Southern Grace Mercantile

Leave it to Gracie to find a Harry Potter restaurant practically next door to the Coloseum. This place is so realistic it rivals Universal Studios.

Pompeii in 30ish seconds. There are no pictures to do it justice. Simply amazing.

Today was all about getting situated in Rome. We ported in Civitavecchia and took a car service to Rome. On the way the coastline was beautiful what you can't see very clearly in the pictures is that these are farms that butt up to the coast. Once in Rome we got our bearings and relaxed a bit. Hung out in the garden of the hotel, then we walked to La Famiglia, a family owned restaurant that has been around for almost 70 years passed down through the generations. We found a bookstore! G's favorite and then relaxed the rest of the day. Tomorrow we head to Pompeii...

Today is our at sea day. It has actually been a pretty amazing day. We have cruised past several volcanoes, we had a pod of 30 or more dolphins swimming by the ship for a few minutes (i was too wrapped up in watching to remember to get a video) and mostly it has been a day of relaxation. G got to sleep until 2pm....Tomorrow is for Rome.

Walking through the entrance to the world's first stadium is surreal. So much of what we know and do is linked to the Greeks. The stadium while 600m in length and seated 45,000 people seemed small for such an amazing place.

We spent the first part of today exploring Crete. Such a beautiful place. We stayed in Old Town for most of the morning.

We saw a sign that said "Donkey Station with an arrow. So we thought it woukd be fun to see the donkeys....as we started down the stairs I noticed the numbers painted on them. We stopped and looked at them for a second then realized each stair had a number. We were currently standing on 567....then I realized this was the stairway to the bottom of the hill and there were 588 steps before you saw the donkeys...we turned around and went shopping...