I can’t believe I made it on my first cruise ever… and in
Europe! I have always wanted to go on a cruise vacation, and I can now
successfully cross it off my bucket list, not to say that I will never go on
another. In fact, I think I'm addicted to cruises. It was everything I ever
imagined and more. Free food, live music, entertainment, fun activities and
games, bars, casinos, etc. etc. I’m already having withdrawals from my amazing
spring break cruise in the Western Mediterranean on Costa Serena.
Before the cruise, I made my way to Genova, Italy to stay
the night with my cousin Suzie and her husband Gabriel and daughter Catherine!
When I first found out I was going to be studying in Italy, I knew I had family
living there and I am so glad I was able to travel to see them! Although it was
only for a short time, Suzie was able to show me around the beautiful port city
of Genova. It was a rainy day, so we stopped inside a few churches during our walk around the town. My favorite was the church that had the famous Ruben
paintings inside.
We had apertivo at Douce Café which was one of Suzie’s
favorite. We had a glass of white wine and some snacks. Suzie got me to try a
green olive, which wasn’t too bad! We planned on meet up with Gabriel later
that night at dinner, so in the mean time we walked around the city a bit more.
I liked the main piazza which had a huge fountain in the middle. The city was
so hilly and green, I loved it!
Some of the apartments had entrances on the fourth and fifth
floor by bridges because there were level with some of the elevated land. It
was so cool how the city was built given its terrain. They also had public
transportation elevators since going up and down hills is so common.
We had dinner later that night at Eataly! I had never been to
this restaurant, even though they have one in Chicago. It was such a cool
location, looking over the port and near the water and boats on the dock. I got
a traditional dish of Genoa, which was pesto pasta. Pra is well known for their
pesto and I can personally say it was the best pesto that i've tried yet! It came with potatoes and
green beans which was a filling addition to the dish! That night I was able to
stay at Suzie’s place, which was great since I had one more sleep until I
headed off to the cruise.
The next morning I sleep in a bit and got up for breakfast.
Gabriel made a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, cheese and
prosciutto. I also had some pumpkin muffins that Suzie and Catherine made which
were SO good. I missed homemade food. After breakfast we walked around the town
a bit more since it was sunny! We went to the top of a hill that looked over
the city, it was a great site! I took some pictures as well.
Sadly, my visit came to an end, as I had to grab a train
into Savona, Italy to get on the cruise. It was so special to spend some time
with family while abroad and I’m excited to see them the next time they are
back in the states!
After taking a quick train to Savona that Sunday afternoon, it was time to board the cruise.
None of us could contain our excitement. We checked out our tiny room for four,
and then headed up to deck 11 to watch the boat sail away. They played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Time to Say Goodbye” And we were off to our first stop in Naples!
Regardless of the rainy cold weather, we were so happy to explore the cruise
ship.
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| Right before we departed |
Deck 9 was a popular deck for us since it had the pool and
hot tub with a bar and also the buffet! We had a quick lunch while we waited
for our bags to get dropped off to our rooms. I had French fries and a chicken
patty. I could already tell I was going to love it here. Then we ventured over
to the buffet, because why not? They had SO much more food. I tried some
margarita pizza, cucumbers, fruit and some cheese and salami. By 4pm we headed
down to deck 1 – where our room was – and found out we had got our luggage so
we unpacked a bit in the room. Our room was tiny, but it would be perfect for just sleeping which was all we really planned on doing there.
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| Pool in Deck 9 |
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| Cabin 1308 |
Our meal time was set for 6:30pm every night in the dining room (this was quite early for Italian time…). Once we were ready for dinner,
we made our way to deck 3 to find our table. Lucky we were paired next to Bree,
Kelly, Jack and Greg, the other four we booked the cruise with, at the table! I was nervous our group would be split up
but it ended up being just as we wanted. Our view from our table was beautiful!
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| our view at dinner |
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| Dining room for the week |
After dinner we made our way to the theatre. That night the
entertainment was a singer. He performed a ton of different songs and my
favorite was when he did an Elvis impersonation! He got all dressed up and
danced like Elvis would. He played one of my favorite Elvis songs “Cant Help
Falling In Love.”
Later we found out there was karaoke night in the Luna
Lounge so we headed there after to show to check it out. They had the Project
Band playing and we all started dancing around the dance floor because they
were playing so many good songs! Its funny how an Italian cruise would play
American music, but I wasn’t complaining. About an hour later the band finished
and Pepe, one of the crewmembers in charge of karaoke night, gave us a list
filled with songs to pick from. Our cabin ended up singing “You’re the One That
I Want” from Greece and it was so funny! We were not the best singers but we
had too much fun with the song to even care. Our other friends sang Bohemian Rhapsody
and unfortunately they were too intoxicated to get by, so they got kicked off
the mic. Oops. It was funny for us Americans, but what we didn’t realize was
that Italian karaoke was a very serious thing because every singer after us was
amazingly good! We learned our lesson the hard way I suppose.
MONDAY - NAPLES AND POMPEII, ITALY
We woke up early for a quick breakfast, but we
realized that they had so much good food at the breakfast buffet like pancakes,
fresh fruits,bacon, sausage, eggs and cheese. It was a very filling breakfast.
On deck 9 where the buffet was we noticed that in the pol area they were
teaching everyone how to salsa! We quickly joined in and it was so fun to pick
up a few dance steps.
Our plan for visiting Naples was to do one of the cruise
excursions to hike Mt Vesuvius, but unfortunately since the weather was bad
they had to cancel it. We were all pretty bummed, but Lauren and I really
wanted to see Pompeii regardless of climbing Mt. Vesuvius or not, so we decided
to do the Pompeii excursion that went through a lot of ancient ruins. It was
pretty rainy out, as we hoped on the tour bus. Thankfully once we got to
Pompeii (only a half hour from Naples) it cleared up a bit. Our first stop on
the tour was to a coral factory. They had a lot of jewelry and little trinkets
all made from coral which was really pretty to look at, although everything was
very pricey… After that quick stop, we made it to the archeological park of
Pompeii. It was such a cool place. We walked through ancient gladiator
barracks, and down ancient streets.
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| Mt. Vesuvius from our bus window |
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| Lava remnants |
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| Gladiator barracks |
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| Ancient street sign |
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| Stone Street |
We walked into an wealthy home of an ancient family. It was cool to see how they lived and how they had such an open home with out any doors, windows, or completely enclosed rooms. In fact, this home was so well preserved that there were still frescos on the walls!
This was one of the ancient shops we stopped by on the main shopping street.
You could see Mt. Vesuvius from this park, and it was
covered in misty clouds and looked very dark and mysterious. It’s crazy to
think that the volcano is still active!
We went to a cool arena, and we climbed up to the top of the
seats to get an elevated view of the area, and it was breathtaking!
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| Lauren and I |
We got to see where they had public baths also. Ancient
culture is very interesting especially in this aspect. When we went inside
where the baths were they had some plaster cast of people’s body right before
they died from a volcanic eruption. You can see the fear on their faces.
Next stop was to the red light district. It is supposedly
the most popular tourist spot in the entire park. We got to walk through what
used to be brothel. They had erotic paintings all over the walls, their beds
were also still there, but they were made of stone, which would have been very
uncomfortable.
We ended up on top of the park, there were ruins of the town
everywhere! It was cool to look around at what used to be a roman city. They
had a pretty great view of the city from so high up.
We had about a half hour to spare until our bus took us back to the port. Since we were in Naples, we had to get a pizza! We ran into a little restaurant outside of the park and got a margarita con prosciutto pizza. Naples pizza is known for its speedy cooking process. We literally watched it being made in front of our eyes in like 8 minutes! The chef rolled out the dough, threw some sauce and cheese then some pieces of prosciutto on top. He stuck it in the oven and within 4 minutes it was ready! We were so hungry at this point, that Lauren and I scarfed down the entire pizza! It was so fresh and hot. It really hit the spot and we were ready to call it a day and head back to the boat.
That night for dinner was one of my favorites. I had eggplant tiramisu which was just layers of eggplant, tomato, cheese and green pepper. It was also nice to had a few glasses of wine with our dinner, my favorite was the red wine we were able to have which was Chianti. The show that night was called Circus. They had one guy doing the entire show, it was incredible! He did a lot of acrobatic stuff like hanging from a long sheet doing flips and holding himself up with only one hand. He also balanced on two stilts with his hands! All of this on a swaying boat too… When he was doing the trick with the long sheet, they played R. Kelly’s classic “I believe I can Fly” it was funny because it fit so perfectly to what he was doing! He had a whole segment of shadow puppets, which was very cool too. He made so many different characters, both people and animals! He was well rounded with his talent.
Monday night was latin night in the Luna Lounge, we were so
excited for it since we had just learned how to salsa and it was also an excuse
to drink some tequila. They played some fun latin music all night, our favorite
song was Ai Se Eu Te Pego. At one point, two of the crew members came to the front
and started a salsa dance sequence and we all joined in, it was so much fun!
After lots of salsa-ing we headed back to our cabin to get some sleep before
our next stop in Sicily!
TUESDAY - PALERMO (SICILY), ITALY
We got into Palermo a city in the Sicily region on Tuesday.
I slept in quite a bit since the night before was pretty crazy. Around 11am we
grabbed some buffet lunch and then headed to explore Sicily. Bree, Greg, Jack,
Kelly and I all decided to take the “fun train” tour around the city since we
didn’t have too much time to just wander around. The fun train was interesting,
they said everything in four different languages which was pretty talented but
also very time consuming.
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| Sicily mountains - view from the port |
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| Afternoon in Sicily - view from the port |
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| Greg, Bree, Jack, Kelly and I posing by the Fun Train |
We went passed on of the biggest opera houses, a building used in The Godfather, and ended up at a gorgeous church. We got to have some time to explore the inside of the church and it was so elaborate.
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| Biggest opera house in Italy |
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| Exact building used in The Godfather |
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| Church in Palermo |
The second half of the tour took us through a lot of streets
and piazzas in Palermo. Being in an island off of southern Italy, there were
palm trees and the city felt very tropical and beach-y even. It was a very different
feel for Italy since I am so used to small northern Italian towns far from the
coast. I liked the change, and it was a good perspective of how much the
culture changes.
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| Bishop's house on top of a mountain |
We got back to the boat late afternoon and killed a few
hours before dinner by exploring the boat a bit. We checkout deck 12, which was the top of the boat! Bree and I were goofing off a lot and did the titanic pose and just ran around the boat listening to Lonely Island Boys "Im On A Boat."
Before dinner we decided to play cards and participated in some fun quizzes in the Apollo
lounge. We all learned how to play Euchre and used it as a drinking game as
well. A lady next to us over heard us and instantly asked if we were from the
Midwest area in the US. We all were taken back a bit since we had not found a
lot of Americans on the boat yet, but she said she knew we were from that area
because we were playing Euchre which was such an odd observation but it guess
its true! We also found our new favorite
drink – pineapple and white rum – the bartenders caught on as well but also
hated how much we ordered drinks.
After dinner, we went to the theater for that nights show.
It was the mythology show and it was super elaborate! There were a lot of
dancers wearing basically nothing.. and the men dancers had some crazy
choreography. Afterwards we went to the Apollo lounge and played some games
with the whole group. A lot of people were getting a bit sea sick since the
water was very rough and the boat was swaying quite a bit. After most people
went off to bed, Kristen, Greg and I went to the disco to check it out. It was
filled with a lot of very young kids but we just had fun dancing on the dance
floor and being crazy. We got more drinks at the bar and then after we were
annoyed with the crowds of kids, we headed to the casino. I wasn’t planning on
playing at first but I ended up going in on a black jack table. Greg and I were
playing pretty well and we meet this lady Colleen who was from Texas but lived
in England with her husband and now lives in Italy. She was the sassiest
southerner I’ve meet but she was so cool! She helped me out with a few hands
and had some good tips. The dealer got to know us pretty well because we were
three very loud and quite drunk Americans. They all knew me by the end of the
night because I was so frustrated with one of my losing streaks! I ended up
losing 15 euro, but it was pretty fun to play and also to meet Colleen!
That night, our housekeeper for our stay - Michael - made a butterfly out of on of the shams we had on the bed, it was such a cute touch!
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