Sailing and Naps and Supper

Venice from the ship


The last post left us thinking about naps and N did indeed take that opportunity. I decided to explore the ship. I WALKED up 6 flights of stairs and then elevatored down. I checked out the buffet areas and found the internet cafe area. (more about that later)

Back to the room, I cleaned up a little for supper, then woke N at 6 to go outside and see the ship pull away from Venice. To this point all we have seen of Venice is the rather industralized area wshere folks get on the ships. Not the historic disstrict. We watched and took pictures and talked to folks standing around. Not sure what we saw (as far as famous landmarks) but it was interesting. Lots of canals- couldn’t help wondering how their mosquito problem is.






When we were finally “out to sea”, we went down to our dining room.


The Coulette tour folks have tables together and we sat with 2 couples from Penn. One of the gentlemen knew where Brownwood is because he was an asst. coact for one of the women’s basketball teams who came to Bwd last year to play the Lady Jackets when they won their division of the NCAA last year. He remembered L Underwood greeting them in the parking lot, before they ate one evening. They also took a chartered plane out of the Bwd airport when they left. Three of the four folks from Penn were retired high school teachers, so we had much to talk about. And one couple has a daughter who is expecting a baby in August. Small world. N’s “thing” during these evening meals on tour is to walk around and take video of everyone. He shares these films with all our group later.

Changed $ to Euro at the casino (more about this later J & G)

N bought a comb and looked for some Febrese (sp?) which he usually brings, but it is still on his shelf at home.

We looked at the Internet area and declared it fairly useless for my blog project. I was planning to download each blog to a thumb drive and take it to the internet area, then download to the computers there. NOPE, not gonna happen--no USB port for the thumb drive. The sole purpose of these stations is to check and send e-mail, which I will do at 1 Euro for every 2 minutes. You do the math.-- 30 Euro per hour. We are taking the thumb drive with downloaded blogs on our side trips, hoping we’ll come across a REAL internet cafe for downloading. So, we’ll see.

We returned to the room to re-charge the cameras and had a horrifying discovery--the video camera was lost. We back tracked to the internet area, NOT THERE, we went to the casino, NOT THERE. Went to the store where he got the comb--YES! They were holding it for us. YEAH!!!

In trying to look for the video camera, we came across a difficulty w/ the ship that we had been told about. There are only certain decks (floors) that allow a person to go from the front to back. Other decks are “you can’t get there from here” areas. The “through” decks are 1,2,5,6,9--the places where we were looking in were on 4, so we had to go up to 5 and across and down. Will take some getting used to. One of the tricks will be remembering which floors do allow “through” passage.

It’s 8 am--I’ve been up and showered for awhile, N is up and showered and we’re ready to go experience morning (breakfast) on the ship. Hope to find a place to download today---If not, we’ll get this sent in the next few days. I do plan to send an e-mail explaining that posts may not show up every day.


We “did” the breakfast buffet. Think Las Vegas trough buffet. About 6 separate lines with eggs, pastries, meat, cheese, fruit, cereal. The coffee, tea, juice, milk area is separate and a little more tricky—anyone out there read Italian. I have discovered that it is similar to Spanish, but is definitely not Spanish.

Since our tour leaves at 11:45, we decided to do a large breakfast and to skip lunch. I’m sure we’ll have 7 courses for supper again today. By the way—those courses are 1. Appetizer, 2. soup, 3. pasta, 4. salad, 5. entrée, 6. Cheese, 7. Dessert

We walked thru the Casino—tokens are needed, the machines don’t take coins. Got $5 worth of “quarters” and lost it all. The strange thing about the casino is that children were playing without parents. The casino is noisy, obnoxious with loudness—bonging, raucous music and some machines even quacked like ducks—loudly. I don’t even need to mention the smoking. It seems like EVERYONE on this ship smokes, so there are very few non-smoking areas.

More later.