Friday was a hectic day at work. I hardly got a chance to get to the projects I had planned. I really didn’t want to leave on my vacation with unfinished work, so I kept working through the night until 7 am. I was shocked when I woke up at 6:30 and saw he was still not there. Two hours later we left for the train station and started our vacation.

I was worried that with Chad getting no sleep the night before I would have a very lonely trip, but we were in a car with some expats from Seattle living in Zurich. Small world. They were good company for the first half of our trip. The train ride south through Switzerland is awesome. And the Swiss are so scrupulous about maintaining their property, with manicured lawns and stacked wood. Because of that you can tell as soon as you cross the border into Italy. 😉

At the port in Genoa, the cruise director met us. “Are you Elisa Parry?” Several of the crew were watching out for us, it turned out. We got escorted to the front of the security line. He said that he wanted to make Elisa comfortable because she was pregnant. I think it was also because he wanted to be extra hospitable to ex-Sea Diamond passengers. It was amusing that he made a lady with a cane hold her bags and wait so we could go through. 🙂 I was amazed at how attentive everyone was. Part of me is a little worried it is because I put up a bit of a fuss this spring when we were working out details for this cruise.

• Photos of Genoa

The first port call on the trip was Marseilles. Poor Elisa learned the pronunciation as Marsailles (like Versailles), and it’s forever ingrained in her memory that way. Just trust us when we say it’s tricky. We don’t like French pronunciation. French is more than foreign to me– it’s like something alien. I just do not have any concept of pronunciation. We took a ferry out to the ÃŽle d’If. It’s Marseilles’ version of Alcatraz. That’s the island prison that you read about in the Count of Monte Cristo.

• Photos of Marseilles

All the restaurant staff have been really friendly. Several of them already knew about our Sea Diamond experience. The maître d’ is weird–he explained to us that his pregnant wife has three steins of beer every week, because it’s good for breast milk. 😕 I suggested that he ask a doctor about it. We thought he was joking, because he is a real personable guy–not so. Wow! And he was so proud of himself after he got us a seat in the place of honor at the captain’s table.

Today we stopped at the island of Palma de Mallorca. We don’t really remember much Spanish but we wish we did. Palma is a really beautiful port. One of its defining features is windmills all over the island. We went to shore just for a tour of some big underground caves. The highlight was arriving at a large underground lake for a concert. When the announcer said it would be live we assumed it must have been a mistranslation. But then a lit boat came rowing into the dark with a string quartet and organist playing classical music. We got to have a little trip in the rowboat to cross the lake before we left the caves. Very romantic. The guide was nice and spoke some English for us. There’s only a dozen English-speakers on our whole cruise, so on our next tours we will just have to try to understand the German guides.

• Photos of Palma de Mallorca