From there we drove down to Barcelona and got on a very large boat, that headed east. We cruised the Mediterranean as far as Naples, Italy. At that point G&G made it half way around the world before we finally said "ok, that's enough". We put em through a lot and they came out no worse for wear...very, very impressive.We thought the cruise was a good idea. It was a much more comfortable way to travel. There was a lot more space and better food, even though my 4 passenger Peugeot comes standard with a built-in French bread maker and wine dispenser. We also found that cruising, as opposed to driving, over to Italy, was much more affordable. Using the '90 Day Ticker' website, we found a great deal and locked into a price of $649 per person for the week but if you are 55 or older, they give you an addition $100 on-board credit per person. So Randi talked to them on the phone and was able to get that addition $100 credit for each of us by putting Dad and I in one room and Mom and Ran in the other. I was a little concerned with this concept at first but the thought of those additional rum drinks kept it in perspective for me. However, as the sailing date approached, the price on the 90 day ticker kept getting cheaper. Grampi noticed a couple weeks before leaving that it had gone down to $500 per person, so Randi called her guy again...who apparently couldn't say "no" to her about anything...and she was able to get us an additional $50 on board credit! That got us to $499 per person for the week. Pretty damn sweet deal, if considering that against paying for hotels, gas, tolls, meals, rum drinks, along that whole route. If this boat would have waited a few more weeks to sail, Ran would have had that poor guy paying us, to go on that cruise.
This wasn't like the Caribbean cruises, that Randi and I have been lucky enough to be on, in the past.
Those cruises are focused on lounging in the sun, whether it be out at sea or on some island beach, listening to Reggae music and reading a good book. On this cruise we were lucky enough to have almost perfect (around 65 and sunny) sight-seeing weather because on every morning, except one, we found ourselves docked near some historic town, filled with things to do and places to see. There was no lollygaggin around, layin on a lounge chair, dozing off in the sun. No sir. You get your ass out there and be a tourist or you're a loser by dinner time. So that's what we did. Everyday we saw more tourist sites than some people see in a year. We'd come back to our typical cruise ship dinner table and talk about historic facts and myths with our new friends. All those dinner partners turned out to be great folks. We all genuinely seemed to enjoy each other company every night. There was Len, Charlotte and Evan from Florida...and Dave, Jane and Pam from the island of Guernsey, Great Britain.Our first stop was on the French Riviera in Cannes, France. It's kind a of summer, beach town for the wealthy. It proved to be an interesting little tour we took of the town on a small, open trolley ride that has the appearance of a small scale train. The four of us were packed very tightly into one bench seat...I don't think I had more than 1/4 cheek touchin the seat at any one time.
The next stop on the agenda was Genoa. We were disappointed with this, as this stop was initially destined to be Portofino but as it turned out, while Portofino would have been a more beautiful setting,
Genoa may have been a more interesting town, from a historical point of view. We took a taxi from the boat and had him drop us off at the main Cathedral on via San Lorenzo. The exterior and interior of the church uses black and white striped marble, which looked unique and pretty amazing really. From there we walked to Piazza de Ferrari and had a coffee there by the large the large fountain. Grampi was amazed at the small size of his coffee. Then we walked up to the Porta Soprana, before turning around to walk through a little part of the "vicoli", down 'via di Canneto il Lungo'.
We found out later that we were so close to Christopher Columbus's house but we didn't know it...he could discover America but we couldn't lookup his address. The extremely narrow and old street of Canneto il Lungo made us question taking it for Mom safety in riding down it in a wheelchair. While standing at the top of the hill and contemplating this an older Italian woman walked by and seemed to know what we were thinking. We didn't understand what she said but we thought she was maybe saying "If you take-a Eleanora down-na that street-ta, you are-a sum kind ofa fargin icehole. I pray-ya for Eleanora...I makea da sign-a ofa da cross-a". Needless to say, this made us all a little nervous. Hundreds of years from now I didn't want to be part of the pilgrimage here for Saint Eleanora..."she wenta overa a one-a hundred-a miles per hour-a downa dat streeta because-a 'Johna the Bast*rda' leta go ofa da wheelchair". It was really cool to see in all the little shops packed into the narrow alleyways and get a feel for the way of life there. We walked back to the Aquarium in Port Antico, before finally catching a ride back to where the boat was docked. We had a full day of walking and were all ready to call it a day.The next morning we arrived in Livorno, Italy. This is where they stop for folks to get to Florence, Pisa and the Tuscany area.
We decided to rent a car and drive the hour and a half into Florence ourselves. We saved quite a bit of money, over taking one of the excursions offered by Celebrity Cruises. We drove into Florence as far as we could, before getting to the inner city area which is 'permit entry only'. It is camera operated and if they take a picture of you driving in their without a permit you get an automatic ticket. We parked the car at the train station and then a taxi over to the Accademia Gallery, where David lives. The David.
Michaelangelo's David. He really was what we came to see in Florence and we weren't disappointed. We signed up for a guided tour there and we enjoyed listening to our guide's passion for Michaelangelo's work. He focused solely on Michaelangelo and also solely on David. If you are like me and your expectations are set low, to see a statue of a naked man holding a sling over his shoulder and a rock in the other hand...you are overwhelmed at the sheer size of this work of art. David is a single piece of marble that is exactly 13 feet high from head to toe. It's massive! 
Our guide explained that Michaelangelo was commissioned in 1501 to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by another artist. It was to be a colossal statue portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom. 
Our guide told us with a smile on his face that looked like Robert De Niro "after the Pieta sculpture and then David was completed, Michaelangelo was-a number-a one...no doubt about it...a number-a one". They didn't allow pictures in the museum, so I only got about 15 shots of David. From there we walked to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo). 
This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is made up of 3 buildings...the church, a bell tower and the baptistery. This amazing square also had some World Heritage-type gelato, that came complete with gelato and a side of waffle. Damn!, that was good. We got to see the gilded bronze doors of the Baptistery up close. The doors have twenty-eight panels, mostly depicting biblical scenes from the Old Testament. Michelangelo referred to these doors as fit to be the "Gates of Paradise" and that's what they are referred to as today....because-a he-a was-a number-a one-aThe next day the agenda didn't let up at all. It actually got kicked up a notch with Roma!! Again the dock for a really large boat stopping for Rome was quite a distance away. In the great city of Chicago they'd say "hey, whattaya doin, get dat ding atta ear...you gotta park dat overs in Civitavecchia"...of course in Chicago, if you pay the right people, you could probably park her right next to the Coliseum. Civitavecchia is about an hour away from Rome. We considered renting a car again but opted for the 9 euro round-trip train ride there. This seemed like a great idea until we arrived and got ripped off on a 50 euro cab fare, going across the city, from the train station to the Vatican. We arrived 15 minutes late for our 10:30am guided tour of the Vatican Museum there but were lucky enough to catch the tour before they left the initial starting point. We explained that Mom would be taking the tour from a wheelchair and they were very accommodating. So accommodating that the rest of the tour started to feel neglected. We all had headsets on to listen to the guide there and she referred to us as "da familya ofa Eleanora". At every stop along the tour she would say "where'sa Eleanora...is she-a hiding againa...oh looka everyone-a, there'sa Eleanora...isn't she-a beautifula...marvelousa... bravo, bravo". I started to feel like a celebrity by just assisting Eleanora. I was actually starting to wave to the crowd as we would enter the next room along the way. The museum is huge, with an amazing collection of art. The guided tour is well worth it and our guide was fantastic...bravo, bravo. We finished the museum tour and go right from there, down some steps and into the Sistine Chapel. When Michelangelo painted this, he was most definitely #1 and it was apparently well known, as the story of how the Pope begged him to return, after harassing him to finish, makes that clear.
The ceiling took him 4 years to finish, during which time it's said that Michelangelo read and reread the Old Testament while he was painting the ceiling, drawing his inspiration from the words of the scripture, rather than from previous works of sacral art at the time. His painting of The Last Judgment, is believed to be his crowning masterpiece. We walked out of the Chapel and we were escorted into a special entrance of St. Peter's Basilica...someone must have called ahead to let them know 'the familya' was approaching. 
What an incredible sight St. Peter's is inside...just breathe-taking. It's fun to stand by the main entrance and watch people's expression as they enter. After St. Peter's we took a quick cab ride over to the Pantheon, to have lunch in the square there and marvel at this very ancient Roman temple, built around 126 AD. It went from originally being built to worship all the pagan gods of ancient Rome, to being converted into a Christian church in 609 AD.
While most of the other buildings of ancient times did not survive through the medieval period, they say the Pantheon being a Christian church was the reason it was spared from destruction. It is an amazing structure, right in the heart of Rome. Sitting in the square staring up at it, it really felt like to me "this is Rome". Unfortunately we were running out of time and needed to get back to the boat. By the time we cabbed back to the train station we were all becoming slightly concerned that there was a chance we could miss the boat if things didn't go right. With this paranoia in mind, we practiced what could become an emerging sport called 'Extreme Wheel-chairing'. As far as we could tell, using our broken French language where Italian was being spoken, there was only one train to catch back to Civitavecchia that afternoon. It was leaving in like 3 minutes from 'platform 28'...and we were at 'platforma numbera one-a'. So when Randi said "we better run" I made one of the dumber decisions in my life and started to run like Forrest Gump, while pushing Grandma in the wheelchair. We were way ahead of Ran and poor Grampi, as Grandma's wheels were traveling at possibly 20 miles an hour...I'm very fast when I'm scared. It turned out platform 28 was like a half a mile away...literally! When I looked back we were way ahead of Ran and Grampi. I could hear her yelling at him "come on Dad, can't you run any faster... RUN!" But as it turned out, the train was delayed and we made it there maybe 10 minutes before it left. That night I'd laid awake thinking about my crazy decision to run like that with Grandma. I first thanked God that I didn't hit a curb and launched her skyward. I also was wondering what good would it do for us to get to that train before them. What could we have possibly done to stop the train, while Ran and Grampi caught up ? 
I suppose I could have had Grandma get out of the chair and then sent it for a ghost ride into the cow-catcher...that would have caught someone's attention?? It was crazy. We all had a good laugh after we made it back. That night we had our Thanksgiving feast aboard the ship. We actually had the traditional turkey dinner and lobster!
The following day was our last stop of the cruise, before having the final day at sea. This stop was at the birthplace of pizza, Napoli (Naples). And at that point in our continual cruise eating binge, I felt like I could have given birth to a large sausage and pepperoni pizza. Naples is one of the oldest cities of the western world, being originally founded by the Greeks as Neápolis (New City) and it looks like one of the oldest cities. On this day G&G took a bus tour of Naples on their own, while Ran and I went to Pompeii. We weren't sure how we were getting there but I met a nice kid at the taxi stand, outside of the dock, who convinced me I could trust him. His name was Lino Rapillo. He was 24 years old and still lived with his parents in Naples.
He was a good lookin kid and Randi said a couple times "my girls would like to meet you". I was in the cab thinking "ok, Mrs. Robinson, that's about enough". He drove us 30 minutes to Pompeii and picked us back up again around 3 hours later. 
Pompeii was like visiting a large, deserted Roman suburb. It was really amazing to get a glimpse at what Roman life was like, actually at the height of the Roman Empire (79 AD). It really didn't seem so bad. Life seemed to be simpler back then. If you had a good horse and a nice pair of sandals, you were set.
We were able to walk into a few different houses that still had pieces of frescoes on the walls. It must have been a beautiful town with all the sculptures and wall paintings intact. The only problem was that the mountain just behind was ready to blow and nobody knew it. The volcano Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii under 60 feet of ash...that's deep. After Pompeii we cabbed back to Naples, where Lino took us to the oldest pizzeria in Naples, the historic Pizzeria da Michele. 
He insisted we all have our own pizza, which was ridiculous, considering the food we had awaiting us at the dock. I really didn't think I would find anything special about their pizza. I grew up in Chicago, which also prides itself with their pizza. It sounds silly for me to say this but I have to say, this simple, oven-fired, extremely thin, margarita pizza (said to be the original pizza made for Queen Margarita) with oil on it, was probably the best pizza I've ever had...seriously. 
From there we drove over to the Church of Gesù Nuovo, with its unusual fascade. It was originally built as a palace during the 1470s and the facade was preserved during the transformation of the building. We continued on and Lino continued to weave his way through their narrow streets. It looked as though it was laundry day for everyone..."hang em high and let em dry" from high up on their balconies. We decided to finish our tour with a shot of expresso at Gran Caffee Gambrinus, where Lino convinced us to eat again. He bought us a pastry that was delicious. He saw his uncle and his cousin on the way out the door...everyone seemed to be 'his people'. I saw cannolis in the window on the way out of Gambrinus. I had to be physically removed from the premise, to avoid having anymore food.
After our final day at sea, we arrived in Barcelona one very fast week later. We made a quick tour of Barcelona, seeing two of the Antoni Gaudi sites, the church of La Sagrada Familia and the famous Parc Guell. We drove through the Ramblas and saw the crowds of people shopping, before making our way back to France. Then on the way home we stopped in Carcasonne, so G&G could see Robin's hood and we could acquire another souvenir spoon.
It was great to spend that time with them. We were very impressed by their fortitude and courage in making the trip. Having them here made our apartment feel more like home and kind of gave more justification to us being here. We feel very fortunate for everything and the way it all turned it.
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