Today we're on the island of Sicily, in the port of Messina. The excursion we have booked for today takes us to Taormina (about 50 min) where we wander round the beautiful but small town, check out the roman/greek amphitheatre and the fantastic views of the coastline. After Taormina we head to another village for lunch before heading up Mt Etna. They take you up to the visitors centre - basically as high as you can go by bus - you can go higher by cable car and 4WD. I had expected to get closer to live craters but the excursion was limited to walking around old ones and viewing the extensive lava flows from 2001 and 2002. The have to rebuild the roads, visitors centre and cable cars every 10 years or so when they get wiped out by lava. Purchased some of their local spirit speciality which they call "firewater"- 70% alcohol!
On leaving Mt Etna it was just straight back to the ship as departure was earlier today, at 4pm.
As we had an early lunch today (and used to eating tons constantly ;) we had some pizza burgers with our customary late afternoon cocktails (I will miss those!) and then chilled out playing cards then rested back in the cabin. We popped back up to the marketplace about 9pm for dinner then went to the guest talent show at 10.30pm. The main reason for attending this show (for me anyway) was because John Heald was hosting the show and you know you're in for a great time if John has anything to do with it. I would go as far to say that he would be one of the reasons I would cruise with carnival again rather a different cruise line (of course he's not on every cruise they release a timetable every few months of which cruise director's are going to be on which cruise). John is the senior cruise director not just on board the ship but for the whole company.
Anyway, first up 3 guests singing, they were pretty good, clearly not the first time they had done such a thing before. The second part of the show was the real treat though. John got the whole audience involved in telling a bedtime story with certain parts of the story triggering a required response from the audience. In addition, 3 people were chosen from the audience to act out the main characters in the story. Quite simply the funniest thing I've ever seen live!
We received our debarkation luggage tags today which quickly brought home the nasty realisation that the cruise was nearly over - no more warm sunny days, no more water slides and afternoon cocktails in the sun by the pool, no more being waited on hand and foot with a constant supply of fantastic food prepared for you :(
The ship arrives in Barcelona at 5am (day after next) and we are scheduled to leave the ship between 630 and 715am - a horrible early start just to add insult to injury. I went to guest services to see about changing the time zone we have to be off by (latest is 800 to 845am) but was told there was no room in that zone but that we could leave our luggage to be taken off in the earlier time slot but leave a little later ourselves. Our flight is not until 14.20 so we don't need/want to rush to the airport.
Tomorrow sea day - last full day on board :(
No comments:
Post a Comment