Well, for us it is 11am Friday morning, and we are sitting in the Rome airport. However, I’m not sure when I’ll actually be able to post this to the internet/blog.

Eric and I both loved the Cote d’Azur, also known as the French Riviera. We ported in Monaco, and went to France to visit Nice and Eze. Eze is simply a tourist trap, but Nice is awesome. The entire area of the Riviera that we saw was just beautiful, and we’d love to go back someday. We went to the Nice market and did some shopping, then just walked along the boardwalk. Once back in Monaco, I went back to the ship (tired after a long day), but Eric went to the casino. Actually, he had to change clothes first since business casual attire is required. He didn’t gamble since minimums are so high, but he did buy a five dollar chip as a souvenir. There aren’t any photos from the casino b/c they aren’t allowed, but Eric said it looked like a museum- very ornate with marble everywhere.

Yesterday we were in Livorno, which is just a port city that is the gateway to Florence/Pisa/Tuscany. I could go back to this area for a week, at least. It was so pretty, and Florence was one of my favorite Italian cities. And no, it’s not name favoritism. It’s actually called Firenze in Italian. We saw David at the Accademia, then went to the Duomo area, then on toward Uffizi and the Arno river. I got some shopping done and had a lovely time. We also had a great lunch in Florence at Piazza d’Repubblica. We headed to Pisa in the afternoon, and took the obligatory pics of holding up/knocking over the Leaning Tower. I don’t feel the need to go back to Pisa again. I just wanted those pictures:-)

I decided last night that I was tired of being away from the US and healthcare facilities that I could communicate with if need be. Not that anything was wrong, I think I just started getting sick of being away; a little homesick. I miss my doggies. Eric was happy to skip Greece if it was what I really wanted, as long as we could get our flight changed. Luckily, we were at the airport by 8:30, and they got us on a 12:45pm flight to Atlanta. That gets us to Atlanta around 5pm (I think after all the time changes), and we should be in Charlotte by 10pm. So now we have Sat, Sun, and Mon to unpack, and get our affairs back in order. Back to the real world in other words!