Split's Personality

Croatia is a country that I honestly might not have ever thought about, except that my high school soccer coach was from there and that's really all I have to say about that. I never in my life said to myself, "You know where I really want to go?!?! CROATIA!" But, when our family heard that Split, Croatia was on the itinerary of our cruise, I think we all thought, "Sweet!" (Actually, the itinerary said just "Split," so we spent a lot of time discussing if this meant that there were two ports we could chose from and some people would be tendered to one place and others would be tendered to another, and therefore the people would be "Split." But I digress.)

Split, Croatia - along with the rest of the Dalmatian Coast along the Adriatic Sea - is a beautiful, white, sunny locale.
After tendering ashore, we walked around Diocletian's Palace, a huge ancient edifice that once housed thousands of people during danger. The place was huge, and it was weird to see these old nooks and crannies of the palace filled with vendors selling CDs and modern jewelry.

This little park was just outside the Palace walls.

Just outside Diocletian's Palace was the Green Market, which had a section for touristy souveniers and a section like a local farmer's market.

We stopped for a drink near the water. It was Sunday, and Mass was being shown on a flatscreen in the outdoor bar lounge area. Cultural difference? Guilt trip? The only thing on? You decide! Michael took pictures at each of our stops of the local beer, so here's the first of many:

Then we all walked to Bacvice Beach. It's funny, only about a quarter of this was actual sand beach, the other three-fourths were just stone walkways that dropped off into the sea. Mom and Dad secured us a spot at a restaurant while 'the kids' went down to the beach. Shan got some sun while the rest of us jumped in the Adriatic!

I was a little hesitant after JP shrieking that it was cold, but eventually got the courage to jump in. It was cold at first, but felt good after a few minutes. We all jumped in a few times before joining Mom and Dad for lunch.

After visiting the nude beach:Kidding! We all are wearing bathing suits under this! And you can see our ship in the background!

That restaurant was so cool. It was three stories up above the water with great views. The food was INCREDIBLE (I had shrimp risotto).

Then we headed back to the ship. We played trivia (got 3rd place) and got ready for dinner. This was our quasi formal night. Other cruiselines have serious formal nights, but Norwegian is known for being "freestyle" and casual. Here are a couple pictures from our balcony.

That night was our official celebration of JP and Shan's anniversary. The servers were so sweet on this cruise! They came over and sang a little song for them.

Later, at the karaoke bar, Shannon and I mustered the courage to sing! We did a duet of "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. I was the male role, obvs.

We both felt a little ambivalent about the whole thing. I think we both had fun but thought we could have sounded a little better. Man, karaoke is harder than it looks! But Michael and JP insisted that we sounded great. They are either truthful or very smart.

Since it was the 4th of July, there was a big country music Ho-Down after karaoke. There was a lot of dancing and learning line dances. We mused that only Americans would completely embarrass ourselves by looking so ridiculous in front of others like this. I kind of like that about us.

Then we had this little guy greet us back at the cabin:It's a puppy, don't you think?

Next up: Corfu, Greece!

Where better than a blog to humiliate oneself?

I interrupt your regularly scheduled vacation updates to show you some pictures that will hopefully make you laugh, cringe in awkwardness, be embarrassed for me or some combination of the above.

Since I blogged about how much I love dancing at weddings, I feel it's only fair to show you some of the professional pictures from Tyler and Lindsey's wedding. All photo credit goes to samjstaton.com.

I will start you off with relatively normal pictures of us dancing so you might be mistaken into believing I am an okay dancer. I will then finish off the photo share by convincing you that I am the most horrific creature to disgrace the planet.

No one can mess up "Shout," can they?

Still pretty normal.

Okay, facial expressions and robotic arms moving into the realm of "unpleasant."

I can explain this next one. I was trying to get Michael to 'milk' my thumbs. There is a particular line in a particular song that says, somethingsomethingsomething "Milk the cow!" So I tried to make my hands into an udder-like shape.

This is when things get weird.

Which of the following do you think just happened?

a. I discovered the chocolate fountain in the corner

b. I realized my strong Frankenstein-esque desire to squeeze a bridesmaid tight

c. I got detached from the Conga line and was terrified at the consequences

And, my personal favorite:

Wow, sometimes my grace and poise astounds even me.

The only redeeming quality of this image is that Michael is laughing so hard. That means that only about 99% of this party thought I was OUT. OF. MY. MIND. The other 1% consisted of me and the man that bound himself to me for life.

And in case you were wondering, I wasn't drunk. I do this kind of thing sober.

And yes, these pictures are posted publicly on the bride's Facebook page, for all of creation to see.

And yes, I'm available for hire to come to your wedding and demonstrate these kickin' moves.

Venice and Setting Sail

After the dawn march through Venice, Mom and Dad met us at Rialto Bridge to take us to the hotel. We took much-needed showers and took another short nap because we wanted to get up and make use of our time in Venice. (BY THE WAY - why do Europeans not believe in shower curtains? They have a removable/portable shower head in a bathtub and no shower curtain! I did a series of graceful pirouettes to keep the water flow always pointed against the wall so as to not drench the whole bathroom. Michael said "Screw it" and took a normal shower. Afterwards it looked like a saturated sheepdog shook itself out in there.)

The first thing on the agenda was to see San Marco's Square.

See what I mean about how many tourists are out in normal daytime hours?

Then just some meandering around the shops and canals. We ate lunch at such a wonderful restaurant right on the Grand Canal, nestled right next to Rialto Bridge. We all got some awesome Italian food and enjoyed the view. Then, of course, got dessert (gelato). I spent a lot of time debating posting this picture or the alternate, which featured Mom and Shan looking exactly the same as above and me stuffing my face with gelato.

When it was time to head to the cruise ship, we took a water taxi. This is a private (motor) boat that takes you anywhere you want to go. This is definitely the way to travel! We saw such beautiful sights from this unique vantage point and got great pictures!

Under a low bridge:

We even drove right up next to the ship: our new home! When you board a cruise ship, you're usually given a window of about 5 hours to get on board. Last time we cruised out of Miami and tried to board right at the beginning. We ended up waiting around in huge lines and it seemed to take forever because you're so excited to get on the ship. This time we wanted to spend as much time in Venice as possible, so we waited until the last minute to board...and we walked right onto the ship. I really recommend this route.

After checking out our awesome balcony cabin and going over a short safety drill, we ran for the atrium because there was a World Cup soccer game playing. We watched a couple WC throughout the week. First, it was great seeing it on this huge screen but the coolest thing was watching it with people from all over the world. We watched Germany vs. Spain with Germans and Spaniards. That was cool.

But we had to leave the game early because we were pushing out of port and had heard that this view of Venice was not something to be missed. Whoever told me that was SO RIGHT. We were high above the city on the 13th deck, so got to see Venice from a really interesting perspective.

We went to sleep early because we hadn't had a full night's sleep in about two days. And let me tell you, the big king size bed in our cabin felt just fine.

Next up: Split, Croatia!

Day One: July 1-3

At the end of this one long day, I said, "How is it possible that one day can last three days?" I think it really summed up our traveling experience. That one day really felt more like seven.

The long flight from Phoenix to London was actually great. We had tons of movies to choose from and all tried to sleep early in the flight to get used to the time change, but none of us got great sleep.

Once we got to London, we all knew the 3 hour connection from Heathrow to Gatwick airport would be tight. Well, security and customs really took a long time, then the shuttle was 15 minutes late. We still had hope, though. Here we are on the shuttle, green and confident in the shuttle system. Then there was traffic. By the time we got to Gatwick, we were pretty nervous. We sprinted through the airport with all of our luggage (Michael might have taken out a small Asian woman - sorry, whoever you are!) and we made it to check in..... Too late.

We missed our flight to Venice. We spoke to the lovely women at British Airways who really went out of their way to help us when we told them that we had to get to Venice or risking missing the cruise ship. There were no flights out of London that day. The only one the next morning was sold out. After searching all other options, we found our only choice was to fly to Bologna, Italy and then take a train to Venice.

So that's how we came to celebrate JP and Shan's 5 year anniversary at a airport pub named "Garfunkels" instead of a canal-side cafe in Venice.

Still pretty cheery, though, eh? We tried to get a little shuteye whenever we could. Trust me, by the end of this trip, we all became wonderful Public Sleepers.

So we got into Bologna around midnight, but we knew the next train to Venice wasn't until 3 am. Waiting for 3 hours was going to suck, but maybe it was a really nice train station where we could get some sleep.

No such luck. It was pretty seedy. And when we got there to buy tickets on the train, it said it was sold out! How was this possible? we thought in horror. The next train into Venice wasn't until 6 am, so now we were looking at 6 hours of waiting at this sketchy train station. We tried valiantly not to give in to the depths of despair. We sat in a nearby McDonald's as long as they'd let us because it was the only place open. Well, by the time 3 o'clock rolled around, we were all desperate to get out of Bologna. So even though our tickets were for the 6 am train, we jumped on the 3 o'clock train like a pack of hobos and celebrated triumphantly when the train pulled away toward Venice.We didn't even have seats. The train had a very narrow aisle from which you could access compartments. We didn't want to go searching for an empty spot and risk detection, so we sat on these little fold out nubs of seats in the tiny aisle. We couldn't sleep because it was uncomfortable, the train was rocking and people kept having to squeeze past us. But we were headed to Venice, so we couldn't really complain.

So after 26 solid hours of traveling, two disappointments, multiple naps but no real sleep, we arrived in Venice at 5:30 am.

When we got there, we had a few options for getting to the hotel. A water taxi is direct and fast but very pricey. A waterbus costs less money but doesn't take you directly to your destination and takes a long time. We looked at a map and decided we weren't too far from our destination, besides, it was free. Well, it ended up being 30 minutes over cobblestones with luggage and up and down the stairs of bridges.

However ... nothing could beat the sights that we saw with the sun rising in Venice. It was so early that the streets and staircases were deserted, which is a view not very many get to experience. So I'll leave you with some images from the haunting trek through Venice, which looked (in our tired delirium) more like a movie set or abandoned Disney park than real.

Thank you for reading.

Next up: Day Two: Venice and Setting Sail!

We're Back!

Bonjourno!

I can't believe that we're already home and that the vacation is over! It went by so quickly and we were definitely not ready to come home.

I have over 370 pictures from the whole thing. I know. So here's the thing, I simply can't force myself to try to pick the ten best pics and have one blog post about our incredible vacation. Instead, I'm going to post one blog entry for every day we were gone. I hope that's not venturing into the land of TMDs (too many details). If you're really not that interested in reading that much about our vaca, feel free to pass over these posts.

So, here is the first in the 2010 Euro Vacation series! Featuring:

JP (aka Stelios),

Shannon (aka Athena),

Dad (aka Yanni),

Mom,

My true love,

And me, Julie.

I hope that served as a little "teaser" to the blog posts to come. Stay tuned for the next post of Day One: Travel!

(Hoping for a) Bon Voyage!

I can't believe this day is finally here! We leave for Europe tonight!

The forecast looks great (really warm) and we're ready to go.

In the next 12 days we will have journeyed through England, Italy, Croatia and Greece! I'm beside myself with excitement, but also nervous about our travel plans. I'm sending out positive vibes so no volcanoes will erupt, no flights will be delayed, no airlines will go on strike, and all shuttle buses between Heathrow and Gatwick Airports run smoothly.

So I won't be blogging for awhile, but I hope to have some wonderful pictures and stories to share when we get back!

See you then!