Thoughts after cruising the Mediterranean

Our Ship the Voyager of the Seas

I have now been back for over a week, but am just now taking the time to write about my travels to the Mediterranean. I had a great time on the cruise seeing the different sites and spending time with my family! I took a ton of pictures and will only put a few up here, but if you want to see all of my pictures just ask!

We left for the cruise on Friday Sept. 28th. I flew with my Grandma and my aunt and uncle that live in Payson.
Here is a picture of Grandma on the way to the airport

We had a lay over in Atlanta and then on to Barcelona. Grandma "lost" her passport twice (I found it in her carry-on both times, but it sure did make me nervous that she couldn't find it for a few minutes. On the flight back home, I held onto her passport and just gave it to her when we needed to show it :) That worked out much better!)
I didn't sleep much on the flight to Spain, but wasn't too tired. I sure did sleep well that first night on the ship though!

So we got in to Barcelona around 11 am on Saturday the 29th and just explored the ship and got settled in our stateroom. Here's a picture of me in my room and a picture of part of the ship.









The next day we went to Nice, France which is along the French Riviera. It was so beautiful there. We rode the city bus up to a little town called Menton where we walked around the city market, played a little in the Mediterranean and just sort of took in the sites.

On October 1st we went to Pisa and Florence. In Pisa I climbed all 294 steps to the top of the tower. It was really fun!
That afternoon we went to Florence. The first picture is one the church in the middle of Florence and then a replica of the "David" statue. The real statue is in a museum that was closed the day we were there. Grandma and I spent hours looking for this statue and that's pretty much all we did in Florence. Florence wasn't my favorite stop since all we did was walk in circles and we were separated from the rest of our group!
On Tuesday we went to Rome. We had the best tour guide that day! She was just awesome!
We saw the Forum, the Colosseum, the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel. That day was probably the fullest, we didn't even eat lunch that day. Here's a picture of the Colosseum and a statue with marble eyes inside the Vatican.
The next day we went to Naples. We went on a drive along the Amalfi Coast which was just gorgeous! We ate an authentic Italian meal at a restaurant in the mountains and then went to Pompeii. It was another incredible day!









Thursday October 4th we went to Palermo Sicily. We went to some catacombs there in Palermo (we couldn't take pictures, but click on the link to see what I saw. It was cool and weird at the same time!) and then went up to a town called Monreal. It had the coolest church! The church had all of these cool mosaic's and I was surprised how many Bible stories we could recognize decorating the walls of this church.









Our last day on the ship was at sea as we sailed from Sicily back to Spain. We slept in, ice skated, played mini golf and watched the Ice Show. Each night our stateroom attendant would make us a little towel animal, so here's a picture of my mom with their towel monkey!












Here's Ashley's parents playing mini-golf on the top deck of the ship. It was pretty windy up there, but still fun to play!

This trip was a lot of fun! I'm glad that I got to go and that Grandma invited me and paid for part of the trip. I will always remember my first time to Europe. And it is only the 1st trip, because now that I've been I have to go back again!!