March 23, 2015


Well, last night, walking beside the same bed, past the same wall that I’ve been walking beside and past for a week, I hit my bossy toe (ask Stacey Amerson if you don’t know) into the wall.  This morning it is a lovely shade of blue and hurts.  Clumsy!  It’s one of the three toes on my left foot that are just along for the ride anyway – they help give balance to that side, but they do nothing else.  That is thanks to my Granddad Bittinger’s hatchet and my failure to listen more than 60 years ago.  Put your hand down if you’ve heard that story!

I had quite a nice compliment from a lady today who is from Germany.  She said, “You can tell that English is not my native language.  The way you speak, it is so easy for me to understand.”  Quite nice of her, I thought.

After my talk this morning (“The Spanish Main and the Search for El Dorado”) I went to the “On Location” desk to talk to the ship’s resident expert on the ports where we are stopping to get some tips for our upcoming destinations.  We have secured a tour in Madeira, Portugal that will toodle us around for about 3.5 hours, but it doesn’t leave until 1 p.m., and we are alongside at 8 a.m.  KK, the destination expert, told me about a shuttle for $6 that runs into town and so we will take advantage of that before we go on our tour. 

In Cadiz, Spain, we are taking a bus that takes us into Seville (it is a 90 minute ride with a guide on board) to explore the old city on our own. 

We did not book tours in our last two stops: Malaga and Cartagena.

In Malaga, Spain there is a shuttle for 4 euros that goes into town. 

And in Cartagena, Spain, the ship docks right at the downtown, so it’s off to explore there as well.  Hopefully we’ll get some good pictures that we can post from Civitavecchia at our B&B.  And KK also told me of some side trips we could take, riding the train.  She suggested for those side trips I might rent a car, but when I mentioned that to my cruise buddy, there was a loud and firm “NO!”  Yes, dear!

Really good supper companions tonight.  We’ve had some enjoyable tables.  Really, I can’t think of any that were bad.  Delicious beef tenderloin was my choice for dinner – and it was tender enough to cut with the butter knife.  Chocolate cake and butter pecan ice cream for dessert.  Bonnie had lasagne (not as good as hers) and vanilla ice cream and orange sorbet for dessert.

The show tonight was the final appearance of the Divas 3.  They did a Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton, and an ABBA, among others.  Pretty girls.  Great voices.

And now we are back in our stateroom, fixing our night time drinks of Diet Coke and Mountain Dew (smuggled on board at Fort Lauderdale) and then off to bed.  We set the clocks up an hour at noon tomorrow, which will make us 4 hours ahead of y’all.

Well, TTFN