We don't get a lot of sea days on this cruise. I think there's only 6 or 7 out of the 33 days on board. Most days are spent in ports where activities and tours are available. Mom likes these sea days where she can get up later and wander around on the ship. She doesn't like to swim because there are too many people around on those days.We hung out by the pool. I worked on the blog while Mom went to the shops on board to browse. The weather was, o...

So this is one of the three ports we got in lieu of Israel. There's nothing here. The port is about 8 miles from the center of town so they have to bus us in. Only two buses so it takes along time. We have breakfast, do a few chores and head down to the cruise terminal. We get on the bus at noon and make the ride into town. We get off and Mom waits under a shade tree because it's hot, maybe 90, while I look for something to see. I take a few shots ...

So now these next 4 days are all different from our original schedule. Today was supposed to be a sea day followed by two days in Israel. Then a sea day and Crete. Now that Israel is out of our itinerary, we are not having a sea day today and Mom was counting on that. You see, she has been having problems with irregularity so finally, last night, after holding off for so long, she ate 20 prunes and 3 glasses of prune juice. Today she was out. In the morning...

We're not seeing the Colossus but more about that later. Our tour today started out at 9am on a bus from the ship. We took a ride through the town of Rhodes, Greece. We saw the city, went up to the acropolis and returned to a palace and "street of the knights". We learned that Greece was controlled by the Romans, Ottoman, Italians and Germans up until 1948 when they again won their independence. The buildings were nice. The tour was short, only a few ho...

Today we visited Ephesus, an old city with history from Romans, Greeks, Turks and biblical ties too. After breakfast, we left the ship at 8:30am on a bus. Our first stop was high on a hill overlooking Ephesus, the last home of the Virgin Mary. After the death of Jesus, John the apostle was given the responsibility of caring for Mary and he took her with him to Ephesus. Later she was moved to a home in the mountains where she spent her last days. It was a be...