After a sad final breakfast, we left the Legend of the Seas behind at the dock in Italy, we still had a fair journey ahead of us before we were able to find our next staying location – we had to take a shuttle bus from the port to the pier, then a walk along the beach, followed by an hour long train journey to Roma Terminus, and then we would have to hunt around for the bus station.

After a few hours or traveling and hauling heavy luggage around, our 310 bus would eventually drop us off near our next hotel, the Globus Hotel (Best Western). We sat around in the lobby and ate free pastries provided near the check in desk, then headed up to the room to drop off the luggage. Only one of our 2 rooms were available as we were trying to check in before the stated time, so we had to kind of make do. Our hotel had wifi (unlike the boat), so we took full advantage of that and soaked up as much news and social media as we could while the signal held.

I was playing around with the tripadvisor app on my mums phone and decided to scan the area, apparently one of the top 100 food places was located less than a few minutes down the street, a pizzeria as it were. Me and Gavin rushed off to grab some pizza to bring back to the room, we found it, but were instantly greeted with a giant wall labeled ‘language’. The pizza here is apparently served and paid for by weight, with large slabs of pizza laid out, we had to go caveman style and just point at stuff… it came to 10 euro for a small box, but it was probably worth it.

After a short rest, we were off to the metro station, headed to colleseo. A 10 minute walk and 10 minute train journey later and I was in front of one of the most iconic structures in the world, the coliseum.
Magnificent is probably the only way to describe it, awesome in both architecture and sheer scale, I ended up taking around 80 photos in the time we spent walking outside and inside the coliseum, my finger unable to keep away from the trigger. The size of it is the most surprising thing, everyone knows the coliseum is big, but it is SO BIG – even the steps on the staircase were double the height of standard stairs.

After walking about the coliseum, we were lead down some backstreets by my brother, on the hunt for yet another pizzeria. This one was again, in the top 100 of food places in the app, so he was pretty keen on eating there (kid loves pizza), unfortunately he ended up leading us down the wrong road and we spent 10 minutes walking around in some shitty backstreet area instead of sitting down and eating.

The menu at this pizzeria was sparse, I ordered a mushroom and prosciutto pizza and was pleased with the result, it wasn’t quite as 5 star as the reviews made out, but it was certainly above average pizza. My brother on the other hand was not enjoying his meal quite so much, he ordered a ‘white pizza with ham and rocket’ or something, which apparently translates to pizza but with no tomato sauce, it came out a pale white topped with cheese and a small garden worth of rocket leaves – he did not enjoy it. (also, I am very proud of the picture of the Bruschetta below, impressive detail considering the camera i’m using)

On the walk back, we stopped for another Italian specialty, Gelato (ice cream). The shop we found did 3 scoops for 3 Euro, a bargain compared to what we had seen, I got a cone with scoops of Bounty (chocolate and coconut), Mango and Pineapple. The employee loaded the small wafer cone up with the gelato, with little regard for gravity or weight distribution, it was tasty as hell though, and perfect for the hot sunny weather we had been exposed to all day (>27 deg).

From here we walked back to the coliseum and headed up a hill, trying to find our way to the Palatine hill, instead we found ourselves invading a wedding celebration at the back of a church situated next to the roman forum, whoops. Trip back down the hill, and then we sat on a wall for a while for some people watching – plenty of young girls doing ridiculous photoshoot poses, lots of wedding pictures being taken, lots of Indians trying to sell cheap souvineers to the tourists… all standard for a national landmark I guess (thought I don’t remember so many people trying to sell us cheap goods while I was visited the Eiffel tower or Amsterdam Red Light district).

We were pretty exhausted by now, my father in his 50’s in particular was feeling it – Hell, I was aching, and im less than half his age so I don’t know how he was holding up so well. We would spend the rest of the eve just casually walking down the strip near the coliseum, admiring parts of the roman forum and numerous cathedrals, churchs, statues and other historic buildings scattered about the place. At 7ish, we headed back to the hotel for some much deserved rest and a shower.

A final late night walk around the area revealed that there isn’t a massive amount of stuff around our hotel, there are around 8 pizza shops, 4 gelato shops and 2 bars – and those are pretty close to actual figures. I’m not entirely sure why they need so many pizza and gelato shops, but this is Italy I suppose. We bought some pizza to take back to the room as a late night snack, and went to bed early.

(Didn’t really take my camera out for this day, as it was just walking around on the boat)

A nice little lay in, as its not like we’re going anywhere or have anything to explore. Breakfast was at windjammer again, nice little omlette, hash brown, corned hash, etc.
From here we had a little rest by the poolside (because we were so tired from eating breakfast, or something), then it was off to the gym for a while to nurse these sick swans.

Around 1pm, there was a belly flop competition out at the outdoor pool, with music blaring and fat people flopping into the pool to a cheering crowd, it was pretty funny stuff. Meanwhile the staff had fired up an outdoor BBQ by the poolside and were cooking masses of seafood and chicken paella (delicious).

I went back to the room to check on my brother, who apparently gets seasick easily, I thought I’d rest a spell… and ended up falling asleep. Whoops.

We lounged around in the room for a fair bit of time, wandered around the decks a little bit, had a snack at the poolside café (or rather, I had a snack – prawn noodle salad). There was a ‘capitals quiz’ happening in one of the bars downstairs so we headed down there to give that a go, just another something to try and pass the time. The jist of the quiz was basically just to name the capital city of a named country, the catch was that the countries were ridiculous ones that nobody cares about (eg. Estonia – my parents were so confused when I knew the capital of Estonia haha), we got a measly 7/15 score.
We spent a further hour or so playing ‘dai di’ (Chinese card game), then had to queue for the customer services to pay our bills and such.

Dinner was seafood heavy, with scallops for starter, cod, prawn and scallop with mash for main, and a strawberry soufflé for dessert. Then it was literal showtime, we went off to the showtime theatre for the first show of the night, which was a 2 piece Russian acrobatic performance – apparently the girl of the group was part of the Olympic gymnastics team or something. The show was incredible, the girl could do splits and throw her leg over her head as easy as snapping her fingers together, I got distracted a few times imagining what a gymnast girlfriend would be like. After the show ended, the cruise director rico came out and did a little comedy skit of some of the most stupid questions people ask him, with highlights being “do the crew sleep on the ship” and “do you use fresh or salt water in the toilets”.

The second show of the night, and the cruise finale as it were, was a 4 seasons performance with more acrobatics, this was in the atrium of the ship over 9 floors, so they had some real vertical space to play with, and used it well. The lighting in the atrium can change many colours as well so they used that along with the seasons theme, live singing, dancers and the aerial acrobatics to really create a grand finale performance. For the encore, most of the higher ranking staff came out for a sing-song (chefs, managers, etc).

We are departing the boat tomorrow morning, we’ve had a fantastic time aboard the Legend of the Seas and my time with royal Caribbean (the cruise company) has been a good one, We were handed a guest satisfaction survey and it was really hard to fault anything in particular.

Tomorrow we arrive at our final destination, Rome, Italy. From there we’ll be checking into another hotel and then exploring that city, in the meantime though, I should probably pack my suitcase ready for tomorrow…

Most bizarre dream over the night, involving perfume (a music group) holding some sort of dance audition in my room, Kashiyuka and I share a romantic moment, and then she decided to spread what I can only assume is some form of glue into my eyebrows before tearing it off (ow)… Meanwhile, my cousins are going crazy in the house, my uni housemate Ed is randomly in my lounge playing video games (refusing to get out I might add), Cross and Grant are doing something in another room… Weird.

A slightly later start today, followed by our now normal routine of heading to the Romeo and Juliet restaurant for breakfast, which was almost an English breakfast today.

We had decided today was going to be our beach day, the forecast given in the leaflet (we get a leaflet each night recommending what to do in the day’s location along with the forecast and timetable for the days events) said 28 degrees and sunny, so we headed to the top floor to get our beach towels… to be greeted with grey skies and rain.

Well shit. We got changed again and decided to head into town, hailed a taxi, yo home smell ya later etc, and we were at the cathedral, which probably has a more fancy and descriptive name, but it is a gigantic famous cathedral in Palma city centre, we had actually been here already two years or so ago when we came to Mallorca for a week, so we just kind of briskly walked through and had a little walk around the city. Fast forward an hour or two, and it is now 28 degrees, sunny as hell and there we are with no swimwear (I had actually changed into jeans like a retard), we decided that the boat still wasn’t too far away, so taxi again back to the boat to change – we stopped off at windjammer café to have a buffet lunch though (burger and salad for me with fruit salad dessert).

One more taxi, a change of clothes and a rented beach towel later, and we were at beautiful Palma nova, a huge beach. The sun was beaming at full force and the sea water was surprisingly clean, we spent the next few hours just chilling out, alternating swimming with sunbathing.
I think I got a fair tan just from today, I certainly feel like I look darker when I see myself in the elevator mirrors.

That actually makes up the bulk of the day somehow, I think because we had already visited Palma before, it didn’t feel like much of a big deal and we (read: ‘I’) didn’t take many pictures, and then the other half of the day was spent laying on a beach, how much can I really say about that.
Oh, there were some titties, unfortunately there were not many nice titties but a fair few fat droopy ones, Gross.

Back on the boat and we had around 90 minutes to kill until dinner, I ended up on the 11th floor deck just lounging and listening to music for the majority of it. I took the above picture while lazing about, not bad for a phone picture.
Dinner tonight was a summer fruit medley followed by a chicken… something… I forgot the name of it, it was breadcrumbed and had a layer of ham and cheese inside it though, kind of like a fancy kiev or escalope. Dessert was a berry tart.

After dinner we all went our own ways again to kill time before bed, I ended up in the gym which is apparently less busy at this time of day (~9pm), I had a nice work out and then came back to the room to shower and blog. I think I worked my triceps too hard as everything is now incredible amounts of effort. Working out felt kind of good though, I may consider getting a gym membership when I go back home assuming my job leaves me enough time for that sort of thing.

The journey back to my room had me sharing a lift from 9th to 2nd with a bunch of high ranking ship officials – who were talking about the difference between land miles and nautical miles… I refuse to believe that is a standard conversation, and instead am pretty convinced I was just witness to a really long running employee in-joke where, upon sharing a lift with a customer, you have to come up with the most bullshit complicated ocean talk you can possibly think of.

Tomorrow we are in Valencia, Spain – I’m not entirely sure what to expect, maybe lots of oranges? Valencia oranges are a thing I’m pretty sure, not sure what else they have though.

I still need to do some shopping, I changed up 150 euros for this holiday, and whilst I know I could always save the money, it still feels like kind of a waste, I really regret not buying those swim shorts the other day in Barcelona, live and learn.

Our first rise on the boat, 8am or so. We were still out at sea, but land was quickly approaching, the green hills and pale buildings of Barcelona in the distance. It would be 2 hours until we were set to arrive at Barcelona port though (and then another half hour until we were due to be cleared from there) so we headed to the Romeo and Juliet Restaurant again for breakfast.

No expense spared again for breakfast, staff were in full swing already at this point of the morning, the tables set and ready to go, we sat down and were immediately offered tea/coffee/juice and a pastry to start before we were even given a menu, I picked out a nice looking cinnamon swirl from the platter.

My breakfast was a lovely little plate of breakfast essentials – bacon (streaky American style), scrambled eggs, sausage links, and hash brown (which resembled grits more than anything you’d see in the UK). You could also help yourself to a bunch of other cold breakfast stuff from a counter in the middle, I grabbed a yogurt and some granola too because… Im greedy (though not as greedy as my father who ordered an omlette meal AND pancakes).

Finally we were cleared to leave the boat, so after watching some acrobats in the cruiseship main foyer, we got off the boat and went through the port area before taking a bus to central Barcelona.

The bus dropped us outside Port Vell and a massive statue/podium thing which im presuming is really famous. We started our trip by heading across a nearby bridge to MareMagnum or something which was a shopping centre, the shops inside were fairly standard fare, I almost bought some swim trunks but decided against it in the end because I can’t be bothered to carry shopping around for another 7 hours.

From here, back to the statue and on towards la rambas, a strip of stands which is somewhat infamous for its pickpockets I hear, there were a ton of living statues around here as well, detailed enough to make the living statue acts in London’s Covent Garden look pathetic, these guys had props, wings and so on. I learnt firsthand that nothing is more impressive than being genuinely unsure as to whether or not you are looking at a statue or a person standing still, It reminded me a little of that youtube video I watched a few weeks back where a guy basically just put a fish-bowl in front of an actual statue and watched as everyone started taking pictures with it and putting money in.

Barcelona is gorgeous, the roads are spacious, bright, and littered with trees and hot women (instead of faeces, take note Marseilles), the architecture on the buildings kept impressing me as we walked around the streets, even the top half of buildings which were unspecial had awesome architecture and detail to them. We walked through some back streets just exploring randomly, we stumbled onto one or two churches, one of them the Santa Eulalia Cathedral, which was very impressive. We also walked through some of the gothic quarter, which is pretty much as it is described, with a more gothic look to the buildings – very pretty though.

After a little while of walking through random backstreets, we wound up at Barcelonas version of the Arc du triumph, complete with a football and tennis ball wedged into the cracks in the design (some 20 meters up).

Lunch was at a small café, we weren’t actually that hungry after our mammoth breakfast, but were pretty desperate for an excuse to sit down somewhere shady. It was nothing spectacular, just some sandwiches and a drink, it was a much needed rest though as we were already getting pretty tired from the walking, it was still only 1.30pm or so too.

Mum was dead set on seeing the Sagrada Famiglia (or as our family refers to it, the corncob church), we tried our luck on the underground to get there, turns out the Barcelona underground isn’t too bad, separated into its own separate lines and such like the London underground (but without the Zone 1-6 bullshit that makes London more confusing), thankfully we live in an age now where ticket machines have touchscreens and multiple languages, so buying a ticket was pretty easy, and its one price to go wherever.

Leaving the metro station and doing a 180 left me face to scaffold with the backside of the enormous Sagrada Famigila, sadly half of it seems to be covered in scaffolding and building apparatus at any one time (they say it’ll be completed in 40 years?), the parts of it that are visible are very impressive though. I do find it odd that there are two very different styles which can be seen where they are building on top of the old building, even the colour is two distinct shades.

The detail on the building is amazing, similar to the line for buying tickets to go inside, which went literally around the block – kind of surprising as the tickets to go inside are 13.50 EUR per person, a crazy price to pay to go inside to look around in my opinion, but maybe there are some fantastic views inside.

Regardless though, we weren’t going to be able to get inside even if we wanted with that massive queue outside, so we turned our attention elsewhere and started trying to find out how to get to the other famous Barcelona attraction – Parc Guell.

About 20 or so minutes later of walk-sit-walk, we found a bus which would take us to Parc Guell, this place is miles out from just about everything else. An old lady on the bus yells at me to confirm that im about to miss the Parc Guell stop, the camera around my neck possibly giving away the fact that I am infact a tourist who has no other business on the bus.

From what I’ve heard and sussed during my time in Barcelona, Parc Guell is designed by the same architect as the Sagrada Famigila, and it shows. The inside of the park is a beautiful collection of small architectural set pieces interspersed with lush greenery and dark skinned entrepreneurs trying to sell you cold water and souvineers (while the cops chase them about – seriously.).
Not a whole lot more I can say about the park really, it was very pretty and a lovely excuse to walk around in the sun (bit too hot at times though), It was also a lovely excuse for the girls to dress down a little apparently as the amount of hot pants and borderline see-through dresses today was impressive.
I’ll let my pictures do the rest of the talking for Parc Guell.

Not a whole lot we could do after Parc Guell as it was so far away from the other attractions, we took a taxi back to the port to board back onto our ship and spent an hour or so winding down and freshening up before dinner.

My dinner tonight in the Romeo and Juliet was French themed, I figured since I didn’t get to have much of a French dining experience in Marseiles I’d substitute my own, I had a bouillabaisse soup (seafood soup) with garlic crouton for starter and Coq au vin for main (chicken in red wine with mushrooms), It was pretty good, though I think im done with French food for this holiday. I also tried Escargots for the first time, my dad ordered it for starter and I had one… It wasn’t bad, but at the same time mid-way through chewing it I remembered it was a snail and just felt very put off.

We walked around a little after dinner, stumbled upon the 80’s party in the foyer, apparently our waiter from earlier in the evening was dancing about in the crowd topless – I guess their work is varied at least?

There was also some sort of party happening on the top deck outdoors but it was so windy I didn’t stick around for too long.

Tomorrow we’re in Palma de Mallorca, Spain – which I believe Is primarily going to be a beach relaxation day, I’m okay with this after all the walking we’ve been doing.

Still bitter from our experience last night, we set out earlyish after checking out from our hotel, the roads were slightly more lively as it is now a Monday, though the streets are still not quite what one would call busy. We mostly just went off for a wander around the streets of Marseilles  our hotel concierge had circled a small area of the town where there were some shops and such so we went to go and see what was there.

During our walk we ran into many of the same issues from yesterday, shit on the floor, the smell of sewage, random cars parked onto the pavement (why is that allowed?). Marseilles is clearly a place where nobody gives a shit about anything, or at least, that’s the feel we were getting from the place.

We went into a small shopping centre to have a little browse, but there wasn’t much in there at all, so we pretty much just passed through and kept walking the streets. We popped into a small old looking sweet shop and bought some Navettes (Marseilles speciality biscuit thing), we sampled some of the other stuff too.

The dock area had a different feel to it on a Monday morning (as opposed to a Sunday eve), there was some cool stuff around, a small boat-shop for example. We went into a small nearby church as well, just because it was there.

The rest of our time in Marseilles was pretty much walking back to our hotel through the back streets, I bought a fruit tart (which was amazing), we also saw some dumb chick who had gotten her SUV stuck in the extremely tight backstreets of france.

At last, it was time to bid Au revoir to France and get on our cruise ship, a short taxi ride, check-in and walk later, and we were on the ‘Legend of the Seas’, a gigantic cruise ship with 11 floors, multiple restaraunts, 2 pools, gym, rock climbing wall, casino, theatre… You get the idea, it’s a big goddamn boat.

Holiday blog sort of turns into food blog at this point, as documenting my time on the cruise ship is about as easy as saying ‘I relaxed, did some sunbathing, and ate a lot’.

Lunch was spent at the wind…something café (which I keep calling Windrunner café just because.) – a buffet style restaurant which serves food most of the day, it had a huge selection, though as expected from a buffet the food quality is far from fantastic, It’s good enough though, and still better than our French dinner from yesterday.

Dinner was at the fancier restaurant, the Romeo and Juliet, Scallops for starter, a roasted duck for main (Duck with braised red cabbage, croquettes and beans) and then a banana crème brulee for dessert. It was a fancy meal, and I kind of look forward to seeing what else the restaurant has to offer (which is convenient as I’m pretty sure this is where we’re eating every night from now on whether we like it or not).

Little bit of a walkaround after dinner, and then back to the room to type this out and play on my phone, not sure why I didn’t think to bring my 3DS, but I really wish I had it right about now because theres way more waiting around in rooms than I’m used to.
Tomorrow we’re in Barcelona, hope its nice.

After a horrific 2:40am wakeup call, we headed to Gatwick Airport for our early morning flight. We arrived in France at around 8am and took a bus to our hotel in St gar…something, our hotel was by Port Vieux and about a mile or so walk away from the station where our bus dropped us off.

The streets on the way down to the hotel were a pretty decent representation of Marseilles, cars parked randomly on the pavement, vomit on the pavement, random whiffs of shit as we walked through the streets… One could say that first impressions were less than fantastic, but life goes on, and I guess after living in London it was just kind of a shock to see somewhere that looked even worse.

We go the hotel and dropped off our baggage (lots of baggage, packed for a 10 day trip after all), we are already exhausted by this point through our sleep deprivation, the hotel concierge wouldn’t let us check in just yet though, so we had to go out again into the city to try and waste some time until 2pm when we can actually get into our room.

We stumble upon a massive cathedral, situated literally just down the end of the road where our hotel is located, it’s huge walls and peaks can be seen from far down the street. It’s architecture is impressive, though somewhat ruined by renovation work happening outside, the inside is stunning, the detail on the ceilings and floors was really impressive.

After exploring the cathedral, we take a walk down to the port, there are some cool buildings here, and a museum of some sort, we have a little look around but ultimately decide to move on as the entrance fees are a little excessive.
We exit one of the buildings and I notice a few people taking pictures of above us, I look up and snap this picture…

And then shortly after I begin to hear a pitter patter… Rain? I glance upwards and see a very literal shitstorm. It is everywhere, I sprint underneath a nearby awning and feel like a war hero evading an artillery strike. ugh.
We explore around the museum a bit, there are connecting pathways on top and a bridge to some nearby castley kind of buildings. We walk around here for a little, just admiring the scenery. The sandy/clay style used around here actually made it feel like we were in Spain more than France.

It was down to the port next, we had yet to eat lunch, so we went searching for that, we ended up finding it in a small cluster of restaraunts. The service in the restaraunt was awful, we had to wait ages to place our order, though once we had ordered the food came relatively quickly. I had Mussels and fries – pretty standard French stuff? It was pretty good, the mussels tasted fairly fresh, we were by the port after all I guess.

We trekked back to the hotel to check in and freshen up… The whole family ended up falling asleep. 2 or 3 hours later, we were out again, we had a walk around the port area some more, partially just wandering, partially trying to scope out something nice for dinner. The sun setting made for some very nice lighting, I’ll let some pictures do the talking for me I guess.

There was an area with a mirror-like ceiling which was kind of cool.

Dinner was at a seafood speciality restaraunt, 3 courses for 15 euro, which seemed like a decent price – of course, as they say, you get what you pay for.
The food was awful and the service was equally bad. A sliver of smoked salmon and some toast for starter, a fish boullibaise for Main (which was underseasoned, full of fish bones, the potatoes were undercooked, the bread was borderline stale…) and an apple tart for dessert. Each course took forever to come out as well, I think we were there for around 2 hours – practically held against our will.

Dinner took so long to come out that by now it was nearing 11pm, we walked back to the hotel and reflected on the day.

Not sure if I mentioned, but there are constant ‘pockets’ of shit-smell just kind of randomly strewn around the town, im not sure whats up with that, but its horrific, i dont know if they lack a sewage system in France or what but it certainly felt like it.