Yay! We are back from the cruise and had such a wonderful time! It was a difference of night and day the experience we had here vs the Germany Fiasco (Praise God! lol!) # days after we returned we celebrated Megan's 3rd birthday and the day following Uncle Sean and Aunt Terra visited for a few days before returning back to the States. So even though we have been back techinically almost 2 weeks, just now am I really getting a chance to document our travels! For today I will introduce you to our Ship, The Ocean Village, and talk about our first port: Tunisia, Tunis (Africa)

(Joe playing photographer while taking a breather outside a Sidi Bou Said museum. I laugh at this picture b/c the hat is so not me lol. give me a ballcap anyday lol, I wore it because Joe seemed to like it)

Our ship was great! The staff was super friendly and helpful, the food was terrific and there were plenty of activities to keep us busy on board. (One night we tried our luck at Bingo and actually won 100 pounds ='s $180.00 American Dollars!! whoo hooo!!)

There were 2 restuarants that served 24-7 buffet, The Plantation and the Waterfront. We found we liked the laid back atmosphere of the Plantation more than the Waterfront, but that was just our preferance. reakfast was almost always served at the Waterfront, otherwise we stayed to the Plantation (I am going into detail here because I know at least one of you are planning on taking this cruise this fall or early spring! congrats! you'll have a blast!) We also discovered that if we went to the Plantation inbetween hours, at say 2pm or so, they served "snacks." These were the best! we loved these! pizzas, hamburgers, hotdogs, and french fries!! yummies! on some days, mostly after just coming from a long hot day of wonderous, but tiring sightseeing, THIS is much more of what were looking for lol! Cold drinks and easy going "snacks" LOL!

We also discovered the restaurant La Luna. This was a great place! they have "reserved" seating outdoors by the pools and indoors in the air conditioning as well. Most people thought La Luna charged extra to eat there, which is true but ONLY for dinner! Lunch is free just as at Plantation or Waterfront. Here there were far less crouds, no waiting in lines or carrying trays, and you ordered your food from a menu, not a buffet. We loved this! We'd come back from trekking Italy go straight to La Luna, sit down in a secluded air conditioned area and order a pizza made straight to our order! We did this on several occasions. (For my birthday Joe treated me to eating there for dinner which was AMAZING! the difference of "high class" from lunch to dinner was as night and day. I felt under-dressed lol, but none the less the food was heavenly and it was a great place for my birthday dinner!)

The cabins were nice. we had a double bed, shower, closet space and plenty of drawer space for the two of us. There was a tv and we were able to "catch up" on recent movies out as we haven't seen movies in the theater but twice since we've been here and both of those were children's flicks to take the girls to. It was funny when our 2nd night there one of our lights began to fizzle, crackle and pour out thick white smoke! I freaked out and ran into the hall. Joe turned out all lights and began to call down to reception. I am in the hallway BEGGING Joe "please please can i hit the smoke alarm?" (this would not have sounded the ship into chaos, just alerted the crew in the control room there had been smoke or fire spotted in our area. no beeping or loud high pitched alarms would have sounded to OUR ears...just to the crew) I never in all my school years hit a fire alarm in school, and here HERE was my chance!!! there was true smoke! I was waiting for sparks to fly at any moment! "C'mon honey! there's one right outside our door!!! can i hit it please please?!" *jumping up and down simulating my 4 year old when she gets *really* tired and whiney. He said no, i begged again, he countered with "do you have any idea how much one of those things costs? you're not breaking any glass." argh....so he calls to reception, the night manager comes to check on us and calls an electrician. electrician checks it all out. turns out it was the casing that needed to be replaced now. He'd have one up the next day. no problem to us, it was bedtime anyway and we didn't really need that light, plus there were 3 other lights in the room itself. but of course i had to take pictures of our "hole" in the ceiling lol. What kind of scrapbooker would I be if I left out such excitement eh??? By the way, the electrician said this was the first time this had happened at all on the ship! Guess we got the "lucky" room lol.

(hole in our ceiling while waiting on a new light casing)

So, back to the cruise. we flew out of London and arrived in Majorca Spain. prety little island. for me it was pretty neat as my mom spent some time there as a teenager. Now i could officially say I've seen the windmills she's talked about before. We boarded the ship in an easy check in process and checked out our room. our luggage was delivered to our cabin almost immediatly. We set sail that evening and spent that night and the next day at sea. The next morning we awoke to find ourselves at the port of Tunisia on the coast of Africa.

(Tunisian Church)

Tunisia was really great. Our tour was split into two trips. First we explored the "rich" town of Sidi Bou Said, checked out the shops and then left to see Carthage. Carthage will be in my next blog as there is just too much to say and too many awesome pictures to combine into this blog. So for now, Sidi Bou Said is all I will talk about today.

(Mosaic in Tunisian Museam. Joe really loved how the reflection in the mirror shows the woman's face. Especially as the top part of her face didn't quite survive the excavation)

The primary language is arabic and i believe some french. Going off of memeory, but I think thier source of money was the Dinar, but everyshop we saw advertised in Euro's. No one on our entire cruise took pounds except on the ship. Everywhere on port took Euro's just as FYI. anyway, back to Sidi Bou Said. it surprised me in that it did not look anything like I expected Africa to look. It was hot and dry though yes. Sidi Bou Said is characteristically marked by whitewashed walls and bright blue doors and windows. It really was beautiful.

(Taking a breather in Tunisia)

I really enjoyed Carthage alot more than I did Tunisia, but then again I really wasn't interested so much in shopping which was really the main attraction to Sidi Bou Said. I will be blogging Carthage next! To close, Here is our tour guide "Ralph". We were both really impressed with all our tour guides. They were all super nice, spoke fluent english, and very knowledgable about thier home country. Villefranche, france was the only place we ventured out on our own and we really missed not having a guide there to fill us in on all the highlights and history of the place we were experiencing.

Saying good bye and thanks to Ralph. (that is a jasmine flower we bought while in Sidi Bou Said in my hat. I also bought a pure oil of the Jasmine flower while there to wear as a perfume. It is heavenly and one of my favorite "finds" to bring home)

(More pictures are at our Flickr site!)