The Black Lung Struggles to Understand the Exchange Rate, Part 5: All Vacations Must End

Our last stop of vacation was Dubrovnik, Croatia. Before going to Croatia, all I knew about Croatia was that parts of Game of Thrones is filmed there. In Dubrovnik, actually. You can go on Game of Thrones tours. Of course, I don't watch Game of Thrones, so that didn't really excited me (although a few people in our tour seemed into it). But really, the exciting thing for me is that Dubrovnik looks like the kind of place where they'd film Game of Thrones, which is to say, super olde-timey. Like 1600s olde-timey.

When we first got to Croatia (or more accurately, when we first woke up. Who knows what was going on before that?), it was super gloomy and rainy. But I appreciated that, because it made my rain coat and umbrella not be superfluous luggage items, which they totally were before. Croatia, at least the part where we were, is very different looking than Greece. For one, there are a lot more trees. And mountains or at least very large hills. Also, things are more orange and less white. Anyhow, it was super beautiful and a fun change from what we had been seeing for the past several days.

Dubrovnik is right on the coast (handy for our cruise), and it's basically at the bottom of a mountain. It has historically been a pretty heavily fortified city, because mountains on one side, the sea on the other side, and a wall all the way around. More on that later. So the first part of our tour was driving up the mountain so we could have a view of Dubrovnik from above. I don't mind saying that it was terrifying. Fun fact you may not know about me: I am afraid of heights, and when those heights are cliff roads with no barrier between the vehicle and falling to our doom, I am super afraid of heights. I could not look out the window. I actually traded seats with a nice man who really wanted to look out the window so I could be on the side of the bus furthest from imminent death. But it was a really good view.

You can't really tell from this picture, but this was the perilous viewpoint! That kind of orange section down there is the city.

After that, we headed into the city itself. There are two parts of Dubrovnik: the old city and the new city. The new city is totally ok, and I'm sure it has many fine qualities to recommend itself, but we really spent all of our time in the old city. Specifically, touring the old city walls. See, back when the old city was the whole city, walls were an awesome way to protect yourself from invaders. Dubrovnik has had walls around the city since about the 7th century. The early walls were destroyed and rebuilt at least a couple of times, I think. The current walls were built mostly about 400 years ago, although they were being worked on and changed for a couple of hundred years surrounding that. The walls are super awesome. They are cool medieval type walls, and you can walk along the top of them around the whole old city. And we totally did! I think all the way around is about 2 km. Placed strategically around the walls are a bunch of forts with cannons to fire at enemy ships and stuff. 

The walls are pretty high off the ground, as all walls that are protecting people from invaders should be. When we first got into the city and saw the stairs we had to climb to get to the top, 2 of our group decided to stay behind. Then about a 4th of the way around, another lady decided to go back because it was just too high for her. She was super freaked out. It was a little scary in at least one place, but I was mostly fine, because I wasn't relying on the bus driver for my life. I was relying on my own feet, and they're usually pretty reliable. 

The stairs we had to climb are on the far left of this picture. Also, awesome old building.

I think somewhere along that stretch is where the lady gave up because we were too high. But it was totally worth it!

As we were walking around the walls, it was pretty cool to see that the city looks pretty unchanged from how it probably looked hundreds of years ago. Except that now people have electricity and satellite dishes. One of the most noticeable things is the roofs of all of the buildings. They're made of these very pretty orange tiles (hence the orangeness of the city). Some of them are very orange, and some are more faded and greenish. That's because many of the roofs were damaged during the Croatian war of independence, which was really recent! Apparently, Croatia used to be part of Yugoslavia, and then decided it wanted out because Yugoslavia was a communist country, and they were not into it. The war started in 1991 and didn't officially end until 1995! During the first year of the war, Dubrovnik was shelled by the Yugoslav army for several months. A lot of buildings were damaged and a few were destroyed outright. There are still some ruins in the old city where buildings were not rebuilt. The city is a UNESCO world heritage site (just like the Sassi!), so the restoration work was done using the same materials as before. Hence the super orange newer roofs. 

At the beginning of our walk. You can really see the different tile colors in this picture. I guess they will all eventually have that awesome multicolored look. 

Some of the ruins that were left after the war.

Look how modern everything is! You can watch lots of TV now!

This was the view from one of the forts. You can see why the city looks orange from afar.

One of my favorite views of the city, because you can see part of the wall where we walked in the middle. This was after it stopped raining, though. 

I hope Dubrovnik never changes. It was an amazing place to see.

One of the other things you can see all around the old city are statues of Saint Blaise. He's the patron saint of the city. Also of wool combers and who you should pray to if you're trying to help someone who's choking. I could not make this stuff up. Anyhow, he's the patron saint of Dubrovnik because he appeared in a vision to some important dude in the year 971 to warn him that the Venetians were planning to attack. Why did Saint Blaise do this? Who knows? Maybe there were a lot of wool combers there. Maybe a lot of people in Dubrovnik were choking on stuff. In any case, there are many statues of him around the city. 

This statue of Saint Blaise is right above the gates into the old city. Also, we were totally crossing a moat(!!!) when I took this picture. 

A fancy church in the city that is probably named after Saint Blaise and definitely
 has a statue of him on top of it. 

After we went all way around the walls, we were set loose on the old city to do some shopping! Here is where life got a bit confusing. Even though Croatia is part of the EU, they don't use the Euro (like the UK keeping the pound, although I guess it doesn't even matter any more. #brexit). Instead, Croatia uses the Kuna. The exchange rate of Euro to dollars is pretty even. Basically, a Euro is usually about $1.30. So I just kind of pretended everything was dollars and wasn't too far off. But the exchange rate for Kuna is about 6.65 Kuna to 1 dollar. Or 1 kuna is about 15 cents. Basically, it was extremely hard for me to figure out how much $$ I was spending on anything. At one point, I wanted to buy some super beautiful jewelry, and after I bought it all, I realized I still had 200 kuna left. I had to buy more stuff! But it turned out to only be about $30. LOLZ. I did treat Bonnie and Leanne to some delicious ice cream, which was crazy cheap. I got Bitter Orange ice cream, which is apparently a big deal there because there are bitter orange trees growing all around the city. The oranges are not the kind that you can just eat. Even in the ice cream they were pretty bitter. But good! And then I got to buy a cute little nativity from the Christmas store, which was a delight. 

Eating some delicious ice cream, with the Christmas store right behind us. A lot of the streets in the city were awesome little alleys like this. 

Hey, there's the moat! We will miss you, Dubrovnik!

Then it was time to go back to the ship. We made friends with an old British lady that afternoon, who told us all about her super crotchety cruise companion, and it made us even more grateful that we are awesome friends/vacation partners. 

Farewell, Croatia! You were very different but equally as awesome as Greece.

I forgot to put this awesome picture on a previous post. But I'm pretty sure it's a heavenly sign that I am meant to go on fabulous vacations. 

The next morning, we docked back in Venice to start our journey home. The first part went pretty great, honestly. The Venice Airport has the fastest, most efficient security lines I have ever seen. Venice, I salute you. And we got sandwiches on the plane, even though we were only flying to Paris, and it was a really short flight. The airport in Paris was pretty crazy, but still, everything went really well. We were flying to Atlanta, which is about 9 hours, so that was kind of rough. I could not sleep. I maybe got 15 minutes during those 9 hours. And I was too tired to read, so I watched a lot of movies. That was actually pretty nice. I watched Far From the Madding Crowd which was very good and beautifully made (Bathsheba was crazy to not figure out which of her fellas was the best right away. He was even the cutest one!). I also watched Creed, which was really well made and acted, but I didn't like it, because they spend too much time punching each other in the face. Yes, I realize that I was watching a boxing movie. Then I watched The Man From U.N.C.L.E, which was super fun. Very silly and exciting. And since I still had time, I watched The Peanuts Movie, and it was super sweet. I got a couple of episodes of Brooklyn 99 in there too. And of course I walked up and down the aisles of the plane a lot too. Plus, when you are on a long flight, they feed you a lot. I think it's to keep you from getting restless. I made myself a little sick eating all of the airplane food. I guess I could have said I didn't want all of it, but I needed something to do!

We finally arrived in Atlanta, and then we just had a short flight to Baltimore before home. This is where everything went to total crap and life became terrible. Atlanta Airport, you have joined Delta on my list. Also NBC for their terrible Olympics coverage. Keep in mind that at this point, I have already been awake for about 21 hours with only a short 15 minute nap. So, grumpy. Anywho, when we got off the plane, we had to go through customs. I get it, we had just come from international places, it's cool. Of course, the line was insane, and even though we asked an airport worker about moving up in the line so we could catch our flight, she said they didn't do that. Which is really stupid. But it was OK, because customs went really fast, even with the insane line. The real problem was, then we had to go back through security. This is madness. Customs should be inside the secure part of the airport!!! And once we got to security, there was only 1 lane open, because they didn't have enough people working. If you are that busy, you should hire more people!!! And even though our flight was really soon, the lady working told us that they could not let us move to the front of the line. I call shenanigans. They could have let us move to the front of the line. That is an accepted practice at airports. I have seen them do this in NYC, which is way bigger and more important than Atlanta. Basically, forget you guys. The long and short of it is, we got to our gate about 3 minutes before our flight was supposed to leave, but the plane had already pulled away. I know for a fact that the plane sat on the runway for at least half an hour before taking off, so this was especially infuriating. Basically, we were stuck in the airport all night. I was really mad. Bonnie said she had never seen me that mad before. I think it's because she had never seen me that sleep deprived before. Luckily, I was able to sleep on airport chairs for about 2 and a half hours on and off, and it really made me feel 1000% better. But I was still filled with total rage towards both Delta and Atlanta. My advice, never fly through Atlanta unless you want to have a hellish experience. 

Luckily, the next morning, I finally was able to fly to Baltimore! Leanne came with me, because she had to get stuff from my house and then immediately head back to the airport to fly to SLC. I felt super bad for her. Bonnie had changed her flight to fly directly to SLC from Atlanta instead of stopping in Bmore for a day because she could not handle travelling anymore. And my wonderful friend, Monica, came by and fed Boh for me again because I was 12 hours late getting home. When I did get home, my baby Bohseph was super glad to see me, and I was super glad to see him, too. He's a good boy. And he was super nice about napping with me all afternoon. Funnily enough, even though I didn't get too seasick on the trip, I was super landsick for about 5 days after we got back. I definitely felt like I was still on a boat, even though that wasn't at all how I felt on the actual boat. I'm not going to become a sailor any time soon.

So that was it! Our fabulous European cruise vacation, with terrible beginnings and endings and awesome middle parts. The Black Lung will return! hopefully, next time I have enough money to go somewhere cool.  

The Three Amigos will ride again! Someday!

The Black Lung Ponders the Eternal Question, Part 4: Are Olives Really Better than Salt Water?

Previously, on The Black Lung: Greece rules, basically.

After leaving Mykonos (sad face), we spent a day in Athens. The city is famously named after Athena, Greek Goddess of Wisdom and War and probably some other stuff. According to myth, Athena and Poseidon originally competed to see which of them would be the patron god of the city. Poseidon made a saltwater spring for the city, which they were all, Thanks? I guess? And Athena made the olive tree! Apart from the fact that I dislike olives a lot, olive trees are pretty great. After all, that's where olive oil is from! And olive wood! And shade! So the people of Athens made the smart choice and named their city after Athena. 

The city we docked at was Piraeus. Apparently it's been the port city of Athens since about 500 B.C. The two cities are basically right next to each other, and they're about as different from Mykonos or Olympia as you can get, by which I mean, they are huge. According to our tour guide, the city was designed (in modern times, I assume) to have about 500,000 inhabitants, but about 5 million people live there. It's very crowded! The strangest thing to me is that none of the buildings are tall. You'd think with so many people there would be high rises everywhere. But we sure didn't see any. 

About to hike up to the Acropolis, looking super cute as per usual. 

Our main trip of the day was, of course, The Acropolis. It's super impressive. It's a giant hill in the middle of the city with the remains of several temples on it. They're really big and beautiful and were probably breathtaking when they were not fally aparty. I really don't know how the ancient Greeks built them. We kind of struggled just climbing to the top of the hill. We definitely wouldn't have been able to also carry up giant blocks of marble. Today, the Acropolis has the remains of I think 2 temples and a couple of other buildings, one of which is the entrance to the Acropolis, so kind of like an ancient Greek visitors' center. I don't really know as much about this place as I might wish, because our guide had a super thick accent. She was hard to understand! 

Part of the view hiking up to the Acropolis. I think this is the old-timey visitor's center. 

Our tour guide! She of the hard to understand. Also, there were many steps and columns. It was most tranquil. 

We're almost to the top! I wish I knew what all of the ruins are! I think they're all temples, and most of them are for Athena, but maybe one is for Zeus and one is also for Poseidon? IDK, this is why it's better to just have the one actual Heavenly Father. Also because He's way nicer than the Greek Gods ever were.

My one of my favorite things about the Acropolis was the random marble remains just lying around everywhere. There's some restoration work going on right now on the temples, but I don't think they'll be using all of that stuff. I think some of it will just be lying around looking super cool. 

With cool random marble and Athens in the background! This was the brightest day. So much sunshine!

Moi in front of the Temple of Athena Nike. Note the olive tree! Probably not the original one, but who even knows! I'm not sure about this temple-Athena is the goddess of wisdom and war (and handicrafts!) and Nike is the goddess of victory, and I don't think they were ever the same person, it's very confusing. In any case, I love those lady statues a lot.

On the other side of the Temple of Athena Nike. It was really pretty. And you know, as far as Greek gods go, Athena was one of the cooler ones, so I can see why they liked her so much. 

The Parthenon! This is the giant, awesome temple to Athena. They are doing a bunch of restoration/preservation work on it, as you can see from the equipment in the background. Also, up near the roof were some awesome random horse heads. Good times. 

One of the views of the city from the Acropolis. Look, it's a temple to Hephaestus that is remarkably well preserved! This was the thing about going on tours-if I had been doing my own thing, I would have immediately set out and found this temple. Alas, our tour did not allow us to wander off. 

On our way back down from the Acropolis. How did they build this???

After we visited the Acropolis, we basically went on a driving tour of Athens. It was pretty cool! Favorite features: the national library which I did not get a picture of, but it was super beautiful; the statue that holds the actual heart of Lord Byron, I guess because Greece held his figurative heart (literature!!!); the totally rando ruins that pop up in the middle of otherwise normal looking locales, and of course, the Olympic Stadium used in the first modern Olympics in 1896 but actually reconstructed from an ancient stadium. 

Lord Byron statue! Complete with actual human heart. 

Random ruins that are now in a park. I feel like this was part of a temple to Zeus. Our tour guide said they find this kind of stuff all the time, but a lot of it they just have to ignore, because they have to build new stuff somewhere! 

Olympic Stadium! They also used this for the Olympics in 2004. They have a real sense of history in Greece, and who can blame them?

Then we went to the Plaka, which is a historic neighborhood in Athens and mostly ate lunch. But it was really good lunch! I got moussaka, which is eggplant, meat, this creamy sauce, and cheese. It sounds weird, but it was super good. I was really into it. One unusual thing about Athens which was different from Mykonos is that there were dogs everywhere! In Mykonos, it was cats. The dogs all seemed to be well fed but super dirty. So I just don't know if they have homes or not! I hope so. I took pictures of all of them for my calendar anyway.

Greek Orthodox Cathedral in the Plaka. It was super pretty. We ate lunch right across from it. We also used the bathroom right across from it. Gross fact about Greece-the plumbing is terribad, so you cannot flush the toilet paper. You just bin it. EW!

One of the many dogs we saw in Athens. It's wearing a collar and doesn't seem super skinny, but it was not with any people and look how dirty it is! Life is so mysterious. 

The end of our Greece experience was legit amazing. Because the whole time we were in Athens, our tour guide kept telling us that we could not be late back to the bus. The bus driver cannot wait! If he waits he will get in trouble with the police! Our group this day was super great and responsible (not so on other days), so we were waiting at the appointed corner before our bus got there. And sure enough, police were ticketing anyone and everyone in a car. The best part was they were ticketing this taxi driver, then they made him get out of his car, then they got out a screwdriver and took his license plates off the car! He was protesting vigorously the entire time. Actually the best part was how extremely handsome the police officers in question were. Yowza! Alas, no pictures, but it's probably for the best. We probably would have been ticketed for that.

Then we left Greece. It was legit tragic, although luckily not ancient Greek tragic, because that would have surely ended in at least one of us dying miserably after being cursed by the gods for something silly. The next day was spent sailing. Boo! It was my least favorite day of the trip because I wanted to get off the boat! But I did get lots of naps. And it does give me an excuse to post this great picture. 

Sailing!!!

Stay tuned for next time, when the Black Lung goes all medieval on your...wait, this is a family blog. 

The Black Lung Boosts the Local Economy! Part 3: The Black Lung Considers a Change of Venue

Previously, on The Black Lung: Italy at last.

When we first booked our trip, we were supposed to spend 1 day in Greece and 2 in Turkey, but because of unrest in Turkey, that got switched to 3 days in Greece. No offense to Turkey, which I've heard is great, and of course I would never wish unrest on anyone, but Greece is the best. Seriously, it's amazing, and I will go back there one day.

The first place we went in Greece was Olympia. We actually docked in Katakolon, which is a tiny town that was super cute when we drove through it. But our big excursion was about 40 minutes away by bus, in Olympia, the site of the Ancient Olympics!!! The modern Olympics are just about my favorite thing ever, so the ancient Olympics totally seemed like my jam. Sure, there was no swimming, but all the sports were done naked, so it balances out. JK, women were not allowed to watch the Olympics in ancient times. :(

First things first-the financial crisis in Greece is real. As we were driving to Olympia, we passed a lot of very scenic countryside with lots of bags of trash along the side of the road. Our tour guide, who was super proud of being Greek (a theme amongst Greek tour guides), was also super embarrassed about their trash problem. I guess having no money means not having all of the awesome civic workers you and I take for granted. Say what you will about the trash in the Greek countryside, but these people know how to maintain some awesome ancient ruins. The remains of ancient Olympia consist of some awesome partial temples to Zeus and Hera, plus places where the athletes trained and performed. I think it must have looked pretty amazing in its heyday. There were remains of stone columns, giant stone blocks, and pedestal bases for statues all over the place.

In front of what I think is the athlete training area. According to our guide, many athletes in the Olympics died from dehydration. Drink lots of water, guys. Also note the pretty trees! 

BTW, we were not anywhere near Mount Olympus-apparently when the Greek pantheon made its way to this part of Greece, they named the city/sports stuff in honor of the Olympian gods. Also, I have had more than one person ask me if the Greeks still worship those dudes. I totes laughed, because I'm a terrible person. But no, they absolutely don't. As we learned on a different day in Greece, 97% of the country is Greek Orthodox, which is pretty darn similar to Catholic as far as I can tell.

I also really loved the flora in the area. The trees were great. They probably weren't ancient, but they were really pretty. One of the coolest things we saw was the actual ancient stadium where the sporting events were held. Apparently some events from the 2004 Olympics in Athens were also held there! I think it was discus, or possibly shot put. We also saw the location where the Olympic torch is lit every time there's an Olympic Games. We had just missed it by a couple of days, too. The actual location is very lame looking, but it's a cool tradition.

Leanne is also super into the stadium. The Ancient Greeks did not run in circles like modern people. They ran back and forth in lines. Whee!

After we saw all the coolness of the ancient ruins and had to wait for the stupid tourists who got lost (is it so hard to stick with the guide???), we got to boost the local economy by shopping! I bought the most delicious pistachio creme there. It's kind of like peanut butter, but a lot less thick. It's so good. I wish I had bought more, even though it was $$$. I also got some great earrings (and resisted buying the matching necklace, something that I would fail at later in vacation) and the most delicious baklava at a little cafe. I have made it my new goal to learn to make baklava that tastes even half that good.

The Temple of Zeus! That guy was the worst.

Did you know that Greece (which is totally not called that by Greek people-it's called Hellas) has about 10,000 islands? Most of them are super tiny and not inhabited, but about 200 have people living on them. The next day we went to one of them, Mykonos. Apparently, it's super touristy, but I can totally see why, because it's amazing, and Bonnie and I are going to move there someday. We just need a librarian job and an occupational therapist job for English speakers.

On the water taxi. We were so happy/seasick!

Anywho, because of the specific excursion we went on that day, we took the water taxi from the port to the main town, and even though the water was choppy, the weather was windy, and people were legit getting sick, it was a wonderful view. After we got to town, we took a half hour boat ride to the Island of Delos, which was our tour. Fun fact-when I went to use the boat bathroom, a lady ran in front of me and started barfing. JK, it wasn't fun, it was the worst.

Anywho, in case you didn't know, Delos is the mythical birthplace of the twin god/goddess Apollo and Artemis! Apparently, Hera was super ticked that Zeus had an affair with Leto, the twins' mom, and she forbade anywhere on earth from sheltering Leto. Poor lady was just pregnant for a long time. Eventually, Delos offered her shelter because it was already a sucky place, so it had nothing to lose. But Delos became super great, so it worked out. The island is pretty small, about 6 km long and 2 km wide, but about 25,000 people used to live there! That's a lot of people! It was a very prosperous place, too. One way they made all their $$ was from the slave market, which is a bummer. The island basically has no natural resources. They relied on rain water for drinking, and they got their food from other islands nearby. And it was against the law to give birth or to die on Delos. So if you were way pregnant or looked pretty terrible, they would row you over to a neighboring island to take care of things.

Apparently we visited at exactly the right time of year, when there were beautiful flowers on the island. The rest of the year, it is brown.

The House of Dionysus! It's called that because this mural is totally Dionysus riding a leopard. 

This was another super fancy house/maybe a bank. They don't really know. And look, a dove!

Our tour guide told us that about 25% of the island is currently excavated, but archeologists still live on Delos, and are slowly but surely working on more. Apparently, a lot of the island's artifacts are gone, some because of looters after the city fell (they thought Apollo would protect them, and he blew it), and a lot because of neighboring islanders. During plague times, people thought they would be protected from disease if they whitewashed their houses with lyme, which you totally get from burning marble. So a bunch of the awesome marble was carted off and used to make people's houses white, and probably not safe from the plague at all.

In front of the Temple of Apollo! Maybe it's because I don't know that much about him, but he seems pretty cool for a Greek God. 

In front of the Terrace of the Lions. These dudes are guarding the sacred lake where the gods were born (since drained because, mosquitoes). And look how windy it was!

After we left Delos, we spent the rest of the day on Mykonos. What a great island. According to a friendly shopkeeper, they get cruise ships pretty much every day for about 8 months of the year, and the other 4 months, nothing happens there. The town looks like the stereotype of a Greek town-all white buildings with beautiful blue accents. And there are cats everywhere! We really enjoyed wandering around the town, especially after we turned off the main drag and explored the tiny side streets. We also got some delicious chicken gyros (they don't taste the same as the ones I've gotten in the US). I got a vanilla milkshake that was also super different from what you'd get here but delicious anyway, and we all got some ice cream. Hours after the milkshake, don't judge me. I was very excited to see that they sold Kinder Bueno ice cream. If you're not in the know, Kinder Bueno is my very favorite candy ever. And it is delicious in ice cream. We were very sad to leave Mykonos at the end of the day. I think we could have happily stayed there for several days and had an awesome, relaxing time.

Mykonos! One thing we loved about Greece was how incredibly beautiful the water was.

Wandering the streets, we met a clown on stilts, and he made me this balloon dog. I named him Killer.

Cats of Mykonos. I started a photo series of street cats and dogs in Greece, and I decided I shall turn it into a calendar to benefit homeless pets. I'm not sure if all of these cats were actually homeless, but some of the did look really sad.

The sign that prompted us to go exploring the city. We never did find the library, but it was worth it anyway.

With Bonnie on one of the little side streets of Mykonos. And this was one of the wide streets! It was really pretty there.

On the hills above town. Seriously, you can all come visit me when I move there.

And that's it for the relaxing parts of Greece. Stay tuned for next time, when the Black Lung sees some super foxy Greek policemen.

The Black Lung is on a Boat! Part 2: The Italian Job

Previously, on The Black Lung: everything goes wrong.

At last 24.5 hours after we were supposed to arrive in Venice, we finally made it! And I must admit that I dig their airport. Mostly because it was a breeze to get through customs. Those Italians really know how to do it. Also nice, the bowl of not great but not bad candy by the baggage carousel. Plus the fact that you can get a taxi to take you directly to the port. Since we were super late, we had to go straight there for our boarding time, but since we took a taxi, it was insanely fast to get there.

To preface, when we were in New York, it somehow came up that I had never ridden in a taxi before. The whole idea of taxis is super creepy to me, probably because I have seen more than one TV show where the murderer turned out to be a cab driver who was choosing his victims based on who he drove around. So we joked a lot about murder cars, and then immediately had to ride in one. I have rarely if ever been more afraid than I was while taking that ride. This man was speeding, tailgating, swerving in and out of traffic, and generally driving in ways that would get you pulled over and arrested here in the states. I had to close my eyes for a good part of the drive so that I wouldn't see my imminent death coming. But amazingly enough, we did not die! We didn't even crash! So good job, crazy guy. Still never want to go anywhere with you again.

The ship we were on was the MSC Magnifica! I always feels like you have to say it with an exclamation point. I guess it was pretty nice. We all kind of laughed when we saw how tiny our room was. It worked out OK, and technically we could have had 1 more person in the cabin with us, but we were all really glad we didn't. It would have been crowded! The one thing we didn't like about the ship was that there were mirrors everywhere. Seriously everywhere. It all made you feel kind of narcissistic and/or gross, depending on how much you had done to look beautiful before you started looking at yourself.

Magnifica! Our cabin was on the other side of the ship (and inside so no portholes or balconies for us) on deck 8.

Our tiny home away from home. The bunk was mine! I think Bonnie only hit her head on the ladder that first night. And you can see that another bunk also could have been folded down on the other side if we had wanted to bring a friend.

There was some fun stuff to do on board, although a lot of it was really geared more toward the drinking/gambling types. The best thing was the theater, which put on really weird live shows every night. Since people spoke all sorts of different languages on board, the shows were always dance related. My favorite one/the one that made the least sense was Ike: Raised by Wolves! Seriously, it made no sense. There were people dressed like wolves and elk dancing around, and then there were some contortionists who did some stuff, and then some acrobats who were amazing but had nothing to do with wolves. Also, a lady came out and sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water." All of the shows were at least kind of like that, which was neat. The last one was Harry Potter themed, and it was adorable. The best part was when Voldemort really just wanted to dance. Reader, I LOLed.

One thing that everyone has asked me was how the food was. It was OK, I guess. We made a friend our last day who said that this cruise had the worst food of any she had ever been on, so there you go. It was really plentiful, so that was nice. I got a lot of fresh fruit, which I enjoyed. And I think if I had liked seafood, this would have been very exciting for me. We mostly ate in the buffet, because the restaurants were very seafood heavy and because our dinner time was at 9:45 at night. I did get cannoli one night at the buffet, which was very exciting. And one of our ship friends, who was from South Africa and had never heard of cannoli before, was convinced by my praise of them that she should give it a shot. Basically, I can't believe they don't have cannoli in South Africa.

Anywho, back to the good stuff! Our first full day on ship was rough, because we were super tired. And kind of bummed that the far off view of Venice is all we got to see. But Venice was super beautiful. I'm pretty sure it would have been awesome. I hope I get back to see it before it sinks into the sea. The other rough thing about it was that they took our pictures on the way onto the ship, so that every time you came or went and got your card scanned, your picture came up to identify you. Unfortunately, we had jsut been on an evil plane ride, so we all looked tired and gross. Every time my card was scanned, I wanted to yell, "Look, see how I'm normally much less gross than that???" But I didn't. I just hoped they would figure it out on their own.

 Why are you so picturesque, Venice? Why must you taunt me so?

I have heard that Venice has a bit of a smell (not surprising considering the location), but with views like that, who even cares? Also, I just watched The Italian Job, the one that came out when I was in college, and I'm pretty sure this building was in it. 

Whoops, I went right back to the bad stuff. Really the good stuff now. The next morning, we docked in Bari, Italy. It's down near the boot heel of the country. We didn't see too much of Bari itself, because the excursion that we signed up for was in Matera, a town about an hour's bus ride away. Truthfully, Bari looked pretty lame, but Matera was awesome. Only complaint-we didn't get to stay very long! I'm not sure why, because after we got back, we sat on the ship for more than an hour before we left, so they definitely could have let us stay longer and go shopping or something.

So yeah, Matera is the third oldest continuously inhabited city in the world according to our tour guide. I have no idea what the other two are, and the internet cannot seem to agree about it, so who knows? Basically, there's a new town, which is mostly where people live now, and then there's the ancient cave city, the Sassi, where mostly people don't live now. There are two parts of the caves, too. There's the cave caves, where people started living in prehistoric times, and then there are the cave houses where people lived for hundreds of years until the 1950s. These houses look like stone houses from the outside, but inside they are totally caves. The government forced everyone to move out of the Sassi in the 1950s, because they were basically living in caves, with all that entails. No plumbing, no electricity, 12 or more people living in just 2 or 3 rooms with cattle. Today, the government owns most of the Sassi, and residents of Matera can get long term leases on the houses if they want to live there. But since it's now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, apparently you have to do all sorts of crazy expensive but historically accurate renovations to live there. So I think it's mostly a tourist place now. We did see some people who seemed to live there though. Pretty cool. We did not find out if the insides had to be historically accurate. But probably not. I'm pretty sure they can put in plumbing. And they probably don't have to let cows stay with them.

 The Sassi in Matera. Isn't it amazing? The inside of those buildings are totally caves!

 Bonnie, Me, and Leanne with the Sassi in the background.

The ancient cave part of the Sassi, which is across the little valley from the cave house part. It was really pretty. A lot of people were exploring over there, which made me somewhat jealous.

The Sassi was basically breathtaking. It's almost unreal how amazing and beautiful it was. Apparently a lot of movies have been filmed there, like The Passion of the Christ and the remake of Ben-Hur (did we know about this, internet? Has this alleged remake been released into the wild?). And I'm not surprised at all. It's not only super historical looking, it's just amazingly beautiful. I would have loved to spend more time there and explore.

And that was it for Italy. Stay tuned for next time, when the Black Lung does some naked running and other very Greek things.