To Dorothy

Ok, I couldn't resist one more post. I had a great time at our 4th of July party with Bill's mother, Dorothy. She said she was an active follower of the blog and that she wanted to have a copy of some of my photos.

So Dorothy, this one's for you!

Thought I should add a few photos for those of you who are interested. Anyone still out there? This is in front of the Coloseum. Could you guess? Ron is up ahead or taking the photo and Jan and Pete haven't arrived yet. This was on our second day in Rome and we were still trying to hoof it as a group of 10. Looking pretty good!

We were looking pretty good until we wore our feet out! And this was still on day 2. Guess how we felt on day 5 of Rome. I don't think there is one of us who would give back one single step of that trip. We are looking back at each other's photos and wishing we were still there.

Jan and Pete finally arrived! Well, at least we know they are coming back to Rome. A coin in the Trevi Fountain assures a return to Rome and all of us except one tossed their coins in. We'll see if the legend holds true. I'm just not sure I'll be the last one around to tell you about it. And since the other bloggers are handcuffed and cannot blog..... you may never know!

Let me know if you are still reading and if I should post a few more photos. Between my 1,052 photos, Scott's 1,994, Bill's, Dan's, Janet's and John and Sue's, we should have enough to find a few to post. Any requests? The beach at Mykonos? The view from Santorini? The little old lady who sold me a Greek shirt in the Turkish town of Sirince? Perhaps Ron and me in our Blazer shirts at the Acropolis.....

The ship is still moving

Is anyone else still swaying with the Solstice?

Contributors to step up!

Now that we are home, I am hoping we will have more blog contributors. I will add a few photos, especially for our kids who won't sit through the week long photo showing. I am hoping that others on the trip will add all those little anecdotes we've discussed and experienced. I am hoping Jan and Pete will continue our story with new adventures and mostly, I hope we continue to find all the blessings we can in our lives together!

A favorite memory? Add it here!

Fiumicino, JFK and PDX

Tristemente, tutto deve finire! Sadly, everything must come to an end. But in our case the end only means planning for the next. What a trip!

Our close knit little group arose early in Rome to eat our last Italian breakfast and load up the vans. We were having our cappucini (thanks for the grammar lesson, John) and who should arrive in the breakfast room, but Jan and Pete! They were the only ones who could have slept in because they aren't headed home. They are picking up a car at the airport and heading to Orvietto. Their daughters Mackenzie and Zoe are meeting them on Sunday for more of Italy. Lucky buggers!

The rest of us, exhausted from 6 days in Rome and 11 days in Italy, Greece and Turkey, were sad to leave and happy at the prospect of seeing friends and family. I think my puppies might be missing us by now! I know I am missing Mom and Kyle and Lindsey! Our regular driver, Hassan, was there early to pack our bags in the vans and get us to our flight out of Fiumicino. We headed out, keeping our eyes peeled for any last look at Rome which we hadn't seen, perhaps a well dressed women on a vespa in red ribboned sandals. We easily made our flight and settled in for our trip home. Janet wasn't as settled as the rest of as, as she realized that she had dropped her passport! She had it to get on the plane, but didn't see it in her paperwork once she sat in her seat. A little panicked, she looked around the floor nearby. Scott, seeing her searching as he came down the aisle, kept his eyes to the floor. Just as a man was settling in, he shuffled his feet and Scott, out of the corner of his eye, noticed he kicked a little blue folder under his seat. It was a God thing. Scott reached over and picked up Janet's passport. She would never have found it under the seat a number of rows in front of her! That was the second time a Willis came to the rescue!

Everything went fairly well on the flight, at least for us. The woman with 2 small screaming children didn't have as smooth a flight. What a joy to have adult children! We landed at JFK and looked forward to a 4 hour layover. Unfortunately, our flight arrived about 45 minutes early, to extend our NYC time. Unfortunately, Linda didn't get us into a VIP lounge! That was her only job on the whole trip, but we don't blame her. So, don't know that I've spent much time at JKF until now. I didn't realized how blessed I've been all my life to not have flown through JFK before! What a mess! The we were going through customs. For some unknown reason, Delta didn't have the customs forms for us. No problem, they said, they will have a representative at the airport to meet us and give us forms. And we believed them! Silly us! There was no one there from Delta for a full flight from Rome. Finally a short little man with a New York attitude from Customs came out with the forms. He was going to keep control if it killed him. Several people almost did! He decided to give out only the Visa waiver forms first (about 5 people out of the entire plane of about 300 people). Then when a few people reached over to pick up a blank customs form he grabbed them and told us that if we didn't wait patiently he would take the forms and leave, he didn't care if the police came and arrested him, we weren't getting the forms unless we were nice! Short guy, big attitude. A little power hungry. We finally got our forms and made it through customs, even with Linda's over 3 ounce bottle of liquid skin miracle or whatever it was she bought on the ship and didn't pack in the checked baggage. It is nice that the Europeans don't have that 3 ounce rule! She was able to pack it in her checked bags at JKF and not have to sacrifice her skin just to get home! The other snaffu was that John and Sue were missing a bag! Yes, again, a bag gone, but to share the love, it was John and Sue instead of Janet this time. Again, a Voyager to the rescue! Bill, not to be detered, finally found it.

We finally found our gate and sat down for a beer. After the beer, Scott and Dan discovered there were too many duty free shops for us to be the right terminal. So we found the transportation gate and waited for the van to take us to the correct terminal. Judy was happily talking to her kids on the cell phone - it is sure nice to be easily and cheaply connected. We finally got to the correct gate, but after all that trudging from gate to terminal to gate to terminal, we were don't slogging our stuff around and we still had 3 hours to go. Ron and I watched the herd of bags, while others went to sit and have a bit to eat. We weren't quite ready for food or for moving more luggage! I just wanted to sit. And sit we did. The line to Chili's was really slow and the service was slower. It was fine as we had nowhere to go.

Finally, after getting in line to board our flight a little late, I found that at the end of the jetway, there was no plane! We weren't boarding a plane, we were boarding some kind of box on wheels and lifts! As soon as everyone was in the box, it lowered and started driving, or lurching along. We were in that box, thinking we were being shipped UPS instead of flying! We drove around that airport in a box! I still can't believe it. I think the driver was stopping at each plane, rolling down the window and asking if it was the plane to Portland. The entire box of people were roaring with laughter when Ron's suitcase fell over and almost ended the Googins lineage. Once on the tarmac, the two rear doors of the box suddenly popped open. I'll face Rome traffic and vespa near death experiences before I'd ride in one of those again!

We finally found our plane and yes, we were blessed again, the plane wasn't full. We were able to spread out with 1 couple per 3 seats. After about 18 hours of travel, one needs a little space. I think we all slept off and on until we reached Portland and HOME! It was nice to recognize the airport and listen to English! Even on the plane we heard lots of foreign language and the flight attendant doing the announcements was harder to understand than the planes in Italy! The best part for me was walking down to baggage claim and seeing my son. It was so good to see Kyle waiting for us and that was a great hug! I realize how much I did miss being home.

Just so that we realized the extent of our trip, the search wasn't over. We all found our bags, all except, who? John and Kyung Sook! It was the same garment bag that was so slow at customs at JFK. We were so tired, we were headed for the door when John's bag finally was spewed out onto the conveyor. The end of a memorable trip.

But wait! It isn't over! We have a party planned to see each other's photos and update the pedometer!

Pedometer: From the hotel at the airport to the Witcosky home in 17 days, we racked up 295,599 steps. That is about 88.6 miles. No wonder my toes are shorter than they used to be!
Photo update: Between Scott, John and the rest of us, we have shot about 295,599 photos! 150,000 by Scott, 145,00 by John and the rest of us combine to make 599. If we get the chip back from Sue's camera we may well have more photos than steps!

Rome revisited and Jan's Birthday

We landed in Civitavecchia at about 4 in the morning. We packed our bags the night before and they were picked up late in the night. We rose early, around 6:30, packed our pajamas in our carryon luggage. After double checking our rooms for things left behind, we headed to breakfast. John and Dan had the great idea of getting breakfast in the dining room instead of the overcrowded Oceanview Café. We were waited on by about 15 waiters! It was a nice breakfast and we leisurely finished and headed off the boat. All was easy and relaxed until we couldn’t find one of Janet’s suitcases! After 20 minutes or so of looking through thousands of bags, Janet was planning on all the new clothes she would buy when the cruise line paid her to replace her clothes. Darn it all if Judy didn’t find the bag! No new clothes, but at least Janet had something to wear on the plane home. One of our vans was a little late picking us up at the cruise port. Turns out the wait to get to the port was 40 minutes! That was stopped in line after the van got to the port, The line of cars and vans and busses was over 1 km long. We were lucky to have only a short wait and were loaded the flock of bags and headed back to Rome.

Another Italian mattina! We arrived at the hotel, dropped off bags and headed out to do the one last thing we didn’t do in the first 5 days. Some went to St Peter’s, some to Piazza Navona, some to the Pantheon for gelato and some to Intimissi for pajamas! A trip to Europe isn’t complete without a trip to Intimissi, according to Ron. Ron and John and Sue and I were able to walk by the hotel where we stayed with Lindsey and Kyle on our first trip to Rome. We saw the wine bar where Lindsey ordered a sandwich with white truffle oil and I finally figured out what that horrid smell was! Haven’t liked truffles since! So we got a few photos to replace the ones we misplaced from our first trip. I’ll have to photoshop in Lindsey and Kyle 7 years younger. We had lasagne and pizza, beer and vino bianco, walked down Via Condotti, window shopping at Gucci, Ferragamo, Versace, Louis Vitton, Hermes, you name it, if it is a big name and expensive, we walked by the store! After the Pantheon, the best gelato (Fico d’India and kiwi) at Della Palma, we headed back to deposit our bags in our room and blog. You lucky fans!
I hope to get out a few more words from Europe. Today is Jan’s birthday and the plan is to have some dinner together. We will headed to Piazza Navona and try to get gelato at Tre Scalia - the birthplace of Death by Chocolate. That’s the way to celebrate a birthday! I hope to get in a quick review before we head out tomorrow morning for JFK.

Una giornata a Napoli e Sorrento!

Thursday in Napoli!

Ok, everyone is tired of my song by now, but here we are in Naples. We arrived early and Jan, Judy, Scott, John and Sue headed to Pompei and Mt Vesuvius. Dan, Janet, Bill, Linda, Ron and I headed for Sorrento. Pete basked in the quiet of an empty ship and a hot tub. Not a bad idea after 14 days of non stop sight seeing and walking. Sorrento was such a great little town! We took the hydrofoil there, about a 40 minute ride. Coming in from the water was amazing because, like Santorini, it is built on a cliff. The main part of the city is flat but it juts right out into the sea. As you approach from the water, the cliff goes straight up and then the buildings look like they are the top part of the cliff. You don’t want to fall off the balcony there! Then as you walk through town, you come to a little bridge and it drops off into a canyon a couple hundred feet down. In Sorrento, there is a little, famous wood inlay factory. The men, Dan, Bill and Ron, really wanted to see it. The work they do there is amazing, so beautiful. They had a showroom with tea trays, music boxes, pictures for the wall, coffee tables, games tables, many things all beautifully hand made. It is called Notturno. I think they made Pinnochio there. It was fascinating as we toured the factory, just the 6 of us and one other couple. They explained the process in making the inlay and how it is an art form that not many are doing anymore because cheap copies can be done with a laser and put on particle board. These are much less expensive, but don’t last and aren’t as nice as the true hand inlay. It was fun to get a few little things to take home.

Next in Sorrento we went, ok, everybody together now, SHOPPING! I don’t know how we could have shopped so much and bought so little, but it is fun to look at the shops and just browse. We found a really great pizzeria called Aurora. We sat under the umbrellas, had beer and wine and pizza in the birthplace of pizza. Ok, it was invented in Naples, but we were close. We also had a traditional dessert called Sophia Loren. Not telling why it is called that, you’ll have to come to Sorrento yourself to find out. We walked back to the port to catch the hydrofoil. We took a bus into town. It wasn’t far, but up a steep hill. The walk down was easy and beautiful. We had many steps into the crevasse, but then we followed the winding road that the bus took. This road was tiny and with hairpin curves. The small busses had to stop to let cars pass and could barely negotiate the turns. If a bus was coming while you were walking down, you had to hug the rock wall on either side to not get hit. There were plants growing from niches in the wall and everything was beautiful. It had rained in the morning before we arrived, so the streets were wet early in the day, but we were blessed with warm, sunny skies.

On the way to Sorrento, we saw Mt Vesuvius, or at least most of it. The top was covered in a cloud every time we saw it and we were worried that the rest of our group would hike all the way up there and see nothing. Instead, they went to Pompei and saw that. They said it was a great place to see, many ruins, but different from anything else we had seen earlier. Both groups had great experiences, just different. We saw each other back on the ship. We are all a little bushed from all this traveling, but so happy that we have had this chance to be together and see a new part of the world. Another blessing.

We had a sail away party on the back of the boat and watched Naples fade into the distance. Judy took photos of the lighthouses and shed a few tears. Her favorite part is sailing away! We’ve had such a trip, none of us is ready to leave, but I think we are all ready to talk to our kids and families and rest from our vacation! Our last dinner together was very nice, then we all packed our clothes for our last day in Rome.