It's the wild traveling tourist!!

Hello again from the Royal Caribbean! (Do you suppose they’ll pay me for advertising?) Well, it is Tuesday, October 9th, about 4:30 p.m. and we are just cruising away! I’d thought I’d take advantage of our day at sea to catch you all up of the exciting events! Let me do a little backtracking. When last we visited, Rod and I were cruising on the Tyrrhenian Sea going from Naples, Italy to Venice, Italy. If you look on a map, you’ll see that we went all the way down around the “boot” (we were actually on the “boot” when we went to Positano, Italy on our Naples stop), through the Ionian sea, into the Adriatic Sea and back up to the top of the boot to Venice. We had almost two days to enjoy the sights of Venice and to laze around on the ship.
In Venice, we visited St. Mark’s Square, St. Mark’s Cathedral and the Doges’ Palace. If you have ever seen pictures of Venice that show people surrounded by pigeons, then you’ve seen St. Mark’s Square. For some reason, people seem to be enamored with buying a euro’s worth of bird seed and becoming a human bird feeder. I don’t get it. Maybe I’ve just had to clean up too much bird-poop in my life to be fully delighted in having hundreds of “flying rats” as one man called them, hanging on my arms and sitting on my head!
On the second day of our visit, which was Saturday, October 6th, we went on a gondola ride with a couple that we have gotten to know from the ship. (Yes, we have actually socialized and made some new friends!!) It was not nearly as exotic and romantic as it looks in the movies, but it was very cool to float around a town that has no front porches and who’s back doors open right up onto the canal. We did walk around a bit more and were thrilled to find a public park! I was so excited to see some grass!! Up to that point all we saw under our feet was cobblestones, bridges, boats or water!
Sunday landed us in Dubrovnik, Croatia!. We took a shuttle bus to the “Old Town of Dubrovnik.” The Old Town was built inside an amazing 1.5 mile long wall that was built as a fortress. Inside the Old Town we visited a Franciscan Monastery that boasts the oldest working pharmacy in Europe. We also visited a couple of ornate churches and Rod even took the zillion stairs (I’m exaggerating, a little) to go and check out the 3rd oldest synagogue in Europe. He took a couple of illegal pictures so I could experience it. (He’s such a good little criminal!)
Monday was the first time we have encountered rotten weather! And,from what I’ve heard, the timing couldn’t have been better! We stopped at Corfu, Greece. We had luckily chosen a “panoramic” tour which means we sat our butts in a big comfortable bus and were driven around the city. The island is absolutely beautiful and incredibly green. There are over 4 million olive trees on this small island that is home to about 150,000 people. During our “panoramic tour” it rained like stink, we saw lightning over the sea and also had some “goofy Italian” as our tour guide called him, that decided to pass our rather large bus on a very curvy road then lose control of his car and slide into a ditch, completely smashing the front of his car. Our bus driver, Christo, jumped out and got the guy out of his car. He was fine and several other cars stopped. But, to be on the safe side, our driver did stop at the police station to report the accident. Another highlight was stopping at the highest point of the island and enjoying a slice of vanilla cake! OK, I know this sounds like a pretty sad little port stop when a car accident and a piece of cake are the highlights, but, what are you going to do? I could tell you about all of the piles of garbage around the town because the garbage men were on strike, but I don’t want to ruin the beautiful picture you must have in your mind as you think of Corfu, Greece.
Today is Tuesday and, as I said, we are at sea. We’re going back around the boot so we can be in Rome tomorrow. I’m so excited to see that magnificent city! Today we slept in, ate breakfast, took a nap, ate lunch, now Rod is taking a nap while I’m typing. Actually, I’m sure Rod is really tired because he decided to try the rock climbing wall that is here on the ship! He was an animal! I couldn’t believe how fast he went up! He’s going to try the harder section of the wall on Thursday.
Well, that’s it for now. I’m going to try to get online and copy and paste this update before I need to get ready for dinner. Thanks to all for reading and also for your continued prayers for safe and healthy travels.


Much, much love,
Annette

p.s. I want to be honest for all of my phriends.....this has not been an easy trip....I don’t want any of you to think that you must be doing something wrong because you haven’t been able to travel like this. Dragging around my oxygen, keeping my Flolan cold, mixing my Flolan and staying virus free (yes, there are numerous colds going around this boat) is hard. But, it is really, really worth it. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I’m determined to walk away from this trip with happy memories for myself and especially for Rod. Now, those of you that don’t have PH, I’m sure what I wrote doesn’t make sense to you. But, I know that my phriends understand, and I love each and every one of them for it.