A One-Street Tour Shows Why I Like Naples

This little video tour is a rapid-fire look at the cultural wonders that await anyone who can venture into the backstreets of Naples. Living in the streets (called “Basso living”) is quintessentially Neapolitanpeople here seem perfectly adept at enjoying life with their domestic worlds tumbling right out onto the gritty streets of this fascinating city.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

 

A Speedy Cruise-Ship Orientation

On a cruise, after a couple days on the ship, you get the lay of the land. It’s good to give yourself a tour of each deck early on, to find the special places and find out about your various activities, eating, and drinking options. Here’s a quick look at how my cruise ship (Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas) was laid out.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

 

Poolside on the Top Deck on a Day at Sea

A day at sea on a Mediterranean cruise might take you from Barcelona to Rome, or from Rome to the Greek Isles. This truly is a relaxing day, with nothing to do but eat, laze around the pool, and marvel at the vast and seemingly pristine nature of the open sea.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

Day at Sea: When a Very Big Ship Seems Very Small

On a beautiful day at sea, there’s lots to do. Today, I marveled at the huge blueness of the Mediterranean, and then took a unique tour that gave me a rare look at the inner workings of the day-to-day management of a cruise ship.

I was continuously inspired by the simple vastness of the Mediterranean, and how we could spend an entire day at sea and see no land and almost no boats. There’s a clean, dramatic, relaxing, screen-saver beauty to a two-tone-blue world of sea and sky.

A highlight for me on this cruise was the “all access” tour. Out of 3,700 passengers, a dozen of us opted to pay $150 for a three-hour tour that took us behind the scenes. We got to visit each department and talk to the officer in charge, gaining an appreciation for the complexity of running such a huge ship. This man managed the ship's food inventory, and was responsible for keeping the pantry and fridge stocked for 5,000 hungry passengers and crew for a week at a stretch. Each vast refrigerated warehouse had a particular temperature designed to keep a particular kind of fruit or vegetable fresh and crunchy for the longest period of time. The officer admitted that if bananas are on the "push list," you’ll see more banana smoothies at the poolside bar. How smartly he manages the produce inventory on the ship has a big impact on its bottom line. While they ship lots of items from their company depot in Florida (because things are much less expensive in the US), he made a point to say that since fruits and vegetables in Europe are simply tastier than ours in America, they purchased most of them here.

The bridge (the huge command center from where the captain and his crew run the ship) comes with a wing that juts out on the port and starboard sides and gives a great view back towards the stern. As part of our “all access” tour, we got a chance to see the ship’s state-of-the-art navigational tools in action.