I was thinking of a South American cruise or a land tour but I was told that the best time to go there is early in the year so I was prevailed on by my wife to take another Mediterranean cruise instead, this time, to include Istanbul, Ephesus and Athens. Might as well go! I've been inching to go anywhere to get some distance from the sight of our recently renovated kitchen which I think was a waste of good travel money. My wife better start feeding me with good homecooked meals or I will paddle up the Amazon and live on piranhas... if I'm lucky to catch any LOL. If I know my wife as well as I do, she'll probably tell me to keep paddling upstream until I reach the Amazon's source water and email her when I get there...then she will lovingly tell me to stay there for good LOL.
Our trip started well because of scheduling luck - we picked Detroit to catch our connecting flight to Rome. Had we decided to get our connecting flight in NY, we would have run into problems because of the hurricane. We arrived in Rome with plenty of time to spare to get to Civitavecchia where our cruise ship, the Celebrity Equinox, was at berth. The ship was a let down compared to the newest and largest of the cruise ships, the Allure of the Seas, which we tried last January to visit some Western Caribbean islands. I'm not complaining though, Equinox's food is good, it is less crowded and more importantly, they let me bring in my favorite recreational drink at check-in.
These are some of the guys who will make or break your trip. The guy with the hat on is the ship's executive chef, a swiss married to a Pinay from Cebu.
