Celebrity Summit

Last honeymoon entry I SWEAR!

Long story short, we would definitely go on another cruise. We were very pleased with Celebrity, it was clean with excellent service. We ended up in a small interior room on the lowest floor and it was fantastic. Not for everyone probably, but for someone who may want to sleep in on days when the ship is at sea it was fantastic. There were sea days where we slept till 2pm, then got up and found lounge chairs pool side and laid down to read/eat for an hour then fall back asleep for the rest of the afternoon. Exactly what a vacation should be like in my opinion. We were lucky that the entire trip there was only one thunder/lighting night and really you almost never felt the ship moving. (except at the beginning of the trip when I was incredibly nauseated to begin with and could practically talk myself into feeling the movement)

Barcelona, Spain

Now it was time to bid our ship goodbye in Barcelona. Being as this was our honeymoon and Hubbin had some specific goals for Barcelona when he booked the trip, he booked us an extra night in Barcelona before we would fly home. It was a verrrrry nice hotel and it seem exceptionally lush after two weeks in our little closet cruise ship room. He used to have a Spanish girlfriend so he’d been to Spain a few times and more than anything this time in Spain he wanted to visit La Sagrada Familia. So that’s what we did. While consulting tour books in our hotel I decided I wanted to visit the Gothic Quarter and La Rambla. Fortunately our hotel was pretty much in between all those, so even though we vowed to treat ourselves to cab rides, we still ended up walking nearly everywhere. Here’s a traffic sign Hubbin decided means “It is now ok to run down pedestrians with bicycles”. I’ll go ahead and admit I was not really looking forward to La Sagrada Familia, but I was completely impressed. In awe really. We ended up spending several hours there and I’ll just give you the two minute overview on what it’s all about. So Gaudi was an architect who is famous for his “overdone” style (where we get gaudy from). And he set out to build this enormous cathedral that told the story of Jesus Christ. You need a lot of time to sit an look at it, but nearly every story you can think of in the bible is represented in the architecture. This particular side is “the nativity” side. The church is really only maybe 40% built at this point and is still actively under construction. I was pretty surprised how much Hubbin enjoyed it, since he’s generally anti-religion. He said if he had visited this church in his younger days it may have made him a religious man, that the kind of impact this had. Inside the church is a really neat effect. Gaudi found inspiration of religion in nature and really tried to bring that into the church. His pillars are supposed to look like redwood trees. They REALLY do. You would get the distinct impression that you’re attending church in a forest when you came here to worship. Especially when all the stain glass windows are installed it really gives the impression of light filtering down through the trees. We’ve decided we’re going to make another pilgramage back when the church is finished… of course we may be in our 70s by then and traveling with grandchildren… We had a good time strolling down La Rambla but were a little confused about what we were supposed to be thinking. There’s lots of gypsies and stands set up in the middle where people are selling everything from flowers to live animals. We saw chipmunks, ducks, bunnies, turtles, hedgehogs and so forth. There was a distinct black-market quality about it all. We obviously made no purchases. The gothic quarter we just sort of wandered into. I was expecting gothic buildings and for it to be a bit more like Venice, but it seemed to be more like Barcelona’s shopping mall, full of teenagers and buildings transformed into H&M. We had a lovely time in Barcelona, but we were quite ready to head home the next day it had been a long and wonderful trip.

Pisa, Italy and Italian Beach

The day after Rome, we were going to see the leaning tower of Pisa. Which caused another one of those “Oh my goodness, it’s RIGHT HERE” moments. First of all there is NOTHING else in Pisa, no wonder they just did all that major work to prop the tower back up a little, because if it falls over no one will ever go to Pisa again.

It really does lean dramatically and it’s a really huge tourist trap. Other than that, not really a whole lot to say about the leaning tower. You can pay and climb up in the tower, but they only let X-number of people up each hour and they didn’t open it until 11am and we arrived at 10am. We spent 45 minutes there taking photos and buying a few souvenirs before we were loaded back into the bus and left for the beach.

We were tired, we were hot, and we were very tired of walking. We were only about 3 days away from the end of the trip now and on our 3rd of 4 touring days in a row so we were really tired. I know, I know, “Ugh I’m SO tired of touring famous European landmarks, POOR ME“. But genuinely, we were fatigued. The night before we very nearly tried to cancel our Pisa and Beach day trip in favor of something shorter until we learned the deadline had past and we were stuck. It turned out to be one of our favorite days. We went to Nettuno Beach (Neptune Beach).

My new generalized opinion of the Italian Beach is: “Ew”. We didn’t swim because when we got down to the water there was all sorts of trash floating in the water (plastic bags, sanitary pads, etc)… The locals seem to be much more organized than Americans with the beach space, each renting a changing room and chairs and umbrellas all laid out in neat rows, but clearly not so careful about water cleanliness.

Hubbin and I, both being of excessive pale Brittish Isle descent were not too keen on sun exposure plus it was way to hot to be laying in the sun, so we spent a good portion of our beach time walking around the little town. We had a delicious lunch of pizza at a little cafe, followed by two of the most amazing iced coffees I’ve ever tasted. Then we changed into our swimsuits and walked along the waters edge getting our feet and legs wet for a while before retiring to the shade of the beach resort restaurant (No AC to be had in the whole town so don’t even ask). It was a really, really nice day.

Rome, Italy

Rome was the city we booked tickets for the big/expensive/all-day tour. Which, really, there wasn’t any other way to do it. We wanted to make sure we saw certain things, and hadn’t a CLUE how to get around? The boat docks a solid 90 minute bus ride from the city so we got an early start.

I had one of those moments, we were riding in the bus, through the city, rounded the corner and THERE was the colosseum! Right THERE! Right out my window!

We saw on the news later that night back in our room that it was 40* Celsius in Rome that day, or rather 104* for you Americans. And it felt EVERY DEGREE.

Overall, the tour was kind of a disappointment, we got to see everything we wanted to see, but the tour guide (who was totally bizarre) spoke poor English and I felt like we were a herd of cattle most of the day. I also felt like she spent an awful lot of time with us standing still telling us random facts like where the gladiators stayed rather than about the Colosseum. We decided really the way to do a big city like that (aside from spending more than 8 hours there ) would be to group up with a small group and hire a private tour guide. See what you want to see, and spend exactly as much time as you want to.

We saw the Colosseum then did a walking tour through the city (for HOURS, in 104 degree HEAT), Roman Forum, Venetian Square, Trevi Fountain (Our coins are IN) and then lunch at a very fancy restaurant.

Then we went to the Vatican. We’re not catholic and we weren’t really terribly excited about the Vatican or St Peter’s Basilica. Buuuut, we were a bit awestruck with the Basilica. The catholic church really knows how to pack a lot of oompff with all the money they’ve accumulated over the years.

Getting ready to go to the Vatican was kind of funny because they wanted the men to wear long pants women to wear long skirts… but it was 104*! Hubbin wore shores and then pulled them down a little and I wore a tank top and brought a shawl and we both made it past inspection. There is an ENORMOUS jumbotron outside for them to broadcast during ceremonies. Hubbin nicknamed it “The Divinitron” and he was very upset that the pope has a bigger TV than him. I got an adorable picture of him pouting with the Divinitron in the background.

Athens, Greece

Athens is the city I missed, so I really can’t go into a whole lot of detail. After I totally over-did-it in Santorini, we got the health facility to give me a note to get reimbursed for our Athens tour. Athens was the first day we had an actual scheduled tour that we paid money for ahead of time. Hubbin asked if I wanted him to stay with me but I told him I really wanted him to go on the tour so we could get the photos. I slept the whole day straight through until he came home. Hubbin was excited about seeing the Acropolis and the temple of Nike but overall didn’t like Athens. He said the city of Athens looked for all the world like Beirut. His funny story from the trip was when the tour guide was telling the group that Greece isn’t really like “My big fat greek wedding” not everyone is named Nick and not everything ends in “opolis” and Hubbin said “The joke was on him because right then we drove by a huge sign that said “Nickopolis”. Hubbin was adopted by a nice couple from Atlanta who we ended up also hanging out with in Monaco later on in the trip. We were about the age of their children so I think we filled a little homesickness-hole for them too. Hubbin did have wonderful iced coffees in Athens though and I had a very nice nap .

Santorini, Greece

Hubbin’ wasn’t really prepared for Santorini, I had looked at my friend’s photos so I knew it was going to be one of those cities with the beautiful white buildings and blue roofs like you imagine when you think of Greek isles. Hubbin’ was amazed how pretty it was. We woke up that morning and our cruise ship was already in the harbor and we ate breakfast gazing out the window at these steep volcanic mountains with what looked like snow at the top. Not snow, those were the towns. We had to take a tender boat onto the island, and then once we were there we took a cable car to the top. I wasn’t too excited about the cable car (it was WAY UP HIGH) I concentrated on taking pictures and we were at the top before I knew it. The options to the top were

1. Cable car
2. Donkey
3. Walk

The bartender on the ship assured us the night before that if we took a donkey we would smell like a donkey for at least three days. Wikipedia informs me the elevation is 984ft… so I wasn’t interested in walking. Santorini was STEAMING HOT the day we were there. It was after my first dose of antibiotics, so I was feeling only about 50% improved.

In retrospect, I totally over did it that day, it was way to much exertion for as sick as I was. But I don’t regret it. We had no organized tour that day so we got off the cable car and just kept walking left and up until we got to a sidewalk with a nice view of the coast. We bought a gorgeous painting there of one of the famous churches with the blue roofs. We’re having that framed for our dining room as we speak. We bought a few souvenirs and had lunch at a little cliff-side restaurant. The restaurant was kind of crappy and the food wasn’t that good. I had a tomato and cucumber salad with some of that gyro dressing on it that totally hit the spot for how hot it was there. Hubbin’s meatballs and potatos made me nauseous though. Yet again we spent the day just wandering around (in the sweltering heat) taking an obscene amount of photos. By the time we decided we were finished we headed back to the cable car/ donkey station only to learn the line for the cable car was 1 hour and 45 minutes. So we headed into a few of the tourist shops and I got a few pretty silver jewelry items, then we decided we would rather take our chances walking down the hill than stand in the sun not moving for nearly 2 hours. So we set out on the donkey trail which was, mmm, treacherous. Europeans are apparently very into making very wide stairs (maybe 4 of my steps per stair, that are slanted down to the next step) I guess it’s ok for donkeys? But after what appeared to be decades worth of donkey poop (turned grass) ground into each step you really had to watch yourself because they were kind of slippery. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill (I really wish I had kept track of the time it took us) we were so sweaty we could have convinced you we had jumped in the ocean with our clothes on. It was a little gross for me to have the heplock in my arm covered with a clear dressing and my whole elbow wrapped in gauze that was now saturated with sweat.

We did both make it back to the ship alive, the ships staff met us at the tender boat pick up area with cold cups of water and wet washclothes they had clearly had in the freezer the whole day. I never felt anything so amazing in my whole life as an ice cold washcloth.

Santorini was amazing. I think it’s the perfect place if you really want to relax on a vacation for like 5 days, get a hotel room there (there were lots with excellent views and swimming pools right on the edge) and lots of little cafes. Hubbin thinks you’d probably be tired of it after about 5 days because it seemed like there wasn’t really much to do there other than shop/ visit cafes/ and sight see.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Our second stop was Dubrovnik, Croatia. One of the places we were not looking forward to as much, I mean, seriously? Croatia? Dubrovnik, I think impressed us both. We once again took the cruise ship offered transportation and had no official tour planned. It’s one of those very old European cities that’s surrounded by an impressive stone wall. We spent perhaps our first two hours wandering around the narrow hilly streets trying to figure out how to get up onto the wall. (We didn’t realize we had walked by one of the few entrances right when we walked through the front gate: there was a fee of course) Then we spent the next few hours walking the wall and taking an obscene amount of photos. The old city was beautiful, the craggy rocks were beautiful, and you could not believe how blue and clear the water was! All told we probably spent 4-5 hours in Dubrovnik, I don’t think we had anything to eat while we were there, before heading back to the ship. We each bought t-shirts and Hubbin bought a German car magazine (Apparently Croatia’s second most common language is German) I think going to Dubrovnik was worth it, it was a beautiful city. However I don’t really think it’s a “destination”… I feel like we spent 4-5 hours there and pretty much saw everything there was to see. Some of our prettiest pictures are from Croatia, but I don’t think we’ll be headed back there ever.

Venice

Our first stop on the trip was Venice. We arrived from Atlanta to Venice at about 11am. It’s very nice because you arrive and collect your bags, then the cruise ship has buses waiting on you and you hop on and they drop you off at the dock. Thank goodness because otherwise I think it would have been a little stressful finding our way there. Then you check your big bags with the cruise ship and they deliver them to your room for you. What they didn’t tell us is that they don’t deliver them till that evening, so we spent our whole day in Venice wearing our yucky flying clothes (jeans and t-shirts) rather than our nice clothes we packed for sight-seeing a photo ops. The cruise ship had a little shuttle ($10 per person of course, because they charge you for everything they possibly can) But it was convenient to have a boat drop us off at St. Marks square and a guaranteed ride back to the ship later.The weather in Venice was low 70s and overcast, so it felt cool enough for a light jacket.

Hubbin’s life long dream was to take a honeymoon to Venice so this was one of the most exciting stops for him. My only wish about Venice was that it was later on in our trip, because honestly I had a terrible time and it had nothing to do with the city, just that I was so incredibly nauseated It really was a beautiful city, small narrow sidewalks, little streets, and nearly everytime you rounded a corner there was another photo op… We spent most of the day wandering around taking pictures and stopping in whatever little shops we found along the way. We bought a nice painting for the house and a few smaller souvenirs from the same artist for our mothers. We ended up eating dinner in what appeared (to me) to be a small Italian style fast food restaurant with a couple selections of spaghettis and pastas that you served yourself. It wasn’t excellent but we were hungry at the time and we didn’t want to spend the time or money for a nice sit down dinner.

After dinner, Hubbin’ suggested we go on a gondola ride, but I was fairly sure puking over the side of the gondola would be frowned upon so we walked around for an hour or two waiting for a few bites of spaghetti to settle and my zofran to kick in. We did finally take a gondola ride (after an extra pill of Zofran). We didn’t go on one of the fancy ones, or one where the guy sings to you, but we were really in it for the photos and scenery anyway. It was really pretty to drift down some of the little side canals and just look at all the beautiful houses. This last picture is “the bridge of sighs” linking the court house to the prison. Venice was really beautiful and we’ve already decided we want to go back.

Sick as a Dog

So the honeymoon was just wonderful really, I think it was exactly what we needed in so many ways.

Really before I can tell all the stories though I need to do my disclaimer. You have to take into account with my story that I wasn’t feeling 100% for the first 6 days of our 12 day cruise. Like when I say Venice is beautiful but don’t go into elaborate detail about the food we ate or anything like that, you have to remember that I threw up twice in Venetian toilets and every smell, movement, and taste made me nauseated…

The worst part about the honeymoon was that the Thursday before we left I woke up at 2/3am sick as a DOG. I woke up and ran to the bathroom with diarrhea. I was supposed to work at 7am and was still planning on going, but when I started vomiting by 5am I nixed that idea. I called in sick and was generally miserable all day. I woke up Friday feeling much better so got dressed and left for work with a bottle of pepto-bismol in tow. I got worse as the day rolled on and when the second aide arrived at 1pm for the evening shift the charge nurse sent me home with a low fever. We stopped by my parents house after my mom got home from work and she started an IV on me and gave me 2L of fluids. I obviously needed them because I only managed to pee a trickle after the second bag. Saturday was my 1st day off before we left for our honeymoon Sunday. Diarrhea has a tendancy to make me a little nervous, given my bizarre history.

I muddled through packing Saturday and honestly didn’t feel too bad and thought I might be on the mend I officially started panicking in the middle of Saturday night though because I was now running to the bathroom 5-6 times an hour with copious amounts of diarrhea. What panicked me the most was the thought of Cdiff, in a foreign country, on a cruise ship for TWO WEEKS. At the rate I was going I’d end up in the hospital for sure. I broke down and called a nurse in my ER at 3am (we had to be at the airport in 8 hours). I said “look, I know you can’t give medical advice over the phone but that’s kind of what I’m asking for” she said “Ok, I will, I know you won’t sue me ” so I told her what’s going on and why I was worried and she said “honestly, we’ve had a LOT more Cdiff patients here in the past few weeks, out of my last 5 shifts I think I’ve had 3 or 4 positive patients” I said “oh really? Wow” she said “do you want me to have the doctor call in a prescription for Flagyl for you?” I said yes. Then I said “I don’t want to take something I don’t need, how long do you think I should wait to see if it’s a virus before I start taking the flagyl?” She said “I think the N/V/D patients we see it usually is over in about 3 days, I think more than likely that’s what you have so you should start taking it right away”…. We picked my flagyl up on the way to the airport with some zofran my mom’s friend called in for me to. (Black market healthcare all around, I felt so guilty) I was threatening to puke the whole way to the airport and I don’t mind telling you I looked TERRIBLE and honestly didn’t care if we went on our honeymoon at all.

Coincidence or not, my diarrhea stopped after the first flagyl pill. My nausea and vomiting continued till about 2 or 3 days into our trip though… part of me is convinced though that was just from the flagyl. Flagyl makes people nauseated, plus I was already way behind the game with eating and drinking so I wasn’t able to eat a full meal or get down enough fluids to keep it from making me nauseated. Halfway through the trip when I was able to eat/drink properly the flagyl didn’t bother me at all. So that’s why I had not a drop of alcohol the whole honeymoon, because alcohol and flagyl don’t mix.

Here’s where the story starts getting really dramatic though… I was joking with my coworker when I got back that I feel like one of those patients we mock that comes into the ER and rather than saying “I broke my finger today” starts by saying “welllllll, three weeks ago….” and then has a whole list of complaints.

You know how airplanes are famous for making you dry? When we landed I had a dry feeling throat. I think it was also a little bit from my scopolamine patch (we got those before we left just incase we got sea sick, but since I was so nauseated before we even left for the airport, I put it on in the hopes it would help out) which my mother told me would make my mouth feel dry. So I drank lots of water and assumed my dry throat would go away. It didn’t go away in Venice, I remember whining it was a little sore in Dubrovnik, then I woke up on day 3, our first day at sea and could see my abnormally large tonsils (that’s normal for me, I’m very well endowed) were brick red with large nasty white patches and I was pretty sure I had a fever.

Well shit. I was hoping my sore throat would go away, but now I was virtually certain I had strep throat. I had no choice now but to head to the ships infirmary. I walked down and pitifully checked in telling the nurse I thought I had strep throat. I had to fill out medical history forms and current medications. You know how paranoid cruise ships are about communicable diseases so I was terrified if I told them I potentially had Cdiff they may just toss me overboard or kick me off the ship at the next stop. So I wrote I was taking flagyl. But decided that I would attempt to play dumb and avoid mentioning Cdiff.

I could hear the tension in the Ecuadorian doctors voice when he was asking me why I was taking Flagyl. I told him I had diarrhea before I left and that’s what the doctor gave me. He asked what the doctor thought I had… I said I didn’t know. Kind of true, the doctor just wrote me a prescription, no one had tested me for anything so really there was no proof. He finally dropped it and had me sit on the table while he got his light and tongue depressor. When I opened my mouth he realized he didn’t need the tongue depressor and flashed the light briefly on the back of my throat and then his arms fell to the side and he acted upset. “Do you know how this looks? Did you see this in the mirror” I said that I had. He said “How long have you been like this?!” I said “today is the first day, it just felt dry the past two days, I thought it would go away”… he said “No, this won’t go away. This is very serious. I’m very concerned.” He then had me sit back down and said he was “very concerned” about 4 more times.

Because I was already taking antibiotics and got strep he was worried he wouldn’t be able to get rid of it. He decided he would put me on IV antibiotics (ON A CRUISE SHIP, ON MY HONEYMOON)… my first question was if they were able to do that on the ship. He said they were but that if I wasn’t better in three days he needed to send me to a land hospital to get more intensive treatment. (I decided right then if that was the case I was buying a plane ticket and flying back to the US, no way was I going to be hospitalized in CROATIA) So they put in a hep lock that stayed in my arm for three days and I went down to the health facility each evening to get antibiotic treatment.

I was 50% better after the first day, 80% better after the second day, and 100% better the third day.

He then wanted me to take 10 days of oral antibiotics. I know it makes me a bad person, but I never took them. I was taking 10 days of flagyl, to potentially fight Cdiff and antibiotics are what normally causes Cdiff in the first place so I felt like I was kind of caught between a rock and a hardplace. I opted to treat myself as though I had the Cdiff (because I felt fairly sure that was the case) and then decided I’d go to my doctor when I got home to follow up about the strep throat. (Now two weeks later, my throat is just fine and my belly has fully healed too, so we’ll see what she says)

Now that I’ve got this health disclaimer out of the way I can do a day-by-day blog of the actual honeymoon

June 29th

So we did at long last arrive home on June 29th, by several miracles.  Please dear readers give me your best estimates of exactly how long you think this process takes:

1. Deplaning from an international flight behind 50 exchange students from row 40.
2. Walking 0.25 miles to customs at JFK
3. Waiting in line at customs
4. Claiming your checked baggage
5. Handing over your passports for verification on the way out of customs
6. Rechecking your bags for your connecting flight
7. Waiting in line for elevators which are apparently the only option connecting the international terminal to the regular terminals
8. Going through airport security complete with shoe removal and husband setting off metal detector with his belt buckle
9. Running 1 mile (and I do mean run) to gate 31

Any guesses?

Hubbin and I completed all the the above tasks in the record time of 1 hour and 10 minutes arriving at gate 31 just in time to take three deep breaths and walk onto our plane home… which then sat for 4 hours (FOUR FULL HOURS) on the runways due to weather followed by a “mechanical issue” requiring us to head back for repairs and then refueling. Our plane was complete with an out of order sink and bathroom door that you couldn’t close because there was no way to unlock it. Nice

However everyone’s day was saved by the flight attendant who informed us during take off that as soon as we reached cruising altitude he would pass out the cashews reserved for 1st class to the whole plane and that “everything in his galley was ours, including all the wine and liquor”. SO I had my very first drink of our entire honeymoon (explanation to follow) on the flight home 30 minutes from landing. Let me tell you, after not eating for 8 hours the glass of wine went STRAIGHT to my head and I then had the most wonderful flight experience of my entire life. I will also tell you that Chardonnay and turbulence go VERY WELL together. Because my foggy brain recorded one of the most turbulent flights I’ve ever sat through. (Turbulent enough that I remember thinking “if I know I’m going to die some day, I need to remember to bring wine”) I’m seriously considering paying whatever premium it is normally and having wine on every flight from now on.

We did make it safe with every piece of luggage, and took a dinner break at my parents house with Hubbin’s mom in attendance to hang out souvenirs. We finally rolled into our driveway just before midnight which taking the time change into account is 24 full hours commuting and 17 hours with our butts in plane seats.

We had an amazingly wonderful time, but we’re very glad to be home.