Part 2, Naples Italy

Let me first start by saying that the negative thing about sailing the Mediterranean is that it is kind of a rough sea. So even on a massive cruise ship........you feel the boat rocking. Just wanted to get that out there! So the plus side to that is that the ports are so close together that you only spend one full day at sea going and the rest of the time you are only at sea from about 7pm at night until about 7am in the morning, at the latest. Kind of helps with the rocking of the boat but you do have some serious sealegs when you return to shore.

First day on the cruise ship was at sea. We sailed from Barcelona all the way to Naples, Italy, which is "right above the ankle of the boot" as the tour guide in Naples informed us. We had a fun day at sea and the weather was perfect. Spent some time in the sun sipping beer, and I spent a little time in the spa getting a little pampering. Our ship had come all the way from Galveston, Texas. In the off months it's the ship that sails from Galveston down to the Caribbean and then in the summer months it sails across to Barcelona and then makes the weekly trip through the Mediterranean until November, then it returns to Galveston again. And there were actually people on the boat that had sailed over from Galveston and then spent a week on the cruise with us to Italy. I love cruising, but that's a little long for me!

So the second day we arrived in Naples and Jeff and I had an early start. The cruise ships dock in very industrial areas. So at first glance it's not a pretty place when you get off the boat. But thankfully the tour buses take you off to the pretty parts of Italy and you get to see the picturistic places you see in the movies and in photos. Let me first say our tour good was really great. She was Italian (of course) and she has the classic Italian voice. She was really a pleasure to have as our tour guide. So our excursion was off to Almalfi to start. To get there we had to take a small boat ride about 45 minutes away along the coast.

The coast headed to Almalfi

Almalfi Italy

Unfortunately the weather in Naples wasn't great and so the water was really choppy and it made for an extra long choppy boat ride! When we got to Almalfi the waves were so bad that it took 4 guys holding down the plank and people running across. NOT the highlight of the tour. But we walked along the streets of Almalfi. A little quaint village with just your typical Italian look. We got a brief tour from the guide and then free time. Jeff and I found a nice little bakery and had some real Italian pastries and a cappuccino. It was really good.

Our pastries from a little cafe in Almalfi

The streets of Almalfi where we had pastries and coffee

So after Almalfi we took the boat ride back and then we took a guided tour to Pompeii. Wow! I guess in my mind I always thought Pompeii was this small little village. But it's huge! I couldn't even begin to take enough pictures of how big it was or the amount they have excavated since the volcano covered the village in ash. There was a house that was still in tact enough that they could go in and see the detail of the art and painting on the walls. And lots of mosaic flooring that some how managed to survive the volcano.

One of the many walls in the house that is still standing and the paintings that survived the volcanic ash

Mosaic flooring at Pompeii

A small part of Pompeii's market square with the volcano in the background that erupted and buried in ash

So the creepy part of Pompeii for me is that as they were excavating they came across places where people had died under the ash. They were able to pour casting (concrete) into these places and get real castings of the way the people laid as the ash covered them. Sad in ways and at the same time it puts a real feel on how traumatic and scary it must have been. It makes me wonder why people would want to live around a volcano. The tour guide said that for a lot of those people it's their land, all they have known and it's land that's been passed down through generations. Still, seems so scary that it could erupt again and they could lose so much, possibly their lives.

One of the several castings they had. This is one of the more pleasant ones. I couldn't bare to take pictures of some of the ones that were not so "peaceful"

A better picture of Pompeii's market square. Such a small part of Pompeii!

Pompeii is amazing to see though. I'm glad we got the opportunity to see it. Naples was great. An opportunity of a life time to see it all.

These HUGE lemons were all over Naples and Pompeii. These are the lemons they use to make the lemoncello liquor the region is known for

Part 3 will be about Rome.
To Be continued....................

The Honeymoon is over!

LOL......well in the literal sense it is! The long awaited (and postponed) honeymoon was fantastic! We had such a great time. I can't even begin to tell you how thankful we are for the opportunity to have got to experience and see the parts of Italy and France we did. Not to mention a couple of fun days in sunny Barcelona.

We got to Barcelona a couple of days before our cruise and stayed in a great hotel recommended by a friend. It's one of the tallest buildings in Barcelona and at the very top they have a panoramic restaurant with an incredible view of the city. Jeff and I had breakfast there both mornings and just enjoyed the view over Barcelona. The hotel was aware that it was our "honeymoon" trip and so they left us a nice little cake and card in our room our first night there. I thought that was very nice!

One of the many views from the restaurant. It was over cast in the mornings there.

We had some fantastic food while we were there. We ate at a nice seafood restaurant at the harbor our first night. Food was really good and the service was great too. Then the next day we had some tapas and also enjoyed some gelato after lunch. We also took the hop on, hop off bus that day and toured all over Barcelona. If ever in Barcelona it is the way to go. You pay a flat day rate and you can get on and off as much as you want all day long. We spent the whole day going around Barcelona and getting on and off. We even took a cable car over the harbor and seen the boats from the sky. We also got to see the Sagrada Familia. When we first came up on it Jeff said, "wow what an ugly building". But I find it fascinating and remember studying about it in Architecture class and also in art history and the Gothic era. I think Jeff warmed up to it the more we looked at it. And we hit the famous Park Guell. It really is pretty neat to see. But I will never forget the hike up the steep road to get to the park from the main street. The Mosaics in Barcelona are really something. They are everywhere! We seen so much more but just know that Barcelona is a beautiful city and lots to see. If ever you get a chance to go, you must!

A shot of a few of the ships from the cable car we took over the harbor

Sagrada Familia

The entrance into Park Guell

The famous Mosaic lizard at Park Guell

The beautiful mosaic ceiling at Park Guell

Self portrait at Park Guell

This mosaic bench at Park Guell is atop the roof and it goes all the way around the whole roof

The following day we got on the cruise ship there in Barcelona. We took a Royal Caribbean ship and we set sail from Barcelona and we went to Naples, Italy; Rome, Italy; Florence/Pisa, Italy; Nice, France; and Toulon, France and finished by docking back in Barcelona. Like I said, it was fantastic. But you'll have to wait a few more days to hear about the ports. :)

When we docked in Nice we had to take a tender boat to the dock from the cruise ship. This is our cruise ship sitting in the harbor of Nice/Florence.

To be continued.....................

A whole lot of hike

The weather has been kind of up and down lately but we've definitely had a lot more bright sunny days than bad days. Of course with the volcanic ash it was touch and go for about a week with what the weather would be like outside, but that all has seem to get much better over the past week.

So I've found myself hiking more lately and taking in the weather. Last week we hiked down South from Aberdeen and did a pretty hard (at least for me) hike up a mountain and then back down. I think the hike was about 3 or 4 hours long but some really great views and it was a little chilly that day but mostly sunny. Unfortunately in my rush to get out the door that morning I some how managed to leave my camera behind, so I didn't get any good pictures that day.

Yesterday we hiked Raemore, which is in Banchory (pronounced Ban-cory) and is kind of South West of Aberdeen. It was an easier hike than last weeks but still about 3 hours long. It was up a mountain as well but it didn't seem to be as steep as last weeks, so I think I enjoyed it a little more. The weather, however, wasn't that great yesterday and we got drizzled on most of the day with cloudy and overcast the whole way. We didn't mind getting wet though. I did remember to take my camera though, so I got a few pictures.

This was our hiking trail, of course going down the mountain

One of our fantastic views. You can tell how overcast it was. All that vegetation in the picture is Heather that hasn't bloomed yet.

Tyra and I (one of my American friends here)

We passed a pasture with horses in it while we were finishing up our hike and these horses just came right up to the fence to greet us. I didn't use my zoom....they were that close to us!

Pretty horses

And for those of you that I remind of the long hours of daylight that are fast approaching..........we are now at the point where daylight is here wellbefore 6:00 and it's not getting good and dark until after 9:00.

So the long awaited trip to Barcelona, Italy and France is finally here. I've already had several request to take lots of pictures and post all about it. I can't promise I'll be able to post a lot of pictures, but I'll definitely hit some of the highlights and post as many pictures as I can!

Auctions, hiking and volcanic ash skies......

Auctions, hiking and volcanic ash skies...........that's what I've been up too!

Taken on my hike Tuesday at Glen Dye

So it's been a busy week. Tuesday I took a fantastic 2 1/2 hour hike with a group of girls from AWA. We stopped off at this little cottage and had our packed lunches and toasted spring with some champagne. It was a great time. It was a little windy and chilly up where we were but all in all.........a beautiful day. I snapped a few pictures while we were out hiking. The area we hiked had a lot of sheep on it and they weren't scared of us at all. They just sat there and stared at us as we walked by. Some of them were literally less than 50 feet away. But as one of my hiking buddies said, "I've never dodged so much sheep crap in my whole life". lol

See how close the sheep were and there were some that were even closer

Little creek we walked across. See all the little white specks in the background.......sheep!

Same little creek, where it flows into the river

We were kind of put in the mountains some. There was still a little snow in a few places

Wednesday we had our long awaited charity auction for the AWA group. Each year the group has an auction where members bring in odds and ends of things they want to donate and we group them with similar things and auction off the "lots" to raise money for our selected charity for that year. We had a great turn out and lots of goodies. There were some great bidding wars and everything auctioned off. We did a great job of raising 2600 Pounds for the charity. And to put that in dollars it's about the equivalent of $4000. So a great turn out for a great cause! This year our charity was Grampians Women's Aid (which help women & children coming from domestic abuse homes). We had been planning and working hard at getting things ready for the auction for a few weeks now, so it was nice to finally have the auction and see that the hard work "paid off". Yay to the fantastic group of ladies of AWA for donating things and then buying things in the auction to go toward a good cause.

And today we woke to find out that it was cloudy and overcast outside. But not due to bad weather, but rather volcanic ashes that were floating in the area above Scotland from a volcano in Iceland. It's wrecked havoc on a lot of European countries because it's got the airports shut down due to visibility and danger of malfunction by flying in the ash. Thankfully we aren't flying anywhere right now but it's really quite scary to think that it might take several days for it to clear off well enough for planes to get back to flying over Europe.

We hiked along side a river for a little while too

So an exciting and busy week here at the Bartulla household!

A nice day for a hike

We have daffodils even growing in our flower beds around the house.

The weekend was really nice! Gave us a sense that spring is finally here. Now having said that I am skeptical that I have just jinxed it by saying so!

Both Saturday and Sunday the temperatures got up to the upper 50's, the sun was shining and it couldn't have felt better to be outside after a long, cold winter! Saturday we brought the smoker out and cooked burgers for lunch and ribs for dinner. We sat outside and soaked up some rays and had a few beers. I felt like for a second I was back home, but not so hot! You can tell though that we are getting acclimated to the weather. Jeff was braver than I and actually wore shorts for a few hours on Saturday. Even the neighbor commented on his bravery of wearing shorts. I rolled up my sweats and wore a short sleeve, but shorts are not in my forecast, at least not yet.

Sunday we decided to take a hike down to the shore and walk along it for a couple of miles to the little village right down the way from us. It's called Johnshaven and it's a little harbor town. So we hiked about a mile from our house down to the shore and then walked along the shore till we got to Johnshaven. We played along the shore line for a bit and then hiked back. It got warm enough on our hike to shed our jackets. We'd never done the hike toward Johnshaven so it was nice to enjoy the scenery from the shore line. We passed the little creek that runs by our house and where it eventually empties out into the North Sea. We passed by the really neat school in Johnshaven that you normally can't see from the roadway. And we took in a few patches of daffodils that have finally bloomed. All in all I think we hiked about 5 miles (my best guess). Might have been more, might have been a little less but I think it was pretty close to 5 miles. What a great way to spend a Sunday! We decided that we need to do more hiking this spring and summer.

This is at the Benholm Mill, in their parking lot. Lots of daffodils

We passed the Mill on our way to the shore

I hear everyone say that when the daffodils bloom, spring is here. I hope they are right!

Once we got down to the shoreline I turned around and took a picture of the hill behind us. We live just on the other side of those trees, up the hill......about a half mile past the trees.
This very same creek runs by our house, but this is right before it lets out into the North Sea. It's much prettier here, I think.

This is the shoreline with its low tide. Lots of rocks. One day I'll have to get down there when its high tide so you see more of the Sea and less of the rocks. Of course after living here for nearly a year, I am still not sure when high tide is.

This is the really beautiful school from a distance. You can see the top of it through the trees from here but from the road it is completely hidden.

As we got closer, this was the best picture I could get. This was with my zoom, we were still quite a ways away.

I love this little old overgrown bridge. I didn't seen see it at first, Jeff is the one that pointed it out.

This wall stretched almost the whole way from where we got in the shoreline at to Johnshaven. No telling how old it is but it was 4 to 5 foot tall (varying in places). Though it was broken down in a few places it is still standing in most places.

I've heard Aberdeen called the granite capital of the world because there is so much granite here. You walk down the beach and there are just chunks of granite laying there. I found this worn smooth piece of granite (on the left). It sparkles with sparkly bits in it. And then I found this piece of turquoise (on the right) while walking along the rocky beach as well. This picture doesn't do either justice.

Just when you think spring has sprung....

At the beginning of last week I would have swore that spring was here. We were having really beautiful sunny days and it was getting in the lower 50's and not very windy. Nice days! Several days when out and about we just needed a light jacket. Such a welcome relief! Even some of the daffodils around town started to open up.
Then.............out of no where last week we get snow! Wind, rain, snow............and just over all bad weather! Such bad weather that a lot of places South of Aberdeen lost power, including us. We went without power just long enough to need to toss everything in the fridge but thankfully saved almost everything in the freezer. The freezer is in the garage and with all the snow and wind it was pretty cold outside so I guess that kept the freezer cold enough. Needless to say I wasn't to thrilled about not having any heat during that power outage.
Jeff was offshore so I lite a fire and bundled up and slept in the living room. And I was ever so grateful when the power did come back on!

So that was last week. This week it's been kind of rainy and cold, a little windy. But today it's beautiful again and the sun is shining and it's a bit warmer outside today. I'm not going to say spring is here.........as I fear I will pretty much jinx it! But I am hoping the daffodils will finally open up around the house and I can snap some good pictures. I need the sun too, just so it's not a rainy gloomy picture! :)

I know back home things are starting to warm up and you all are not looking forward to the summer months. I haven't forgot about those 100+ temps and the humidity that makes you feel like you are melting away. I think when we finally do return home that our first summer there will feel like we are gonna die. lol

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!

Daylight Savings Time

Daylight Savings time is here. Yes, we are still on the old system where we don't have daylight savings time until the last Sunday in March. We are also getting into that time of year where we have daylight until crazy hours in the evening and the sun is back up early at crazy hours of the morning. I remember a few days in June last summer, when I first arrived here and it wouldn't get dark until about midnight and by 2am the sun was up and shining through the windows. Torture on a body that depends on darkness to get a good nights sleep.
Right now it's daylight around 5am (I guess that will be 6am right now because of daylight savings time) and I guess it really gets dark around 7pm. It'll progressively get longer and longer days of daylight as the days pass into the summer. I think this summer I'll try and snap a few pictures here and there along the way of the various hours, so everyone can see the degree of lightness in the late hours of the evening.

We've had some really beautiful days and the daffodils are coming up and slowly opening. Hopefully this week they'll be open and I can snap some pictures. They are so pretty.........yellow flowers just line the streets and hills. So as soon as they open, I'll get a few pictures of those.

We've booked our "summer" vacation. We are headed to Barcelona for a few days and then hopping on a cruise in Barcelona and taking a cruise to Rome, Florence, Naples, Nice and Toulon (France). Super excited and can't wait! No worries, I'll take lots of pictures and blog as much info as I can remember.

I've also been hiking a little more. I forgot my camera last week when I hiked up at Ballister, but I will take it with me next time and try and snap pictures, wherever we end up hiking. The sun is shining most days and the temperatures are getting up in the lower 50's right now. Which around here is very nice!

Stay tuned......daffodil pictures to come as soon as they bloom and hopefully some great pictures from some hikes we do!

St. Patrick's Day in Dublin

We had a fantastic time in Dublin! Dublin is a really beautiful city. It's small and easy to move around but what a great time! It's what I always thought a typical small European town would be like, especially in the UK, or as this would be, Ireland.

So we arrived on Sunday evening, which by the way was Mum's Day here. And we settled in to our hotel. Then we ventured out and found a nice little Italian place to have dinner at. The food was fabulous and I had one of the best tiramisu's I've ever had for dessert. Tiramisu is my favorite so I was very happy for that!

Monday we sat out kind of early on foot to visit St Patrick's Cathedral and to tour the Guinness Storehouse. Dublin is super easy to get around on foot, especially if you are staying in city centre. So we walked everywhere. Guinness Storehouse was great to visit!! We had a lot of fun and toured the whole facility. As part of the tour you get a pint of Guinness to enjoy at their fabulous Zero Gravity Bar. It's at the very top of their building and it is surrounded by glass and overlooks all of Dublin. It's really neat to see! Unfortunately the walk back down the steps is not so much fun after having a pint of Guinness. :) And Guinness taste different on this side of the world. It's really very tasty.........at least to me it is! I don't like it in the states, but love it here.

St Patrick's Cathedral

Guinness Storehouse

One of the several great views from Zero Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse

Monday night we found a great little place that had Mexican food. Now let me just say that finding Mexican food on this side of the world is not near as hard as finding GOOD Mexican food on this side of the world. But it was really tasty and the salsa was the best I've had on this side of the world. In talking to the waitress I found out that the owner is from Mexico. He lived in Mexico until he was 17 and then he moved to New York and met a nice Irish girl and they got married and eventually moved to Ireland. So he opened up a restaurant in Dublin. Kudos to him because it satisfied this Texas girls need for some good Mexican food.

We saw this guy while we were out and about on Monday. He was accepting 1 Euro to let you take your picture with him.

Tuesday we set out on foot again and hit the river for a river boat cruise along the Liffey River (the main river that runs through Dublin). It was very overcast that day and a bit chilly but the boat was covered and heated and it was really nice to see the city from the river boat. We went through a really old lock gate they have there. It works kind of like the Panama Canal in that you enter into the lock gate and it closes behind the boat and the water rushes in and raises the boat to the level of the water through the next gate. Then that gate opens and you move through it. Normally the boat tour doesn't go through the gates like that but on that particular day the river was high and it was kind of hard to make the tour through some of the lower bridges along the river. The tour was really fab and we had a nice time. Tour guide was super nice and talked about everything along the river and even showed us where U2's recording studios are in Dublin. By the way, the lock gate was engineered and began operations in the late 1700's and it's still operational to this day!

The River Liffey close to O'Connell St (the main street in Dublin)

The lock gate as we were going through it

After the boat tour we set out to the famous Temple Bar in the Temple Bar area and had a Guinness there at the bar. They had live Irish music and it was busy but not near as wall to wall with people as in the evening. We couldn't get in there the night before, so we thought going in the early afternoon would at least get us in the door. It's a neat old place and really quite big, compared to how it looks on the outside.

The Temple Bar

We also hit Trinity College and seen the fabulous Book of Kells. Unfortunately you aren't allowed to take any pictures of the book or inside their really fabulous old library, where the book is kept. But I will say that if you ever get to Dublin, see the library and see the book........the library is really a site to see with their long hallway and all the really old books.

We also walked through the National Wax Museum there in Dublin. It as okay. It was mainly about Ireland history so a lot of the wax figures were different people through Dublin's history. They did have a room with people, figures and inspiration from Ireland. They had U2 and David Bowie, which I thought was kind of funny. They also had Pierce Bronson. I tried to get pictures in this room but it was poor lighting conditions and no matter how I tried to set the camera I couldn't get a great picture.

At the wax museum. She was creepy........I don't care what anyone says!

So a few of the locals we had struck up conversation with kept telling us that we needed to get to the parade early and find a good spot has the crowds would be thick! They kept saying to look for high ground, though Dublin is flat, so there was no high ground. So we set out early to the parade, leaving around 10am and the parade was to start at noon. When we got to the main street there was hardly no one there. But as the hours went by it was crowded! Every bit of 7 to 15 people deep where you could fit that many people. Since we had gotten there so early we were right at the gate that blocked off the roads and so we had a front row seat. But let me tell you, we were pinned in up against the gate with little elbow room. Made it difficult at times to get some good shots of the parade. After the parade it was terrible trying to get out of the area. It reminded me of being at Mardi Gras with the crowds of people and just not being able to walk anywhere without nearly being elbow to elbow in people. We did finally manage to get through the crowds and found our way to a little pizza place that my friend Sarah told me about, Steps of Rome. We got some fantastic pizza for take away and headed back to the hotel to sit and rest our tired feet and enjoy some pizza with some beer! After that we went down to the hotel bar, had some beer and listened to the really great Irish band they had for the St. Patrick's Day festivities.

At the start of the parade. Look at all the people and this is a VERY small area of the long parade route!

It wasn't a Macy's Day Parade by any means but it was pretty interesting!

There were people from all over the world there! Even a Lafayette La High school band and the University of South Carolina marching band was there from the U.S.

The little girl in the basket was on the news that night and she was saying how much fun she had but how hard riding in the basket was on her bum! lol

So let me clear up two myths that we had heard that we did not see on St. Patrick's Day. First they did not dye the River Liffey green! Second we did not see green beer! I'm not saying they didn't have green beer anywhere but I am saying that we did not see any while we were out and about and they weren't offering it at the bar either. lol

So Thursday morning we headed back home. Dublin was fantastic! We were there long enough to see a lot and still have time to rest. We had some really wonderful food there and even had some sushi there that was pretty good! We really enjoyed Dublin and came home feeling great and not like we were running around the whole time like we did when we were in Paris. Grant you I was sick most of the time we were there but I didn't let it slow me down. So if you ever get a chance to go to Dublin I highly recommend it. Even if it's not during St. Patrick's day, it's worth a visit!