TheHobbys

btw - if anyone is interested and traveling into Rome ... I would highly recommend using Rome Cabs. My dad recommended using them from their trip a few years back. It was only $175 euro's to get from Rome to the cruise port and the same to get back to the Leonardo Div. airport. We booked reservations about a month before the cruise. There was no payment due and we just paid the driver once they showed up, we did tip both drivers but it is not required. Both drivers were on time, courteous and got all our bags and us loaded and to our destination. Stefano’s RomeCabs | Website: www.RomeCabs.com Normally, I wouldn't post stuff like this - but have to say, it was very nice to have our own dedicated cab/driver and not have to wait in line or flag down someone who may not have been as affordable. Just a piece of mind to have this part booked.

Glad you enjoyed the blog. The app actually worked pretty good. We did have to set our phones to roaming and in airplane mode while on the ship. We were able to turn notifications on for the app in order for us to text each other. The calendar was for the most part up to date. There were a few cases where we had JJ in the DL make a reservation for us that didn't show, but we knew what time we had for dinner in the Solarium. The weeks leading up to the cruise, some of our bookings / shows / dinner would be in there but it seemed to only be one whoever reserved it. So, there was a few where my wife booked stuff that I couldn't see on my linked calendar - but it seemed to work better than our last cruise in 2019. The other thing to watch for ... since we had two balconies, we had to make Giovanni's reservation for both rooms at the same time. However, because it was two rooms - they thought it would be two separate tables with two people each ... not a reservation for four. Make sure to swing by the restaurant, if that's your case, and have them combine the reservations into a single with everyone at the same table. It worked out for us, since we ate at like 5:30 before the big crowd of reservations kicked in.

That first picture was our view from the balcony. The cone of food was fried crab but there wasn't much crab in them.

Here's some pictures from La Spezia

I totally spaced on my blogs - sorry about that. I think there were times I was blogging in my head knowing I needed to sit down and write it out, but then the vacation brain took over. I think I covered everything, but if ya'll see I missed something just let me know and I'll dig around in my virtual notes about that day.

Day 14 .. last day at La Spezia. This is the stop where you could go get on a train and head over to see the leaning tower of piza. But, honestly after we looked at the whole trip we couldn't really find much else to see our do after that. Thus, we decided on doing something else. Our diamond lounge host, JJ, had highly recommended taking a ferry over to see the little villages of Chique Terre. Or something like that. The idea was to take the ferry around to see each little village then around the 5th stop hop of and then take the train back. I was expecting about 100euro for the four of us, but guess prices went up and it was more like 160. All good though. I have to say it was hard getting going. Especially getting the kids up and moving. There were a few conversations about how nice it would be to end on an at sea, instead of rushing to do an excursion then back to pack. The ferry leaves around the 15 minute mark of every hour, we aimed for the 1215. Yeah it was a little later than planned but I think most of that planning was stuck in my head and didn't make it past that. Off we went to get a ticket and jump on the ferry. Plenty of time ... yeah, no. It's like a 15m walk from where you get the ticket down to the ferry. After getting the tickets we had like 15m. When we realized just how far down we had to go, we had to pick up the pace. Think we made it on board just before the shoved off. The boat is nothing special but if it's crowded you have to sit inside. There is a balcony where those in the know sit ... we weren't in that knowing group. All good though. It was challenging for a bit .. I mean trying to motivate a sleepy kid and a hangry kid. The ferry was slow and enjoyable from a relaxable stand point. There were some really nice views, pictures to come in a bit. We made it down to the second stop before opting to jump off and go see the little town. Mainly, it was decided to hunt food then head back for the sanity of everyone. Bring your hiking legs and hill climbing legs. Yeah, so this stop at least has quite a few stairs and a sorta steep hill in the middle of town. Fair warning for stop 2. The first stop isn't that bad and no clue on the other stops. The little city was cool and the wife and I talked about staying there but then we started to think after a day or two for us it would get boring. We found some fried crab and fries and something else but it was just ok ... nothing to make us go wow. Probably just touristy cooking. Heh. The girls shopped for a minute as there really wasn't that much that stood out to go look into. After milling about wasting time till the next ferry, we made our way back to wait for the next one. It was probably a good thing we took the ferry back towards the ship as there were dark storm clouds over the further stops, so it could have gotten us all wet and made for an even funner trip - lol. #sarcasm. Once back at La Spezia, off to get back on the ship we went. The kids were anxious to go find their new friends to hang out one last time, while the wife and I hunted coffee and snacks. The packing had started the night before. I usually like to start packing back up a little before the last day, just makes it a little less stressful on me. It's not much, just getting the suitcase back out and rolling up the dirty clothes. Speaking of clothes ... we packed way too much. I think there were like an extra 4 pairs of pants I packed for some reason that I never wore. Better to have a little more than not enough. We thought about hitting up the main dining room to see if the meal would be a good one for our last night, but nothing on the menu stood out to us to make us want to get dressed up to sit through it. Thus, we opted to find something in the jammer. I have to say, the food on this cruise didn't wow us. Our last Anthem cruise, the food was outstanding and even on the Oasis and Allure, the food was fairly rememberable. This one - I guess I have to say forgettable. But that's just us The evening brought on our last casino day. We had made some slot playing friends over the week that we laughed and cheered with. It's fun to meet other people who enjoy chatting and cheering for a couple dollars on a slot machine. By the end of the night, we went to talk to the casino host to see if we qualified for a free cruise ... 36 points short. Yeah, so we stayed a little longer to get those points and get our free cruise. Now comes figuring out when/where/what ship that'll be on. Back to room to finished packing and get the kids packed up then off to bed before getting up early. We had to disembark about 8:30 and just walked off with our luggage. Each of us had one backpack and one large suitcase, so it was easy. It was the smoothest disembarking experience we've had thus far. I'm thinking it was not as crowded as a Caribbean cruise, where everyone has to get off and everyone has to get on. This one, seemed like about half get off in Rome, since the other half had gotten on midway through the cruise. We used Rome Cabs and had prebooked a specific time for 9am pickup. The cabbie showed up and was holding a sign with my name and we were the only ones in the cab. The hourish drive to the airport was kinda quiet. We were all exhausted and sad to be leaving. Funny how you have mixed feelings about leaving and wanting to have just a few more at sea days and at the same time feelings of being ready to get home. If you haven't traveled internationally yet, you might want to add an extra hour or so to deal with the airport. Especially ones you don't know how to navigate. Plus, some of the going through customs can be really slow. We thought we had like 3 hours to burn at the airport but by the time we got there and thru customs and actually found our gate, we only had like 30 minutes. I won't go much into the flights, other than to say it was an hour late leaving to head to NY where we had a 2 1/2 hour layover - now 1 1/2 hours or little less. Long 9ish hour flight was pretty painful. Sleeping on the flight was difficult. I let our daughter have the window seat so she could lay her head against the side - my head bobbled to and fro. Thinking a massage soon will be needed. We landed last night in NY. Uh, so what we didn't factor in was all the security and customs. In a nutshell, you have to walk all the way back to baggage claim, go thru customs, go wait and get your bags. Yes, you have to get your checked luggage. But then you go around the corner and re-check it, so not to big a deal. Then go back through the line at another customs and then towards another security checkpoint. I think we had like 4 different checkpoint where we had to show our passports. Keep those handy and if you can do paper ticket, that's advisable. Some folks with tickets on their phones were holding up the line. All this, and then about a 15-20 fast walk all the way to our gate. Tic tok - the time showed they had started to board and we were still a long ways from the gate, so fast walking kicked in. Guess what - we got to the gate and the plane was delayed an hour. At least that gave the girls time to hit the bathroom and grab a coffee and some more snacks. Finally, we boarded the plane home. This was the last leg - another delay because they didn't get the freaking drink package correct. After sitting in the plane for another 30 minutes, finally we taxied and headed home. To summarize the whole trip. It was good and I'm glad we did it. However, next time we'll opt for a longer cruise and shorter days wandering around. We'll still tack on a couple of days before a cruise, but probably not a full week. For me, all cruises are great - I love just being on the ship, regardless of what ports we are doing. It's the atmosphere that I enjoy. Everyone is over the top friendly, with the exception of some of the other cruisers. Ya'll know 'those' people. Back to work we go. Now's time to plan for our daughter going to college in a few months. Our next major cruise is slated for summer 2025 probably going out of Southhampton, England. The ships/dates aren't out for that just yet, but right now seems it'll be a 12 to 14 night route somewhere. If we schedule our free cruise, I'll be back to blog that one. Thanks for joining us on our international trip and bearing with me through the good times and bad times - lol. I have to say, blogging like this seems to be therapeutic and also help remember what all we did. As you can tell from my blog, it turns out to just be a brain dump. A little coffee in the mornings and a little blogging about the previous day and you'll be good. I'll toss some additional pictures of places out in a little bit. If there's any questions or want to see if I grabbed a picture of something, toss a reply. Otherwise, happy cruising and enjoy! John and Carrie Hobby

Day 13. Marseille France. I have to admit we were a little excited about taking a tour of the city and wandering around. That way we could try out some coffee and pastries. Uh, that didn't happen. Let me keep yall in suspense ... for a sec anyways. About 830 finally forced myself to get up and go get coffee. It's kind of hard to walk the 15 miles in the morning just for coffee, but it called. It was a really late night, think about 2am my roommate finally came back. I let him hang out longer with some of his friends, since he was enjoying it. After getting some coffee on the promenade, it was of to the diamond lounge for breakfast snacks. BTW, the expresso machine in here doesn't actually use expresso beans but rather regular coffee. It's still coffee. While hanging out and letting the kids sleep in, we started chatting with some folks about the stop. So, Marseille is the second largest city after Paris here in France. Thus, the downtown shopping and fighting traffic started to remind us of the states. The more we talked the more we talked ourselves out of getting off the ship. There is a shuttle that would take us into town but it's 20 euros per person. So, there's about 100 bucks right there just to go for a few hours ... that turned into an expensive French cup of coffee. (One of the things we wanted to get) After we finally decided to make it another at sea day, we were off to wake the kids and tell them we were hanging on the ship. Today was one of those crew emergency test things where the sound the alarm. My poor son was half asleep and didn't hear it was a test and only for the crew. So I got afew text about what he was supposed to do. He had waken abruptly and was trying to gather his important stuff lol. It was all good for a short laugh. The girls headed to the pool for a few hours of sun with minimal people, while my son and I went to grab some froyo... that's frozen yogurt for yall. Lol. We found the ping pong tables empty so we played a few games. He was then of to find his friends and me off to listen to some music and sit outside. I can't sit for long, so after a few songs I got up to find the girls. I found them soaking up the sun and my wife having some new friends. We hung out with them for a bit before heading out to clean up for the evening. Down in the diamond lounge, guess yall know that by now, they have some really good crab cakes and some other pastry thing. We have reservations to see the show hairspray tonight, so that'll entertain us for a little bit. Tomorrow is la spezia or something like that. We are actually planning to go do something this time. There is a boat that'll take us around to see some different color houses and then we can jump on a train to get back to the ship. More on that adventure tomorrow. I'll toss out afew pics from the ship here in Marseille shortly.

Day 12, right? Think so. Today was Palma de Marcello or something like that. We managed to get the kids up and moving, mostly. Our son was dragging, lol. He's taking advantage of the 1am curfew I gave him ... well that and it's also the boat curfew for those under 18. With towels in hand of we went. So, when we booked these, we had to do it by room. Girls got 2 tickets and the boys 2 tickets. Now, when we got down to the main theater where we were meeting our group to get on the bus we got in line to get a group number. Funny, the girls got group 23 and the boys got group 24. It wasn't a problem, was just funny they split us like that. Anyways, the beach was like most any normal beach, pictures to come in a bit. A brief walk about and we found something to drop a few euros on. We are trying to make sure we spend all we brought so as not to have to get it reconverted. Around 1 we were on the bus heading back. About 4 hours there was enough. The water was pretty chilly for us, not like caribbean water. Back on the ship and the kids went to find their friends, enough family time heh. The wife went to enjoy a facial she won during some drawing. And me? Yeah, you probably know, it was nap time. I don't think anything special for us tonight. Tomorrow is a show, though. Everyone is on their own for dinner. Thinking we might meander up an try the El Loco fresh. Tomorrow is Marseille France...another just hop off and go wandering.

Ok, so where did I leave off. Oh yeah, so we wandered down the tourist stretch watch people and window shopping. Most of what we were seeing reminded me of the Caribbean Islands... same stuff different store. We slowly made our way back to the bus to head back to the ship. I think we were all pretty tired, at least I was. Once safely back on board, the girls went to lay by the pool whilst I crashed for a few hours. We did dinner in the Solarium, I told ya about already. Little wandering around the boat to waste time just so we didn't go to the casino to early. We made some new friends while playing, but they were the ones winning. Yeah, so one of them we were talking with got some minor jackpot like 4 times ... it wasn't a small one. Good for her, but she was playing well outside our range. We still have to work, so no major wins here. It was late by the time we decided to call it a night, since we had to meet for our beach transfer around 845.

Day 11 .. if I counted right. The days are starting to blend together and go by faster it seems. Weird how a long vacation does that. The last real two week vacation was our honeymoon for two weeks on back to back cruises. My wife may correct me on that .. Ok let's see, where did we leave off.? Yesterday was Barcelona. There were no excursions for us, just random roaming. There was no time frame, so we slept in a little. Our as much as we could. Oh yeah, guess yall know because I was back down in the diamond lounge writing. Our son had played dodge ball the previous night and had soar legs. He's not much for just walking around looking at stuff, so he opted to stay on board. Well off the trio of me and the girls went to explore. There was a bus from the ship to the city, maybe 10 minute drive. It was only 4 euros per person for a round trip ticket. Make sure to have euro and it's easier if you have exact .. #looksatotherpassengers What little bit we saw was pretty cool. Down a little alley we went and started to notice a little more unpleasant smells. It started to distracted from looking around, although it was just buildings. We at least wanted to say we ate there, on the hunt we went. There was a little open square with six or seven restaurants to pick from. We found one to try out. The girls had a pasta dish and some rice thing filled with mushrooms. I think we all grabbed a shovel and started digging out the shrooms, since my wife doesn't like them. Me? I was smart and ordered the fish and chips. The fish was extremely good, we were surprised. Chips=fries. Oh yeah, we started with some nachos that were really good. If I can remember the name I'll drop it out here. So, an app, three plates and a bottle of water ended up being about 75 euros. Little steep for lunch for three, but it was still good. We also didn't want to go to a place with a low rating. Funny, after that our daughter seemed to want to head back. We convinced her to walk down the main drag. She quickly found some little elephant trinket and I grabbed a stuffed animal key chain for my son. The girls stopped by a shop for a quick look at clothes. I met another dude standing outside on the street like me, his girls were inside shopping. Oops, sorry for gotta pause and head up to wake the kids and get ready for the beach. Back later to finish the story. We'll be back after these commercials - heh

Dinner options in the Solarium... what we had was good except the salmon was dry. But much nicer than sitting in the WJ ... #spoiled

I think I'm with you on this now. The past few have started to feel uncomfortable. I blame mine on age lol. Think I'll stick to regular ones also from now on ....

Glad you enjoy them. I find it kind of a therapy to take time and just write about the day. Haven't done the king on this cruise but will send my son to check it out. We haven't done the MDR since probably 2009. The WJ ... um let's just say it seems good but we got spoiled to other places to eat. Mainly the coastal kitchen because we had access ... this trip we don't. We ate at the WJ once a few days ago and it was ok. However, I think what I ate didn't agree with me but that's just me if you are diamond you can hit up the club there for happy hour and snack on something like the below. If not, sorry for the tease oh, the little Irish pub on the boardwalk doesn't have food which sucks because on the anthem they do and it was pretty good. You may want to book dinner in the Solarium, well you have to if you want dinner in there. Breakfast and lunch are open to all. It's included but you get a little nicer atmosphere. That's where we heading tonight ... oh on about 10 minutes lol hope this helps, anything you want pics of or have other questions I'll try to post ya back

Some pics from dinner. Looks good but didn't make us go wow. Garlic dinner rolls .. very soft Some crab dip appetizer Fried risotto balls. They could have been good but risotto needed a little more cooking. My wife makes better ones My lamb chops.. medium. These were tasty The salmon .. wife said it had bones, so careful And dessert ... cheesecake and a tirramasue . Uh . Teramassue .. hmm teriblemassur? Crap, can't get spell check working. Stupid phone. Maybe it needs coffee.