monkeys in gibraltar, uk

the infamous red telephone booth

the best thing about our day in gibraltar was the monkeys. gibraltar is a tiny rock island on the south of spain. you can see spain and africa which was pretty cool. it was pouring rain when it was time to get off the ship and at first we thought we would try to wait out the rain storm.

not happy about it raining...again

but i was too eager to see stuff so i made chris brave the storm. we walked a good 45 minutes in the rain through town until we got to the cable car tram station and we were drenched, so we decided to split a mini bus tour of the rock. we saw the hercules monument,

us in front of hercules monument...not really sure what it stands for but whatev.

the caves and tunnels and of course the monkeys. chris got a kick out of the monkeys and the authentic cannons that were all over the island.

chris setting off a cannon in town

as we were walking back to the boat after having been in the rain all day, the sun started shining. of course.

cadiz, spain

spanish garbage dump


contemplating the meaning of life

this is the house of the governors. the red drapes were hung for a festival that happened the previous day.



a cool building across from the cathedral

cadiz was a lovely beach town. it is situated on an island that is connected to the mainland of spain by a small isthmus, so it did not have the typical big-city feel most of the ports we went to had. while in cadiz, we walked to yet another cathedral.

this one cost to even go inside so we just hung out on the steps for a little while and took pictures of the outside.

after walking around the old streets for awhile and seeing some neat buildings we found this tower with a camera obscura inside. we climbed to the top of this tower and inside of a dark room there was a small window in the cieling right above a huge white concave screen. above and outside were lenses that captured sunlight and when directed in a certain manner could portray live images of the city onto the screen. we were able to meander through the entire city and see cars moving, laundry floating in the breeze and even people walking around in the streets. it was really neat. after the darkroom show, we climbed to the very top where the lenses where to see with our own eyes what we had seen in the darkroom.

after the tower, we grabbed a couple napolitanas, and headed for the beach. there just off a pier on either side of a small bay were an old military base that was still used by the spanish and, of course, a castle. we walked to both. while we walked out to the military thing, we spotted this homosexual couple doing a photo shoot of each other on the beach. one was the photographer and the other was of course the model. and boy did he think he was sexy.

he had a black leather jacket and he would fling it around and make sexy poses. we were laughing hysterically. on our way back to the boat we walked through a really pretty park with some neat tree carvings {?}.

boats waiting for the next tide to come in

malaga, spain

a lovely gardent with a cool mosaic floor tiling in the castle

chris overlooking the ocean

keeper of the castle.


smooching with a view

the castle on a hill

pretty spanish cathedral. in my opinion, spanish catholics showed the most devotion to their religion

from view of the cathedral

different angle of the castle

chris being strong in front of the torro {bull fighting} stadium

we got sick of asking people who couldn't speak english to take our picture and then it not turn out the way we wanted, so chris started using the timer...

after a day at sea {which was relaxing after running around for a week} we spent a day in malaga. we toured through a huge spanish cathedral, a neat castle, saw the torro stadium {for bullfighting} and then walked around the city. chris had been craving some jamon cerrano {which is spanish cured ham}. while we were walking around chris spotted a butcher shop so of course we had to go in to see if they had jamon. it made me sick instantly because there were tons and tons of pig legs hanging up all over the place {i knew they were legs becuase the hoofs and hair were still in tact} and it smelled like rotting meat. to make things much better, there was a guy trying out the blood sausage {i'm not gonna describe what that is, if you're that curious ask chris}. so i waited outside while he made his precious jamon purchase. he tried and tried to get me to taste it but i was stubborn and didn't even have one bite. he even tried to get a spaniard woman to convince me but i couldn't get the smell and site of the shop out of my head. next we went to the market. i was thinking it would be similar to the market we saw in nice but boy was i wrong. other than the market and the butcher shop, malaga was absolutely lovely.

cagliari, sardinia

pretty buildings and palm trees in sardinia

chris and i being goofy on the shuttle bus

sardinia is a pretty island just off italy's main land. although it is technically it's own country, italy claims it. since it was the first really warm and sunny day of our cruise and we heard the beaches were pretty, we spent the day in sardinia on the beach which was great. but don't be fooled...that mediterranean sea water is FREEZING!

chris testing out the water

view of the mediterranean

i'm a lot more of a chicken than chris

neat lookin building in town

naples, italy

a colusseum in pompeii

there were wild poppies everywhere in italy! they were beautiful but people in italy treated them like weeds


a beautiful view in sorrento

while we were docked in naples we met a neat couple from canada who were on a different cruise ship. we ended up spending our entire day with travis and lani {sorry if the spelling's bad!} which made for a great time. we first went and saw the ruins at pompeii. they were huge! there were different sections of the city during each ruling period, so it was interesting to see the different styles and layouts of the houses.

many of the houses had an interesting draining system inside the house that would collect and drain rain water for house use.

chris's favorite part about pompeii were the encased humans {morbid i know!}.

i can't even imagine being buried alive by ash and lime stone much less being in the vicinity of a volcano eruption. after pompeii we hopped back on the train and headed to the little town of sorrento. it was a very pretty place with lots of beautiful flowers and greenery every where and the buildings were all very colorful too.

we ate lunch at this restaurant and enjoyed the patio dining you find all over europe. sorrento is famous for its pizza so i tried the traditional margerita pizza {tomato, cheese and basil} and chris had pepperoni, although the pepperoni is not what we're used to in the states. at lunch we sat next to another couple that had come over for their honeymoon and were spending 200 euro a night for the hotel they were in {yikes! that's like 300 dollars a night!}. after lunch we walked around sorrento for awhile and then hopped on the train to head back to pompeii. we wanted to climb mt. vesuvius {the volcano responsible for burying pompeii}. it was really cloudy and kinda rainy and we couldn't really even see the mountain because it was covered in clouds. but after talking to both the tour bus company that takes people to the top and a bunch of taxi drivers, we determined that we would be able to get to the top of the mountain and so us and the other couple shared a 70 euro taxi ride up to the top where the hike starts {the taxi driver was gonna wait for us and then take us back to the train station afterward}. the drive up the mountain was beautiful but the higher up we got the foggier and foggier it became. the road was super narrow and huge tour buses often came flying around the corner. pretty soon we couldn't even see 3 feet in front of us. i was totally freaking out. when we finally got to the top it was rainy and foggy and there were people everywhere. we saw that the gate to the trail was locked. after talking to the owners of the gift shop and keepers of the gate, we discovered that in fact we couldn't get up to the top of mt. vesuvius. we were furious. we couldn't believe that they would tell us the mountain was open when in fact it wasn't. stupid scam artists. we wanted the taxi man to take us back to naples where the boats were for 50-60 euros since he didn't have to wait and we were up there for like .2 seconds. so after some arguing between us who don't speak italian and the taxi driver who doesn't speak english, taxi man decides to give us "special price" and take us to naples for the same 70 euros. by this time we were exasperated and agreed. stupid scam artists.

ROME

rome was our favorite city. but like the saying "rome wasnt built in a day" rome can't be seen in a day. we were running the entire day. after the two hour train ride to actually get to rome, we ran to the metro station and took it to the colluseum, which is RIGHT across the street from the metro station.

we walked outside and there it was plain as day among all the traffic and people. it was crazy. the line was long to go inside and since we had heard it wasn't worth the 11 euros to go inside, we just walked around the whole thing and took a bunch of pictures. the colluseum was the monument that chris was most excited to see and thankfully he wasn't disappointed.

while we were contemplating going inside the colluseum vs the vatican, a local scam artist told us that the wait was longer that 3 hours and the doors were closed at noon {it was 11:00 at the time, so basically he was telling us there was no chance to see the vatican and that we should do his colluseum tour instead}. we decided to head over to the vatican anyway just to check it out. we did wait in a horribly long line but not for three hours, it was more like 40 minutes. while we were waiting it began the downpour that would continue until long after we left. the vatican chapel and museum were amazing. it took us about 3 hours to get through. it was absolutely unreal the amount of amazing art.

this is a statue of a guy who was a famous doctor {don't remember his name, but the snake staff is a symbol for medicine}

there was a huge long hallway just full of roman and greek statues.

view to the outside from inside the chapel/museum at the vatican

this one's really hard to see, but it's the portion of the sistine chapel where god is reaching out to adam

all i could think about was the poor bloke who had to hang from the ceiling to paint it all. like i said before about catholic cathedrals, it was super dark, so many of the pictures did not turn out well. my favorite part was the sistine chapel of course. there were hundreds of people in there while we were in there and i couldn't believe how quiet it was. every so often it would start getting loud and the vatican officials whould blow their whistles and literally shush everyone. it was actually quite amusing. after the vatican we hopped back on the metro. we didn't have much time left so we decided to see the spanish steps and the trevi fountain. we didn't actually know we were on the spanish steps until afterward because it was so rainy, but i can tell you that i slipped and fell down like 6 of the spanish steps. they were made of marble and my smooth bottom flip flops didn't agree with them in the rain. when we finally found the trevi fountain we were both soaked and cold. but we had to do the touristy thing and toss the coins into the fountain. {stories say that if you toss a coin into the trevi fountain and make a wish that you will ultimately return someday...hopefully}.

chris tossing his coin in for good luck

i sure hope we get to go back someday!

things we didn't see that we wished we could have: the pantheon, st. peter's basilica and so much more