In on
25 November 2008 with no comments
Started the day with David Pogue’s iPhone class and Mom and I sat in the back drooling over our new friend’s shoulders as they demonstrated his tips on their awesome phones. Mom will have one by Christmas!
The boat pulled into Naples and Mom and I toured the ruins of Pompeii. Donato (like tomato - long O) our tour guide told us he is a poet so the tour was a little existential - pretty funny. He started our tour explaining the history of the location then said “Too much detail in this talk. Talking should only be about art.”
Pompeii is HUGE! It is an amazing architectural record of what a great city would have been like back then. It is so well preserved it leaves little to the imagination - the roads, the buildings, the bakeries, the fast food restaurants, the brothels….
Here’s a picture inside the brothel where pictures above the rooms depicted the act you could ‘order’ - it’s basically a menu.
This is a picture of the sign on the street (right off an intersection) that “pointed” the way to the brothel.
Mom said she toured Pompeii in the 60’s and was not allowed in the Brothel because women shouldn’t see the ‘porngraphica’. heh
The entire ruins is still not uncovered - the map that showed us around was still half ‘green’ depicting the areas that are not yet excavated. Donato told us they ran out of money then pointed at the excess of guards who were standing around the gates smoking and talking and said “it’s easy to see why they run out of money when you see where it all goes”.
We got on the train and went to Sorrento for a quick stop - beautiful town. Walked around with Maria, Gwen and Mom and got some gelato, drank limoncillo then back to the boat. Great first day out and about!
In on
25 November 2008 with no comments
If you are familiar with cruises, dinner seating is random. Big tables that seat 6-9 people and they just seat your party at the table with random people in the order which you arrive. This can sometimes be really great and sometimes conversationally challenging.
For the first night our Geek Cruise Director Neil chose the seating and there were 5 new friends at my table. I met Genevieve, Gwen, Maria, Christina and Gerry and we laughed all throughout dinner and decided we must be the kids table. We kept our seating arrangement for the rest of the week and guarded our chairs like they were made of gold.
Thank you Neil for choosing the seating arrangement. Here’s a picture of the ‘kids table’ from later in the week. The obligatory shot with the cruise staff as you leave the dining hall, Gerry really liked her “eyes”.
In on
10 November 2008 with no comments
Stayed up all night working through and watching the elections. Holy shit i cried and have never felt more proud in my life…
Thanks to Mom and Dad they drug me out of bed, shoved food down my throat and got me to the boat on time. Of course once we got to the boat - we had to wait.
I’m learning a lot about foreign cultures though like the Italians are a very relaxed group of people. The shops all close around lunch time and people go and eat and drink a coffee then they all come back to work - well the same can be said for the cruise boarding experience. I should have known when the guide said ‘It should be a 45 minute wait but the sitting area is very comfortable’. It ended up being 5 hours.
Like the ‘geeks’ we all are though we gravitated to other geek cruisers and started playing games - this is how you become the most popular person in any waiting room - bring a deck of cards.
Here are our new friends Genovieve, Rodger and Tim all playing ‘Goblin’ while we wait for the mess of Europeans to board before us - ugh. *Photo credits to Gen for the crowd shot and the one with me and my Mom.
In on
4 November 2008 with no comments
that’s a long flight from NYC to Genoa, Italy. fyi, they spell it “Genova” i was really confused trying to find my connecting flight in Rome.
got to the hotel ok, the taxi diver didn’t speak english but spanish is pretty similar so ‘cuanto’ is close enough to ‘costa’ to where it all worked out ok.
my parents had a pesto, salami and parmesan sandwich waiting and lots of other goodies stashed in the hotel room. we went out for hot chocolate then came back and ate some more goodies. here’s dad looking like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
