All right, so we’re all done talking about Italy, but I will tell you a bit about the cruise in a couple different ways.

The cruise started in Naples, and then we went to Civitavecchia, which is a city in Italy that nobody’s ever heard of, and they go to because it’s a poor city to get to Rome.

But we did not go to Rome, having already visited Rome, which we did intentionally because it wasn’t enough time to get to Rome.

The cruise also went to Mykonos, Greece.

It went to Cusadasi, Turkey, and it went to Santorini in Greece.

And, of course, there was a day or so at sea.

Let me tell you all about it.

Your Daily Lex.

As you may recall, we were traveling on the cruise with friends.

Another couple joined us, John and Rich.

And I love a cruise as a way to travel with friends.

I love traveling with friends.

There’s something fun about you’re exploring the world and you’ve got other friends there, too.

And it’s got to be the right kind of friends to travel with.

I have friends who I love who have said to me that I shouldn’t travel with them.

My buddy Craig was always like, you don’t want to travel with me because I like every minute of vacation to be in use.

And so I’m up at 4 a.m.

so we can go hike a thing, and then we’re going hard all day.

I like adventure.

I like seeing stuff.

And I also like relaxing and not getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning.

So Craig’s right.

I probably shouldn’t travel with him, at least not that kind of trip.

But a cruise I love with friends because it’s choose your own adventure.

Everybody can do their own thing, and then you meet up for meals, or you meet up when you do other things when you want to.

So we did some excursions with them, some stuff separate.

We had every dinner together.

We had many other meals together as well.

And we saw plenty of them.

It was awesome.

So Civitavecchia, we got off the ship together.

We did not book an excursion there.

Actually, that’s not true.

Lauren and I had booked an excursion there.

And then the night before the excursion, they were like, oh, by the way, your excursion has been canceled, which was really frustrating.

And they didn’t have anything else that we could do.

There was one Spanish language tour we could go on, but that didn’t seem that interesting.

So we got off the ship and explored on our own.

It was a cute little town, and we got a bunch of steps in, which was good, but it was insanely hot, which was the hallmark of our trip.

And on the way out, we should have taken their free shuttle, but we didn’t know to, so we walked.

And it was like just walking on road, and it was so hot.

Painful.

But it was cute.

Had a good time.

Even got to see a surprise church.

It was a surprise to us that we would see a church.

But cool.

The cool things about the ship included that at one point, we decided all of us would get massages, which was funny.

I was hoping to work on my arm stuff, which it did help with for several hours.

But there was also, I learned that the gym sells, or not just sells, but offers for free if you have a yacht club, which is what I was doing.

But anyway, we could get smoothies, which was cool.

So I got protein smoothies almost every day of the ship, which was awesome.

Every day of the cruise, I should say.

So Mykonos, we did a boat tour, and it was cute, and it was a fun boat tour with some very odd people on our boat with us, including John and Rich.

They were not odd ones, but man, oh, man.

There was one girl who was like 20 with the brain of a two-year-old, and she was like incredibly dumb.

She’s an insult to two-year-olds, honestly.

And Mykonos was cool, and we saw some lovely stuff and jumped in the water, whatever.

But the tour guides were like, well, this is the club where you have to spend $50,000 to reserve a table, and this club is the one that goes all night, and this club is the one that celebrities love because blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, the whole town is just a tourist town that’s just clubs, which, okay, whatever.

Kusadasi, Turkey, we really struggled with.

Lauren and I weren’t even sure we wanted to get off the boat because they don’t love Jews.

Our friends were like, you know, they don’t like us either because my friends are a gay couple.

But they’re also like, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see some stuff in Kusadasi.

So we went over to some ruins called Ephesus, and they were awesome.

It was very, very cool, but we didn’t contribute money to the Turkish economy, which I felt good about.

And then Santorini, Greece, I really liked.

It was very cool.

We saw a bunch of beautiful stuff, and boy, we had just, we found some, not a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but like a no-name restaurant that was cliffside, which we ducked into mostly because it was so insanely hot.

But we did a wine tasting, and we got some frozen caffeinated drinks, and I got a gelato that was insane.

It was just perfect while you’re sitting cliffside looking over the water.

Man, it was awesome.

I would go back to Santorini.

I did see a bunch of signs in Santorini reminding you that you’re a tourist, but we live here, so please don’t go crazy.

And some posts about, like, what tourists imagine Santorini is and then what it actually is, where what it actually is is oodles of people.

It wasn’t overwhelming when we were there, I think in part because it was so freaking hot, so it wasn’t as teeming.

It was just steaming, if you will.

But, man, it was great.

And I did gain seven pounds on the cruise, and I think that by mid-next week I will have shed those pounds again.

So that’s good.

I’m almost back to my pre-cruise weight.

Anyway, that’s all I got.

That’s the end of my vacation stories.

Happy Thursday, August 7th.

More soon.

Lex.