Live from the Rotterdam Oct. 17, 2009 Athens to Rome - Page 5 - Cruise Line Fans: Cruise Forum, Reviews and Chat From Real Cruisers

MCcruiser · 10-30-2009, 03:28 AM

Update on the GI illness precautions:
=Paper towels have replaced individual hand towels in the public restrooms
=Using hand sanitizers before dinner is now mandatory. To make sure that there are not long lines, there are two automatic sanitizers at the dining room entrance, and a waiter with a manual one as well.
=Small bottles of hand sanitizer have shown up in cabins.
=There are lines to get drinks (juice, milk, tea, etc) at the Lido, since nothing is self-serve. =Waiters can still serve water and coffee at the tables, but they have to wander off to get you packets of sugar, milk etc.

On our excursion yesterday, we met someone who had been ill, and had been released by the doctor that morning. One thing he mentioned was that when he went to the medical center the first time, they asked if he had been on the Nile cruise excursion in Egypt and eaten the food provided. He had. At dinner last night, one of my tablemates reported hearing a similar story. We also discussed how we had thought it was weird that people on long private tours did not stop for food! Now we are just as glad. (People on most of the long excursions from the ship did have a meal, but it was at an American chain hotel, not a local place.)

Luckybluesman, if you decide to do anything in Egypt, I recommend sticking to bottled water, and food served at European/ American style establishments. There may be nothing wrong with the food or water for the locals, but I suspect there is something there that people from other places may not be able to digest.

luckybluesman · 10-30-2009, 06:15 AM

Thanks again for keeping us up-to-date. We will stay onboard and relax. Lee

Char · 10-30-2009, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MCcruiser

....snip....On our excursion yesterday, we met someone who had been ill, and had been released by the doctor that morning. One thing he mentioned was that when he went to the medical center the first time, they asked if he had been on the Nile cruise excursion in Egypt and eaten the food provided. He had. At dinner last night, one of my tablemates reported hearing a similar story. We also discussed how we had thought it was weird that people on long private tours did not stop for food! Now we are just as glad. (People on most of the long excursions from the ship did have a meal, but it was at an American chain hotel, not a local place.)

Soounds as if the Nile excursion was a common denominator in the GI illness. Glad you havn't gotten sick, Mindy.

reggierail · 10-30-2009, 01:11 PM

Great review Mindy.

Thanks so much for taking the time to post.

Reggie

Char · 11-01-2009, 05:29 PM

Mindy, where are you?

MCcruiser · 11-01-2009, 10:09 PM

Sorry I have haven't posted in a while. I needed the days at sea after Alexandria to get my energy back, and then we were in port every day. We got off the ship on Saturday, but Phil had to check football scores, so I did not get on the computer.

The next 2 posts will catch me up.

MCcruiser · 11-01-2009, 10:10 PM

Malta
Malta is the island country south of Sicily. It is actually 5 islands, but most people live on the island of Malta. It has a long history, but the parts most known are from Crusader times and WWII. However, they have also found ruins of rock constructions from 5000 BCE. In recorded history, Malta was ruled in turn by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Byzantine empire, the Arabs, the Normans, Germans, the French, and the Spanish. This mix had quite an effect on their language, which is a Semitic language similar to Arabic, but written in Latin letters.

In 1530, the king of Spain offered Malta to the Knights of St. John, since the Ottomans had kicked them out of Rhodes. (Hmm. We’re were just in Rhodes last week.) They came to Malta, and set up their capital in the center of the island. Soon afterward, the Ottomans tried to take the island over, and there was a long siege. The Ottomans did not succeed, and it started the decline in their influence in the Mediterranean. Then a fortress city, Valletta, was built on the coast, and the knights soon moved their capital there. This is where the cruise terminal is, as well as a ferry port. This has been a busy harbor for a long time, because Malta is in a strategic position in the middle of the Mediterranean. Years ago, it was for military strategic reasons, and then for sea trade, and today for the tourist trade. Cruise ships on both Eastern Mediterranean and Western Mediterranean itineraries stop here. It is a good harbor, the people speak several languages, there are things to see and the public transportation is good.

We went the first morning on a tour of central Malta, compliments of our travel agent. Thank you, Danna! The towns are very close together; we could only tell we were in a different town by the road signs. Our first stop was in the town of Naxxar (pronounced Nash-ar), where we toured the Palazzo Paraiso. It had been the house of one of the Crusader Grand Masters during Crusader times and had been very sparsely decorated. A member of the Maltese nobility bought it in the late 1800’s and redid in incredible detail. It is now a museum, and used for receptions, since it has an ornate ballroom and beautiful gardens. Martha Stewart would have a field day in this place; the walls have marvelous stenciling that look like cloth, and the ceiling moldings look like curtain valences with fringe, and are made from stucco.

We then went to the tiny town of Mdina (pronounced mmm-dee-na). This had been settled in Roman times. These days, it has mostly limestone buildings in medieval style. Except for an occasional tour group or film crew, this is a very quiet town, with only one small hotel. Only residents are allowed to drive through the town, and all commercial deliveries have to be done by 10:30 in the morning. It was beautiful and peaceful. Our tour included a tour of one of the Palazzos that had been converted to a museum and we got to sample local pastries and wines. It was a great morning.

In the afternoon, we stayed in the town of Valetta, which was the Crusaders’ capital. It had modern shops and old churches intermingled on streets mainly for pedestrians. In some ways it was similar to the main town on Rhodes, except the streets are on a grid system, and it has a more urban feel to it. Since Malta had been an important target of the Nazis in WWII, it has an extensive museum dedicated to that war. We also walked along the ramparts and peeked into a few churches. Since the ship was overnighting in port, we took the opportunity to eat Indian food, one of our travel traditions.

The next morning, the ship took us to another Maltese island, Gozo!! This island was such a pleasant surprise. There used to be some light industry on the island, but that went away when Malta joined the EU. Now the main source of income is tourism. There is some farming as well, but since the younger generations are not interested, that is also disappearing. We saw farmhouses all over the island that were converted into rental property and/or B&Bs. We took a tour of the island on 4WD jeeps, and got to see some places that are harder to get to. There were plaques on the fronts of houses identifying the owners with the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. It turns out that many islanders leave Gozo and go work elsewhere in the world. If things work out, they come back to Gozo to retire. Gozo has beautiful yellow sand beaches, and we stopped at the one where Odysseus, from Homer’s Odyssey, stayed with Calypso for 10 years, There were other sites on the island, but our favorites were on the west coast, the Inland Sea, and the Azure Window. The Inland Sea is pool of seawater surrounded by cliffs and linked to the sea by a narrow tunnel in the cliff. It is just small enough that buildings around it block most of the view of it from the road. It’s just big enough to have a small beach, and to have a pier for small boats. Just across the road is the coast, and you can see a big stone archway over the water, the Azure Window. Both are popular with divers, and you can rent a small boat to go between the two.

A lot of people we talked to were considering coming back to Malta and Gozo. I haven’t talked Phil into it - yet.

MCcruiser · 11-01-2009, 10:12 PM

Sicily and Naples
In Sicily, we docked in Messina. This city had been for all intents destroyed by an earthquake in ????, so we took an excursion to the old Roman town of Taormina, This town is very vertical, with windy roads snaking up the hills. We also saw the small, quaint town of Castelmola, which is on the same hill but is higher up than Taormina. There were good views of Mt. Etna on and off that day, as well as of the beautiful bay that Taormina is built on. There is an old Greek theater that the Romans later used for their purposes, and is now used for small concerts. Maybe we were just getting tired, but we just didn’t think this port was as interesting as others we had been to.

Naples was another story altogether. We were able to take a tram from the pier to the main train station and a train to the main entrance to Pompeii. That was incredible. If we didn’t have to get back to the ship, we could stayed until closing. As it was, we were there for close to 5 hours, and felt like we had more to see. I had hoped to find a place on the way to buy a picnic lunch, but we ate at the cafeteria that was on the site instead. We paid a little extra for convenience, but the food was pretty good as well. Although much of the artwork has been removed and placed in the archeological museum in Naples, there were several copies of the important works that were very impressive. Phil particularly liked the mosaic of Alexander the Great fighting the Persians. .

The weather was great, so we had a great view of Mt. Vesuvius. The main
impressions we left with was how busy this city was, and how eerie to see the volcano that caused it to disappear basically overnight so close by. We didn’t go to Herculaneum, which is nearby and was also destroyed by the Vesuvius’s eruption in the year 79. Another thing we missed was the Archeological Museum in Naples, where many of the artifacts in Pompeii and Herculaneum have been moved, for better preservation. It would have been great to see all of them to get a more complete picture of what Roman life was like at that time. But with limited time, you have to make choices and hope you choose wisely.

We went back to the ship to pack, since we would be disembarking in Rome the next day. Without an elevator to tell me what day it is, I may lose track!

I will write a bit more from Rome, and then we go home and go back to work.

Char · 11-01-2009, 10:23 PM

Oh...it's almost over....but what memories you have! I saw the Azure Window on FB.

There is never enough time to explore when you are on a cruise...just hit the high spots and hope to come back on a land trip later. We did our land trips first, while Bob was still working and we were young enough to walk everywhere!

Enjoy the rest of your time away and rest up for getting back to your "normal" routine.

MCcruiser · 11-02-2009, 02:12 PM

You know you are going to an out of the way port when the ship doesn't provide a shopping map of recommended stores! LOL!! While we got port info and a good map for every port, we only got shopping maps for Malta, Messina and Naples. And those maps had very few recommendations - between 1 and 4.

As far as port maps, while Holland had a brochure with map for almost every port, they had to use a local map for Gozo.