The next morning we wandered down to the lobby and met up with a few of our fellow island cruisers, then ran around the Quito airport trying to figure out what was going on. The airport is actually quite nice, if poorly laid out, and not amazingly run. But, eventually we got on the right flight, and were on our way. We figured that the reason ( Read more... )

The flight to Quito was not terribly eventful. A long layover in Miami which was made much more pleasant by meeting up with my folks who took Shannon and I out to dim sum (8 hour layover, so we felt no concern leaving the airport ( Read more... )

After a while, the captain throttled back. So we managed to get some reasonable sleep that night without being tossed all over the place. We arrived in Gibraltar sometime around mid-morning, a bit ahead of schedule actually. It was neat to see a lot of other ships, as we'd largely be avoiding shipping lanes, and so hadn't seen many other ships ( Read more... )

After the lightning tour of major cities, we managed to take some time off. The ship spent a day at sea, so we managed to spend a lot of time reading and writing. I spent some time helping my mom with a jigsaw puzzle that we eventually determined was missing a significant number of pieces ( Read more... )

After several days of non-stop tourism, Corsica was a welcome respite. There isn't all that much to see here, they really try to play up their connection to Napoleon on the island. We were greeted by a rather aging contingent of actors dressed in the appropriate uniforms for the french military, including one gentleman clearly dressed as Napoleon ( Read more... )

The tour of the Vatican and the Colosseum in Rome was the longest tour that we signed up for. Because of that, and how tired we were from the non-stop touring since we landed in Barcelona, we had an early dinner the night before. This was really quite pleasant, as we managed to avoid the very loud table just behind us in the dining room ( Read more... )

After an early night, we made port in Nice. Deciding that since the French Riviera is really more worth seeing during the summer, we opted instead to go and visit the tiny nation of Monte Carlo. The express purpose of that trip was to see the Grand Casino. On the way we stopped at a local tourist attraction, a still functional medieval city ( Read more... )

So, after our whirlwind trip through Barcelona, we boarded the ship, Celebrity Cruiseline's Century, and set sail. Usually on a cruise ship, you get on and have an entire day of just lounging around the ship so you can get used to being on a ship, explore, locate the ice cream, and deal with the horrendous number of hours you just lost flying over ( Read more... )

The plane ride over to Barcelona was not fun. Shannon and I departed from BWI at 9:30pm, so we had both put in a full day's worth of work. Estimated final arrival in Barcelona was at 2:30pm local time. We had planned to meet with my parents catch a meal, maybe an early dinner of tapas or somesuch and then sleep, this was not to be. Flight ( Read more... )

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