the inevitable

We made it back from our Mediterranean cruise trip safe and sound!  But...the inevitable is that I ALWAYS get sick during or after I travel and this time is no different.  This cold is kicking my pa-tooty.  But enough complaining(see my previous post)...

It was a wonderful trip.  I feel like I'm still trying to digest everything we saw and did.  Mike's parents were on the trip too so it was great to see them and spend time with them.  To give you a taste:

-We started in Barcelona.  Arrived two days before our cruise departed so we were able to check out Barcelona.  From there, this is where we visited ~>
-Toulon, France: We took an excursion to Marseille & Aix En Provence.
-Florence, Italy:  We visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa and did a wine tour/tasting at a Tuscany winery.
-Rome, Italy:  We visited the Vatican & the Colliseum.
-Naples, Italy: We walked around Naples and ate some pizza...no special excursion this day.
-Mykonos, Greece:  This was a great place that we walked around and ate some delish greek food.  The pics will speak for themselves for this place.
-Istanbul, Turkey:  No special excursion but we did a city tour bus.  Saw some beautiful mosques and visited the Grand Bazaar and a Spice Bazaar.
-Izmir, Turkey: Took an excursion to the ancient city Ephesus...super interesting place.
-Athens, Greece:  We visited the Acropolis/Parthenon and had a bus tour of the city.
-Venice, Italy:  We took a walking tour through Venice, which included a visit to St. Mark's square & Doge's Palace.  We then had a nice gondola ride...how could we not?  It is a city built on water and all.
-We had an extra day after the cruise in Venice so we literally just walked around Venice and ventured through all the random alley's and streets, no matter how small or "scary" they may have looked.

I'll work on posting pics this weekend.  This being our first cruise, we really enjoyed it.  They had good entertainment on the cruise and a lot of activities.  I think a Carribbean cruise would have had a totally different feel.  It stayed around 70-75 degrees at almost every location and on sea days so it definitely wasn't a "lay in the sun or pool" type of vacation (which we fully understood).  I actually think hot weather would have caused this trip to be pretty miserable...we did lots of walking so I wouldn't have wanted to be hot & gross the entire trip.

Who knew that if you aren't on the ship at All Aboard time, you WILL GET LEFT BEHIND.  I mean it seems pretty obvious but we definitely left a few groups behind a couple times because they weren't back on ship.  They caught up with us at the next port but all at their own expense.  Yikes!

We got back last Friday and then left on Saturday for Gunnison, CO.  Mike was working up there for the week so I decided to bring my work and join him this time.  Long story short, his location/time there was adjusted so after some negotiation with the house sitter, I ended up coming back home Monday night after work.  And now the inevitable...fighting this cold...I think my body is detoxing from how I treated it on vacay.

Hope all is well with all of you!

Complaining

I was checking all my social media outlets this morning and the following was posted on facebook by one of the fitness gals I follow.  It really resonated with me and how I've been feeling lately so thought I'd take time out to post:

(This excerpted from The Challenge to Succeed audio series by Jim Rohn ~ I pulled these pieces of the quote from www.jimrohn.com.)

"Complaining.  There's room for legitimate complaining, but if you let this deadly disease of attitude - complaining - loose it will conquer you.  Complaining can take over your life.  Destroy you and leave you without anything.  Nobody want to take along a complainer.  Nobody wants to promote a complainer.  Nobody wants to live with one.  Nobody wants to be a partner of one.  Nobody wants to have one around.  Complaining leaves you out of more opportunities than you can possibly imagine if you let it take over and grab you by the throat..."  "...Complaining is not for the winners in life.  You must focus on what you can do, not what you cannot.  And you must focus on the opportunities not the difficulties.  When you do this you will not only inspire yourself but you will be an example for others to follow as well."

I may just need to paint that bolded sentence on every wall of my house as a friendly reminder to myself.

Happy Tuesday!  Back to work...no complaining allowed!!