Glad to hear those of you who left us are arriving home safely. You're all missed !

The fun continues here on board. This has been a busy cruise for sure....only 1 sea day for a 17 night cruise. We have actually been really good about making excursions and haven't missed one day yet (though we've been tempted). We've thoroughly enjoyed our days in Italy. Yesterday we were in Amalfi and had an excellent excursion visiting a small town new to us... Ravello. It is so pretty, on top of the mountain and full of charm!

Today we're in Sardinia. We had a "scenic tour" and this sure is a beautiful island...just gorgeous, clean and very upscale. Unfortunately being Sunday and off season, it was like a ghost town with everything closed. At least we got to see the island and it is very impressive so hopefully someday we can come back.

Tomorrow we're in Livorno. We're signed up to go on a biking excursion in Lucca with Cheron & Mark. This should be interesting, it is suppose to be flat but the typical cobblestone streets. Thank goodness they provide helmets for us. We have had the best weather I can ever remember on any cruise. Sunny and gorgeous days. I hope I'm not jinxing us as I hear there's a chance of rain tomorrow :(

The fun continues on board, we had nice dinner at Prime 7 last night with Cheron, Mark, Sheila, Ken & Olivia... good food, good friends and lots of laughts. Tonight we're eating with Elda (asst. cruise director I'm sure many know her). Last night was the Gold, Platinum, Titanium cocktail party at sail away. It was on Deck 8 forward in the private "crew only" deck. A nice idea organized by GM Davor.

Up until yesterday we won trivia 3 days in a row. Our team is just Sheila, Ken and me but we're kind of recruiting Olivia to play with us, we need her brains. Yesterday the questions were difficult and we struggled, but as always it's just about having a good time together. They had a block party last night after the cocktail party and before dinner, I met lots of our nice neighbors who got on in Rome, much younger average age than we're use to cruising with.

So this kind of wraps up the past couple of days. Just having a great time....I can't believe we only have a few days left... !!

Marcie, the bike tour in Lucca is one of my all time favorites, and one of the few tours I would gladly do again. It is very flat and safe. The majority is on a bike path built on the old city walls, and the rest is on pedestrian only streets. You will have a great time.

We're home! The bike excursion sounds great! And so glad you're continuing to enjoy nice weather. I got our 10 euro umbrella from Naples all the way home.

Posting during MARINER solely from my iPhone was challenging. Especially with Photobucket acting up. Here are some photos from the trip:

Fairy chimneys from Cappadocia:



From the hot air balloon:



From the terrace of The Museum Hotel:



The Mariner in Istanbul:



The Blue Mosque in Istanbul:





Alice and I were very lucky to see it and the Topkapi Palace and the underground cistern all in about 3 hours before boarding the ship!

Think "From Russia with Love":


Sorry, iphone photo not so good.

We had an amazing day in Ephesus. I had not seen the Terrace houses before. Alice with the good camera has photos of those. Of course, here's the library:



We wondered around Kusadasi for awhile until it was time for Alice to go back to the ship to play cards. I stopped and had a turkish coffee by the sea (the one I had in Amman on NILE 2 was better) and got lost in the 'grand bizarre'. I found a fish market though! I love those:





I made it back for trivia:
Alice, Jeff, Ngaire, Marcie, Helen, Dave, Jim, Ken:

A quiet morning in Mykonos. My third time there, so we went to Dilos.



Santorini:



An unbelivably funny, and fun dinner in Signatures with Olivia, Marcie and Tom:



Salt flats and old windmill on an espresso stop on the way to the olive farm in Trapani:



The trip to the volcano Mt. Etna was something altogether different:



Later that night we passed by Stromboli and thanks to Elda, asst. cruise director who pointed out the mountain, Alice and I were patient enough to keep looking and saw the shooting lava.

Last La Vernada breakfast at the port in Civitavecchia before getting the train into Rome. We got an earlier train than I had booked on-line (about an hour earlier) and it was a good thing. Gave us more time in Rome to find our connecting train to Florence. However, it was so packed I had to stand the entire way into Rome.

Post-cruise photos of Florence and Venice:

Florence:
Duomo



Ponte Vecchio



With our headphones on doing the Rick Steves Renaissance audio walking tour:



I had bought tickets on-line for the Uffizi gallery for Thursday at 3:00 pm thinking that would give us time to get to Florence, check into our hotel, and get to the museum. We managed that fine. In fact, we heard there would be a strike on Friday. So, after the Uffizi, we went to the Academia (where the real David is). I had also bought on-line tickets for that for Friday at 8:30 a.m. I asked them if we could get in then (it was about 5:30pm Thursday) rather than risk not getting in on Friday due to the strike. It all worked out great!! We were thrilled. Except my Rick Steves audio tour wouldn't work, I think it didn't fully download when I did all the downloads at home. So we ended up paying 10 euros for the museum's audio guide. Oh well.. that goes in the bucket with the 10 euros I spent in Naples to buy an umbrella since I was too dumb to take one from the ship. At least I got the umbrella home though! And the guide was good. Didn't know the David was carved from a single piece of marble that two other sculptors had failed to be able to carve anything from.

On to Venice:

So, it's Friday, and now the strike is on. We can't take the public water bus from the train station, so 60 euros later we are in a water taxi on our way to the Hilton:





Random photos in Venice:







Lunch. See the sign above the door?

Love markets! This is near the Rialto bridge:

Thanks for the pictures Kim! Two of my most favorite cities!
--------------------
Helen

Fantastic pictures and commentary, thanks Kim and Alice!

I enjoyed seeing your photos Kim & Alice. What an awesome trip you had!

Kim a fantastic picture gallery of great memories thank you so much for posting those. Travelling with you both is such fun you get the most out of every adventure!

Loving these pics! Some of my most favorite places.

Kim, so happy you could post all these great pix. I couldn't post any from the ship, just kept getting timed out.

Our itinerary changed due to some high swells...we couldn't anchor in Portofino yesterday so we had a much needed sea day. It was great to stay on the ship, play Hearts and games and relax. Today we're missing St. Tropez, France and instead went straight to Monte Carlo where we're docking now. Everyone was excited about over nighting here tonight so this was good news. The Voyager will be in Monte Carlo tomorrow, same time we are.

Had fun dinner last night with Sheila & Ken, then went to last 1/2 of the show. On our way back to our room the casino was calling. Tom said he had an itch to play craps so we stayed for an hour. Unfortunately the poker table wasn't as kind to me as it was the week before with Joan & Dave but didn't lose much.

Today I'm playing Ken and gathered everyone's excursion tickets so we could all get on the same bus for our 4 hour tour of Monaco & Eze. Tonight we'll have our farewell dinner with Val & Mike and Olivia and anyone else who wants to join us. Sad to say good bye after having such a wonderful 17 days on board. We''ll spend a couple of nights in Switzerland with friends, also one of our favorite places on earth.

LCT (name of our trivia team) won yesterday....helped that we had repeated questions we had heard the segment before. Going home with all clean laundry...that always helps.

Ciao for now!

Great pictures Kim, felt like we were right there.

Marcie, you and Tom always have the best trips and the best time. Haven't cruised with you in a long time, and looking forward to PAGODA and a chance to spend some time with you.

Sounds like MARINER was a big success, but then all the LCT cruises are. How could they not be?

Marcie, I'm sad that your cruise is about to be over. I have so enjoyed all the posts and photos you all have posted. So glad you all had such a nice time!!

Great webcam view of the Mariner!

After losing 2 looong posts here during the cruise, going to be brief. Great cruise!!! Miserable weather last 3 days, but nothing we can do about that. glad to have spent some time with a lot of new people, and ones I had met, but hadnt had time to get to know better! Nice final dinner tonight with old pals, Tom and Marcie, and new pals Val and Mike, with whom I share a ride tomorrow with Alain at dream Tours. Mark and Cheron stopped by the table for goodbyes, I can't wait until March, when some of us are together again on Pagoda.

I really need to get that luggage out the door. Ciao.

Thanks for the entertainment - it sure seemed liked a fantastic cruise!!!!!

You all have good, safe travels home! Miss you guys!!! Stinks that the weather was bad the last few days. But, you are right Olivia, what better way to spend those days than with good friends on a Regent ship?

P.S. I wonder what happened to my profile picture?

We had nice new Mercedes waiting for us when we disembarked and the sun is shining bright today....figures. We're at Nice airport killing time before we fly to Zurich. We've had such a great time and luckily have a few more days in Switzerland before reality sets in.

Luckily we've checked in at home and everything is going great...looking forward to getting lots of slurpy dog kisses and purrrs when we finally make it back to California. It has been a great vacation, we have 2 more short cruises before we're on the Voyager in March PAGODA which will be kind of a MARINER reunion.

Ken & I played our last trivia game yesterday, just the 2 of us !! Surprised ourselves by doing well (and no repeats) and missed winning by 1 question. Wonderful dinner last night with Olivia, Mike & Val and then Tom & I went dancing to some great Beatles Music in Horizon lounge. Early breakfast in Compass Rose...may be awhile until we have this 1st class service again.

Safe travels to all !!

Looking forward to seeing you on PAGODA Marcie, thanks for all the great sea mail. Lets definitely plan dinner one night or two.

Made it to Switzerland fine and can finally upload this picture with the cute sign Mark made for our last game of Hearts. (Mark, Cheron, me, Val)

Thanks for the pic of my big sis, Val!
Sally

Did any of you meet the occupants of Suite 816 who departed in Rome? There is a thread on CC that they left an item of jewelry in their safe. It was turned in to reception, apparently.

Mark you never give up do you, a determined effort to get Ken's name added to the company.

Ken and I had a big giggle over that sign. Soon the ship will start believing the company name has changed!!!

Plus a memorial - we are not dead yet we are like McArthur "we will return"

That was pretty darn cute!

Great commentary and pics! I'm missing our old LCTer's! Looking for great cruise or trip to join you guys on next year:)

I hope I am on any cruise you choose, Kim! We miss you and John!

me too Kimmi....it's been waaaaaay too long!

KIMMI, SUZIE, CARLA, I miss all of you - we have had some fun times!!! XXXOOO