We docked in Valencia in the afternoon. We booked a tour to see the Coves of St Josep and a quick trip around the old quarter of Valencia.  On the way to the Coves we were introduced to the incredible architecture of Spain with the City of Arts and Sciences. Blown away and we will let the photos do the talking.

The Coves are part of the longest underground river in Europe. We have never been into caving and I don’t think we ever will be, however, it was interesting.

We then toured the commodity markets and food markets and we will be exploring these later on the bus trip.

Once again we found the Wake View bar and it was a stunning sunset and the place was empty as everyone else was packing.. Lou and I in true form didn’t pack, instead leaving it until the last minute in the morning.

Lou had me on the dance floor again and this time it was for the Rumba.  Sadly the hips and feet didn’t communicate and I can say more work is need before our first performance.

We had our last dinner at Alfredos’ where we had our first dinner and then off to a Whitney Houston tribute.  The singer was very talented and had a great range but her interpretation of the classic was not to my liking.

In the morning we docked at Gibraltar.  We decided against the tours as we are exploring Gibraltar on the bus tour. We, however, went for a walk through the town and window shopped.  The prices of grog in these places are amazing.  I can only think that the government in Australia is making a killing out of my bad habits.

After the success of the Cha Cha Cha, Louise took me to the Merengue.  The hips have not had a workout like that for some time.

Once again we found the Wake View bar as we sailed out of Gibraltar. Great views and great beer..

Later, after dinner, we went star gazing.  We now know how to find stars in the northern hemisphere. Very useful in the southern hemisphere and I couldn’t find the saucepan or the southern cross.  Earlier in the night we were entertained by the Princess World orchestra comprising 16 musicians and singers from around the world.

Local runway

The rock

Frotifications to keep Trump out

Bye Rock

Bye Bye Rock

Today we spent the day at sea and we crossed the Greenwich Meridian and went from west to east or something like that.

Lou took me off to a Cha Cha Cha dance class in the afternoon and after some discussion as to who was leading we were still crap but enjoyed it immensely.

In the evening after dinner we went to the Tenors of Rock which could have been better and then we went to the Marriage Match Game Show which was hilarious.

No Pictures today

Today we docked in Toulon and we were supposed to go to Marseille, however, we were so tired we cancelled and stayed on the ship to try and catch up with our blog, unsuccessfully.

Lou took me to Bingo. Yep we lost..

In the afternoon we discovered the Wake View bar on the 16^th floor at the rear of the ship to watch the ship leave the port.

Where we go dancing

Toulon

Toulon again

Cheap runnabouts

Sunset with Lou

Same sunset

In the evening we dined in the market place and we will pass on that.

Monaco and the French Rivera but first we had a visit to the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild.  This villa was donated to the nation after the death of Bertice Rothschild.  She was the granddaughter of the original Rothschild and she inherited from Alfronz.  She was married however she was childless.  Her hobbies were gambling, gardening, animals and travelling especially cruising. She spent her life collecting art, much of which has been donated to art galleries throughout the world. She needed a place of piece so she found a mountain near Nice and started.  She blew the top off the mountain and created a flat area for the house and the garden. She was what you would call an eclectic designer. I can appreciate the wealth spent on this house however I didn’t like it much. She loved pink so as you can appreciate everything is pink and the design is eclectic.

The other thing is you can now appreciate the workmanship of the churches we have visited.  I know the churches spent quite a lot but this was the mansion of the one of the wealthiest people in the world. The workmanship is not there.  There is concrete cancer and cracks throughout the building and even though it is only 100 years old it needs a lot of money spent on it. There’s the negative.

The positives…The location is amazing.  If global warming ever happens our home will have a similar outlook.  (lol) The gardens are to die for. It has various design themes such as Rose, Exotic, Provencal, Japanese, Stone, Florentine, French, Spanish, Sevres garden. The designs of the gardens are made to take advantage of the views and to me it is the best feature of the establishment.

The gardener’s Hut

Pink was in I think

Love this garden

Views from the garden

Water Feature

Reverse view up to the house

Nice is pretty nice

Nice is really nice.

It was then onto to Monte Carlo. There is no space in the country for roads so the exit roads are all underground.  It is the first time I have seen a roundabout underground. 50,000 people work in Monaco.  It has a population of 38,000 with 9,000 citizens.  The other workers come daily from France and Italy.  Needless to say, in the mornings the roads are a little congested.

It is a great place if you don’t want to pay tax, as no one including companies pay tax. Income for the country is from the Casino and VAT. The 9,000 locals pay a lot less for rent than immigrants that is why workers commute each day.

I think there are a few high value residents in this area.  The vessel “A” is owned by a Russian Billionaire.  Check out the two doors at the back of the boat.  They are for their tenders (lol).  Drive on drive off and I would be happy to swap my tinnie for a tender anytime. This is one of many privately owned boats/ships here.

The A

run aboutCheap

Love the view

Sean Connolly, Putin, Bono, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, Shirley Bassey, Ringo Starr, lots of Formula 1 drivers, the three tenors and many more have homes in Monaco.

We have been on the Monaco Grand Prix track…..in a bus.  We stopped at the start line and the bus driver must have engaged the ESP because we laid no rubber.  We also went through the tunnel that the F1s go through at 260km at 25kms. The Grand Prix isn’t until May however as you can see they have started preparing the track.

We then went to the top of the hill to pay a visit to the royal family.  Prince Albert, Princess Charlene and their twins live in an amazing hilltop palace with a view over the bay. We saw where they were married and where Prince Rainier and Princess Grace were buried. We walked past where Princess Caroline lives.

The Prince has ultimate control over the parliament and like his Dad he has a vision for the Principality.  They are presently reclaiming 6.0 hectares of the bay for a residential development. So much for the real estate value of the present shoreline unit dwellers, however, I am sure that the Prince will have a clear view from his cliff top palace.

Princess Grace

Prince Reanne

Home/Castle for the royals

We also saw a driverless bus while in Monaco.  Our tour guide was worried about her future prospects of employment. We had a great lunch Avenue 31 started with focaccia, a light margarita pizza, chicken done in honey and a small piece of cheese cake all washed down with wine of course.

We booked some shore excursions quickly before we left not really taking a lot of notice of the fine print.

Docked in Livorno this morning.

We thought we had said goodbye to Italy and bus trips, but no our first trip was to Cinque Terre and Portovenere which involved three hour return bus trip; one and half hour boat trip and ten minute train trip to see the spectacular Italian Rivieria.

Cinque Terre means five villages and our boat trip took in all five. These little towns are built on severely steep terrain.  One of them, the boat does not even stop at. This is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is also known as the Italian Riveria.

The first at Portovenere we had a little walk through and up to church of St Pietro.

View from ferry

The picture below features two tubs that were used to measure the wine for tax purposes.  A plug was put in the front wine poured in and the tax paid on the amount.  At least it was oxygenated, not sure about the cleanliness.

Wine tax or toilet trough

Lord Byron and a few other English poets lived in this area and used the coastal vista as inspiration for their works.  It was also known as the Bay of Poets.

He also was a great swimmer and this plaque reads “This grotto was the inspiration for Lord Byron. It records the immortal poet who as a swimmer defied the waves of the sea between Portovenre to Lerice.”

Entrance to grotto

View from grotto

other view from grotto

View from ferry

We then caught a public ferry to Riomaggiore, Corniglia and lastly Monterosso where we had lunch.  Beautiful spaghetti with mussels and clams, misto of seafood and a shared walnut tart and wine of course.  This is the Noosa of the area and found the worst toilets of the trip.  Beach very rocky and you have to pay for a spot on the beach.  We are very fortunate in Australia to have such wonderful sandy white and free beaches.

Pick a hill any hill

Toowoomba’s Range Crossing

No Roads

Going up the mountain

Close up of above

This is for the birds

Nice marble beach

Italian Riverea

Paula’s favourite beach no sand

Our last day in Roma.

Our driver turned up on time much to the surprise of the hotel receptionist.  Hour and twenty to the port of Civitavecchia.  Should mention they are allowed to do 140kmh.

Me thinks hotel bought books at market ……..2nd from end

Early and easy access onto the Majestic Princess the newest cruise ship in the world. Takes about 3500 passengers I think.

We went up to 16^th floor for the Majestic Sail away Celebrations – live band – lot of hype.  It was great.

Big ship

Pointy end

Where does it end

Lou & I getting ready to board

Home for 7 days

Up early…not likely. Today’s mission was the Spanish Steps, the Bourghese Gardens again the Gallery of Modern Art.  Unlike us we achieved all these, plus a little bit extra in the day.  The steps were high and long however they afforded a great view across the city.

A quick trip to the gardens and lunch (wine included) and a short walk to the Art Gallery where we saw Gustav Klimpt’s The three Ages of Women which we learnt about in one of our ADFAS lectures. We also saw some very interesting pieces of mud that was called art and a cow peeing. They were modern but I am unsure of whether, in my opinion, it was art.

Where you tie up your horse.  Wish I had one

We then thought about a taxi, but as Maria would say tiredness is not an illness and we decide to walk home.  We were rewarded with coming upon a huge square at the base of the Spanish steps and walked down a fabulous street of designer shops that I was glad to see Louise was too tired to go into them. The hardest part was battling through the crowds at the Trevi Fountain to get home.

Today was going to be an easy short day.. 20m down the street is a leather shop, the smell of which lured us in. We didn’t want to leave and wish we had more tourist dollars to spend.  Lou scored a great leather hat and lots of other little trinkets. We then had to go back to the motel to drop off the purchases.

Our aim was to head to the Jewish Synagogue however a few wrong turns later we were at the Victor Emmanuel monument which we had planned to visit after the Jewish area. Emmanuel was the man who unified Italy in 1890.  Before this Italy was a number of independent states. It is hard to describe the building but we will try.  It is imposing and spectacular and it is impossible fathom the scale of the building. There is one picture we have included from the balcony of the monument which shows the courtyard and building where Mussolini gave his addresses to the people and the building dead in front with the green balcony was Bonaparte’s Mum’s place.

The Jewish Museum was amazing. The artefacts held there represent the journey these people have taken over the many years. The Jews were part of the Roman community for the last 2000 years, however the Catholic church didn’t like them much.  At one stage they had we told they could only live in one area of Roma was gated and locked every night, could only have one Synogogue and couldn’t do their own occupations and could only be money lenders and sellers of second hand cloths.  Later this was extended to include that the men wore yellow caps and had yellow cloth sewn on their clothes and the women had to wear yellow scarves.  At the time the yellow scarf indicated the profession of women as prostitutes. They have been continually persecuted at every level including only allowed to build in an area that was under the level of the Tiber.  This meant that their homes would be continually flooded unless they built higher than three floors. This type of pressure was put on them with the hope they would convert to Catholism. The guided tour of the Synogogue was interesting including that this is the largest vaulted ceiling and is only 1cm lower than St Peter’s.

We walked home and collapsed for a while before going out to the Opera at a church.  We were conned….. so we decided to walk the streets of Roma and it was an amazing evening discovering more ruins in Roma and ended up at the Colosseum and walked all the way back.  Great Night..

Surprise, the cab driver couldn’t find the motel so he ordered us out of the taxi and told us to find it ourselves.  Luckily it was just up the road.  Just down the road(20m) was the Trevi Fountain.

Today we set out on foot exploring…where is Maria and the local guides. First past the Trevi Fountain, too many tourists and onto the Pantheon. It was conceived in 31 BC and Hadrian did a reconstruction on it in106 AD and in 608 AD it was changed from a pagan temple to a Christian church.  It has the largest dome constructed by brick (43.3m in diameter) and is open at the top.  The floor is concave and there are drains in the floor to take the water away.

Raphael, the artist, was buried here in 1520.

We were then walking down the street and I came across this..  In Australia women have padded bras but in Roma we have padded undies. I don’t whether this is to make their butts look bigger or to protect against pinching by Italian men.

We had a great lunch which we can’t remember where it is because we would love to go back to it. Near the kitchen was a large square table that the family sat around.  I am still not sure whether it was a true family or the other type. The next picture we snapped on the way to the Jewish Ghetto.  While it was a lovely picture there is no way we were going to eat there.  For the people who didn’t have the assistance of Maria; Ghetto means foundry area and the name just stuck with the area.  One of the Popes in the 1500s issued a Papal Bull directing that there would only be one Jewish Synagogue in Rome and that all the Jewish people would be rounded up and put in the Jewish Ghetto.  I will have more on this tomorrow.

We walked over to the Islo Tiberine or Island in the Tiber.  It was a milling site however it is now houses the main hospital.  We walked along the river bank, paved with marble, and passed under a 2000 year old bridge.  At the end of the island we could see the remains of one 2000 year old bridge that they got horribly wrong.  The angle was wrong for the river and the holes too small.  The first flood destroyed the bridge and a new one had to be built.

It rained tonight so we had dinner at a restaurant near the hotel.