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!