Europe Trip!

Mike is going on his second year as an agent for Farm Bureau Financial Services, which is an insurance company. As a production incentive FB has reward trips for the top 11% of the company, that you can qualify to go on each year. This year the trip was a Mediterranean cruise that started in Barcelona Spain and had various ports in France and Italy! After a lot of hard work we qualified for this trip and just recently got home!

Our flight left on Friday June 2nd from the Sioux falls airport bound for Barcelona. The magnitude and beauty of the ship was unbelievable as we pulled up to it in our tour bus. We get checked in and find our room, which was awesome. It had an open air balcony with patio chairs which gave us the most wonderful views of every port we stopped at. All food was included and we had 24 hour room service, a formal dining room, a full buffet and a couple more dining options!

The first night we had a welcome reception with appetizer and cocktails for all of the FB people with an Ice skating performance. It was great to start to get to know some of the wonderful people that were there to experience this trip as well. From there it was to dinner and then to party in the hot tub. The next day we had a day at sea which was great to have the option to sleep in and relax after the previous day of traveling. Mike spent the day in the hot tub partying it up with other agents from around the US and I enjoyed sun bathing and watching at a distance from the upper sun deck. We had our first of 2 formal dinner nights which was at 9:15 that night. Needless to say Mike was in great shape to attend a formal dinner! He was well behaved and of course was the life of the party as usual!

Our next port was Naples. We took a boat to the Island of Ischia, which we toured for 2 hours on a bus then went to the thermal springs, which was just awesome, and relaxing. I think Mike needed a day like that after the previous night!

Next was Civitavecchia Italy where we deboarded the boat at took a bus to Rome. Alls I can say about Rome is WOW! The history and architecture is just so magnificent no words can explain. We saw Trevi fountain, the ancient ruins, the colosseum, St. Peters Basilica and much, much more. It is something I will remember and appreciate for the rest of my life!!!!!

Livorno was next on our list which we passed on tours and explored on our own with a couple friends from Oklahoma. We checked out some city markets, an indoor fish market and was hustled on the street by people selling watches, purses and sun glasses. This was a lot of fun to see what we could negociate final prices for! We had a great authentic Italian lunch and made it to the boat with plenty of time to spare for cocktails and hot tubing!

We than ported in Villefranche, which we were than bussed to Monaco. We had a tour of Monaco, the palace, and several other beautiful areas. Monaco was the cleanest, most beautiful, safe spots in all of France. We then went to the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo. The architecture and artwork was amazing, but the steaks were even a little too rich for Mike and Gary, so they settled for putting a few bucks in the slot machines and watching the high rollers play the tables.


Marseille was the final stop before heading back to Barelona. We again toured on our own, saw a few stands selling fresh seafood with the largest lobster I ever saw in my life. It was 50 Euro per kilo. Which we estimated at over $200 us. Can you say insane? The rest was just a lot of high end stores like Prada, Louis Vetton & Rolex. All things that where very high end and too hard on the pocket book! Everyone else decided to give up and head back to the boat, So Connie, Joe and I kept on looking for an open air leather market. We never ended up finding it, but stumbled upon a mall instead. It was very similar to ones like at home, so after trying to get lunch by people that didn't want to wait on us we finally headed back the ship!

We made it home without a hitch, and as fun as it was, it is sure hard to beat HOME! It was so nice to see the kids again and get back into the swing of things!!!