Tuesday January 14
Today was the day I’d been waiting for! Today was Pompeii. Weirdly, today was also a late day. We wouldn’t be docking until around 13:00 (1pm) so when I went down for breakfast it turned out, they were actually serving brunch. Wild. Although it wasn’t really since the more traditionally afternoon tidbits weren’t actually going to be served until after 11:00. Anyway, before eating, I made a stop at the excursions desk. See, the way I figured it, after Genoa, I decided I’d rather have a guided tour than strike off on my own. In a city where I was staying and not under a time deadline, it would be fine, but knowing I had to get back to the boat by a certain time, just filled me with a particular panic. Thus it seemed best to get it sorted. I booked myself on a city tour for Palermo, which included seeing the opera house. But more on that in the next day’s entry, when it actually took place.
Getting on the tour bus, I was sitting by myself, as a solo traveler I often did, when another solo climbed aboard. He sat next to me and introduced himself as Doug. He’s a geologist from Kansas but was thinking about relocating to Europe and was checking out a few places. I had a buddy! Also on the tour were Alexsander and Rebecca, who were on my first tour in Marseille. Regardless of the fact there are upwards of 4000 passengers on board a ship, you do tend to see the same people over and over. Before we left the docks, our guide Paola handed out headsets (single ear and not terribly comfortable) and the tour began.
We were told all about the geography and history of the region as we left the city and headed towards Pompeii, passing Herculaneum on the way.
Our first stop, as is often the case on cruises, was at a shop selling engraved cameos. They were cool, but incredibly expensive so I didn’t buy anything. But they did let us use the toilet, so that was okay. Then it was off into the ruins themselves.
Pompeii is incredibly well preserved and, as someone on our tour pointed out, while it was sad for them, it was amazing for us, today, who can study it and learn so much about how things were****. We saw all sorts of old buildings and shops and homes. The house, named for an important playwright, was pretty cool. Nice to see writers getting some respect! We also walked through the Lupanar, an ancient whore house and saw a penis carved on the roadway, which, contrary to popular myth, did not point the way to the prostitutes, but was instead a symbol for prosperity. Too bad, really, since the other way is a better story.
About this point in our tour, it was getting cold and another couple was beginning to wonder if we were going to see the plaster bodies, which, let’s face it, are the primary reason most people visit Pompeii. They asked Paola about it, since they wanted to see them and then go back to the coffee shop at the entrance to get out of the cold. Sure enough, they were coming up.
Overall, I was blown away but everything there. Sure, I wish it had been a little warmer, but that’s a small complaint. This, in conjunction with the Palace of Knossos, which I saw last July, have really increased my appetite for learning more about ancient cities and civilizations.
After the tour, Doug invited me to go along with him and his dinner companions, Patt and Lawrence, for some authentic Napoli pizza. They had asked Paola for a good spot and she recommended Pizza Madre, a place just across from the port, so off the four of us went.
Patt and Lawrence are a married couple, living in Portugal, even though she’s originally from the US and he’s from the UK. The place was mostly empty when we got there, around 17:00, and we all realized we weren’t terribly hungry, but we did want to try it. In the end, we ordered one Pizza Margherita to share (to which Doug treated us all) and then, after a quick stop trying to find souvenirs, headed back to the ship for dinner.
Dinner was fun as we realized Doug and Patt and Lawrence were seated at the table next to ours, and Doug lived fairly close to Fritz and Barbi. So now it was my turn to make introductions (especially good since they were all slated for the same excursion).
After dinner, I actually decided to be social. I had made a plan to grab drinks with Aleksander and Rebecca at one of the plethora of bars onboard.
They are an incredibly interesting and artistic couple, having just recently gotten married. He’s from Bulgaria and she’s from Menorca, where they live. And yes, Menorca is a real place. We all thought we just misheard Mallorca when she mentioned it that first day, but nope, it’s real (and we passed it on our sea day back to Barcelona). We ended up nursing drinks and talking for about 3 hours, in a wide-ranging conversation covering all sorts of topics. Eventually, though, we had to call it a night. It was getting late and we all had to get up for excursions in the morning.
**** In fact, an important discovery was made about 3 days after we were there.
Wednesday January 15
Got up and headed down to the restaurant for breakfast. Saw Doug there and joined him. This would start a pattern. We had a nice chat and discovered he was on the same tour I was on today, so after we ate, we both headed back to our cabins to grab supplies for the day with a plan to meet up at the departure point.
When I got to the main showroom, where we were waiting to go out to our bus, Doug wasn’t feeling well so he decided to skip the day’s tour. I promised to take lots of pictures for him and headed out.
As I walked to the bus, I saw a woman trying to take a selfie with the bow of the ship, so I volunteered to take it for her. Her name is Bridgett, and since she was traveling solo (there are so many of us daring folks) we decided to team up as photo buddies.
Again, we had headsets distributed on the bus and, again, our guide was Paolo (a guy this time). Our first stop was the Teatro Massimo, and really was the reason I had chosen this tour. When I was looking at excursions originally, back home with Rasa, the Teatro is the thing I was most interested in and while we had looked at distances from where we figured the dock was and calculated how far it would be to walk there on my own, I was glad I had booked the tour. No lines, everything was included, and I didn’t have to worry. (as it turned out, it really wasn’t that far to walk to the Teatro, but I didn’t know that until after the tour was over)
At the Teatro, we were handed over to Katerina, who worked there. She gave us the rundown on the building and its history, all while taking us through the various areas. Now, I had thought the tour was going to be more behind the scenes, but in the end, it was pretty much just a tour of the public spaces. Still pretty cool, just not what I was expecting. That said, after seeing the way some of the tourists in our group behaved, I’m not surprised they didn’t want to take us anywhere sensitive.
In the house, the orchestra was rehearsing for an upcoming performance, so we were asked to not take flash pictures in the darkened room, nor go further than the soundboard. I stayed near the back, took my pictures and just enjoyed the elegant building. But…we were still on headsets so we could all here Katerina constantly asking people, nicely, to turn off their lights, to not use flash, to not go so far into the room, etc. It was like dealing with grade schoolers.
When we went upstairs to the royal box, Katerina directed us to circle around so everyone could get in and see the view and move on. But there were people who couldn’t do that, and either went the wrong way, against the flow of traffic, or just plopped themselves in the front row of seats, making it difficult and uncomfortable for the rest of us to climb over them.
Ugh.
The theatre itself is beautiful. There are six floors of box seats, which look like prison cells from the outside hallways. And the last place Katerina took us was the smoking room, called the Pompeii or Echo room. It was one of those great acoustically designed rooms where, when you stand in the center, your voice is amplified back at you in a booming echo. Really cool.
Leaving the theatre, we were guided on a nice, long walking city tour. We visited the Quattro Canti and the Piazza Pretoria, walked by the San Cataldo and ended up at the Palermo Cathedral. It was here, we got a taste of Sicily in the form of an arancini. This is a fried rice ball filled with meat and not only was it delicious, but it was huge. If I understand correctly, this is Sicilian fast food. You could buy them everywhere and it seemed like they were there for grab and go meals or snacks. After our arancini, served out on the street as it should be, they brought out a tray of cannoli, the traditional Sicilian dessert (made famous in the line “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”). Again, so good but this one was so big I couldn’t finish it. Also, it was served in the traditional Palermo way, with the candied orange on top. All of this was followed by a small sip of sweet dessert wine.
Bridgett and I ate, checked out the church, and did a little souvenir shopping. We also got some great pictures of a moveable float-like statue of St. Rosalia, patron saint of Palermo.
With the city portion of the tour over, we all piled back into the bus and were taken to an amazing vista point overlooking the city and harbor. The bus driver was a master, navigating a winding mountain road with ease. At one point, he had turned around and was backing up along this narrow roadway.
When the bus dropped us off back at the docks, we still had lots of time before departure, so Bridgett asked if I wanted to grab a coffee. Absolutely! We went for an espresso and chatted. She’s a doctor with grown children and a husband who isn’t into travelling so she was supposed to go on this trip with her sisters, but they missed their flights so she was on her own.
After our coffee, we decided to walk around the town. Right next to the coffee place, though, was a small shop advertising stamps! I popped in and bought some stamps for the next set of postcards I had written…except while they sold stamps, I couldn’t drop them off for mailing there. So now, we had an objective in our little walk. We had to find a mail drop.
Eventually, we did. We also saw the Teatro again. And then we found a little souvenir stand where the owner refused to take full price for something, having already offered it at a discount.
By this point, the gray clouds were starting to drizzle so we decided to head back to the boat. I went back to my cabin and had a nice chat with Monki before the ship left European shores for two days.
After dinner, I realized Rasa was rubbing off on me – there were too many people out and about. Instead of doing anything social, I went to the buffet, grabbed myself a mug of tea, and headed back to the cabin to read.
Thursday, January 16
Woke up this morning on the coast of Northern Africa, about to head into Tunisia and, for the first time, had to fill out a landing card. No problem. I did it and then went down for breakfast and found Doug sitting outside the restaurant waiting for me.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked.
“I don’t feel like being waited on,” he said. “Wanna go to the buffet?”
“Sure.”
So we headed up and again, the food was pretty terrible but we had a good time hanging out and chatting. Then it was off to the busses. This time, though, unlike our previous stops, we had to pass through immigration where they stamped our landing cards and thumbed our passports. Weird, since this was the one place I actually wasn’t going to bring my passport with me. I was on a full day excursion this time, the longest one of my trip, mostly because I really wasn’t sure what to expect here and figured it would be safer to be in the hands of a certified guide than to do things on my own.
Our first stop was at the National Bardo Museum, the largest museum in the country, located in the Bardo suburb of Tunis. It houses, among other things, a huge collection of mosaics, which is what it’s known for and what we were there to see.
Our guide, Mourad (which kind of translated as “Mr. Wish”) was very knowledgeable and patient as he took us through the various rooms, showing some of the most complete mosaics I had ever seen. Some were huge and others small and dainty. He explained the process and the history, as well as the cultural significance of the pieces we were seeing. I was really hoping to get a book explaining all of these things in even more detail, but unfortunately, there were none available. There weren’t any real gift shops, but I did manage to find some postcard books with some of the mosaic pieces. I bought them, but I forgot that here, you’re supposed to haggle. Instead, I settled too quickly and ended up paying much more than I should have. He wanted to charge me 40 dinar, which should have been about €12, but then when I said I only had Euro, the price jumped to €20. When I added in a mosaic keychain I wanted to get for Monki, the price went even higher. Eventually, I paid €20 for everything, but I hated it, because I felt caught unaware.
I did better later in the day, though.
The other thing I noticed was a constant, if not overwhelming, police presence. We had to pass a security checkpoint to get the bus into the parking lot of the museum. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the attack 10 years ago perpetrated against European cruisers visiting for the day. And yet, there was a very palpable police presence.
Side note, the traffic we went through to get to our following stop, at the la Medina de Tunis in the Kasbah, was insane. I have no idea how our bus driver made it through the crush of cars, but from the window where I was sitting it looked like we were inside one of those “how do we get the car out by moving other cars” logic games. Crazy.
When we finally arrived, we parked near the Government Square (Place du Gouvernement). The police presence here was insane. I asked our guide what was going on. He explained about all the government buildings in the area, but also that there was a protest happening.
“What are they protesting?” I asked.
“Who knows,” he responded with a shrug. “They do this all the time.”
Okay then. Off we went into the Souk.
Now, in our excursion packet back on the boat, we had been given a note explaining that we might be taken someplace for a carpet or perfume “demonstration” and that we could opt out if we wanted to. Except we were never really given the opportunity since that was where we were heading now. We were all told to go upstairs and sure enough, it was a sales pitch for expensive rugs. Our guide was very quick to point out there was no door and we weren’t being held captive, that we were free to go anytime, but really, once you’re there, social decorum kind of insists you sit tight. I mean, it was fine. I wasn’t about to buy a rug and the last time I was in one of these things (that last cruise I was on, only this time it was in Turkey) we actually got a whole lesson on how silk was made. So I was prepared.
The pitch was low-key, and they gave us a bite-sized sweet pastry and some sweetened mint tea so it was a nice break out of the cold. And that little dessert caught my eye. Remember, Rasa had asked me to bring her back something edible, specifically from Tunisia. This looked to be the perfect thing! After the carpet presentation (where, yes, one of our cohort did purchase two rugs and the haggled down price was €2000 or more (not sure if that price was for one or both rugs). We were then taken into the souk proper to have a bit of a wander. On our way there, I asked Mourad about the sweet pastry, if he knew where I could buy some to take home. He assured me he would let me know. I thanked him and went off to explore.
Mostly it was jewelry shops, which, I was later assured by Angie and her Grandma, Jackie, were all really inexpensive. Then, before we had all reconvened to head off to our next destination, Mourad walked up and handed me a cake box in a plastic grocery store bag.
“Here you go,” he said. He had just handed me about 3 pounds of those pastries. Didn’t ask for any money or anything, just “enjoy.” Excellent! That was Rasa sorted then!
I also noticed we had picked up a security detail. There was a guy who had joined our party (I noticed him after the rug pitch) who was conspicuously packing heat. He followed us into the souk proper and when I asked if he was our security, he explained he was a cop.
Once I’d noticed him, though, I realized he was coming with us. He was attached to the tour. Interesting. I will admit I felt slightly safer.
Our next stop was at Les 3 Marins in La Goulette, just outside of Carthage where we were ultimately heading. This was our lunch break, where we got traditional Tunisian food, including a salad, a brik, and chicken with cous cous. The food was nice and the restaurant was well situated on the shore. Unfortunately, the beach was a bit of a mess, with garbage everywhere, but you could certainly see how it would look if it were cleaned up. During the summer, I bet the place was jumping.
After lunch we were on to Carthage and the ancient history of Tunis. Mourad, who has been a tour guide for more than 30 years, really came into his own talking about this stuff. You could certainly feel his passion. He took us to the Carthage Tophat, a cemetery for babies and the unborn, which was six levels deep and still being excavated. This is the only thing remaining from old Carthage. Then it was on to the Baths of Antoninus, the largest Roman baths in Africa. It was stunning how big they were, how much area they covered. So impressive. Again, I wished for a book, but the gift shop was closed.
Our final stop of the day was in Sidi Bou Said, an artistic colony decorated in blue and white, like Santorini. We had an hour or so to walk around and see the sights. I followed the recommendations and walked up the hill to the viewpoint and was treated to an amazing sunset overlooking the water.
Back in the bus, it was time to get back to the boat. Theoretically, we were supposed to be back on board by 17:30 (5:30pm) since the boat was scheduled to depart at 18:00 (6pm) and it was already 17:15 (5:15pm) as we pulled out of the parking lot. But just because we were running short on time didn’t bother our guide. He knew the boat would wait for us and so he took the opportunity to stop the bus and show us, at 132km, one of the longest aqueducts in the Roman empire.
It was after 17:45 by the time we finally made it back to the port, and we still had to go through customs and immigration to get back to the ship, but we all did.
We had a guest at dinner that night, since Patt and Lawrence never made it to the dining room, Doug joined us at our table. We all talked about our various excursions into Tunis.
After dinner, I decided to check out the show. This time it was a Cirque-inspired “Afro Celtic Fairytale” called Aziza and it involved a woman and fairies and a unicorn. The story didn’t really matter, but the unicorn puppet was pretty good. Also, it was the same set of performers we’d been seeing all week.
Then, since it was a night before a day where there were no time constraints and I didn’t have anywhere to be (the next day was our sea day on the way back to Barcelona) I decided to try something I’d seen an ad for one of my first nights onboard: A rum tasting.
It was basically five shots of different rums from five different distilleries. They also gave you five chocolates as palate cleansers between rounds. It was late and almost no one else was in the place, so it was just me and the staff having a good laugh and enjoying spirits for about an hour. My favorite was Roxana, from Peru, who was an accountant in a former life but had been on boats since 2009 and wasn’t going back. She’d even been offered a promotion to an accounting position but preferred working the bar with the people. She was great and kept recommending which order I should drink everything in. And she was right!
In order from least to best:
After I finished, I headed off to bed, ready to embrace my last full day on board.
Friday, January 17
My last full day on the boat would be spent entirely at sea.
Despite having several drinks the night before, I was still up at around 7:00. The weather wasn’t great and the boat was rocking a bit, but I don’t think that’s why I was awake. Mostly it’s because I don’t sleep well. Haven’t in years. No idea what it feels like to be physically rested. Regardless, I was up. So I read for a few minutes before deciding I should go for breakfast.
I went down to the dining room at around 7:45 and looked for Doug. He wasn’t there so I decided to wait, taking a seat outside the main entrance. I was right where he had been a day or two earlier so I figured if he showed up, I’d catch him.
By 8:00, he hadn’t shown up and I was getting hungry. I grabbed a table and started looking through the menu. Sure enough, a few minutes later he showed up. Turns out that when he came in, he didn’t see me so he had gotten his own table, but his evening waiter, who was also working the breakfast shift, asked if he’d like to eat with me. You gotta love the attentiveness of the wait staff on cruise ships.
I did discover that, at least on MSC, if an employee is mentioned five times by name in the customer survey, they get a free excursion, which also means the time off to actually go on it. So yes, when I finally got my overall cruise survey, I mentioned several people by name. A quick word about the surveys. I got one for each excursion, emailed the following day. When I did bother to connect my phone to the internet, I would see them there, while I cleared out dozens of other messages. I kept them saved so I could respond fully once I had returned home. Except that once I returned home and tried to access them, the surveys were no longer valid. Basically, the company wants us to take our vacation time to fill out the surveys, which means if you don’t have the internet package, you have no voice. Really not happy with that. And honestly, from what I’d heard about the from everyone who had gotten it, it wasn’t great. There are two different packages, the “browse” and “browse & stream” and if you’re not paying attention, you get one which can’t do what you want to do.
For me, except for not being able to hear from Rasa and Monki, I was good with being out of contact for a bit. Frankly, I need more of a social media detox, but that would then mean being more social in the real world… Everything’s a tradeoff.
After breakfast, wrote out more postcards, took a little nap, then read a bit. By the time lunch came around, I decided to go back down to the main restaurant.
For the first time this trip, they told me they were out of individual tables and did I mind sitting with others? Of course not. So they sat me down at a big table by myself and presently brought over two other parties; one couple and one triple. Both sets spoke French and neither acknowledged me in any way shape or form. I said hello when they first sat down, but that was it. Each group kept to themselves, which is fine, I have no problem with that. They don’t know me so why should they expend any energy in small talk? But on my end, yes, I had my book with me (I never went anywhere without it), it just felt rude to read at a table with other people. For some reason, this was also the meal I had where I liked pretty much nothing I ordered. I choked down what I could, and got out of there as quickly as possible. As I was leaving, I did get a friendly bon jour, so I guess they did know I was there after all.
As I was wandering aimlessly around the boat, I ran into Rebecca and Aleksander. They were on their way to the arcade and I tagged along. This was the arcade where you could win tickets for prizes and they were having a great time. We also discovered that the games were slightly rigged and that there weren’t a lot of prizes you could win. But they were having fun and I was having fun watching. The area was up with the teen stuff, including the Liquid Disco, and the water slide. I think Monki would have a good time on the boat – if not now, then in a few years when she’s a little more independent.
Also in this area was the F1 simulator. MSC has long been a sponsor of F1, we’d seen their logo all over various tracks, and I’d seen their simulator in their promotional material, but I hadn’t actually seen it on the boat. Since I was there, though, I had to try it out. It was hard! I don’t remember what circuit it was, but I got three laps completed and I think I came in 12/12. All said, though, it was fun!
Since Aleksander and Rebecca were also getting off the boat in Barcelona, the figured they should probably cash in their tickets, but ultimately, the only thing they could get was a glowing horse from Frozen, which they then gave to me to give to Monki. That was very sweet and Monki was really excited when I brought it home for her.
I said good-bye to my new friends and continued my wandering. That was when I ran into Angie and her Grandma doing arts and crafts in one of the bar/lounge areas.
I’d met them the day before during the Tunisia tour and they are just lovely. This trip was a gift from granddaughter to grandma and they were having a fine time. We sat and created “Iris Folding” art and spent a couple of hours folding and taping paper and just chatting about life. You really do meet amazing people when you travel.
It was during this time we had a chat with the crew member facilitating the crafts. She said that during the winter, the sea day and leaving Marseille were the worst days on the boat. She also explained that in the couple of years she’d been crewing, the only time she’d been scared was when the ship tilted sideways during a storm, but she often would run down to her cabin for seasick pills during the sea days.
Dinner that night was probably the best meal of the cruise, and we all said our good-byes before heading upstairs to pack.
They’d left instructions and luggage tags inside the room, asking us to place any luggage we wanted delivered to the dock outside our room before midnight. Not a problem. I got everything packed except for what I’d need for the evening and next morning and set my bag out and crashed out. Check out time was 8:00am.
Saturday, January 18
I got up, took a quick shower and made sure everything was in my bag before heading out for breakfast. The problem here was that I had to be out of the room by 8:00, but my shuttle to the airport wasn’t until 10:20, so I dawdled at breakfast and then just kinda hung out at the meeting point, reading, until time came. I was able to check in for my flight since I again had internet access (even though I had paid extra for airport check-in, I didn’t have to use it)
I left the boat, grabbed my suitcase from where it had been deposited, and, along with a dozen or so other folks, climbed into a passenger van. There was one brief moment of confusion when we all tried to figure out which terminal we were supposed to get dropped off at, but it was sorted soon enough.
At the airport, I had about 3 hours to wait until my flight. I tried to find someplace to send my postcards, but no luck, so I just carried them with me. The flight to Riga was not full, so I was able to swap out seats for a window. But we were late, as seems to be the case for airBaltic.
When we landed in Riga, thankfully the next gate was just across the way from where we had landed so I was able to make the connection. This was also the only time in all four flights where they actually checked the weight of my bags. They were over, so I had to pay an extra €30, but at that point, I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home.
Our flight to Vilnius was also not full so again I was able to move to a row by myself for the 35 minutes we were in the air.
The big fun was when we landed in Vilnius.
There were two trains leaving for Kaunas after my flight landed, one at 21:30 (9:30pm) and one at 22:15 (10:15pm). Either way, I would be able to get a train back, but obviously I’d like the earlier one. So I was booking a Bolt as I hustled through the baggage claim area (I only had carry-on so I didn’t have to wait) and then had to find the specific Bolt pick-up area. When my driver arrived, I hopped in. He was a nice guy, spoke four languages, and we had a discussion about how, at -1c, it really wasn’t cold like it used to be. I also was using my app to purchase tickets for the earlier train so I could just jump on board when I got to the station.
The train was on time so I made it back to Kaunas and a brief Bolt ride from the station had me walking in the door at home before 23:00 (11:00pm).
It was a great trip, but it was also great to be home.
Now on to the next adventure!
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 
Hi. Not reading this. Didn’t get part 1. Please send. Thank you. Hugs, RickiSent from my iPhone