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

15 Days remain

With only 15 days remain­ing before our vaca­tion (Inter­na­tional edi­tion) we are get­ting very excited for our trip!

The sense of excite­ment and pure panic are col­lid­ing and result­ing in a flurry of “how much work can I get done”, “how much stuff do we need to buy”, “what’s going on with these cats for a month”, “OMG, we don’t have a cat sit­ter any more!” and so on.

We will be gone for most of the month of May as we fly from Cal­gary to Rome, hop aboard a cruise for 10 days and then hack around France and

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April 22nd, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: cruise, Europe, seabourn, Uncategorized, Vacation | Comments are closed