Month: October 2008

Our first port of call was Naples. There were shore excursions to the area beaches, and of course to Pompeii, but we decided on the tour to Herculaneum. Why? Everyone goes to Pompeii. Any time you travel to that region you can easily pick up a guided tour of Pompeii. Herculaneum was a smaller seaside resort for the wealthy that was also destroyed by the 79 C.E. explosion of Vesuvius. The site is smaller, having been excavated less, and having the modern day town of Ercolano still on top of it (literally – they can’t excavate some areas because they go under people’s houses), but it does have some things to recommend it. Primarily, it was buried by mud, not ash, so is much better preserved, including original timbers that charred and fossilized, but did not burn away. Having a classics minor, and knowing an expert on the area (she was in a PBS special narrated by Leonard Nimoy!), we took more pictures here than at any other spot, I think. I’ve posted the gallery up at http://picasaweb.google.com/laurion of course.

From Herculaneum

Before boarding our cruise ship, we had a day and a half in Rome. Airline hassles, hotel rearrangements, and camera battery outages kept us from seeing or doing as much as we’d planned, and raised our frustration levels. Not the best way to start travels, but the good outweighed the bad, including good food, good tour guides, and actually getting to see some amazing sites.

I’ve posted most of the pictures we did get, but as I mentioned, the camera battery ran out halfway through our tours (my fault!), so we didn’t get that many pictures. Again, posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/laurion

From Rome

I’ve uploaded the first wave of pictures to Picasa for you all to see. These are the pictures from the wedding itself, taken by the professional photographer. If you were there, and you took pictures, please let me know, and send copies to me – we’d love to collect them all together!

Over the next few days I plan on going through the pictures we took on the cruise, and will be posting them as well.

All of these can be found at : http://picasaweb.google.com/laurion

From Wedding

On the good news for me front, I did just upgrade the hard drive in my MacBook Pro from the 100 GB it shipped with to a 320 GB.  Got tired of having to plug in an external hard drive just to listen to iTunes or sync the iPod.  On the MacBook, this is an easy process; a few screws and a lever.  Don’t know why, but they decided that on the professional, higher-end, more likely to have owners that want to upgrade MacBook Pro, this is a process that involves 25+ screws, including Torx size 6, dismantling the lower case, detaching several ribbons (almost lost the bluetooth), rubber bumpers, and a lot more time.