Mahón and Port Vendres

Mahón or Maó as its known in the local dialect, is the largest city and port of the sec­ond largest island (Minorca) of the Balearic Islands which are part of Spain. It is the sec­ond deep­est nat­ural har­bor in the world at 5km long and 900m wide, with very clear water.

The Carthagini­ans occu­pied the island in 205 BC and named the port after Mago Barca, the brother of Han­ni­bal. In the mid­dle ages Mahon was occu­pied by the Moors. In 1287 it cap­tured by Alfonso III of Aragon who estab­lished the King­dom of Majorca, a vas­sal state to the kingdom

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May 29th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: cruise, Europe, honeymoon, seabourn | Comments are closed

Barcelona

As we arrived in Spain (Barcelona to be more exact), Brandi’s voice decided to take its own vaca­tion, sim­i­lar to when it dis­a­peared before our wed­ding. It would not return until the end of the cruise. To say this was frus­trat­ing would be a huge under­state­ment. An inabil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate in any­thing but whis­pers — impos­si­ble in any crowded or pub­lic place. The other pas­sen­gers on the ship were vaguely sym­pa­thetic, but made lots of jokes about singing or talk­ing too much or Brian finally get­ting some peace and quiet for the first time in our mar­riage. Really it was

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May 26th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Category: Barcelona, cruise, Europe, honeymoon, Vacation | Comments are closed

Cannes and Sanary-sur-Mer

A quick note, if you are read­ing this on our blog and not in an email; if you click e pic­ture they get big and full resolution

The first expo­sure to France was land­ing at Cannes. It was hot, extremely muggy, full of peo­ple prepar­ing for the upcom­ing Cannes film fes­ti­val. Tourists all over the place, and the locals seemed annoyed at them already. In the fist pic­ture you can see the many tents along the harbour-front ready for the red carpet.

We walked around town, Strolling through the old parts of town and through the mar­ket streets taking

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May 21st, 2012 | Tags: , , , , | Category: cruise, Europe, France, seabourn, Vacation | Comments are closed

Portoferraio and Porto Venere

The two Ital­ian ports on our trip are the two lit­tle fish­ing towns of Porto­fer­raio and Porto Venere. The fact that they are both small, Ital­ian and based around the fish­ing indus­try is where the sim­i­lar­i­ties end, the two towns are quite dif­fer­ent in feel and energy.

Porto­fer­raio is a town in the ital­ian province of Livorno, on the edge of the epony­mous har­bor of the island of Elba and is the island’s largest city. Because of its ter­rain, many of its build­ings are sit­u­ated on the slopes of a tiny hill sur­rounded on three sides by the sea. In

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May 18th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: Europe, Italy, seabourn, Vacation | One comment - (Comments are closed)

Cruise Day 1 - Embarkation

From the moment we entered the lit­tle air con­di­tioned build­ing in the port town of Civ­i­tavec­chia, it was clear we were about to expe­ri­ence a com­pletely new kind of travel. We were greeted with smiles by peo­ple in sharp uni­forms and crisp white gloves. They con­firmed the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of our last name, dis­cussed dietary requests, and every spo­ken syl­la­ble was warm and wel­com­ing. We had already dropped off our back­packs, we just had my purse and Brian’s cam­era bag on us — even then, they offered to carry them for us onto the ship. We were escorted onto the ship,

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May 18th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Europe, Italy, Vacation | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 
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