7 January

Planes and Boats and Trains! 

We left Porto for Rome on the 20th and spent three days revisiting the old sites in that capital city. Our hotel was close to the city center and we walked from there to the Colosseum complex and all around that ancient area. Rome is old, old, old, and you can feel it as you get to the some of the original sections. While touring, we were fascinated to discover the Clementine Gnomon Meridian Sundial in the Santa Maria degli Angeli Church and works of Michelangelo in the Baths of Diocletian. We saw numerous sculptures with missing heads, for a variety of reasons (google it to learn more), but why many of the penises are nowhere to be seen (and believe me, I looked closely!) is more of a mystery. You can see how travel has broadened our horizons!

From Rome to the port of Civitavecchia to join our Windstar cruise for a week touring the Mediterranean. After our months of independent travel in Portugal, we didn't feel the need to engage the cruise tours, and instead arranged our own side trips. While in Livorno, we traveled to Pisa by local train, a quick and easy day trip that cost next to nothing. Ditto in Nice, where we took another train to the quaint medieval town of Menton and visited the Musee de Prehistoire Regionale. Finally, in Barcelona we saw the Maritime Museum and the area where ship building was conducted centuries ago. All good.

One nice extra during our cruise was a tour of the bridge on the Windstar Star Legend. The young first officer was particularly informative, and we were treated to a brief whale sighting while there. Since we spent Christmas aboard, we presented ourselves for massages at the ship's spa to celebrate that day. All was going well, and we met a most interesting couple of lawyers from Spokane for the last several meals aboard. Unfortunately, though, I started getting a head cold the last couple of days, no doubt aggravated by the poor air quality in that region of the world, and had to face long flights to our next destination (Australia) with a pocketful of cough medicine and lozenges.

We got to Australia via a 6 hour flight to Dubai and then a 14 hour flight to Melbourne. We left on the 30th of December and arrived early on the 1st of January. We think. Between my head cold and jet lag, I was exhausted, but while waiting for our hotel room we took the free City Center tram around town and I got very enthusiastic about spending more time in Australia. Luckily, Bill has managed to settle me down while I stir him up, and in this instance, he let me spout off my grandiose plan about returning for another week or two while we were in this part of the world without saying much of anything. This was on Wednesday, the first.

On Thursday, we visited the Immigrant Museum and learned the more sordid history of Australia. We also spent time wandering around the city center, where there are crowds of visitors at this time of year. One thing that disappointed me was the number of homeless on the streets of Melbourne, some clearly mentally unstable and in very sad conditions. Our attempt to find a decent meal were again unsuccessful, as we were around Chinatown and there was not much variety in that area, other than street food. I was beginning to "settle down" about my enthusiasm for staying in Melbourne.

Friday was a fabulous day, as we rode the Puffing Billy steam train! Puffing Billy Railway is a narrow gauge heritage railway in the southern foothills of the Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne, ending at a lovely lake setting where we ate our picnic lunch. That was splendid, and our tour followed that trip with a visit to the Healesville Sanctuary, a place I had heard of but never thought I'd get to visit (neither of us realized that was part of our tour). Between Koala bears, Tasmanian Devils, Wombats, and Emus there were so many varieties of beautiful birds and other exotic animals. It was 87 degrees, but we tried to avoid direct sun as much as possible. Still, it was exhausting, and we were glad to refresh ourselves with gelato and chocolate for the last stop of the day.

By Saturday, not to be stopped by a temperature of 100 degrees, we spent the morning in the Melbourne History Museum. Huge, with so many displays and lots of mention of the First Peoples who were in Australia long before any visitors from elsewhere took over their land. By now, I was really starting to fade, as I don't do heat well, but I managed to eat dinner before succumbing to my cold and collapsing. I spent all day Sunday sleeping, only getting up to pack for our flight out of Melbourne Monday morning. Between naps, Bill reported statistics on his people watching, where he observed the percentage of Asians, of non-Australians, of women versus men, of women with and without bras, and other important mathematical findings. I learned a lot about Australia while I was here, but I don't plan on going back.

Settled Down Lory and Stirred Up Bill