J and I got back on Monday from a 2 week vacation in Europe. We had an amazing time, met some great people and basked in scorching sunny weather every day. Here’s how it went…
May 10-12 Venice
Gondoliers over my shoulder. Too expensive.
Amazingly beautiful. A city on water. Streets, alleyways and bridges crossing tiny canal routes. It’s easy to get lost in the tiny streets, especially if you’re used to a grid street system. Thankfully, there’s always markers towards the major landmarks and you can navigate your way based on them. Our hotel, Lanterna di Marco Polo, was midway between the popular Rialto bridge and San Marco square. Room rates are expensive (~$200 CDN/night for a very tiny room in a 3 star hotel). Water taxis are a cheap way to get a good view of the city. Buy a ticket and get on the #1 line. It takes you around the major canal route and makes lots of stops. Just ride it for a while and see the sights. Much cheaper than taking a gondola which is about $100 for an hour ride.
San Marco square is a great place to people watch and relax. The square is full of pigeons and are actually a popular attraction. Vendors sell food and pigeons flock to you and sit on your hands and shoulders. Very funny to watch people freak out when then get 3 dozen birds surrounding them. My favorite attraction here was Doge’s Palace. Shop specialties are ceramic masks. We even saw Neil Patrick Harris (aka Doogie Howser) at the Peggy Guggenheim museum. For meals, we mostly ate pizza, spaghetti and lots of gelato and they were all amazing. Italian pasta is just sooo much better than when you get in North America.
For the following week we took a Royal Caribbean cruise around Italy and Greece. This was our second cruise together and looked forward to having a floating hotel with constant meals and pampering.
May 13 Split, Croatia
The pillar was falling so I spent some time holding it up.
We only spent an afternoon in Split. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday so there weren’t many shops open and most would only take their local currency instead of the Euro. The port looks very modern yet has an old historic area which is great to walk around in.
May 14 Corfu, Greece
I was exhilarated after a dip in the water.
We did a great excursion of a 4×4 tour of the island. A caravan of 16 jeeps took off from the harbour and headed to the mountains, up a series of steep switchbacks (27 of them I believe) to a mountaintop village for a tour and sampling local snacks, wine and ouzo. The tour continued on down the backside of the mountain to a great beach hotel and I took a refreshing dip in the salt water for a half hour. Another lunch of greek salad, mousakka, and lamb spaghetti. J drove the tricky technical way back up the mountain and did an amazing job doing so. A very fun way to see a lot of beautiful sights of the island. We also found out how they harvest the olives in that area. Mesh netting is laid under the trees and as the olives fall off the tree, they’re shaken across the netting down the bottom of the hill for collection. In some cases, they fire shotguns into the trees to shake some olives off the trees.
May 15 Katakolon Greece
The ancient competition field in Olympia
Katakolon is a sleepy port town, with shops that only open when cruise ships arrive. We took an excursion to Olympia to see the beginnings of the Olympics. A lot of great history of sport. Some ruins still exist, but most are toppled pillars. We also got to run around on the competition area of the original site of the Olympics.
May 16 Santorini, Greece
At the top of the hot volcano. Santorini is in the background.
Our excursion took us to the volcano, and a hike to the top. Still active, but the last eruption was in the late 1940’s. A hike to the top of the volcano, and we understood why they were handing out bottles of water - it is HOT. No open volcano pit, but just the heat absorbed by the dark lava. Next, our ship took us to a sheltered bay for a swim in warm volcano springs. We had to jump off the ship into the 10 degree water and swim to shore for the springs. The look on J’s face as she jumped in and immediately realized how cold it was will always stay in my mind. The swim to shore was longer than expected, but the salt water made it easy to float. The springs weren’t really ‘hot’, more like slightly warm. We also got an explanation of the tricky harbour waters in the area, and how a recent cruise ship in the area hit some of the underwater cliffs and eventually sunk[video].
What a view for lunch.
After the tour, we took the cablecar to the top of Santorini. If you’ve never seen Santorini, it’s definitely a spot that has to be visited. A village perched on the top of a sheer mountain cliff with amazing views of the surrounding sea and sunsets. Houses are tightly tucked into each other built into the side of the mountain and one person’s rooftop is the neighbour’s patio. J and I had lunch at a great restaurant with a patio overlooking all the ships docked below. There are 3 ways up and down to the village. 1) cable car like a ski lift 2) ride a donkey up the steps 3) walk up the steps yourself, avoiding the donkey doo. We opted for the very long lineups for the cable car which moved fairly fast. We heard horror stories from people who walked and complained it was very slippery and dirty. We even saw a couple who took the donkeys and the guy fell off and split open his head. I’d obviously recommend the cable car.
May 17 At Sea
Forced rest. The cruise had lots of activities planned to keep everyone busy. This was the only day of the vacation which wasn’t impeccible clear blue skies. A few clouds blocked the sun at times, but nothing much to complain about.
May 18 Naples, Italy
The ancient version of Abbey Road in Pompeii.
Lots to do from Naples, but Naples itself it mostly a busy industrial city with terrible traffic. The worst I’ve ever seen, even worse than Rome. Street lights don’t seem to be obeyed. As our tour guide explained, “red lights are simply an opinon”. We took an excursion to Pompeii. I’ve always wanted to see this and it didn’t disappoint. Pompeii is amazingly preserved huge city, even though only about 2/3rds of it has been excavated. You could easily spend a week in Pompeii exploring the whole city and not see it all. There are even examples of preserved bodies of people who eventually succumbed to the smoke and ashes from the volcanic eruption in 79 AD. A lot of the original pillars are still standing and the foundations of all the buildings are intact, but the upper floors of the buildings were toppled. Storefronts, bakeries, and even a brothel are there.
May 19-21 Rome
The cruise ended in Rome and we planned to stay a few days, but unfortunately not as long as we’d like. We packed as much into our 2 day Rome visit as possible. First stop, the Vatican.
In the middle of St. Peter’s Square with St. Peter’s Basilica in the background.
The Vatican was definitely the highlight of my trip, not for religious regions, but simply for the architectural and artistic elements. I’m a huge sucker for roman columns and St Peters square doesn’t disaapoint. Over 140 giant pillars surround the massive open gathering area. The sheer enormity is just so impressive. Next, St. Peter’s Basilica is the most amazing church I have ever seen and it is definitely one of my favorite places in the world. The artwork and sculptures are so beautiful that I was in awe. Around every corner, another huge marble sculpture and another amazing painting and ceiling. I could have stayed there for hours and I tried to. We also took a long climb up to the Cupola, the large dome for a very high look down into the church. Going up even further still, walking the disorienting slanted stairs up around the top of the cupola you appear at the very top of the church with a 360 degree view over the entire city.
That evening, we found a great neighbourhood restaurant and had some authentic bruschetta and spaghetti. “When in Rome”, right? We stuffed ourselves and couldn’t even touch the pizza that we had ordered. We took a walk to the Trevi fountain to see it lit up at night. Very romantic and impressive.
The Roman Colliseum. I’m not a Gladiator.
For our last day we started with the Colliseum. We paid $10 for a short tour that gave us a free ticket and bypassed all the very long lineups. That timesaving itself was worth it since we didn’t have much time. The tour explained a lot about the history of the Colliseum. On to the Palatino and the Roman Forum to see the ruins. The sun was cooking us and we fasttracked it through the ruins, hiding in shade where possible. Another great lunch of pizza and a visit to the Spanish Steps. This also brought us to the fashion and shopping district, what J had been looking forward to. She had shopping withdrawal and needed a fix. A tour around shops like Ferragamo, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Hermes, Gucci, Prada, etc and some money spent and J was feeling normal again.
Another great pasta dinner and some more walking of the city finished out the day. We had to leave Europe, but we’ll be back again soon.
All photos by my wonderful wife, J.
