The main event! The one I'd been waiting for the entire cruise. It isn't that Firenze (Florence) is more beautiful than anyplace else we'd visited. In fact, it's not that beautiful, it's frenetic, it's chaotic, it's kind of dirty but mein Gott the HISTORY! So much has taken place in such a small area it was awe inspiring to walk the streets and imagine Leonardo Da Vinci learning to draw or Lorenzo Medici walking the 2 blocks from his palazzo to the Duomo or to look at Ghiberti's Baptistry doors and then turn around to see the amazing Duomo rising almost 500 ft into the air right behind you and picture Brunelleschi overseeing the construction of the massive dome. And we haven't even gotten to the Chiesa da Santa Croce or the Ponte Vecchio.

This was a great little town that we never even planned to visit but Portofino turned out to be so small that we had the entire day to explore that we hadn't anticipated. B and I both agreed that we love this little seaside village. It was very small, pretty, clean, quiet and everyone seemed friendly. We got to practice our Italian a lot which I thoroughly enjoyed although Italians tend to speak so fast that I had a very hard time understanding them if they thought I spoke their language. When they understood we were Americans they slowed down and I was able to get through a conversation.

Santa Margherita is about 2 miles away from Portofino along the coast, if you're looking at a map of Italy you'd find us at the northern most spot of Itay along the coastline of the Mediterranean. We bought a 3 Euro umbrella as it started sprinkling which promptly broke the first time we opened it hehe. Luckily it stopped drizzling so we didn't need it but I guess you get what you pay for.

You hear about Portofino and you think you know what to expect. Then you see Portofino and you think to yourself "WTF?", sure it's gorgeous, sure it looks just like the pictures but is this really it? Yes, that's really it, you can see the entire town in under 10 minutes of walking. There are only a few hundred residents and from the prices at the bistros and shops they all must be Hollywood celebrities. You can forget about groceries or a farmacia, those are a bus ride to Santa Margherita away but if you need a last minute Gucci or Prada you're in luck. Having said all that, this town has in irresistible charm and I found myself not wanting to get back on the tender back to the ship.

No matter how much you've heard about Monaco and Monte Carlo, until you visit it you'll never understand how so much wealth can be concentrated into such a small area. In Monte Carlo anything less than a 150 ft yacht qualifies you for food stamps and the yachts seem to be cheaper than the flats on land. An efficiency near the harbor sells for around 1,000,000 Euros, Ferraris are everywhere and mansions can be found everywhere you look to the tops of the mountains down to the shoreline.

Well everyone talks about nude beaches, I finally got to see one. It was pretty scary. The beach along Nice is topless and I got to see some things I'd prefer to forget hehe. We went to the old town section of Nice to find a Socca vendor we'd seen on Samantha Brown's show, we found her and the Socca was worth the journey. Socca is a pancake type of food made of soybeans, flour, olive oil and pepper (and God knows what else) and it's very tasty. After that we walked around the open air market and bought some olives (we're trying to become olive fans, B is progressing faster than I in this regard) and some almond praline, oh who am I kidding, we ate our way through this town. We had some pain du chocolat, some brioche, some dusted chocolates, etc (get the picture?). We also found the cafe we'd explored a few years ago on our honeymoon. Very cool to be in a foreign place like this and run into something you recognize.

Getting around in Europe is not very difficult if you have a basic

This was my favorite city of all on our trip (B's 2nd pick). It combined all the great things we loved about Barcelona without the chaos of the larger population and I prefer speaking French to Spanish. It's more centrally located to the rest of Europe and it's in a region that's much more beautiful. The day started very cold and it looked like we'd get a lot of rain, we went into a church and when we came out it had rained already and the sky had completely cleared up and it was warmer now. Geez, how long were we in that church? hehe

Nice city, too damn busy. It's the busiest port in the Mediterranean from what I understand and that doesn't begin to describe it. The city was very pretty but very very busy and very very crowded. We weren't here very long as we spent most of the day in Aix-en-Provence but we had a few hours to kill and walked to the old port which had some nice sidewalk cafes and more sailboats than I've ever seen in one place. We shared a crepes avec jambon et fromage and picked up a pastry on the way back that was so good it must have been illegal.

Montpelier is a larger university town and to say that it is immaculate doesn't do the town justice. There wasn't a spot of dirt or garbage anywhere in the city. Even their train tracks had grass in between them such that it looked like the train was strolling through a meadow. There is an old section of the town surrounded by the new section which appears to have not a single building more than 5 years old and given the proliferation of cranes throughout the city it looks like their building the entire town from scratch.

Sete is just a small sleepy fishing town that isn't really ready to be a tourist destination. Most cruise lines can't get into this port, our little ship (30,000 tons) barely fit in the harbor so you can imagine the 90k and 150k ton behemoths out there now couldn't get within a few miles. Because of this, our ship was as interesting to them as their town was to us. The port was ringed with locals who had come out to see the ship in port.

We were there on a Sunday so almost every single thing in the entire city was closed save for a couple of cafes. To make matters worse because we'd gone to Montpelier we were in town during their siesta (what is it with Europeans and naps?). Anyway, it was a very nice town even though we didn't get to experience much of it.

Barcelona more than made up for our bad experience in Tunis and the fact that I still had not received my luggage and was wearing my clothes from the airplane for a week now. Barcelona is a large city done right. The thoroughfares are large and you can walk anywhere or easily hop on a bus. The city is spotless, it's as if a brand-new city was built to look like an old one.

We spent 2 days walking up and down La Rambla, the main walking area of the city anchored by a statue of Cristobol Colombo at one end (where our ship was docked) and extended out to one of Gaudi's designed buildings. We'd been to La Sagrada Familia before so we didn't bother going again this time. We decided to explore every side street and alley we could find with no thought at all

What can we say, we hated the place. It was very cool though to think we were in Africa for the first time. It's an ugly city, the market was full of people who wanted nothing more than to take every Euro we had in our pockets. They all spoke English but not one of them understood "NO". The Souk is a great example of capitalism without any rules, nothing has a price tag on it because the price is whatever these guys can get out of you. I bought a small curio of a vase about 3 in tall because B and I like to have a small symbol from each of our vacations, all I had to do was glance at it for 2 seconds and a salesman attached himself to me like a dog on a bone. He informed me it was made of silver (obviously plastic) and that he could let me have it for only 50 Euros, I walked away and suddenly the price dropped to 30, then 25, then 20. I left the store altogether and the price dropped to 15 but I still had no interest. About 5 minutes later I found Bridget next door using the bathroom,

We didn't really know what to think or to expect from Malta, all we knew is that it was an island (chain) midway between Sicily and Africa. When we got there it most definitely felt more like Africa from looking at it on the ship. Once we got into the city though it had a more European feel to it. Once again my luggage was nowhere to be found (day 4) but we'd heard there was a Caravaggio painting at the St John's Church so we went to see this. It was amazing, obviously I couldn't take a picture of it but you can see it here on wikipedia. What struck us was how large it is, the figures in the painting are slightly larger than life size. Caravaggio's use of chiarroscuro is amazing, you felt like there was a bright light source illuminating aspects of the flesh and the red pigments were amazingly vibrant.

Our first morning aboard ship I awoke at dawn and opened the drapes to behold such a gorgeous sight of hundred foot cliffs which, over the years, have been shaped and carved out into tunnels, caves, stairs and columns. I got some great pics of the cliffs which you'll love. We tendered to the harbor and took a shuttle up a ravine to the main city center where we transferred to a larger bus to take us to the olive and lemon farm...

Well B and I are back from a wonderful 2 week cruise throughout the Med and we're well rested unlike our honeymoon Med cruise when we returned exhausted. The trip itself started ominously with a 2 hour delay in Tampa, which meant that when we landed at 6:05 pm in Philly our flight to Rome was about to take off. I grabbed my carry on and took off running. We landed 2 terminals away from the plane so I had to run about a half mile with bag in tow. When i finally reached the desk I couldn't speak from a lack of breath so I just handed the lady the boarding passes. Luckily this flight too was delayed a few minutes so by the time Bridget arrived we were boarding.

Bridget and I went to see the Disney Production of the Lion King at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. It was a fantastic show that I'd highly recommend to anyone! The production values were signature Disney and the art of set pieces and costumes were excellent. My favorite was the human giraffe, a person walking on all fours with 5-8 ft long legs and a similarly long neck extending from their head. An elephant, which walked through the crowd was 4 people each comprising a leg. Very cool and the music was inspired by the Elton John soundtrack with a more African flavor. In all a wonderful time!