Day Eleven (Naples, Italy)

Day Eleven (Naples, Italy): We arrived on time today….Hurray!!! After departing the ship we made our way to Hertz rental and rented a car to drive to the ruins of Pompeii. The city of Naples looks like every other city in Italy except for the ginormous volcano in the back drop. We were only 20 minutes away so no traffic problems! Everybody was surprised to see the ruins of Pompeii were an entire city instead of the normal, few broken columns here and there. This made for a lot of walking on some really uneven terrain. The small theater inside is still in use. I wouldn’t mind catching a play there! It was amazing to see how well preserved the human and animal remains were even more so than the Egyptians. It was very humbling seeing entire family’s remains in the Garden of the fugitives. You could even see a skull through the remaining ash on the little boy. We arrived back on the ship in time for the lunch buffet and now we are on open seas until our final port in Genoa. Poseidon is not happy with us right now because we are hitting some rough waters. We’ll right again when we are home safe in the company of the rest of our family in Deutschland. Ciao!

Day Ten: (La Goulette, Tunisia)

Day Ten: (La Goulette, Tunisia): Today was a great day!! We arrived on time and got off the ship on time….yah!!! We then rented a taxi who took us all over the city of Carthage and Sidi Bou Said. There were a lot of Roman ruins that was set right on the coast. We first went shopping and sightseeing in Sidi Bou Said. This was so much fun. I have learned how to bargain!!! I got a satchel that was originally priced for 110 Euro and got him down to 30 Euro. Then Nate got a guy start on a chess set for 30 Euro and he went down to 2 Euro. We didn’t end up getting it but it was fun to do. Then we went over to the Roman Bath House ruins. This was the third largest bath house during the Roman Empire times. Next was the Catholic Cathedral and amphitheater. Finally we are back on the ship heading to Naples to see Pompeii!!

Day Seven (Alexandria, Egypt)

Day Seven (Alexandria, Egypt): Egypt was a little different than I pictured in my mind. It is a very poor country and it showed in how they keep up their streets and buildings. There were mounds of trash along the highway and a lot of their buildings were half built. They would start building and run out of money so they would just stop. Our tour guide said a lot of the people would finish the inside of the house and not have enough money to finish the outside so they would leave it as is. There were whole sections in part of Giza that were cardboard shacks. They do have a population of 80 million but just in Cairo, which isn’t very big, their population is 25 million. Since we left Israel late we ended up porting in Alexandria a little later that what was planned. So we were a bit behind schedule when we left for the three hour drive to Cairo. We first went to the Egyptian museum where King Tuts mask and sarcafigi (tomb) is kept. It was so cool to see the gold mask that you see pictures of in shows and books. They didn’t allow cameras in the museum so we don’t have any of the mask…booo. We then headed over to the Pyramids. Unfortunately it was getting late in the afternoon and we only had 20 minutes of light to take in the sights. They were a sight! There were tours that arrived after dark so we were lucky we got them in some light. There were a lot of angry people when we got back to the ship. 10 French people were confined to their rooms because they were staging a protest at the excursions desk when they got back. We got to see the Sphynix after it was dark and only got to really see the outline. We then went to a nice buffet style dinner at the Mecure hotel. Following that we went to a few shops. I got a cartouch that has my name engraved using the Egyptian alphabet (hieroglyphics). The “cartouch”(car-toosh) is a symbol for eternal life. We also got four different paints on Papyrus paper. They are really nice and we got a great deal on them. We then had a long drive back to the ship and we think the bus driver was a little lost. We were all so nervous because we were about 30 minutes past the time we were supposed to depart but we knew the ship wouldn’t leave without a whole bus of people. Come to find out that we were nowhere near the last people aboard. We went to bed around 01:30 and saw people still arriving to board the ship.

Israel Pics

We added a picture of Maia as well that was sent to us by her trainer that is currently watching her. I'm not looking forward to returning to all that white stuff on the ground.
I will post pics and our story of our journey to the pyramids tomorrow. We didn't get back until midnight last night so we only had enough energy to get a snack and hit the sack. Today and tomorrow is a day at sea so we have lots of entertainment on board. To night is Carnivale night!!!