Rome and Med cruise 10/26/17
SFO to Rome
We Ubered to SFO, leaving home at 6:30 am. The traffic was terrible but we made our flight. First class on Delta to Detroit where we were to change planes. We found the Delta
Sky lounge, actually we found two of them but the first one was full. Although I had to pee, we went to the second one where my intention was to visit the men’s room as a priority. The second was big and rather like
a labyrinth and the men’s room was broken. So I had to go out into the concourse, which is like a big high end shopping mall. Expensive stores that sell stuff that you don’t need. I had trouble
finding a men’s room, and when I did there was a line. After I got inside I found that there were only two urinals. What were they thinking when they designed this part of the airport? The arriving
passengers dump into this part of the terminal, and there are only two urinals. Dumb. Anyway, I survived and re-found the Sky lounge, found the bar and got two glasses of wine and then I couldn’t find Gale.
The Labyrinth got me, but eventually I did find her.
We boarded our flight to Rome, business class with fully reclining seats. Pretty sweet.
Before takeoff there was an announcement that they had an oil leak in one of the engines. They hoped that it was fixed and they were going to start it to check. This reminded me of a story about flying before jets,
when the passenger planes were powered by big radial piston engines. The passengers were loading onto the plane, which involved walking out of the terminal and climbing a set of steps to get into the plane. A lady noticed
that one of the engines seemed to be dripping oil. She pointed this out to one of the crew who was standing at the bottom of the stairs. He looked at the drip and said “Lady, a Pratt and Whitney aircraft engine is like a wolf –
if it ain’t drooling it ain’t running good.” Anyway, our engine apparently wasn’t drooling because we took off and flew to Rome.
Our hotel is very nice. It is the Via Veneto and has a Michelin star restaurant, where we ate dinner. It was an amazing experience. The restaurant is named Magnolia. It has
one Michelin star, but expects to be upgraded in the near future. The cuisine features fish and some chicken. No beef or pork. The dishes are all very artfully prepared, and look too pretty to
mess up by eating. However, we did. Took pictures first. Dinner took 3 hours.
The next morning,
we took a shuttle to the port, Civitavecchia, and boarded our ship, the Azamara Quest. It is a relatively small ship, 593 feet long and 95 feet wide. It has a capacity for 694 guests and 407 crew members. It
was first put into service in 2000. It is very nice, and because of the small size is easy to get around and find where restaurants etc are. The state room is adequate in size and has enough closet and storage space. The
bathroom is tiny. 6 feet by 3 ½ feet. That includes the commode, the sink, and the shower. Good news is that you can do everything in one place.
We had dinner in one of the specialty restaurants, Prime C, which featured steaks and other hearty food. All very good. My only complaint with the food is the wine
quality. They are ok, but to have somewhat better wines you must pay for an upgraded wine package.
Livorno / Florence
The next
morning, Sunday we got up early, breakfast in our room at 6:30 in order to make an 8:30 bus to Florence. That is a 1 ½ hour ride through the Tuscan country side. It is pretty, fall colors and not bad traffic. The roads and freeways are excellent without the usual trash and pot holes we see in California. We had a local tour guide who gave us informative commentary on the way, but when we got to Florence we left the bus for a 10-minute walk into the town and then it was “see you in a few hours”. Gale and I navigated our way to the Duomo, walked around it, dodging many tourist groups with guides, most of them Asian. We
ended back to the square for a nice lunch at a café that was recommended by our guide. Gale had spaghetti and clams, cooked in local olive oil with herbs. It was very good, I had lamb shank, also very good. Then Gale shopped and we went back to the bus for the ride back to Livorno. That evening the Azamara arranged for all guests who wanted to go to attend a concert by the Three Tenors in the reconstructed concert hall. It was very beautiful,
both the venue and the singing. It was a very long day.
On Monday we were once again up at dawn for a tour
of Lucca and a visit to a local winery. Lucca is very interesting. It is a Roman / medieval city, the 16th century with walls that
are still intact. These walls, called the new walls, were constructed after cannons were brought into warfare. They are 50 or so feet thick and brick on the outside but dirt and rubble filled to withstand cannon
fire. There were cannons on the wall and a moat completely around the walled city. The defenses were so good that Lucca was never attacked. Apparently, the best offence was a good defense in this
case. The city inside of the walls has many old 18th and 19th century houses and businesses, and a Roman amphitheater that has been converted to shops and other business. Gale and I had coffee, hot chocolate and a snack at one of the many small delis in the
city, and it had good WiFi, which was much appreciated by us. The city is preparing for Comic Con, so is being filled with temporary tents and popup show places and apparently will be a mad hose starting later this week.
We left Lucca to visit a local family owned and run old winery in the hills above the town named Fattoria Maionchi. They make several good wines based on Sangiovese
grapes and very good olive oil. Interesting to me was that they reuse their oak barrels for two or three years believing the new oak gives too much flavor to the wine. Their methods of making wine is simple, time tested
and works.
That evening we went to a special dinner on board the ship – Chef’s Table French menu. It was a seven-course food
and wine pairing, which started with lobster salad paired with Veuve Clicquet champagne, the main dish was beef filet paired with Baron de Rothchild Bordeaux 2012. It was excellent!
Monte Carlo
The following day, Halloween, we were in Monaco, Monte Carlo, where we did a tour guided visit to the Prince’s
palace, and even saw him briefly as he left the palace in his chauffeur driven Lexus, and then went to the Casino for a look / see, but we did not gamble. The casino building is famous from the James Bond movie Casino Royal.
It is also the opera house. There are two sections of the casino – the first section tourists like us can enter for free, and has mostly slot machines. The second section is for serious gambling or celebrities.
It cost 12 euros to enter, and there is a dress code. No jeans, sport shoes, shorts, tank tops etc. Coat and tie preferred for the gentleman, and lots of money. The cars parked in front were all
Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches and Maseratis. We drove the race route but in a small coach it is not very exciting. A race day ticket for a seat in the grandstand costs 900 euros. I need to be
sure to watch the race next year on TV.
As I said, it was Halloween. Europe does not celebrate as we do in the US.
We saw a few orange plastic pumpkins and other tacky decorations, and one or two kids in costume and face paint, but they do not trick or treat. The day after is All Saint’s Day and is a holiday, at least in France.
The weather on the entire trip has been excellent, high 60’s and clear skies. We are lucky. We also have remarked
on how clean the streets and highways are in all the countries we have visited. It is not like the San Francisco Bay Area which are always lined by trash and every vertical surface is defaced by graffiti.
Ajaccio, Corsica, France
We docked in Corsica the next morning. We
took a mountain drive tour through the beautiful Prunelli Gorges. It is all granite, very rugged and pretty. The highest peak is 6000 feet high. The small villages are quite picturesque, granite
walls perched on hillsides accessible by quite narrow roads. Our bus driver was good; we did not fall off even once. It snows quite a lot in the mountains in wintertime which guarantees a plentiful supply
of water for the island. In fact, they export water. I guess as bottled water. There are four ski areas on the island. Tourism is their main industry. mostly mainland European
tourists. Napoleon was born in Ajaccio, and they are very proud of it.
Palamos, Spain
The following day, November 2nd we were scheduled to dock in
Palamos, Spain on the Costa Brava at 1:00pm. The captain and pilot had a bit of difficulty doing that. It was very windy, with a 30-knot wind blowing off the sea directly across our beam. They tried
once to get the ship alongside the peer but the wind was so strong they could not move it sideways to the peer. We went back out of the harbor to try again, and this time with the aid of our side bow and stern thrusters and a big tug boat
pushing on the bow they got two lines tied onto cleats on the peer, then moved the tug to the stern and pushed it up to the peer and finally tied us up. This operation took an extra hour but was pretty interesting for us passengers.
Palamos is an old port originally established by the Romans. We did not see much of this city, which seems to be pretty
much industrial, instead we went on a tour to Girona. This is an old city, originally Roman that was on the road between the south of Spain and Barcelona and ultimately France. Our tour was of the old
14th and 15th century town and the
Jewish Quarter. In much of Spain Jews were constrained to live in what we now call ghettos. This area was called El Call. Eventually the Jews were exiled from Spain by Fernand and Isabella in 1492.
There is much Jewish history in the museum in Girona.
This town is in Catalonia, and right now the Catalonia region is in a political battle with the
Spanish government about their desire for self-rule and even secede from Spain. We will see more of this in the days to come, but there are Catalonian banners, flags, signs saying “Si” – as in “yes secede” all
around the town.
Close by is the town of Figueres, which was the home of Salvador Dali. The ship offered several tours to see his home and museum. We
chose not to do these tours, but like all of the ports we stopped at, there were many tour options available.
Tarragona, Spain
The following day we arrived in Tarragona Spain, still on the Costa Brava and still in Catalonia. We were here only for the morning, and we had not arranged for a formal
excursion. We took a shuttle from the ship into the old town. I found Tarragona to be very interesting. There are lots of Roman buildings, tours, ruins and walls that are very well preserved.
There is a magnificent cathedral within the old walls. Construction began in 1171 and it was consecrated in 1331. It is really big, with gothic vaulted ceilings, a big convent and cloister, numerous side chapels,
secret passageways, etc. It seems to have been elaborately decorated with religious paintings, but they are essentially all gone, presumably destroyed by the Moers during the centuries when they occupied Spain prior to being finally expelled
by Fernand and Isabella in 1492.
The last evening on the ship we had dinner in another one of the specialty restaurants, Aqualina. The food and
service was excellent. Gale had veal scaloppini and I had Sole. We both finished with a dessert of limoncello soufflé. It was delicious.
Barcelona, Spain
We got off the ship in Barcelona the morning of November 4th. Gale had arranged for a ride to our hotel; the driver was on time and in a nice Mercedes. Our hotel was the Majestic. It is a five-star
hotel located in the center of town. It is one of the nicest hotels we have ever been in. Our room was a junior suite, with an entry foyer a living area, a separate bed room and a marble bathroom with
a Jacuzzi tub big enough to do laps in.
We walked up the street to a Gaudi designed apartment building called La Pedrera. Gaudi (1852 –
1926) designed a number of buildings in Barcelona. His designs are very modern, have no flat surfaces and to my eye are strange. This apartment building is big, 6 stories tall and is still being lived in. But
there is a walking tour with headphones available, which we used. It cost 16.50 euros. It is interesting and worth doing to get a feeling for the design work he did. Because the next thing we did is
tour the biggest monument to his genius, the Sagrada Familia. This is the very big cathedral that he is most famous for. It was designed in 1909, construction began in 1911, and the target date for completion of
construction is 2026, the centennial date of Gaudi’s death. No matter what you think of the design, the building is magnificent. The exterior reminds me of a sand castle built by dribbling wet sand into towers, but
the theme is not carried through. There are gothic, conventional and plain sections to the facade. Almost every section of the exterior is decorated with religious figures, gargoyles, lizards, snakes,
etc. The inside is somewhat more conventional, is in the shape of a cross, and is actually very pretty. Most striking for me were the enormous columns that support the ceiling; they are designed to look like tree
trunks and then toward the top they spread out into branches that blend into the ceiling. Note to any readers who want to experience this. We had our hotel concierge make our reservations. We apparently
got the last ones available that day with an entry time of 5:15pm; the next day was sold out. This is a very popular tourist destination. We again did an audio tour, and I recommend it.
Between the two Gaudi building tours we ate lunch at a little sidewalk café near our hotel called Torres. It features wine and good food. We both had rooster, which was
excellent, roasted for quite a while to make it tender and served in a butter mushroom sauce. We had a very nice Chilean merlot, Santa Digna.
The hotel gave us a bottle of champagne as one of our Signature Travel amenities, so for dinner we had room service bring us spaghetti and a salad. Very nice.
The next day we did a Hop on Hop off tour of Barcelona. It gave me a good overview of the city which has many wide boulevards and 18th and 19th century buildings, parks trees and in general reminded me of Paris. Gaudi’s
works are featured by the automated bus commentary. It is obvious that his works are very popular and draw large amounts of tourists. One stop was at a park that he designed, but was so crowded that access was limited
by needing a ticket to get into the main part of the park, and the waiting time was 1 ½ hours. We could, however, get into the non-limited part. It looked to me like an attempt to create a Roman ruin.
The structures were made of stone and concrete, with archways, towers, walls and open areas, and of course trees, yuccas, and other plants. By the way, it is almost a one mile walk from the bus stop to get to the park, most of it
up hill. If anyone reading this decides to go, get a ticket on line before going.
We left Barcelona on Air France business class
with a plane change in Paris. It went well. Air France served Charles Heidsieck champagne so Gale was happy. My only complaint was that the Barcelona flight left at 6:30 am which meant that we had to
get up at 3:30 am. Too early.