April 1, 2010. One year later

Athens, Greece was a place we can mark off our list.  Much like Morocco, I don't know that we'll ever go back to Athens specifically.  I wouldn't mind visiting the Greek islands (ie. Santorini or Mykonos) but Athens...probably not.  Not that it was a bad place and not that we didn't appreciate all we were able to see.  But the cruise before us had to re-route their trip to Athens because of the economic uproar they were experiencing.  And honestly, the city itself is pretty dirty.  There's a lot of grafitti and trash inside the city.  Nothing like I expected.

With that said, we were able to get some pretty amazing pictures:

For us, it was hard to appreciate Athens when we had seen the incredible architecture in Rome just 2 days earlier.  And as Christians, the landmarks in Rome spoke to us more.  After we left Athens, we found ourselves saying that we had just paid money to see "a bunch of rocks."  Unfortunately, the city just didn't leave a lasting impression on us.  This was pretty disappointing because I had expected so much of Athens.

March 30, 2010. One year later.

We loved Rome.  Period.  We saw so many things in one single day that it's hard to remember even one thing distinctly.  We spent a lot of money to get the most comprehensive tour since our time was so limited.  We had 12 hours  to see everything we could possibly fit in and I'm pretty sure we got darn close to hitting every highlight possible.  Now it's all a blur but we know we want to go back.

Our tour group was small which was wonderful.  This allowed us to move quickly from one site to another and not to waste a lot of time gathering up everyone.  And our tour guide was a 4ft, 8in 85-year-old Italian woman who ran circles around all of us.  She had so much energy and knowledge and we couldn't have asked for a better experience.  It was Holy Week and there were probably 8,000 students waiting to get into all of the touristy places.  Because we purchased the most comprehensive tour, we were treated like royalty.  We were able to bypass thousands of people in line at the Colosseum.  We definitely got what we paid for and were so glad we opted to get the most expensive tour.

We saw so many awesome sites that it's easier if I just explain our day using pictures:

The Arch of Constantine and The Colosseum

We stopped at Trevi Fountain which is beautiful.  We made sure to make a wish in the fountain (they claim if you throw a coin in, you'll return to Rome) and of course had gelato :) )

We headed to the Pantheon, where there is a lot of activity going on.  They were doing construction on the building but it was still very neat to see a building that we've always seen in pictures!








































Next stop was Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica.  Again, thousands of people were in line to get in but surprisingly, it didn't seem like we waited in line that long.  We were able to go inside the Sistine Chapel which is too awesome for words.  (You weren't supposed to take pictures but I managed to snap a few without getting in TOO much trouble.)

(I think this ceiling is amazing bc it looks as if it's textured, right?  Well, it is a completely flat ceiling that was painted to look 3D!)

Below is an actual dead Pope on display inside The Vatican.  At least this Pope was preserved well.  There was another poor fella who hadn't been preserved as well who had turned a nice greenish/gray color.  Talk about creepy.

We had the opportunity to do some sightseeing on our own at lunch time so we of course set out to find an authentic pizza place in Piazza Navona.  The pizza we found was actually all it's cracked up to be!

It was very surreal to see some of Michealangelo's famous statues right in front of you.  To think that someone actually sculpted these with their hands is just too hard to believe.

As you can see, we saw some pretty incredible sights.  But before we headed out, we had to stop and see one more famous person...

















We definitely want to return to Rome.  Rome in a day was exciting and fun but you just need a little more time to really take everything in.  We'd love to take a tour of Italy and see other cities as well.

March 28, 2010. One year later.

March 28th, 2010 was a pretty special day for The Shepherds. Once we arrived in Barcelona, we decided to take a ride up to Montserrat. Montserrat is actually the name of the mountain but what it is known for is Santa Maria de Montserrat, which is a Benedictine abbey located in the mountain in Catalonia, Spain. This is the monastery where people come to worship “La Moreneta,” or what we know as the “Black Madonna.”

(This was a little boy in our tour group picking up a Palm to take into the service.  We thought he was cute.)

This was so special to us not only because 3/28 was Palm Sunday and we were headed to a Benedictine monastery, but this was our very first church service together as a married couple.  We were fortunate enough to actually get inside the basilica (as you can imagine, there were thousands trying to do the same thing) to hear the Palm Sunday service.  The entire service was spoken in Latin so we have no idea what they were saying but just to be in the presence of the monks was incredible.

Because we spent so much time in the service, we weren’t able to see much more of the village.  But nonetheless, it was very meaningful to us both.
(We did get a picture of "Shepherd's Chapel" though which we thought was pretty cool.)

After Montserrat, we headed back to Barcelona and walked around the city for a few hours.  We went back to Las Ramblas, where you're guaranteed to see plenty of interesting things :)

We boarded our ship late that afternoon and the ship had an entirely new group of passengers.  Although this was the same ship we'd been on for the last 12 days, most of these guests were just boarding to only go on the 9-day leg of the cruise.  And most of these new guests were American.  The non-American guests referred to all of the Americans as "loud."  David and I wanted to pretend to be European because yes, those Americans were loud ;)

To get away from the madness of everyone boarding the ship, we went out to one of the side decks late that night and got a great picture of the moon over the Mediterranean Sea.

Next stop...Rome!

March 26, 2010. One year later.

The last port on the first leg of our cruise was to Malaga, Spain.

Malaga is the 6^th largest city in Spain and is the southernmost large city in Europe.

It’s known for having one of the warmest winters in Europe (averaging 62 degrees) and for being one of the oldest cities in the world.

However, it is probably most well-known for being the birthplace of Picasso and more importantly Antonio Banderas J

When deciding which excursion to take in Malaga, there weren’t too many tours that really caught our attention.  The only one that interested me was the trip to the village of Mijas and the countryside.  Mijas is known for its white-washed buildings and is often compared to Santorini.  Well I’ve always wanted to go to Santorini so we headed to Mijas.

We were a little disappointed in this excursion because not only were the white-washed buildings the only thing to see but every store in town was closed while we were in town.  We did appreciate the panoramic views from some of the mountain tops and were able to get some pretty good pictures though.

When we arrived back on the ship, we sat on the back deck with our friends Pat and Paul from California to take in the last port exit before arriving in Barcelona.  Paul and Pat did this cruise opposite of us so this was actually their last port.  We still had another 9 days to go but they were exiting the ship once we arrived in Barcelona.

Paul retired a few years ago and they have been traveling ever since.  David and I decided we wanted to be just like them when we grow up :)  We had a great time with them and were really sad to see them go.

Cruises are really neat because you meet so many different people.  This one was especially cool because 75% of the people on this leg of the cruise were non-American.  I guess that’s why we gravitated towards Paul and Pat.

(This is a random picture of David deciding he wanted to be "European" and eat french fries with mayonnaise.  Dis.gust.ing.)