It has been some time since our last entry!

Hello Faithful Followers.
This is Barry writing first to address why it has been so long since our last entry (March 2015).
Mardi Gras has made two voyages during the interim which I will write about soon. Linda did not crew on those trips so there was no entry(she was very happy to not be along on those trips because of the wild weather). So the reason that there have been no entries is that she didn't write them! Naughty girl that she is.
For lack of a better vehicle, we are posting our winter cruise which is actually a long airplane ride to Italy on this blog. This trip had to replace the winter cruise since there are not enough $s for both so here we are in Rome seeing the sites. Being excited about things nautical I haven't seen much yet in that venue but I have seen quite a few old pieces of rock. Honestly, I don't really feel that way about it as I love the history.
Today we saw Julius Caesar's final resting place. Actually it is where they burned his body which is much the same. As it turns out, a lot of Romans really liked him and were not happy that Brutus and his senator buddies did him in so after they lit him up, the crowd started throwing extra flammables on the fire until the fire department had to be called to extinguish the enormous fire. This took place in 44 bc in the middle of the forum which is the government center of old Rome. Lots of marble buildings with tall columns. Not a good place to have a bonfire/ funeral pyre.
The Roman Forum is just next to the Colosseum. The tour guide said that there is no good proof that many Christians were eaten by lions here. But he did say that 50,000 jewish slaves were marched through the adjoining arch into the Forum to celebrate Rome's victory over Jerusalem in about 66AD. He didn't say what happened to those guys but it probably wasn't good.
Yesterday we took our zombie tour. Is was zombie because we had not really slept on the way over. The smart advice is to stay up and keep going until a normal bedtime. Mine was 630 pm and Linda's a little later. So after about 12 hours of sleep, I felt great this morning. I will let Linda tell you about yesterday since I was a zombie. (Coming soon!)