Day 21...Last day in Italy / "4th" of July BBQ

Day 21, July 5th:

Today is my last day in Italy and I didn’t even get to explore!  We initially reserved this day to explore Naples, but after our late-night bus ride, we all decided that we would catch up on to America via facebook, Skype, etc.  Danielle, Jenna and I headed to a small café right by the pier to use their internet.  It was well known by SASers so the internet sucked because too many people were trying to use it at once.  It worked for a good while at the beginning so I got the opportunity to Skype to my mom and dad, which are at my grandparents’ house in Ohio for the 4th.  I also got to talk to my cousin Mitch!  It was great being able to talk to almost the whole family at once.  I don’t know how often I will be able to talk them all in the upcoming countries, so it was good to get it in now.  

After we spent a few hours at the café, we searched the internet for grocery stores that were nearby and we stopped by two stores.  It was awesome because they were super close to the ship.  I like to buy some snacks and canned beverages for the ship, since everything onboard is sorta expensive.  It is nice to be able to have a nice cold coca-cola and some potato chips every once and a while.  We bought all sorts of stuff this time.  I got like three different types of individually wrapped Italian pastries, some chips, Nutella (a new find for me) and some other random stuff.   After all of us filled up our baskets full of food, we walked, skipped and hopped back to the ship.  I know that the security guards think we are crazy for bringing all of this food onboard.  They love us though (at least we hope so)! 

Around 17:00, everyone on the ship headed to the decks for our 4th of July BBQ on the 5th of July!  It was so cool.  We had hamburgers, ribs, mahi-mahi, potato salad, cole slaw, mac-n-cheese, baked beans, salad bar, all the fixing’s, millions of fresh fruits and assorted desserts.  The crew had a blast putting it on for us.  They were having more fun than we were!  They even decorated all of the decks with flags and made homemade cake.  The burgers and ribs were even grilled right there on the deck for us.  It was pretty fun! 

After dinner, everyone onboard gathered on all of the decks at the back of the ship for a group picture.  It was pretty cool to see my new SAS family hanging out on the back of the ship cheering away for our pictures.  You will have to check out the SAS website to see if they posted any pictures or a video.  Their blog for the voyage should be pretty cool too. 

After all of the shenanigans were complete, the “group” had a great big welcome home party.  We sat around for hours telling all of our stories from the week and reconnecting after our week in Italy.  It was a good day overall!  I went up to the 7th deck to watch us pull away from the dock and say goodbye to Italy!  I had a really good time so far!  I now know why some of the people on the ship have been on here for like 6-13 voyages (I think the most is 13...).  It is hard to believe that it is already one third of the way over!