The final stop on our trip was Paris. We traveled on the overnight train from Venice and arrived in Paris around 9am, just in time to head to our second segway tour of the trip. This was a shorter tour, only about 4 hours but just as much fun as our tour in Rome. We went past the major highlights including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the military academy and other museums and scenic spots.  We even saw a movie being filmed in the middle of one intersection, and were able to stop for a couple minutes to watch.  Our lunch stop was at the little outdoor cafe outside the Louvre, which was really nice.  Our tour guide ate for free, a pretty good incentive to bring...

The last stop on our cruise, and probably the one I'd been most looking forward to, was Venice.  I've always wanted to visit Venice and I'm not really sure why, other than I always thought it sounded very romantic.  Venice was all I was hoping for and more, I thoroughly enjoyed our time there.  We had almost two days there, as we spent our last official cruise day there, stayed on the ship overnight and debarked in Venice the next morning, with all day to enjoy the city some more before catching our train to Paris. Our first day we just spent exploring, and doing our best to get lost, which, apparently, is what you're supposed to do in Venice. It wasn't too har...

We're a little behind with the last few vacation posts, but we'll get them up.  :-) Our second last stop on the cruise was Split, Croatia.  The old town here was once Diocletian's Palace. He was a Roman emperor who built the palace for his retirement. People eventually moved inside the palace walls for safety and it became the town. When we walked in the main entrance, we were greeted by a long hallway lined on both sides with little stalls selling all kinds of jewellery, crafts, books and other things. Partway down the hall there are two more large hallways, each leading to sections of the palace that can be explored. We went exploring. The palace was a h...

More pleasant surprises on our visit to Corfu today. A theme we've noticed on almost all our ports of call has been the narrow twisting streets full of shops and restaurants, but nothing on the scale of Old Town Corfu. So easy to get lost and huge. Shops ranged from the touristy crap to local motor repair shops and everything in between. There must have been several thousand shops. If you have Corfu on a ship's itinerary, this is the one to do your shopping in.  Besides that, there are two old fortresses to be explored, horse drawn carriages, scooters to rent, boats to tour in, etc.. The island of Corfu is huge and somewhat mountainous. We didn't explore outside ...

We've spent two days in Venice, and both absolutely loved it. I'm typing this on my phone so it will be a short post but we'll post the details on Croatia and Venice when we get to Paris. We had a pretty full two days, and Venice was everything I expected and more. We've already decided this is a place we want to come back to and spend more time. We're just killing the last couple hours at a cafe right now, then we board the night train to Paris where we'll spend three days before heading back home to reality....

In Katakolon, the main attraction is Olympia, the site of the original Olympics. We had planned to visit it, but after having seen the amazing ruins at Ephesus and Pompeii, we both thought it might be fairly underwhelming, so decided against it. Other than the ruins, there is just a small touristy port town, pretty much just a couple streets with shops selling the same souvenirs as all the other shops. Our ship came right into port, and the town was right there, so it was easy to walk on and off the ship. We wandered up and down the streets, walked out to the end of another dock and had a look at the little fishing boats that were moored there, and then found a ca...