After completing Merritt's medical treatment in Bad Nauheim we found a low priced transatlantic cruise that sailed out of a port near Rome. This solved the issue of Merritt not being able to fly from Europe to the US for 90 days post-surgery.
Saturday, Oct 6th, one month after our arrival, we left Bad Nauheim and traveled by train from Frankfurt to Milan where we changed trains and continued onto Rome. Airbnb made it easy for us to arrange a home to stay in until the cruise departed on Oct 14th.
Frankfurt Train station with some kind of interesting organic art in the background.
During our trip to Rome, we had a family with their children across the aisle from us. It reminded us of all the time we spent traveling with our own kids. The two boys did pretty well on the seven-hour train ride. The scenery wasn't too bad either.
Heather's number one priority was getting a haircut once we got to Rome. We walked by a salon our second day and they fit Heather in immediately, a good cut but about 3 times the cost as in Serbia. We are going to miss those $4 Serbian haircuts (along with so many other things)
It was nice having nine days in Rome. Merritt was still recovering so about every other day we just stayed in the apartment and read and played cards. We had been to Rome about 25 years ago but of course, we did have to go out and see some of the sights, the highlight being a trip to Tivoli to see the gardens there.
If you ever find yourself in Rome and are getting a bit tired of all the tourists and concrete we highly recommend taking the one hour train ride to Tivoli.
It was nice to see all the manicured greenery and fountains.
Back in Rome, some of our favorite places included the Spanish Steps
Piazza del Popolo next to the Borghese gardens
Trajan's column still standing since it's construction in 113 AD.
Piazza Navona
The colosseum.
Trevi Fountain
Going to church at an Italian speaking ward.
The real highlight of our week in Rome was being able to meet up with Jon and Becky Rands who were also completing their mission (they served in Slovenia). We frequently worked together on YSA and Youth activities in the mission. One of the greatest blessings of serving a mission are friendships formed with the members and other missionaries. It was pretty neat that our Rome plans overlapped by one day and we were able to get together for dinner and visiting.
On Monday, October 14th we took a train to Civitavecchia and boarded the Norwegian Pearl along with 3500 other passengers to begin our trip back to the US.
Because of Merritt's recovery and also just because we like to read our favorite spot on the ship was the library which had a good selection of books and it was open 24 hours a day.
Our first stop was Pisa where we got off and took a train to Lucca. Sorry no photos of us holding up the leaning tower of Pisa. Lucca is famous for its towers which families built in a "keeping up with the Jones's" fashion. At one point there were hundreds of them but now only a handful remain.
Our next stop was Cannes, France from where we took a bus to Nice. It turns out we should have taken the train because the bus took twice as long as expected (over 2 hours).
We spent several weeks in Nice five years ago and found the city just as charming as we remembered. They have made several improvements since then that makes it even better. One of the best things about Nice is the Promenade that runs for several kilometers along the coast.
We enjoyed our day in Nice and someday we would like to come back for a much longer visit. We left in time to catch the last train back to the boat from the historic train station (30 minutes).
The next day we stopped in Barcelona. We arrived the day before major demonstrations supporting the separation of Catalonia from Spain. Hopefully, they can get things worked out peacefully. We focused on seeing more of Gaudi's works, stopping first at the Segrada de Familia, which is incredible inside and out. We were here six years ago and it was interesting to see the progress they have made. We definitely will come back again when it is finished.
Gaudi was a pure genius. Here are some other buildings he designed that we visited. It would be fun to design and build something like this (on a much smaller scale of course!)
We spent a day at sea so we could recuperate in the ship's library and then our next stop was Cadiz, Spain. We tried to get a train to Seville but it was sold out (should have planned ahead a little better). No matter, we had a relaxing day wandering the pleasant streets and parks of this small town. We stumbled upon a tennis club with some nice courts so perhaps we will come back and spend some more time here someday.
Our next stop was Lisbon. It was dramatic to sail into the bay where Lisbon is situated. It reminded us quite a bit of San Fransico with the city being built on the hills above the water.
We spent time in Lisbon before, so Heather stayed on the boat and Merritt just got on a bus and asked the bus driver for suggestions where to get off along the route. It turns out the route went out to the Expo part of town which is full of new developments. It includes a large shopping mall, an aquarium, a gondola ride across the water and several parks. While just doing some exploring Merritt came around a corner and stumbled upon the new LDS Lisbon Temple. This temple had just been dedicated a few months ago and it was very neat to be able to see it. We will have to come back again someday when we can attend the Lisbon temple.
After Lisbon, we had two more rest days while we traveled to the Azores. The Azores are part of Portugal and are located in the Mid-Atlantic, think Hawaii minus the beaches as everything is all black lava rock along the shoreline. It was a very beautiful day on the island of San Miguel.
Many of the building are done in a black and white motif.
We also enjoyed seeing all the elaborate black and white designs in the cobblestones throughout the city.
Here is a photo of us together as we left San Miguel behind.
We rested up and played some cards during the next few days at sea.
Our next stop was Bermuda. It is part of the United Kingdom so everything was left-hand drive and they even had some of the red phone booths you typically only see in England. Bermuda is heavily populated with both homes and boats. It was nice to be in a location where all the signage was in English.
The next stop was Port Canaveral (this was a substitute port for the Bahamas which still haven't recovered from the recent hurricane). Some people went on excursions to Disney World and some to the Kennedy space center but we just rested up on the boat. Also, this was the first port we had come to that wasn't serviced by any public transportation (welcome to the USofA where everyone has a car).
Our next and final stop was Miami. We arrived just before 7 am while the city lights we still shining.
A cruise does not normally appeal to us and we would never have taken this cruise except for it being an expeditious means for us to get home but we would have to say it was better than we expected. The food was very good (we both ate too much) and we were able to see lots of amazing sites without any hassle of checking into and out of hotel rooms. Maybe we will do this again sometime but not for a while.
We arrived in Sacramento where we are enjoying spending some time doing jigsaw puzzles and hanging out with family and friends.
Getting Merritt's surgery done and then getting home resulted in being on the road and living out of suitcases for 54 days. It's good to be home!
We went to the Sacramento Temple with Heather's father. We have a lot of memories from Mormon Center (dedicated by Pres. Kimble in the 70's where he forecast that this would be a good location for a temple in the future).
We are grateful that we were fortunate enough to be able to serve our mission in the Adriatic North Mission with wonderful people who will be close to our hearts forever.
Next up is spending more time with our four granddaughters in Holladay, Utah during Thanksgiving
