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 groups there!  While we were eating, our guide told us about the “secret” way to get into the Louvre, an alternate entrance that not a lot of people know about so there aren’t any line-ups.

After the tour, we jumped on the train and headed over to our hotel, which was right by a train station which made getting around Paris really easy.  We spent the rest of the day just wandering around (Alpha even found the restaurant where we had dinner the last time we were in Paris, no idea how he remembered) and picking up a few things that we needed. We picked a different spot for dinner this time, and sat facing the sidewalk so we could people-watch while we ate.

On our second day in Paris, our original plan was to go to the catacombs in the morning and the Louvre in the afternoon.  When we got to the catacombs, we found a line that pretty much wound right around the block, so we decided to skip it as neither of us wanted to spend two or more hours in line.  If we ever go back to Paris, we will definitely book tickets in advance for that one.

Since the catacombs were off the list, we headed to the Louvre next, and had much better luck there.  We found the entrance our guide told us about, and sure enough we sailed right in with no line-up at all. The museum itself was absolutely amazing, and even the building was work of art, never mind the artwork inside it. In the basement were the old city walls, which was pretty neat to see.  From there we headed to the Egyptian section, which was amazing, although somewhat unfortunate that all those treasures have been removed from Egypt. There was everything from sphinxes (Alpha even found his twin) to mummies to mummified cats to pottery collections. I think the thing that both fascinated and wigged me out the most was the individually wrapped fingers on one of the mummies; for some reason that really nailed home the fact that it once was a living, breathing person inside all the bandages.

From the Egyptian section, we moved on to the Greek and Roman sections, and then some of the other artwork areas. The sheer quantity of artwork in that place is unbelievable, and the subject of many of the paintings got to be somewhat comical after a while. For a certain period in history, artists seemed to be putting bare breasts into every picture, no matter how inappropriate the topic.  War scene; lion mauling baby; you name it and there was a bare breast somewhere in the picture. We went back to the same little outdoor cafe for lunch, and then headed back in to see more artwork. I even saw the Mona Lisa, but only from a distance as there was a huge crowd of people around it.

That evening we wandered down by the Eiffel Tower a bit, checked out the line-ups to see what we’d be dealing with, and then had dinner at a restaurant right on the water, and got to see the tower twinkling. Dinner was pretty good, except for our appetizer was rather unappetizing. We ordered tapas, and ended up getting 5 sardines laid out in a nice neat row, heads and all, and unbelievable stench.  We had to send them back, it was hard to imagine anyone looking at them and wanting to pop them in their mouth but I guess some people do.

Day three was the Eiffel Tower, which was extremely packed, but well worth it. We waited in line about 45 minutes or so, which wasn’t too bad, then headed up to the first level, had a look and headed up to the top.  On the way up to the first level, we were right at the outside of the elevator, and both of us were a little wigged out on the trip up, as the ground got further and further away. By the time we got there, I was ok but I think Alpha was still a bit nervous. Heading up to the top didn’t seem as bad, although it was really packed up there.  We walked all around the circle, and it was pretty neat to see the city from that height.  Once we were done up at the top, we headed back down to the first level and had a tasty lunch at the restaurant there, then headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags and start our journey home.

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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 hard to do, given all the tiny little alleys we found, but we always seemed to find our way back to a main waterway.  If you’ve never been to Venice, it is such a unique city with canals instead of streets, and everything cars and trucks do here, boats do there. They have boats for cars, buses, taxis, delivery trucks, you name it.  The only way to get around the city is by boat or by foot, so we did a little of both.

Boating in Venice was just as crazy as driving in Rome or Naples.  There are boats everywhere, and no apparent organization to how they navigate in the wider canals, several times it looked as though a boat was on a collision course with us, but we always managed to avoid a crash. It was pretty entertaining, but a bit nerve wracking at times too.

The evening of the first day, we found a little cafe beside the water fairly close to San Marco Square, where we could just sit and people watch. One thing I noticed was there was a fair number of nuns out walking during the evening, that must be when they get out for some exercise.  Understandable, given that their clothing is probably pretty hot.

Some of you know we got married in Las Vegas, and on our wedding evening, we had dinner at the Venetian and went for a gondola ride in the hotel.  I told Alpha that if we ever went to Venice we had to have a gondola ride, so on our second day that was the first order of business (after coffee of course!). The ride was fairly expensive, and we’ re not sure that it was actually as long as advertised, but to me it was worth every penny. I love the feeling of being in a boat, and it was so cool to be in Venice, with the gondolier steering us around, telling us about some of the homes and landmarks.  A couple highlights from the tour were the house where Mozart lived as a young boy, and the hotel that was used in the movie “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, which we had just watched not too long before. At one point we ended up in a bit of a gondola traffic jam, but for most of our ride there weren’t too many other gondolas around. Some of the canals we went through were fairly narrow, with just inches to spare on the side in some cases.  But our driver was pretty skilled (not sure how long they have to train for the job) and we never hit.

After the gondola ride, we explored a bit more, then decided to head over to Murano Island, which is famous for its glass. We hopped on the bus again (our tickets from earlier were still working) and got another great sightseeing ride on the trip over.  If you’re looking for anything but glass souvenirs on Murano Island, you’re going to be very disappointed.  The little streets are lined with lots of little unique shops, each and every one selling some type of glass.  Many of the stores we went in had absolutely amazing works of art on display, from sculptures to bowls to amazingly intricate and detailed chandeliers. My mission on the island was to find a pair of earrings, and after going in a few shops I found a funky pair with little blown glass balls.

The trip back to Venice was a bit of an adventure, as we discovered that our bus tickets had expired, and there were no ticket dispensers on the island.  There was a sign saying that if you told the bus operator when you got on the bus that you had no ticket, you could just pay the regular fare and not be fined. Which is what we did and all was going well until we realized we didn’t even have enough cash left in our pockets to pay for the bus ticket.  We did a bit of squirming and apologizing (ok a lot of squirming) and the operator said we could just go to a ticket booth when we got back, and then I remembered that Alpha had tucked a 50 euro bill inside his tilley hat for just such an emergency, so we were able to save face a little by paying for the ticket before we got back.

We had a bit of time to kill before catching our overnight train to Paris, so we sat down and had a drink, then I bought one of the giant pink meringues that I had been drooling over all day.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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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 huge honeycomb of rooms, and it was so neat to wander from one to the next.  In some rooms there were stone bathtubs or benches. Here and there, there were stone carvings and artifacts on display, that must have once been part of the decorations in the palace. Some of the rooms were closed off; it looked like the walls were starting to crumble and they were being shored up. We spent quite a bit of time exploring, and even found a couple places where the rooms opened out to a courtyard, and then back into more rooms.

Afterwards, we left the palace itself and went out into the walled town, wandered a bit and eventually came outside the walls into a huge market where there was all kinds of fruit (some of which we’d never seen before), fish and other foods for sale. Beyond the fruit stalls, there were more stalls selling clothing, purses, leather goods and other wares.

Our lunch was at a “Facebook” Cafe, a little restaurant with free wifi that advertised Facebook parties, not sure exactly what that is. After lunch we did a bit more wandering around, bought a couple souvenirs and then back to the nice cool air conditioned ship.

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 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 the town today as it’s a short visit, but if you were here for a while, there are some beautiful seascapes to be seen and plenty to explore. The harbour of Corfu is completely sheltered, so it’s a great place to sail as well. A week here would be nice.

 Saw a few more kitties. One didn’t let me pet him. <snif>.

 The ship docked along the flight path for the airport so there were ships landing right over our ship all day. I’ll try and take some video and upload it a bit later.

 There were old abandoned, 6 story brick buildings, right in the middle of all the occupied buildings. Just left to crumble, it’s a weird thing to see and there was a lot of that here.

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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.