A Quick Glimpse

We are in Venice!
And yes there was a lot in between since our last blog. There are not too many great wifi connections in the middle of the Mediterranean.

We are in the final of the final stages of our trip - as of tomorrow afternoon we will begin our journey home....via Rome - via London.

A quick Glimpse:
I have seen so many places that are beautiful, Venice is in a category on its own, you really cannot compare.

Haifa Israel - Mount Carmel

 Our ship docked in Haifa Israel, the city is on the side of Mount Carmel...and it was a beautiful day! We had the opportunity to hike down mount Carmel to Elijahs cave - a very important religious site for a number of religions.
We had been thinking of doing some tours, but decided to take it easy and wander on our own. We loved it.

Overlooking Haifa

Old stone steps that have been worn down for who knows how long, something eery and cool about them.

Elijah's cave, mostly a shrine at this point. We met a Jewish man on the way in that instructed us how to be respectful of this very important site for them. Very interesting experience.

One of the most memorable sites, this tree was right at the top of Mount Carmel at the beginning of our hike. Something wonderful about it. 

The View from the Top of Mount Carmel

Beautiful beach, too bad it was January, the air was 20 degrees, but the water...not so much.

Jayson trying to coax me to put my feet in the water.

Wet feet because the wave came up to where I was standing. #shouldhavejustwentinwithbarefeet

Prepping the coucous for the fryer. 

We found a little falafel shop tucked into a little corner (literally), Hebrew Coke. Delish.

The Gentleman that owned the shop was incredibly nice, he had a bunch of his own sauces that he would add  to the falafel. SOOO good.

This the German quarter in Haifa, Germans began settling here is the 1860's, when World War II loomed they were forced to leave for obvious reasons. They have since began settling back since the 1960's. It is a beautiful area with lots of shops, cafes and restaurants. At the end of the German quarter up the mountain is the Bahai gardens. Bahai's pilgrimage here from around the world. Tourists come for their impeccable gardens.

Life is Wonderful - Day 1 in Rome

Rome is a little surreal, only because everywhere you look you see what you have only seen in your textbooks, or in calendars, or in movies... For anyone with a remote interest in art you are in instant 'artistic overload'. Everything has an artistic flare, from the architecture, to the statues, to the gardens, the coffee, the gelato....everything!

After arriving and being nicely jet-legged, we plunked down to an early night and than rose to early to explore. It is unusually nice in Rome for this time of year (+12 Celsius with CLEAR blue skies). I haven't felt the heat of the sun in a while-  even when it is sunny in Glasgow it doesn't warm your insides like it does here.

Anywhoo, here are a few of our favorites...

Our lovely hotel room, all the hotels have these metal electronic covers fromt the outside, so they stay very dark,quiet and safe at night. Love.

View from the hotel terrace

National Monument to 1st King of Italy.

Need I say more.

 Monument to persecuted Christians at the Coliseum - though they say there is not evidence it happened here, the Pope had this set up. I do believe that Christians were martyred here, even though the history books may not say so.

Picking oranges in ancient Rome. Grabbed an unripe one. MORE SOUR THAN ANYTHING I HAVE EVER TASTED.

Pantheon

Trevi Fountain

Finishing of our day with a glass of wine in the hotel Lounge

Cheers to Life.

Another day in Rome. This is at the Vatican City

Jayson checking out the large water basin

Jayson looking around to see if anyone is watching

Is that Jayson in the basin!!??!?!

What a beautiful outside St. Peters Basilica.  You can hear the bells ringing.  Check out the video!

Layover in London

So folks, that's it.  We are now gone from Scotland.  We will miss many things about it.  The Scots themselves, the Castles, the Currie and the crazy weather.

Beautiful Landscape.  Notice the farms are separated by stone walls

   We stopped in London for a night to leave some luggage to travel light and catch an early flight to Rome.  Our flights home to Canada are out of London as well.

We spent the night at the airport...

Since our plans to stay at a friends place in London fell through, we decided to sleep at the airport for the night.  We had to be at the airport 10 hours after we arrived into London and it takes 2 hours to get to Heathrow through Transit.

Didn't know what to expect, but the good news was that the terminal 4 has a Cafe Nero shop open 24/7.  The staff were generous about us sleeping in the cafe.  We weren't the only stragglers there!  The shop ended up being filled with others in the same situation.  The manager even made sure Lissa and I had the nicest seats, closest to a plugin once the section was opened after being mopped.  I guess he really liked that I asked permission ahead of snoozing.  

Lissa's turn for her sleep shift, I blogged and watched movies

Let's just say, we drank lot's of coffee, tea and snacks.  Watching movies together was fun as well.  Poppers Penguins was pretty much a lame movie with a few good moral themes.  We blogged about our recent Castle tour and took turns sleeping, to watch our luggage.  In all, it turned out to be an OK evening that went by pretty quickly.  I think it was mainly because we had to go to the check in queue at 4:30 in the morning.

Castle Campbell

This castle is high up a hill, at the very top end of a valley.  We could smell the clutch in the car while making our way up the valley to this Castle.  Driving a 1.2 litre car with 4 adults and some luggage ascending a steep 1 lane road puts a lot of strain on the engine.

The road didn't take us all the way, so we had to park and hike the rest.  The view from the Castle was awesome, especially on mild sunny days. 

 These pictures were provided by the Sharilyn Clowes.

Linlithgow Palace

The birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots.  

Linlithgow Palace

We were playing Where's Waldo

That's a tower.

The Lichti's.  Oh so cool.

The Clowes.  Even cooler.