Thurs Nov 14, 2024
Hi Folks! We were docked overnight in Naples and oh what a difference a day makes. Today it was bright and sunny with no rain. Just the way we like it!
We decided to venture out of the city and our excursion took us to the Royal Palace of Caserta. It was constructed by the House of Bourbon as their main residence as kings of Naples. The complex has 1,200 rooms, took 90 years to build and is the largest palace erected in Europe during the 18th century.
The construction of the palace began in 1752 for Charles VII of Naples (later Charles III of Spain). But Charles never slept a night at the palace as he abdicated the throne in 1759 to become King of Spain. The political and social model for the palace was Versailles, outside of Paris. I’ve now been to both and I’d say Versailles is much grander and more opulent.
We also toured the gardens, which too were designed to be like Versailles but again did not quite compare in my mind. They were very beautiful with lots of water and fountains but not to the scale of Versailles. There were also several movies filmed here such as Mission Impossible and Star Wars. Overall it was a very nice tour!
After our tour, we got back onboard and had lunch. After lunch we chilled and then listened to the guest lecturer. Her topic was on the lives of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. She talked first about the Greeks and how we got our word democracy from the Greek word “demos” for people and “kratos” for rule. The Greeks used pieces of broken pottery called “ostraca” to vote someone out and that’s where we got our word ostracized.
She then discussed the ancient Romans and how they went from simple farmers to having over 100 million subjects. They started out as the Etruscans in the 5th to 6th century before Christ and then had a 500 year reign as the Roman republic. The Roman forum was the center of Roman life and she discussed how critical the Senate was to governing. It was mostly done thru long oratorical messages especially from people like Cicero. But the grossest thing she said was that they would wash young babies in urine from someone who just ate cabbage. Now my ancestors better have never done that to me!! Lol.
After that we went back to our room where our butler had our hot popcorn ready. We snacked and chilled and got ready for dinner. Tonight we are eating in one of the specialty restaurants called the Silver Note. It was our favorite restaurant on our last Silver Seas cruise but is hard to get into. The cool part is there’s a couple there that plays/sings live jazz while you eat.
That’s all for now and hope everyone is having a great Thursday! I’ll post an update after dinner.
The Wandering Italian 