La Spezia, Italy

Last night we went through a beautiful storm.

The bright light woke me up and we watched the sky dance with a real light show, with cloud to water lightning bolts.
Our stateroom is on the port (left) side so the view was perfect as we headed north.
It was awesome! It got a bit windy but didn't seem to bother the ship at all.
As you can see, we were just catching the edge of the storm and we didn't get rain.

We docked at La Spezia early in the morning.

After breakfast, it was my intention to go see the leaning tower, but Chrissy was having none of it. Nancy said it wasn't worth it too.
It would have cost about $400 for a cab to go there and back, it isn't close to the port.

She said needed to pack, but told me I could go by myself. To anyone who's married, you know what that really means. Go, then come home to some cold shoulder soup. To her credit, there were a lot of loose ends to pick up. The pool towels needed to be brought back to the pool attendant. If you left them in the room, you'd be charged $25 each. Fine print... We need to have our bags packed and into the hallway by 10pm.
This is what it would have looked like if we visited.

I also needed to have my last of 10 treatments with Dr Punith.

When my kids were younger, I took Casey and Billy to karate classes. We had a (friendly) match with another class in the nearby town, and one of the young guys was going to show me how tough he was, and ended up tearing my rotator cuff. I've put up with the pain since then, probably 30 years. I can do mostly everything, but the pain is constant. He explained to me how the pills and physical therapy were useless because the pain is coming from inflammation under the skin, something western medicine doesn't address. The acupuncture makes the body pay attention to this area and heal itself. Amazing science. I have to say I'm nothing short of amazed, that I can now push the brush through my hair with no pain.
Just short of a miracle.

Pat asked if was able to use my French while in France, but everyone there spoke better English than my French! I will say that the French I heard in Marseille was much closer to the French I grew up with than than the Parisian and Quebec French. At least I could understand them.

We dock in Civitavecchia in the morning, where we started the cruise. We off-board the ship at 8am and Chrissy arranged for a driver to pick us up at 10am to bring us to the Rome airport, a little over an hour ride. Our flight out isn't until 3pm so there's no rush. We fly from Rome to San Francisco where we arrive around 8pm tomorrow night. 14 hour flight. Our flight to Tucson is at 9am Friday, arriving at 11:30am, so we'll spend the night at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in SF, and be home early afternoon on Friday. I'll probably have one more post to let you know we've arrived safely.