Years ago, I promised my niece and nephew that I would take them anywhere in the world for high school graduation. My nephew is easy, and happily reported that he wanted to go to Fenway Park in Boston. My niece had a difficult time choosing and wanted to go to either Italy, Greece, or Australia. She finally decided to go to Italy, and when I booked the trip I realize how easy it would be to see Greece also.
For her first time in Europe I wanted her to see as much as possible with as little planning as possible! I hate planning and while trying to plan our trip I randomly googled Mediterranean cruises and found a Cruise that went from Rome>Naples>Kusadasi>Istanbul>Crete>Mykonos>Athens. So you're telling me we get to see all these places and I don't have to plan or pack my bag or worry about our safety on trains? SOLD!
While on a trip to NYC news broke that Turkey was in the middle of a Military Coup and was unsafe. The cruise line immediately rebooked our trip and instead we went to Montenegro and Corfu,Greece.
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| WE MADE IT TO ROME!!!! |
We flew into Rome and out of Athens and I booked two days in both cities so that we could fully see those two cities too!
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| The cutest tourist in the world! We were so Jet lagged but so excited!! |
Rome, what can I say? It's literally one of my favorite places in the world! The pizza, coffee, people, tiramisu, sights, history, and gelato are indescribable! In Rome we stayed in a B&B called Domus Alberti, ran by a man named Federico, he was so kind and said Cíao with 11 O's so it was more like Ciaoooooooooooooo! He also put 15 parentheses on smiley faces so they were like really smiley, so Caylei and I write these things to each other often! :-))))))))))))))))
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Legend has it that if you throw 2 coins into the Trevi fountain you'll return to Rome and fall in love with a Roman, we obviously threw two!
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| The Colliseum |
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| Inside the Colliseum, luckily we purchased tickets ahead of time, I would highly suggest it! |
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| This door is in the Roman Forum and dates back to BC, its so beautiful! |
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| Roman Forum |
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| Trevi Fountain, eat at the Gelateria in the plaza by the fountain! |
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| The Pantheon, such a cool building! |
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| Tourists! |
The Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel are hands down the most amazing thing in Europe!
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| The staircase up to the museum. |
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| Just a pretty cross |
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| The stairs leaving the Chapel, I dream about taking a picture of this sans people. |
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| I like this photo because pictures aren't allowed in the chapel, so Caylei secretly took this one! Her Forehead is the evidence! |
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| I tried explaining how good the Tiramisu was in Italy, she finally understands! |
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Tiramisu HIGH!!
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Next we went to Naples! We were so excited about Hiking Mt. Vesuvius and eating Napoli pizza. Naples was quite the adventure, we left the boat and found a shuttle to Pompei that would let us look around for an hour then drive us up to Mt. Vesuvius, we could hike up to the top then it would drive us back to the ship. Once at Pompei we realized that the drive to Mt. Vesuvius was so long that we would likely miss Naples Pizza, we were so sad but not for long because we were so excited to hike a Volcano!!
Pompei was really cool but there was this bizarre art installation of really modern bronze statues amist the ruins. It was pretty but weird and out of place.
We took the shuttle up to Mt. Vesuvius and hiked the 4 mile hike. It was so cool and one of the most beautiful views of the trip! On our way back down the shuttle brakes started to smoke, so we were stuck on the side of the road for quite sometime while the driver figured out what was going on. We quickly realized that due to the time delay we weren't going to make it back to the ship on time! The shuttle coordinated a drop off with another trolley that took us back to the ship, we just had to risk a road side shuffle between shuttles. Once on the trolley we made a friend that said that he was planning on getting a pizza before boarding the ship, What?! We thought we were out of time and were going to miss the ship! We were 1/2 an hour early and we were able to find a trattoria that was closing up for siesta. They were kind enough to reheat the pizza oven and make us pizzas! We made it back to the ship with time to spare!! And... The pizza in Naples is devine!!
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| The bronze sculptures in Pompei |
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| Perfectly preserved human body |
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| Just letting some other tourists walk by on a narrow street. |
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| On top of Mt. Vesuvius!! |
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| We made it!! (This is where the jumping series began!) |
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| Caylei spotted a vent that was steaming! |
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| Check out that view!! |
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| The best pizza man alive!! |
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Carrying our pizzas back to the ship!
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Next on the itinerary was Kofor Montenegro. We LOVED Montenegro, the bay was gorgeous and these massive granite mountains seemed to explode out of the ocean.
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| A small island in the bay of Kotor. |
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| Caylei got an "iced coffee" and it was a coffee and ice cream float! We went back for seconds on our way back to the boat. |
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| The jumping continues! We laughed so hard trying to take this with my iPhone timer! |
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| We found a 10Euro boat ride around the bay, money well spent. |
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| Our bay tour dropped us off near this restaurant, it was unreal delicious! I dream of the food there! |
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| Caylei is SO content! |
So then...we went to Corfu Greece, an we didn't take a single picture. It was a small, dirty, stinky, hot, dry island. We were so disappointed #firstworldproblems #disappointedbyagreekisland
Crete sure did make up for what Corfu lacked. Beautiful island, amazing people, more delicious food!
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| Island hopping series, this is me realizing that my niece could go buy me a beer! :) |
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| On the bus to a public beach |
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| This adorable man on the bus showed us this beach, coffee, beer, food 2.50$ And... they serve the most amazing chips with every beer. "I know the guy" |
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| Oh these Greeks and their mixed grill, mmmmmm. And the tzaziki! |
Mykonos was unreal, one of my favorite places ever! We ate some decent food, got attacked by a Pelican, and got called sisters more than once!
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| My beautiful model. |
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| Just.So.Pretty |
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| The wind was out of control! |
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| All that jumping made us hungry! The server at this restaurant said we looked so much alike is was like I was copied and pasted onto KK's face! #copypaste |
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This is MY bread and pasta! Apparently he was the restaurant pet :)
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Athens, so hot right now. No really, Athens was 500 million degrees. We tried to tourist early in the AM or late in the PM and nap during the heat of the day. We saw all of the old relics and ate sooooo many Greek salads... mmmm We thought we didn't like Feta or Greek olives, we were wrong.
FYI-The ground is called the Acropolis and there are many old relics on it, the one structure is called the Parthenon. My only complaint is that there was too much modern lighting, handrails, and boundary fence. You could hardly get a photo without a modern chunk of metal in your pictures. I wish they had consulted a historic architect(does that exist?) or used more natural materials.
On our last night in Greece we went to this square close to our hotel because, well... Pinterest said we couldn't miss it! So we went there and it was weird. Lots of people just hanging out. Well KK and I got the creeps so we were standing by a fountain, right next to a few american men. We stood there for a minute before deciding to leave. Right before we left this creeper walked up to me and told me how beautiful I am, then fist bumped me and said bye bye. Not sure why foreigners love the phrase bye bye??But they do so...now KK and I say it all the time! This was one of our favorite quotes of the trip.
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| The Parthenon(there was a crane inside of it for restoration) |
I want to go to all of those places!! So beautiful!
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