Trip of a Lifetime!!

A year ago Jason won the "Employee of the Year" for all of Boston Market, out of more than 10,000 employees - so proud of him!! For the award he won a travel voucher to be used wherever he wanted to go, along with a week of extra vacation! Neither one of us have been to Europe before, so what better way to celebrate his award and take a trip that we hadn't really thought would be possible for awhile. We booked a Mediterranean Cruise, and with the generous help of Jason's parents watching Jake & Tyler we headed off for 12 amazing nights in Europe! To see the full slide show of our trip, click on this link:
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And here's a quick recap of our amazing trip... We started our trip off with a quick stop in London, we only had about 20 hours here total but we made the most of it and saw as much as we could with a hop on/hop off double-decker bus tour.

Buckingham Palace, London

Big Ben....Parliament

Tower Bridge

After our quick day in London we flew to Barcelona, Spain where we had a day before our cruise left from the Port of Barcelona. We stayed in an amazing hotel right on the famous Las Ramblas street, which had tons of stores, street vendors, entertainers, restaturants and not to mention great people watching!

Las Ramblas

We found the best Tapas restaurant and bar right across the street from our hotel, loved it!!

The next day we boarded our ship the "Liberty of the Seas" and set sail in the Mediterranean!! Our first stop was Toulon, France!! We had a very big adventure here, as we got lost in the middle of the French countryside but eventually, after a public bus ride and the train, we find our way to our destination of the beautiful French beach town of Bandol. Here there were beautiful boats, great shops and tons of delicious restaurants.

Train station, very glad to have finally made it here!

With our first lunch in Port, we started a tradition of having a bottle of wine at lunch each day. When in France... :)

Our second port was Cannes and Monte Carlo, France which ended up being our very favorite!! The scenery was absolutely breathtaking, not to mention the yachts were unlike anything you could ever imagine!!

Amazing yachts, bigger and more deluxe than you can ever imagine!

The famous Monte Carlo casino, I even won $$ :)

The next port was Florence / Pisa, Italy where we traveled to a very cute beach town, Viareggio. This town was what you picture when you think the "South of France, with miles and miles of beach clubs filled with chairs and umbrellas.

Our cruise next headed to Italy, with our first stop in Rome! We still only had one day here and with so many things to see here we again did the double-decker hop on/hop off bus tour. We didn't quite get to see everything we probably should have/wanted to, but we saw our priorities.

In front of the Trevi Fountain

National Unity Monument

The Vatican

Mass on the big screen TV outside The Vatican

Just one of the beautiful churches we saw...

The Spanish Steps

At the top of the Spanish Steps

The Colosseum

We were in absolute awe of the history of The Colosseum and trying to imagine what it was like to be there during the action

Our last port, and another one of our favorites, was the Aisle of Capri.

Loved the convertible taxis!

Outside the Blue Grotto

Inside the Blue Grotto, natural blue light coming up from the limestone in the water - hard to understand how blue it really was

Here are a few pictures of our ship and our fun times while we were aboard!

Our very fun table for dinner every night, we sat with a honeymoon couple from Florida and another couple from Boston, he was a NFL referee & let's just say Jason loved hearing all of his stories!!

Our cruise docked back in Barcelona, where we then flew to our last stop of Madrid, Spain. By this time we were tired and missing Jake & Tyler so much, but we ended up loving Madrid!! We stayed in yet another beautiful hotel and found a great area with many fun restaurants & bars where we had our final great meal before heading home. On our walk back to our hotel we walked through The Reitro Park - an amazing park in Madrid, almost better/bigger than Central Park in NYC!!