Cruising Through the Italian Riviera.
On our 4th day in Spain we boarded The Norwegian Jewel for our cruise through the Italian Riviera. First stop -- Sicily!We were beside ourselves with excitement to make a stop at the island where Al Pacino portrayed the Godfather in the first movie. Mark incessantly researched the area to find the "Godfather" tours. We finally settled on a train ride to Turino where we could see the sights.
But first, the cruise ship. What a ship! This is one of the cruise ships that now offers "free-style dining." Remember The Apprentice episode where the teams have to present their marketing campaigns for free-style dining? That was absolutely one of our favorite parts of the cruise was
the fabulous restaurant experiences -- we visited the steak restaurant, the French restaurant, the Chinese restaurant and the Italian restaurant. For only $7.00 per head, we kept finding ourselves back at the steak restaurant. Go figure.This is a picture of Mark & I on our "last meal." We ended up leaving the ship at the French port and decided to have one last real breakfast. As you can see, everyone else had hightailed it for port.
Being sun-worshippers, our first stop on our "at sea" day was some much needed R&R by the pool. I just love cruise pools -- not sure why -- probably cause they are always the perfect temperature.We completely recharged our batteries and soaked in the Italian Riviera sunshine. Listening to the salsa band and watching fun-loving cruisers making complete fools of themselves in games like the male sexy legs contest. Yikes! Not so sexy guys!
I also fell in love with the bar. No, not because the alcohol was flowing and the music made me want to dance. Because of these crazy fun chairs! I wanted to just hang out in them all day long. I had to come back during the day though to get the pictures so you could actually see how cool they look. And they were comfy!
Then there was chocolate night. There was one room dedicated completely to a chocoholics dream. There were chocolate fountains, chocolate carvings, chocolate bon bons, chocolate cakes, and even sugar-free chocolate desserts! Mark and I way-over indulged. And he doesn't even really like chocolate. I just wished I had brought my camera. I obviously had NO IDEA how amazing chocolate night was going to be. But I wasn't going to leave that area because it was like someone said "Gold is being handed out at the restaurant" because people flooded the room as soon as it opened.
Now, back to Sicily.
We pulled into port, hopped the train to our stop, and got off. Our first realization was that we had a VERY large hill to climb to find the little town. And then, after huffing our way up, we realized, it was just a glorious shopping center! That has no restrooms!After meandering for 30 minutes we realized this wasn't our cup of tea and we found a gondola ride to the bottom of the mountain and found a cool little beach-front resort to have lunch and hang out at.
We met a really nice couple from our cruise ship on the walk -- who had the same idea we did. It was really fun to just meet random people in another country and realize they are traveling on the same ship you are.
All in all, I'd say skip Sicily. There were so many fabulous cities in Europe and Sicily just didn't do it for us. I mean, how long can you walk around looking at stores of olive oil and linens?
posted by Melanie Strick @ 11:02 AM
0 comments
