We departed the ship in Civitavecchia at 8:15. We found disembarking to be very easy — it’s one of the benefits of passengers rolling on and off the manifest at most of the ports-of-call. You simply don’t have the mad crush of an entire ship disgorging itself all at once.

We met our driver at 8:25 for the trip to the airport (€150), which took about an hour.

Check-in had a little bit of a queue at British Airways, but it wasn’t too annoying despite my lack of status with the airline. All told, we had to waste about two hours before our scheduled boarding time.

Unfortunately, once we’d boarded the plane, we sat on the tarmac for nearly an hour while they struggled to load and unload the luggage. It seemed they were mysteriously short-handed in the baggage handling department?

The flight was otherwise uneventful, and I managed (finally — they’ve been out on other BA flights) to enjoy one of BrewDog’s Speedbird 100 Transatlantic IPAs (brewed to commemorate the centennial of BA and named, of course, for Concorde).

We were about 45 minutes late into London as a result of the baggage snafu, which further delayed our arrival at our hotel due to increased traffic during rush hour. Nonetheless, we made it to our (very small, otherwise fine) rooms at the Hotel Xenia by around 5:45.

After dropping off our baggage, we left for dinner at The Bolton, a nearby pub with excellent food and beer.

Mom and Emerson had burgers (British beef/cheddar and wild boar/chorizo, respectively). Libby enjoyed the bangers and mash, and I went for a traditional steak and cheese pie:

All in all, this made for a nice “welcome to London” end to our day.

We left the ship around 8:30, took a shuttle bus out of the port, and then a taxi (€15 euro, maybe a rip off?) from the cruise terminal to the train station, which saved us a 30 minute, uphill walk.

Once at the train station, I bought us Cinque Terre Train Cards, which included unlimited train transport, bathrooms, WiFi, and use of the trails within the Cinque Terre National Park. This was €58 euro for the four of us (including a book) — which was about the cost of a single “on your own” excursion organized by the ship. Of course, it put the burden on us to “figure things out,” but that was no problemo to me. The trains just run in two directions and the villages are only a few minutes apart.

We opted to take start at the most distant village and work our way back, which minimized our return travel time (in case… whatever happened).

The train journey isn’t very scenic. Most of your time is spent in tunnels. Indeed, you only get brief views of the villages and seaside at the stations themselves… assuming you didn’t stop in a tunnel there too!

Our first stop was at Monterosso al Mare, which is the flattest of the villages and seemed to have the most beach / coastline too.

Next we moved on to Vernazza with its attractive natural harbor:

We then skipped Cornilgia in the interest of time, as the trains run every 30 min or so. Thus, one wants to be judicious about hops on and off lest you waste a lot of time in the stations.

Instead, we moved on to Manarola, where we enjoyed a lovely fried calamari and potato lunch while walking around the village and along the cliff side walkway:

Or, final stop was in Riomaggiore for a look around (and some dessert — always good to have a traveling feast):

We then boarded one of the trains for our quick trip back to La Spezia. Since we had enough time remaining before our ship was scheduled to depart, we ambled down through the town and along the water front to the cruise terminal. Like Genoa, this feels like a real, “lived in” place too. It doesn’t get a lot of attention from the guidebooks, but we thought it was a perfectly nice town and could have happily spent more time exploring it.

I really like days like today when we see lots of new things and I get to put my travel skills to good use. That’s always especially fun… savoring both the place and my small victories as a traveler of the world.

We grabbed a quick dinner at the buffet and otherwise spent the rest of the evening getting ready to depart the ship in the morning.

Work continued to be a source of interruption and frustration for me, as it’s been for most days of this trip. I’m planning to avoid that in the future, if at all possible, as I’m gone a lot for work anyway so would rather be fully present when I am with Libby and Emerson.

Genoa has a storied history as a major port city — arriving via ship seemed very apropos. It feels “lived in,” which I mean in a nice way. I like the contrast between its narrow medieval lanes and grand piazzas.

Unfortunately, being a Monday the city’s museums were closed. Alas, this is one of the challenges of cruising: arriving in port for a one day visit that doesn’t align with local happenings.

We did, however, make limoncello out of our lemons by enjoying a gourmet pizza lunch at Savo — top quality ingredients, made with care. Just my kind of place:

We spent a bit more time wandering around the old port area (which had been revitalized) before returning to the ship.

For dinner, we ate at the ship’s teppanyaki restaurant, which was one of the best teppanyaki meals I’ve ever had in terms of both flavor and the show (which was participatory). Here’s Emerson trying to flip an egg on a spatula:

The waterfront of the historic city center is very attractive:

The Fesch Museum was mercifully uncrowded and contained a number of high quality works by artists both familiar and unfamiliar to me.

Maison Bonaparte was a bit less exciting in part because the explanations were entirely in French and also the smaller space was a bit more crowded with tourists. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see (though not Angelina Jolie’s handprints in concrete in Cannes interesting).

The other major sight, the town’s Cathedral, was closed. So, we returned to the waterfront and enjoyed some ice cream and drinks at one of the restaurants that were open on the quay:

Today’s Box Score: +1 Country (Corsica)

We started by taking a taxi to Parq Guell. Unfortunately, no tickets were available for the day (despite arriving at 9am!). Oh well. From there we walked to Sagrada Familia. Guess what? No tickets available there either. Oh well. We’ve visited that before too.

We then walked to the Eixample where we viewed a number of the Modernista masterpieces.

We then spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon exploring this area and the Gothic Quarter, which is quite evocative with its narrow alleys and warren-like feel.

We then crossed Las Ramblas to have lunch at Guell Tapas in El Raval. Here’s Libby enjoying a delicious cava (sparkling wine) sangria:

Lunch was equally good.

I think we could eat tapas every day for a month and remain happy perfectly happy.

We returned to the ship by 3:00 and had dinner in the ship’s Pan-Asian restaurant by Roy Yamaguchi. I had sushi, which was great. Emerson and Mom also seemed to enjoy their dinner, but Libby didn’t love her dishes (having tried them, I tended to agree they were kind of “meh” at best).

We returned to the cabin to find that they has delivered two chocolate ships models to us (another–slightly bizarre–perk of our status).

We docked in Mallorca and departed the ship around 1:30pm. It’s a bit of a walk along the waterfront from the cruise terminal to the historical city center, but it was a pleasant enough stroll. I especially enjoyed looking at the various boats and yachts, which always puts in the mood to buy one (not that that’s a good or wise thing).

Mallorca is surprisingly lovely. I say that for no particular reason. I mostly just thought of it as a holiday spot for Brits. Thus, we came with no real preconceived notions or expectations, which is usually a good setup to like a spot.

We visited Palma’s cathedral, the Royal Palace della Almundaina, the Palau March (which was something of an eclectic art museum with an especially alluring and elaborate nativity scene on display), and the Museu Fundación Juan March (which housed modern and contemporary paintings).

We then enjoyed a lovely dinner of Spanish tapas at one of the local restaurants, called Tast, in town. The food was excellent!

After dinner, we walked around Palma a little more to soak up the atmosphere and then took a taxi back to the ship (which cost only 6€ one way for all of us vs. 12€ per person round trip with the ship’s shuttle bus!).

Today’s box score: +1 country — Mallorca (Spain)

Having been to this part of the world a few times, we didn’t feel especially rushed to take the first tender ashore (though we had priority tickets) nor did we feel the need to rush out of town to places like Nice or Monaco (been there, done that).

Nope, we decided to spend a leisurely day in Cannes itself, exploring the seaside town and enjoying a nice lunch.

The waterfront is swoon-worthy in terms of its beauty and its yachts.

Like this Azimut:

The location of its famous film festival is a bit less visually attractive:

The road along the beachfront is lined with luxury hotels and shops, as well as chic and expensive bars and restaurants overlooking the bay. I guess if you’re going to spend $35-40 to eat a hamburger this isn’t a bad spot in which to do it.

For our part, however, we found a nice wine bar that was a few blocks inland that was quite enjoyable for eating a a cheese and charcuterie plate washed down by a nice glass of a dry Provençal rose.

In the mid-afternoon, we walked up to the oldest part of town for sweeping views of the city and bay:

Back aboard ship, we enjoyed dinner at the Butcher’s Cut, which is Seaview’s speciality steak restaurant. Libby and I ate for free as one of our Voyager’s Club Black level membership benefits. The dining experience was otherwise $39/pp. for a three course meal with additional charges for various “upgrades” and/or the option to pay even more to order entirely a la carte.

Truthfully, speciality dining aboard ships had become increasingly expensive. While it’s often far superior to the included fare, I find it increasingly to be less good value for money. But, we can afford it and enjoy it… so c’est la vie, I suppose.

Note: I’ve noticed the images and text of some of my prior posts are kind of, to used the technical term, “screwed up.” As I’m already behind by many days in my posts and am working off of only an iPhone — I’ll have to fix these issues later. Apologies to my loyal readers… all 3, maybe 4, of you.

Today was our final (partial) day in Rome.

Since we only had the morning available and had already visited most of the major sights (and St. Peter’s was a non-starter for the morning due to the Pope’s audience), we opted to visit something a little less on the usual tourist path: Villa Farnesina.

It also had the advantage of being only about a 30 minute walk away along the banks of the Tiber. The villa is most well known for its frescoes, including those by Raphael.

Following our visit, we returned to the hotel, grabbed our luggage, and departed for Civitavecchia around 1:00pm. It’s a little over an hour from Rome go the port and costs about 150 euro (for a mini van sized transport; it’s a bit cheaper if you just need a sedan).

Our cruise is aboard MSC Seaview, which is an entirely new cruise line and ship for us.

First impression: all seemed fine, though a bit “unorthodox,” to us. The boarding process was efficient yet “quirky. ” What do I mean? It’s difficult to say exactly (as the ship is nice and new, the crew friendly, etc.), but MSC is just a “bit different” as a European/Italian cruise line compared to what we’re used to from their American competitors. For instance, children (with permission) are allowed to check themselves out of the kids’ club at a much younger age. Likewise, food selections and eating venue times seem to appeal more to European tastes. Drinks too are handled in a more European way (i.e., you’re more likely to be paying for coffee and water in dining venues).

One of the stranger aspects of this MSC cruise (which seems to be a feature of many of them) is that you can start/end your cruise from numerous ports. So, we started in Rome. But other folks will come and go in other ports, including Cannes, Barcelona, etc.

We’d only experienced something like this once before in Alaska, which could either be a 14 day round-trip or a 7 day northbound or southbound journey (as it was for us). This just makes for a different vibe on a cruise, as there’s no clear beginning or end as a collective.

We had dinner in the Main Dining Room on the first night. The food and service were fine to good: nothing especially memorable (good or bad).

Since MSC matched our elite status with other cruise lines, we’ve moved to their top-tier loyalty level (Black Card) immediately. This gave us a welcome aboard bottle of sparkling wine and chocolate-covered strawberries.

Our balcony cabin (#12104) is nice and new with some thoughtful touches, though I’d like more contrast between the furniture and the carpet and a bit more storage space.

Arguably the best part of this cruise is the itinerary, which features a port of call on every single day. That’s highly unusual and very efficient in terms of using vacation time for sightseeing well. Of course, it also means no real downtime either, which might be as much of a “bug” as a “feature” at the moment for me.

• Dinner last night was very good at Canaletto — the pasta course being especially superb, particularly the pan fried gnocchi with short-ribs
• Adrian, our cabin steward, is a wiz at folding towel animals. He made a point of especially inviting us to a demonstration today, and he seemed to be genuinely moved that we showed up for his event (he was one of two stewards hosting the show). He even invited Emerson by name onto the stage to help him fold an animal.

Meet “George” — Emerson’s towel animal creation…

Indeed, I sat smugly at breakfast this morning talking about how I wasn’t even sure if a partial transit really counted for a Panama Canal transit for someone wanting to scratch it off their bucket list. (For the record, I’m still not sure, but I’ll go with “why not” if pressed.) While others scouted out prime spots on deck long before our arrival at the first lock, I munched on one of HAL’s sublime bran muffins confident in my superiority. Yet, as we finished breakfast and approached this wonder of the modern world, I couldn’t help but find myself a bit excited by the prospect of experiencing it firsthand.

Of course, by this time the bow of the ship was positively crammed with fellow passengers.

Undeterred, we watched closely the movement of ships ahead of us and exiting the canal in the other direction. For those that don’t know, the locks of the Panama Canal work like a kind of escalator for ships: the lock gates open, a ship enters, the water level rises/falls to match the water level in the direction of travel, the opposite gates open, and then the ships moves on. That’s how all canal locks work. Of course, the Panama Canal does this on a grand scale (and even a grander scale for the new locks, which support ships considerably larger than the historical Panamax size).

To get a private, front- (well, back-) row seat, we returned to our aft-facing balcony cabin on the stern of the Zuiderdam.

Entering the first of the Gatun Locks…

This provided an unobstructed view of the operation of the lock gates behind us.

In the second lock, watching the water rise…

After making our way through all three of the Gatun Locks, the ship stopped in Gatun Lake and disembarked passengers (including us) going on excursions in Panama. Our plan for the day? An ecological adventure on the man-made Gatun Lake in search of native wildlife, especially monkeys.

Unfortunately, it was a bit rainy (that’s our ship on the lake!)…

Zuiderdam on Gatun Lake

But, hey, it’s the rainforest! This is part of the adventure! Besides, we took a lot of sea-spray from the boat on the river anyway.

Being at water level on the Panama Canal really changes one’s perspective. It allowed us to better examine the topography of the land and imagine the islands of today as the hills of a bit more than a century ago.

Boating along Gatun Lake…

We did manage to see some monkeys (though the photos are much better on my SLR — I’ll have to upload those later).

Following our two-hour boat tour, we all were thoroughly soaked for our return to Colon, where our ship was awaiting us. It had transited the Gatun Locks in the opposite direction while we were on tour. Needless to say, our shipmates were all keen to get out of their wet clothes and warm up. As such, nobody had a desire to explore Colon on our arrival there, which was a good thing as Colon has a bad reputation (not a place to wander outside of the port gates).

Indeed, I have to say the town looked fairly rundown and rather seedy. This was one of the nicer streets:

Colon, Panama

All in all, we had a fun day… I like a mild adventure and sense of slight discomfort sometimes when traveling (which isn’t especially easy to do on a cruise). It makes me feel a bit more alive.

Today’s box score: +1 country (Panama)