Pirates parade.

This is what we do when the ship gets boring. Smooth sailing!

Nov 5 Cartagena, Spain

Cartagena is a clean, pleasant port town in SE Spain with a broad promenade. We bought brandy and sangria to pour into Hal's bottles to sneak onto the ship. Caught up on Internet at local Burger King. We watched a movie on ship, "Joyful Noise" with Dolly Pardon. Getting ready for slow day at sea tomorrow off the coast of Morocco.qq

Nov. 4 Palm de Mallorca, Spain

Lots and lots of boats as we walked an hour each way to city center and the cathedral. I got to use a wifi to catch up on news including 60 emails and 2 updates to blog. Really liked the single person car pictured. Got a box of delicious Sangria for 1.05 euro. Snuck it on the ship by putting it into Hal's water bottle . really hot todayq

Nov. 3, Ajaccio, Corsica , French

People speak French and I am surprised that I can still read signs and follow normal conversation. I could not help it and bought a baguette that the baker had to pull out of the oven for me. Heaven.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born and spent his childhood in Ajaccio, Corsica so there are lots of statutes around here. It is a cute village with a farmers market on Saturday. We tasted the local cheese . We walked the town for 4.5 hours.

Tonight was the first formal dinner with escargots and f r we champagne,,,,,Hal had 4 glasses. We went to the soul singers entertainment tonight.....and got our BEST Ever score on spider!!!

Wifi on board is slow and costs 65 cents a minute, so I will be looking for a place in Palma, Mallorca tomorrow .

Nov.2, Civitavecchia, Italy & ship

It is always difficult to say goodbye to Leslie. David was wonderfully strong to take us via bus with all our luggage to the train station. We took hour train for $6 to port to catch our Royal Caribbean cruise on Mariner of the Seas. It was not too long a walk from train to ship's shuttle.

Started eating right away...so much that I got sick after both meals. The center of the ship is a huge shopping mall. Our cabin even has a couch...and comfortable for all of our stuff. We get CNN on TV so will monitor the election results.

The first show was polish balancing act and acrobatics. Nobody else showed up at our table for 8, so we have not met many people yet. We got 16 days, so that's okay.

Day in Roma

David runs in this park above the city.

Elisabetta

Elisabetta, the best Italian friend in the whole world. She was from Siena and lives in Tuscany with and near her two kids who helped us navigate Florence, Pisa, Lucca and a 2 day trip in Tuscany later.

We met on an airplane in 1969 and have been in contact several times since then. She cooks wonderfully and just finished her cookbook that we will help try to get published for you to read the history and secrets of her traditional cooking.

She will come to visit next autumn so we can show her the fabulous sites in San Francisco...

You can follow our trip at our travel blog: Http://travelingyoungs.blogspot.com