Naples, Italy

Last evening, after we published the Blog we first learned about the tragedy that took place at Virginia Tech. This morning we learned more details about this terrible event. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and to the families of those that suffered losses and our prayers also go out to all of those who suffered injuries and we hope for their speedy recovery.

Today we are in Naples, Italy. We arrived in Naples a little before 8:00 AM and were cleared by local authorities fairly quickly. We will be in Naples until midnight this evening.

Before we talk about today, we wanted to briefly tell you about last night’s entertainment. We attended a special one time show. It included most of the musicians who play throughout the ship along with various singers. We enjoyed all of the songs and especially the song, which was sung by, Krista Pope, our World Cruise Hostess.

Last evening, Anne Marie surprised Keith by having a cake served for dinner which she had made arrangements for with the Head Waiter a few days earlier so we’ve included of picture of our Senior Waiter, Anne Marie and the wonderful cake.

We awoke very early this morning and had breakfast at the Lido Café and then worked out in the fitness center. Both of these venues were quite quiet. We do not have a tour planned for today since this evening there is a special World Cruise shore side event planned in Pompeii. We will tell you more about this event in tomorrows Blog.

We were last in Naples in 1997. Naples is considered to be the capital of Southern Italy. There are so many areas to visit from this port of call. There is the famous Amalfii Coastal Drive which is approximately 40 miles in length. Another area is the Isle of Capri. From Naples one can take a hydrofoil for a forty-five minute journey over to Capri. Then there is Pompeii. This was a vibrant city which was instantly buried in up to thirty feet of volcanic ash in 79 AD. Finally, there is Herculaneum which was named after Hercules and was also buried in 76 AD. In its time, Herculaneum was a seaside resort town.

Since we have the event for thie evening, we decided to just talk a nice long walk around the area. We walked for close to three hours and walked on a combination of main streets and some side streets. We walked through a building called the Gallery and the architecture of this building was exquisite. We’ve included a picture with the Blog of a small portion of the interior but the pictures does not do justice to the beauty of this buildings interior.

We also walked on some of the streets where those local from the area shop and walked little markets that sole baked goods, vegetables and fruit, meat, delicatessen items and pastries. The aroma from one of the pastry shops that we looked at was out of this world and each pastry looked wonderful. It reminded us of the types of baked goods that we would see (and eat ☺) as youngsters. After all, we are in Italy!! The only challenge that we had on our walk was getting across some of the streets. Finally, we mastered the technique of crossing the streets as Keith would walk on the outside and hold his hand out and up as if to tell the drivers to stop and that seemed to do the trick. The weather was very nice and we had a wonderful time walking all around the area.

When we returned back to the ship we enjoyed a wonderful lunch in the Main Dining Room. We then took care of a few errands on the ship.

Tomorrow we will enjoy a day at sea and as we mentioned we will let you all know about this evening shore side event when we write tomorrows Blog.

Keith & Anne Marie