Favorite Memories

1.Singing waiter in Florence
2.Dinner in Kuśadasi with brick oven
3.Parker & Phoebe’s act in the talent show
4.Walking through Florence at sunrise
5.Hosting the Caruccios for dinner in Florence
6.Dinner in Crete (great food)
7.Going to Rabat for a day as a family.
8.Beach time with hermit crabs and SAS friends in Cadiz
9.Eating Nutella crêpes in Marseille
10.Eating pretzel bread in Antalya
11.Having a nice dinner (the carbonara was amazing!) in Rome 12.Swordfish in a restaurant in rome
13.Visiting Gaudi houses in Barcalona
14.Walking on las ramblas
15.St. Peter’s Basilica
16.Gelato in Gozo
17.Gelato outside the Vatican
18.Fado night in Lisbon (don’t forget gazpacho)
19.Seeing a HUGE manta ray in the Lisbon aquarium
20.Lunch with peacocks in a castle in Lisbon.
21.Doing cartwheels on the lawn of the Brighton Pavilion
22.Our flat on Brighton
23.Watching DadDad ride a motorcycle in Marrakech, Morocco
24.Recieving the world from the videographer (beachball world)

We are so glad to have had this opportunity. Thank you for being our faithful readers.

And one last set of pictures

The girls at Osterley Park outside London

All the kids at the talent show on board the ship

Parker singing “What is the feeling” from Wicked at the Talent Show

The girls all dressed up for the final ball

Perri did their hair…

Dad-Dad plays with a toddler on the subway in Barcelona

All the teens playing cards on the ship.

The kids at Gaudi’s Casa Batlo in Barcelona

Perri takes in the Sagrada Familia

The kids at the Park Guell

On the fair grounds of the 1929 Exposition

Food galore at the market in Barcelona

And an appropriate goodbye…

18 August, 2013 10:05

France Blog

The Caruccios had become our fast friends by France. They had started doing everything with us, and don’t count France out.

On our first day in France, the Nelson & Caruccio crew, minus Dad, went to Aix en Provence. It was a cute town with a market that had fresh fruits and veggies. We started the day by going to that market and buying a few fresh snacks. Then we went to an art museum that had really beautiful paintings and sculptures. After the museum, we went to the market to buy lunch. We got baguettes, ham, cheese, and some fruits. After lunch, our group split up. DadDad and Nathanael stayed on the main street to sketch, and the rest of us walked around and shopped. After that, we went and got a snack of gelato and crepes. Then we were homeward bound.

On the second day, the Nelsons went to the museum of Marseille. It was made up of a modern building and an old fort.

On the last day, our family went out to get crepes. Then we went to a museum full of models of ships. It was really cool. Then we got lunch and I, Parker, went on a double decked carousel. After that, we went to the second half of the museum that we saw in Aix.

France was really awesome!

-Parker Nelson

18 August, 2013 10:04

Hello! A few ports ago we docked in Valletta, Malta. Some of you may have read that and thought what?? Where the heck is Malta? For those people- Malta is under and slightly to the right of Sicily, Italy (which is the football the boot is kicking). I didn’t expect much of Malta, I’ll admit, but I was actually surprised. Malta was one of my favorite ports this whole voyage!

The first day in Malta, Dad had a field lab and so was gone the whole day. The rest of us went with our new friends the Caruccios to Golden Bay beach. We had an amazing time. The water was very refreshing, the sand was soft and good for sand castle making, and we ate a quick but delicious lunch at the beach bar. We rode the hop on- hop off bus to and from the beach, which was easy transport. However, there was no air conditioning, so we were sweltering, and the recordings that tell you the history of each stop were quite difficult to hear.

The second day the whole family minus Nathanael went to the island of Gozo, which is to the top left of the island of Malta, on an SAS trip. After a bus ride and a ferry ride, we went an ancient ruin. However, this was not any ordinary ancient ruin. This was the oldest free- standing building in the world. Who knew it was located on a small island in the Mediterranean that hardly anyone knows exists? Anyway, it was slightly unimpressive, but I suppose you can’t expect much from a building that is older than the Pyramids. Next we went to the Azure window, which is a rock that has formed into an arch from all the waves wearing it away over the years. I have to say, the window was pretty incredible. The blue waves crashing on the formation and spraying water everywhere- an amazing scene. Lastly, we drove to a small town on the edge of Gozo where we ate lunch.

On the last day, we all went into Valletta. We practically walked around every square inch of the city (Valletta is the smallest capital in the world… just to put it in perspective). We went to St. John’s Co- Cathedral which was beautiful. We also ate milkshakes, which were very refreshing and delicious.

I hope to see everybody very soon… we get home in six days!

-Perri

Parker’s Rome Blog

Rome was FANTASTIC! It was NOTHING like I thought it would be, but it was still great! I thought it was going to be a whole bunch of ruins, all throughout the city, but was I wrong. It was a huge city, like many others! There were still ruins, but not like i thought they would be!
The food was phenomenal! We had a whole lot of gelato! My favorite combo was mint and Belgian chocolate chip! Yum!
On the first day we went to the pantheon, the trevi fountain and the spanish steps. On the second day, we went to the Vatican Museum! It was full of artifacts like maps, paintings, pottery, ext. on the last day we went to the colosseum and the roman forum. Rome was cool.

P.E. Awesome
(Parker)

Pictures from Malta….that little island in the very middle

Arriving in port at sUnrise…the harbour fortifications bathed in sUnlight.

Parker strikes that pose

boats in the harbor..

One o the side chapels in St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. More gold than we knew was possible. We are just SO Protestant.

The south coast of Gozo….the even smaller island next door.

Perri on Gozo

A spot called the Azure Window.

One of the government offices built by the British during their colonial rule over Malta

The streets festooned for the Feast of the Assumption. The public festivals are really astonishing.

Pics from Rome

The girls at the Coloseum

Kids in St. Peter’s…

OK…is that for real?

The staircase in the Vatican….

The dome of Quattro Fontane

Hey, could you take thr…OK, then.

The Trevi Fountain

The ancient and the curious collide….a guy covers Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” in front of the Pantheon

One of the many many Counter Refomation ceilings in Rome

Florence by Nathanael

Our trip to Italy was, to say the least, amazingly awesome. After landing in Livorno, we wasted no time in going to the train station and traveling to Pisa. Alas, it was only for a few minutes because we were on our way to Florence. Upon arrival in Florence, we passed the Duomo on our way to the flat where we were staying. Just seeing the tantalizing image of the great cathedral made everyone anxious to start sightseeing. The location of the flat was perfect, only a few blocks from every important building in Florence. It came with a few unadvertised downsides, however. The first problem was probably the most major one – we were on the fourth floor, with no elevator, 82 steps in total. Basically h-e-doublehockeysticks for our grandfather. Besides that, and no A.C., and a mosquito problem, it was fantastic. After settling in, we strolled down to the Duomo and toured its amazing interior. Then we had gelato. Ya know, just assume we had a ton of gelato, because writing when we had gelato every time is gonna get annoying. The second day we toured Florence, visiting the minor important buildings like the Palazzo Medecci and other places like the Duomo museum. We met with the Caruccios for dinner and gelato. On our third and final day we climbed the dome of the Duomo (which was utterly spectacular) and went to the daVinci museum, which had useable examples of some of his smaller contraptions. For dinner we went to a Caruccio-recommended place which was a combination of delicious food and a waiter who couldn’t stop singing. Delightful. The fourth day we boarded the train to Rome.