A Long Walk Home: Cruisin'

Good morning everyone. Earlier this morning, around 9ish, I looked out my window to a bright, cloudless day, and now I sit here typing up the second post on my trip looking out my window watching a big, beautiful rain storm... It makes it easier to stay in and type when its 50 degrees and hailing out. Gotta love the UK. I am actually kind of relieved though, it makes it easier to accomplish things indoors.

Like I said, today I will tell you all about my cruise and its 9 days and 8 nights of sailing, excursioning, big dinners and scheduled daily activities. Well, here goes nothin'...

We boarded the ship for the first time in Lisbon, Portugal on the 4th of April. We went through the customs and security and everything and got our SetSail Passes. Woot woot! And then we got to board the ship! We got to our rooms and put our bags down and it didn't take us long to notice that we only had one bed (Later, when our stateroom attendant, Paula, came by to meet us, she would laugh at us when she noticed we were both boys, and we didn't want to sleep together. It was a quick fix though and soon enough we had our own separate beds to sleep in). It didn't bother us too much though, and within minutes we devised a plan that would allow us to sleep in the same bed, but minimize our insecurities that were spawned from our society induced homophobia- I decided I would take the part of the bed farthest to the left, and he would take the side farthest to the right.
Note: Neither of us are really homophobic, I just included that for the sake of story telling. The plan however, is the actual one we used.

After seeing our cabin we decided to start exploring the ship. These boats are absolutely unbelievable. Ours had two pools, 4 hot tubs, a rock climbing wall, a mini golf course (which sounds cool but I think it was just carpet put on top of 3 feet of cardboard, and it reminded me of what I imagine the grass in the model town in Beetlejuice would feel like), a casino, like 3 restaurants and food available constantly and, for all I know, probably lots of other stuff that I just didn't find.
Oh and shuffleboard.
On our trip exploring we discovered that there weren't too many people near our age on the boat. In fact, early scouting reports were confirmed a few days later when we realized we had see everyone under the age of 24 and there were less than 20 of them. You might think this would hinder the plans of such a young group of travelers, but I can assure you it did not. The daily activities were geared for us to excel in. Shuffleboard and Mini golf contests, lessons in nearly every kind of Latin and Ballroom dancing, and seminars on how to fold towels and napkins were all conquered by our younger and much more agile figures. I myself became an experienced and nearly decent napkin folder, and was easily in the top 10 best male dancers in our introductory salsa class. My friends and I even beat some of the old people at their own game, winning key chains for getting the high score in a pub quiz. And even with the age gap we met a lot of fun people, not to mention nearly every person around our age on the boat. For example, my partner in the dance lessons was a Czech lady in her late 50's named Olga. She was very nice, but I had to make sure I didn't get too close because her husband was watching the whole time, and he told me he wouldn't allow any funny business. Among the other fun people we met were the Scottish couple that watched Kyle buy his sunglasses from a street merchant in Lisbon, a Russian couple that lives in New Jersey now that owns a few warehouses and told us how to smuggle booze onto the ship, and a Portuguese man named Arnaldo who invited me to his place anytime and he would let me stay there and we could go to parties together. All in all, I would say a successful social experiment.

We didn't just stay on the boat the whole time though. Not a chance. The first place we were supposed to stop was Gibraltar. But, due to choppy waves in the harbor it was unsafe for us to leave the ship. Most of the young people figured it was mostly due to the average passenger on board being a senior citizen and were kind of upset, but I personally thought it was for our own safety and the captain probably knew best. So took it with a grain of salt, these things happen. The day wasn't a total loss though, I did get to see the Rock of Gibraltar, one of the "Pillars of Hercules," from a distance and I also got to watch them refuel a ship at sea with another ship- which was actually interesting to watch and, due to the rough waters, had to be attempted multiple times and took way longer than expected, forcing us to leave port later than we would have if we had gone on land. It would have been nice to climb a big hill and see some monkeys though! Maybe next time...

Our next stop was at Cartegena, Spain. It felt good to be back in Spain really, and I my Spanish speaking returned to me briefly which was cool. Cartegena has a long history of being controlled by many different cultures and empires including the Romans and the Moors. The coolest thing we saw was probably the ancient roman amphitheater which was in amazing condition, but there was also a very cool castle with great views of the city, a fairly dilapidated bull ring, and a huge sea wall that runs around the coastal part of the city. I think I heard something about the submarine being invented there too. They had a maritime museum there, but I was unable to go due to the lack of time we had. All in all, it was a very cool stop. But, much like probably all of the places I visited, it would take a lot longer than a day or two to fully appreciate what they have to offer.

After Cartegena we had a day at sea followed by a day in Valletta, Malta. One thing we didn't know about Valletta is that the harbor was a good 20 minute walk from the city center. Up hill. Both ways. Ok maybe not both ways, but definitely the way there, and we had no idea where we were going at first. But we eventually found it and it was pretty gosh darn cool. I can't find my map and I can't remember the names of a lot of the buildings but I do know that we saw most of the main stuff, the biggest of which was the Hospitaller's Cathedral and that was pretty dang amazing. The Hospitallers were an order of knights similar to the Knights Templar who protected travelers who were going to Jerusalem during the crusades and one of their main bases was in Valletta (pictures of the cathedral below). The other things we saw included a big fort that was closed to the public and now housed police training, a big garden with nice views of the sea and a statue of Winston Churchill and a plaque of Albert Einstein, a statue of an old Prime Minister named Gorg Borg Olivier and a museum of anthropology that had some very fascinating things on the ground floor related to anthropology and a really weird exhibit for some noir (I don't know if thats how you spell it, but it wasn't really my style) artist on the top floor. We found our way back to the boat much easier, and upon arrival met some fellow travelling companions who told us that we could have gotten a horse and buggy ride all around the city for very cheap and we could have seen stuff that was farther away from the city center that wasn't on our map... Maybe next time.

Following Valletta, we had another day at sea and then we arrived in Split, Croatia. There were a few reasons I was excited to visit Split. The first, it looked awesome on the internet and from my cabin window. The second, I would get to use a new currency other than the Dollar, Pound or Euro- Croatia uses the Kuna, even though many shops accept the Euro. And third, we got to take the little shuttle dingies to the dock! Woot Woot. It turned out the that like 3 of the shuttle boats ended up breaking down that day and the whole transporting people to and from the ship was a giant C.F. for a while, but it all got sorted out. The city itself was pretty beautiful. Cobblestone streets throughout, tons of little shops and cafes everywhere, tons of old temples and churches and thousands of little alleyways that weaved and intertwined all over the city. Needless to say, we got lost a few times. But that was ok, especially with the dingies breaking down all the time, we didn't have to worry about making it back on time. The biggest disappointment of the city was probably the Temple of Jupiter. I mean, with a name like that, you can't help but imagine it being anything but spectacular, which it really wasn't. We paid about 5 Kuna to get in (about a dollar) and when we walked through the door we discovered that that was about it. There was a hollow altar that was missing its top in the middle, and one tall blonde statue across the room (which probably wasn't more than 15' x 15'). The statue itself looked more like Jesus than Zeus/Jupiter and while that's not a bad thing, I don't think the god in that statue could wield a lightning bolt. It wasn't terrible though, just not what I was expecting. The coolest thing had to be when we were walking through an alley and a kid came hauling through on his bike. He looked up and saw us and tried to break, but it was too late. The cobblestone was too slippery and he started to fall. He ended up sliding pretty far and coming to a rest right at my feet. And guess what ladies and gentlemen, I didn't even laugh at the time. I helped him up, asked if he was ok and let him go on his merry way. Poor kid. It was a fun story to tell later though, especially because the way he skid to a halt at my feet made me feel like I was some sort of master of the elements, commanding skidding children and bicycles to stop before my feet and raising them to their former states only worse for wear in the scuffed paint on the bike and the bruised ego of the young lad.
After that, I, master of skidding bicycles, returned to the boat and packed up to get off in the morning in Venice.

I think I'll stop here and pick it up tomorrow in Venice since this is getting to be pretty long. So Venice and probably Rome for tomorrow. I have a few pictures from each of the cities below and I suppose thats all for today.