Patmos, Greece, a tiny island of 12 small Greek islands east of the Greek mainland. We had to tender ashore from our ship, tenders were operated by the local Greek cruise due to union requirements.We were pleasantly surprised .to find a small Greek village which we later enjoyed. On arrival we started our tour to The Cave of Revelation and the
Monastery of St. John the Evangelist. Unfortunately, I have found the commercialism of holy sites to be disturbing. Approach to the cave of Revelation is many steep steps down (that have to be climbed back up). Once inside it was difficult to view all of what Nicolas had described because of the many adornments.
While I understand that this is important to those of the Orthodox belief, I personally found them to be distracting. It truly was a privilege to be in this holy place and even though there were distractions, I felt a special presence in the cave of Revelation.
The Monastery erected to be used as a fortress to protect the monks from pirates in biblical times.
The monetary is home to 12 monks who care for the holy places of Patmos, and serve as caretakers for the museum that is housed there. It’s most famous item is a painting by El Greco of Jesus. It also had portions of the original gospel of St. Mark. Both of these were special to see.
Following our tour, we had some free time and decided to stop for a bite to eat. This was pier side and we were entertained by many feline friends who eagerly awaited any morsel we could provide… We tried local samplings of cheese bread, pie and local wine. Some of our party did some local shopping and we boarded tenders back to the ship. For a relaxing evening and following day at sea (I had to correct this as I originally had ‘ate’ for at) probably a Freudian slip.
November 7, 2011
November 10, 2011 | Author: Barb
November 5, 2011
November 10, 2011 | Author: Barb
Dubrovnik a very picturesque city we had a wonderful trip out from the old city up the mountain around hairpin turns and roads along the side of the mountain – no guard rails fun if you are on that side. Of the bus. Our shore excursion was a private one that turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip….
We took the mountain road and had many opportunities to view the old town from on high, a really picturesque sight with all the orange roofs and the high old walls. We were transported to the home compound of a local family and greeted with a glass of the local beverage called a grape brandy (Wow!), some locally grown and dried figs and music playing. An accordion player and guitarist provided the local entertainment. We were then escorted into a room that had an old olive oil press and an old stone water mill powered by water to crush olives. They explained to us how the olives were ground and then put in baskets that served as sieves to press the oil from the crushed olives.
Following this description the food presentation began. We started with plates of homemade bread of which we delightfully dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar followed by plates of prosciutto, cheeses and pickles, all locally produced. This was accompanied by red and white table wine and delicious fresh squeezed tangerine juice. Following this we were served a simple lettuce salad which we dressed with the local olive oil and balsamic vinegar and this lead us to our main course. We were not prepared for the generously laden platters of roasted potatoes, chicken, pork and beef. Just when we thought it could not get any better, dinner was topped off with fresh, homemade apple strudel and by the way, as we waited for each course to be served, we were serenaded by the family. Then much to our surprise, a member of our group, Joseph to be exact walked in playing the accordion (when we return home we will attach a movie to the blog of this for your enjoyment). The time soon came when we had say goodbye and return to the old city of Dubrovnik which we happily toured. This city has made a monumental recovery from the damages and hardships it encountered during the conflict of the 1990’s. We were delighted to see the restoration and beauty of the Old City. Our visit to Dubrovnik left us with a warm spot in our hearts for the people of Croatia.
November 4, 2011
November 6, 2011 | Author: Barb
Ravenna is our last stop in Italy then on to other countries. Not sure what to expect here.
We had a Princess Cruises shore excursions and our guide was quite good explaining the wonderful and very ancient Mosaics we saw. Some dating back to the 400 or 500 AD time period. Interesting and amazing that they survived this long in such magnificent condition.
Ravenna is a relatively small town and the shops are smaller family run typr shops and they follow their own time table not like the big cities. They close and 12noon and everybody goes home to eat and they reopen at 3PM. No time to shop because of this unfortunately. Back to the ship and a relaxing sailaway. I have been disappointed that the hot tub experience that we enjoyed on the Oceania cruise is not the same on Princess. The Hot tub is not very warm and there are no bubbles. No fun to sit in after a long day of sightseeing and sail away from ports as we did 2 years ago oh well we will sail aaway another way.
November 3,2011
November 6, 2011 | Author: Barb
Today we leave the villa and head into Venice where we will board our ship around 6 pm this evening. As we ‘villa people’ arrived in Venice we had to truck/drag our luggage from the parking garage/rental car drop off area to the water taxi’s pick up place – something to remember when packing and booking hotels in Venice.
It was wonderful to spend the day just walking around Venice once more soaking the sights that you can only be seen here. We also were able to take sometime to shop picking up last minute items we won’t find elsewhere.
We have been able to secure a meeting room to gather with all the other people in our cruise group for transfer to the ship.
Our transport to the ship was really neat with a luggage transport boat and 2 water taxis to take us and our luggage. Sort of fun to arrive at a ship on a boat but we still had to go through all the ship check in stuff. Becuase we were late getting to the ship we missed the lifeboat drill. too bad!!!
We ended our day sailing out of Venice to a champagne toast to a wonderful cruise remembering in a very special way those who could not be with us. We want them to know that they are with us in spirit every minute of the cruise.
We bid a found goodbye to Venice as we sail past St. Marks Square to our first ort of call Ravenna.
November 2,2011
November 6, 2011 | Author: Barb
Today we are off to visit the islands of Murano, know for glass blowing and Burano, known for lace making. We met with another couple for our cruise that had just arrived the day before in Venice and headed across the lagoon to the Island of Burano to see a demonstration of glass blowing by a master craftsman. The particular glass blowing factory demonstration we saw we craftsmen who specialized in making chandeliers. A really fascinating sight to see how each piece is blown individually and then the chandelier is assembled. If you are buying for the US they will wire it for US electrical current. We were then able to walk through the showrooms that had many beautiful art pieces as well as fine hand blown crystal that you could order as you choose. It was rather expensive about 750 Euro’s for 6 glasses.
From here we again headed across the lagoon with our guide to the island of Burano where we were able to take a walking tour and see the shops and houses. Burano is famous for its many colored houses of yellow, blue, pink, green and many shades of each all brightly colored. It is said that these came about so that the husbands who were fishermen could find their correct house on return from the sea. The women while the men were away made lace and we were able to see several demonstrations of that at some of the shops. We had scheduled a seafood lunch while on Burano at the Il Gatto Nero (The Black Cat) and it was a wonderful meal that we all enjoyed. We then took and extra hour on the island to do some shopping. Following this we called for our scheduled water taxi and headed back to Venice and then on to our villa so we could prepare for departure the next day. We had a light salad and garlic bread dinner (as lunch had been so full) and went off to bed early so that we could get an early start in the morning.
November 1, 2011
November 6, 2011 | Author: Barb
Today we have nothing scheduled so will spend a lazy day at the villa. The morning has been spent lying around outside and with people either dozing or reading and just resting and catching up since we have been on the go since we left the us.
Later on 4 of us went off to find out if anything was open since this is a Holy Day and unless you are in a large city like Rome or Venice everything is closed for the day. Since the Holy Day fell on a Tuesday it appears that most of Italy has taken a long holiday weekend and most place out of the big cities were closed for a 4 day weekend. We did find a restaurant that was recommended to us for dinner later on this evening. After we got back to the villa the other car took off in the hope of finding the very upscale outlets (Gucci, Prada, etc) open but that turned out to not be the case so they found a restaurant and had a 5 course leisurely meal in the middle of the afternoon. The other 4 waited and went to dinner in the evening. Tomorrow we have an early start for our visits to Murano and Buraano.
October 31, 2011
November 1, 2011 | Author: Barb
Today we went to Maranello home of Ferrari cars, south of Modena to visit the Ferrari Museo and an outside tour of the Factory. The most impressive part was the Hall of Victories with all the trophies they have ever been won 110 from 1950 to 2009. Additionally displayed 9 of the championship cars. What an absolutely awesome sight! It exhibited a car that broke the record of 8 championship victories in 10 years. We additionally took a bus tour through the factory area and saw the newest buildings recently constructed. Ferrari makes a strong effort to make the work environment an energetic and pleasant place to work. It takes approximately 3 months to build an 8 cylinder model and 5months to build a 12 cylinder but if you want to order a new model car expect the waiting time to be 2 years and a 1 year waiting time if it is for a version of a model year in production. It is a unique factory site tour of something different from what we are used to in the US. I will say that it was rather fun to go through this tour with the guys traveling with us from an automotive company that will remain nameless. Our guys are experts in their field and they knew that the manufacturing process presented as being unique to Ferrari were however common practices through out the automotive world.
Following this we had hoped to eat at a restaurant across the street from the factory but it was closed due to the holiday weekend (November 1) so that did not work out. Instead we started on one of our adventures.
We headed for Modena to find a specialty store with balsamic vinegar and lunch somewhere. In the city. Because we don’t know where we are or where we are going we are relying on the phone map GPS to get us where we want to go. This turned out to be a really difficult a challenge. Ask John about driving the round-a-bout 4 times while Barb tried to figure out where we were! WE STILL DON”T KNOW!!!!!!! Finally we stopped and the 2 cars split up and we all went our separate ways and we each fond wonderful local restaurants with superb food even though no one spoke English.
Some of us were also able to find the local balsamic vinegar made by our restaurant owner and some people purchased this to bring home.
The Phone GPS battery was running low so we relied on lead foot (Guisseppi) to get us home in record time !!!!!!!!!
We are now sitting around at the villa having several bottles of wine as we discuss our day and what will come tomorrow!
October 30, 2011
November 1, 2011 | Author: Barb
Today we had a free day with nothing planned so we went to Venice for the day and had a wonderful time. Venice is extremely crowded on a Sunday even in this “off season” We arrived at the Piazzala Roma car park. Some of our group took off walking and some of us traveled with the general public via Vapperetto the public bus which is really a boat. We rode the boat until we arrived at the Rialto Bridge where we window shopped for a while then started for St. Marks Square. We were heading for the other side of Venice over many bridges. The city of Venice is made up of over 180 islands and you are always walking over bridges. As we were leaving Venice last night on the Vapperotto we met a young woman with her 4 month old son Lorenzo. She owns a restaurant on the Grand Canal and we went there for lunch. The service left a bit to be desired but we think it was because we were a party of 9 and it was overwhelming for them. While the service was not so good the food was excellent and we all had an Italian lunch – long and leisurely.
Following lunch we went to the Doges Palace and the connecting prison. There were some fascinating displays of the suits of armor, weapons and absolutely unbelievable swords that we can’t figure out how they even were able to pick them up. Part of the tour took us across the Bridge of Sighs called so because the prisoners ‘sighed’ as they crossed the bridge into the prison. We were able to take a water taxi to the Piazzala Roma where we made our way back to the villa.
Our evening at the villa has turned out be a circus!!!!! We found that our landlord at the villa had washed all our towels. We pulled in the driveway and saw our towels hanging outside to dry and it had not happened and it was 630PM. Because we wanted to take showers and need the towels one of our party (F. Stanley) decide we could dry the towels in the microwave. So he put a wash cloth in the microwave and it worked fairly well so he decided to do a larger towel. The first few minutes were fine then he thought it needed a bit more time – this turned out to be a mistake. Which was first realized when the odor of burnt Egyptian cotton filled the air (one of our party said it smelled like toasted marshmallows) but needless to say we didn’t have any marshmallows! Instead he pulled out the towel and found that it looked like the shroud of Cessalto. With burnt splotches at the many folds. The towel will go on tour to our other destinations and when we board our cruise ship and we will take a picture at every stop. Just like our own ‘Flat Stanley’
October 29,2011
October 30, 2011 | Author: Barb
Today we visit Venice for many the first time. For the first time visitor the ride into Venice on a water taxi is a breath taking experience, you don’t know which way to look. the breath taking sights are all around you. Our drive into Venice was exciting, roads very crowded and the first parking garage at piazzala roma was full so we have to go to the one further out at the tronchettto an interesting experience as we find that road signs in Italy are not wonderful and can be difficult to read. We finally met our transfer person who took us via water taxi to meet our guide for our Casanova tour of Venice. We found this tour lacking! We finished the tour and went on our gondola ride with serenade.
This was a wonderful emotional experience for all of us. We had an accordion player and singer who where just wonderful and as we glided down the canals of Venice to their music it was a really wonderful experience. The romantic setting of the gondola rides and the beautiful sunset was the perfect way to begin our delectable dinner at Vino Vino a restaurant we found most enjoyable. We ate early by Venetian standards at 600PM and when we left at 730PM the restaurant had just filled up. This was a really nice place to eat with table along the canal in nicer weather and a very cozy courtyard but it was too cool though pleasant to dine outside.
We made our way home with a few side trips as I said the signs in Italy are difficult to see when driving at 130 km.
We have written this and had a glass of wine and it is off to bed and another day tomorrow to Venice.
October 27,2011
October 30, 2011 | Author: Barb
October 27, 2011
The Villa is lovely the kitchen is very Italian sort of a great room comfy and cozy while the dining room and living room are beautiful but very formal. Definitely not the place to lounge around with glasses of red wine. We had dinner in tonight and went to bed early to be ready for our tour of Verona and some wine tasting tomorrow. The bedrooms and bathrooms are roomy but lacking some of the extras like towel rods, closets and dressers. It makes it difficult to put things about and it is easier to live out of our suitcases. The Italian thoughts on heat are very different from ours and our first night was chilly (really that would be cold).