Sunday, December 02, 2007

Away from it All

With Thanksgiving over and nothing planned until Christmas, we decided to take a quick break - this retirement thing has turned out to be such hard work! Thus it was, on a mean and icy mid-west weekend, that we found ourselves getting on the big metal bird in dreary Detroit to fly away to warmer climes. First stop was Frankfurt, Germany - a little warmer but still raining and miserable. Fortunately, Frankfurt was just a brief layover and we quickly continued, southward this time, to arrive in Rome around 10:00 am in the morning. Next, a change of pace as we enjoyed a pleasant coach ride to the city of Civitavecchia, a little coastal town 40 or 50 miles north of Rome. Here, we caught the first glimpse of our home-to-be for the next three weeks - a huge, white, 109,000 ton boat. A few formalities later we were in our comfortable little room recovering from our thirty hour journey. After a little exploring, we found one of the restaurants, enjoyed an excellent prime rib dinner followed by bread pudding and finally retired for the night. The ship left port in the early evening and set sail for our first stop, Naples.
While in Civitavecchia the ship took on 110 tons of food.

4 comments:

Vicki and Don said...

Just wondering how you sailed away if you were on a 109-ton ship and took on 110-tons of food! What you didn't say was how many pounds you gained during your trip! :-)

Pete said...

There's one in every crowd...
The ship was MUCH bigger than I thought - 109,000 tons. Of the 110 tons of food, about 15 pounds stuck to me. Marian added just 2 pounds. Busy now getting back in trim for Christmas :-)

Unknown said...

Sooooo grandpa, when is my cruise??????????



Emily

Unknown said...

just kidding, I am glad that you guys had a nice time! I knew there was a catch when it said 109,000 tons, and 110 tons of food, I knew that food had to have gone some where!