Once again, it's 5am and I'm awake. It does make for excellent photography opportunities though, being wide awake before sun up! We're going to head out together this morning to see what new paths and pictures we can find around the town. This afternoon we board our Cruise, and tomorrow we'll  visit Pompeii .. a dream of mine since childhood! Today will be busy, and once on the ship (the Costa Allegra, for those who care),  blogging will be my main means of communicating with you all, until we arrive in Mauritius on the 26th of December...
Time to head out for another photo morning! Enjoy your day wherever you are!

For some reason, last night's blog with photos didn't load properly!.. Well, more has happened since then. After a pizza buying experience, where I had to ask which language they preferred before I could begin to order, ("Spanish! Yes, Jose in the back room can speak that, bring him out!") We ate a pizza picnic in our rooms, and then headed out for a walk to see some of the city. It was dark, so I didn't take the camera.. it's a bit too flashy for the back streets of Genova! 
We went into a  little store to buy our first bracelets.. -we buy bracelets every stop we go when we travel- easy souvenirs to carry!-.. and it happened to be an arabic shop.. Someone else walked in  behind us, and the guy at the counter said "Ah a lan wa sa ha lan" and the other man started to reply.. and suddenly the words jumped out of my mouth in reply:    'Al ham du lula, Kaifal hal? Al ham du lula"..
-Which is actually the only paragraph I've learned from my arabic tapes I've been listening to for a few weeks, to prepare for Egypt. .. (It's basically a 'hello, how are you', kind of conversation) It was hilarious to see all their faces go absolutely BLANK white!.. I smiled, and explained in Spanish that I've been studying Arabic for Egypt and it was my first time using it. They laughed then, all 5 guys standing at the cash, but then they stopped talking altogether, in case I knew more than that, and could understand everything they had said about us a few minutes earlier, while we were shopping!.. Of course that's the only phrase I know, so I paid for the bracelets, said "Shukran" and we left.. Iain was embarrassed, but I was laughing all the way home about  the fact that I came to Italy and got to use my Arabic phrases on the first night!