Flight of the Navigator

I know some people were worried I would never finish these posts, but have no fear this is the last installment.

One of the best parts of our trip was our cruise. Our ship's name was The Royal Caribbean Navigator. (Which every time I heard made me think of The Flight of the Navigator, which I haven't seen in forever but loved as a child.)


The first day aboard we went down for our safety training, and I secretly nominated myself line leader of B7.


As you can see, I took my secretly nominated postion seriously and located the life preserver right away.


One of the delights of the cruise was the yummy meals and great company from our dinning guests from Wales. They were lovely.



The ship had a million things to do. We swam, read books at the library, and went to a lot of amazing shows. The first day we started the fun by playing some minature golf.


Then we did a little ice skating.


Next we played a little shuffle board.


However, my favorite recreational activity was laying on the deck just staring out into the beautiful water.


Of course, the wind was a little intense sometimes. There were a few nights that it had us wobbling around, and lucky for me it was a great little resistance trainer running on the track. However, most of the time when we felt the wind, we just had to throw up our arms and say, "Ahhhhhh."



After all of our adventures, we came back to our room to find delightful towel creatures. We liked them so much, we even took a class on how to make our own.


Then we would collapse onto our beds in exhaustion. As you can see we had a great room, but with no windows you'd be surprised at how long your body will just keep on sleeping.


In the end, we had nothing but smiles for The Navigator.

The Labyrinth

Legend says (although it depends on which legend you read) that King Minos built the Palace of Knossos as a labyrinth to house the Minotaur. He even imprisoned his architect Daedalus, so no one would find the way out of the labyrinth. Every nine years, he sent for seven Athenian boys and girls to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Finally, the Athenian king Aegean sent his son Theseus to slay the Minotaur. Theseus succeeded in killing the Minotaur and found his way out of the labyrinth with the ball of string given to him by Minos's daughter, who had fallen madly in love with him. (This is the part where my students either start to giggle or roll their eyes.) He hurriedly sailed home to tell his father of his victory. However, in his haste he forgot to change the sails on his ship. They were to remain black if he had been killed but changed to white if he succeed. King Aegean waited outside his towers scouring the sea for any sign of his son's ship. Unfortunately, when he saw the black sails, he was so grief stricken he flung himself into the sea. Legend says that sea is named after him-Aegean. Isn't mythology so fascinating?




Well with a legend like that how could we not visit the Palace. And so on a cloudy day, we hopped on a bus to the great Palace of Knossos. Just after purchasing our tickets, the rain began to pitter patter. We decided not to let it get our spirits down and began to explore.



The Palace of Knossos is on the island of Crete. It spans 5 acres and was reconstructed by Arthur Evans. These people were so amazing they had aqueducts to bring in water and pipes to take out the sewer. You may have noticed all of the bull pictures. Archaeologists believe they worshipped the bull, or perhaps the legend of the Minotaur really is true.



The Palace is huge and looking down in it, you can picture it being a maze.



The throne room of King Minos. Amazing frescoes on the walls.



If you look closely you can see a lady working on restoring the frescoes. Patience.



The young prince with lilies, or is it someone else? Unfortunately, much of the palace is a mystery, and we can only guess. However, I imagined royalty in this picture.

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We were wet, we were soaking, and we were having a wonderful time.



I don't know if you can tell how thoroughly soaked we truly were at this point. Every step was a squish of water pouring out of our shoes. However, as we waited for the bus back to the ship, we just couldn't help singing in the rain. This of course made quite a few of the umbrella carrying, poncho wearing passengers stare at us in wonder and craziness. However, nothing could dampen our spirits, because how many times in your life do you get to actually sing in the rain on the island of Crete? Unforgettable

Ephesus

Our journey in Turkey began in Ephesus. Ephesus is mind boggling. Only 15-20% of Ephesus has been excavated. I was stunned as we toured the ancient ruins, there were so many. It is suppose to be the largest collection of Roman ruins in the Mediterranean. I loved it.



They say this is where Nike got its swoosh.


The Library of Celsius once held over 12,000 scrolls. I would definitely go there to read.


The public toilets, awkward, yet amazing.


The road where Cleopatra and Mark Anthony came into Ephesus.
They say the people poured wine on the road, the very first red carpet.



The Great Theater where Paul preached. Wow! The theater seats 24,000 and is said to be the largest theater in the ancient world.


Out of nowhere came the gladiators. Just watching the show made me cringe. I don't know how people watched the real events


Next stop the town of Didyma (which means twin, referring to Apollo and Artems.) These are the ruins of the Temple of Apollo. Medusa helped keep evil away.



The Temple of Apollo was amazing. I don't know if you can see how huge these columns are, but they were humongous. 166 columns were built. They were 60 feet tall and 6 feet wide. People made the pilgrimage to the temple to receive guidance from the oracle.


The last part of the tour was a light lunch of authentic Turkish cuisine. When I say authentic, I mean authentic. I am doing my best to smile, but really my insides are churning. How does one eat a fish that is staring at them? I could not, and so at the urging of my friend, I put the lettuce over his little head. Then I dug in, the best you can dig in, knowing that the fish's eyes are under a piece of lettuce.
However, besides the fish situation I found Turkey delightful, and so I bought two boxes of Turkish delight for the kids hoping to bring some of that delight home.

It's All Greek to Me

Somehow this phrase never ceased to grow old in Greece. Every time we read a receipt, a street sign, or a billboard, it was always fun to say, "It's all Greek to me."

I must admit that Greek blood runs in my veins. My great grandfather came over from Greece. I grew up eating baklava, greek soup, writing to my greek cousin, and hearing stories about the wonderful Greeks. I had huge expectations for Athens, and it did not disappoint. In fact, I am already planning my return.



We visited the Panathenaic stadium built to honor the goddess Athena. It was built in 566 B.C. and redone in marble in 329 B.C. It is the only major stadium in the world built entirely of white marble. So cool! It also hosted the return to Olympic games in 1896. I once read about two runners who jumped over a fence to run at the Olympic Stadium in Greece. I'm not sure if it was in Olympia, or at the new stadium, but the thought of jumping did cross my mind. Can you imagine running where the ancient Greeks ran? So amazing. However, I was much to short to hop this fence, and those runners, well they were arrested.



Oh how I would have loved to see the old time Greek theatre with their elaborate masks and men playing all the parts. This theatre, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, was just down from the parthenon built in 161 A.D. seating 5,000 people. Amazingly, they still have events there. When I go back, I will definitely be attending.



Here I am holding the whole porch of madiens, from the Erechtheum in my little hand. The most fascinating and horrifying fact I learned was that they kept a snake in the temple and felt that it was an essential for the safety of the city. They fed it honey cakes, and if it refused to eat the cakes it was a bad omen. I think it was a bad omen to have a snake in there in the first place.



The beautiful view from the acropolis.



Finally, my favorite the Parthenon. It clearly states on my life list that the Parthenon is a must and it was well worth it. The temple of the goddess Athena is magnificent and an amazing symbol of the ancient Greek life.




Last of all I have to share the great Greek food. Gyros, real Greek salad and baklava. My mouth waters just thinking about it. Greece was definitely amazing!

Never go in Against a Sicilian When Death is on the Line

I never knew a lot about Sicily or Sicilians, except maybe a reference from The Princess Bride or that my grandfather charged up a hill there during WWII. However, I must tell I now know my life was missing something and that something was Sicily. Sicily was absolutely beautiful and those Sicilians, let me tell you, they have a lot of pride. They refer to themselves as Sicilians, before being Italians. (Kind of reminds me of Texans. :)

Our trip in Sicily began with a beautiful drive up the mountain to the quaint town of Taormina.


An amazing view from the town.


If there is one thing that I love, it is a good slushy. And let me tell you those Sicilians had the best slushies around. Delightful Granite, a yummy, lemon slushy.


Besides having a beautiful view and delicious treats, Sicily had a little spunk. We couldn't resist a photo with this guy.


Taormina also had a beautiful public garden donated from an English lady when she passed away. I would have loved to have spent a few days just strolling around here.


Looking down at this beautiful view made us want to experience the water below, and so we hopped on a cable car to the beach.


After wading in the water, I decided to carry my shoes to let my feet dry off. As I sat down to put on my shoes, I noticed tar all over my foot. (Okay, I know from the picture it doesn't look like much, but if you have ever had tar on you, you know any amount is too much. ) Somehow this didn't completely register to me and I tried wiping it off with my hand, which led to my hand filled with tar. I had not even a paper in my purse to get it off, so I walked along the street barefooted, until I found a bathroom. I rushed in (I know kinda gross with bare feet, but what do you do?) I got in there and found that this bathroom must have decided to go paperless, because there was not a single tissue paper or paper towel in sight. I finally gave up, pumped water out of the sink and just wiped the tar on my shoe, pants and sock. However, being filled with tar couldn't dampen my spirits, as you can see from our little cheerleading picture. Go Sicily!

Next stop: The land of my ancestors, Greece.

Rome if you want to, Rome Around the World

Every trip deserves a little theme song, and I could not think of a better one then the B52's Roam for our trip to Rome. That's right, read the title again and soon you will be a singing along.

After years of teaching about the Ancient Greeks, Romans, and artists and sculptors from the Renaissance. How could I in good conscience continue to teach the children without ever going there? And so, with only my students' best interests at heart, I took one for the team and took a little trip.

I met up with some friends in Rome where we navigated ourselves from our delightful apartment to our tourist destinations latching onto anyone who spoke English, dramatically gesturing with our hands, and cheering whenever we made it to our destination. However, we got better and soon were running around Rome like, well, tourists. But I think we did pretty well, and I soon learned to say excuse me in the correct form to close friends and acquaintances. Amazing, I know. You should hear my good morning and thank you.

Our little group outside the Colosseum

The Highlights:

The buildings, ruins, sculptures and paintings
Most of my time spent in Rome was taking pictures saying, "Wait till the kids see this one. Did you see that painting? The kids are going to love this one. Oh my goodness, this will go perfect when we talk about the gladiators." Yeah, pretty much I loved every minute of what we saw and learned about in Rome. If you are fascinated by it as well, let me know. I have 8 different pictures of just mosaic tiles. My class won't know what hit them when I come back with my slide show O'Roma.


Just outside of St. Peter's square you can stand in two countries at once. Vatican City and Italy. However, this isn't the spot. Although, we took this picture because we thought it was at first. However, I like this picture better than the real one, because it has a great shot of St. Peter's square, and I loved St. Peter's.


The Colosseum was amazing and mind boggling. The architecture is amazing, and the thought of 70,000 people watching people and animals fight to the death-mind boggling.

Food:




For some reason, pretty healthy people see no harm in eating gelato once or twice a day while in Rome. It's that good.


Eating yummy pizza outside the Pantheon was fabulous. And although it may appear that I am consuming two huge pizzas, the other is not mine. I had to draw the line somewhere. I mean how am I going to eat two things of gelato a day, if I eat two pizzas?

Fountains:
I was at a football game yesterday and noticed that I was a tad grouchy and unlike myself. Why, you may ask? I didn't have any water. I couldn't bring any into the game, and I was too cheap to buy any water at the game. Which brings me to another reason I loved Rome. FOUNTAINS!!!! Everywhere you turn in Rome there are the most beautiful fountains, and some that are not the most beautiful, but all provide you with fresh, delightful water. I never had to worry about not having water, because everywhere we turned there was another fountain to refill our water bottles. Heaven!



A free refill of heaven



The Trevi fountain-Beautiful! (3,000 euros are thrown into the Trevi fountain a day, and they use that money to help stock a supermarket for the needy. I like that.)



Getting ready to throw my coin-Rome I'm coming back.


Night:
There is something magical about night in a beautiful city, and even with the graffiti, I thought Rome was beautiful. All around us people leisurely strolled along the strikingly lit buildings and fountains. We sat on the Spanish Steps savoring our gelato, visiting, and taking in the city. Our last night I stared out on the beautiful city through our apartment's panoramic windows and just sighed. Magical.

At the Victor Emmanuel Monument-designed for the first king of a united Italy.


Next stop: Sicily (I thought I would wrap everything into one post, but there is just too much. Then I thought I would at least write about all of them at once, but I am just too fidgety tonight, and so the saga will continue.)