Europe Trip Days 5-9: Giza Pyramids, Pompeii, and life at Sea

This post will be shorter and without pictures as I'm blogging from
the iPhone on the cruise ship, and the Internet is $0.75/minute!

Day 5: Pyramids!
On Tuesday we took a guided tour of the pyramids booked through the
hotel. All I can say is "wow". I was very impressed by the size of
these structures as well as the still mysterious history. Thankfully
we lucked out and ended up with a very knowledgable guide, only one
academic degree away from being an egyptologist. We were able to get
some fantastic pictures as well which I'll post when we get to a
mainland Internet cafe. After the sphynx and Ri's camel ride (yes, I
have pictures of that too), we relaxed at the hotel the rest of the
evening and enjoyed some live Egyptian music over dinner.

Day 6: Back to Rome, the Spanish Steps, and the Trevi fountain
We got a nice early start on Wednesday as we headed back to the
airport to fly back to Rome. The flight offered a good nap. Back in
Rome and checked into our Hostel (lucked out and got a private room),
we set out to do some exploring of nearby sites since it was too late
to go to the Vatican. First stop was the Spanish Steps, which offered
a great view of Rome from the top. From there we headed to the
fountain which was far more impressive than I imagined. If you
haven't seen or heard of it be sure to check out the pictures I'll be
posting later. After a nice dinner at an Italian cafe we headed for
bed in preparation of our 5:41am train to Naples in the morning.

Day 7: Pompeii!
the story of Pompeii always intrigued me when I was younger, so I was
very excited to see it in person. After a long train ride to Naples,
we figured out how to transfer to the right light rail to get to
Pompeii. In this process I realized that 3 years in the NYC area is
excellent preparation for figuring out foriegn transportation systems.

After another hour, we had finally made it out there. We spent the
next 4 hours hiking all over the site and took way too many pictures.
I was most impressed by the ampitheatre, as it was the first that we
know of so far. I was also surprised as how well many things were
preserved inside the buildings. Walking through the streets as the
residents once did really gives a humanistic aspect to the story.
However, I learned that they were all a bunch of upper class elites
with slaves, so that ruined the nostalgic side of it... :-) After
touring on the sun and heat we were exhausted so we stopped and got
pizza and fresh lemonade at a nearby cafe. I was blown away by our
pizza, by far the best I've ever had! We decided not to try
Herculaneum and headed back to Rome to get some sleep as we had to
make our way out to the port to catch our cruise in the morning...

Day 8: Setting sail on the Holland America Noordam
We were able to get moving and catch the right train to Civitivechia
on Friday morning. We decided to dave a few Euro and walked down to
the port from the train station. We then caught a shuttle bus out to
the ship. This being my first cruise, I was surprised by the size of
the ship up close. It really is like a floating city! Check in was a
breeze and we were quickly on the 9th deck eating. We toured the ship
and amenities while our room was being prepared, and then we crashed
for a little while in the room. Everythig on the ship is very nice
and clean, they do a fantastic job with maintanence. Riannan ended up
liking the bed so much she stayed in it for a nice long nap, while I
decided to check out the deparure party ok the pool deck. They had
live music and were charcoal grilling fresh steaks! So there I sat
enjoying my steak, salad, and mojito watching the land sink away into
the horizon. That night we dined on the casual option and then
proceeded to check out the bars, lounges, casino, and night club.
While a little cheesy, our favoritebso far is the Piano Bar where you
can gran a drink and sing along! We also got to enjoy some nice
clasical music by the on board string quartette.

Day 9: Life at sea...
Saturday was an "at sea" day as well as the first formal night on the
ship. They offer so far a lot of good programming which filled up our
day. We slept in and got a late breakfast after working out in the
gym. We then went to an art auction, had a nice lunch, hung out in
the wonderful "crows nest" to do some reading and journaling, dressed
up in our formal attire, enjoyed a nice four course meal for dinner,
got free champagne at the captain's toast, listened and danced to the
acoustic guitarist in the crows nest bar, sang along to Sinatra tunes
in the piano bar, danced out all our remaining energy in the night
club, and then crashed, hard.... :-)

While very different from how we usually travel, I'm greatly enjoying
the cruise experience so far, as long as I can ignore the typical
annoyingly ignorant cruise crowd... :-P

More to come!