Med Cruise

11Jul – 18Jul

Between high school and college, I took a trip to England and the continent for eight weeks. Afterwards, I thought about what it was that I really appreciated and wanted to keep doing on foreign travels. I decided that one of the things really enjoyed was just walking around and seeing how people in other countries lived. I saw plenty of sights like the above (Mallorca, Spain) on my Western Meditteranean trip (Italy, Spain and France), but I spent a lot of time focused on things like in the next picture.

This is an urban beach in Provence, France. Not at all like the sandy, gradually sloping beaches I’m used to seeing in the US, but clearly a perfectly satisfactory way for people to spend hot summer days. So the sights I saw and the photos I took tend to be a lot more of the everyday type than the monumental type.

I spent two years in Gaeta, Italy (halfway between Rome and Naples) as a sailor (1996-98) and felt, especially when I came back to the US and started living near Philadelphia, that as far as facilities for bicycles, motorcycles and pedestrian walking areas go, that the US was the poor country relation to the successful European city guy.

Think there are spots in New York City that are as good as this bike path in Mallorca, Spain. Joggers use the bike path as well and the line in the middle does mean you’re supposed to travel on the right.

Mallorca

La Spezia, Italy

Mallorca. So cool to have a REAL alternative to a car! Cars are still good for carrying groceries, long distances and bad weather, but if your home and workplace are reasonably close, big savings on gas!

Huh! Does the US even HAVE motorcycle parking, small parking spots like this?

Nice park design in La Spezia, Italy.

Shopping street in Sorrento, Italy, where cars CAN use it, but where cars are generally not used at all. Gaeta had something sort of like this. We had an alley where one car at a time could pass through, but where cars were forbidden during most of the day.

“Official” tourist stuff and markets for shopping.

Palma, Spain

Barcelona (We only saw the outside, we didn’t go in), Spain

Your heroic narrator in front of the same cathedral.

Barcelona

La Spezia – center of town.

Sorrento, Italy.Center of town.

My ship, “The Legend of the Seas” belongs to Royal Caribbean. 18 decks from the gangway to the top observation posts, at least as far as the public elevators were concerned. When I was on a Carribbean cruise many years ago, they just had food lines open all day. This was a bit differenet. Certain food lines were available certain times of the day. Only a small handful were available between usual meal times.

Midnight on board the ship, first night! Lots of music available throughout the cruise (stuff I liked was usually in the evening). Naturally all the songs that I witnessed were covers, familiar from other bands going back decades.

My social connections during the cruise? Ehh, a bit disappointing. I was supposed to regularly eat dinner with a group of about 10 people, but was assigned instead to a small table surrunded by empy tables. After I complained, the supervisor investigated and then said that as I was eating during the early shift (starting at 5:30pm, the next was at 7:00pm) and there were mostly families and older couples at that time. I may have been able to switch to the later hour, but I wanted to be sure I had digested dinner before sleeping. So I just read my tablet during dinners. Food was of course delicious! A few days into the cruise, I downloaded the ship’s app, which listed the ship’s social events. I made a few of them.

Heh! Looking down the passageway to where my stateroom was. I was at pretty much the end there. I timed my getting to my room. It was a solid five minutes. I’m an extremely slow walker (I was on two shore excursions and had to really work to keep up), so it likely takes a fit, healthy person only three to four minutes to cover that distance. Ehh, it was good exercise! The stateroom was entirely satisfactory. Plenty of room and electrical outlets.

One very common feature in all of the countries (This is Barcelona) was balconies with black metal railings. They generally weren’t very large, certainly couldn’t put any permanent furniture outside, but you could stand outside, have a cup of cappuccino, say hello to neighbors and just plain get some fresh air.