Buon Giorno

 Buon Giorno,
My friend and travelling companion Pat and I boarded the Norweigan Jade in Civitavecchia, Italy this morning. Jade is a beautiful midsize ship that once did duty as the Pride of Hawaii in Honolulu, has cruised the Mediterranean for a few years and will next year be cruising the Caribbean.

Jade is the smallest ship in the Norwegians fleet carrying 2400 passengers and 1200 crew members. The Hawaiian décor with lots of teak, colourful blown glass hibiscus, carpets, artworks and even a life sized statue of King Kamehameha overlooking one of the dining rooms looked and felt right and didn’t seem terribly out of place in the Mediterranean. I rather like all things Hawaiian so it suited me just fine. Arrivedercii, buon giorno, mahalo and aloha!

Ciao - hi and bye

Buon giorno - hello, good morning

Arrivedercii - goodbye

Grazie - thank you

My home away from home for 21 nights

 

A raft of 4 elevators and my cabin is just a step around the corner, so very handy yet didn't hear any elevator or traffic sounds at all

Plain and simple is all one needs

 If you take the wrong elevator........

Pool deck. Dig the art deco palms

A map of our next few days journey

 You can always see what lies ahead of the ship on the tv

 The social heart of the ship with hibiscus ceiling

 Grand Pacific dining room

 King Kamehameha

Aloha, Mediterranean style

Still enroute

Feb. 3, still enroute with a 4 hour airport wait time at YVR to get the 9 hour plus flight to the U.K. and then a 3 hour wait to change planes to get on a 3 hour flight to Rome. Then we had to hurry up and wait for our hotel transfer to arrive which didn’t so then a “5 minute” walk on a moving sidewalk which turned out to have portions that weren’t functional and so it took us at least 30 minutes to walk with all our luggage then finally we were able to crash out for a few hours.

We then enjoyed their complimentary breakfast buffet with eyeopening strange/new to me breakfast foods like melon juices, smoked and pickled herring, olives, baked beans and seafoods and unusual looking orange eggs.

Soon the ships transfer bus came to drive us another 90 minutes to the Civitavecchia cruiseship terminal 80 miles away from Rome where we could finally begin to cruising like a Norwegian. Can you tell….I am beat; travel day starts off exciting but soon fades to not much fun especially when it begins at 10p.m. after being up all day and then travelling into a time zone that’s 9 hours ahead of us. I could never sleep on a plane.

 

Did you know that Norwegians say "aloha"? I didn't either but i'll explain........... stay tuned.

Mediterranean cruise

Feb. 2, 2015

I’m off to Rome! Flying the friendly skies of British Airways to London and then on to the Eternal City. Spending a night at an airport hotel before boarding the bus for Civitavecchia, Italy to board the Norwegian Jade for 21 nights.

A reminder:

Euros Canadian

10 =    14.07

20 =    28.14

30 =    42.00

40 =    56.27

50 =    70.34

60 =    84.41

70 =    98.48

80 =  112.54

90 =  126.61

100 =140.68

Turkish Lire will be easy; just half it to get aprox. Canadian $ equivalent.

The only other currency I’ll need is U.S. and that’s pretty easy, used to that one. Oh, and perhaps British pounds. Geeze, so many monies to learn but have to know what I’m spending.