Boarding the Cruise Ship

The boat dropped us off at Piazzale Roma and we hopped in a taxi for the short ride to the pier. He took us right up to the luggage drop off for our boat, Royal Caribbean’s Splendour of the Seas. After going through a check-in process, we were able to board our cruise ship in the early afternoon.

This was our first time aboard a cruise ship and it was amazing to see how massive these ships are!

Our stateroom was located on one of the lower levels and was attended by a man from Honduras named Luis. He was always very friendly and often stopped to talk to us in the hall or offered helpful tips for that day’s port. He cleaned the rooms in the afternoon and did a turndown service while we were at dinner each night. Every other night he left towel animals on our bed.

After seeing a Bible in our room, Luis shared that he is also a Christian. At the end of the week, Steven wrote him a nice note to leave with the tip, thanking him for the hospitality and excellent service during the week. We told him if we don’t see him again, we’d see him in Heaven.  Here are the pictures of our stateroom for the week.

And of course, your video tour! This video was a second take as I tripped on the step up into the bathroom on my first video attempt.

Boat Ride on the Grand Canal

We opted not to go sightseeing the next day because we wanted to make sure that we arrived at the cruise port terminal in plenty of time. There was a public boat stop right in front of our hotel, which I thought we could use to get to the cruise ship terminal. I asked the receptionist and she said the only way to get there would be to take a water taxi or hire a private boat. We didn’t like either of those options, so off we set again to haul our suitcases to the other side of the island to the public boat stop that we knew for sure would take us to the terminal. The experience was much like the previous day, although this time it was hotter, but we were at least mentally prepared for it. The winding streets proved to be a challenge once again and our route changed multiple times as we got lost and then figured out our new location. Finally, a waiter told us to throw out the map and pointed us in the correct direction. We made it there and boarded a boat that took us all the way down the Grand Canal, and wouldn’t you know it….right past our hotel! Ha, lovely. I was not too happy with the receptionist when we figured out we could have walked about 10 steps and been at a correct boat stop. Oh well, live and learn. The walk did let us see more of the city!

There are several boat lines, very similar to bus or subway lines in most cities. Tickets are available for a single trip or if you travel on the boat frequently, you can buy a pass for a few days or even a longer time period. A shorter trip like this is 6.50 Euros a passenger, while a trip to the airport is 14 Euros each. The boats are used frequently by citizens and tourists and I don't really think there is a passenger limit judging by how tightly people crammed on the boat, adding more at each stop! If you can get a place to stand by the railing, this is a great way to see the sights down the canal.

If you just want to cross from one side of the Grand Canal to the other and a bridge is not nearby (there are only a few bridges that actually cross the Grand Canal) you can take a traghetto.

It is an older gondola that is stripped of its "throne" and luxury trimmings. At only 50 cents a trip, this is by far the cheapest "gondola" ride that you can take in Venice! A private ride on an actual gondola will cost a minimum of 80 euro.

When you board the traghetto, passengers all face the same direction and remain standing in rows for the short trip across the canal. During the boat ride we went under the Ponte di Rialto, which is a 16th Century stone bridge that crosses the canal.

NH Manin

Our hotel, the NH Manin, is located right on the Grand Canal.

This is the view looking up and down the canal from outside of our hotel.

It was an amazing view and really neat to look out the lobby front doors and see the water two steps away.

The room was nice with a nice street-level view out of the window.

The showers are certainly smaller here!

A tv was hidden away in the cabinet and Steven was happy to find LOST playing on one of the channels. He watched it later that night, and didn’t seem to mind that it was all in Italian!

Here's your video tour of our room.

The hotel had a complimentary breakfast in the morning, served in the charming outdoor courtyard area.

Arriving in Venice, Italy

We arrived in Venice, Italy at 9:00 AM, which is 3:00 AM Indiana time. Venice is a complicated city when it comes to transportation because of all the waterways. There are lots of transportation options, but land taxis and water taxis are likely close to $100 if you’re traveling from the airport to the island where the main part of the city is located. As an alternate means of transportation, I had read about a waterbus that would take us to Piazza San Marco, the area where our hotel is located. Once we had our luggage, we proceeded down a walkway that led to the airport pier.

There we caught the alilaguna waterbus and took about an hour long boat ride to our destination.

It was a neat way to get our first glimpses of the city as the boat made several stops along the way, including one at Murano, where all of the glassblowers reside.

Normally we would have caught another boat from this drop off point to our hotel, but as luck would have it, the public boats were on strike that day! I found an information booth and asked for directions to our hotel. I bought a map and the lady showed me which route I should follow. Venice is a charming city, but hauling suitcases in the heat is not the ideal way to first explore it!

We made our way around and around the narrow winding streets and decided even with a map this city is next to impossible to navigate.

There are no vehicles on the island and no roads, just tons of streets or walkways that go in all sorts of confusing directions. Five or six streets usually come together in an open little plaza area and then you have to figure out which way to go next. There are canals that wind through entire city and every few blocks you have to cross over one.

This means stairs up and stairs down, a really fun adventure with two huge suitcases, a large duffle bag, a tote bag, a backpack, and a purse. It’s even more fun if one of the suitcase wheels was broken during your flight therefore no longer rolls properly. We finally made it to our hotel and were able to check in around lunchtime. We intended to take a short nap since the only time either of us had slept during the last two nights was for a few hours on the flights. Five hours later we woke up and realized it was dinnertime! We set out to explore the area around the hotel, thankfully without any luggage to haul around. The buildings have so much character and the canals are really pretty.

Even street signs are worthy of a picture here!

There are gondolas everywhere and it’s fun to watch the gondolas paddle down the canals, while the guests are serenaded by the gondoliers.

Rosa Rossa is an Italian restaurant that the receptionist had recommended.

They had about every kind of pizza that you can imagine, including options with goose ham or deer ham.

There was even an option with hotdogs as the main topping.

I had to laugh and show this to Steven because once when we were out of pepperonis, I tried to convince him that hotdogs would be a fine alternative on our homemade pizza. He didn’t agree with me, but apparently someone in Italy does!

The waitress told us that one pizza served only one person so we quite surprised when she brought out our food and there were two very thin, but almost full-sized pizzas!

We had lots of leftovers that we wrapped up and shoved in the minibar fridge. It was dark by the time we made it back to our hotel; the Grand Canal looked so pretty lit by the moonlight and a few hotel lights.

A Glimpse of Paris

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a long layover in Paris, France. Our plane from Boston arrived just in time for us to rush through security and make it to the terminal where our next flight would be departing. When we were boarding the plane, we were slightly confused because once we walked down the runway there was only a bus waiting. We jumped on the bus, hoping we were in the right place! Sure enough, the bus made its way to the outskirts of the airport where were boarded an Air France plane and took off for Venice. We didn’t get to see anything in Paris except for the airport, but I guess at least we can say we’ve been to Paris!

Exploring Boston

Upon arrival in Boston, I went a Delta counter to ask where to check-in for our next leg of the trip. He looked at my information and said our baggage was only scheduled to go as far as Paris. I guess Mr. Baggage Clerk in Indy didn’t get it totally fixed. We had to go downstairs to the Baggage Service desk where they intercepted our luggage and got it retagged to make it all the way to Venice with us. Good news. With that problem solved, we made our way to the information counter for suggestions on what to do with our 9 hour layover. The lady in her thick Boston accent said, “Here’s what you’re going to do” (no question of what we wanted to do) and directed us to the correct buses and subways to take to see the two locations she said we needed to go. That sounded like a plan for us and off we went in search of the first bus that would take us to the South Station in the city. At this location was an office where we could pay to have our carry-on luggage stored for the day. We figured out the city’s subway system and made our way to the recommended stops. Thursday was a cool, foggy, and misty (not quite rainy) day. We walked down the streets of Boston, looking at the cool buildings, peeking in shop windows, and searching for a place to eat. Boston is a really neat city because of the mixture of old and new buildings. Finagle a Bagel looked like a good restaurant choice for brunch. At the counter there is a really cool system where the employees toss your selected bagel onto a small conveyer belt. It reaches a certain point where it is shot through a slicer and launches it to an opening at the other end of the counter to be prepared for your sandwich or toasted.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the streets of Boston. One of my favorite stores had all sorts of unique light fixtures. One was a chandelier created with hanging pieces of notepaper, each with its own sketches or random notes written. We were stopped on a sidewalk for a bit, where they were filming a scene of a movie. The scene was on the patio of a café and the extras were walking across the sidewalks in the background of the scene. We stopped next to the line of extras and watched for a few minutes until the filming stopped and we were allowed to continue across the sidewalk. Boston Commons is a large area where quite a few historical sites are located. There was a large monument of the Declaration of Independence and many other statues. Tour guides dressed in colonial outfits were giving tours to groups and school children. We walked past a cemetery where Paul Revere and other historical figures are buried. After a few hours of exploring, our feet were getting tired and the lack of sleep was kicking in. We made our way back to pick up our luggage and returned to the airport. Once we made it through security there were only two hours left until our plane would begin loading. Houlihans, one of my favorite restaurants, is in the airport and we spent the remainder of our time there eating dinner.

Making Plans

We’ve been talking about going to Europe for at least a year now and finally about three weeks ago we made our plans, booked the tickets, and made it a reality. I searched many travel options including traveling around the continent on our own by plane or train, going on a guided tour with a group, or taking a cruise. We ultimately decided that for this trip a cruise would be the best option. Neither of us have ever been on a cruise and this would allow us to enjoy the travel time between countries rather than facing the task of deciphering a European travel system in an unfamiliar area where we don’t speak the language. There are lots of European cruise options: Scandinavia, Northern Europe, Western Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean, Greek Isles, etc. Our first choice was a Western Mediterranean cruise, but Greece was also at the top of my list of countries that I wanted to visit. I created a spreadsheet of European cruises that traveled during the month of June (I know, you’re all shocked at the spreadsheet). I was researching 12-15 night cruises and still hadn’t found the perfect one. I noticed there were lots of options for 7 night cruises and began to think maybe we could do two separate cruises instead of trying to find one that went everywhere we wanted. That led to spreadsheet number two, which was a list of all of the 7 night cruises, dates, prices, and details. Only a few combinations of cruises during our timeframe could actually be paired together because of their departure or arrival dates. I had to make sure I allowed enough travel time in between countries to get to the next destination for the second cruise departure. I took the few double cruise combinations, plus our top picks for the longer cruises and created a third spreadsheet. With this I looked up flights and added this to the prices of the cruises to come up with the overall cost for each trip. The results pointed to a clear cut winner so I booked the cruises then I booked the flights. The final choice is to fly to Venice, Italy and take a Greek Isles & Turkey cruise, fly to Barcelona, Spain, then take a Western Mediterranean cruise. Upon return to Barcelona, we’ll fly back to Venice and home from there. From the time we booked our trip we had two and a half weeks until departure. We informed our workplaces of our vacation dates and travel plans and both were very supportive. I don’t think I slept too much between this time and the date of our departure. I spent any spare time that I could searching online to plan our travel and activities. We have the option to book excursions at each port city through the cruise ship, but those get pretty expensive by the time you plan for about 11 cities. Instead, I decided to see what we could plan on our own. This is definitely the more challenging and time consuming method, but in the end worth the cost savings. I found a great website that had information on a lot of the cities that we will be visiting and had detailed information on how to plan your own excursions. The website had pictures and lots of details on transportation methods, city highlights, travel tips, and much more. I began compiling a folder of information on each city. For the cities that this website didn’t cover, I found other port reviews that would suffice. Monte Carlo, Monaco is our first stop on cruise #2. This country is very small, about the size of New York City’s Central Park (according to my chiropractor). It had a great website and they sent me maps and tourist information in the mail. I was impressed to see that Monaco even has its own special iPhone app, perfect for tourists. Over the next two weeks I continued to add information to my port city folders until I had enough information on each destination. I added weather forecasts, transportation details, and maps when available. The final step was to book our hotels. I used Priceline.com to start bidding on hotels a few days before our departure. I finally booked the last one about 4 hours before leaving for the airport Thursday morning. It was a crazy two weeks as we planned everything for our trip and we both wrapped up things at work. It culminated in an all-nighter Wednesday before our early Thursday morning departure. The Harrisons were kind enough to come to Avon Wednesday night and Louise got up early to take us to the airport at 5:30 AM. I had checked-in online and when we arrived at the airport the baggage clerk said our luggage only showed that it was going as far as Boston, not all the way to Venice. He ran to the check-in counter and got it corrected for us quickly so we wouldn’t miss our flight.