Day 3
First stop on the boat is Portoferrai Italy. It is on the island of Elba, which is the island Napoleon was exiled. It was quite the beautiful little port town. I am sure the whole island is nice but we didn’t get to see much. We spelt until 10am by accident. Once we rose and shone we walked around for a few hours. We saw neatly arranged old buildings and streets. We descended down onto a tiny rock beach and walked in the water. The water and view were stellar. It was a locals beach I believe. Not many people were there, and it was at least a million steps down to get to the water and beach. It really was one of those places that people might call a hidden gem. It was on the opposite side of the island from where the boat docks. So it was a bit out of the way for everyday tourists. I have spent a lot of time learning, playing, and constantly messing with this new camera. So far so good. Hopefully the pictures will turn out OK. So far I really enjoy the learning curve, as long as we have decent pictures to show for it in the end. It has been a long time since I actually gained enjoyment out of learning. On our way back to the boat we found our first geocache of this trip.
Day 4
La Spezia Italy. It is amazing that on a boat of 200 guests every single employee of the boat can know that we are Mr. and Mrs. Sellers. We do nothing to stand out or fit in. We don’t socialize with the wine drinking, dinner invites, happy hour, tea, palates, or anything I can think of. Yet somehow they all know our name. That must be the sign of true first class service. Not much happened today. A very lounging day. We walked around the town of La Spezia for a while. It is a very shopping orientated town, so that is fun for about 20 minutes. Nothing much else happened, not the most memorable of ports. We found 2 geocaches today. One in a phone booth and another in a cannon that took us 2 tries to find.
Day 5
Cannes France. Wifey found a dive boat with her keen eye so she went for a dive. I strolled around Cannes like a tourist with my camera and best looking “I’m a tourist” hat on. While she dove I went for as swim in the sea alone. The water was amazing blue and warm. There were naked boobies out everywhere. Unfortunately, none of them were worth getting in trouble for staring. Cannes seems pretty great. They really boast a lot about their film festival, as well they should. I’d love to go to a film festival one day. Maybe Telluride. There are blocks and blocks, probably miles, of every fancy name brand I have ever heard of. None of them mean much to me, but just the sound of the store names makes chicks go crazy. I do like knowing there are expensive shoes called Jimmy Choo. That makes me feel like I can still someday do something with my life. Something meaningful, that can really help this world. Wifey said her dive was not so great. She described it as fairly uneventful and far from the best. She was just extremely happy to be under water for an hour, and in France to boot. That is an odd thing for a human being that is not Aquaman to say. We took a train ride for an hour through Cannes that gave us a fun tour with some history. Turns out that Wifey is a big fan of Le Petit Trains. They are a better than average way to see more than self-population would show me. We had dinner off the ship tonight since the boat didn’t leave until 11pm. I ordered foie gras for what I think is the first time ever, muscles, and fish. All quite out of character for me. I simply asked our waitress what the best things they made we’re and ordered those things. My dinner had an entire head and watched me eat him, and punished me by having bones. We found a guy named lazy bones. He is a trackable geocache. He was located at one of 2 that we found today. The first was at the top of the town looking down over all of creation. The other was in the middle of the town at a busy intersection. Luckily everyone was too busy paying $8000 for a shirt to notice what I was doing. We need to decide where we are putting lazy bones next. Either Spain or back home to the USA.
Fun note about today…there was an ornamental guy on Wifey’s dive boat with a tattoo in the English language that said, “the opportunity garsp is in our hands”. I hope this is the equivalent of all the knuckleheads with ornamental writing tattoos who tell you it is the Chinese symbol for peace, love, prosperity, etc… I have always hoped that the tattoo artist played a joke and those symbols actually mean “I blow goats” or “I love divorces.” I wish I had gotten a photo, but he was just out of camera range. I did manage to fit this guy from the boat into frame:
Newest photos of these days are here.