Notoriety

Wyona and David in bare feet,
splashing in the water in
front of St. Mark's Cathedral

“Why might the photographers on the boat know you”, Bonnie asked.

I told her I would tell this painful story.

To begin with, I have a nice hand held Canon SX220 HS – purchased because my arms would get too tired carrying my larger Canon on day trips off of the boat.

A lovely purple colour and I can tell it apart from Moiya’s camera, for though hers is the same camera, it is a turquoise colour.

David and Wyona with their shoes back on.

One afternoon while the boat was docked, David came rushing down to have Moiya and me come up to the veranda view from the 14th floor and look with him at another boat that had docked, people streaming off of it.

It seemed there was no organized way to pick up luggage and both he and I were busy taking shots of travellers sitting on huge piles of luggage while their friends were still off gathering more cases of goods.

That night I downloaded my pictures, and then a little later picked up my camera and erased everything on the memory card.

I was careful.

I saw the first picture that said, do you want to erase all, and it was a picture I recognized from the afternoon shoot, I said yes.

Moiya and David at the canal

When the erasing took longer than normal I had my first clue as I thought, how odd.

That took longer to erase than usual.

Then I looked at the camera and thought, hey, I thought my camera was purple and not turquoise. Whoops.

When Moiya came back to the room, I asked her to lay down on her bed while I talked to her.

David and Arta looking over the
Grand Canal in Venice

She said she wasn’t tired. I told her she might be when I was finished my story.

I began by telling her that I have seen David all over the ship, taking pictures for days now; I would see him in an easy chair, looking over the ocean in some lounge, erasing the pictures he didn’t want, then I would see him down in the Centrum doing the same thing a few hours later. I told her that he doesn’t have those pictures anymore.

I have erased them all. Moiya was pretty cool about it, but they weren’t her pictures.

Then David came into the room.

I had to start my story again. When I began to retell my story, Moiya took the bedsheet and pulled it slowly up over her head so she only had to hear and didn’t have to see.

“You erased them all?”

“All.”

“Do you know any way to get them back?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I am going to the ship’s photography department and maybe they can help me.”

All of the above pics were those recovered
from David's camera
due to the magic of the Celebrity Photo Dept.

This may have taken Dave 5 trips, over the course of three days. Each time they felt they were getting a little closer, but hadn’t had success yet.

“Your sister-in-law.”

“Are you still staying in the same room with her.”

“Is walking the plank legal?”

He would come back and torture me with what they were saying.

The department eventually accessed a program that would bring Dave’s 1000 pics all back. The department was successful because I didn’t know to format the disk every time I erased it, something I have now learned.

That is how everyone in the photography department got to know me before I won their special prize of $100 of free pictures.

Greg and Wyona just bought a new camera yesterday – exactly like Dave’s and mine, but Greg’s is fuchsia.

When I saw the new camera I asked Greg if he had anything he wanted me to erase on it.

Arta

Singapore

... sky approaching Singapore ...

The sky never ceases to amaze me. I feel this way at home.

Even when it is -40, in Alberta, you can look up and think that the sky is breath-taking. I often feel that breathlessness when I look out of a balcony on the boat at sunset.

The sun setting, and the ripples on the water look different every night.

... mist at Port Kelang ...

One thing I like about a buffet table is that I can circle it a number of times before I have to choose what I will eat.

That circling, looking at something a number of times, that is what I miss when I am on a bus tour or looking out onto a river.

Even with my camera in hand, it is still often too late to take a picture by the time the thought crosses my mind.

This was particularly true the morning we came into Port Kelang.

"I will take pictures when the mist rises," I thought.


But the mist never rose.

Kuala Lumpur War Memorial

I also found that when the five of us travel together, there are few chances to get pictures with more than a couple of people.

We scatter like seeds in the wind, so while I could get a picture of Wyona and David, Greg and Moiya were somewhere else.

This airport in Singapore only rivals the one in Barcelona.

"Look, you can eat off of the floors," says Wyona there.

"Yes, my favorite airport," replies Greg.

 ... two weary travellers at the Singapore airport ...

I hadn't seen the airport in Singapore before, so I wanted to walk around. "Gives Barcelona a run for its money, doesn't it.  They agreed.

Fast Food Duck

I have always tried to find something new in every day -- and after so many years of practise, the task gets easier and easier. I saw it here -- my first look at a duck fast food joint.

Colourful enough.

On reflection, I should have gone in and ordered some food.  Fast food duck!  Would have been fun even if I hadn't have eaten it.

How much weight can my luggage carry?

I wanted one of these folding baskets from this street merchant.

I could imagine the fun of serving bread in it to my guests and how amazed they would be when they saw it collapse.

Moiya had already figured out how many hours it would take her to make one with her jig-saw, which made buying one doubly attractive.

Wyona was half way through negotiating the best price for three of them, when she, at least, figured out that we were already tossing out precious rocks and shells we had collected because we were overweight with out luggage and there is only so much that will fit in our pockets.

Waah!

Arta

Moiya Doesn’t Want to Leave Home

Today at lunch Greg said he can’t believe that this ship is going down to Australia, then up through Hawaii and on to Seattle so that it can do the Alaska cruise. Next year. “What ship are we on?” said Moiya. 

“The Solstice,” said Greg. 

“Oh.  I have been on it so long, I think of it as home,” said Moiya.  “And I can tell you, I don’t want to leave home.”

“Write a note to your kids and tell them that – just go on from Singapore to Australia, and on and on, and when you finally die, the ship can just drop your ashes in the sea.”

There is a little bit of that feeling in all of us.

On other matters, I have been going to the dining room every morning to check the lunch time menu.  It is posted on the “My Time Dining” side of the ship.  I have been waiting for a repeat of the Balinese Style Chicken and Beef Satay with Peanut Sauce.  Today I found it on the menu, along with  Papaya with a Hint of Lime cold soup.  “I am doing the cooking and inviting everyone for lunch at the dining room,” I told Greg and Dave at the in-depth 11:00 am lecture on Malaysia. 

Ordering was hard, for we just wanted Marius to bring us sticks of vegetable, beef and chicken sticks of satay, like the ones they serve on the streets of Malaysia. “Just put them in the middle of the table,” said Wyona.  “This is an all-you-can-eat-buffet, isn’t it,” said Wyona.  To make it easy for the cooks in the kitchen the server wanted to know how many times to order these three dishes to change them from an appetizer size to a main course. 

Another server came by and laughed when he saw us. “We have been eating this in the crew section of the ship for the last three days,” he said.  “You should have been eating down there with us.  I ate 11 sticks last night,” he said.

“We have been trying to get down to that dining room,  to where you eat, but they keep a line between us.  We have always suspected you are getting better food down there.”

I have a half an hour before I go to Art 101 this afternoon.  The class is causing Moiya a lot of stress – she doesn’t like the mess, or maybe I should call it the freedom that comes with watercolour.

 “I want a face on this body.  Here, just put a dob of red here, and there the face is,” said the teacher.  That just doesn’t work for Moiya or me.  This morning we had another water colour class, and David just brought back a lovely print, a gift from an art lecture he attended. 

“I have never seen water colour classes given on a boat,” said Wyona.

 “We are so many days at sea,” said Greg.  “We are going right around the world on a boat and they have to figure out things for people to do who don’t want to go for $200 massages, or work out on the treadmill all day.  What is popular are the classes they run in the internet lounge.  So many classes there and people are standing shoulder to shoulder to listen in.”

On the point of classes, lectures and shows on the boat, we keep going to the Love and Marriage Game Show which is hard to run on this boat, given the demographics of the people who are sailing.  It is the first time this boat has gone through the Suez and around India and the trip has attracted seasoned cruisers.  This morning at 10 am in the elevator, I caught the scent of the specialty coffees offered to these cruises from 8 am to 10 am.  Their speciality lounge was closed down and they were on their way back to their rooms, carrying their coffees.  These are not the kind of people who join up for the Love and Marriage Game.  One couple said they had been on the game, many years ago, and then the husband piped up, “And since that day, I have been sworn to silence.  I don’t talk at all.”  Either the couples are too smart to go on the show, or they have rehearsed and refined the answers to the questions that could be problematic to their marital happiness once the show is over. And those are the questions that make the rest of us laugh.

We have heard a new question.  What is it that your wife likes to do out of the house?  Between the five of us, we have been making guesses about how others in our group would answer that question.  Dave says he like to fix things.  Greg says he likes to go to lectures. The answer given by most men about their wives is ... my wife likes to shop. 

This is not true in our cases.  “I don’t like to shop,” said Wyona.  “I shop because we have to have groceries, because someone else needs new clothes, because an appliance needs to be replaced.”  Here is my answer as to what I like to do out of the home she continued.  “I like to cruise.  And Greg, what do you mean by saying you like to go to lectures.  Where do you go to them all?  On cruises!  So give it up and just say it.  You like to cruise as well.

Well, way to open up my eyes, though I say to everyone, there is something about saying that phrase that makes me uncomfortable .  Wyona points out that years ago cruising was absolutely out of sight as something a person might do.  But now many people cruise.  “Not my friends,” I countered.  But that really isn’t true.  Still ... the word cruise can be softened by saying I like to travel, a phrase that means the same thing.

David says he likes to fix things.  He hasn’t been doing much of that on the boat.  He wakes early – and nothing really begins before 10 am, except breakfast. He does go to everything – participates in the ship OlympiX; today he went to a lecture on how the engine room runs, as well as the destination lecture on Port Klang.  As well he goes to the 9 am Bible Study Group – now a person really has to have read every possible thing to do in every hour of the day, to have found that group. 

Yup.  A good question for all of us to answer.  What is it we like to do outside of the home?  Not much question about what we like to do.

Arta

The Suez Canal

There is a difference of opinion between the travel guide on the bus and the one on the boat.  The Egyptian on the bus said that his company is the one with whom Celebrity deals when booking the passage through the Suez and that today’s package for the ship to move through the canal is one million dollars.  I believe him. 

The cruise travel director says that the cost of today’s trip is $300,000.  I believe him, too.  Travelling for so long, I have learned to believe everyone.  Either way, for who knows where the truth lays, Greg, Dave and I were not going to miss the Suez Canal journey of 100 kilometers yesterday.  When the convoy of our ship and 17 other ships following it began to move through the canal, we went to the fourteenth floor of the ship, forward and looked out. 

The night was warm and dark.  The moon was high.  I could make out Orion in the sky.  The air was humid.  The whirring sounds of the birds flying beside us was forefront.  Two spot light were pointed forward, one west at about 1 o’clock and one pointing east at about 11 o’clock.  Those two lights were at the front of the shi, by the obelisk on the helicopter pad.  The birds that had been flying alongside the boat (the ones that Wyona had been trying to feed) now came forward and were trapped in the cones of light.

Greg, David and I went to the top of the ship a little after midnight and stood there quietly, watching the ship move by the buoys that had red lights shining from them.  I don’t know exactly what I expected, but it was more than the narrow channel of water through which we were moving – so narrow that two boats can’t pass by each other, so half way through the trip, we stopped in Bitter Lake, to let the ships that are coming from the south to the north, through the canal, and let them pass us, before we travel along the route they have just come from.  I stood there for three hours in the dark night, trying to let my senses have their fill:  the warmth, the humidity, the sounds, the smells, the sight of the water, light and dark, cool and hot.  At 3 a.m. I told Dave and Greg I had to get at least a few hours sleep before watching more of the journey.  Together we walked back to an elevator.  Along the way a man who had just got up to jog on deck said good morning. 

Four hours is enough sleep for me. I was on Moiya and David’s balcony at 7 am.  I hang over the railing of course.  I am not going to miss one moment of this journey.  We are watching the Asia side of the canal.  My binoculars are trained on the military who are in small houses – not big enough to lay down in, and the windows are open.  The truth is, there are no windows.  There is also the space where a door could be, but isn’t.  Sometimes the military wave their rifles at us in a big hello.  Others have their binoculars trained on us as we have ours trained on them, and they give a wave when they know we can see them.  There are many shrill whistles sounded.  Finally I figure out that this is the way people in the desert talk to each other.

Wyona and I study the sand dunes in between watching the men on guard duty by the canal.  At one place there are two buildings, a mosque and a truck.   The men have their washing hanging out behind the military vehicle.  We notice that they deposit their garbage in a gully a small ways away from the two houses, the windows of which are shuttered and closed.  No one else is around on the banks.  “A waste of a perfectly good beach,” I say to Wyona.  It is hot.  All we have ever imagined from movies about the desert is in front of us.   I think about Laurence of Arabia and Nasser (1956), both of which I have seen again, recently. We try to get our perspective right for we are at least eight floors up.  At first it looks like there are a few feet of pebbles that separate the canal water from the desert.  By the time we have studied the small size of some of the guards, we have figured out those are big boulders lining the side of the canal.  Wyona is better at figuring out how the miracle of this trip could have happened to us, for she is the one who did the planning to make it occur.  I just sit and watch, amazed.  The boat is going 10 knots per hour through the canal.  The temperature is about 85 farenheight. Wyona keeps telling me to get into a pair of shorts.  I stay in the shade.  Moiya is in the sun, small beads of perspiration running down her temples. 

By this time we are on Wyona’s said of the ship. When we run over to Dave and Moiya’s side of the ship a few hours later we see gardens, palm trees, roads, houses, a bustling city.  Still just sand dunes and military installations on our side.  “That is because this side of the canal is irrigated by the water from the Nile,” is what Moiya says, for she has been up on the top of the ship, listening to the ship’s travel lecturer.  She wishes that his lecture had been piped into all of the guests’ room, via the T.V.   I wish that as well.  But Wyona and I choose a road less travelled – the one of watching the desert. I did learn how to watch in detail for the more we sat there, talking to each other about what we were seeing, the more we saw.

The adage that I read down at the cruise services desk is “It is not what you see, but how you see it.”  That adage came to mind today.

Arta

Sister Trip

Moiya, Wyona and I took a sister trip -- something we learned to do years ago.  I would like to say it is an annual event that it is driven by some anniversary, but no ... it just happens when one of us thinks – why is it that we are so busy we don’t have time for each other anymore.  We hop in a car and have no idea if we will be driving 2 miles or 200.  We only know we are getting away together.

This week Wyona was the driving force behind organizing a trip which is a lot of work and entails the following: make sure that all three of us can leave the property at the same time,  making sure that we have enough money behind our credit cards so as not to not be hindered by any of the hidden costs that such a trip can incur.

Moiya saved money on yesterday’s sister-trip.  Lunch at Red Robins was a burger for each of the three of us.  She is the only one who turned her burger over to examine the bottom of the bun.  Now, tell me, who does that in a restaurant. But ¾ of the way through, she had to take a look and then ask the waitress about the green splotches on the bottom of the bun.  The manager came out to assure Moiya that he had thrown out the rest of the buns in that package, and that this item would be deleted from her bill and to thank Moiya for so graciously bringing that fact to their attention.  That is the moment (recognizing the now low price of Moiya’s bill) that Wyona decided it was her turn to treat Moiya to lunch -- the bill being only a Coke and some sweet potato fries.

At our last stop of the day, Costco, we stopped for an ice cream cone.  I am the one who loves cones.  They got cones, but the clerk delivered a sundae to me.  “I wanted a cone,” I said.  “Yes, I know,” said the cashier, “but the helper delivered a sundae, so I will just charge you 23 cents more.”  At 3 pm, I am too tired to argue and deliver the extra money to her.  She takes a cone and places it upside down on my sundae.  Now doesn’t look appetizing to me.  And further, I am worrying that someone watching will think that is the way I order my sundaes. In the meantime, someone in the food line-up has commented on Wyona’s new pillows, and in a monologue has told Wyona that the now non-stop chatter lives in Kelowna for 7 months of the year, rent4s in Hawaii for 5 months of the year, has done this for 35 years and has cruised 8 times. The woman is also pulling her latest cruise agenda out of her purse to show Wyona – who really hasn’t had the chance to say a word to her. Then the woman says, “So nice, chatting and off she goes,” Wyona. still silent, watching her leave, shakes her own head and asks, “What did I do to deserve that!”

Wyona told me never to leave my bill taped onto items in the cart. Someone might steal the bill and the groceries, she said, and then Wyona checked that I didn’t ignore her caution to me and watched me until I tucked my receipt into my purse.  When it was time to produce our receipts at the Costco Exit Wyona couldn’t find hers.  The futile exercise of finding her now-lost- receipt lead to checking each of her pockets – of which she has many ... on every outfit she wears, just not on today’s clothing, but that is her regular uniform – lots of pockets. Watching her check each pocket is like seeing someone give themselves their own security pat down.  Next she dumped out her purse onto the camera counter where the clerk also helped her try to find the receipt, by going through multiple papers of the day.   

No receipt. 

A third strategy, the camera clerk told her, is to go to customer service and get a duplicate receipt – not a bad thing to do unless you have to do it in the presence of the person you have just lectured about keeping good care of your receipts.

Oh yes.  Sister trips are good trips.

Arta

Thriller

On sea days Moiya, Wyona and I are looking for something to do. 

In the ship’s daily newspaper called the Compass I read, "come and learn to dance the Thriller". 

On the list of things to choose that I call “Things I Might Not Do Otherwise”, that item was in the top three. Wyona and I were on the dance floor for the first lesson and Moiya joined us for the second lesson. 

We should have known something was unusual when the dance directors wanted to know our stateroom phone numbers and when we were handed out two pages of instructions about the dance moves. At the end of the second lesson they said that the Thriller dance number was going to be peformed before one of the evening events called the Quest, and that we would be getting front seats in payment for our performance. 

That is when Moiya and about 8 others of the dancers went to the side saying we/they were opting out. The cruise staff are adept at twisting arms and giving positive feed back: don’t worry, we will be in the front line for you to follow; no one will be noticing you through the smoke and strobe lights; people who have done this before on other ships have said the performance was one of their cruise highlights.

This didn’t seem possible to me. In the first place, I had been on a previous cruise and the participants that time had been given 5 hours of practise, not the 3 that our shortened cruise had assigned for the dance practise. I told Wyona the next morning that I couldn’t sleep all night, waking all night to practise in my mind all of the phrases I could remember – boogie to the left, boogie to the left, swim, swim, turn to the thriller pose, etc., imaging where my feet would be going. She laughed and said she was having nightmares – that she was mad at the cruise dance directors because they had changed the steps and so she had mutinied and got a group of the other dancers to agree with her that they would do it the old way ... against the wishes of the instructors. 

Jewellery compliments of Seattles Best Coffee Shoppe

In real life, Moiya was absolutely OUT – with every excuse in the world. She folded (but just barely) to group pressure and stayed in, if she were to be allowed the middle spot in the chorus line-up, – thinking that there she would be hidden the most from the view of the audience.

Alex came to the pre-performance practise – in the ice rink where a floor slips over the ice so that there is a place for dancing and for the quest events that were to follow. 

Alex filmed us on the video of Wyona’s camera – a clip worthy of u-tube.

Here is the problem for the three of us – we know no Michael Jackson songs – not even Thriller, nor have we watched the Thriller videos. 

3 of Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas most talented dancers

As Moiya whispered to me weeks later, “Why would I have the lyrics to any of the Jackson tunes in my mind. Twenty years ago I put that music in the category of wickedness that I should never listen to."

The three of us persisted on board, practising our moves in the cabin, pre and post breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

When we reached the point of the final choreographic touches to the dance (a place none of us thought the others would reach) Wyona was identified as a confident looking dancer and assigned a place in the back of the line – which at one point turns into the front of the line -- an assignment that made her shoulders slump and her feet stamp a bit and her head shake in disbelief, but what could she do? Look confident! The reward is front line billing – at least when the back line turns into the front and the front to the back.


“Nope,” she said. “We seem to be the only ones in the theatre that are hearing these words for the first time. We are listening cold. The rest of the audience is hot – look at them silently mouthing the words along with the singers.”

After the intermission we were changed. Perhaps it was the Pepsi we drank. But we were actually, entranced. I wonder at this moment what the word transmogrified means, for that word pops into my mind about us. The lyrics, the dancing, the miming, the band, the gymnastics, the costuming, -- magical moments on stage. A fantastic show. Following the audience’s wild clapping and cheering at the end of the show, the cast did a reprise – many more numbers – among them, the Thriller song and the moves that Moiya and I had learned on the boat. People in the boxes were standing, their bodies swaying, doing all of the steps that the cast was doing on stage. Moiya joined in, doing the moves we had learned on the boat, her feet stamping and her hands clapping – the deadman walk, the steps where the head and shoulder meet to simulate a tick, the lion pose – I was crying, I was laughing so hard watching her.

Image from Website

Moiya wants me to mention that Thriller is not really a show with a plot. All they do is play Michael Jackson songs which are both sung and choreographed. There is a child who comes onstage at first, singing one of Jackson’s earlier songs. And there is another figure that looks like Jackson as an older performer ... but no plot line ... just the songs.On the way home in the subway, we began to plan our costuming which is going to go over the top the next time we get on a boat and there is a chance to perform the Thriller dance. In fact, we were five long tube stops past the place we should have alighted to get the Northern Line home by the time we stopped our conversation and tried to think of how we were going to get home. Moiya was right. There is mortal danger in being Michael Jacksonized. 

Move on a few weeks – to yesterday. Wyona left Woodside Lane for Calgary. Moiya and I left Woodside Lane for downtown London, wondering which of the yet unseen West End Musicals we could add to our agenda. We slipped into the theatre where Thriller is staged, not believing that we would get a ticket since Wyona has been there many times and she had never been able to get tickets. But the stars were in alignment – we got producer tickets, right in the middle of the theatre, about 8 rows from the front for the very cheap price of £32.50. We warmed up to the ambiance we could feel in the crowd in the first part of the show, though we napped a bit. I turned to her and asked, “Moiya? Do you know any of the songs. Ever heard “Dirty Diana” or “Bad” before?”

Split, Croatia

We are on our way to Alexandria Egypt and have three sea days to get there. Our Deluxe stateroom has a balcony.  Arta is in the room with us.  It is Wyona’s birthday.  This ship is so big and the service is exquisite.  The food is out of this world. 

I want to tell you about our trip to Split, Croatia.  There are so many things I want to know about your mission there Matthew.  How many months did you spend in Split?  Did you ever get to old town?  Greg said that he went up the clock tower and that you could see the whole area from the top.  David went on an excursion while I stayed back to spend all the money....the Kuna.....that Matthew brought home from his mission.  I sent $300 Canadian dollars to Matthew just before he was coming home from his mission about 8 or 9 years ago.  I told him to spend it all and to bring home something for everyone.  He didn’t have time to do that.  Unfortunately, the money was already changed into Kuna in his account, so he brought it home.  Wyona and I shopped around in some of the jewelry stores to find something I liked.  It was after lunch time and Wyona was thirsty so we stopped to get a diet coke from the kiosk.  The lady would not take the 20 KUNA and pointed to another 20 Kuna that she had in her hand.  I have to say that they did look different. They have changed the look of their currency and it now has so nice shiny stripes on it.  Ours looked old, very old.  We went to a Bank nearby and waited in line.  They could not change the old money for new money and the fellow told us that we would have to go to the financial institution [FINA] to get it changed.  It was quite a ways to go and we were on foot so we (two old sisters with aching feet) started going in the direction we were told to go.  We had not money to buy water or anything.  We had no money to take the #6 bus in that direction.  We didn’t know if we were even going in the right direction.  We just kept asking people if they spoke English and asked for “FINA”.  Some Croatians could help us and some could not.  Wyona’s foot hurt so bad!!!

Oh, I must let you know that the ship was leaving Split at 4 PM.  The last tender to the ship was at 3 PM.  If we don’t make it.............we have to find our own way to the next Port which was the last port on that ship and it was in Venice. 

Wyona and I have shopped until we could drop. We’re trying to speed walk to “FINA”.  Yikes!......Isn’t a BANK a financial institution??????  Why do we have to go to FINA?   

I’ll tell you why ... because we want to spend the Kuna that would have been good for nothing ... no one would even take that OLD money. It is worth about $230 dollars!    We either try to get new for old OR just let that money go to waste.  I COULDN’T DO THAT NOW!     Oh, Poor Wyona.....her feet were sore and she was limping. Finally Wyona said, “There’s Fina”.

We go in to Fina and I am getting shaky.  I know that my blood sugars are low so I went outside and ate the melon yogurt I smuggled out of the ship.  I always need to have something close by to take care of those lows.  

One other important thing!  I didn’t take any identification with me.  No credit cards.  No passports.  No driver’s license.  I handed the money over to Wyona because she just happened to take her driver’s license.

The only problem now is that the girls in Fina don’t know if that can change the FINA but maybe they could change it tomorrow......That darn Fina!

I was outside trying to eat and Wyona came out an told me they could not change the Fina.  I said, “OK” and was ready to go back to the ship.  She, of course was joking.  So, we headed back to Old Town wondering if we would ever be able to find the shops.  I had no time to shop around anymore and ended up buying a gold pendant for my gold chain and a silver chain for a necklace.  We had enough Fina left to each buy a Gelato and a few pastries. We got back on the Tender (a boat that takes you out to the anchored ship in the harbor) and made it back to the ship.

I declare......I have never spent that much money so quickly before in my life!

Love to all,
Moiya