We visit the Florida Mouse

On February 23, 2023 By Jim BellomoIn Air travel12 Comments

Originally I was not going to write a review of this trip. This was a family trip with my kids and grandkids, and I usually do not do a lot of writing about that kind of trip. They are more private, and I hardly ever put a recognizable photo of my grandkids on my blog. But our experience may help other grandparents (and we know a lot of them) deal with Disney better than we did. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great experience most of the time, but we are also happy that Walt Disney World is now a sure “Been there, done that, not going back” experience for us.

This trip was our Christmas (and birthday) gifts for our kids and grandkids this year. We have previously taken them to Disneyland in California (about seven years ago) on a cruise (the summer before the pandemic hit), and we had promised them the big Disney experience when they were both old enough to remember it. And it just happened we went on my grandson’s birthday. This brings me to the first thing I would have loved to avoid but couldn’t—crowds.

When we went to Disneyland seven years ago, the grandkids weren’t in school yet, and my daughter wasn’t teaching, so we only had to work around our work schedule and my son-in-law’s. So we could go whenever we wanted. That is the key to all amusement parks—go when others can’t. Sadly, both kids were in school this time, and my daughter is back to teaching, so we had to coordinate with school schedules. I refuse to do summer. The heat is just horrid and would be worse than the crowds. Maybe it’s worse. And it was still pretty darn hot. Not oppressive like it would have been in the summer, but really hot for us Pacific Northwesterners.

I have done a lot of research about the best time to go to WDW (Walt Disney World), and it used to be that the worst week of the year was the week between Christmas and New Year’s. But not anymore. It turns out that it is now worse during President’s Day weekend…which is when we were there. I base this on the report from the folks who write the book, “The Unofficial Guide to WDW,” who reported that this shift in crowds has now occurred. The Unofficial Guide books and their companion Lines app have been my go-to for avoiding crowds for years. Since way back when I took our kids to WDW in the 1990s, they have been amazing in helping me plan. With their book, their website and their app, they help you develop touring plans that can work. But not this time because the crowds just overwhelmed the plans.

This is the MOST frustrating vacation to plan. When I plan our other travel, I can make specific plans for specific tours and set specific times. Once in a while, a problem will occur that throws things off, but with Disney, it’s all a crapshoot. You can’t plan around the crowds. And there is so much to learn about WDW. Like how the Genie+ works (I didn’t figure that out until the last day), how the transportation system works, and just so much…AAAAGGGHHH!

I feel like I am rambling here, so let me get on with it.

What was good

Spending quality time with my wife, my daughter, her husband, my brother, his wife, my niece and my two incredible grandkids.
Having my Star Wars fan grandson celebrate his 12th birthday riding the Millenium Falcon, helping the Rise of the Resistance and taking Star Tours.
Our hotel (Disney’s Contemporary Resort), which was convenient, had decent food, comfortable beds, great bathrooms, helpful people at the front desk and one of the best showerheads I have ever used.
Some of the food was pretty darn good (but expensive) for a theme park/hotel. For instance, the turkey sandwich at the hotel “food court” was so good I had it three times during our stay. Our lunch in Epcot at the Coral Reef and the quick dinner at La Cantina De San Angel, also in Epcot, were all great. But sorry, WDW has some real problems with basic dining. More about that in the what needs changing section below. I also loved that at many restaurants, we could pre-order on our phones, pick a window of time we wanted to eat and then click a button when we arrived, and they would have it ready in minutes.
Disney’s free transportation gets you to all four parks in a hurry even when you are going really, really early. From our hotel we took Disney busses to two of the parks and the monorail to the other two.
The rides we were able to get on were awesome. Disney still does an amazing job with those. The newest Star Wars rides were great, but even I (who is not an Avatar fan) loved the Avatar ride in Animal Kingdom. There was nothing quite like it. I am still kind of awestruck by how amazing it is. You literally believe you are flying on a winged animal.
Magic Bands work great! Disney should hire out the people who make their Magic Bands to help cruise lines that are having problems with their RFID devices. A Magic Band is a device that looks like a wristwatch that you can use for EVERYTHING at Walt Disney World. It’s your room key, you can charge anything to it while on the Disney properties (food, souvenirs, drinks and just about anything else you can buy). You just hold up (like I do my Apple Watch) and tap it. It never failed—it worked every single time. It was so great to walk out of the room every day and not worry if you had your key, your wallet or anything but your sunglasses and sunscreen as long as you had your Magic Band on your wrist. And you can customize them as well. Mason had a Star Wars band; mine was Goofy, so I could walk around saying “Gorsh” all day. BTW: You could also use your phone to do anything that the band would do.

What REALLY needs improvement

The problem with Disney dining is NOT the food itself; it is the selection of places to eat it, especially at breakfast. About 90% of the in-park food venues do NOT open until 11:00 am. When you get up at 5:30 am to be in the park by 7:30 am so you can get at least two rides in before the non-Disney hotel guests are allowed in at 8:00, then there should be more than one place open to catch a quick breakfast. In three of the four parks we visited (Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom and Epcot), the only place we could find to get food or coffee before 11:00 am was Starbucks. Seriously. And don’t tell me it’s because no one eats breakfast at WDW because those places were PACKED! SWAMPED!And I know that the Touring Plans folks say you should get breakfast stuff to eat in your room. Well, that is all well and good, but if you fly in and take a shuttle to your hotel and have no car, how are you supposed to get to a grocery store to buy those breakfast items? Pack them in your luggage?
Genie+ sucks! This is what Disney replaced a great program they used to have called Fast Pass. You could reserve a spot on a ride and come back at a later time to take it. It was FREE. Now they have this thing called Genie+. You get to do the same thing, but it costs you big $$$. So you have paid $100 plus for a ticket, and if you want to be able to get on rides without waiting in line for hours, you can pay an additional $15-$20 per person/per day to be able to make an appointment to come back in two hours to ride a ride. This way, you could be standing in two lines simultaneously…kind of. But it just does not work well. It’s kind of like TSA Pre-Check at the airport. So many people have it now; it’s almost faster just to do the regular security line. And Genie+ is a huge ripoff. We were offered it free for an afternoon to make up for something (more about that later), and when you use it, you can book a ride time for a future hour. But until you do that ride, you can’t book anything else. For instance, at 2:00 pm, we booked a ride at the first available time for something my granddaughter wanted to do. The soonest we could get the reservation was 5:00 pm (I will admit that Grandpa messed up our first reservation). So that meant we could not book any other Genie+ reservations until three hours later. When we got off that ride and attempted to book another reservation, nothing was available until 8:30 or later. Being exhausted and having to catch a 5:30 am bus to the airport, we bailed. Worthless. And a huge ripoff.

What was just stupid

The crowds. And a lot of the people who make them up. There were:
- Adults who had kids with them that were all under five years old. Who are you there for? Your kids won’t remember this. Mason was five when we took our grandkids to Disneyland seven years ago. He remembers much of what we did; Maylee was two and remembers nothing about the trip. What a huge waste of money for a few pics of your child with Mickey. And you are making it so much more crowded (because you take up a ton of space with your damn strollers) for those who can’t come at another time.
- Adults with no kids in their party. Why are you there during one of the BUSIEST weeks of the year? Did you really want to honeymoon with half of the USA? A week before we were there, the crowd levels were at fours and fives (on a scale of 10). When we were there, every park was between eight and ten. If you had come one week earlier, you could have had a better time yourself and lightened the load on the parks. Idiots.
- The usual rude people who run you over with their motorized carts, wheelchairs, strollers and sometimes just their bodies. I can’t count the number of times someone in our party was run into.
- The abomination that is the big, fat tubs of lard who rent scooters because they are too lazy to walk. We actually saw one family where the son, dad and granddad were all in scooters. All of them were able to get out and walk (I saw them do it a number of times as we followed them around Animal Kingdom). They had no problem riding the rides. Sadly, their kids whined because they didn’t want to walk either. We also saw a couple with two kids who had a motorized scooter rental and kept taking turns riding it. The mom would ride it onto the monorail, and the dad would ride it off. What are the chances they were both disabled but yet could walk behind the other on the scooter? I fully realize that some people have handicaps you can’t see, but this kind of stuff goes too far. My mom spent much of her last years on a scooter because she could not walk after a stroke. These people are taking up the space of those who need it. Shame on them and the example they set for their children.

The worst parts for us

This one is easy—illness. We arrived on a Thursday night. We spent Friday day in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, standing in one line after the other. By the end of the day, my granddaughter was exhausted, dehydrated and feeling queasy. Queasy became a full-blown illness, and she and my daughter were flat on their backs in bed with a stomach ailment for the next two days. They missed two complete parks, and even on our last day (Monday), even though they could come to Magic Kingdom for a while before they got really tired out, they never got to do much of the fun stuff. And my son-in-law missed that Monday as he got whatever they had, so he was down for all of that day.

I will say that Disney came through on fixing this as much as they could. The manager at the hotel made sure that for every day they missed, they were credited with another day in the park (more than a $150 value) sometime in the next ten years. I hope they can go back and use them sometime in that time frame.

I should also say I feel terrible that my brother, sister-in-law and niece came with us because they could have gone at any time and avoided all the lines. But they wanted to see WDW with the kids (it is an entirely different place with kids) and us, so they came along.

Alaska Air did us wrong!

There was one non-Disney thing that happened on this trip that TOTALLY TICKED ME OFF! I purchased our Alaska Air airline tickets in July of 2021. I bought them with our annual companion fares we get for being Alaska Air VISA cardholders. I got six seats in one row (row 18) so that we could all sit together. About two weeks before our flight to Orlando, I checked our reservation to make sure everything was good, and it was. Then the day before the flight, when I went online to check in, I found that the kids and grandkids were still in row 18 but that Kathleen and I had been moved to the back of the plane to row 29. WTF?? Since we had done nothing to precipitate this, I got very upset and called Alaska. We were told there was nothing they could do about it and that we should ask at the gate to see if those people could change seats with us. Really—would you trade two aisle seats for an aisle and a middle seat? I wouldn’t. But how dare Alaska Air change us on a whim or let a computer change us? Kathleen tells me that one of the two people who got our seats was a 20-something with long shaggy hair that was sick most of the flight (maybe that’s how our kids got sick), and the other was a businessman who spent the entire flight on his computer. My guess is that he was a high-mileage Alaska Air flyer.

Whenever I hear someone complain about their seat assignments, I always want to say, “you should have booked and chosen your seats earlier.” Which is exactly what I did, and then they moved us. I still don’t understand how (or why) they did that. But I was told it says they can in the fine print.

Recommendations

When you first decide to go to Walt Disney World, get the book, “The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World.” Then download their app called Lines. Do their touring plans and stick with them until the crowds overwhelm your plans. You have to do your homework before you take this vacation.
Don’t go during a school holiday, the summer or any other time of the year not recommended by the Unofficial Guide unless you have no choice. And realize that things change from year to year. President’s Day Weekend had NEVER been that crowded prior to this year.
Stay in a Disney hotel. Not only will you be closer to the parks, but you will get to get into the parks anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes earlier than the general public. That was the reason we got on the Avatar ride in Animal Kingdom in less than 30 minutes. When we got off, the wait was close to 2.5 hours. The same with some of the Star Wars rides.
Get up early! Be in the park when it opens. On two days, we were literally the first or second people in a particular park.
Download the Disney Parks app from Disney. Great maps and suggestions as well as making it possible for you to unlock your room with your phone if you don’t get Magic Bands.
Train for the experience. In our party, Mason (my grandson) and I were easily the ones who did the most walking since we never got sick. We walked a total of more than 40 miles in four days. Ask my Apple Watch. That’s in the neighborhood of 20K steps a day. Start walking a few weeks before your trip.

That’s about it. I might add some more later, or I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. We all had a great time when some of us weren’t sick, and I wouldn’t trade my memories for any of it. But I am also glad it is over.

I am hoping my brother will add via comment (below) anything that I forgot.

Our motley crew on the morning of Day 1. No one was sick, and no one was tired.

Oops, I almost forgot one thing I wanted to throw in here. After we got home, my niece Cassie sent us a DisneyWorld Bingo. I thought it was hilarious and wanted to share it here. If you go, you will understand all of this…100%.

If you can dream it, you can do it. —Walt Disney

Panoramas just won’t fit

On December 19, 2022December 20, 2022 By Jim BellomoIn Photography6 Comments

I love shooting panoramic (pano) photos. Not the kind you do with your iPhone. The ones I take are usually composed of a series of photos I have taken from the same place, with my feet firmly planted on the ground. I swivel my upper body and shoot anywhere from six to 15 photos. Before I start shooting them, I take a photo of my left foot. Then when I finish, I take a photo of my right foot. When I am doing my photo triage, later on, I know where the pano starts and ends.

Then I process those photos in Camera RAW and stitch them together in Photoshop. From that, I have gotten some pretty good panoramic photos. But I will let you decide. I decided to put together this post because I have so many panoramic photos, but I can’t post them on Facebook or Instagram because they crop them severely. When I do, you can only see the very center section. So here are a few of my own with a caption that tells you where I took them. As you will see, I take them both indoors and out, of scenery and people as well. Anytime I have a subject that won’t fit into one frame. My shortest (the indoor one in Naples) is only three photos stitched together. My longest (not sure which one) might have as many as 20.

Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. To really see these, you have to see them BIG!

My best pano…Puerto Vallarta sunrise

My most recent pano…The Boeing Museum of Flight

Victoria, British Columbia

Venice, Italy

Cinqe Terre, Italy

Split, Croatia-1

The first Olympic stadium, Athens, Greece

Taromina, Italy

Bonaire

Split, Croatia-2

Taromina, Italy

New Orleans, Louisiana

Toronto Aquarium

Athens, Greece

Niagara Falls, New York

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Mariner Spring Training Game, Peoria, AZ

View from the Acroplis, Athens, Greece

Athens harbor, Athens, Greece

Sedona, Arizona

The Parthenon, Athens Greece

Kotor, Montenegro

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Naples, Italy

Taromina, Italy

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Akaroa, New Zealand

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dunedin, New Zealand

Interior of the dining room on Holland America’s Nieuw Statendam

The beach at Seaside, Oregon

The Biosphere outside Tucson, Arizona

Bonaire

Avalon Harbor, Catalina Island

Celebrity Century

Downtown Curacao

Dawes Glacier, Alaska

Allure of the Seas

Inside a mall in Naples, Italy

In the beginning, the cubists broke up form without even knowing they were doing it. Probably the compulsion to show multiple sides of an object forced us to break the object up – or, even better, to project a panorama that unfolded different facets of the same object.
—Marchel Duchamp

Disembarkation and our trip to Barcelona

On September 27, 2022September 28, 2022 By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences, Photography7 Comments

When we cruise, the first thing the real cruisers want to know about is the food. But the second is the embarkation/disembarkation. It’s been my experience after more than 30 cruises that if things are going to go wrong, one of these two times is when that will happen.

With this disembarkation, I am happy to say that nothing went wrong…except to say that they made us get off the ship (this is every cruiser’s lament). Pretty much everything went off without a hitch getting off the ship. We got up, had breakfast, and were asked to be out of our stateroom by 8:00 am. Sat for an hour in the Atrium, got our tag colors called, grabbed our luggage, took it to a van (since we were doing Viking’s post-cruise two-day extension), it was loaded into a van that followed our “luxury motor coach” into Barcelona from Tarragona.

That’s where thing kind of went bad. Viking now had to do something with the 35+ people on the “luxury motor coach” from 9:30 am when we got on until 1:00 pm when the Nobu Hotel in Barcelona would be ready to check us in. So they arranged a “luxury motor coach” tour that would drive us from the ship to Barcelona and then drive around Barcelona, showing us some of the sights. This started with them getting us lost before they even got the “luxury motor coach” out of the port (Seriously!).

Then they sent us a guide who admitted up front that he usually worked with Japanese tourists, so his English was not very good. On top of that, he also (like other guides we had previously toured with) felt like they had to fill every moment of the three-hour sojourn with the sound of his voice. He even started singing at one point. I overheard another passenger say, “I thought the guy with the flute yesterday was bad, but this guy is so much worse!” I had to agree. And since he was not confident in his English, he seemed to be much less confident in his directions and tour facts.

It took us about 70 minutes to get from Tarragona to the outskirts of Barcelona. He talked about 90% of the time. Mostly gibberish to us because his English was so poor. Our first stop in Barcelona was at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. This gorgeous art museum we thought was built high above and far from the city and not near anything. I took the header photo I am using today from in front of it.

We later learned that we were less than a mile from our hotel but that it would take almost three full hours to get there. And we didn’t stop to see the museum, just to use the bathrooms. Viking had bought tickets for us to get into the museum, but then we had 15 minutes to use the bathrooms and get back on the “luxury motor coach”…so we could be driven around and mumbled at while seeing the sights through a “luxury motor coach” window. As a photographer, this is my idea of torture. Seeing things I want to shoot but not being able to shoot them because the reflections in the “luxury motor coach” make it impossible to get a good shot. I did take a few when we got off at the museum. Here’s what they look like. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The inside of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya

From here, I could have walked to our hotel in 30 minutes but, it took us 2.5 hours to drive there.

La Sagrada Familia from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

Once we arrived at the hotel around 1:15 pm, we were told to go up to the second floor and that we would be checked in at a special desk just for Viking cruisers. When we got to the second-floor room they were using, there was about an hour’s wait to get registered. This is because they had planned well by sending the first “luxury motor coach” off and then not sending the second one for about 30 minutes. That way, we should have been staggered when we reached the hotel and able to check in without any lines. But this was not to be after our “luxury motor coach” driver got lost getting out of the port, and by the time he figured out how to get out, “luxury motor coach” number two was ahead of us, and we were not that far ahead of “luxury motor coach” number three. That meant we all pretty much got there at the same time. Viking had close to 250 people staying at the Nobu Barcelona. It was very much like the Marriott where we had done our pre-cruise extension in Athens. Both of them were four or five-star, high-rise hotels that were well outside (not in easy walking distance) of the main attractions of their respective cities. The rooms were nice, and the included breakfast at both places was delicious, but I would have traded that for something a little closer to where I wanted to shoot pics.

So instead of standing in line to register, we left our bags with the bellman at the front desk and took a taxi to a wonderful restaurant that Kathleen and I had eaten in when we were here in 2007—La Rita. The restaurant had been there for about 10 years before that and is still going strong. The menu was exactly as we remembered it. I made reservations almost a month in advance because when we go to Spain, we make our main meal, our lunch. People in Barcelona eat dinner around 9:30 pm, and we just can’t eat that late. So we have our main meal at lunch (around 2:00) and then grab some tapas in the evening.

After lunch, we came back and were able to check in easily, with no lines at all, and our rooms were ready. We unpacked, I did some posting on this blog and some photo processing, and we hit the hay for a very busy day on Sunday, our only full day in amazing Barcelona.

I had thought I could wind up the entire cruise with two more posts, one about Barcelona and disembarkation and one to sum up the cruise. But once I started talking about disembarkation, this one got too long to include our awesome day in Barcelona, so you will have to read two more. See you tomorrow. (BTW: we are home in Redmond after a hellacious day of flights and being up for 26 hours straight.)

You’d have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I’d probably want to die in San Sebastian. —Anthony Bourdain

Tarragona not Barcelona—it all worked out!

On September 26, 2022September 26, 2022 By Jim BellomoIn Photography6 Comments

When we first booked this cruise with Viking, the itinerary finished in beautiful Barcelona. About three months later, we received a note from Viking that we would NOT be docking and spending an overnight in Barcelona. We would instead be docking and spending the night in Tarragona, a (we researched) small, industrial city south of Barcelona. (You can see how far apart they are above.) That kind of ticked me off because I was really looking forward to being able to wake up on the ship and then go for my pre-dawn photo walk and still be able to sleep on the ship that night.

We later learned that Viking had to switch because even though Barcelona is a HUGE port for cruise ships, there were going to be so many there over the two days (Friday and Saturday) that she would not have been able to stay for three full days. She needed four days tied up at a pier because we would have two days there (arrived Friday morning, disembarked Saturday morning) and then the cruise that followed ours would need the same (embark on Saturday afternoon, sail late on Sunday). Viking just could not take up a berth in Barcelona for that long. So that’s why we wound up in Tarragona.

In hindsight, I am so very glad that we did because it turned into one of my favorite photographic experiences on the trip. And I almost missed it once we were there. I almost missed it because we had tickets for the Viking-included excursion called “A Snapshot of Tarragona,” and when we got up, we just weren’t sure that we wanted to go. After being on the road since August 29, we were pretty much done. Kathleen wanted to just stay on board and pack, but she encouraged me to go ahead and take the excursion. I still (up until 15 minutes before it left) had not committed myself to go. But go, I did.

The first thing to note about leaving the ship was that it was docked a VERY long way from the gate to the port. In other words, this was NOT a port I could have walked out of. And then, once you got out of the port, it was a long way to the city. To say it was a very long way is an understatement. When we got on the “luxury motor coach,” we were then driven for about 30 minutes, and we were still in the port. It is a HUGE industrial port, and we were moored all the way out as far as you can get before still being at sea. And the road out of the port had what seemed like continuous speed bumps that the “luxury motor coach” could not go over quickly. Once we were out of the port, it was another 20 minutes before we were off the coach at the edge of downtown.

At this point, I am beginning to think that I made a mistake in coming. Viking was running shuttles all day long, about every 15 minutes, so I knew I could go back whenever I wanted. Our guide for the day was another guide that seemed to be paid by the word. She walked us around some Roman ruins (as much as I love Italy, if I never see a Roman ruin for a few years, that will be OK with me), which were pretty cool, but they didn’t really hold that much interest for me. I have so many photos from my Tarragona day that I will put the Roman ruins and what we could see from them here. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The first Roman wall and turret.

Closer view

Looking behind me, this more modern church.

More ruins

Of a chariot race track.

More ruins.

More ruins still.

And the obligatory narrow street scene.

And more ruins.

Lived the cool patterns on this tile.

And another cool street.

On the other side of the citadel.

More narrow streets. But cooler colors.

More citadel but another view point.

Inside the ruins

Upstairs on the ruins.

More and more ruins.

Stop the ruins!

And the (even though they are cool) narrow streets.

But I did live this actual ruin that was left in place. Each door goes into a different restaurant’s patio.

Yes, more ruins.

With cool windows

And cool verandahs.

One more ruins for you.

What did grab my interest were explosions and gunshots going off about three blocks away. We had been told that there was a Catalunya-wide festival going on that weekend (Catalunya is the “state” that both Tarragona and Barcelona are in) so we were pretty sure that this was what we were hearing. We could also see fireworks and a parade at the end of those three blocks. Here’s what I saw when I looked down the streets and then walked around to do some more investigating.

You can see the crowds.

I took this from about two blocks away. You can see a lion “float” on the right.

Throughout the city center you could see people like this having a festival breakfast on the sidewalks.

And the crowds were growing.

The square was filling with people.

There were many more people having a meal together.

The wine was flowing at 9:45 am

Note the different colors of shirts everyone is where.

Here’s the green team.

And this is what they would be competing in later in the day—human pyramids.

No, I did not get to see the human pyramids in Tarragona. To show you the photo above, I took a picture of a picture. But we did get to see one being built on Sunday in Barcelona. We weren’t able to see one built in Tarragona, because around noon, it started to rain, accompanied by quite the thunderstorm, so they were canceled for Friday. After looking at a few more ruins, the guide said we would now have some free time, but not to go downtown, it would be too loud and dangerous near the parades. So you know what I did…I went right downtown where the parades were. I am so glad I did. An amazing experience, as you will see.

On the way downtown, I found people getting ready for a parade. It turns out they do the parades twice in the morning. Once from the square and once back. So I ran into a bunch of people getting ready to march on my way down. Here’s a quick gallery of those people.

The red team members getting ready.

Not sure which neighborhood these guys represented.

Or these

Or these.

When I finally reached the city square, I could tell they were getting ready for something. At this point, I thought I had missed it all. Then I heard (from a side street) firework explosions. I headed from the square to where the parade would be coming from, and this is what I saw. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

What downtown looked like before the parade.

I heard the parade comiing so I headed up the side street where the explosions were coming from.

This curve was just a little up the street

But it was close confines.

All that smoke you see is coming from the fireworks and it was LOUD!

Costumed characters lighting off fireworks.

You can see how smoky it is.

The mascots of each neighborhood led their groups down the hill.

The mascots had fireworks attached to their costumes.

The fireworks would scream for a while and then explode.

It was beyond loud.

I will try and add a video so you can see how loud it was. Probably not on this post.

These people are placing the fireworks

And lighting them.

And now the bull is fully loaded.

When he snorts, they go off with their screams.

He rears up and they explode.

There were bulls, dragons…

…strange dragons.

Very strange dragons

Each mascot was followed by a band from that neighborhood.

All of them were followed by peopel with muskets that when they fired them, it was louder than the fireworks.

And another band.

Then the golden chicken

With a pigeon in its mouth.

Everyone cheered the pigeon while he danced.

The king golden chicken/

And there was a horse.

Kids would pose with the mascots before they started marching.

The horse would dance into the crowd.

And the bands play on.

Here comes the armadillo.

And his band

Did you know there were Spanish bagpipes? Neither did I.

Here comes the lion

Followed by some huge dolls.

And another band.

This is a sequence. The man on the real horse has drums…

…and recognizes a man in the crowd.

He decides to pull the man up on his horse.

Found out later, the man being pulled up…

…was the Mayor of Tarragona.

He had a heck of a time climbing on.

But he finally got there to the cheers of the crowd.

Hurrah!

Now he as to get off.

That may be hard than he thinks.

Friends try and help him off.

Quite the job

Ended up taking four people.

They finally got him down.

And our rider got his hat back.

More incredible figures in the parade.

They just kept coming.

People would greet each other on the steets like they hadn’t seen each other in years.

Everyone was so friendly.

Including this guy.

The red team gets ready to march.

Big heads.

The remains of the fireworks were everywhere.

Huge

This woman had no idea he was behind her.

More marchers.

Colorful costumes.

Spanish knights.

Ladies with swords.

Kids dancing.

Teens getting ready to dance.

And I turned to a side street and this is what it looked like. No one there.

Back around and ready to go again.

The teens dancing in the street.

Loved the action.

This festival was amazing.

OK, sorry to post so many photos, but it was a photographic bonanza where I got to combine travel photography with street photography, my two favorites. I spoke to so many other photographers during the parade. They would see my camera and comment on it, and I would ask about theirs. Or about what was happening in the parade. They all spoke some English, and I speak zero Catalan, but they were so hospitable, and they did their best to tell me about their city and the festival. This, to me, is what travel is all about. What an incredible time I spent shooting in this awesome city.

After I had shot all these photos, it was back to the ship (I actually shot more than 900 photos of the festival—aren’t you glad I didn’t put them all online?) I was actually back on the ship in time for lunch with Kathleen. Then we spent the afternoon with Kathleen napping and packing and my processing photos, posting the photos and writing about our adventures. Speaking of processing and writing, I have had a couple of people ask about what cameras and lenses I use and how I decide what to post and not to post. I promise to do a separate post about that when I have finished the cruise write-up.

Two more posts will finish this trip. One for our disembarkation and full day in Barcelona and another to sum it all up and review the cruise. We are sitting in Barcelona airport, ready to board our flights home. See you soon.

I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unnecessary.
—Mitch Hedburg

Marseille and Seti finish our time in France

On September 25, 2022September 25, 2022 By Jim BellomoIn Photography3 Comments

Let’s get this out of the way quickly. We have been to Marseille before. We were not impressed the first time, and the ship was moored a VERY long way from anything worth seeing. So to make a long story short, we stayed onboard. No reason to get off and see the same 500-year-old churches and museums we had seen before.

Now let’s talk about Seti. It seems to us that in every country we have visited (except tiny Montenegro), Viking has planned a stop in a small but interesting village that did not have a major draw; they just gave the visitors a taste of what life is like in the real world. Sibenik, Croatia, Crotone, Italy and now Sete, France.

Sete is a tiny (by French standards) fishing village. It is so small that we could do a tour of downtown without leaving the port on a “luxury motor coach.” We did have to take that “luxury motor coach” from the ship to the front of the port because it was a very industrial port, and they didn’t want people walking around. It was kind of funny that the “luxury motor coach” we got on to go less than half a mile was the nicest “luxury motor coach” we were on for the entire 21 days.

We were doing the Viking Walking Tour of the village, and we had a guide who we thought was going to be great. He led us along by playing the flute. We looked like the rats being led to the sea by the Pied Piper. But once we were in town and he got down to the actual touring, he became just like every other guide—paid by the word. Instead of telling us that the town’s main canal held its fishing fleet, he had to tell us how you fish for this and that fish. To be honest, if I want to know how to fish for tuna, I will look it up. I wanted to know about Sete, France. Here are my pics from Seti. At least the ones that are interesting enough to share. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Our Pied Piper Guide

Markets were opening

They have a jousting tournament every year when boats like this have a man standing in the front with a lance, trying to knock another guy, on another boat in the water.

The main canal out to sea for their fishing fleet

Loved these boats and the colors.

The market was setting up.

It was a very nice waterfront walk.

Blue boat. Kind of a theme for me.

Cool, old hotel.

There is always that church steeple.

Loved how the 2nd floor was boarded over.

Great black and white art on the inside of the seawall.

A blue door. More theme.

Downtown Street.

Boats lined up to go.

That about sums up our time in France. Of course, we had Eze and Nice yesterday, but this tiny town, Sete, was the real deal. Just a sleepy fishing village.

I woke up one time coming out of a blackout, and I was on an airplane, descending to land in Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. And all I can think is I must have decided it was a good idea to go to France, and got my passport, and got on a plane. — Joe Walsh, lead guitarist of the Eagles.

A very long day in Eze, Nice and Monaco

On September 24, 2022September 24, 2022 By Jim BellomoIn Photography8 Comments

The morning after we left Livorno, we awakened in Monaco. That’s the best part of cruising. You go to bed at night in your hotel, and when you wake up, your hotel is in a brand new city. And you don’t have to unpack again.

In Monaco we were doing an eight-hour ship’s excursion that would take us to the hilltop village of Eze, the beachside city of Nice and then the old and new parts of Monaco. The afternoon before when we were watching the port video on the TV in our room we noticed that they had changed the rating of the excursion from “moderate” to “demanding.” Well demanding was fine for me but not for the rest of the group, especially Kathleen and Jamie but they came along with us hoping they would be able to find a place to sit and wait when it got “demanding.”

Hilltop Eze

Our “luxury motor coach” first took us to Eze. We had been to Eze back in 2007 and had loved it but it is quite a climb. So Kathleen and Jamie stayed at the bottom while Steve and I climbed up. Here’s my pics from Eze along with captions which will tell you even more. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

One of the first things you pass on the way up to Eze is the Golden Goat.

This is the view looking down into the Golden Goat.

Which is a restaurant.

I really liked this statue in their driveway.

Now into the city.

Steep brick pathways

But incredible views

A few feet of ramp up…

…then a step.

But cool places to take photos of.

Doorways

Chapels

Belltowers

At the top of the hill there are gardens.

You have to pay six euros to go up into the gardens

But without paying to get into the gardens, you can’t get to the top.

The views were spectacular

This is the main church in Eze

I thought this was the perfect Mediterranean photo.

What a view.

On the top are Roman ruins.

Looking down at the entire church.

More Roman ruins. Those Roman guys got around.

Looking in another direction

Coming down and looking back to the gardens

The front of the church

The interior of the church

A restaurant on the way back down.

The rock that is Eze.

On to Nice

As soon as we climbed back down and collected our waiting wives, we were back on the bus for a short drive (again on crazy, twisty roads) to Nice, France. We did a 20-minute drive-through with our guide pointing out sites as we went. Then the driver dropped us off near the huge farmer’s market and the promenade that lined the beach. After a short walking tour, the guide told us we could wander off on our own and meet her back at the bus at a particular time. Of course, we walked in and found a place to have a seat and an Aperol Spritz (our clear choice of drink on this trip). While Kathleen, Jamie and Steve sipped their spritzes, I, of course, took a lot of pics. Here they are! You know the rules.

Walking by the Nice Opera House

Our guide Bernadette.

These are candied fruits…

…and vegetables. Seriously? Candied Celery?

Flowers

Fruit

Biggest mushrooms ever.

The Market

I took a photo of this building back in 2007 and it looks exactly the same.

Looking back up the hill to the fortress.

Parasailing off the beach.

The beach was all pebbles. I can’t imagine anything as uncomfortable…other than the beds on the ship.

The promenade.

A cool Mediteranean street.

Herding cats in the market.

Ran into Larry and Corky.

Inside a beautiful Nice church.

This guy cracked me up. Just too tired to bother.

Steve and Jamie returning to the ship.

Nice butt?

Looking to the modern part of Nice.

The family awaits.

The queen of Nice.

The Principality of Monaco

From Nice, we were off on the low road to Monaco. Although Monaco is less than one square mile, it is divided into two parts. The older section on top of the rock is much more historic. The newer section where you would find the casino (where James Bond plays cards) and the “fancy” shops are down the hill. It is amazing how many people have slammed into this tiny country. Since we were here in 2007, they have almost doubled their population yet; the area is still the same…although they are building out over the sea now.

We first stopped in the older part of Monaco, where you would find the cathedral, the palace and an awesome place for lunch. Our guide walked us up from a really strange underground parking lot that was so big about 20 “luxury motor coaches” could fit inside. When we reached the surface, it was a hike past the Oceanic museum to the cathedral. By this time, it was getting pretty late (lunch-wise), and Kathleen needed to eat, or she would get a headache. So she and I broke off from the group and walked up and found this awesome place that served us our favorite Aperol Spritz and a pizza Margherita. It was just what the doctor ordered.

After lunch (Steve and Jamie joined a few minutes later), we went back down, and I went into the Cathedral, took some shots, saw the grave of Princess Grace, remembered why I am not Catholic anymore and left. Took a few more pics of the outside, walked over and did the same at the palace, including a cool pano of the rest of Monaco, and that was about it for the old town. We met our guide at the yellow submarine outside the Oceanic Museum and went back down to the bus to be driven to the newer side, which the locals consider Monte Carlo.

On the Monte Carlo side, we did even less. Kathleen and another woman from the bus had had their fill of stairs, so they found a bench in the shade and waited while I went around and took a few more photos. We got back on the bus and went back to the ship. Here are the pics from Monaco. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Took this early in the morning from our verandah as we sailed in. This is all there is of Monaco.

It’s the second smallest country (after Vatican City) in the world.

The Palace

Looking down at the Formula 1 race track for the Monaco Grand Prix.

Statue in the square.

There is a bad dad joke to be made here but I am leaving it alone.

This palace guard did NOT like me taking his picture.

Part of the Cathedral

A close up of some of the decoration on the church.

Inside the cathedral.

Princess Grace’s tomb. The 40th anniversary of her death was a week before this and that’s why there are so many flowers.

The church itself was beautiful.

Not sure what this building next door was but I liked it.

It faced the cathedral.

On the way back to the bus I passed this statue that said it was Princess Grace. I don’t remember her looking like that.

Now in Monte Carlo, this the famous casino. Part of many James Bond movies. Like Casino Royale.

James left his Rolls outside.

The clock tower on the front of the casino

Our ship, the Viking Sky tied up in Monaco.

This hand sculpture is behind the casino.

A view of the casino from the back.

The harbor a little later.

That concluded our day. It was a long one. Many hours on a “luxury motor coach” going around tight bends above high cliffs, seeing where rich people live. Eze was the best part. Just wish we could have stayed for some crêpes like we did the last time.

It’s true that Ferrari and Monaco are the two most important things to F1. —Albert II, Prince of Monaco

Pisa and its Tower

On September 23, 2022 By Jim BellomoIn Photography7 Comments

This one will be short and sweet as I am still high as a kite about a photographic experience I just had in Tarragona, Spain, today (it’s Friday, September 23 as I write this). Besides, our visit to Pisa was not the best day of our trip. Not because the Tower wasn’t leaning, but because it was just kind of a ho-hum experience. After so many days of getting on a “luxury motor coach,” testing our Vox earsets (so we can hear our guide while we walk around), driving to wherever, getting off the bus, having the guide rush away like a madperson, having to go and ask them to slow down, listening to them tell you the history of everything while wearing the headsets, then going from place to place quickly and standing while the guide talks (you would think the guides are paid by the word), it was getting really old.

This was another of Viking’s “included” excursions, so we were on the bus to Pisa at 8:30 am. We are glad we went in the morning (we had a choice of the afternoon as well) because those who went in the afternoon said it was a total zoo with huge crowds. We were able to at least move around the square.

Today’s guide was a speed demon. She went so fast that the people at the back of the line lost track of her leading the group. And worse, there were numerous other groups from bus tours who had parked where our bus did, and we were mixing in with our crowd and we with them. It was horrible. And this was the day the Vox system that we bring from our rooms (headsets so we can hear the guide) decided to fail. We knew it wasn’t our headsets but the guide’s microphone because no one could understand about 80% of what she said—too much static.

So there we were in the square in Pisa, with the Tower and the basilica right in front of us and not able to understand a word the guide said, so we ditched the tour. We just took off on our own, went at our own pace and made our own plans. The guides kind of know you are going to do this because they tell you in advance where to meet to go back to the “luxury motor coach.”

So I shot some pics; it started to rain; we sat by the church and then decided to take refuge at a sidewalk cafe with huge umbrellas and have a cappuccino. It was delightful just to sit and people-watch. After a while, Steve and Jamie joined us, and we started walking back to the “luxury motor coach.” Then we found out that we were just going back to the same place to meet the “luxury motor coach.” If they had told us that, we could have turned the almost mile-long walk into something where Kathleen and Jamie could have rested every so often instead of their version of the Bataan Death March. These guides just do not get it. Usually, I tip our guides quite well. So far on this trip, I have tipped two. Just two. The others have either been rude, in a huge hurry, rambling or worse. Of course, we all tipped Luigi and Alessandro in Cinque Terre, but they weren’t Viking guides.

After the march, it was back on the “luxury motor coach” and back to the ship where I wrote you another blog post and processed my photos, which you can see below. Hope you enjoy them. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…