Laziest Day

I'm actually caught up with posts for the first time since right before the cruise. This is kind of amazing.

Part of the reason why is because we did practically nothing today. We woke up this morning to say goodbye to Umma, Halmony, and James as they left for the airport and then Oppa left us alone in the apartment for the rest of the day. I mean, we could have probably tried to arrange a trip to somewhere if we wanted, but I think it was nice to just have an uber lazy day.

We sat around the apartment doing practically nothing all day. At some point, Mia took the cucumber that was in the fridg and made a pretty epic salad thing out of it. We watched Laguna Beach on TV for five seconds before getting tired of it. We watched Living Lohan on my computer until we got bored with that show. I caught up on blogs. Finished the book I was reading. Played Nintendogs. Watched a lot of TV. Actually, the 1930s Scarlet Pimpernel was on and I kind of half-watched that.

Oppa got here around 7/8 (not sure exactly when) and we made pasta for dinner. He brought back another cucumber so Mia made her little salad thing again. We had a little minifeast for dinner. Good times.

After dinner, I just kind of put a lot of the packing stuff together so there will not be as much stress tomorrow morning. I did that and found out from Chris that he succesfully ordered a transcript to be sent to Hastings and that should get there by Friday. Good.

This probably won't be the last you'll hear from me. Tomorrow's a very long travel day and I'm sure there will be things to write about.

Another lazy day

Today was another lazy day. As I said in the previous entry, it was supposed to be a day in London, but we decided against in the end in favor of another rest day.

I woke up around 10 and really spent the first few hours of the day lazying around Oppa's apartment. Umma was doing last minute laundry and packing. We watched some Laguna Beach because it was on TV, but since it's not nearly as exciting as the Hills, we found Quantum Leap and watched that instead. I read a lot and did some stuff online. We had cereal and a lot of the chocolate that's been lying around. A pretty relaxing day.

Around 2:20, we headed out to find a bus that would take us to Reading so we could go back to the Oracle and watch The Dark Knight. The bus stop was actually a lot closer than we had thought and we managed to make a friend at the bus stop. A lot of people helped us get to the Oracle. Either our clueless vibes are apparent to people other than Egyptian security guards, people in this area are incredibly friendly, or both.

We get to the Oracle and buy tickets to the 4:30 Dark Knight. That left us with an hour with nothing to do, so we ended up going back to Yo Sushi for lunch and spending a lot more money there.

After that, we went to see The Dark Knight, which was pretty amazing. There's a lot I could say about it, but this is LOL Europe and not LOL Bamtan. I thought Heath Ledger was incredible. Maggie Gyllenhaal was much better as Rachel than Katie Holmes, even though there really isn't much to the character in general. I want to see it again.

The movie got out a little before 8 and we walked over to this shoe store that Umma saw on the way to the Oracle the night before and wanted to go to. It was closed, so we sadly went back to the mall. We stopped in HMV before grabbing some pizza from Pizza Hut to take back with us. We went back to the bus stop to get back to Wokingham and sat there for around 30 minutes before realizing that the last bus was at 7:45 or something.

We called Oppa to pick us up, walked back to the mall, and waited for him to come and pick us up. We got back. Umma did last minute packing. We ate pizza. I read more of my book and caught up with blogging. Eventually went to bed at almost 2 am because I had to arrange to ahve Chris sort out some Hastings stuff that I found out is due on Friday. That was about it for that day.

Disneyland, Paris/Back to England

We woke up early this morning (or slightly earlier than usual) because we had our flight back to England. Umma wanted us to leave a little earlier because we wanted to walk around the Disneyland, Paris area. We had gone to this park like fifteen years ago or something like that. Back when we went there, the park wasn't even called Disneyland, Paris. It was called EuroDisney. Anyway, that's why we were leaving earlier than usual.

Since it was a Sunday, the market was closed, so we couldn't get more of those sausage sticks that we liked. As you may or may not tell, this was a very upsetting experience. Truly, it was. We got on the road and headed back in the direction of Paris. We traveled relatively problem-free towards Paris, stopping once to get more gas, use the restroom and get snacks at a gas station. Once we got to the general Paris area, I had to figure out how to get us to Disneyland, Paris. I was more or less successful, except for when I got us onto one freeway going in the opposite direction of our destination and we had to go. We won't talk about that though. All in all, it was about 1-ish when we got to the general Disneyland area. As we entered the area, we passed by the hotel that we stayed at way back when, which was some Western-themed resort. I thought that was cool. We parked in some parking lot and walked over to the Disney Village, which seems to be the equivalent of Downtown Disney.

So, when we went to this park way back in the day, we ate at some seafood-ish restaurant in that little village area. They gave everyone hammers and would tell everyone to pound on the tables with said hammers to scare away sharks. Gianni loved this restaurant when we went there, so we spent a while trying to find it even though we knew that it was very likely no longer there. We were right. I think it's a Rainforest Cafe now. Now that we were disappointed and depressed, we all went to the bathroom and looked at a few of the stores. Since it was lunch time, we also looked for a restaurant that was not as overpriced as the other restaurants so we could eat lunch. We ended up settling on this New York-themed place but ended up just taking our food to go when we realized that we were semi-late for our flight.

It took us a lot less time than we had expected to get from Disneyland to the airport and because they are both two major areas, it was not hard to get from point a to b. We stopped at a gas station along the way, where Oppa found a crumpled 20 Euro note on the ground. Cool stuff. It almost negated the gas that we just spent. Not quite. We got to the airport and circled around a while trying to find the right terminal. We returned the car and then headed towards the terminal with two hours to spare.

We found the desk for our airline, thinking we had to check in there. They shooed us away to another place, where we had to wait for like 40 minutes in this long line to check in. We get to the check in counter only to have them tell us that Halmony needed to check in at the counter outside. Obviously this was both upsetting and annoying, especially after having been shooed away by the first counter. There was yelling and stress that went back and forth, but it kind of all worked out. Oppa checked everyone else in while Umma took Halmony back outside to do whatever they had to do. Then they just let us go up and check Halmony in. There was almost a fight with Oppa and the man at the counter in the process, but we managed to successfully get through that line.

Next we stood in the passport control line for another 15 minutes. It probably would have been faster if it wasn't for the fact that people take about four times as long to check Gianni because his beard probably either tags him as a drug smuggler or a terrorist. We've had this problem for a while, actually. If we were to ever carry anything suspicious (not that our family of all people would), Gianni would not be the one to carry it as he's the one most frequently tagged for the random check. Anyway...

We get through the passport line and then have to go through the security line. This was actually annoying for eco-geek me. They make you throw your bottles away in a little trash can. This is standard procedure, yes, but you usually don't see a recycling bin on the other side of the security line that taunts you. Even though there aren't any vending machines or anything, there are actually like twenty recycling bins in the gate. I don't know.

Anyway, we were in with ten minutes to spare before they started boarding. Except we didn't board. There was some sort of delay with the plane. The pilot actually started explaining it on the plane, mumbled something that I couldn't understand and said nevermind it's not important. Anyway, it meant that it was another 30 or so minutes until they started boarding. We didn't board directly onto the plane. We all got into little extremely stuffy buses that took us over to the plane. We all fit into two buses and even though they have this strict order in which they load people onto the plane, the fact that we got into these buses together that jumbled us up kind of defeated the purpose. Though, for all I know, there could have been a special bus that took all the special passengers on first. All I know is that the A and B people seemed to get jumbled, which worked in our favor. We got separated from Umma and Halmony, who went on the first bus. As we were waiting for the first bus to unload all of the people, we saw the two of them shuffle over to the save spots for the rest of us. The plane took off almost an hour late and after of this stress, I've decided that I don't like the Charles de Gaulle airport.

The flight itself was not particularly exciting. I did some of those fill it in puzzles and read my book, while Mia and Halmony slept on both sides of me. I felt like there was significantly less leg room on this plane than the one we took to Paris, but that was probably my imagination.

Because the plane took off so late, we arrived to the Lutton Airport somewhat stressed. We got in at 6:20 and our shuttle to the Heathrow Airport left at 6:40. This gave us very little time to get to the bus stop. We got off of the plane as soon as we could and then stood in line to get through customs. Even though the line for the non-EU passport holders was shorter than the EU passport line, they had less people working on it and only took one person at a time. They wouldnt' take us as a group even though every other airport I've been to does and I'm sure that since they all asked us more or less the same questions, it would have saved them time too. Actually, they didn't ask us all the same questions. I got the standard questions. The guy Mia had asked her slightly more complicated questions that I think she failed. Gianni got asked a ton of questions, including ones that asked where he went to school and what he studied there. Lol at my brother.

Once through customs, we ran to the bus station and got there right at 6:40. We got there right on time, only to find out that the bus we were on was very late, so we ended up waiting another 30 or so minutes for it to come. The problem was that we arrived right at rush hour, so the bus was stuck in traffic on the way here. The bus ride to Heathrow took a lot longer than the one that we took from there. Part of this was traffic, which was pretty intense. Also, to avoid traffic for the majority of the trip, our driver took us through a lot of surface roads. It was definitely a very scenic trip, but we got to Heathrow over an hour after we were scheduled to arrive.

The initial plan for the night, since Umma and I had bus tickets to go to Reading was to see The Dark Knight at the Oracle in Reading. The Oracle is this big shopping mall in reading, by the way. Anyway, by the time we got to Heathrow, we were very tired. Oppa took everyone to get the rental car and drive to Reading and Umma and I took the bus and we were just going to meet at the Oracle. The bus ride over was long due to it being rush hour and a traffic accident along the way. The bus was also very stuffy and the AC was not working, so we were dying for most of the trip. Some guy eventually opened the emergency hatch or something to get air into the bus.

We eventually got there and made our way to the Oracle to meet everyone else who seemed to have been waiting there for a while. We were still going to get TDK tickets, but found out that kids under a certain age are not allowed to be at the theaters after some certain time, meaning that James could not see it with us. We decided to just wait a day to see it then.

We did notice, however, that they had a Yo Sushi at the Oracle. Let me explain. When we went to England like 6 years ago, we went to this sushi restaurant in London called Yo Sushi. The sushi isn't really that great compared to what we can find in like California, but James was in love with this place for whatever reason. In fact, part of the reason we were going to go to London the next day was so that James could be reunited with his beloved restaurant. The fact that it was in the Oracle was very convenient for us and we ended up just canceling the London plans so that we could have a more relaxing packing/laundry/Batman day. Anyway, we got to Yo Sushi very shortly before closing, so there really wasn't much of a variety. I have to admit that I was a lot more impressed with the place this time around. Possibly because I avoided the sushi, but for a pound you also get unlimited fizzy water and I really liked the fried rice that I had. Also, I got avocado rolls and I haven't had avocado in forever (other than that one day I managed to find guacamole in the Windjammer Cafe). After we ate, we all squished into the car to go to Oppa's place and stayed up a while to watch Love Actually on TV before going to bed.

Bayeux/Normandy Beaches

Because we didn't have to travel as far today, it wasn't that big of a deal that we were not out early again this morning. We still woke up, got ready, went to the market and did all that jazz by the same time that we did the day before. We bought a lot more of those silly salami sticks though because we loved them so much.

Our first stop of the day was to the town of Bayeux, which is about 20-30 minutes away from Caen. It is a cute little French town that houses the Bayeux Tapestry. This tapestry, which is over one thousand years old, tells the story of the Norman invasion of England and the events leading up to it. This thing is pretty epic. It's like 70 meters long or something like that. The price of admission to see it included the little audio guide so that it could walk you through the story of the tapestry. This audio guide was more stressful than the one I had the day before though. It would rush you through 4 or 5 frmaes of the story at once and then make you pause for like 5 minutes so that they could play really silly music. Other than that, it was pretty cool. They even sold do it yourself tapestry dealies in the gift store. I don't think it was for the whole tapesty, that would have been ridic., but you could do small parts of it and display it in your home. How fun.

Anyway, there was another little part of the museum that you could visit after you saw the actual tapestry, but I didn't find it as interesting as I found the tapestry itself. There were some cool artifacts (like authentic chain mail), but other than that they just had little mannequins in poses really.

After leaving the museum, we walked around the town a little more. We grabbed postcards before we saw the tapestry, so we had to find stamps to send them out with. The first tobacco shop we went to kind of yelled at us as if we were offending them, so we almost gave up. On the way back to the car, Oppa took Mia and me to see the Bayeux Cathedral. We found another tobacco shop in the area that did sell stamps, so that part was settled. The cathedral itself was very nice. It wasn't too big compared to some of the other cathedrals that I've seen on this trip, but it was still very nice. Also, it looked like one of the gargoyles on the facade was an angry nun-like person. Maybe that was just my imagination. We met up with everyone else and loaded back into the car. After circling around for a little bit, we drove off to our next destination.

The next stop was Omaha Beach, which is where the American cemetery and memorial for the D-Day landing is located. It was about a 20 minute drive out of Bayeux. The drive also included passing by a lot of cows. There are a lot of cows in Normandy and they are all very perfectly spotted (or all white).

Anyway, we parked outside of the cemetery and memorial and walked inside. The area was very pretty and very nice. The cemetery itself was sad, though. Oppa, James, Gianni, Mia, and I all walked down to the beach itself. I think Oppa was expecting to see some stuff from WWII in the area because he saw it when he went there ten years before, but there really wasn't anything in the area that we were at except for beach. We climbed back up and met Umma and Halmony again and then walked through the cemetery to look at the main memorial.

On the way out, we also visited the museum that they had set up at the entrance. It was nice. I think it was like a year or two old because everything about the museum seemed new. But pretty much it was memorializing the Americans who died at D-Day and gave short biographies about some of their lives as well as background on the event itself. I really liked the set up.

We left the area to find another museum that Oppa had found an advertisement for either in Bayeux or at the hotel or somewhere. This one had a lot of guns and items that were used by people during the war and kind of told the story of the French experience of it, or that's what I got out of the museum at least. It wasn't too big and there wasn't too much to the museum though, so we kind of breezed through it and left shortly after.

We weren't really sure what else to do at this point. We were kind of hungry by this time since we hadn't really eaten since breakfast (with the exception of those sausage sticks that we had been poking at throughout the day). We ended up stopping at this little fishing town to eat. I don't remember what the name of the town was, but it was very cute. We just got food from some small sandwich shop and Umma was disgusted with the fry sandwich that Gianni got. It was literally just a baguette with fries in it. She clearly had not eaten with us on our backpacking trip to have experienced the constant fries, the hamburger sandwich with fries in it, the American pizza, etc. I had a nutella crepe for dessert, so I was very happy. I also managed to finish my book while Umma and Mia ran around looking for a place to eat.

We left the town after we ate and then went to another town to look at the mulberries. On the way, we stopped at some other little place to look at the batteries, which I guess held a lot of the guns and tanks and stuff. I'm not exactly sure because I don't remember all of Oppa's explanations. It was a fun little stop though (and a good bathroom break). We could climb on top of them and look inside and stuff. It was cool. I think Gianni got cut on the back by one of the rusty old guns, which caused a bit of a panic.

Anyway, we eventually got to the town with the mulberries. That's apparently the code name that they used for what Oppa described as cement-ish boats that the Allies blew up to form temporary ports and docks in preparation for the Normandy invasion. You could see a lot of them from the town we were at, which was cool. If had time for beach stuff or were into that at all, I wondered if you could swim out to some of the closer ones and climb on them, but since we didn't pack our swim suits and did not have time to swim, we wouldn't find out.

We drove back towards Caen and were going to look around the city itself, but got slightly lost while doing so and ended up deciding against it. Our hotel was on the outskirts on the town, so we hadn't really seen much of it. Anyway, we got back to the hotel around 8, while there was still a lot of daylight outside and while there were still actually parking spots in the parking lot.

Once we got back, we all took turns on Oppa's computer. I blogged for a while and tried some of Oppa's apple alcohol (very strong, btw). After I was done with that, I went back to the girls' room and read the new Dave Gorman book while watching Lost in French.

Mount St. Michele/St. Malo

Because our destinations for the day were kind of far from where we were staying, we wanted to leave the hotel kind of early-ish. If you've ever been on a vacation with my family, you would know that we hardly left early. It was still technically morning when we left, though. That's good.

On the way out, we discovered that there was a market across the street from our hotel, so we got breakfast and salami there. We also got these like dried salami things which kind of tasted and looked like a classier version of Slim Jims. They were very good.

Anyway, we headed out towards Mont St. Michele. It was about an hour's ride out to the area and there was a lot of stress because Oppa doesn't generally trust my ability to navigate even though I managed to get us everywhere we needed to go.

Mt. St. Michele is this little medieval town place that has a very big abbey up at the top of the hill. It's a coastal city that is an island depending on the tide at that particular time. The view of the area from a distance is pretty spectacular. We got there around high tide, but I think it was waning down by the time we got there.

The actual town itself was very cute and very picturesque. Because the streets were very narrow, it felt a lot more crowded than it probably actually was. All I know was that there were certain areas that were hard to get through because it was so crowded. We climbed up the hill to get to the abbey and went inside to look. There was a great view from the top of it and the abbey itself was very gorgeous. Oppa also got us one of those free self-tour guide things to walk around with. Those are a lot more complicated to carry around than they should be.

Once we saw the abbey, we headed back down the hill. We stopped along the way to eat gallettes at this small creperie. They were very good. Mia and I also split a nutella crepe for dessert and that was kind of amazing. We bought James some ice cream on the way down (because he now eats ice cream almost constantly) and then left Mt. St. Michele.

On the way to our next stop, we found some random goose farm and Oppa bought his pate, his apple liquer, and his very smelly cheese. He was a very happy person at that moment in time.

Our next stop was St. Malo, which took some navigating to get too. We parked a little outside of town and then took a bus in. St. Malo is a cute little fortified coastal town. It was kind of similar to Rhodes in a way, except a lot less hot. And not as pretty. And there were not as many things to do. And it was smaller. So, I guess the only real thing that made it similar was that it was within a fort. It was still a very cute little town, though and after going through very hot spots like Greece, Turkey, or Egypt the cold weather was very, very refreshing.

Anyway, we looked around the town for a bit. We walked along the wall for a while, first. Then, we found some spot that overlooked the sea. It was pretty.

They also had some art stands scattered around the area and we looked at a couple of them. Mia found some really bizarre one that she liked.

We looked at a couple of other shops after that. Mia and I found some market that sold large bottles of Orangina. We got some as well as some chocolates. Good times. We wandered around St. Malo for a while afterwards, looking for a suitable place to eat dinner. We eventually found some place that did the sea food that Oppa and Umma were looking for as well as pizza because that's essentially all James eats. The food was good.

After eating, we took the bus back to the car and left St. Malo. I think we had good timing on this one because it was drizzling as we left and started raining soon after we loaded into the car. Oppa took a wrong turn somewhere on the way out of St. Malo, so we had to circle around a lot of very dark and not so crowded areas to find our way back. It worked out in a way. The road that we got lost on went in the direction of the freeway we had to take to get back to Caen.

Anyway, like we had the night before, we made it back to Caen very late. Like after midnight late. I read a lot on the way back and helped Oppa when we were changing freeways and doing things like that. It wasn't too hard finding the way back once we were on the right freeway, though.

After we got back, I was probably up until like 1 or 2 reading my book, which by this time I was very much into.

Travel Day to France

So our plane to the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris left at 3 pm, so we naturally left Oppa's place at 9 am. There's actually a legitimate reason for this, so let me backtrack just a little.

We were flying from some cheapie airline that only leaves from the London Luton Airport and not Heathrow. These airports are like an hour apart. We could not, however, drive directly to this airport because Oppa had to return his car to the Hertz place at Heathrow. The airports are connected by a bus, so we had reservations for a bus shuttle at like 11 something or some time like that. His car only fit up to five people, so Oppa had to drop Umma and me off at the Reading train station so we could take a bus to Heathrow. I guess we really didn't have to leave that early. Whatever, we got to the Luton airport around 12:30 ish, an hour too early to check in. We spent most of that time in the WH Smith looking at books. I bought a book called the Pirates Daughter. It looked interesting, but I mostly got it because the word pirate was in the title and I am weird.

Anyway, after about an hour, we stod in line for the check in and did just that. We found out we would have to combine our carry on bags (we didn't check anything in since we would only be in France for like 3 days) to one, which was a stressful experience on its own. We went through security, which was a hassle as usual. I set off the alarm somehow and when they pat you down at this airport, they really, really pat you down. I'm sure a metal detector thingy could have been equally effective, but whatever.

We sat around the gate for a while after that, waiting for them to announce the gate the we would be in. I read my book until then. When they did it, we had to run down to our gate and stand in line. This airline doesn't assign seats, so the set up is very similar to Southwest. Other than that, the flight out to Paris was relatively uneventful. I just read my book which I ended up enjoying a lot more than I actually expected.

We got to the Paris airport and after getting through customs and purchasing a road map of France, we ran around the airport looking for the Hertz rental car place. While Oppa stressed to find this place, James and I stood in line for fries. We were all kind of hungry, so we bought a bunch of McDonalds fries to hold us over for our drive out to the Normandy area.

We get the car, which can surprisingly fit 7 people in it (tightly, but it can still fit all of us nonetheless), and start our journey out to Caen. I think the trip was like 2 and a half hours long or something like that. Not sure.

The drive was okay up until a certain point. It was like a fun little family road trip. Around 8 or something, however, the light went on indicating something was wrong with the car. Since the car manual was only in French and Mia's French classes did not go over automobile problems, we weren't exactly sure what the problem was. All we knew was that the car wouldn't go above 110 km/hr. We turned onto some random street and ended up driving for a while until we made it to some random gas station just outside of Le Havre. We stayed there for a while, trying to get a hold of Hertz to exchange the car or do something about the problem. We spent a good fifteen minutes there, either on hold or talking to the American office trying to get the right number to contact the French office before we gave up. I guess it didn't matter anyway because the moment we started the car up, the light and the problems all disappeared.

Now we were stuck in the middle of Le Havre, somewhat hungry because it was 9 ish around ths time and kind of lost. On the way out of the Le Havre area we stopped by this random restaurant so that we could eat and figure out where we were. This was actually a very interesting experience. So, we approach the doors to look at the menu and figure out if we want to eat there or not. The menu looks okay, but all we can see through the window are the restaurant patrons staring at us. We figured at this point that we had limited options food-wise, so we decided to eat there anyway.

The moment we enter the restaurant, we experience this sort of experience you would only see in old western films. Everyone inside turns around and stares at us. Maybe it was the Asian-ness. Maybe it was because we were in a small town and clearly did not belong. Maybe it is because we reek of the essence of American tourist. Whatever it was, the people inside were clearly not happy with our presence. To top that off, they managed to seat is in the center of the restaurant in this really silly patio table that did not belong in the restaurant. While we tried to sort out what we wanted to eat, they brought out a basket of bread that we very nervously and quickly ate. We ordered our food, and the food was okay. Oppa's sausage dish smelled strange. All of the people who stared at us initially all left, so it wasn't as uncomfortable. Our waitress was also very nice and she gave us detailed directions out of the area and to the Caen area as we left.

It was around 11 by this time and very dark and we still had an hour or so left in the drive. It was relatively easy to find and I fell asleep at some point along the way. I got woken up while we were in the general area because Oppa was stressing and trying to find our way to the hotel. It was actually not that hard to find though. Once we got there, Umma and Mia went inside to check in. We then parked, found our rooms, and I went to bed shortly after.

Wokingham (lazy day)

Today was our lazy day in Wokingham, or more aptly our laundry day. I kind of woke up when everyone was stressing to get Andrew out and to the airport and then went back to sleep until 10. I woke up to Umma cooking ramen with sweet and sour sauce that ended up being good.

We spent most of the day sorting out clothes and getting some of it clean. This took a long time because Oppa's washing machine is very small, so we could only wash clothes in small batches. Oppa had also gone to work for the day and had left us in the apartment with no toilet paper, which was slightly stressful.

I spent most of the day reading the Meg Cabot book that Mia got from the book exchange shelf on the cruise. It was very light reading and a fast read, but it was kind of addicting. At some point, we also found a Hills marathon on MTV. I had not seen the show before this and have just discovered how disgustingly addictive that show actually is. Also my extensive celebrity gossip knowledge seemed to provide me with a lot of background information on the people in the show. It's so dumb though.

At around 3, we went outside to walk to the Chinese restaurant near Oppa's place. Turns out it was closed, but some guy gave us directions to the center of town. We made our way there and we discovered that most of hte restaurants in town were closed until 6 as well. We eventually found a pub that was open and ate there. It was completely empty, so it was very awkward at first, but the food ended up being very good.

We walked back to Oppa's place, stopping at a store along the way to get toilet paper and actually met Oppa along the way. He drove us back to the flat. We stayed there for about thirty minutes and then loaded into the car to go to the movies, illegally putting James and Umma in the trunk. We actually all went there to see Batman, but it turned out that Batman was not out in the UK until Friday. So, Oppa went back, James Halmony and Gianni saw Hancock, and Umma Mia and I saw Mamma Mia. I've never seen a theater with so many women in it before in my life. It was actually somewhat terrifying. That said, Mamma Mia was extremely silly and campy, but the scenery was gorgeous and it was still fun to watch. Also, Pierce Brosnan cannot sing.

After the movie, we went back, did last minute packing for our trip to France, I blogged a little bit, and went to bed.

Disembark/Fiumicino Airport/England

The disembark day of the cruise is always an unhappy day. For one, you wake up early to wait for them to call your name. For us, this usually takes a long time. So, we woke up early and got our food and then sat around for like an hour to wait for them to call us out. Once they did, we got our luggage, and then went outside to sit around for another hour for our ride to pick us up. Uncle Alex, Chicca, and Nicole were leaving separately since they had driven there, so we said our goodbyes. The car came to pick us up and to drive us to the Rome airport. The ride to the airport was fun and we reminisced about our fun cruise trip for most of the ride.

When we did make it to the airport, we unloaded our stuff and said goodbye to Nonny, Nonno and Chabba and went inside the airport. We were 6 hours early and could not check in our bags, so we just had to sit around and wait. By some strange coincidence, we actually sat next to the Super Family. Umma went around and shopped while I tried to get blog entries done so I could post them when I got to the Internet.

This leads us to the next problem with the day you disembark. After being pampered with constant food for however long you were on the cruise, you suddenly realize that the cruise buffet or 24 hour pizza bar is not just an elevator ride away from you and that you actually have to go out and search for food yourself. So, we did just that. We found some obscenely over priced restaurant in the airport and ate there in shifts. I was really only happy because I finally got my mozzarella di bufula.

We sat around in the airport in that way until about 2:30, when Oppa thought it would be okay to check in. We went downstairs to the British Airlines counter to check in, only to find that we could check in but couldn't turn in our bags for another hour. So we sat around in that area and waited for that hour. I got acquainted with Nintendogs, which is actually a lot more addicting than I had initially imagined.

We finally get to check in our bags and then go through security, which is a lot less lax than it is in the US. They thought we were stupid when we asked if we had to remove our shoes. We went through passport control, which also took a lot longer than it should have. Once through all the security madness, we sent everyone to the main terminal except for Oppa and myself who went to the British Airlines snob lounge to use the Internet. That ended up being a little harder than I had imagined, but I got online and was able to upload a few blog entries and make sure everything was running smoothly with school paperwork. Also, I thought it was cool that British Airlines gives its snob passengers free alcohol. Not that I had any. I've had a cough since Athens or something, so I drank a lot of tea and had a tuna sandwich. I also smuggled a diet coke out for Andrew.

We left around 6 to meet up with everyone at our gate and waited until we boarded the plane. The plane ride took about 2-3 hours. It was weird being in a plane again after traveling around by train and boat. We got to London Heathrow around 8 or something. This is where things got slightly complicated. Oppa's car would not have been able to fit all eight of us and our luggage. We sent most of the luggage, Gianni, Andrew and Halmony with Oppa. Mia, Umma, James and I took a bus from the airport to the Reading train station. We sat in the back, which we thought was cool at first, but it was disgustingly stuffy so I was dying by the end.

We got there around 11, at exactly the same time that Oppa had made it to the train station to pick us up. He drove us to his flat and I almost immediately fell asleep on the couch until I got yelled at to go to sleep for real. Between all the traveling, the early wake up, the lack of constant food, and the fact that I'd developed some strange cough, it had been a long day.

Connexion

Alea is a BLOGGING MACHINE.

I want a pet piggy, but I have discovered that they're around $500-$2,000 to purchase, and I'm not that into it anymore.

But they're oh so cute. And if I ever get bored with it, there's always certain meals I could prepare.






































Oh my God, I'm sorry. That was a horrible, horrible joke and I would never do that to a piglet that adorable.

To make up for it, I shall end this post with a picture from a bizarre website I have just stumbled upon called Squid.us. I don't even know where to begin explaining what is wrong with this website, but this is a picture of a piglet squid, and I hope you enjoy it. It also makes me miss Freddy the squid from a few summers ago. Poor Freddy :(



Goodbye.

Day 12: I Love Capri

Today, we were back in Italy where we started our cruise. It was nice to know the language again (even though a lot of people did more or less speak English along the way). We woke up early as usual to take our own excursion into Capri. This Italy excursion actually was a lot more stressful than we thought it would have been. Initially the girls were going on a Chabba-led excursion to the island of Capri, which is off the coast of Naples, while all of the guys went on an Oppa-led excursion to Pompeii. At some point, we decided we were going to do our respective excursions and then meet in Sorrento for pizza. Then, Gianni got sick, James got sick, and Andrew was in some weird mood, so the Pompeii trip essentially got canned. We also left Chabba behind and canned Sorrento. A lot of changes.

Anyway, we woke up early and had our breakfast for our trip into Capri. We disembarked (on the fourth floor this time, not the first) after hearing a semi-stressed Chabba tell us that Andrew had disembarked on his own to use the Internet. We had the clear message that we were now in the southern region of Italy because several cars hit us on the four minute walk over to the hydrofoil station. We stood in line for tickets (which were actually very expensive for this hour long boat road into Capri), got our tickets, and boarded the little boat that would take us to Capri. We got stuck on the top of the boat, so we were under the sun which was not fun. Also, people would run around the ship trying to get us to buy silly Capri caps. On the way over, though, some very excited man came up and told us that the Blue Grotto was open today and that they were doing tours out there. This made us slightly sad because this was the one thing that James actually wanted to do in Capri and we told him it wouldn't be open.

Anyway, we get to Capri and see a ticket line to do the Blue Grotto trip. Even at that point, we didn't think that we were going to do that trip because it would be expensive and we still kind of wanted to see Sorrento. We also weren't sure if we would have time to do it. In the end, though, we kind of had this "how often are we in Capri" moment and decided to do it anyway. First, however, we followed the suggestion that they gave us on the ship and bought our return hydrofoil ticket to Naples early in the day. We got the 3:25 ticket because we were not sure how long everything would take.

We went back to the main docks and got our ticket to go out to see the Blue Grotto. So, the way that they do this is that you have to take a big boat out to the Blue Grotto and then you have to pay another 10 euro to take a rowboat into the actual grotto. The bigger boat that we took was actually a good investment because it actually circled around the island after visiting the grotto. Anyway, we bought tickets for the 10 o clock tour and loaded the boat, this time sticking around in the shaded areas of the boat. It took about twenty minutes to get out to the grotto and another 15 minutes to get into the rowboats.

So, the Blue Grotto is this little grotto that I guess has ruins in it or something. It's only opened depending on the conditions of the water as well as the level of the tides. The entrance is only small enough for one row boat to enter at a time, and you have to duck into the row boat to actually enter. Once inside, a combination of the sand or rock (i'm not sure which) below you, the sunlight, and the water creates this incredibly gorgeous shade of blue that illuminates the enter grotto. The acoustics of the grotto also have perfect acoustics for singing. So that's the Blue Grotto for you.

We got onto our rowboat. Umma got to sit in the front while Halmony Mia and I were cramped into the back. Because you have to duck so low to get into the grotto, you have to sit on the bottom of the row boat. It took us a while to actually get into the grotto. Because the opening is so small, only one person can go in or out at time and we managed to get to the entrance while all of the boats were exiting. Once it was our turn, we all ducked down into the boat as we went into the grotto. Mia describes this moment as being similar to that moment on the Pirates of the Caribbean where you go down that drop. You go through all of this splashing water and enter into this cool cave on the other side where everyone is singing. It was pretty cool. Also, none of the pictures that I took inside the grotto do any justice to the actual shade of blue that the water becomes. It was really pretty.

We stayed in the grotto for about 3-5 minutes, listening to a lot of singing before we exited. The trip out of the grotto was a lot more painful than the trip in because Mia suffocated me with her hair as she was ducking down. The rowboat took us back to the boat and we waited around for another five or ten minutes for the last few groups of people to complete their grotto trip. Once everyone was back on board, we started our trip around the island.

The island tour was very cool. Capri is a very pretty island. On the way, we saw both the Green and White Grottos (Capri seems to be big on their grottos), a very picturesque lighthouse, and the houses of Giorgio Armani, Sofia Loren, and the Gerber family (I think that house belonged to Mussolini at some point as well). Anyway, it was a pretty cool tour.

After we got back to dry land, we decided to get tickets to go up the funicular to see the main part of town. Funicular is a funny word, by the way. Anyway, we get up to the main part of town and are greeted by a giant bell tower. We head deeper into town and pretty much are bombarded with a ritzy shopping area. Seriously, if I was interested in legit designer products, I would have been in heaven. Instead, I felt like I was in a Santana Row for those who mean serious business. It was very pretty though.

Our first stop was to find the Chantecler (sp) store because Umma wanted one of the bells that the people were talking about on the boat. Apparently that's THE brand to get these lucky bells from, otherwise they are not really lucky. There were no people in the store, though, so we got a little intimidated and found a cheesy tourist store that was more our style. I actually just sat outside and wrote a postcard while Umma and Halmony became friends with the storeowner. After they bought souvenirs, we explored the town a little longer. We eventually found a place where we got some cheap silver (and fake) not lucky Capri bells. I've been wearing mine on my wrist ever since. I'm not sure if I've been luckier because of it, but I've definitely been a lot louder.

We took the funicular down around 2-ish to get back down to the port area and then went in search of a cheap place to get pizza and other Italian foods. We found a place and sat down. It took forever for them to take our order. Our boat was scheduled to leave at 3:25 and we didn't get our order taken until 2:55. This was extremely stressful, but by some stroke of luck it took them an absurdly short amount of time to make our food. We ate, ordered gelato, got lost finding the boat, and then barely made it onto the boat before it took off for Napoli.

We had to split up a little this time around because most of the seats were taken, but we more or less got to sit together. I passed out about halfway through the trip because I was tired from the long day and we eventually made it back to Naples. We stopped at one or two touristy stores on the way to the ship and ended up boarding about 30 minutes before the last call.

First thing Mia and I did was go to the top deck so that I could exchange the last of my Vitality points for prizes. I only really had enough for two key chains. I offered to give Oppa one of them to make up for the fact that I embarassed him the day before in that line dance class, but he didn't want it. Now i have two vitality key chains. Actually, I think Mia wants one.

Anyway, afterwards, we went downstairs to get as much stress packing done before dinner. As those of you who have cruised before know, the last night before you disembark is always stressful because you have to pack all your clothes and leave it out for the crew to take downstairs. Well, it's extremely stressful for us. I don't know if it's actually stressful for normal families. We packed until a little before dinner, then got ready for dinner and went upstairs in time for a big raffle.

The raffle was to win a giant goodie bag full of jewelry and RC-logo items. Every time you spent $150 on products in the cruise stores, you got to put in a raffle ticket. We obviously didn't win, but we were happy because the first person they called wasn't there to claim their prize. We're sick like that.

We went to dinner after that. Uncle Alex, Chicca, and Nicole were not there again, so we squished into one table once again. As is usually the case, the last dinner on the cruise was kind of sad. I think I got some good veggie paella or something like that for dinner. We said goodbye to our waiter and assistant waiter. The dining staff sang to us. It was all good.

After dinner, we went downstairs to do the last of the packing. We managed to finish this just in time for the crew to come pick up our stuff. Great timing, actually. Mia, Umma, and I went upstairs to the Schooner Lounge to watch Ian perform one more time before the cruise was over. He sang American Pie, among other songs, which was happy. We made our way to the casino to find Halmony and so I could play that obnoxious party slot game that I was obsessed with last cruise. I didn't know it was on this cruise ship until the day before, so I was excited and had to play on it a little bit. Lost money, of course, and then went downstairs to sleep one more time on the Legend of the Seas.

So long, and thanks for all the fries

Well, my eurotrip is finally over ( by a week because I dumbly asked to head home early).

I didn't think I'd miss it as much as I do now that its over.

Since I didn't post nearly as often as I should have -- and the few posts I've made have varied from short and incoherent to completely schizophrenic -- I've decided to do a quick recap. My memories still relatively fresh, so hopefully I won't skip over anything.


London:
Cockfosters. That alone would have made my trip.

I'm pretty sure this is where the theme of "Mock Andrew" was established.


Here is a list of the things I wanted to do in London:

• See Big Ben

Here's the response my comrades gave me when I mentioned my list:
"Oh, I'm sorry Andrew, we can't do this, Big Ben was destroyed to make room for condos"

I believed my comrades unconditionally until we were physically standing under Big Ben (which was a lot tinier then I thought it would be).

Drunken pub guy was hilarious. I was amazed Mia had the moxy to take a picture with him (although this would turn out to be one of the less scary people she would end up taking a picture with). The fish and chips I got at that pug tasted quite good, although I wish I had tried some pie.

After that, Alea brought us to an amazing place that words fail to describe. It was a magical place at a train station that was probably the highlight of our trip.

Mr. G's flat was pretty awesome, it reminded me of the rural area in Sean of The Dead.

that's all for right now, I'll finish this up later.

Day 11: Day at Sea (Part Four)

So, this I think is the last cruise blog that I am going to be able to put in for a while. Depends on our Internet access over the next few days. We're flying back to France tomorrow, so we'll see how everything goes. I am leaving my laptop behind, but Oppa is bringing his with us, so depending on whether or not we get Internet I will also put in Capri, the last few days, and update on things happening. Anyway, here's this entry.

This was day at sea number four and the last one of the entire cruise. We got to wind back the watches an hour the night before, so it felt like I got an extra hour of sleep than I should have. This still did not change the fact that I did not make it out to the early morning mile walk. I sat around until ten watching some movie or another on TV and then dragged Mia outside to go to the Burn Fat Fast seminar that was supposed to be going on in the Conference Room. When we got there, some lady told us that it was no longer going on in that room and directed us to the Viking Lounge on the 11^th floor. We took the elevator up there, only to see a buffet-style set up of food being laid out. Unless they were burning fat through some sort of torture, Mia and I assumed that the lady pointed us in the wrong direction and gave up our search. Instead we stopped by the library because we thought we saw Oppa in there. We thought right and bugged him for a while before going back downstairs to get everyone else to go up to eat, which we did. We stopped by through the library to get Oppa again first though.

Anyway, we got our food as usual and ate way too much of it (as usual). We had to eat quickly though, because we wanted to see a towel folding demonstration at 11. These cruises like to fold towels into the shapes of animals (I think Carnival does it as well), so they were showing us how it was done. We were a little late, so we missed the beginning of it, but that was okay. Whatever. It was still a lot of fun to watch.

We hung around the Schooner Bar for a little while after because they were holding a movie trivia there at noon or something. I think James spent a lot of that time showing Nicole his Nintendogs game.

Anyway, they had the movie trivia and the person running trivia made it a little easier because the one before that was extremely difficult. It was a lot easier this time around, but that may have possibly been just for me. The majority of the movies they asked about were movies that I had seen (or movies that one of the other cruise staff people gave very obvious hints for). But seriously, they asked questions about Moulin Rouge, Titanic, The Breakfast Club, Save the Last Dance, Almost Famous, Mission Impossible, etc. so these were all movies that I had either seen or am unheathily obsessed with. For those more classic movies that I wouldn't have known, I had Umma. The end result of all of this was that we ended up winning the trivia game. We won luggage tags like we had the day before, but it didn't matter because when we won this particular trivia game, we beat the Super Family. By one point. They sulked. Uncle Alex said that one of hte kids was talking about how they couldn't believe we won. I didn't even need to do anymore trivia. I accomplished one of the goals we had set out to accomplish and I was happy.

There was a scavenger hunt immediately after the trivia, which I probably wouldn't have participated in had it not been a Vitality Rewards game and had I not been on this uber high from beating the Super Family at trivia. But, I did. And I dragged along a grumbling Mia, James and Andrew to play this game with me. It was all fitness themed, so it wasnt actually that hard for me. We also needed a sock with a hole in it and Andrew had conveniently destroyed one of his socks the night before for the dumb Quest game, so all was good in the world. At some point we lost Mia. I thought she told me she wasn't feeling well so she was going to go, but I think she just really said I'll be right back. Either way, we were doing serious business scavenger hunt, which means we had to leave the stragglers behind. We were one of the first two groups back, which meant that we got special bonus points. Additionally, we tied with another group and instead of doing some stupid tie breaker, just decided to share the prize. We ended up with 15 more Vitality Points and cool Royal Caribbean logo medallions (and yes, I wore that medallion proudly around the ship and actually wore it around earlier today).

Anyway, I went downstairs to show off my new bling. Umma was packing up Gianni Oppa and James's room. I dragged Gianni James, and Oppa upstairs for the afternoon trivia. We lost, unfortunately, but the people we were sittting next to won and they were nice, so all was still good. We also grabbed our passports and then decided to go up and eat because we obviously had not done so in quite some time.

After eating, we went to the Rock Climbing Wall so I could redeem some of my Vitality points. I ended up with this pretty nifty Royal Caribbean Vitality tote bag (not like I don't have enough tote bags already) and saved the rest of my points to see if I could get anything else in the last few days.

We went downstairs and got Halmony and Gianni set up for Bingo. Then, we searched the ship for Mia. We were unsuccessful, but did manage to find Oppa. Umma and I dragged both James and Oppa to a line dancing class. I think this was partially because she had discovered that, yes, our society has come to a point where they reward people free things for engaging in physical activity, but it was also because cruise dance classes are both silly and fun. Anyway, this line dancing class was more of an aerobics workout than a dance class. We were running around everywhere and jumping and I was disgustingly sweaty after that 30 minute class. Either that or I'm just lame at dancing. Both probably because I landed on my butt a few times during the class. Oppa was the funniest, though. In order to not have to dance, he would yell at James for stupid things and then stand around to watch us until the dance instructor caught him and made him continue dancing.

After the dance class, we went downstairs and found Mia, who had apparently been reading or something all day. We spent a lot of the rest of the evening packing up stuff, but eventually had to change clothes to get ready for the last of the formal nights. We wanted to check some stuff out in preparation for our trip out to Capri, which ended up meaning that we were doing some silly raffle for a cell phone charm (I think), so we ended up being a little late for dinner. Nicole was sick, so Uncle Alex and Chicca were not at dinner and we ended up squishing everyone into one table. Dinner was good. I had the prime rib. Good stuff. We also celebrated Andrew's birthday, but he left early for some reason and wasn't able to eat the cake with us. Our waitor packaged a piece of the cake up for him for us to take to his room though.

James was also not feeling well. He was almost falling asleep at the table. When asked why he wasn't going downstairs to sleep, he told us that he wanted to, but he wanted to wait for the ice cream he ordered. James is a funny guy.

Anyway, after dinner, we went upstairs for a while because Umma had just realized that the library had a book exchange and wanted to see what books were available. We ended up hanging out there for like fifteen minutes and then going downstairs to sleep and get ready for our day in Capri.

Day 10: Athens, Greece

As has been the usual case at our ports of call, our Athens morning was an early one even though we weren’t on any actual tour or anything. The idea was kind of like the Rhodes thing, where we went and hit all the sites that we wanted to see before it became too unbearably hot. I figured this would be a little harder today because we had just heard someone on one of the news stations talk about how Athens had been especially hot due to fires or something to that effect. Anyway, the point of all of this jibberish was that we woke up very early for Athens. We got our usual Windjammer breakfast and I got my omelette. I’m so sad that I discovered them so late into the cruise. Before we left, we mentioned to our assistant waiter that we were going to do Athens on our own and without an organized tour and she looked very stressed.

We were doing another Chabba tour of Athens. I think it may have initially been an everybody tour like Rhodes, but it ended up just being the nine of us. We disembarked and after getting a little disoriented and trying to get onto another crowd, we eventually managed to get outside and enter Pireaus, which is where the port that we were at was located. The next tricky part would be to find the Metro to take us into Athens. This ended up being a lot harder than we had thought. We had to walk about twenty miles outside of the port to actually get to the town while fifty taxi cabs drove by and asked us if we wanted a ride to “___(enter big Athenian landmark here)___”. Each time after we declined their offers, they almost hit us while driving by. Additionally, it was hot, so we spent some time whining that life would have been so much easier if we could be on one of those air conditioned buses that would take us directly to the Acropolis. A few even drove by us, while our fellow cruise patrons (or people who were on the ship docked next to us), looked at us with pity.

So to get to the Metro Station, we eventually found out that we would have to take a bus. To get onto the bus, we would have to buy tickets. Unfortunately we were there on a weekend and they don’t sell bus tickets on weekends. The bus people tried to not so subtlety hint that we could just get on the bus and not pay, but this stressed Oppa out for a while, so we spend some time trying to find a place that would sell bus tickets before finally giving up and cheating the system like the public transportation employees had suggested. We weren’t actually sure what stop to get off on to get to the Metro Station, but we made a friend on the bus who told us exactly how many stops it would take to get there. We got to the station, and got our day passes for the Metro and went into Athens.

The ride into Athens took about fifteen to twenty minutes and we ended up getting off a couple of stops earlier than we had intended to so that we could explore an older neighborhood of the town before making the climb up to the Acropolis. This part of town was actually pretty cute and we shortly after started making our climb up to Acropolis. This part was a lot harder than I had imagined. Somehow, my image of the Acropolis was from the Chipmunk Adventure, where both the Chipmunks and the Chippettes run up the hill, while singing. It was definitely harder than that. Actually, it wasn’t that bad. It was just hot and I was sick with a cold, which makes things seem worse than they really are. We also had to circle around because we were also climbing up the hill from the wrong side, which added a little bit of extra work. Also, I would just like to say that the path up to the Acropolis is very slippery, so that also added to the challenge of getting up there.

We made it to the entrance eventually and purchased our tickets. There was still more of a climb to go, so we made our way up. By this time, we were at a high enough point where we had a very pretty view of the city below us. It was very nice. We finally got to the point where we could enter the Acropolis and it was unfortunately a lot more crowded than we had anticipated. There were like five hundred tour groups trying to enter the area. They were also doing a lot of reconstruction on the ruins, which was kind of lame. Even with all of that, it was still an extremely impressive and amazing thing to see and it was so cool to be walking around in that area. The view from the top was also even more impressive than what we saw on the climb up. We probably spent about thirty to forty minutes exploring the area and it didn’t really matter that I was being toasted by the hot Greek sun because it was just so cool. Eventually, the developing sunburn did start to hurt, so we all retreated to the shade. We also lost Mia and Andrew so we had to find them as well.

Also, even though Mia and I had asked Chabba multiple times, we were not allowed to jump onto the ruins and dance and sing on them like the Chipmunks and the Chippettes do in A Chipmunk Adventure. In fact, there was actually an explicit rule outside of the entrance that said no singing. Even though I know that it isn’t true, part of me hopes that it was in response to that movie.

Once we did locate them, we started walking back down the hill. On the way, I got my postcard, wrote a quick note on it and sent it out while Andrew and Umma were stressing about the fact that the vending machine full of water bottles kept on saying it was sold out or something like that.

We went down and found an overpriced place that sold water on the way down. We stopped by a few souvenir shops because Gianni was looking for an owl statuette and made our way down to the shopping areas in Plarka. Plarka is consisted of a lot of narrow streets, where they sell a lot of very touristy goods and Royal Caribbean-approved jewelry and rugs. This pretty much translates to an ideal stop for Umma. We walked through the shops in search of a restaurant that the cruise ship recommended. It was down almost at the end of the street, but we found out that it was actually a lot more expensive than we had wanted. We walked down a few other streets and ended up finding a tavern with an impressive view of the Parthenon, something that made Oppa very happy. The food at the restaurant was good and I finally got my authentic Greek gyros, which is another plus.

After eating, we left Oppa and Chabba to stress about how to get back to the Metro Station while we went to find a jacket for James. The jacket says Hellas, which is apparently how you say Greece in Greek, but also made Mia and me happy because we had initially thought it meant Nor Cal. We got that for James and then Umma sent everyone but me back to Oppa and Chabba while we ran to the beginning of the street we were on to find a jewelry store that she had seen very early on in our Plarka stop. It actually wasn’t that hard to find because I remember her getting very excited about it when we had first seen it. She got her stuff and we got Andrew a shirt for his birthday and ran back to where everyone else was. We got back to a very stressed Oppa and made our way to the Metro Station.

The Metro was a lot fuller than it had been on the way into Athens, but it wasn’t that bad overall. We got back to the Pireaus metro stop and had to find our way to the bus that we had taken in. I found it while everyone was way behind me and I was ahead with James. I called everyone over, pushed James into the bus and went inside myself. Everyone else started loading in, but then started stressing because they didn’t see me on the bus, even though I mentioned several times that I was there. End result was that the bus started taking off with Oppa caught in the door way doing a dance to try to hop onto the bus. It went on that way for half a second until Halmony took control of the situation, stood up, and shouted stop. At this point, the bus driver stopped the bus, let Oppa in, and we all had a good laugh on the way back to the port. We got back to the port and loaded onto the boat like thirty or forty minutes before the last call for passengers.

We threw our stuff down in the room and then went up to the Windjammer to get some refreshing ice tea-lemonade to cool off after our very hot, sweaty and disgusting day in Athens. We also managed to grab some cookies as well even though we were still very full from our Greek lunch. We hung around there for an exceptionally long time and even ran into a couple that we had met on the Cairo excursion and talked to them for a little while.

Actually, I am not quite too sure how everything happened after this because after Cyprus, I had not been taking notes of each day’s events in my Moleskin and it’s been quite some time since we were in Athens. However, I know that we did shower and get ready because we were very dirty from walking around Athens all day. After not smelling anymore, we went up to the Schooner Bar to go do the Name that Tune Trivia, which ended up being with movie themes again. For most of it, it was just Mia, Andrew, Gianni, and me trying to figure it out. And actually I think James was also there, but he usually just plays the DS and does not contribute much to our trivia masterminding. For this one, it turned out that there were only two teams playing. The Activity Staff person who was overseeing it thought that there were three groups, but one stopped. So, even though we actually did embarrassingly bad, we managed to win the game. I was kind of proud of us for getting the music for The Mask. We didn’t think we had gotten that one right. Anyway, they ended up giving prizes to the two teams that were playing, but we did walk away with about six new Royal Caribbean luggage tags. Yay for that.

We thought about going to see the entertainment for the night, but it was a show with swing dancing and it didn’t really seem to interest any of us, so we decided against it. Instead, we decided to take advantage of the fact that we had nothing to do for the next few hours and finally let James have his silly game of Monopoly. This process took forever. When we got there, people were actually playing the game, so we couldn’t really do much. They actually finished the game quickly and we managed to steal it back from them. At this point, we looked at the gameboard and realized why they had probably closed up shop so quickly. A lot of money was missing as were a lot of the deeds for property. We decided to be somewhat resourceful and ripped up the papers with the daily trivia to make deeds and extra money. Then, we began the game. Obviously, it took all of us a very short amount of time to remember why we do not play Monopoly that often and it soon devolved into the usual really dumb antics of Monopoly, where James somehow managed to get twenty Monopolys early into the game, Mia gave me all her money in an act of defiance, Gianni managed to get the two most coveted properties on the board and have houses on them only to be wiped out by James, and Andrew cried a little on the inside because he hates the game. All in all, a good game of Monopoly.

Then, we had dinner. I don’t actually remember what I had for dinner, but it was probably pretty good. The dessert was phenomenal. Umma and I split a Kahula crème brule. Yum. We left early, though, because we wanted to check out the big game show of the night. The game show was called the Quest and it was pretty much a scavenger hunt for adults. Umma sent us ahead to go save seats and it was already very crowded by the time we got there. We were not sure if she actually wanted us to participate, so we elected Andrew to be our team captain and grabbed a number.

So this is how this game works. They shout something that they want you to look for and the teams go up to the main stage with the item and the number in hand. The emcee shouts out the numbers of the teams that participate in the round and they get points. The game started off pretty tamely. We had sent Andrew up with a Cruise Compass, my purse, and a sock that he ripped up so that it could have a hole and everything was good. We did not participate in the conga line because no one wanted to do it with me or Umma and Andrew walked out when they needed a male to get on all fours and bark like a dog. We skipped over the men/women kiss some random bald guy on the head wearing lipstick and pretty much stopped participating at that point. We did actually join in a couple of other times. They needed a woman wearing man shoes and I wear man Rainbows, so that was easy. At some point Andrew and Gianni had to hold hands and skip up to the stage, which was really funny. However, once they started having men take up pairs of woman bras, have men and women change shirts, have men take off pants, etc., we stopped participated all together and just watched what slightly drunk people would do for a Royal Caribbean hat.

After the game was over, we went upstairs to the tenth deck to watch the Greek toga party from a distance. We kind of figured it was going to be kind of gross because we expected it to be crazy drunk people dancing around in togas, but it was actually kind of fun to watch. They had a Greek band out playing music and people participating in traditional Greek dances. We sat around and watched that for a while, but ended up deciding to go downstairs to the Schooner Bar to listen to the live music down there. After listening there for a while, we called it a night. I caught up on blogging for a while before going to sleep.

Day 9: Day At Sea (Part 3)

Like the last day at sea, I wanted to wake up early again to do the early morning Walk a Mile. I even set the phone alarm so that I could do so. When the phone went off, I was still not feeling well from the night before and just decided to go back to sleep for an hour. Ended up waking up around 9:30, and ended up missing the walk a mile for the morning and the Yoga class that I wanted to try out. That’s okay anyway. I would have had to pay more to do the Yoga class.

I got ready pretty quickly and while everyone else was getting ready, tried to fit in a mile up at the track. The winds were very strong, so I really only got half a mile in before I gave up and decided to head back downstairs. Everyone was still getting ready and after they were done, we went upstairs to go say hi to everybody in the library before heading over to the Anchors Away Lounge for Swing Dance lessons. Umma forced Andrew and James to do the class. We could not successfully wake Gianni up and Mia refused to participate. It was kind of fun, but the fact that I was dying of a cold made me all sweaty, disgusting, and congested by the end of the class. We stopped by the stores on the way back to the Library to go pick up some cold medicine for me. We went to the library to get those who wanted to eat to come down to the Romeo and Juliet restaurant for brunch with us.

In addition to the usual crew (minus Gianni who was still asleep), we managed to get Nicole to come eat with us alone. This was a lot of fun because it’s been a hard game getting her to like us each day, but Chabba was very clearly stressed the entire time because he was worried her mood would change at any second.

After lunch, Umma Oppa and I went to the Internet Café so I could check my email and make sure that things were running more or less smoothly on the Internet front. I was using it semi-successfully until Oppa and I got frustrated at the Internet being slow. We also were using up too many minutes (because Internet is so expensive on the ship) and had to go downstairs for trivia anyway, so we went downstairs. We missed the first few questions, but Chabba, Uncle Alex, Aunt Chicca, and Mia already seemed to be cracking away at the questions. Ended up losing that one. There was another trivia going on very shortly after, so I just decided to bring my laptop up to the Schooner Bar, blog and wait around for it to start. I didn’t end up getting much done because we ended up having a lot less time than I thought we did. It’s all good though. While we were waiting, Andrew and Gianni were playing around with the walkie-talkies to see if they would work. While they were playing around with them, Umma managed to trick Andrew into thinking that he was in trouble for interfering with the captain’s radio signal. I think he actually believed that because he used private calls after that.

The next team trivia started and we actually did fairly well on this one. We had Chabba and Oppa for this one and a lot of the questions were history related, so we got a lot of extra points. We ended up losing by one point. We probably could have gotten that one point if Chabba had been paying attention to what he was reading on Athens because one of the answers was literally on the page he was reading. I was most proud of how we managed to answer the question about what day of the week John Lennon got shot. Mia knew the date, so I used the computer calendar to look up the day of the week it would have been. Oh, technology.

I dragged Chabba and Andrew upstairs after that to do a mile of walking. It was still very windy, so it was kind of hard. We would have done more, but I had to meet Umma downstairs for bingo. The set up was similar, except instead of doing two games on one card, we did three. Still did not win, but we were a lot closer.

I sent a group ahead of us while we were still playing the Bingo game so that we could do the movie trivia. Didn’t do too well there in the end though. Lost to the Super Trivia family who I think have collected an extremely large collection of goods by now. As far as trivia went for our family, today was not the best day for us. Actually quite embarrassing, if I must add.

I went to the gym after that, but was not around for too long. It was kind of crowded, but I managed to run on the treadmill for 15 minutes and ride the bike for another 20. Good work out all in all, but did nothing to burn off the cruise food I’ve accumulated I am sure. Went downstairs after that for the shower. Today was our yellow day, so we all emerged from our rooms looking like the sun. I’m sure everyone thought we were weirdos.

We went to the show for the night, which was put on by some singer. He was really good and very food. Had a great voice and did a great Nat King Cole tribute. Umma kicked Mia and me out a little early though so we could go embarrass ourselves at family trivia. We didn’t do that badly, actually, but we were very upset at getting the question wrong that asked what show the Muppets appeared on regularly. You would think that answer would be the Muppet Show, but it’s actually Sesame Street. I disagree, but whatever.

We had dinner, which was good as usual. Had vegetarian chili and a number of other great dishes for dinner. Tiramisu for dessert. Yum. I was not feeling great after dinner. We ended up hanging around in the center area outside of the restaurant afterwards, but I went downstairs to sleep shortly after. Had to get a little better in preparation for Athens anyway.

Day 8: Walk Like an Egyptian

As usual, we had to wake up early for our excursion out to Cairo. I think like six or something. We docked at the Alexandria port at around 7 and our tour left at 7:45. We got ready pretty quickly and went upstairs to get a quick breakfast before leaving for the tour. I had just recently discovered that they make you omelettes if you stand in the long line, so I got one for breakfast. A nice filling thing before the long bus ride to Cairo.

We went downstairs to get our numbers and do that whole thing and then got outside and loaded our bus for our trip to Cairo. I wasn’t too upset about waking up so early because the trip to Cairo was like three hours, which would be ample time to sleep. We got onto the bus and the whole time, all I could really think “oh my God, we’re in Egypt” and “oh my God, I’ve made it to Africa.” It was kind of surreal. The entire day was, actually. This tour was police escorted, so we also had a police escort who came along with us on our bus and on the tour. That was pretty interesting and probably will be the only time I will ever be on a police escorted anything, so I should have enjoyed that and pretended I was somewhat more important than I really am.

Anyway, as we were leaving the port and Alexandria, our tour guide told us some facts about Egypt, like information about the economy and the culture. It was pretty interesting, but I was also dead tired because I was awake at an hour that I do not enjoy being awake at, so I eventually just gave in and went to sleep for a while. During my sad attempt at sleeping on a somewhat uncomfortable bus, I heard Umma scream and laugh because Gianni had apparently come up to her seat and opened up (and broke) the ash tray in front of her. I asked her about it later that day, but she misheard me and thought I was telling a joke “what did the ash tray say to the cigar.” So, for a while, both she and Oppa eagerly waited to hear the punch line of a joke that I had apparently just created.

I woke up maybe an hour and a half to two hours after going to sleep because Umma was asking me if I wanted to get a cartouche with my name engraved into it. I said yes, and then had to figure out and order the one that I wanted and all of the jazz. It was complicated because there were a lot of choices to go through and everything. After using all of that brain power, it was kind of hard to go back to sleep. Plus, we were in the middle of the desert somewhere and probably somewhat near Cairo, so I didn’t go back to sleep.

About twenty minutes or so later, we were able to catch our first glimpse of the pyramids. It was pretty cool and very surreal. I almost felt like we were just driving into Vegas and looking at the Luxor from a distance and not one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I pointed the pyramids out to Mia, who in turn pointed them out to Umma. When Mia told Umma about the pyramids, her response was “Oh, they’re probably fake.” We’ve been teasing her about that ever since.

It took us a little while longer to actually drive into Cairo and to the site of the pyramids. Once we entered Cairo, the bus driver’s style of driving changed. Driving in Cairo looks absolutely terrifying and I am pretty sure that we almost hit about five hundred people during our day in Cairo.

Anyway, we get to the pyramids and it was surreal how cool it was to see them up close. Our tour guide told us a little bit of the history of the pyramids and then we parked the bus and they let us out to look at them for about forty minutes before we would move on to our next destination. As we had expected, it was very hot once we got out of the bus and the fact that we all had to dress very conservatively for this excursion did not make it any better. However, it was a little more bearable than I had expected it to be, so it was all good. The moment we stepped off of the bus, we got barraged by people trying to sell us souvenirs from Egypt. There were postcards, dancing camel dolls, hats, etc., etc. It was overwhelming. We were also barraged by people who wanted us to take rides on their camels. This was actually something we were explicitly warned against before leaving the ship because they charge you both to get on the camel and get off. They were also kind of gross and smelly up close, so I was okay without it.

We walked up close to one of the pyramids to take about five hundred pictures, but we were not allowed to get too close to that particular one. Apparently Oppa was able to get up close and touch the other one, but no one else really approached it so no one else got to touch the pyramid like he did. So sad. I think there was something about our group that must have completely stressed out our police escort because he kept a closer eye on our group than any other one. He kept on watching us and stressing that we were too far from the bus.

I think Andrew and Gianni managed to stress Umma out, though. In an attempt to stress either me or Oppa out, they kept on trying to make the little RCI tour stickers that we were wearing offensive. So they told everyone that things like the color purple, stickers, the number 9, Times New Roman font, etc. were offense to the Muslim culture. Everyone else ignored them, but after noticing the security escort follow us around looking very distressed, Umma tried to have us all rip off our stickers because she actually believed them. After about forty minutes, we loaded back onto the bus, but not before Umma purchased those Egyptian hats for James and his friends, Andrew, and Gianni. They looked kind of silly trying to put the hats on. Good times.

The great thing about this guided tour of Cairo was that even though we were in the middle of the very hot desert, we would be driven around everywhere in our very nice, comfortable, and air conditioned bus. So it was a great relief to be loading back into the bus, even though we knew that our next destination would be as hot, if not more.

Anyway, the next stop on the tour was to see the Sphinx, which was actually a lot smaller than I had expected it to be. We parked a little ways away, and we had to push our way through more souvenir vendors to get to the entrance. Once there, we had to stand in this very hot and sweaty pathway to get to a close and nice view of the sphinx. Before doing that, we had to push our way through a group of tourists from Scotland who chose the most awkward spot to take a picture in front of the Sphinx.

Once we finally did get out to an area that we could breathe, we were able to take a lot of pictures next to the Sphinx. Umma found this little kid who was probably James’s age who was walking around selling souvenirs that she decided she wanted to kidnap and adopt or something. He was this little street smart kid who ended up selling her “papyrus” bookmarks and who took a picture of James at an angle where it looked like he was kissing the Sphinx. Seeing the Sphinx was kind of like being on some movie set for Indiana Jones or something. We were in the middle of the desert, looking at the Sphinx and in the distance, you could see police guards watching the landmarks on top of camels. It was just so cool.

We walked back towards the bus, getting back there a little after we were supposed to meet. It was okay, though, because there were three or four groups who had to get on after us. We next drove through Cairo towards the Nile River for our lunch break. On the way, we saw all of these half-done houses and apartment complexes. Apparently the way things work in Egypt is that you don’t get taxed for living in a building where the façade is not completely done. This means that there were a lot of apartment complexes and houses that are not completed so that the inhabitants would not have to pay taxes. This seems like a kind of silly law, but whatever.

So, the next part of our tour was to eat lunch on a fallukah (sp?) along the Nile. Fallukahs are these little sail boat things. They’re very cute and were very comfortable to ride. We had to wait around a while to get onto one. Two buses hit the site at the same time, so it took us a while to get loaded on to the various fallukahs. During this period of massive confusion, we ended up being pushed to the absolute back of the line (probably because accommodating a group of nine is a lot more difficult than accommodating a group of four, for example). Anyway, in this confusion, we got to ride our own fallukah with the tour guide. Knowing our group, it was probably better that way.

It was very fun being able to ride around on a boat on the Nile. It was also fun to use puns using the word “denial” because Andrew hates puns. After walking around in the hot sandy desert area that surrounded the pyramids, the fallukah ride was a very welcome break. There was a great breeze in the area, which really cooled all of us down. Additionally, our lunch was very good. I was actually a bigger fan of all of the salads that we were eating than all the meat we got even though I did really enjoy the fried fish. This relaxing break lasted about forty minutes to an hour and we didn’t actually venture too far from where we started. After we docked and got off of the fallukahs, we loaded back onto the bus to hit our next destination.

The next stop was this mosque and the house of some high ranking officer in the British army. I don’t actually remember who the guy was, but his house was actually in the mosque. It was pretty cool to see the set up and it was a very nice house, but because of the narrow pathways and stairwells, it probably felt like the hottest point of this tour. I came out of this man’s house feeling absolutely disgusting because it had been so hot in there. This was also kind of not good because we also went to visit the mosque next door. The mosque was pretty. We pretty much just had free time to look around for a while and take pictures.

We loaded back onto the bus and saw a clear look of relief on the face of our security guard when he saw that our group had returned. Once on the bus, we drove towards the Cairo bazaar. On the way, we passed through a number of other pretty cool sites, such as the city of the dead, which I think used to be a cemetery that people started building houses on until the Egyptian government forbade it. I think that’s what it was.

The bazaar was pretty cool. The streets were not as narrow as the Turkish bazaar that we saw in Kusadasi, but the people were just as persistent in trying to get you into the store. While the Turkish people’s selling argument would be that it was free to look around the store, the people in the bazaar in Cairo were a little more blunt. They straight out asked us how they could take our money. Because of the limited time that we were spending at each site on this tour and the fact that we had spent most of our cash before even getting to the bazaar, we didn’t actually end up doing much shopping at this point. We managed to run into Uncle Alex and co., which was a pretty surprising coincidence. Gianni wanted to buy a pharaoh hat because he is weird and Andrew wanted to buy a miniature fez because he is weirder. I bought a couple of last minute souvenirs, but the one who really came out of the bazaar a winner was Mia, who managed to convince Umma to buy her an Egyptian guitar-thing. We also bought little scarab necklaces from some little kid who ended up giving us a lot of scarab necklaces for free as “gifts” and then got hit in the head by a local shopkeeper because he was probably taking away business. At this point, I also noticed our security guard watching our group again, making sure that we weren’t causing a ruckus. I really don’t know what it was about our group that stressed this guy out, but it was almost funny.

We managed to drag ourselves away from the bazaar to get to the bus stop on time and before any other group, all of the groups of people who had not decided to spend most of their money on the souvenirs at the pyramids. Once on the bus, we headed over to the papyrus store to go watch a papyrus making demonstration (which was kind of cheesy) and wait around while people bought authentic Egyptian papyrus. I wasn’t going to get anything until I noticed that I could buy bookmarks for a lot cheaper than everything else and get my name written in hieroglyphics on it. This stop was also a great stop for a clean bathroom before the three hour ride back to Alexandria and allowed everyone to go pick up the cartouches that they had ordered earlier in the day.

This stop seemed to take forever, but I think it probably just felt like it was a lot longer than it really was, probably because the novelty of it wore off after you bought the things that they wanted you to buy. In retrospect, I should have gotten more papyrus bookmarks. Anyway, after that stop, we headed back to Alexandria. This ride seemed like it took a lot longer than the ride into Cairo, probably because we hit traffic pretty much everywhere we went. It didn’t really matter for me though, because I fell asleep shortly into the trip. The end of this tour was kind of sad. Out of the three organized shore excursions that we went on this time around, this one was by far my favorite.

We got back to the port of Alexandria around 8:30 or something and got bombarded with more storeowners trying to give us last-minute Egyptian souvenirs. We also got bombarded with cruise staff handing us glasses of water and moist towels, which were very refreshing after the long hot day in Cairo. We got back onto the boat, put our stuff down in our room and went up to the Romeo and Juliet dining room for dinner. As we were waiting for everyone to get together, we looked outside of the ship to see an epic line of people trying to get onto the boat. Apparently our timing was perfect. There was no assigned seating for the dining room for dinner because we were in port for so long, so we ended up eating on the other side of the dining room, something that felt awkward and weird after eating in the same place every night. Food was good though. I had French Onion Soup and some Mahi Mahi Tempura. Good times. The shhh woman and her friend sat near us while we were eating. The whole time they were there, they would glare at us for very long periods of time. It was kind of funny to know that they still hated us.

We spent so much time eating, that we missed the 10:15 Name that Tune with Ian, the guy who plays piano every night. This was fine with me until we went to listen to him perform later that night and found out that one of Mia’s favorite songs, Wild World was one of the songs played for the game. Mia’s been kind of bitter about that ever since. We spent some time at the piano bar after that to listen to him and Gianni and Mia put in their usual five hundred requests, but we eventually went downstairs to sleep since it was a very long day.

Day 7: Day at Sea (Part Two)

After four days of ports and sightseeing, a day at sea was a very welcome break. I had gotten pretty accustomed to waking up early, so I was awake before 9 o clock. This was great because it gave me just enough time to get dressed and go upstairs in time for the 9 o clock Walk a Mile and get Vitality Points for doing so. I dragged my mp3 player along with me and had a nice and refreshing start to my morning. While doing my laps, I saw Nonny and Nonno sunbathing, so I said hello.

After doing my mile, I went downstairs to see if anyone else was awake. Umma and Halmony were, so they dragged Mia out of bed and had everyone start getting ready for breakfast/lunch. I watched Into the Wild and caught up on blogging while they all got ready. It was around 11 by the time we were done getting ready, which was around the time that they started closing breakfast but thirty minutes too early for lunch. To solve this problem, we decided to go save us spots up in the Windjammer Café and wait around for them to open the lunch buffet. We’re such a weird family. Really. We did exactly that and had a great lunch.

At one o clock, we went downstairs to the Schooner Bar for our afternoon trivia, which we very sadly lost (a common theme throughout this trip). We had gotten a note the night before that said that we had to pick up our passports from the Romeo and Juliet restaurant in preparation for the trip out to Egypt the next day. This was set to start at 2 pm. We all assumed that there would be a huge line to get the passports, so immediately after the trivia ended, we got our stuff together and went upstairs prepared to wait in line for a long time. We got there five minutes before they were scheduled to start passing out passports to find that they had not only already started passing out the passports, but that there was absolutely no line. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, but it did leave us with a lot of spare time that we did not know how to fill.

Half of the group went downstairs, but I managed to convinced Chabba, James, Andrew, and Oppa to walk a mile before the next trivia session. We did just that. It was nice and there was a nice breeze to cool us down, which is always a good thing.

After walking the mile, I lost James and Andrew. I wanted to go hang out in the Schooner Bar to save good spots for trivia, so Oppa and I headed downstairs around three, stopping in the library on the way down to pick up our daily Sudoku. We waited around for the next fifteen minutes to wait for the trivia. This one was US TV theme songs. No one showed up to help us. Umma came a couple of songs into it and Uncle Alex came towards the end, but it was mostly Oppa and me trying to figure it out during this one. While I do admit that I watch a lot of TV, I guess I am not that much of a mainstream TV watcher and all of the themes were from mainstream shows so I did not fare too well. Andrew was around when they did the answers and said he probably would have gotten most of them right had he been there, but that was a little too late.

I left early to help Umma with the Bingo stuff that was starting almost immediately after Name that Tune. We stood in line to get our Bingo cards and then found places to sit in the theater in wait. I also had to find Halmony who was lost in the casino. Anyway, not much to say about Bingo. They do it a little differently on these cruises. Instead of getting game packs with multiple playing cards, you get one. They look for different patterns though. So in this case, they were first looking for the X and then looking for a blackout. Essentially you are playing two games on one card. I guess it’s pretty cool. It saves paper. We lost. Nothing more to say about that.

Umma and I walked a mile together after we lost Bingo. After doing our mile, we went downstairs. I changed clothes and dragged Oppa back upstairs to go work out in the gym for a little while. I spent that time on the elliptical, but was very sad when I realized that I had forgotten my mp3 player. Very sad, I know.

I went downstairs after I worked on and got ready for the show of the evening. After incorrectly claiming that the last few shows were comedy shows, this one was actually billed as one. I think it was more of a variety show, because it included a lot of dancing and singing in addition to the comedy. If you call what was comedy, comedy. The actual dancing and singing was pretty good, but the jokes were bad and the slapstick stuff they tried to pull was not good. We had the Welcome Back cocktail party scheduled before the show ended, so we managed to use that as an excuse to escape the bad entertainment of the night.

The cocktail party was good. Even though we were just about to eat, we all ate a lot of the little appetizers they had set out for us. They had these really good hot mini hot dog things out there and chocolate covered strawberries. Good times. We also got free alcohol. A lot of fun. The captain came out to answer questions people had about the ship and they had the couple of the night brag about going on some absurdly high number of cruises.

While they were closing up, we realized that we were kind of late for dinner, so we rushed over to eat some more. I wasn’t going to eat a lot, but they had gazpacho, so I had to. I was very full after that.

We had liked the guy who played the piano on the Name that Tune the night before so much that we wanted to actually go and see him play, so we did just that after dinner. Mia and Gianni were very happy about this and spent a lot of the night requesting songs for him to play. I was enjoying myself as well, but I was just starting to get sick (right before Egypt, I know), so all of the smoke in the lounge made me feel very unhappy. I could not breathe well. Umma got us all little fruit juices, which made it a little better, but I eventually just went downstairs and got ready for bed. We had to be up early for Egypt anyway.