The Sheldon Global Economic Stimulus -Stuff we bought on our cruise

I'm missing a photo of the tapestry wall hanging we bought in Erice for David, and I'm not posting photos of items we bought on behalf of other people that are currently still wrapped up.

For those of you who are not aware - I've been collecting elephants for over 30 years. I have several hundred of them of all shapes and sizes. After all these years, the elephants have to be something I don't already have, which is getting tough. You will see that I managed to find quite a few on our trip.

Here we go:

Barcelona:

This is a finger puppet from a from a flea market in Barcelona right near La Rambla:

This is an African marble-sand painting we bought from a street artist along La Rambla:

Ceramic art is really big in Spain. We bought these along Princessa Street in Barcelona:

We were pleasantly surprised to find Jewish themed items.

This is a ceramic coaster - unfortunately, we could only find one (I wanted 4 or 6). What's really nice is that the menorah has 7 branches, which makes it a "standard" menorah, as opposed to the more popular Hanukkah menorah with 9 branches. Hanukkah menorahs are more popular, because Hanukkah is the most well known of all the many Jewish holidays.

The "standard" 7 branch menorah is actually a Jewish religious symbol, as opposed to the Start of David, which is not:

The following are two Judaic ceramic plates - the top one is a 7 branch menorah, the bottom one is a Magen David (Star of David/Jewish star):

Pictures composed of tiles are also popular. Andy and I have a fond memory of a tiled thing his parents had brought back from Portugal many years ago. This piece reminded us of the one his parents had. We were really worried about getting it home on the plane, because it was so big and very heavy. The vendor wrapped it in umpteen layers of bubble wrap. Instead of carrying it around for the rest of the afternoon, we took a taxi back to the hotel to drop it off, then went back to the same neighborhood to go to the Picasso Museum.

Thankfully it fit perfectly in my suitcase. When it came time to pack for the airplane, we juggled stuff around between suitcases to evenly distribute the weight, so we wouldn't be charged for an over-weight bag. Where were are going to put this in the house, we have absolutely no idea:

Of course, I had to have a Spanish fan. This one is hand painted on raw silk. I need to get a little plate stand to display it on the mantle of our fireplace:

We didn't have a lot of time in Eze (France) at all. We stumbled across a tiny art gallery. If we had realized we had another 10 minutes to shop, we might have bought an actual original oil canvas, but since we thought we were running out of time, we went with a placemat:

This is an original water color from a local artist in Portofino. His gallery is at the very top of the castle:

Back in Santa Margherita, most of the shops were closed between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. One street vendor was still open - she had some really nice ceramic artwork.

Of course, first the elephant. I like this one, because he looks like a dog with a long nose:

The vendor also had several ceramic land/seascapes - it was tough to make a choice, but the one of Portofino won:

We didn't find anything we liked on the day we were in Tuscany. We made up for that the next day when we were in Erice and Trapani in Sicily.

We wandered around Trapani for a couple of hours in the morning before the bus tour started.

I can't remember the name of the stone that this made of, but it's not onyx or malachite or quartz. I have another elephant of the same stone, but it's beige. This one is black and pink:

This one is ceramic. I can't remember if I bought this in Erice or Trapani:

In Erice, we noticed ceramic pieces of ducks that hung their heads over the edge of a table, which was really cute, but I don't collect ducks. Luckily, I found an elephant in the same style:

Our biggest (and last) purchase was a Berber silk rug that we haggled for in the souk in Medina, Tunisia. I think it's about 3.5 feet by 4 feet (haven't actually measured it yet). It's never going to touch the floor. It's going up on the wall above the sofa in the family room:

It's good to know that the Sheldons have done their part to support the global economy.

Homeward Bound - Hasta la vista, España!

Coming home

The breakfast at the Barcelona Universal was not as good as the first hotel. But we didn’t have much time, so there you are.

We were at the airport by 8:00. Check in took a while because they ask some security questions before taking your luggage, and the people at the very front of the line seemed to have some difficulties.

Eventually it was our turn – we did a good job balancing the weight between the three bags, because none of them were even close to the 23 KG limit.

While we were waiting, we saw this line for this odd thing – a machine that shrink wraps your bag for 6 Euros! I guess it keeps it from getting scuffed and scraped? Not sure.

After we were free of our luggage, we tracked down the customs desk to ask about getting our Value Added Tax (VAT) back from the big ceramic tile thing we bought in Barcelona. Even though the vendor assured us all we needed was the receipt, as we suspected, we also needed to show the custom person the actual item. Which was already in checked luggage. The custom guy said, “No item, no tax back.”. So we would have had known to schlep our suitcase across the airport to the custom guy, open the bag, pull out the ceramic thing and hope he would not want us to unwrap its many layers in order to show him what we bought. Then shove it back in the suitcase, drag the suitcase back across the airport to check it in. Then go downstairs and exchange the Euros for dollars. Nah, not worth it.

Besides, we knew Spain is having financial difficulties, so they can keep our 13 Euros. I’m sure it will help fix their huge deficit.

We had our passport checked at least 3 more times before boarding the plane. All this security is in direct contrast to how we flew through passport control and customs on the way into the country.

Our flight was thankfully uneventful. We both had remembered to wear long jeans and bring a sweatshirt on board – and we were still freezing. I didn’t even realize how cold my feet were till we were walking off the plan in Philadelphia and my feet felt like blocks of ice.

Our flight arrived an hour early. Which was immediately counter-acted by the endless line at passport control (we managed to find The Slowest Line Ever). By the time we were at the baggage claim, all the luggage had been pulled off the carousel and stacked on the floor.

After finally clearing customs, the next challenge was to find the exit to the spot where I could sit with the luggage until he came back with the car.

Good think I hadn’t quite finished my book on the flight – poor Andy got lost returning to the airport from the long term parking due unbelievably bad signage and ended up in downtown Philadelphia. A short 45 minutes later, he finally arrived, and we were on our way home at last.

The drive down 95 South was a breeze – we were home at 5:15, arriving at the same time David came home from work.

Ach, vacation is finally over. Time to start planning for next year!

Return to Barcelona (Barcelona Day 3)

Barcelona Day 3 – Disembarkation and our last day of vacation

Since all we needed was a taxi (no transfer to the airport or excursion), we were able to request a later disembarkation time (8:45 a.m.).

We had plenty of time to have breakfast on the Lido deck and hang out for a few minutes in our cabin (Andy used up the last 7 minutes of internet time allotted to us), before our group was called. After being pampered for a week, we were dumped unceremoniously onto the street and onto the taxi line. At least the exit process was more efficient than boarding.

Were it not for the morning traffic (they do seem to have lovely traffic jams in Barcelona), we would have been at the hotel (Barcelona Universal on Ave Paral.lel - not kidding, that's how it's spelled) in about 5 minutes, but with traffic, it was about 20.

It was too early to check in, so we stowed our luggage in the hotel’s storage room. We bought tickets for the “hop on/hop off” tour bus, and off we went. This hotel was a good bit closer to La Rambla than the hotel we stayed at a week ago, and we were soon at stop #4 of the Green Line.

The tour price included ear buds to listen to the audio guide as we drove along. Except the quality of the recording wasn’t so great. We were given the opportunity to sit up on the upper deck of the bus, but the sun was too strong and hot.

We took the bus to the Sagrada Familia church, which is where we left off the week before. This time there was an incredible line – not quite 50 minutes to get our tickets, then another 10 minutes to get our audio guide. The line to take an elevator to the top of the towers was formidable, and we decided to forgo that – we felt no urge to stand in yet another hour long line.

The audio guide for the Sagrada Familia was excellent – there were 11 stops along the way, and some of the individual stops had additional information about what we were looking at. This is one amazing church – looking at the diagrams of the future planned work, it was obvious that the jagunda building we were standing in was only about half the size it will be on completion. The original architect, Antoni Gaudi, was a devout Catholic, and this was his monument to his faith – you could feel it emanating from every square inch of this building.

The two main facades – the Nativity and the Passion – were starkly different in styles, reflecting the mood Gaudi was trying to convey. The Nativity façade was all about round, soft features, angels, peace, happiness and love. The Passion façade was all about suffering, agony and grief. Every inch of the facades had symbols carved into the surface; Gaudi’s love of nature included everywhere – animals/tree/leaf motives covered every inch of the facades.

This was continued inside the church – instead of standard cylindrical columns with flying buttresses, each column was in the shape of a tree, each one unique, with the flying buttresses in the shape of branches from the trunk reaching up to the sky. Leaves covered the ceiling.

The construction is continuously ongoing, and will be for at least another 20 years, so there was tons of scaffolding everywhere, and we saw masons laying the ceramic tile floor.

The tour took us through the museum that holds the models that were made as Gaudi designed his church. He was hit by a tram and killed in 1926, but he had left behind these models and some sketches. However, most of his documentation was destroyed during the Spanish civil war in 1936, and construction wasn’t renewed until sometime in the 1950’s by a different architect.

After the museum, we went into a schoolhouse that Gaudi had constructed, so that the children of the church construction workers could go to school. The school-house itself is yet another marvelous work of architecture.

We were finally done 2 ½ hours after we first added ourselves to the end of the queue.

We had lunch at a restaurant along the same street where we had dinner the week before, then continued up that street to the next stop on the bus tour . It took a few tries to find the actual bus stop.

We got off the bus at the stop for “Park Guel”, which was another Gaudi creation. Problem was, the bus left us only the vague general vicinity of the park. We had no idea where it was, and our maps were not helpful. We followed a street sign and started hiking uphill (why is it ALWAYS UPHILL!!!!), but stopped after a couple of blocks when we realized we really had no idea where we were. Not wanting to wander up and down hill mindlessly and endlessly, Andy went up to the top of the hill and found the park. The good news – it’s spectacularly beautiful. The bad news – it’s several more blocks straight up a San Francisco quality hill. Oy.

We grabbed a taxi that was already headed up the hill to take us the last few blocks. It was well worth it – the park was indeed spectacularly beautiful – with more steps! I was able to get up to the level that had a large covered area, but I called a moratorium on climbing more steps at that point. Instead, Andy went all the way up to the top to take photos, while I sat in the shade and listened to a random string quartet that was playing for the crowd. No idea if the quartet was sponsored by the city or what, but one of the strings was a real, full sized bass fiddle (as in, not a lightweight electric version) – not something one would normally just tote around town and set up somewhere random. There were also vendors displaying their wares on blankets on the floor.

We went back down the stairs to the souvenir shop, but it was too crowded and too hot to stay in there for long.

We then toddled back down the (amazingly steep) hill to catch the next bus that came along. At this point, it was close to 5:30 and the last bus runs at 8:00, so we needed to decide what to do for the rest of our day. We decided to get off at the stop for the Catedrál Gótic (Gothic Cathedral) of Barcelona, visit the cathedral, then continue to the Correro Princessa (“Princess Street”), where we had seen some nice ceramic stuff the week before – last ditch shopping!

The Catedrál Gótic had “modesty police” stopping people (mostly women) who were not dressed modestly enough to go into the church. There was one lady who was making out like a bandit renting/selling scarves for women to wrap around their shoulders.

This cathedral is your classic gothic church – tall, pointed arches, extravagantly ornamented and dark-dark-dark-dark. Take me back to the Sagrada Familia!

We didn’t stay long in the church; we then found our way to Correro Princessa and walked towards La Rambla. Amazingly enough, we didn’t see anything more that caught our eye – I think after the Berber rug thing, we were kinda shopped out.

On La Rambla, we picked a random restaurant to have our last dinner in Barcelona. It was kind of interesting that it was a stereotypic Spanish café, but all the wait staff was Chinese! Just seemed a little incongruous. We decided to try tapas, but we really don’t know what we were doing. We got basically French fries, sautéed mushrooms, chicken wings and a thing called a “Spanish potato omelette” (I called it the “Spanish knish”). We then split an order of chicken paella.

After dinner, we continued down La Rambla for the last time, taking a couple of photos of the street performers. I seriously wondered if La Rambla ever stops. We suddenly noticed interesting street signs: “We welcome everybody, but not everything is welcome. 350 public toilets”. Ew, really? As we walked along, we saw more signs advertising the public toilets – not that I saw one anywhere. All my bathroom breaks were in McDonald’s, Burger Kind or KFC. Anyway, it was a little gross to think about the target audience of these signs – most of them in English, not Spanish!

As we approached the end of La Rambla, we felt rain drops. And by the time we passed the statue of Christopher Columbus, it was definitely raining.

We thought we knew were Ave Parel.lel was (yes, it’s spelled just like that with the “.” In the middle of the word), but in the dark it was harder to locate than we thought. We knew we needed to find the big “hoops” sculpture and the Maritime Museum, but it took a couple of tries to find the right street to turn onto. Once we did, it was a 10-minute walk to the hotel. We were a little wet, but it was a warm rain and nothing we were wearing would be damaged by a little rain, including ourselves.

Of course, we were now able to check in and retrieve our luggage from storage. This hotel had totally free and unlimited Internet! Yey! And the bathroom had yet another strange contraption (not a bidet, we know what that is) that looked like a metal rack, with various knobs that looked like faucets.

Our last night in Barcelona was over – tomorrow, reality smacks us right in the face.

We were sailing along...

Med Cruise Day 7 – at sea, back to Barcelona

Kind of a quiet day.

Sunday morning, Andy went running, and I worked on my blog and posting photos. At 10:00, I went to the informational session on disembarkation. Main point - don’t forget to leave out clothes for tomorrow.

At 11:30, we had lunch with the “Mariner’s Club” – people who have sailed two or more times with Holland America. Our lunch companions were a couple from Colorado, and Rachel from Princeton, NJ. Even after the Colorado couple left, we continued our conversation with Rachel about cruising – eventually we got the hint from the wait staff that they wanted us to leave.

We signed up for the “On the Deck - Walk for the Cure” 5K walk for the Susan B Komen foundation for Breast Cancer. Last year, the cruise director hyped the 5K walk all week long, but this year it wasn’t advertised until Saturday’s program. For some reason, all they had left was Medium or 2XL t-shirts. Oh well, I guess I have a new night-shirt.

After that, we had some free time until the walk at 3:00 (how bizarre!), so we brought our books out onto the outside of deck 3 and sat on deck chairs on the shady side of the boat. I find it very interesting that I absolutely hate sitting on a beach for hours, yet sitting on a deck chair watching the ocean is great! The main difference – sand! The breeze was wonderful, and the hum of the ship was lulling – we both fell asleep at some point.

At 3:00 we met with the other participants in the 5K walk at the Ocean Bar – last year there were a good couple of hundred people participating, this year maybe 50. If the cruise director has been doing his job and pushing this activity the whole week, we would have had a much better turnout.

We did the 5K walk (9 laps around deck 3) in about 1 hr 10 minutes – and this year the staff and some people actually waited for me till the very end! Since, of course, we were dead last. The reward – iced butter cookies and lemonade. Yum!

Andy went down to our cabin and brought up my macbook, and we sat out on the deck chairs for another 90 minutes or so. I was able to upload photos while watching the ocean go by. Not bad, not bad at all.

We went to dinner early (6:00), so we could go to the 8:00 show to have time to pack. We were so early, there were no tables to share, so we ate by ourselves. After diner, we still had lots of time, so we went back to the room and packed up about 90% of our stuff. I also started filling out the customer satisfaction survey – lots and lots of feedback, not the least of which was a complaint about the entertainment this year - still flabbergasted about a harmonica guy who doesn’t seem to know any music written after 1960.

We went to watch the last show of the cruise – first half, Mr Harmonica Guy (he wasn’t any better), the second half, Mr R&B Singer (him, I liked). After the show, we went to the piano bar. Piano guy was great – he told us that he would be onboard ship till December, and that one year he was onboard for 11 months straight. Yikes! On the other hand, he said he was able to pay off his house.

By 10:30 or so we went back to the room and finished packing up, and set the bags out in the hallway.

…sigh…reality returns in the morning….

Toto, I Don't Think We're In Kansas Anymore...

Cruise Day 6 – Tunis.

For the first time this trip, we were docked in a country that was not a member of the European Union, which meant we needed our passports and something called a “landing card”, which was distributed the night before. We knew that Tunisia was a Muslim country, and therefore there were issues with the dress code. Our cruise pamphlet gave some conflicting information – “cover bare skin” in one place, and “no shorts or tank tops” in another. Did this also mean long sleeve shirts? The front desk was no help. We decided that collared T-shirts and jeans would have to be good enough. Not looking forward to wearing full-length jeans in 90-degree heat.

One thing I did do – I took off my Magen David (Jewish star) necklace that’s always around my neck. Not being sure how this particular Muslim country feels about Jews, I decided not to make myself obvious. Or so I thought.

We did find out what the Haunting of the Hall was all about – the cabin across the hall has a verandah, and apparently when the verandah door is open, it causes the whistling sound like blowing across the top of a bottle. We could not fathom why this was not annoying anybody else besides us, including the people with the whistling door! At any rate, as we walked by that cabin, we saw staff with drills working on the door.

When we got to breakfast, we offered to share a table. The waiter tried to sit another couple with us, but they oddly begged off sitting with us (“We don’t want to intrude”), so they were seated at a different table. Hmmm, do we offend? A few minutes later another couple was seated with them, though they did seem to know them somewhat.

We met the rest of the tour group in the Vista lounge. As we were starting to walk to the gangplank, thankfully Andy realized I had left behind my walking stick. He ran up to the room to retrieve it for me (what a good husband!), getting grief from the tour director for holding up the bus. Turned out we weren’t even the last people to board the bus!

After walking off the gangplank, we walked through a customs building, where the officials took half of our land cards – and we kept the other half with our passports.

Another bit of confusion was the currency situation – the official currency of Tunisia is the Tunisian dinar, which nobody on the bus had. Our ship’s pamphlet said they would take US dollars, so Andy left his Euros behind. But the day’s tour guide (Mohammed) said we should use Euros. Whoops. Turns out that it really didn’t matter – people would take just about any kind of hard currency.

Mohammed’s English was flawless. The first thing we noticed was that A LOT of people had either not read or totally ignored all the instructions about not wearing shorts/tank tops/bare shoulders. Then again, I noticed one woman in our group who had on a long sleeved shirt, in addition to her full-length jeans. Mohammed never said a word about it, and it didn’t seem to matter at all the entire day – if you paid in cash, nobody cared HOW you were dressed.

Mohammed did promise lots of bathroom breaks wherever we went, an issue that is of course close to my heart.

Our first two stops were in Carthage, and Roman ancient city ("Carthage" means "new city"). Our first surprise was that Carthage is still a functioning city – everybody’s impression (including me) is that it’s just a pile of Roman ruins. But it’s quite a normal town, with nice apartment buildings built on top of even more undiscovered Roman ruins.

The first stop in Carthage showed us some headstones from the pre-Roman era. Somehow this is not what we were expecting.

What Mohammed failed to mention is even though there are plenty of bathrooms, most of the time there’s a bathroom attendant who expects some kind of tip. And I had no US coinage and only 1 Euro coins. Therefore, I gave them $1 bills - $1 being cheaper than 1 Euro. I was sure I had probably doubled the attendants’ income for the week with my crummy $1.

The second stop was at the Roman Imperial baths. This was more impressive (at least I thought so, not sure about Andy). We had a little time to wander around on our own and take photos (except we were instructed to NOT take a photo of the white walls we saw above the ruins – that is the wall surrounding the Presidential palace, and it’s forbidden to take a picture of it. Ok, then). Mohammend kinda pushed us along (“If there’s no bathroom emergency, let’s continue on to the Bardo museum, since there are bathrooms right there”), so back onto the bus we went.

Once we got to the Bardo museum, we saw the placed was mobbed. Once again Mohammed wanted to hurry us along (“Are there any bathroom emergencies? No?-good-let’s go!”) giving me no time to interject. And since I had skipped the bathroom break in Carthage, and it was a 25-minute drive to the museum, it was now essential that I make a pit stop. I was annoyed that I was being pressured to skip this stop as well. But no matter, I had to go, so I asked Mohammed where the bathroom was. It was easy to find, but Mohammed said I would have to catch up to the group. Nice, thank you for your kind consideration.

I was in a bit of a hurry as I scooted passed the shops on the way to the WC, and right past the attendant lady who had her hand out stretched. However, I made up for my rudeness on my way out – when I gave her a $1 bill, her face lit up and she blew me a kiss! Oy, kinda sad that $1 should make such a difference. On the other hand, I’m glad I gave her $1, if it helped her make a living.

It took Andy and I a couple of minutes to find our group in the crowd inside the museum.

The Bardo museum is amazing - by far the best part of the day. It contains Roman mosaics from all over Tunisia. Unfortunately, some of the galleries were being renovated, so we were only able to see a part of what we were supposed visit. Andy went all the way up to the third floor to see the mosaics up there and take photos.

Even though it was already close to noon, we were not yet going to lunch. One thing about Mohammed – he said the same thing over and over again, but it seemed that it was slightly different with each repetition, leaving us in total confusion as to exactly what was going on – what was the sequence and time frame of the course of the day. So we actually had NO idea when lunch would be. Or where, either, for that matter.

As the bus rolled along, Mohammed gave us the “Tunis is the most wonderful country on earth” lecture – the equality of women (high percentage of women in the universities and in parliament, the banning of the chador and burqa), free university (for those who qualify), the high literacy rate, free health care – on and on – except there’s 14% unemployment (with a significant number of people trying to enter Italy illegally to get jobs), and a lot of people who live in unfinished houses because they can’t afford the material to finish them (it can take upwards of 20 years to finish a house). And lots of women in the streets with covered faces.

Oh and their president, Mr Ben Ali (who’s photo is anywhere and everywhere, with his arms in odd poses and a beneficent smile on his face – and (as we read in a book before we left - who took over from his predecessor in a bloodless coup about 15 years ago) keeps getting re-elected with 95% of the vote, because the people would rather vote for people they know than anybody from the obscure 6 other political parties (who probably never get elected to anything). Of course, Mohammed failed to mention that people who speak out against Mr Ben Ali manage to find themselves in prison.

And oh yes, though Tunisia may be a Muslim country, Christians and Jews live there in perfect harmony – apparently there’s 365,000 Jews in Tunisia and the world’s oldest functional synagogue is located there (not anywhere near where we were headed, though), dating from several hundred years BCE. Now THAT would have been really interesting to see.

So we headed towards the town of Medina and its market place. Mohammed told us about haggling (you have to haggle for Every. Single. Item.), but don’t buy gold, because there’s not enough time to have the gold item certified by the government that it is what the vendor says it is.

Mohammed lead us through the souk (“shuk”), directly to a carpet vendor. After seeing a couple of weavers working away at their looms, and an explanation about the wonderful quality of all the carpets in this particular store, we are corralled into a nicely air conditioned room and served sweet tea with mint. And then the parade of carpets begins – gorgeous, gorgeous carpets, of never-ending variety of colors, patterns and sizes. And so, so, so soft….Within a few minutes the first one is sold without a whole lot of haggling. One of the carpets is described as having the design of the mosaic displayed in the ancient synagogue. For some reason the sales guy is looking straight at me when he says this. Hmmmm….

Eventually we can’t resist the pull of the beauty and quality of theses rugs, so the negotiations begin over a small (maybe 4’ by 5’?) silk rug with 1,000,000 knots per square meter. We don’t make rapid progress, since the original price is $1200 and true to standard haggling protocol, Andy counters with a low-ball $500. Since we weren’t even sure which rug we were interested in, we are scooted off to a private room (we know we’re in trouble now) and 5 or 6 more rugs appear, until we find one we can be serious about. Except the price won’t budge below $950, which is still more than we wanted to spend. They go on and on and on about the quality of the work, the hand craft work, the million knots per square meter….yada yada yada, we agree with all of this, we don’t dispute the craftsmanship (or craft-woman-ship, rather), we agree it is beautiful….but we don’t budge either. The salesman then launches into how well Tunisia treats it’s Jews (seriously, DO WE LOOK THAT JEWISH?!?!?!), which we agree is wonderful…but we don’t budge. We know our tour guide and the bus are waiting for us, so we sit tight. Suddenly, salesman’s boss shows up, who indicates that the morning has brought in $4350, so he offers us the rug for $650 to round out his sales for the day at $5,000. Deal!

I go off to pay for it (thank God for VISA), while a guy bundles it up for us. The sales guy tells Andy to tip Mr Wrap-it-up because he’s getting married that weekend (we’re betting Mr Wrap-it-up is constantly in a state of “getting married this weekend” and has been for years). Andy gives Mr Wrap-it-Up $5, but Sales-guy says, “Give him another $5!” Andy says, “Nope, $5 is the standard tip in the US”. They are not happy, but oh well. We just spent $650. Deal with it. Sheesh.

It turned out that the bus is NOT being held up for us – we still have yet another 15 minutes to shop in the souk. Except we don’t, because we’re exhausted from the rug transaction. I personally was in no mood to haggle again, even though I saw some interesting elephants.

Finally we are on our way to lunch back in Carthage. The restaurant has a buffet with chicken, various salads (they looked like Israeli salads, with small chopped pieces of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers) and date cookies and watermelon for dessert. Though not the most exciting fare, it definitely had taste – a vast improvement over the dead lasagna we had in Tuscany. While we ate, we chatted with other people at the table who had also bought a rug. They asked us if we haggled for the carpet, and we said, yes we did, that we got them to come down to almost half the original price. They were astounded. So even though we have NO idea if we got an actual good price for the rug, we know we did a better than everybody else on our trip. All we know is this rug will never touch the floor!

Back on the bus, we head towards Sidi Bou Said (“SEE-dee bah-YOO sah-YEED”), a rather upscale town. Mohammed recommends that we not buy things here, because all the prices are jacked way up, but at the top of the hill is a beautiful view.

So up the hill we go – once again an amazingly steep hill. Every step along the way, a vendor pops out of his door, sees the stupid “Bus #6“ sticker on our shirts that screams “TOURIST!” and starts with his routine: “Hey, number seeeeks, got very good deeeel, special for youuuuuu, fifty percent off! Just for youuuuu, just for youuuuu, come inside, come inside…” A veritable gauntlet, that makes the agonizing climb (in the searing heat while wearing long jeans) just a joy to behold. Basically Sidi Bou Said is just another souk. Maybe a better class souk than the one in Medina, but still a souk.

What is unique about Sidi Bou Said is the way all the houses are painted white, with a brilliant blue trim. On our climb up the hill, we stop a couple of times to take photos of particularly beautiful doors.

The reward for the long climb is a beautiful view of the sea. But we don’t stay long, because we have to run the gauntlet all the way down hill to meet the bus.

Once back on the bus, we are essentially done for the day. Mohammed takes the opportunity to tell us about the rigors of a public education in Tunisia – how all children learn Arabic and French (both are official languages) and now English is being added to the curriculum.

Back at the bus terminal, we walk through the customs building on the way back to the gangplank – there are all sorts of duty-free shops, but we just keep on going, too pooped to pop.

At the bottom of the gangplank, there are camel rides and a folk band. We have no interest in riding a camel, but it sure is fun watching other people doing it!

Back in our cabin, we finally get to cool off. That evening is the second formal night of the week. Our dinner companions were Lillian and Brian from Toronto, and Bette (“bet”) and Stan from New Zealand. Wonderful dinner conversation!

The show that evening was a “Las Vegas Revue” – I don’t remember much of it, because I struggled to stay awake the entire time.

Tomorrow – a day at sea on our way back to Barcelona.

Viva Italia! (Reprise)

Cruise day 5 – Sicily –Erice and Trapani

Trapani is one of those places that just looks welcoming when you see it for the first time in dock. By default, we knew Friday was going to be a better day than Thursday.

At breakfast, we were seated with a German family, who did not seem interested in conversation with us. It was interesting to watch the man struggle to communicate with the wait staff that he wanted bread rolls with his breakfast – they kept bringing him the tray of croissant and muffins. Or nothing at all. At the same time, the same wait staff couldn’t figure out that Andy wanted multiple glasses of orange juice – they kept trying to give me one of the two glasses Andy ordered.

We didn’t need to meet the tour till 12:15 p.m. at the dock, so we decided to wander around Trapani on our own for a couple of hours. To exit the dock, we had to walk all the way around and through a building that looked to me to be a tourist information center. Not sure what the purpose was to make us do that, but Andy was able to ask how to get to the main shopping streets.

The shopping area was filled with people, mostly tourists from the ships, of course. In one of the shops I bought a black and pick elephant made of a kind of stone that I can’t ever remember its name, but I have others like it – but not black and pink. We wandered out of the shopping area; we think we stumbled across the Jewish Quarter, but there’s nothing Jewish left.

Due to the awkward timing of the tour – we had breakfast at 9:00, but the tour started at 12:30, so when were we going to squish in lunch? So we decided to have an “Eleanor” lunch (so named in honor of a dinner companion from Tuesday, who told us that she has dessert when in port and eat healthy on the boat) – gelato at a gelateria within eyesight of the ship. We then walked back to the port to meet the tour bus. Of course we once again had to go through that building all the way out of the way.

As we lined up to board a bus, we felt like we should interview the tour guides before deciding which line to stand in. Another day of with a bad tour guide would just about do us in. Luck was with us this time – we were able to grab the front seats, which makes it easier for me to get on and off the bus, and the tour guide, Anita, was wonderful. I suspected she wasn’t Italian – her accent sounded more German, and sure enough, later in the day she told us that she was in fact German, but her husband was Italian. Her English was clear and colloquial, and she was interesting!

On the way up the mountain to Erice (pronounced EH-ree-cheh), she gave us a full history lesson on the history of the area. Of course I don’t remember the details, other than there is evidence that Sicily has been inhabited for about 30,000 years, and various populations have fought over it over the centuries. Originally Erice was the population center – because it was perched at the top of the steep mountain trail it was easy to defend – and Trapani was just a port. Over the last couple of centuries the situation has reversed – Trapani is now the bustling city, and Erice now a tourist destination and a center for scientific research.

The climb to the top of Erice was an entertaining challenge – the stone paved streets are 400 years old and very steep. It was worth it though. We visited the church of Erice that has a painting of the Madonna breastfeeding the baby Jesus – a very rare pose depicted in art. The painting is referred to as the “Madonna Lactans” – the nursing Madonna. There was also a statue of what is called “the Madonna of Trapani”, which is reproduced all over Italy.

After visiting the church, we walked to a spot where we had a spectacular view of the coast as well as the remnants of the Roman temple to Venus.

Afterwards, we had some shopping time – we ended up getting a tapestry wall hanging. Coral embroidery is another local specialty, though the coral used is no longer local. Anita mentioned that traditionally some of the best coral craft came from the Jewish Quarter.

We met the bus at the bottom of the hill at the gate to the city. The drive down the steep, switch back road was entertaining – all the buses were lined up like in a caravan.

Once we were back in Trapani, we toured the city center. We visited a church (I’ve already forgotten the names of all the churches we visited) that houses amazing statues/floats representing the passion of Christ. Apparently once a year all the floats are paraded through the streets (I’m guessing this is around Easter time).

In another church was painting with a rare pose of the Madonna nursing the baby Jesus – this pose is called “Madonna Lactans”. On the opposite wall from the Madonna Lactans was the statue of the “Madonna of Trapani”, which is a pose that is copied throughout Italy and Europe.

Anita walked us back in the direction of the ship and people left the group as they spotted a shop to go into. We asked her about the Jewish Quarter, and she did confirm that there is nothing Jewish left there.

As instructed, we retrieved our passports, since we would need them to enter Tunisia the next day. We were still confused about the dress code, since Tunisia is a Muslim country – the pamphlet we received said “cover bare skin” in one sentence and “don’t wear shorts or tank tops” in another. The front desk wasn’t much help on this, so we decided that our collared t-shirts and jeans would be good enough.

At dinner we ate with a Filipino couple from Chicago and a gay couple (Guy and Frank) from Belgium. It was a delightful conversation.

The big show for the evening was, of all things, a professional harmonica player. Seriously? This is the best they could come up with? With low expectations, we went anyway. Although pleasant enough, it was still a bit ridiculous.

One of the couples at dinner alerted us to the dessert extravaganza starting at 10:30, so of course we had to go. I never did find the cheesecake and settled for chocolate dipped fruit kabobs. Life is tough.

Towel animal of the day: not sure what that was supposed to be?

A great day – quadruple thumbs up!

Tomorrow, Tunis!

Oy Vey, Italia

Cruise day 4 – Tarquinia, Marta, Tuscania

We got to bed late last night – a combination of catching up on email, etc, and the Haunting of the Hallway. Though Andy says he heard the weird whistling sound on previous nights, I had no recollection at all. It almost sounds like a child playing a penny whistle – it comes and goes so quickly, that Andy can’t locate the source when he dashes out into the hall. At first we thought it might be the door that leads to the outside of the deck that’s right outside our door, but it’s solidly closed. It’s annoying loud, enough to keep us from falling asleep till way after midnight. And loud enough to wake us up just before Andy’s watch alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m.

So we started off the day tired.

Today the boat was actually docked in port, so all we had to do was walk off the boat out onto the pier to meet our tour guide, Enza, on bus #5. Though her English was better than yesterday’s tour guide, it was still pretty thick, with lots of “ah”s at the end of random words.

Our bus heads off towards Tarquinia, to see the Necropolis (literally “city of the dead”). Enza’s voice was rather droning and monotonous, and I fell asleep somewhere in there. Unfortunately, it’s not a truly deep, restful sleep, due to the jerking motion of the bus. It’s amazing I don’t have whiplash.

Enza’s explanation was a bit confusing, but as best as I can figure about 1860 or so an ancient tomb was discovered in this field – whether the field had been a farm or not, or how somebody came to dig a whole deep enough to find the tomb was not explained. It was the tomb of a person who lived about 2500 years ago – from before the Romans and before the Etruscans (who came before the Romans). There were paintings on the walls of the tomb, illustrating whatever beliefs in the afterlife were common at that time.

Apparently there are more than 6,000 of these tombs in this field, all discovered between 1860ish and 1960ish. The most recently discovered tombs were found by modern technology detecting underground anomalies. It sounded like the age of the tombs ranged from about 500 BCE to 300 BCE. Enza’s explanations really left a lot to be desired.

Each tomb now has a house-like structure covering it to protect it from the elements, with a flight of stairs to go down and take a look. I did that only once – saw no need to upset the knee unless I had to.

After the first tomb, Enza said, “Ok meet you back here at 10:00”, and then she disappeared. Ok, then.

We started to wander from tomb to tomb, reading the signs posted at each one. Andy saw one that had some interesting pornographic images painted on the walls. These dead people really know how to party!

We saw the tour group from the other bus – still following their tour guide, who was still talking about the tombs. Imagine that. So we latched ourselves onto them for a bit, and listened to Bus #4’s guide (Miki) talk. Huge difference – his accent was better, his explanations clear, and above all – he was interesting! We started wondering if we could just sneak onto his bus – he wouldn’t really notice a couple of extra people, now would he?

Suddenly, Enza reappeared with some of our group behind her – and she was now explaining more of the tombs! And it was 9:45. Weren’t we supposed to meet back at the entrance at 10? And now she’s walking around doing actual tour guide stuff?

Totally perplexed, we fell in behind her and listened to her give basically the same info we had just heard from Miki. Not the same affect.

Ok, so back on the bus, and now we’re off to the actual town of Tarquinia and to a museum. Huge building, no air conditioning, barely any electrical anything – the floor to ceiling windows let in all the natural light needed; there were few if any electric lights. We saw the sarcophagi of various rich people from about 2000 years ago – all of them depicting people (mostly men) lying on their left sides. This is the position that the wealthy would use to eat, to help digestion. This reminded me of the Passover seder, where we deliberately lean to the left to eat and drink as a symbol of our new freedom as a Jewish people – only the free (and wealthy) could lean when they ate.

Otherwise, lots and lots of pottery. There was a sculpture of two winged horses that had been pieced together after being recovered from the site where they were found. I liked that piece.

Did I mention the lack of anything electric in this building? Including elevators – we got to climb up 3 flights of stairs. And then walk back down. I’m sure glad I didn’t go down the stairs to visit every tomb!

Enza then vanished again, after giving vague instructions about either meeting her in front of the museum at 11:50, or at the bus at noon. We wandered around Tarquinia for a bit, hoping to see some shops, but it seems to be a rather boring little town, uninterested in tourists’ money. Which is kinda odd, since a couple of bus loads of tourists must show up at least once a week all summer long

Anyway, eventually we gave up and wandered back to the spot where the bus would pick us up.

Apparently the bus drove through Tuscania on the way to lunch in Marta, but I wouldn’t know, because I slept the whole way. The bus was a little warm, and the scenery was not interesting either – mile after mile of rolling brown hills, with random olive trees flung in

When we arrived in Marta, we were shuffled into a restaurant for lunch. We sat down at a table with two women from the other bus – Sharon and Diane from Jacksonville, FL. They proceeded to rave about their tour guide, Miki, who apparently explained that this town was picked was because there is no hotel there, no tourists, and little exposure to foreigners, and therefore “authentic”.

In Marta is a huge volcanic lake, Lake Bolsena, which has a few islands in it. We saw no boats on this lake, which we thought was odd.

Lunch started off with tasteless bread – and I mean really tasteless. The salad was pretty good – all fresh local ingredients. The main course was lasagna that barely had any meat in it at all (we did check to make sure the meat would be beef instead of pork). Tasteless lasagna – not an easy thing to do. There was also red and white wine available.

The best part of the meal was chatting with Sharon and Diane, who’ve gone on lots of cruises. They continued to rave about Miki – about how he made everything sooooo interesting! We were becoming more jealous by the minute.

After lunch, we were lead through a park in Marta along the lake’s edge. There was some kind of market (looked like a flea market), with household goods available for sale at not very good prices. Andy and I decided to sit on a bench and then just turn back to meet the group at the bus, when someone from our group said that Enza told them that the bus was going to meet us at the other end of the park. Really? Wouldn’t have than been something Enza should have told the whole group?

So off we went through the park. Thank goodness at the end of the park was a public bathroom, and all the women lined up. It turned out the stalls had run out of toilet paper, so everybody shared whatever tissues they had. Quite a bonding experience.

While we were waiting our turn, we chatted about how the day was going so far, when suddenly one woman from my group blurted out “I’m just waiting for something to happen already!” and all of us from my group started laughing. It was good to know I wasn’t the only one wondering when it was going to get interesting.

We got back on the bus and continued on to Tuscania, which is a walled town. The view from to top of the hill was very nice, the best thing we’d seen all day. We went visited Tuscania’s church – possibly the ugliest church we’ve ever seen on the outside, but amazingly beautiful on the inside.

Once again we received ambiguous instructions as to when to meet up, and then Enza disappeared. We wandered around Tuscania for 45 minutes, but all the shops all over Italy close between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. (similar to the siesta concept in Spain). Since it was 3:30 ish, all the shops were closed. This was a shame, because Tuscania is supposed to be an artists’ town, and we could see some studios and galleries – but they were all closed. We couldn’t figure out why the tour would be organized to bring us to a shopping area when the shops are all closed.

Eventually we gave up wandering the deserted streets and headed back down the hill to wait for the bus. We chatted with people from our group, and it was obvious that the consensus was that except for what little we saw in Tuscania, the day was a bust. At 4:00, we waited to see if the shop we could see from the parking lot would open. Five minutes pass, then 10 minutes. At 4:15, just as we’re about to board the bus, the shopkeeper finally opens his doors.

The best part of the day? It was over cast, so the temperature stayed about 10 degrees cooler than it was supposed to be. Couldn’t complain about that.

Andy and I basically slept all the way back on the bus. Fortunately, this was a pier day and not a tender boat day, so all we had to do was shuffle back onto the gangplank.

Besides having a bad tour guide, we could not fathom why the tour was organized to be in the shopping area when the shops are closed. The whole day could have easily have been reversed – started the day in Tuscania, when the shops were open, had lunch in Marta, then come back through Tarquinia for the museum and the necropolis, both of which would have been open from 1 to 4 and it would have made no difference if everything else in Tarquinia was closed. In 20-20 hindsight, we realized it would have been better if we had just taken the train into Rome and wandered around by ourselves for the day.

At dinner, we met Carol and Bill (PA) and Roland and Pat (UK), and had a delightful conversation. Their days had gone way better than ours, by far. Hindsight is always 20-20 - we should have just taken the train into Rome and wandered about on our own for the day.

The show of the evening was “Simply Broadway”. This year’s song-and-dance cast is way better than last year’s.

Today’s towel animal – peacock.

Tomorrow – Sicily!

Viva Italia!

Whereas Tuesday’s mediocre excursion destination was saved by our marvelous tour guide, Cecilia (frequently flinging “Alor, voila!” into her entertaining monologues), Wednesday’s mediocre (at best) tour guide, Patrizia, was saved by marvelous excursion destinations.

The day started with breakfast in the Lido dining room – normally a self-service cafeteria (the cruise director likes to call it a “buffet”), but due to extra precautions against the spread of noro-virus that might have come on board with us passengers, the ship’s staff would hand you whatever you pointed to. First, of course, we had the traditional hunt for the window table. Though the hunt is typically annoying enough, it was compounded by the fact that the staff didn’t seem to be able to keep up with clearing tables. This is probably because they were busy handing me my sealed container of skim milk. Anyway, luckily (or oddly) enough, there were plenty of window seats on the seemingly less scenic side of the boat. The bright sunlight made it a little difficult to see the postcard view of Santa Margherita, but it was there, nonetheless.

After breakfast and after we picked up our stuff for the day, off we went to the Vista lounge as specified on our ticket. This time we received our identifying sticker before we entered the lounge – once again, so much for trying to “fit in” to the local population, when you have this lovely hideous sticker on your shirt that can be seen at some distance (“Look out, everybody, here comes a horde of tourists with ugly stickers on their shirts!”). We were immediately called to board the bobbing tender boat. It’s something of a moving target.

A short boat ride later, we were on the dock at Santa Margherita, and a few minutes after that, we were on a ferryboat and on our way to our first destination.

We had forgotten how entertaining Italian accents are – they can’t help but stick “ah” to the end of most English words. So “you are in group number six” becomes “you-ah are-ah in-ah group-ah number-ah six-ah”. If someone is talking to you directly, you get the hang of it after awhile. Broadcast over the motor of a ferryboat, it’s virtually unintelligible.

And so it was, that the entire trip to San Fruttuoso, neither of us had a clue as to what our guide, Patrizia, was saying. We almost missed the photo opportunity at San Fruttuoso, because we assumed we were going ashore, when in fact we were only hovering in the water for a couple of minutes and then moving on. We had misunderstood the phrase “first-ah stop-ah” – we thought this meant we were actually going to stop. Well, we did, just on the boat and in the water.

After the brief pause for photos, we continued on to Camogli, where we actually disembarked and got to wander around this classic Italian Riviera fishing village (that’s regularly flooded with tourists, whom most of the locals totally ignore).

Patrizia, our guide, walked us to the church and gave us a brief explanation. She then said, “If-ah you-ah want-ah, I can-ah talk-ah some more-ah about-ah the town-ah, or-ah you-ah can have-ah more-ah free time-ah”, where upon, she disappeared. So, after the obligatory bathroom break, we wandered a bit and managed to stumble across another tour group from our ferryboat, who seemed to be getting a bit better tour than we did. We therefore latched ourselves onto this group, where learned about the tradition of painting the walls of the buildings to look like they were made of stone or brick - at a distance, it's hard to tell that it's not real brick.

We then got back on the ferryboat and proceeded on to Portofino. Once again, the narration was totally garbled and meaningless. Didn’t really matter – Portofino can speak for itself. Unlike Cannes, which turned us off with its ostentatious and conspicuous display of absurd wealth, Portofino was simply beautiful in its smallness. There might be absurd wealth in Portofino (apparently fashion designers like to own homes there), but it’s much more discrete.

Patrizia lead us up to the church and gave us an explanation about how it had been destroyed during WW II and rebuilt. She also told us a vague story about how a German lady who owned the villa next to the church saved Portofino from being destroyed as well. She mentioned there was a cemetery in the back, told us to meet her at 1:20 p.m. and to be on time, and then she once again disappeared. We hung out for a few minutes taking photos of the plaza, when another Noordam tour group showed up. And once again, we latched onto somebody else’s tour group, since their tour guide seemed more interested in doing her job. She also talked about how the church had been destroyed during WW II and rebuilt. However, she said it was an Englishwoman who spoke German who saved Portofino – because she had housed the German officers in her home, the villa next to the church. In addition, she said the side of the church had various memorials to benefactors of Portofino – and she took her (our) group outside and talked about some of the plaques.

At that point, that tour was done. We wandered through the very interesting cemetery behind the church. By then, we had less than 90 minutes left. So instead of trying to have lunch (and possibly not having enough time to finish), we decided to make the climb to the top of the castle. We started up the path that began next to the church – it took close to 30 minutes, since it was a bit steep with lots and lots of steps.

Andy made it all the way to the top – I came to a halt at the level with an art gallery and a place to sit. The view from even that level was wonderful. The artist’s work was interesting as well, and I bought a tiny (and pre-matted, yey!) original water color for 25 euros. We chatted for a bit with the gallery staff, including the artist’s wife. They told us there was an easier way back down to the town on the other side of the hill. It was still steep, but it was a stone switchback path with no steps. By default it was easier and we made it back down in about 20 minutes.

We only had about 20 minutes left, not enough time to go shopping. We decided to have some gelato – and it was the most amazingly chocolate gelato ever!

When we got back to Santa Margherita, we wandered over to a restaurant and had lunch, which was pretty good – Andy had veal marsala and I had “pesce” (some kind of generic white fish) in a white wine sauce and capers.

After lunch, we wandered the streets of Santa Margherita, which were mostly deserted. We did manage to find one vendor selling ceramic items, and we bought a ceramic Portofino scene and an elephant (of course!). We asked where everybody was, and the vendor said the shops close at 3:00 p.m. Ok then. We wandered around a bit more, but everything was closed. We decided to go back to the ship.

We noted how friendly the Italians were – the chef at the restaurant wishing us “bon apetite” at lunch and calling out “arrivaderci!” as we left, the vendor who was happy to chat with us while we looked at her wares – as opposed to the previous day’s cold shoulder from the French.

When we got back to the boat, I got to take a real nap (yey!), while Andy went running out on deck. It was formal night, so out came the dress and the suit. When we arrived at the Vista dining room for dinner, we were not assigned to a shared table for some reason. The service was once again excellent – I wondered if staff was more available, now that the Lido buffet had reverted back to self-service.

The main entertainment of the evening was a singer, Marcus Jefferson, who performed Lionel Richie songs. He was a lot of fun and did a good job interacting with the audience.

Wednesday’s towel animal: we think it’s a butterfly.

Thursday’s agenda: Tuscany!

If it's Tuesday, it must be France

We were able to have breakfast in the Vista dining room, instead of the Lido buffet line. We may not be able to do this every day of the week, but it’s good when we can avoid the Lido. Our table companions were two other couples – one from the Netherlands, the other from Austrailia – the same Austrailian couple from last night's dinner. All very nice people, and way more traveled than we are.

This was our first experience with taking a tender to shore – the ship was anchored in the middle of the bay in front of Cannes. We needed to make the transition from “Buenos dias!” to “Bon jour!”. We were instructed to wait in the Vista lounge, so off we went - to wait. There was this huge line at the stage, so Andy went off to investigate. It was just a line to buy water. We had the bottle we bought in in Barcelona, and have been refilling ever since.

The travel guide person, Leann, gave last minute instructions – like, if you want to go to the casino on Monty Carlo, you needed to be dressed nicely (wasn’t it a bit late for that info?).

The Monte Carlo excursion was called up first. Twenty minutes later, we were still waiting. The Monte Carlo excursion was rather popular, apparently.

Finally it was our turn, and we decended into the bobbing boat. Good thing there were ship staff members available to help me onto the tender and then off on the other side. After a bit of confusion in the bus parking lot, we found our bus for the day. Our tour guide’s name was Cecilia, and she was wonderful. Turned out, she made the day for us - she was hilarious. We were able to grab the seats right in front.

The bus ride to Eze (pronounced “Ehzz”) took about an hour - it was slow going through Cannes (pronounced “Cahn”). Eze is a typical French Riviera village, built right into the mountain. Once we got there, the #1 priorty of course was to find a bathroom. Cecilia recommended to always pay for bathroom access in France, because that meant it would be clean. Yummy.

This excursion had been rated “strenuous” – all because of the steep walk up to the top of Eze. There is only one flat spot in Eze, where the public water fountain is located. Cecilia explained that all the little streets of Eze were actually donkey trails, and the flat place is where the donkeys got to rest and get some water.

We decided to follow Cecilia alllll the way to the top of the fortress to the "Exotic Garden" – well worth the climb, as the view was just spectacular. We had a little free time till we had to meet everybody at the bus, but not much. We did manage to buy a placemat with this beautiful design on it by a local artist. If we’d had another 30 minutes, we probably would have bought some of her paintings, but considering how far we had to go to get back to the bus, we couldn’t stop for long.

Unfortunately, we weren’t fast enough to claim our front seats again – a rude couple was there first, violating the informal rule of “take the same seats you had before”. It was very annoying.

When we got to Nice, Cecilia showed us a little bit of the old town, and then we were on our own. We had lunch in a random restaurant. We both had crepes – I thought might was great (chicken with gruyere cheese and mushrooms), but Andy wasn’t so excited about his – basically a cheesburger in a crepe. We noted that the wait staff wasn’t particularly friendly or welcoming and not excited at Andy’s poor attempts to order our food in French. Hmm.

Wandering around Nice, it took us a while to find the shops we had seen with Cecelia leading the way. By the time we did find them, there wasn’t much time left, so we had just a brief look and then headed back to the meeting spot.

We both kept dozing off on the way back to Cannes. We decided to wander around Cannes for a bit, as tired as we were. Once again, the #1 priority was to find a bathroom. This time, it was not so easy. We walked in a park along the shore, but saw nothing. We saw the bus terminal, and since bus terminals usually have public bathrooms, we went in. Andy once again tried to use his French to ask the person behind the desk if there was a bathroom – she looked at him like he was a Martian, and then blurted , “Non.” Not, “Sorry, no, we don’t have one here, but there’s a public one in the park”, just “Non.” And then she turned back to her work. Ok then.

Finally found the public “WC” – one that automatically washes itself when you’re done. But it wanted 50 cents – either as a 50 cent coin or two 25 cent coins. And we didn’t have that. We would need to break a bill by buying something. But where?

We saw a McDonald’s and I thought that would be the solution, anyway - everyone knows you can just walk into a McDonald's to use the bathroom – but there was a sign on the bathroom door: "Access code for the bathroom will be printed on your receipt", which meant you had to buy something. And the lines were endlessly long with a zillion enthusiastic teenagers. Never mind that idea.

So we bought ice cream from a street vendor – once again, no “how are you, here’s your ice cream, thank you for coming”. Just handed us our cones in silence. Our change came in 1 euro coins, which meant we had to break one of those into 2 50 cent pieces. Once again, Andy tried to communicate to the vendor, and she just stared at him. Suddenly she blurted, “Fifties?” and we said, “YES!”. Of course, it was obvious she clearly understood what he wanted the entire time he was struggling to explain himself, but she did nothing to help him along. Arg.

So back to the public WC – and now there was a line! The WC displays its status and very politely asks you to wait while it cleans itself. This bathroom is way more polite than the people we met. Finally! It’s my turn. Better than a port-o-potty, but not by much. No toilet paper, no soap to wash my hands – but there was a sink. And everything surface was soaking wet. So much for self-drying. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

We wandered around for a bit, but it was quite obvious we are in the wrong demographic for Cannes – swarms of teenagers everywhere, and all the shops had merchandise aimed just for them. Eventually, we gave up and started walking back to the tender port.

At the end of the day:

Eze – two thumbs up, very interesting, very beautiful.

Nice – one thumb up (me), one thumb down (Andy). I think Nice would be better if we had more time to explore the city beyond the shore line.

Cannes: two thumbs down. Snobby home of the ridiculously wealthy and their obscenely huge yachts. And we're seriously in the wrong demographic for the shops.

At dinner, we once again saw the perplexing disorganization that was so untypical of last year’s cruise. We had to wait 30 minutes for dinner, something that never happened last year. When we came back when our buzzer went off, the line was even longer. They sat us at a table for 8, and we sat there by ourselves for 10 minutes – we saw a family standing there, but they weren’t seated, which was really weird. And they didn’t look happy. They disappeared, then suddenly resurfaced 10 minutes later and were seated at our table. None of us knew what the heck was going on.

A young couple with their 3 year old were added to our table a few minutes after that. Everybody was very nice – it was a pleasure to have conversation with people who were not in their 70’s or 80’s, like last year's cruise. The young couple with the 3 year old live in Woodbridge, VA. The other family come from San Francisco. Everyone had noticed how the French had lived up to their stereotype of being totally unfriendly and borderline hostile to tourists. I guess France doesn’t need tourists’ money.

Dinner took forever - the 3 year old’s dinner didn’t show up till almost 9:00!

We barely made it to the 10:00 show – seemed to me the singers and dancers are better this year than last year. When the show was over, we headed straight for our room, since we have an early start the next morning.

Tuesday’s towel animal – a stingray.

Wednesday’s agenda – stop #1 in Italy, which includes Portofino.

Ahoy, Maties, ALL ABOOOOOOOARRRRRD! Cruise - day 1

This morning was all about scheduling - I wanted to be at the dock before noon. I was hoping to look up the dock information on Google maps, but we had run out of Internet minutes. I even tried going down to the basement where there were 3 computers available for Internet use, but two were occupied and the 3^rd one was non-functional - looks like the hard drive went belly up. Gosh darn, NOT my job to fix it! :-D

Turned out to be a non-issue, since our cabbie had a list of all the boats that dock in Barcelona. I guess he was hoping we would know exactly which dock number to go to, but all we could do is point to the Noordam on his list. Of course, just like the gate for our flight to Barcelona, it was in fact the last dock, all the way at the end.

Luggage pickup seemed easier this time than last year – a Holland American guy came up to us, labeled our luggage and took it away.

Unfortunately, check-in was not so easy – the line was almost an hour long. We had a nice chat with the couple in front of us – newlyweds from Baltimore, of all places! It was very warm in the terminal, like the air conditioning was not working or something.

On last year’s cruise, we were shuffled immediately to a sit down lunch. This year, we were told to go to the Lido deck, which is the buffet or cafeteria-style restaurant. However, the daily program showed lunch was being served in the Vista dining room, which is where we would normally have lunch – but only till 1:30. We dropped off our stuff in the cabin and then went to the Vista dining room– we were the last people allowed in. Andy figured out later that the lunch in the Vista dining room was for the “Mariner Club” members, which was not us. Oops. Party crashers!

We went back to the cabin after asking about Internet access (our #1 priority after food). I was able to logon very easily and voila! We were back in action. Good thing, we were beginning to experience Internet withdrawal. Not pretty.

We went up to the Lido deck for the Bon Voyage party – had some food and then wandered around a bit. We were totally amazed at how blue the water is.

Our goal was to have dinner at 7:30, so we could make the first show of the week at 9:30. The people at our table consisted of a couple from the Netherlands, a couple from Australia, newlyweds from Texas and us. Took a while for the conversation to warm up – we were the last to join the table. Never did learn anybody’s name.

It was on our way to dinner that we noticed the rocking of the boat. During dinner it seemed to get stronger. Walking to the Vista Lounge (not to be confused with the Vista dining room) was entertaining. Last year I wondered why there were rails along the walls, and now I know!

The show was ok – it was mostly for the cruise director to go over how things work. The cruise director apologized for the long lines at check in – all blamed on a “computer glitch” on shore. Of course. Also, since we invited ourselves to the “Mariners Lunch” instead of going up to the Lido deck like we were supposed to, we apparently missed long lines at the buffet. According to the cruise director, they’ve discovered the most effective way to avoid wide-spread infections of the noro-virus is to not allow people to self-serve for the first 48 hours of the cruise. Therefore, the ship staff was serving people from the buffet, slowing things down. Glad we crashed the “Mariners” party and avoided all that!

The cruise director explained a bit about our stop in Cannes – it’s not an actual dock, it’s what’s called a “tender”, meaning they drop anchor and we get to take a boat to the shore. This is going to be interesting.

The Sheldons Support the Global Economy

We started a little later than we intended to, I think. Slept straight through till 9:00 a.m. Andy had decided against doing his long run today and postponed it till Monday. His plan was to exercise in the gym in the basement of the hotel. Normally he would run wherever we were, but without GPS (we’ve turned off all data roaming on our iPhones to ensure we’re not charged $20 per second, or something to that affect) and not being able to speak the language, he didn’t want to take the chance of getting lost.

We had breakfast at the hotel’s breakfast buffet – all sorts of interesting things. Quail’s legs (teensy little things), salt cod (they do seem to like cod around here), plus lox! Yummy. And delicious fruit – and pecan pie! There was a separate corner for “organic and dietetic”, where I was able to find my skim milk. Otherwise, the "organic and dietetic" food looked completely unappetizing.

Our plan for today was simple – the Picasso Museum and the Sagrada Familia church. We walked to the Picasso Museum – this, of course takes forever at the pace I go. We took all sorts of interesting shortcuts, taking us through stereotypic European narrow streets that are not much wider than a small car, with no clear demarkation between street and sidewalk. And the cars drive through anyway. By the time we made it to La Rambla, it was lunch time. Yes it was far and yes I walk that slowly.

So we stopped at some random place – I had vegetarian paella and a salad. It’s been a long time since I’ve had paella. Good stuff.

We continued on our way to the museum – passed through Plaza de Sant Jaume. Shortly after that some realllly interesting stores popped up, and we just had to stop. Saw some beautiful hand painted silk fans (traditionally, young women hid their faces behind a fan. Also, sure helps when it’s hot), and object d’art using Gaudi’s tiling technique (breaking the tiles to conform to curves, rather than destroy the curve). But it was actually getting late – our guidebook said the museum closed at 3:00, and it was after 2:00. Of course, this did not stop me from making note of interesting stores along the way, so we could back track afterwards.

Once we finally got to the museum, the line for tickets stretched into the distance. Turns out, the museum doesn’t close at 3:00 – tickets AFTER 3:00 are FREE. Well then, for once running late paid off. The line was atrocious though – must have waited an hour just to get in. A museum staff member saw me leaning on my walking stick and offered to let me jump to the front of the line, but I felt that would not be right – I don’t depend on the walking stick like a cane, it just helps on days with lots of walking.

When we finally approached the ticket booth, I spotted the entrance to the museum – up a flight of stairs! Stair climbing is a bit of a chore, so I was not looking forward to this. Then suddenly another museum staff person beckons to me and Andy and we bypassed the rest of the line, and were escorted to the elevator (apparently operated only by a key and not available to the public), so I didn’t have to walk up the stairs. This I did not turn down!

The museum itself took about 90 minutes to go through – art mostly from his early years. It was amazing how traditional his early work was. It was interesting to watch the transition from traditional to cubist. The most interesting room was devoted to his study of one painting - Diego Velasquez' painting "Las Meninas" - he reinterpreted this painting many times, each time taking a slightly different direction.

Our next goal was the Sagrada Familia church, designed by Antoni Gaudi, the same person who designed Casa Botllo that we saw yesterday. Apparently, Gaudi was hit by a tram and killed before the church could be finished.

Anyway, on our to the Sagrada Familia, we of course had to stop in those shops we had seen on our way to the Picasso Museum. Uh oh, now that we could take our time, we found all sorts of interesting things to buy. The biggest – 6 ceramic tiles that together depicted a bowl of fruit. How we’re going to get this thing home, not really sure. There will be a major re-alignment of stuff in our bags to avoid an “too heavy” bag fee.

This ceramic thing was too big and heavy for Andy to schlep around for the rest of the day, so we took a taxi back to the hotel to drop everything off. Then we started walking to the Metro, which was just a few blocks away.

The metro stop was in Plaza de Espana. As we got close, we could hear New Age music blasting from somewhere, so we followed the sound. There at the end of this wide street was this HUGE building (turned out to be the Museum of Art of Catalonia).




Apparently today/tonight is the beginning of the Eurpean Athletic Championship and we were watching some kind of opening day performance (later Andy said he wondered if it was a rehearsal). We watched for a bit, but then we continued on to the Metro.

The Metro station had nothing but stairs going down, followed by stairs going up, and then stairs going down again. Arg, just agony. When we finally found the actual entrance to the subway, we had to figure out how to buy a ticket. A kind metro guy helped us – his broken English and my broken Spanish worked ok, after a fashion. The subway cars themselves have almost no actual seats, just places to lean.

The Barcelona subway system is HUGE – at least twice the size of DC’s system. We’re wondering how big Barcelona actually is.

We popped out of the metro station – and there it was, as large as life, this huge church. Unfortunately, even thought it was only 7:00 and the church closed at 8:00, apparently this would not be enough time to go through everything – and the towers were already closed. Disappointing, to say the least. This is now #1 on our list of things to do when we come back to Barcelona on August 2. We were looking for things we could do, since a lot of venues are closed on Mondays.

So I took a bunch of photos of the outside instead. Gaudi’s designs are always whimsical, and so was this church. It fairly looked like a cartoon. He was hit by a tram before he could finish it, and left behind no documented designs for the inside. However, private donations are keeping the construction moving forward – the current goal is to have it completed in time for the 100th anniversary of his death in 2026 (according to wikipedia).

Andy tried to help out this young woman by taking her photo in front of the church – she really wanted to include herself in the photo, but the church was too big and we were too close, and her camera too dinky. But we had a nice conversation with her – she comes from Ankara, Turkey and is studying genetics.

Afterwards, we wandered around aimlessly looking for a place to have dinner – most of the restaurants down one street had only tapas, so we wandered down another street, thinking we would just head back to La Rambla. However, it was the street that had a really awesome view of the church, so there were lots of restaurants to pick from.

After dinner we thought we’d walk back to La Rambla then take a cab back. However, we got lost and spent too much time trying figure out where we were. Eventually we gave up and hailed a cab back to the hotel.

Monday is the big day – ALL ABOARD!

Barcelona Day 1

July 24, 2010

Overnight flights are always weird – since you never go to bed, it feels like the day never actually ended.

I had actually managed to piece together about 3 hours of sleep on the flight, which is some kind of record. I was more awake than I had anticipated I would be at this point.

We retrieved our luggage, managed to find a bank machine and withdraw some Euros, and then found the taxi line. I’m very proud that I was able to remember enough Spanish to communicate to the cabbie where we needed to go. On the way to the hotel, we watched the scenery go by – the mountains in the distance, and this really weird looking building. It was wider at the top than it was at the bottom, and the windows were not spaced in any kind of regular fashion. Didn’t get a photo of that, unfortunately.

Got to the hotel, and we were able to check in immediately, even though it was only 11:00 a.m.

It’s always fun figuring out the in’s and out’s of hotel rooms in foreign countries. First issue – could NOT figure out how to keep the lights on. So we figured we could just call down to the front desk. Couldn’t figure out how to do that from the selection of various buttons on the phone. So Andy just went downstairs to the front desk. Turns out there’s a box on the wall right as you walk into the room, and we have to insert our room key into a slot in the box in order for the lights in the room to stay on. Otherwise, they time out. Very clever way to make sure the lights aren’t left on all day once you’ve left the room.

This little adventure wiped out whatever energy we had left – we crashed for 2 hours. When I got up, I decided to take a shower. In the huge bathroom, I saw a showerhead in the bathtub, which seemed perfectly normal, except there was no shower curtain. Maybe it’s set up that the water won’t spray onto the floor? Nope, discovered that was not the case. As I was trying really hard not to create an ocean in the bathroom, I noticed an actual shower stall on the other side of the room. Oh, duh.

Onward to the next challenge – charging up various electronic devices. I had charged up my iPhone using the adapter I had bought a few weeks ago. And then I realize that the same adapter wouldn’t work for my macbook or Andy’s laptop – those plugs have 3 prongs, and my adapter only has 2. Arg.

Good news! Andy had read in the hotel info book (that’s his job, reading the hotel info book) that we could get a loaner adapter. Progress at last!

We went downstairs and had lunch in the hotel restaurant – we ordered a la carte, since the buffet selection contained mostly seafood (mussels, shrimp, etc) that we don’t eat. I had a “salt cod”, which was excellent. A good start to our Barcelona experience.

It was now 3:00 p.m. and off we went to start a full day of touring. We started by walking to La Rambla, the famous Barcelona shopping boulevard. It was a hike just getting to the beginning of La Rambla. One of the things I really like about Barcelona are the randomly placed benches just about everywhere, which made it easy to take a break.

The weather was absolutely perfect - maybe 85 degrees, zero percent humidity, and not a cloud in the sky. A major contrast to the weather we left behind in Maryland.

At every break, it was fun to people-watch. Barcelona is over-run with tourists from all over the world, which made me think of all the “what to do when you’re traveling” advice I had read on-line before we left – all about trying to dress like the locals dress so you don’t stick out as much and therefore less of a target for pick-pockets. Well, I didn’t notice the locals dressing much different from Washingtonians or New Yorkers. Plus some of the obvious tourists (camera cases, maps a-flutter) seemed to be people from other parts of Spain! And then there were the flocks of foreign teenagers everywhere, in addition to the Indians in their saris, and the Muslim ladies with their various means of covering themselves. So much for “blending in”.

Did I mention people watching? Just a couple of blocks away from the start of La Rambla, I noticed this one guy, who apparently didn’t want to bother with clothes at all. Yep. Start naked, he was walking up the street. He stood at a traffic cross walk, like he was going to cross the street, but then he turned and came back past us. People were noticing now - some people were laughing, others took pictures. I opted not to.

Suddenly he was back and once again stood at the cross walk. He was carrying what looked like a bag of groceries – which meant he had just been in a store! Wonder how the cashier got through that transaction.

Andy pointed out that Naked Guy had no tan lines. He must do this a lot! Except he was wearing a watch and sandals, so he probably has tan lines on his left wrist and his feet.

Naked Guy eventually disappeared – he must have crossed the street and kept on going.

With that highlight in mind we started our trek down La Rambla by taking photos of the huge monument of Christopher Columbus, pointing out to sea. We noted that Chris had lots of clothes on.

La Rambla seemed to have sections – first was the artisan section. I bought my first elephant of the trip from one such booth. There were performance artists – some looked like they might actually do something for a donation (like the flamenco dancers), but most of them were just posing and they were happy to let you take your photo with them for the donation. There was a guy dressed up like The Joker, a man and a woman dressed as angels – and one guy, all in white tails, sitting on a toilet. This seemed to go along with the Naked Guy theme.

There was a flower section with cut flowers for sale, followed by the food section, which included a huge market for meats, fruits and vegetables. The last section included small mammals – stalls selling tiny baby bunnies and one selling guinea pigs.

La Rambla finally came to an end. We decided to head towards Casa Botllo (pronounced – “bye-YOH”), which was a house designed by Spanish architect Gaudi almost 100 years ago. It was truly amazing –very few straight lines anywhere in the house – all curves, all natural lighting, most concepts taken from nature. We bought an audio tour; it took us about 90 minutes to go through the whole thing, including climbing all 10 flights of stairs to the roof. It was well the climb – I took the lift back down.

We had dinner at a “pisceria” – fish restaurant. We stumbled through our dinner selections – an interesting combination of bad Spanish and bad English, but it worked out fine. We shared seabass, which was excellent. A couple of times we saw a flock of teenage girls who randomly stopped and sang to people – either at the outdoor cafes or people sitting in their cars, didn’t seem to matter.

We like Barcelona.

Tomorrow – the Picasso Museum!