Our Mediterranean Christmas Cruise

We love cruises and a Mediterranean cruise was a must for us while living in Spain.  We have also wanted to go to Rome while living so close and we were happy to do them both at the same time.  

We were able to do the entire trip from our front door and back without having to drive a car which was especially nice for Brent. We did have  a 10 min. walk to the metro with our luggage, but there was too much enthusiasm for room to complain.  

This is the train we took from Madrid to Barcelona.  

This was a high speed train which cut the normal drive time in half and was also a bit quicker than a flight since we did not need to arrive more than a few minutes early.  It was also much more comfortable than a flight.  



We sailed on MCS's  "La Precioza" which was true to it's name.

It was a newer and very elegant ship.

Thank heavens the ship had several hot tubs (9-10); however, they were packed unless it was rainy.

I'm guessing Kaiya had a great night's sleep.  We usually get the tiny windowless bunkbead rooms, but not this time.  MSC had a family suite deal that we couldn't pass up.    Unlike previous crusise, the rooms had balconies, the beds were comfy, our rooms were roomy and they had an adjoining door between them.

Our first stop was Marseilles, France, however, this is not Marseilles it is Genoa. Apparently the port wasn't worthy of a picture in fact we did not even disembark since it was rainy, there wasn't anything amazing enough to see, and the city was a 1/2 hour taxi or bus ride from the ship.  We instead enjoyed a lazy day on the ship.

Genoa, Italy

We finally disembarked in Genoa, Italy.  In ancient times Genoa was the most important harbor of the Mediterranean sea.

There were only a couple of key things we wanted to see in Genoa.  The first was this lighthouse "The Lanterna", which is the oldest running lighthouse in the world and a prominent Genovese symbol.    

Genoa has been known to have one of Europe's biggest historical center.

Around just about every corner we felt like we had gone back in time.

This is said to be the natal house of Cristoforo Colombo (Columbus) born between August 26 and October 31 1451. (I have also read that this is not the actual house but a reconstruction of the actual house or only a house from that time period, so who knows?)

 
The house was small, with this staircase taking up a large portion of it.  

Next door to the Columbus house, which is hidden behind the vines on the right, were ruins from a 12th century monastery.  

It is St. Andrew's Cloister which is the only surviving part of the monastery.  It was not originally located at this site but was moved here in the early 1900's when the monastery was demolished to open a more modern square.

The tickets into the Columbus house included a hike up these towers of the Porta Soprana gate built in 1155 which is the best known gate from the ancient Genoa city walls.

Yes it is out of focus but I was the last one from the group and took this while trying to keep up.




From the top of the tower you can see the Columbus house and the old cloisters.  

Our kids were thrilled to see a familiar face (thanks Corey) in 

Italy.

The Cathedral of San Lorenzo, founded in the 6th century followed by several more centuries of restorations and alterations was definitely unique in comparison to most cathedrals we have visited.

There were a couple areas in Genoa that were a little uncomfortable specifically this alleyway that we raced through more quickly with each step.  The girl on the right of Brent didn't seem happy that I had taken a picture or maybe it was just that I was there.  

This is the "Neptune" built in 1985 for Roman Palanski's film "Pirates", where it portrays a 17th century Spanish galleon.  It is a replica from the waterline up, but below the water is a steal hull.

In 2011 it was used in the TV miniseries "Neverland" as the "Jolly Roger" or the ship of Captain Hook.

This thing is going nowhere, since it is permanently moored to the port. 

Civitavecchia/ROME

We only had about 6 hours to visit Rome after accounting for the hour long train ride each way from/to the port in Civitavecchia.  We raced through the Vatican and through the streets of Rome back to the train station to return to the ship by 5:30 pm.

Here we are at the Vatican, the smallest country in the world which made it easy to race from one end to the other. Unfortunately the line to enter the basilica was a mile long which is hard to do in a country measuring just 0.2 miles across.  

This is the Tiber river next to the Mausoleum of Hadrian looking back at St. Peter's basilica in Vatican City.

This is the Roman Pantheon built between 118-125 AD as a temple dedicated to all the gods of pagan Rome.  It is the most preserved building of ancient Rome.  The Latin inscription reads in English "Marcus Agrippa son of Lucius, having been consul three times made it"

We found the smallest truck ever or our kids and the bike had temporarily enlarged.

The Fontana di Trevi or the Trevi Fountain is said to be the most beautiful Baroque fountain in the world.

It took a little European skill getting an unobstructed view of this fountain. Sadly, we forgot to throw in a coin which ensures a return visit to Rome according to traditional legend.  

The closer we got to the Colosseum the more ruins we passed.  




The Colosseum is the most well-known monument in Rome but it's true name "the Flavius amphitheatre" is not.  It was opened in 80 A.D. by the Emperor's son Titus from the Flavia family.

The word Colosseum was first found in a famous prophecy from the medieval monk Beda when he said,  "Rome will exist as long as the Colosseum does: when the Colosseum falls so will Rome: when Rome falls so will the world".  The name might have derived from the enormous 35 meters high statue of the Emperor Nero. "the Colossus" which once stood next to the amphitheatre.

During fights between exotic animals, or between men and beasts, the amphitheatre would house up to 70,000 spectators.  After the 6th century with the Empire's decline, the Colosseum began housing confraternities, hospitals, hermits and even a cemetery, eventually it  transformed into a marble, stone, lead and iron quarry,and ultimately it became one of the world's largest tourist attractions. What exists today is just a skeleton of what was the greatest arena in the ancient world. 

The Roman Forum Piazza would have been the most crowded spot to do business of all kinds including the sale of slaves and before the Colosseum, the games would have taken place here.  The archway in the center of the background was inscribed with a dedication to Septimius Severus and his sons. When Septimius died, the one son didn't want to share imperial power with his brother and so decided to take the thrown with the classic technique of "homicide".  He removed the name of his brother from the arch's inscription and went down in history as one of Rome's cruelest emperors.  

In the center are the only three columns to survive from the Temple of Castor and Pollux named after the Greek divine twin gods.  The temple was dedicated to them after the first legendary victory of the Romans over the Latins. The Roman fathers officially gave names to their children in that temple.

This remarkably large monument was built at the end of the 19th century to honor the first king Vittorio Emanuele II of a unified Italy.   It has been a controversial building since its construction for several reasons: destroying a large area of the Capitoline Hill; too white, too large, pompous etc.  

Running around Rome made for an exhausting day and then to top it off we missed the previous train by just a couple of minutes.  On a more positive note we were 45 minutes early for the next train. Dont miss the boys in this photo.  

It was a stressful return to the port since we started out so late and then this train took 20 minutes longer to arrive at port than we had planned.   Once the train arrived we still had to catch a bus to the cruise shuttle and then ride that to the port.  We were relieved to see other cruisers also arrive late after us. 

Palermo, Sicily 

Palermo was not quite as amazing as I had expected.  

The Church of Santa Maria del'Ammiraglio commonly called the Martorana from the 12th century is on the left and the Church of San Cataldo, to the right, housed a post office in the 18th century.  As expected, Palermo had it's share of old churches...

and as usual we stepped into a few.  This sneaky little girl photo bombed this one. This was in the Jesuit Church of Gesu with it's interior taking 200 years to complete with no spared expense.

 As with all ancient European towns there were several extremely old and run down but charming vacant houses/buildings.  

There was nothing that stood out about Palermo until we ran into this market and soon felt we were back in Morocco.  People were selling second hand junk for blocks and blocks after this.  It seemed like it would never end.

 

I thought "The Palermo Cathedral"was the most beautiful building in Palermo even with it's many different styles due to years of additions, alterations and restorations.  At one time it housed a mosque.

Valetta, Malta

Malta is the 9th smallest country in the world.  We were able to cross the entire country twice within the day.  The official languages are English and Maltese.  Malta was our family favorite port of this cruise.

 

We first traveled in the back row of this double decker to the lovely old walled city, Mdina (center), a place first founded 4000 years ago.

Behind the medieval walls of the timeless Mdina were narrow cobbled streets and yellow stone walls.

Mdina is known as the silent city due to the restriction on the entry of cars.  The place was truly so peaceful I wished we had had more time to enjoy it.



After a significant detour back to port we returned back across the island near Mdina to 2 of the 7 prehistoric megalithic temples. UNESCO claims the temples of Malta are the "oldest free standing monuments on Earth" 

These fascinating temples date from 5,500 to 2,500 BC which make them older than the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge. 

This temple, Ħaġar Qim is the older temple, first excavated in 1839.  The temples were discovered covered in soil.  

This is the entrance of newer temple "Mnajdra", just 500 meters from the other temple and nearer the shores of the Mediterranean sea. 

"Mnajdra" was discovered in 1840.

After visiting the temples we began our journey back to port with a couple of stops. The first stop was Wied-iz-Zurrieq for a leisurely boat ride to see a few caves.

The ride lasted around 30 minutes and included entry into 4-6 caves.

This is us leaving the Blue-Grotto, the most well-known and the largest of the caves we visited. 

I'm not sure if this was counted as a cave or an arch.

Because of all the hype we stopped briefly at Marsaxlokk, "the colorful fishing village" for our last stop.   We took a couple of pictures of the colorful boats, walked around for a couple of minutes and began searching for our taxi driver.



We had our taxi driver drop us off above the port to walk around Valleta, Malta before returning to the ship.  



We happened upon an impressive canon demonstration, did a little shopping and returned to port.  

 We were very happy that we knew about the Barrakka lift which saved us a great deal of time getting back to the port.  It was a couple of seconds to ride it down versus who knows how long to walk through the winding streets down to the sea level and around to the ship.

The next day was a "Sea Day".  First up: water slide that takes you out over the sea.

This is Mason and Kaiya hanging-out over the sea.  Mason had a hard time being able to lie down and therefore kept getting stuck.

This was the kids' big performance at the evening Variety Show with the MSC kids' club.  Mason and Morgan are the two snowman on the left and Kamree is the third snowflake from the right.  The shows were just okay.  They usually included some amazing acrobatic performances but always included fair dancing and mediocre singing.

We were hoping that the cruise would have a magic show as usual but the only magic we saw came from Mason.  Yes those are his legs.

We were welcomed back to Spain the next morning with this sunrise just outside the Barcelona port.

We carried our luggage from the ship to our one night stay hotel within those buildings.  It was a 40 minute walk, but we were able to walk half of it with some new found friends.

These two girls and their parents from New Zealand walked with us for about 20 minutes before we separated.  Kamree had made friends with them at the kids club since they were some of the few kids who spoke English . The family was on a 6 month world tour heading to Asia that evening.  

We had a great time in Barcelona staying near the port and Barcelona's most famous street La Rambla which is 1.2 kilometres long and is visited by most every tourist to Barcelona.  The street was laid out in 1766 following the contours of the medieval city walls.  It was the only space where everyone could leisurely stroll in contrast to the usual narrow winding streets. We were actually able to barter the prices here which we have never been able to do anywhere else in Europe.  We noticed there was a large Indian community in this area and they were running most of the shops.  We got some great deals and we had some yummy Indian food.   Behind Morgan is the spectacular Boqueiria Food Market within Las Ramblas.   



Unfortunately we couldn't afford a 6 month vacation and inevitably ours had to end.


  
On the train ride home we were lucky enough to sit behind this adorable toddler who entertained us much of the time. The lady sitting next to her, however, wasn't as thrilled and eventually got up to move to another seat in a different coach.

The 6 loads of laundry cruelly welcomed us home.