The Cruise Update (Part 1)

It's been awhile since I've posted on here.  I can't believe how time flies, and it's been over a month since posting last.  I know I know, I've been bad...but we have been traveling a little.  Not only on the cruise that I mentioned, but also both of us had traveled back to the States.  Well, enough excuses, on to the update...

We had a great time on our cruise.  The weather was brilliant and it was great to finally get out in the sun and have some warm weather (well, other than when we were in Tunis...but more about that in a little bit).  Surprisingly, the cruise was actually pretty relaxing.  Seeing that both Darrel and I had been on Mediterranean Cruises before, we didn't feel the need to pack so much into all the ports we went to.  It made for a much more relaxing cruise and not such a whirlwind one.  I ended up taking about 600 pics, and I still haven't edited them down yet.  However, I am posting some of them within this post...

Our first port was La Spazia, which is an Italian Port in the north part of the country.  For our excursion, we decided to get on a motorboat and travel up the coast to the Cinque Terre region.  This region consists of 5 (Cinque means 5 in Italian) small fishing towns, and we were able to visit 4 of the 5 towns (the 5th one is actually too small to really visit).  The map below is the region of Cinque Terre...it is the region between the two points with the blue squares on them.  The Italian woman in front of the map was our guide.

It is a very beautiful region of Italy...

After La Spazia, we travelled to the french port of Nice...

The ship was too large for the docks, so we had to take a tender from the ship to the above port.  Once we got to the port, we chose a bus excursion to Cannes, Grasse and St. Paul in the French Rivera.  Cannes is a port city like Nice, and Grasse and St. Paul are further up in the hills.  Grasse is supposedly the perfume capital of the world, and we were able to tour one of the factories that produce perfumes.  It actually sounds better than it was...it was more like a tourist trap than anything, and I didn't take any pictures in the factory.  However, Cannes and St. Paul were quite spectacular.  St. Paul is an old fortified town up in the hills.  There are no cars allowed within the city walls, and it is a very cute town with many shops and galleries.  Here are some of the pics I took in Cannes and St. Paul...

The Grand Auditorium where the Cannes Film Festival takes place every May

I'm standing on the red carpet of the Grand Auditorium

Darrel on the Croisette (the high rent part of town)

The town of St. Paul

You enter the town of St. Paul through this
little tunnel

All the streets were very narrow and cobble stoned...shops on either side of the street

The drinking well in the center of the town

Darrel sitting on the city wall at the highest point in St. Paul



Ditto for me...look at the hills in the background

Our boat in the bay of Nice, which I took from the bus on our way back.  I thought that it was a good pic to show the size of our boat

Ok...I've decided to break this up into two parts.  I will hopefully get part 2 finished and posted today as well.  Stay tuned...