Even though there was some bad weather here and there, Antarctica is an incredible place. I find it funny that the most beautiful places in the world are the most inhabitable. I suppose that’s why us city folk find those areas so aweing. While most of Antarctica is icy nothingness, we did manage to see our share of whales, fat seals, and penguins all hanging out in their natural habitats. I guess I haven’t seen my share of penguin movies, but I was seriously impressed at the penguin’s dolphin-style swimming ability. Probably one of the funnier animal sightings, was the 10 incredibly fat seals all sun-bathing on an iceberg together. It’s like the Malibu Beach for seals.

Another fascinating site was one of the Reasearch Facilities. A few of the scientists joined us on the ship to give lectures from the bridge. In return, we give them supplies like fresh fruits and vegetables, and as rumor has it, quite a bit of Vodka.

If you have ever been to Alaska on a ship, you will have seen some amazing glaciers, tall snow-capped mountains, and plenty of greenery. If you replace the greenery with icebergs as large as the ship, that’s Antarctica. The mountains are all very ominous. A pitch black body topped with a perfect white tone, with the only color scheme to be given by the sky’s palette of choice on that given hour. The mood can change here without any warning. One day while in a cul de sac of icy mountains, the sun was shining bright and the sky was blue when the wind decided to pick up to around 92 miles per hour. Although I am quite used to the ship rocking side to side, I have never been on a ship that only leaned in one direction for hours. It may have only been an 8 degree lean, but I will tell you from experience…that is a BIG lean. At 20 degrees, it’s too dangerous for us to lower the lifeboats. Yeah.

I feel pretty cool to not only say that I have visited the Antarctic Peninsula, but it sounds even better when you hear some of the locations we saw throughout our 4 days down here. Places like Admiralty Bay, Elephant Island, and Deception Island all carry big names, but I swear if you saw Deception Island, you would think that it’s the place King Kong must reside.

I’m glad to have seen Antarctica for many reasons, but now that I know what I was missing, I feel that I can say if you to see mountain landscapes similar to what’s down there, take a cruise to Alaska’s Inside Passage, or take a cruise around Cape Horn in South America. You’ll see some of the best natural scenery anywhere in the world. Probably be a lot cheaper than trying to see Antarctica anyway. Safe travels!

Both Odette and I aren’t interested in the stereotypical tourist destinations for fine jewelry and so forth. So our first stop was focused on the street markets in the part of Mumbai that tourists aren’t taken to. The shape these streets and markets are in would make any charitable celebrity want to throw money at it, with its streets overcrowded by people, cars, cows, and garbage. If you can’t appreciate what you have after seeing so much poverty as there is here, there is something wrong with you.

Shivani said that since she had shown us a poorer part of Mumbai, she wanted to take us to the polar opposite. We arrived at Mumbai’s “Rodeo Drive”. (That’s not what it’s actually called) It was now time to try on some traditional Indian clothing. Really expensive traditional clothing. I tried on some fancy pajama outfit that I believe would have cost around $5000 USD. The girls went on to try on about 7 dresses each which all have about 19 different ways to wear them since there are about 4 or 5 separate pieces to this cloth puzzle. Honestly, I saw one of the women working at this place explaining all the different ways it could be worn and my brain imploded. Of course this took approximately forever, but I was happy to sit in my comfortable chair and have two beautiful women present a private fashion show for me.

Our last stop was at the famous Taj Mahal Hotel (Not the actual Taj Mahal, that’s in New Dehli). From the outside, this hotel looks like any other big brick building, but after you pass through security you realize there’s a lot more that this hotel offers. Especially to those who are willing to open their pockets. Our main objective was to get food and so we were escorted to the restaurant of our choosing and I had one of the fanciest lunches I may have ever had in my life. Honestly, one of the options in the menu said, “Tender lamb kebab that literally melts in your mouth, created for leisure loving nobles, who preferred not to chew.” For dessert I ordered something that had been soaked in rose petals and sweet milk. I almost stuck my pinky finger in the air.

The end of our trip resided with a “relaxing” horse carriage ride back to the ship. See, something I have been avoiding talking about thus far is the traffic. I don’t know how to explain the depth of how awful it is. Maybe you’ve been to New York, or Naples, or Egypt and have witnessed some immense traffic. I would drive all day in any of those 3 places if only to avoid driving in Mumbai. Shivani told us AFTER we got in the first taxi that there was a 75% chance we would get into a car accident that day. Luckily we were in the 25%, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t almost get hit about 13 times. I’m pretty sure our horse turned his head a little to the right at some point and a truck hit him right on the noggin. And I suppose in true fashion of what’s expected, neither the horse nor the driver seemed phased one bit. I would never ever ever drive a car in the city. That’s all I can say about that.

But I did love it in Mumbai. I think it was an absolutely fun day, and would have been tragically less fun if it were not for my amazing tour guide letting me see all angles of this great city.

I got to the front gate, which is right next to the hotel’s water park, where I was told I needed to call and get a reservation to visit the premises. How long does that take? A couple days. We don’t have that kind of time while working on ships. Sad face.

One of the other main destinations was the insanely expensive Emirates Mall. This is the mall that has the Indoor Ski Slope. A couple of my music buddies went skiing for a few hours and said they had such a great time, that it may have been the highlight of the whole trip. While they were flirting with desert ski bunnies, I went off to find a nice local restaurant. I was taken to the middle of nowhere and found myself at a tiny room that was packed with zero tourists. They served me a delicious meal with chicken, rice, papadams (really tasty Indian style chips), chai tea, dessert, all for about 3 U.S. dollars. I can deal with that price any day of the week.

I finally got to the famous Gold Souk. I have never seen so much jewelry in my life. I read that Dubai is the only one of the 7 sheikdoms that didn’t get its wealth from selling oil. The majority of its money comes from the gold trade. So as you can imagine, this Gold Souk (or Gold Market) is pretty extravagant and large. I had a lot of fun pretending like I was interested in the hundreds of shops visited that day. I even had someone take me to an abandoned building where I was given the opportunity to buy mass amounts of illegal DVDs. If you thought that was funny, ask me about it in person, and I will tell you how hilarious the experience truly was.

At the end of the day, I had a really fun time in Dubai. It is an amazing city that really makes the Middle East look beautiful especially since a lot of this area gets so much flack in the news. The people, landscape, culture, and everything I experienced were amazing. Definitely a place worth visiting for a good week or two, instead of the sampling offered by cruising.

I am just gonna make a few notes about it because it is one of those places that must be seen. Anything I tell you, you will probably already know. This is absolutely a place to experience in your lifetime. And it only takes 3 and ½ hours by bus! (Sarcasm Implied) The pyramids are massive and I fully agree to them being Wonders of the World. These structures would be difficult to construct even with today’s technology. And the Sphinx gets all this crap about being smaller than people imagine. It is an impressive site, but it is dwarfed by the pyramids. That is the only reason it looks small. It was a magical experience to be amongst a site you only see in your history text books.

On the funny side, though, I didn’t have much time to get food before the return trip to the ship, so I ate at Hardee’s. Hardee’s in Egypt….

It was quite tasty.

I shopped till I dropped. I bargained like a pro. It was too much fun. I was on a bargaining high. As much as I love having set prices in the U.S., bargaining with these shopkeepers was a blast. They always throw some exorbitant price at you and then you tell them a price that will offend them, negotiation occurs, and at the end of the day, you’re both satisfied with the transaction. You have to remember, if they’re willing to sell it to you for a certain price, they’re making a profit from it. They don’t have to sell it for bare minimum. Which begs the question every time I purchase something…could I have gotten that for cheaper? It doesn’t really matter. I am fine with my fake Rolex purchase and my new melodic/harmonium. I even found a great jacket for fall/winter weather. And had a really cheap meal at a great Turkish restaurant. I only wish I liked coffee so I could sit back with a supposedly delicious Turkish coffee. Maybe when I grow up…

Well luckily enough, our small group is full of strong-willed people that are willing to get up at the crack of dawn and wait in line even if we were told we’d have to wait until 10am. In the past, some crew have been early and lucky enough to get on the very first tender boat. Well we crossed our fingers, waited for clearance, and boo-ya, we were on the first tender off the ship. We rented our 4-wheelers. And then we rode around the island in sheer joy for a good hour on our way to Super Paradise Beach. I am not even kidding. That is the real name of the beach. But going back to the ATVs… oh my god, was that some of the most fun any of us had in a long time! Mykonos is so incredibly different from any place I have ever seen in my life. The color of the island is kind of a bland brown because of the insane amount of rocks covering the small space. No one here has a white picket fence around their home, but every house has a fence…made of rocks. Rock borders surrounded the panoramic view. And talk about some crazy roads to drive on. If you have ever seen or driven on Lombard Street in San Francisco, multiply that times a jillion and that’s what the 10 of us were zooming around on with our ATVs. So fun.

We eventually got to Super Paradise Beach which was beautiful and picture worthy, but my sights were set on driving that ATV around this gorgeous landscape as long as possible. I led myself and 3 of the girls we were traveling with around the island on another long drive to a different beach just to check it out and on our way down one of the steepest hills I have ever seen a road built on, by ATV decided to die. I didn’t realize it until gravity let go of its hold on my vehicle and I wasn’t going anywhere on a flatter surface. After kick-starting and having it die 3 more times, I called the company and about an hour and half later a new ATV showed up. As I mentioned earlier, the time we had in Mykonos before we had to be back onboard was extremely short, so started to get concerned when I tried to get back to the port after sitting for so long, and was getting lost on the ambiguous curvy roads. After what seemed like forever, we got back into town, but still had to find the ATV place, which was a task in itself. At 12:27, I just happened to turn my head and see the rental place. We made it back to the tender just barely in time.

But holy crap, was that a fun day!

So we did. We grabbed a taxi over to the Acropolis where the marble ground was so naturally slippery, people were going down left and right. The Acropolis is a pretty magnificent place, sitting at the highest point above Athens. And no matter how many times you see something from the history books right in front of you, it’s still amazing. I’m specifically talking about the Parthenon. I don’t have anything to say about how magnificent the building is, since we’ve all seen it on TV and in our school text books, but it is definitely very righteous to have been able to stand right next to it. And again, the view is outrageous. Athens is a humongous place, and you can see it all in a 360 turn.

But more importantly, we got dinner right afterwards. Oh my goodness, I don’t know what took me so long to try Greek food (and I’m not talking about gyros). I ordered the Moussaka which is like the Greek version of lasagna, made with cheese, lamb, and eggplant. It was sooooo good. One of the few things I have tried on this whole trip and absolutely plan on learning on how to fix for myself. We washed it all down with Ouzo and finished off the dinner with some extremely sweet/rot your teeth Baklava. Well worth the rotten teeth.

Although it was a short day in Athens, we made the most of what we had. Traveling is definitely a blast when you can roam around with your friends.

Pompeii is incredible. I had no idea the vast size of this ancient city, which stretched for a good mile or two long. Every time we turned a corner I thought we would end up back at the entrance, yet we found ourselves lost in a totally new area. The whole experience was completely surreal; we saw mummified bodies, ruins of wine shops and baths, and amazing colorful paintings on walls that have last through time since the volcanic eruption back in 79 A.D. If you ever make it out to Pompeii, definitely make the walk all the way out to the Coliseum. It is comparable in size to the Coliseum in Rome, and in many ways, more impressive. Now I know my description may lack exciting material, but if you are anywhere near Pompeii, you must go, because it is absolutely worth the trip. Also because Naples sucks.

And of course, since this was the last Italian port, I went to a hole in the wall restaurant and order bruschetta and pizza. And yes, it was the bomb.

We then made our way through different squares throughout Rome on our way to the Pantheon, one of the oldest and most complete ancient buildings in existence. The outside of the building is very old and dirty looking, but the inside is impeccably clean and gorgeous. And to top it all off, directly outside the front door of the Pantheon is a McDonald’s. Outdoor seating of course.
We moved on to make a quick pass at the famous Trevi Fountain where the enormous statue of Neptune stands. The fountain is an incredible piece of art, but we had very little time left since we spent so much time in the Vatican Museums, Rome is a big place to walk around, and we still wanted to see the Coliseum. And man am I glad we did. There is something truly special about seeing a place as famous and as historical as the Coliseum is. We stretched our time out as long as we could there but had to grab a taxi to rush back to the charter bus that would eventually take us back to work…

You will not regret making a trip to Rome.

Florence is a city I am not completely familiar with, but now that I have visited, I can definitely recommend visiting. Beautiful buildings galore are standing next to famous museums, which are right next to gelaterias and pizzerias. The only real goal of the day was to get to the museum that holds Michelangelo’s David. And holy crap is it amazing. I didn’t think I would be so awed by a sculpture, but this was a pretty intense experience. It’s very rare to see something and immediately realize someone’s genius in creating something so magnificent. Pictures cannot do this art justice. And the copies that sit out in the courtyards hold no flame to this masterpiece.

And of course I completed the day with pizza and gelato. And it was gooooood.