Month: May 2022

I had planned this day to take it EASY, starting with breakfast in the room (as I could not reach the buffet, the Front Desk Manager and I came to an agreement this was the compromise), with our Vatican Tour on Monday and our Coliseum and surrounding sights walking tour on Wednesday… Well, that is NOT how it turned out to be! We logged over 12 km walking around the city! Starting off at the Spanish Steps, which was within walking distance from our hotel, we knew that another “Fast and Furious” movie was being filmed in Rome, thanks to our driver from the cruise terminal to the hotel. He wants to be a driver for the movie stars! However we did not expect it to being filmed at the top of the Spanish Steps today! So we got there and were promptly told to view from the bottom instead – so more walking downhill, which was good in a way…until you need to go back up! Next on Lynda’s walking tour was the Trevi Fountain, then the Pantheon, and the Piazza Navrona where we stopped and had a gelato and Andrew a beer. Rome was turning out to be hot – 27 degrees C! Next on the tour was to walk the Ponte Vittorio to view the Castel Sant’Angelo. We were one bridge down the Tiber River and not on the Ponte that leads directly to the Castel, however I was losing steam at this point and once we got our viewing completed from Vittorio, we found a taxi (which took about 30 minutes of searching) and returned to the hotel. We had leftovers from breakfast – fruit, cheese, crackers (GF of course!) and some GF cookies I had purchased for dinner as we were exhausted and had an early morning on the 11th for our Roman Highlights tour! Again, comments to come…

After a good breakfast with GF items and being warned not to take the bus as they are not accessible (which I did not understand as every bus I saw had a wheelchair sign on it), we taxied over to the meeting point for our Vatican Tour that I had booked through Viator. I really wanted to see the Vatican after seeing the Sistine Chapel visit in Vancouver a couple of months ago, however I was quite frustrated with my inability to tour the Vatican as a person who used a mobility device and pay for a “regular” tour. So we had to pay for a private tour for Andrew and myself so that we could be escorted to the proper area to take the stair lift down to the Sistine Chapel. We did miss part of the Vatican Museum as that I understand is not accessible and the benefit being the way we entered the Sistine Chapel was the way the Pope enters it and other people exit – so the ceiling was the right side up for us! Unfortunately there are not pictures to be taken inside the Chapel so I have to leave that to your imagination and what you can see on the internet. Entering the Vatican the tour guide paved the way for us, I had to register as a person with disabilities and show my accreditation that I am rated greater than 80% disabled (which I have which was interesting to obtain in Canada as we do not really “label” how disabled a person is), and we were in for free! Very nice – this apparently is common in Italy – if you have a significant disability you are given access gratis. Not knowing how other tours worked, here is what we did. We looked at St. Peters Basilica from the terrace, along with the Vatican Gardens. Then we went to the Pinecone piazza area where there are pictures of the Sistine Chapel for you to study and talk about. They do this so that the guides can speak and answer questions as no talking is allowed in the Chapel. As we had just seen and listened to this, we got through this part pretty fast, including a comment from the tour guide saying “don’t you want to take pictures”? I guess she fully did not understand about the traveling Sistine Chapel visit! Then we went into the museum, the long, very long hallway! I do know that normally people see this AFTER seeing the Sistine Chapel as at times we felt like salmon swimming upstream as most of the visitors were streaming towards us and not with us. What a gorgeous exhibit – you will see all the pictures below. I just loved the art work! Then down the stairlift and a long a one way tunnel (which they controlled who was going in each direction) to enter the Sistine Chapel from the Pope’s view or exit for the regular people touring. After this it was back up the stair climber, back down the LONG hall and we decided it was time for refreshments and we parted ways with the guide. I had noticed though some other parts of the Vatican that had elevators so after our drinks and walk around the garden, we went back and saw the Egyptian exhibit. It was just as well done as the other parts of the museum – in fact there were some pieces sponsored by a Canadian group there! Our guide, before leaving us had told us that St. Peters closes at 7pm, which is 30 minutes after the Vatican. So we decided to push it and walk there (there is no direct route between the Vatican and St. Peters anymore) and guess what? No line! Up the elevator for me and into the BEAUTIFUL church! Now I know why they wanted it as the highest point in Rome – words cannot explain enough how gorgeous it is. I hope my pictures do it justice! At this point I was exhausted, had walked over 15km in the day and needed to get back to the hotel – so we took a taxi back! We had dinner in the restaurant and called it an “early” night for Roman standards! Captions to come…

After 21 days we are now off the Nieuw Amsterdam and on our own in Rome! Having to find our own food, things to do – what an adventure! To make the transition easy, I had booked a driver to take us to the hotel from the cruise port. We never got his name however he picked us up in a Mercedes van (which is good as with the walker it adds to our luggage) and escorted us to our hotel – the Westin Excalibur in Rome. Now, before we go further, I need to explain how we are staying in some 4 and 5 star hotels along the way as they cost upwards of 1000 Euros a night in the rooms that we are given. Due to previous travels and my unfortunate trips to the USA last year, there was a benefit and I reached very high tier in the Marriott program after staying way over 75 nights in their hotels so, I have lots of Marriott points which I could use on this trip. That also gives me priority room upgrades – generally bigger rooms as you will see starting in Rome. So now back to the Westin, which is a 5 star hotel and WOW was it nice! Except for one thing – there was a difference between what they say on the Marriott website for accessibility and what we actually found. I do not call a hotel “accessible” if I have to act as a baggage cart and take a side entrance that the luggage takes as “accessible”. I do not call a hotel accessible if I have to stand at the top of some stairs and ask the concierge to put a temporary ramp down so I can get to the front desk. Or go outside (through said baggage hallway) to get to the restaurant or have a ramp put down to get to the restaurant or business centre through the hotel. The what broke the straw for me was when I could not reach the breakfast buffet that came with my status in Marriott. So after a discussion with the Front Desk Manager, we enjoyed breakfast in our room for the next 4 days! Now I have gotten that out of my system – again, what a beautiful hotel – it was a shame I could not experience more! Here are the pictures I took. On Sunday, we went for a walk while waiting for our room to be ready and for an “early” dinner, in Italian terms, went to a local trattoria for a nice dinner. Sat on the street and enjoyed some wonderful “senza glutine” food! You all will recognize my salad, Andrew had a GF potato and octopus salad and then I had seafood risotto! Came back to the hotel and there were flowers and turn down service with nice candies that funny enough said “senza glutine” right on them! Living the high life – right! Comments to come…

Our next port was Naples, where we had signed up for a tour of Pompeii. The HAL Excursions Manager had some concerns about me going on this Excursion due to the bumpiness of the site, however after I told her that I had already been to Olympia in Greece, she was okay with it. Pompeii is not far from Naples, unlike other Excursions we have taken which have been an hour or more bus rides away. As we drove to Pompeii which was about 30 minutes away, we passed Mount Vesuvius and heard about the eruption which covered Pompeii and Heracleum. Pompeii was not as buried as Heracleum, which I did not know. Apparently Heracleum was buried twice as deep as Pompeii (about 8 feet). What an amazing experience Pompeii was! To walk the paths that people had walked so many decades ago and listen to the guide talk about how they did things like serve food from different “kitchens” and “bakeries” was amazing – it was almost like you were there! It was also very strange from an accessibility standpoint. Some parts were not accessible such as the roads with the huge chariot mounds in them and then all of a sudden we were at a house of a rich person which had a metal ramp installed to get into it, down to the stables and then at the exit – the house was completely accessible however getting up the curb to get to the “sidewalk” to get to the ramp was not! You know, pictures explain it WAY better – lets look at them! NOTE: There is a map of Pompeii at the bottom…

Back in Italy, now on the Island of Sicily, our original HAL Excursion to explore a local town and its beach (with covered chairs for two) was cancelled by the tour operator so we were offered instead a tour to Cefalu, which is located east of Palermo, still on the north coast of Sicily. The winds had not ceased from the previous day and our trip back from Tunisia – in fact it took 2 tugs to get us into port plus all the technology that the ship has to maneuver (something to do with pods). Even the port, which is normally open 24 hours, was closed overnight due to the winds which were bearing down on it, so all the ferry traffic, plus our cruise ship had to “hang out” outside of the port until it was safe to enter, at about 6am. At 8am our trip to Cefalu began and we were off in a bus that despite the wind gusts, the driver did a very good job keeping the bus, acting like a sail, on the highway! We made it to this historic town and spent about 2 hours there. While walking around we saw a wedding happen in the town church along with I did some window shopping. It seemed to be a VERY popular tourist destination with about 6 busses of people there visiting while we were there too. Driving back there was no wind at all – in fact there was a small “forest fire” which was being water bombed with a beaver type looking plane. Unfortunately did not get a picture of the plane 🙁 but it was cool watching it dump the water! When we got back to Palermo, we just made it onto the ship before it started to rain very heavily! After some pizza and watching the rain storm, we went out and took some pictures of the city, before returning prior to All Aboard! Here are our pictures!

As we were to get off the ship for a 7:30am Excursion we were up pretty early as we had to be down to the theatre by 7:00am to clear customs. Tunisia needed to see each person plus their passport that was going to enter the country. So about 6am when our breakfast was delivered, we started watching the progress of the ship on the in-room television and we saw this about face!

Soon after the captain came on the overhead speaker to announce that 1. we were not going to Tunis, 2. we are high tailing it out of the area due to high winds and rough seas 3. he would have been a “cowboy” (imagine that with an Irish accent) if he attempted to enter the narrow channel circled with this large ship due to the prevailing wind speed (50 knots). So we had another day at sea! Great for me as now I have time for a manicure!

Now, an old adage is “red sunset at night, sailors delight, red sunrise in morn, sailors take warn”. The interesting thing is on this day, we had a beautiful red sunrise and flat sea – was that an indicator of what was to come that day???

For this PLANNED day at sea, I thought I would show you a selection of the delicious meals that I have been served aboard the Nieuw Statendam. Most of these are standard meals on the menu, with slight modifications by the Allergy Kitchen (where all my food comes from regardless of what I order) however there are a few classics which they did make for me by special request! As I mentioned previously, I had an issue with muffins (which actually occurred twice) that were incorrectly sent to me, however all the meals that were cooked for me were gluten free and I did not react to any of them unlike the 2 muffin incidents!

As part of our cruise package we also had the pleasure of dining in 3 Specialty restaurants – the Pinnacle Grill, Tamarind and Rudi’s Sel de Mer. We also went to Nami Sushi wish you pay for what you eat. I have noted those pictures below. Let’s eat!

PS The best thing about being in Rome and off the Cruise ship is you now get full pictures! No more thumb prints!

Now we are in Livorno, which is the port city closest to Pisa and Florence. As we are going to be visiting both of these cities after we leave the ship in Rome, we decided to take a HAL trip to Cinque Terre where we will see the historic villages on the rugged Italian Riviera coastline. So first we boarded a bus and traveled north from the Tuscany region, for 90 minutes, to the Liguia region and to La Spezia where we boarded a boat to take us to the first village, Riomaggiore. Cinque Terre is a string of centuries-old seaside villages. In each of the 5 towns, colorful houses and vineyards cling to steep terraces and harbours are filled with fishing boats and trattorias turn out seafood specialties along using the Liguria region’s famous sauce, pesto. There is a cliffside hiking trail that links the villages and offers sweeping sea vistas along with a local train service. After Riomaggiore, we again got onto the boat and travelled for about an hour past the next 3 villages, with one of them up high, finally arriving at Monterrosso al Mare, the 5th and final village, where Andrew had a spot of wine and we had lunch prior to some shopping time and returning to La Spezia via train and then onto the bus back to the ship. It was a 9 1/2 hour day and I was really looking forward to the next day – at sea!

Wow – what a mouthful to say! Basically Ville Franche-de-mer is the city in the bay just east of Nice. So lets just call this Nice as that is actually where we went! So with our cruise we were given three $100 Excursion credits to use and one we used on a trip to Nice and Eze. Actually, the stop was supposed to be in Monaco, however just like Gibraltar, that got cancelled for some unknown reason, so “Nice” was the replacement stop. When going to Monaco, we were going on a HAL trip to Eze and another village in France, now we are touring Nice and Eze. So those on this tour (2 busses worth) plus 2 other tours were taken by tender directly to Nice where anyone who wanted to go ashore on their own were taken to Ville Franche-de-mer. Our tour started with a walking tour of Nice – which as it was a Sunday, was the antiques market instead of the flower market that operates the rest of the week. We walked through the market (but I did not touch or buy anything!) and then went to a very interesting wine tasting where the vintner/owner explained the wine industry in France very well – even for a person who does not drink wine! He also linked in what has happened in the USA, Australia and Canada which was a surprise! I had a lovely l’eau sans gas vintage 2022. Andrew had the 2 white wines and 1 red wine and he enjoyed them with some bread and cheese. I was full with my l’eau so I passed on the “le pain”. After that we were back on the bus to Eze, which is a small village on the top of a cliff. I knew it was small, I knew there were shallow stairs to climb to get up to the village however what blew me away was how small and compact the village was on this cliff side! The bus trip there was very short and then we started the climb (I was using my crutches and not my walker) which is done in 3 parts. I made it up the first 2 parts (which surprised the guide quite a bit) and then she said the last part people could do on their own – it takes you to a garden. I decided to call in quits as I knew the next day we also had a long walking excursion to Cinque Terre in Italy. It is very hard to explain this village other than it was like a cinnamon bun sitting on top of this cliff – you start walking at the bottom of the bun and circle around and around through the middle of the bun going up until you get to the top of middle peak which is where the garden is. Then you have to come down… There are two ways to come down we found out – the way you came back up OR the back route which we mistakenly found which is LONGER and goes past all the kitchen back doors! It is also more slippery as they keep the tourist steps area cleaner than the kitchen access it seems. On our way down, we left with plenty of time to get to the bottom (after all going down a hill you can walk faster) and we were going to take some pictures of the bridge and instead we were the last people to make it to the bus! Oh well it was a fantastic experience and not one we would really do on our own – which is how I pick the Excursions to do generally. Here come the pictures now!

Well, the first “segment” of the cruise is over! For some people that means they are getting off the ship and for others they are excited to be getting on… For us that meant no In Room dining for breakfast – we had to patronize the Dining Room and then we had to leave the ship for the day so they could clean it. We were not allowed back aboard until 3pm, for a 5pm sailing time. Ted, Pat, Andrew and I had planned to take the Hop on Hop off bus service on both loops today and that is what we did! We took a taxi to the square where they departed from and hopped on! It was supposed to be a 90 minute to 2 hour ride on the Red Line which was the first one we saw… it ended up being 2 1/2 hours so that precluded us from going on the Blue Line in case the same thing happened as that would make us late for the 4:30pm all aboard. So instead we ate lunch at a lovely café called Café Vienna on the Las Ramblas street which is the main tourist drag in Barcelona. Also where pick pockets live – luckily none of us were their prey! After lunch we walked down Las Ramblas a ways, check out the hotel where Pat and Ted will be staying when they return to Barcelona and then took a quick taxi back to the ship. Off for the second “segment”, which for us was still the same cruise, to Rome now! Note: Not too happy with the pictures as they were taken from inside the bus – I will get better ones when we return to Barcelona in June for our tour of Spain!