Back in Barcelona

May 20, Friday....wow! Just like that our 7-day cruise is over. Our ship docks in Barcelona around 8 am and we start disembarking around 9:15 after we collect our passports. Like on every cruise ship we packed our bags the previous night, left them outside our cabin so they could be delivered in the baggage collection area of the cruise terminal. After breakfast in Bora Bora cafe we headed over to deck 5 to collect our passports. Exited the ship right after that on deck 6 (no waiting, yaaay!) and found our bags right away in the baggage claim area. No lines, no waiting! It was the smoothest disembarkation process in all my cruising experience!
A cab ride and €30 later we were at the Barcelona Renaissance Marriott by the airport where we were to spend a night before heading back to SD. Our room wasn't ready. So we took the hotel shuttle into town (for €5 pp). The shuttle dropped us off at the port near La Rambla and we walked north through La Rambla once more. We had to make a pit stop at Dunkin' Coffee (DS asked for chocolate donut).....a coffee and a chocolate donut later we walked the cross street towards the Cathedral. The street had many wonderful shops and window shopping was very enjoyable. I've completely lost interest in going to malls in the US but this was actually fun! Maybe walking the narrow alleys looking through unique stores and not worrying about parking is the charm! Nevertheless, bought a few things...took tons of pics...walked over to the cathedral which presented more photo ops. Unfortunately entry into the cathedral was €6pp which I didn't feel like paying! :(
Instead we went to this cafe, got some tapas & wine, then headed back to the port to catch the shuttle back to the hotel. On the shuttle bus, my neighbor was taking pics with her Nikon dslr through the bus window. I am no pro photographer or even a very good amateur photographer but I am sure anyone who has looked into photography at least a tad bit seriously can relate to this: I cringe every time I see anyone using flash in broad daylight or indoors against glass, especially if the camera is a DSLR!! Yikes! I have to contain myself from leaning over and saying, 'err, excuse me, but u have the flash on and if u take a pic against glass, its gonna reflect the light and u will ruin ur pic!'....but hey, its not my pic, who am I to say anything...and yet I cannot stop from cringing! She wouldn't shut her flash while taking the pics....argh!...:(
After getting refreshed at the hotel, we headed back to town via the shuttle. We walked along an inner street in the Ciutat Villa area on the east side of La Rambla and came upon this chic looking restaurant called Sensi (www.sensi.es). Our pick was perfect....the dinner, wine and dessert were the best I had on this trip! Perfect ending to our vacation! The cute waiters didn't hurt the experience! :-P ....I actually ate tuna tartar, duck, ham, sausage and thoroughly enjoyed it! The ravioli with spinach was out of this world! I ended with chocolate fondant I.e. lava cake and it was certainly one of the best I've ever had!! Yummmmmm! Pix of DS & me in Sensi!

Back to the hotel, quite buzzed and happy, called it a night! Tomorrow, onto SD....truly adios Barcelona!
Random thots: In Spain (at least the places we visited), if you ask in a restaurant, what size is the pizza, they'll say "normal"....err, what is 'normal'???...First response for everything is "not possible" especially on the cruise ship! Almost like the ship was run by the mafia and all employees were just scared to do anything without permission!

Palma de Mallorca, Spain

May 19, Thursday.... we docked at Palma around 11 am. We had decided to go to Dragon caves (Cuevas del Drach) in Porto Cristo which is on the east coast of Mallorca. So as soon as we exited the port of Palma (which is a fairly huge port) we started looking for taxis. Unlike in Italy, taxis were very strict about the number of passengers in each car I.e. 4 in each and there are no taxis that will take more than 4. So we had to take 3 taxis for the 11 of us at €160 per cab for about 5 hours. We got this really cool cabbie called Francisco (Frank in Ingles :-) ) who knew a little bit of English. (Ugh, I wish I knew Spanish...I know, Gabe, u tried to teach and I think that needs to be my resolution for the year!)... we started out towards Porto Cristo winding our way through Palma, took a pit stop at a gas station on the way, went past Manacor (where Francisco pointed out that this is Nadal's home town and what an awesome guy he is!!!), and reached Porto Cristo in about 50 mins. The cabbies took us to this restaurant near the Dragon Caves called Ca'n Toni serving local Spanish cuisine. I had some amazing mixed salad, Spanish omelette and even loved the vegetarian paella that my friends got. I am not a huge fan of paella but the one served here is excellent. Tickets to dragon caves is €11,50pp (free for kids under 7) and tours start every hour. We started our tour at 3 pm. There are no words to describe how stunning the caves are. What makes the 2 km long caves of stalacmites (????) even more stunning and beautiful is the amazing lighting, planned and carried out by Dr. Buigas. The apparent highlight of the tour is the classical music (concert!) played by boat-bound musicians floating across Lake Martel, one of the largest underground lakes in the area. The show was definitely nice but for me the highlight were the caves themselves and the absolutely breathtaking feat of nature. Its a shame photography is prohibited....there was so many instances, due to the gorgeous lighting, of perfect reflections that they would have made amazing subjects for photographers!

We then headed to Manacor where we stopped at a pearl factory on Carrer de Majorica. Majorica pearls are made by replicating the natural process of pearl creation by the oyster. DH surprised me by buying me a gorgeous pearl necklace/ear-rings set. Once back in Palma, the driver took us through old town - which is an intricate alleyway of narrow roads. The one thing immediately noticeable about any street, any alley way in Palma is that its spotlessly clean. This is because tourism is the primary source of income on this island and the locals take this very seriously. The city is kept incredibly clean and inviting. The driver also brought to our notice futuristic looking contraptions on every street - gold colored bins which were garbage disposal chutes. Garbage went down this chute to be sucked by vacuum to the central disposal area somewhere underneath in the middle of old town. Every street also has bins for recycling different articles...very impressive! The old town is very charming. The drivers dropped all of us off near the cathedral. Its a beautiful building just like any other in all of Europe. We walked around the cathedral, through the town visiting stores and looking around. Around 6:30 pm, we split up - my friends decided to head back to the ship and took DS along with them while DH and I decided to continue our exploration of the city. We walked into narrow streets from the main avenue and looked at many interesting stores. On the main avenue (???need name), we sat down at a cafe called cappuccino for some coffee and drink which seems to be the past time for most locals around 7-8 pm everyday. Dinner doesn't happen till much later in the night, so one sees a lot of people sitting down in street side cafes sipping on beers, wines, drinks or cappuccino/coffee! The city had free Wi-Fi and we were able to surf so much faster than on the ship! I was most impressed by the city....dare I say, I fell in love with it! I would love to come back to experience the charm on a more day-to-day basis..live here for a week or more...after that we walked along the marina, found an interesting street side restaurant called Gotic and sat down for some tapas and wine. Tapas were the usual, nothing outstanding but we enjoyed our dinner. Our waiter, Ganeshwar Singh was originally from India and settled in Mallorca. We had an interesting conversation with him and were amazed at how fluently he spoke Spanish....

The walk from the cathedral area to the ship was several miles - we had underestimated the distance but we had a slow and long walk along the marina. The city is extremely beautiful and the coastline is dotted with hotels and restaurants catering to tourists. Lots of Indian restaurants as well.

Once on the ship we had to pack our bags for disembarkation tomorrow. Once that got done and kids were settled in, I went to deck 15 with my tripod and camera to get some night time shots of the lit up cathedral. But even with 200mm zoom, the shot wasn't tight enough. There was a party going on in deck 14 by the Aqua Park...we hung around for a bit and then retired early for the night.

A day at sea...

May 18, Wednesday....per our original itinerary, we were supposed to dock at Tunisia today. But the port was skipped due to the political situation there, so the day was spent sailing at sea. We again had a late night with friends so ended up sleeping in but not before DS made a meal request at 6 am!!! Boy...since I knew Bora Bora cafe opens at 6, I went up to get some cereal and milk plus fruits etc. I was stopped by the service staff saying I could not take the food from the cafe to the room (no possible, madam!!). I found that rather strange since I could have ordered the same thing through room service. I wasn't going to be stopped either way and in my sleep deprived state I actually challenged the service staff and walked out! Was as well, since I didn't wake up till half past 10 (so missed breakfast hours) and having the fruits in the room helped.

We then headed out to the sports cafe on deck 7 so the kids could do bowling. They have a miniature bowling alley for kids but charge €5 for 10 swings of the ball!! We thought that was quite ridiculous but let the kids have a go at it anyway. Once that was done we took the kids to the water slide on deck 15, followed by some swim time at the kids igloo pool, also on deck 15. Then while some of my friends sun-bathed and enjoyed drinks on deck 15, I took the kids indoors for some board games in the reception area so I could connect to the internet and check my work email. Internet connection is charged by the number of minutes and we had already signed up for 100mins for €20. Wi-Fi Connection was fairly good but only available in mid-ship on decks 5, 6, 7. I had heard the connection was extremely slow on most days and that it took nearly 45 mins to sync email! I would have thought all ships would have been updated by wifi service by now but I guess I am wrong! That day though the connection was decent and I was able to sync and check email within 30 mins.

We continued our relaxing low key day at sea by having lunch at Bora Bora, followed by us girls chilling out on deck 16 in the MSC arena. One good thing on the ship was that we always found lounge chairs and were never disappointed when we wanted to hang out. Even though weather was fairly warm and most people were hanging out on the decks and in/by the pool, there was always space.

There was a kids show based on Disney characters at 4:30 pm in the Strand theater. The show was alright - kids got to take pics with 'Aladdin & Jasmin' so they were happy. After the usual dinner at Villa Verde, we went to the nightly show at the Strand - today's was titled 'Italians' and was a tribute to the Italian culture. Again it was a fairly good show - didn't outshine the other days but the dancing was good, costumes were very impressive and the show was well put together.

Later at night, once the kids slept, the adults hung out in our cabin. We managed to sneak in some cocktails from The Aft Lounge on deck 7. I am sure we weren't supposed to take drinks into our rooms but we managed to....although I daresay those were alcoholic beverages! There was hardly anything in any of the cocktails to qualify them as such! :-P

Palermo, Italy

May 17, Tuesday....we had a tough night to say the least! At about 1:30 am, DS's temp was still hovering around 102. After a dose of ibuprofen when the temp showed 104.5 at about 4 am, we decided to dial the medical center. No one answered, so we dialed emergency which redirected us to reception. Strange! But in the end we carted all of ourselves to deck 4 to the medical center. There was a night staff of one nurse and a doc. They were extremely courteous and did gave DS an alcohol rub to reduce the high fever, diagnosed him with acute bronchitis and tonsilitis, prescribed the right meds and sent us on our way. I was happy with the medical staff and service. The night was shot but DS managed to get a few hours of sleep in the early morning hours.

The ship docked at Palermo, the capital city of Sicily, Italy at 8 am. We decided to skip land excursion coz DS was sick but after another visit to the doc at about 11 am, he seemed fine enough to go out. So we headed out to the port and were immediately accosted by taxi tour operators offering a taxi city tour for €120 for 3 hours or €100 (discounted to €90 just for u!) For 2 hours. We kept walking and met another taxi driver called Joseph right outside the port entrance who offered to take us around for €70 for 2 hours. We finally settled on €50 for the three of us for 2 hours of city tour. He was alright but I felt short changed a little because I think he cut short our tour by about 20 mins. No complaints though since DS was getting antsy after about an hour and a half. The comfort of the taxi was worth the money as against taking a hop on/hop off tour. We started the tour by going to the Albero Secolare, a small garden of trees that looked like banyan trees with their roots spread all around. We then drove up Via Vittorio Emanuelle, to Quattro Canti or the four corners of a square which is made up of four buildings - one on each corner. Each building has three levels covered with Baroque sculptures that were designed by the architect Giulio Lasso. The sculptures on the facades of the four buildings illustrate various themes: the Four Seasons, Spanish kings and various patron saints of Palermo's four old quarters. Next to this is Piazza Pretoria which houses a beautiful fountain sorrounded by sculptures and nice buildings. After walking around and taking the usual pictures we walked over to a church that appeared to be under construction - I believe this is called La Martorana. Next to this church is the tiny church of San Mataldo, with three pinkish red domes or cupolas on top and looks more Islamic than Christian. But the actual basilica behind the contructions facade is beautiful with frescoes and delicate art work on the walls and ceilings. From there we headed to the Palermo Cattedrale...which is an imposing structure. The outside is very impressive, the insides, not as much but theres the usual art work, frescoes and sculptures. We then drove past Teatro Massimo, with a quick stop to take some pics and grab a bite to eat in a street side cafe. Joseph didn't seem too keen on taking us anywhere else and DS wanted to head back so we simply drove past San Domenico (which looked like a dilapidated church) and Teatro Politeama (which appeared to be under some sort of construction). Once we were dropped off at the ship and DS was settled in, I walked out into the city up the street from the port - Via Emerico Amari. My intention was to go back to Teatro Politeama and take some pics but the walk itself was very enjoyable. I stopped at a local grocery store and got some interesting looking local pasta, pate and pesto sauce. Then took pics of some intriguing buildings - one appeared to be a church, another a bingo house....the actual Teatro was quite disappointing and I felt it wasn't worth the walk. However, I was able to stop by at a souvenir store and buy shot glasses representing Don Corleone, the Godfather, for DH, who is a huge fan of the movies. I also stopped at a store/restaurant/cafe called Bristol which according to our driver was one of the best cafes in town. I got some pastries from the store ...and just the cannelloni was worth the effort! It was apparently typical Sicilian style and it was very tasty.

Tonight's dinner dress code was formal and while dinner itself was blah as usual, the wine was very good and we got to dress up and take some good pictures. Tonight's entertainment was a show called 'Sortilegio' ('check mate to the queen') and was themed around chess pieces. So the entire costume was based on various chess pawns in black and white. Again, very impressive although the overall show wasn't as amazing as the previous nights. There was a gymnast act which was very good.

We called it a night after a good round of girly chat in my cabin with my girlfriends.

Naples, Italy

May 16....ship docked at 10 am today. After a late night, I barely managed to make it to the Bora Bora cafe for breakfast. Timing for breakfast is till 10 am in Pago Pago and Bora Bora cafes. But at 10 mins to 10 the staff had already started emptying buffet tables. It was very annoying. We disembarked a little after 11 am and walked through the port with the intention of figuring out how to get to Mt. Vesuvius. The ship excursion was €55 pp for adults plus a cost for kids as well. We found a van taxi outside the port - the driver whose name was David agreed on a price of €25 pp round trip for adults only, no charge for kids. We were 6 adults and 5 kids, so this turned out to be a great deal. He also agreed to drop us to a good local pizza place in downtown Naples. We headed out to Mt. Vesuvius with a pit stop for water - the ride took is about 45 mins. Once at the base, we had to walk up to the crater. The walk is fairly steep, on ash and stone and the day today was extremely windy although it was bright and sunny. It was a fantastic day for taking photographs but not so much fun fo hiking. DH prevailed...poor guy, walked all the way up and back down. Tickets to the 'Parco Nazionale del Vesuvio' are €8 pp and included a guided tour at the crater. We met Stephano at a souvenir store right before the crater and he gave a fairly decent account of the crater, its surroundings and history. He earned his €5 tip from me coz he was also cute with that typical Italian accent! :-P

The yummy cherry tomatoes at Fratelli La Bufala

We hurried down coz the wind was killing us (kids and hubbies bailed out on the guided tour). David drove us back into town and dropped us off at Fratelli La Bufala apparently established in 2003 and according to David, the best pizza in town. I don't know about the pizza but they served fresh mozzarella and cherry tomatoes which was to die for! I am not a mozzarella fan at all but really savoured the bread with mozzarella bits and cherry tomatoes with balsamic vinegar! The pasta was also good, I didn't particularly care for the artichoke and mushroom pizza I ordered. That was a bummer since my brother had sworn, the pizza in Napoli was the best ever! :(
We split up the group after that - my friends went with David (again for €25pp) for a tour of Pompeii (which DH and I had done before and thoroughly enjoyed) while we headed for a city of Naples tour. After stopping for some delicious gelato in downtown we headed over to Piazza Municipio to catch the CitySightseeing Napoli hop on/hop off tour bus (www.napoli.city-sightseeing.it). For €22 pp adult we were able to do the route B loop along the gulf of Naples, om the western side of town. The day was cold and overcast and DS was extremely tired, so we didn't hop off anywhere. Although most of downtown Naples and the area we had seen thus far was shabby and extremely dirty, the tour took us through an area called Santa Lucia, which is very pretty. The views from along the coast are breathtaking and it would have been wonderful to get down at several stops and sight see. DS slept through the whole tour and I tried my best to do justice to the scenic views by using my camera to the best of my abilities in a moving bus. Sigh! Some moments were frustrating...especially when I saw the opportunity to possibly take panoramic shots of the entire town of Naples, Mt. Vesuvius and the gulf of Sorrento but we decided not to get down and the bus kept moving.....grrrr! Well, I'll just have to make another trip! :-P
We headed back to the ship after that. A brief walk through the Galleria del Mare shopping center at the Stazione Marittima di Napoli took me through some interesting shops, especially those of Italian leather shoes and handbags! Very unfortunately, DS kept complaining of a headache and as it turned out, the poor guy had a 102.5 fever!!! After some ibuprofen and mommy hugs, we managed to make it to dinner at Villa Verde. It was disappointing to know that our meal request from the previous day was not only not honored but we got the runaround when we tried asking how to request the chef for something specific. On all our previous cruises, Royal Caribbean, Celebrity etc special meal requests were always honored. The comparison was inevitable and we were all sorely disappointed by the service! After a very uninteresting and unappetizing dinner, we went for the nightly show called 'Prestige' in the Strand theater. The show featured the usual dancers along with a juggler (Duo Dillon?) and a very talented shadow puppeteer (Antonio Versini). Once again the show was excellent and we were really entertained.
Guys were planning on having a guys night out today so we headed back to put the kids to bed (mine was out already due to the fever). When I reached the cabin, however, the key card would not open the door. DH who was inside could not open the door either. We called reception, who called some help, who called more senior help, who called the carpenter and finally an hour later they managed to pry the door open! With absolutely no apologies or comp of any kind, the guys fixed the door and walked off! That's MSC hospitaloty for u!!!!! I am certainly NOT recommending this cruise line to anyone, certainly not to anyone used to the RCCL brand of service!

Genoa, Italy

May 15... our port of call today was Genova, Italy. We docked at around 8 am and the plan was to take the kids to the Aquarium. We decided to simply stick with the excursion offered by the cruise line. For €35pp adult and €24pp child, this seemed like a reasonable deal. In retrospect it was because it was raining and cold when we left the ship around 9 am. Although the aquarium is very close to where the ship docks (about a 15 min walk) it would have been nightmarish lugging 5 kids and all their assorted accessories (stroller, backpacks etc). So we headed out of the ship based on our assigned grouping and immediately outside boarded a ferry which took us right outside the aquarium in about 10 mins. The aquarium or Acquario di Genova in in Porto Antico and is one of the largest aquariums in Europe in terms of the number of species it houses. It is indeed marvellous and way better than the one in Barcelona. We took about 2 hours to tour the 3 levels of the aquarium - they even have a hummingbird forest. I was very happy to experiment with my camera settings in varying light. Got some great close ups on hummingbird, tortoise, iguana, crocodile....all very interesting. The biggest complaint though was the humongous crowds..more adults than kids and completely unapologetic when shoving kids out of the way to get a view of the shark or dolphin!! Crazy tourists!! :-)

Once outside I decided to walk the 15 min route back to the ship. We had lunch on the ship (which wasn't entirely bad!) and then headed out for a 1 hour sightseeing tour of the city offered by Genoa city tour which starts in Porto Antico but can also be boarded right at the Stazione Marittima or where the ship docks. For €10 the ride of 50 mins was completely worth it. It takes one through the city to important squares and structures but with no stops. It broke my heart to see all these lovely buildings and alleyways but with no opportunity to actually take pics! :( ....my favorite was seeing Piazza De Ferrari (the town center) and Via XX Settembre (the main shopping street with fantastic architecture and murals). I would have loved to explore the city on foot and wondered why we didn't do that last time we were here!

We made it back before 4pm. The ship departed from the port at 5 pm and we watched the shores of Genoa from Pago Pago Cafeteria on deck 14 with some coffee, sandwiches and pastries -pix taken from Xoom while ship was departing. Dinner at Villa Verde was the usual I.e. nothing exciting but the maitre'd was kind enough to change our tables and put us friends close by on bigger tables so we could sit together. We also got to make our vegetarian meal request for tomorrow....lets see how that goes.

The show at The Strand Theater tonight was once again excellent. It was a ventriloquist show by Willer Nicolodi. The guy was not only fluent in 4-5 languages but he did a great job of entertaining the audience. DS was in splits and thoroughly enjoyed himself. After that we had a girls night out and enjoyed some mojitos in the deck 6 lounge area by the reception. They had good piano music playing till midnight and catching up with my girlfriends was extremely relaxing and enjoyable in that ambience.

Marseille, France

May 14... our first port of call was Marseille, France. Last nights sleep was not quite comfortable - the beds were uneven and my back really hurt. So instead of the planned early morning, I woke up late and barely made it in time to the Bora Bora cafe for breakfast (till 10 am). Breakfast was as lousy as dinner last night and was extremely disappointing. What was even more disappointing was the service staff. Again I couldn't help but compare the service to that on the Royal Caribbean. DH warned me to stop the comparison else really continue to be disappointed! :(

We then dropped the kids off to the kids club (called Grafitti on deck 15 mid-ship) so we (the adults) could go on shore. Marseille is France's second largest city and the capital of the Provence-Cote d'Azur region. Its a maritime cosmopolitan city on the southeast coast of France. The port where the ship docked is industrial and looks very commercial. We took the ship's shuttle bus (€15 pp) to the city center and noticed that the port along the way was more picturesque than the glimpse we got from our ship. Had I done my due diligence in terms of research, I am sure we could have saved some moolah and taken the local transport to the city.
Once we got down at the city center on Rue H. Barbusse, we headed down the street towards Vieux Port (old port). On the street corner of Quai du Port, we bought tickets (€7 pp) for Le Petit Train, which is, as the name suggests a miniature train replica running on the streets of Marseille herding folks to Notre Dame de la Garde. The ride to the church took us through more picturesque streets and the view of the port and coastline were spectacular. Too bad it wasn't a hop off/hop on type of tour - we couldn't really get down anywhere to soak up the scenary or take pictures. The ride to the church took us about 30-40 minutes. The church stands majestically on top of a hill and offers more breath-taking views of the city. The inside of the church houses a crypt (lower church) and a basilica (upper church). I tried my hand at HDR in both the places - will have to see how the pics turn out. The Basilica is stunning with intricate artwork on the walls and ceilings. I need to read up on the history of this place - like I said did not do due diligence on my research. :(

The ride back was shorter and DH spotted an interesting looking square full of street side cafes near Vieux Port. So we headed in that direction on to Quai de Rive Neuve, around the port, to Place Thiars. We saw many interesting looking restaurants - 'Love Sushi', an Indian one called Jaipur ...in fact Indian restaurants seemed popular, we saw quite a few along other streets - Govinda, Ashoka, Le Kashmir etc. We finally settled on a place called 'Fuxia' in Place Thiars. It had a decent Italian menu. As it turned out, the food, wine and dessert there was definitely the highlight of my day. Every dish was exquisite - the bruschetta, Aubergine parmiggiana, gnocchi with pesto, rigatoni Siciliana....yummmm! Just mouth wateringly exquisite! The Chianti we ordered was also perfect. Lunch ended with some excellent Tiramisu and chocolate layered panna cotta. Again exquisite! We simply drooled over the food. We then took a circuitous walk back to the shuttle stop seeing a few other streets around the port area.

Picked up the kids after heading back - they of course didn't miss us at all and seemed to have had a fantastic day. After more late afternoon siesta, we headed for dinner. Menu at the Villa Verde dining room looked boring so we decided to go to the dinner biffet at Bora Bora. Big mistake! Dinner was terrible with hardly any choices....salad was awful, fries were not good, there was only pizza, bunch of cold cut meats, bread, hamburger, grilled chicken.....sigh! We were better off going to the dining room! Lesson learned! I had read that food and service on this ship were far from good but even in my worst expectations, I did not think it would be this bad! I am extremely disappointed. :(

After dinner we headed to the Aft Lounge on deck 7 because the program indicated that there was a dance show. Again there was hardly anyone there at the announced time of 8:30. We danced with the kids for a bit and then headed out around 9, when we saw people heading in! Maybe most Europeans also follow IST! :P Around 9:45, we headed to the Strand Theater for another show. Once again, we were not disappointed. The dancers, artists, magician were all excellent. The magic show kept the kids entertained, the juggling and other acrobatic atcs were good and dancing tribute to the king of pop, MJ was also executed well.

We had to call it a night after that. Tomorrow we dock in Genoa where we haven't quite decided whether we want to take DH to the aquarium or go to Portofino. Grrr, not being connected to the Internet sucks...once one is used to looking up everything online, life without it is tough!