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Vacation is over, and xpcdoojk is back. hee hee

xpcdoojk

By xpcdoojk,
in Royal Caribbean International

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xpcdoojk "Live from...." Rare

xpcdoojk

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Here is my todays output on the Italian Travelouge.

 

jc:)

 

We start the trip back up the hill, and my mind is working forwards to the nicer sunnier day later in the week and a swim in that water. The pathway is not quite as pleasant on the return. I have to stop at least 3 times to catch my breath. It is not awful, but it is really bad! We stop by the pool and I jump in to cool off after my little hike where some of the crew is gathered reading books and taking in the beautiful view. Yikes! The water is still pretty chilly.

 

 

Later, we decided since the sky is a little dark and it won’t be a good hang out at the pool day that we would load up the vehicles and go to Positano. Positano is the town that is most often filmed for the movies of a typical Amalfi village. Most recently it was in the Movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” after she met the guy in Rome, and had a brief affair. The clouds really started to gray the sky by the time we get to Amalfi, and we pulled into a parking lot (not cheap). I rediscovered something I had discovered in Venice. We were traveling really light for this trip, and I wanted to buy some tee shirts for just casual wearing. My nephews back home are all former soccer players at the college level. So, I thought it would be cool to buy a couple of official jerseys for the Italian soccer leagues. So, we saw a neat sporting goods store in Venice, and I bought a jersey for the Inter (Milan) team, because I liked the color, which were blue and black vertical stripes. When I wore it in Venice, my wife said people were looking at me as if they thought I was insane or a soccer player. People would see the jersey and start rattling off Italian at me, because what American would wear an Italian league soccer jersey. This, of course, caused me to stammer my minimal Italian responses. A little bit more background we were warned by friends to not wear bright colors because it makes us stand out as being Americans. I live for bright colors, so I figured that if I wore a soccer shirt I could have the best of both worlds they wouldn’t think I was a tourist and I was not still in my white, gray, and tan shirts. It worked, way too, well. So, as we are giving the keys to the parking lot mafia (joke although only partially), the attendant starts rattling Italian at me in an angry tone. I again struggled through to explain that I just liked the jersey. He replies in English something to the effect that Inter is bad, and that he wants to smash my windows because of the jersey. He was joking, mostly. The encounter made me forget all about my Gore-Tex rain jacket in the back of the car, as I just wanted to disappear.

 

 

We left our cars in the lot and immediately went to get a gelato after all of that stress. I had a pistachio and my wife, had something that started with an s but was a brown swirl that looked chocolate mostly. She started raving about it as it must have had chopped Baci balls in a mix of flavors ice cream. We wander through the neat little streets lined with shops with brightly colored ceramic pottery that is painted all over the Amalfi coast, and is quite lovely. There are lots of neat shops, and it really is just a really pleasant little town. We end up eventually on the beach with the umbrellas folded up, and rows of chairs and colorful boats. Several men are fishing on the concrete pier where the ferries stop and load passengers. Shops, restaurants, and hotels surround the beach. We buy a few trinkets and pretty soon the men need a cocktail and possibly some food. We decide to walk back up the hill and see what is around the other side. It is about this time that it starts to drizzle. So we walk for about 10 minutes past some hotels, and neat homes, but we are not finding a restaurant or even a good bar, and the rain is becoming very intense. Everyone else has their raincoats on or they have an umbrella not me. I have my soccer shirt that is not very absorbent at least I have that going for me. I finally decide that the best chance for us to find a restaurant is to go back to the beach and eat at one of those after I had ran ahead around the next corner and saw more of buildings that didn’t look like restaurants. So we got to repeat the walk down the hill and finally go to the restaurant next to an internet café on the beach from which I had sent a few of my CC friends an email a couple of hours earlier. We had passed on this restaurant early on because it was an al fresco restaurant and it just wasn’t a nice looking day for eating outside. Now that the rain was coming down in earnest and I am soaking wet they suddenly start moving class windows into place all around the restaurant and viola it is an indoor restaurant now. It was Shelby’s turn to order the wine, which is usually good for the budget, and we had 3 bottles of Chianti Classico and 1 bottle of Pinot Grigio. Dinner was above average, and we had a delightful waiter. I unfortunately, was driving on those wonderful Amalfi roads and in a rainstorm so I had one small glass of Chianti. There is just something wrong with being soaking wet, and having to drink water while everyone else is dry drinking wine. After dinner and dessert we walked back to the car paid our ransom and got more grief about my shirt, and then we drove back home to the villa. Some of the guys watched a movie on my DVD player, “The Lady Killers”. Gary and the ladies played Gin Rummy and my DW went to bed. All in all an excellent day for our first full day on the Amalfi coast.

 

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xpcdoojk "Live from...." Rare

xpcdoojk

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Hopefully, Monday I will add more to the narrative! I am going to try to link some photos to this thread this weekend. So hopefully I can make that work. I am burning a slide show of about 50 photos out of over 500 I took for my wife to show at work. She is pretty selective of photos of herself. :D We are going to combine the photos with our friends, and I probably take the least photos of anyone in our group, I can only imagine the totality of all the photos in one sitting, Yikes! I hope my friends took pictures of the places we stayed, as when I get home I pretty much put my camera down and don't think about taking pictures in downtime. Now, I am wishing I had a picture of my English friends lovely yard and cute home. The hotels in Venice and Rome and, especially, the villa. Oh well.:o

 

jc

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Elizanessie

Elizanessie

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Thanks jc for the laugh oops sorry not meant to laugh at you getting wet in a strange country with a strange t-shirt on......dont worry buddy I am only joking with you.....I am so jealous of you,sounds like you had a great trip.The only bit I would miss out on is the bit south of the border of here !! Sadly since we started cruising we just arent interested ina land holiday except as an add on with our cruise.Alex wants more time in US next year.well depending on exams we shall see.If I were to cruise on the Med again I would like to do the one with Venice,I am so upset that mum didnt have good weather there last week.mmmmm rain yes we have lots of that at home here today.Och well back to the typing for you again mate.....we want more.

 

Liz

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xpcdoojk "Live from...." Rare

xpcdoojk

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I am probably making the biggest mistake that I have yet made on CC. I am going to give a link to a photo album with a few pictures of us!:eek: I am generally a very private person. I never try to be in pictures, and I am in a few of these posted. So here in a few minutes, I will post the link as soon as the pictures upload to yahoo.

 

jc

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hstrybuf

hstrybuf

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Thanks jc! I looked at both albums. The pics from London really brought back memories, while all the others made me wish I could see all of those things in person. You are much younger than I imagined. You've totally blown my impression of you as a little old fellow driving to a stockbrokers office. But hey, at least I knew what a Mini was so I'm not completely off base! :D

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xpcdoojk "Live from...." Rare

xpcdoojk

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I am not a car freak, but if you see my MINI Cooper S around town then you will have seen me in the flesh. I live close to Justice Jewelers for a reference for the locals About a good par 5 to the Southeast.:D I will go make the MINI pictures private so that you don't have to wade thru them. I probably will make the whole thing private Monday, and you will have to give me your yahoo id to see them, but I figured a one weekend showing wouldn't hurt, too much. Parnami will probably see them and park his conversion van in the driveway to get even with me! :eek:

 

jc

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