We are back.  I don't even know where to start.

We spent the first couple of days on the boat, docked in Barcelona.  I got a lovely new slightly less "Anne Frank" than usual haircut and a pedicure onboard.  The day was comparatively uneventful.

Then we got to Carcassonne.  I was really excited for Leo to see it; I really thought he'd like the ramparts.  So the group of Leo's friends set up a private bus to take us there (I found the private bus to be strangely glamorous for some reason).  There were about 18 of us, mostly they all live in Miami.  Some are originally from Columbia (and some still live there).  So there was a lot of Espanol going on.

In Monte Carlo, they wanted to rent Ferraris, but the $20k cash deposit was just a touch out of our reach.  Instead, Leo and I spent the morning in Saint Paul de Vence, which was the cuuu-uu-tist French town I've ever seen.  Basically, it looked like the France exhibit at Epcot; little winding cobblestone streets, bougainvillea hanging off the rooftops, city walls, and lots of healthy looking cats (cats in foreign countries always seem to be, um, not healthy looking, you know?).  After that, we all got dressed up (picture Raj in a bowtie, black jacket, and white pants) and we went to the casino in town. 

The next day we went to Portofino, which is also quite picturesque.   We had some amazing seafood for lunch (and then I had some banana gelato afterwards).  The next day, we went to Florence, which was fairly uneventful except that I forgot to show Leo the Ponte Vecchio, so we'll have to go back.

Then we had a day at sea.  The night before included large amounts of both champagne and tequila (use your imagination) so we were a little less, um, peppy than normal the next day.  Leo even ended up doing a Godzilla impression that night that people talked about for the rest of the trip.    The last day of the cruise was spent in Ibiza.  We rented mopeds to get around.  Leo had never driven one before, and neither had I. Leo went by himself on one and I rode on the back of one driven by a friend from Spain. He whipped in and out of traffic the entire trip. Plus there were numerous roundabouts. Every time we crossed through one, I became more and more convinced that Leo would die. Plus, we started out in the old walled city, not on flat roads, I'm sure that didn't help much.

All in all, I had five servings of fois gras, some sevruga caviar, the equivalent of two bottles of Dom Perignon, 20 pounds of Serrano ham, 12 shots of tequila and I inhaled around twenty thousand cubic meters of second-hand smoke.  One of the days in Barcelona, we walked clear from one edge of the city to another.  My legs are still recovering.  We had all sorts of seafood too.  At this one little place in Barcelona, we had grilled razor clams and grilled sardines.  One just can't get seafood like that in Detroit.  We bought almost nothing beyond food and drink, and we sent very few post cards.  We didn't even have to adjust much to the time change: we ended up eating dinner at 10 pm most nights (5pm EST), going to bed at 3 (10 pm EST), and waking up around 10 (5 am EST); so it matched my workday schedule almost perfectly.  It was a very relaxing trip.

I took almost 150 photos.  I need to go to my mother's to download them, but I'll share some once they are available.

Wow!  I almost forgot to mention that the annulment went through AND I got a promotion.