Home Sweet Home

I am home.

A short simple sentence, but a profoundly comforting one. I am knee deep in the hum-drum of re-immersing myself in day-to-day real world life. The cats are all thriving and each has welcomed me home in their own way --- Lucy pooped in my slippers, Kimberly slept at my head and purred all night and Muffin actually allowed me to touch him under his chin. I am amazed at how much mail accumulates over one months time - I have spent over an hour just tossing the catalogues! Now I have to sort through all the bills. Real life does come at you fast!

The wait for the weight

The time for this cruise to be over must be close - there seems to be nothing but Brussel sprouts on the menu for the last few days. Those of you who know me well, know that the dreaded sprout is the top thing on my "food I absolutely hate" list.

I'm wondering just how much weight I've gained. Even though I've eaten more fruit and vegetables (except the dreaded brussel sprout) on this trip, I know that souffles with vanilla sauce for dessert every day have quietly added to the caloric intake! Maybe that treadmill in my basement will need to have daily use when I return home!

Random thoughts for the past month -
-- there are a heap of things to see in this world, but some things remain the same --- everyone does laundry and many cultures hang it out their windows to dry
-- home is where you make it...even a cruise ship cabin can become a cozy safe haven
-- at least 80% of all men over 50 have had some kind of surgery....and are proud to display their resulting scars
-- nausea is bad no matter where you are; worse when you are away from your own surroundings
-- the suitcase always contains more clothes than you will ever wear and is always hard to zip up at the end of the vacation
-- many women can be very mean to their husbands. I have seen and heard some snippy things things that astound me. They can also be pretty domineering...just this afternoon I overheard a woman direct her husbands afternoon agenda --- "you'll go to the casino for a while and will then go take a nap." (The husband was well over 12 years old!) If I am ever lucky enough to enjoy another relationship, I have learned well what to do and not do, what to say and not say!
-- there can be "too much" food
-- good entertainment is hard to come by. That has been the one consistenly bad thing on all three of the cruises I've been on over the past month --- all have had mediocre to poor live entertainment.
-- I can watch "Sleepless in Seattle" over and over without tiring of it
-- I really miss keeping up with the news
-- some women should not be seen wearing a bathing suit in public
-- napkin folding is a universal cruise ship itinerary item

I just reviewed all the pictures I've taken over the past 30 days and have thereby been reminded of all that I have been able to do since late September. Amazing! I can hardly wait to share them with you all. (I will try to learn how to load the pictures onto the blog for my next trip, I promise!)

As a review, I've seen --
-- Venice's Grand Canal, St Mark's Square, Bridge of Sighs, glass blowing in Murano and the quaint colorful island village of Burano
-- The picturesque walled city of Dubrovnik
-- The columns of Olympia and Ephesus and Lindos
-- Istanbul and the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia and the Bazaar
-- The tiny mountaintop towns on Santorini
-- Pompeii and the adjoining dirty, graffiti-covered city of Naples
-- Rome, the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican Museums, the Pope (!), St Peter's basilica (and the absolutely overwhelmingly achingly beautifully serene Pieta) and the Coliseum
-- Original Picasso drawings, etchings and oil paintings in his family museum in Barcelona, along with the Casa Mila apartment building designed by Gaudi
-- Vasco de Gama's tomb in Lisbon
-- the surprisingly floral and tropical Azores
-- miles and miles of endless blue Atlantic

I have loved every minute of it all! I await the weight damage.

Laurentian Abyss

I remain mystified that I can remain in touch virtually when I should be out of touch geographically! I am literally on the high seas - we crossed the Atlantic Ridge yesterday and the disembodied "voice from the Bridge" told us all that we had reached the exact mid-point of the Atlantic ocean. That made me think of The Hunt for Red October and that thought led me to think of the deepest part of the Atlantic - the Laurentian Abyss. Three more days of nothing but water, water everywhere before we reach Ft Lauderdale.

Life has been far from abysmal here on board. We were in Punta Delgada, Azores, two days ago. I was very very pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a desert-y rock-like wind swept island and instead got a gorgeous, green, tropical oasis. A bus trip in the afternoon took us up to the volcano crater on the western=most tip of the island. The lakes inside the crater were beautifully blue, the air was crisp, the breeze just cool enough. The island had thousands of flowers in bloom - hordes of blue hydrangeas, enoumors patches of yellow calla lilies, and great masses of pink Naked Ladies...get your mids out of the gutter....they are so named because they are a lovely pink flower high on a single stem with no foliage. The main business on this island is Dairy, so there were fields and fields of black and white Holstein dairy cows, all munching on the greenest grass ever. Quaint, clean, no graffiti, sparkling white washed homes and buildings.

Night before last, I was up being seasick at 3am -- bleagh! I moseyed to the doctor yesterday morning, got an injection and some tablets and am back to my fighting self again today. The weather continues to be spectacular - folks are suntbathing as we speak -- and the seas remain calm.

I continue to have a fabulous time. My Trivia team is in first place!

Lazy days

Lazy days. I cannot imagine being back at home, making my own bed, doing my own dishes, cooking my own food (not that I do that anyway!)

Princess cruise notes --
-- right now, a live string quartet is playing Handel's Watermusic in the seven story atrium plaza
-- this ship has 19 decks...I haven't visted all of them yet. The ship is HUGE!
-- I attended "Movies Under the Stars" last night. There is a huge plasma screen on deck 16, and there are deck chairs set up all around it. The deck stewards come around with blankets for everyone. Then, once the movie starts (last night it was Ratatouille), they come around again with bags of popcorn. The ultimate was when they actually came around with warm cookies and glasses of milk
-- I am even at the casino. The 6 deck constant automatic shuffler machines keep everyone off count!

I loved Barcelona and will have to go back to see everything I want to see there. Our tour visited one of the Gaudi apartment buildings -- all curvy and ornate, but really lovely. Then we spent the afternoon at the Picasso museum and saw more Picasso's than I know existed in the world. His mom must have saved every picture she had attached to the fridge! There were sketches from when he was a child all the way through his blue and red periods. His early portraits were absolutely gorgeous. I still don't understand the cubist stuff.

Lisbon underwhelmed me. Very 1950's architecture, very cold seeming and inhospitable. Lots of monuments to explorers and the "New World." I must admit, I had forgotten just how much those Portuguese got around.


We had our first rocky evening last night --- Force 9 (Gale) winds which really smacked up hard against the 19 decks. Thank goodness the seas were fairly calm or it could have been a really rough night! All is smooth and calm today - sun is shining and I actually have a little tan.

I decided not to play bridge today - taking the day off. The only activity planned for today was Team Trivia. My team is in second place overall. This morning's topic was Movies.....we knew which year Gone With the Wind premiered (1939), but couldnt get the date correct (it was December 15, we guess December 25th, but they wouldn't give it to us!). This afternoon is General Knowledge again - who knows what the questions will be like.

Tomorrow is our last land until we get home -- my tour for the Azores will include one blue lake and one green lake. Too funny!

I started this trip thinking it would be never-ending. There was one day, a few days ago, that was a little lonely. Today I'm sorry the whole adventure comes to an end in a week. The entire month has been a blur, and I'm looking forward to reliving it all by sharing more tales with all of you and reviewing the pictures I've taken. I'm so lucky to be able to do this!

Monument-al overload

Superlatives cannot begin to describe what I've taken in over the past two days or the thoughts and emotions that accompanied what I saw.

Pompeii was much bigger and more spread out than I imagined. Again I was flooded with the thoughts that I was walking on the same stone roadways and entering the same homes and stores of people who lived 2,000 years ago. Public parks, bakeries, banks, fast food restaurants, vinegar and oil emporiums, vegetable stands, roadways with steps in place to walk across the certainly accumulating day-to-day muck. And the homes - gorgeous entry archways, central gardens, generous living rooms....and the mosaics, oh my goodness, the mosaics! We saw reproductions of the originals in their original settings - on the floor, and then saw the original 2,000 year old mosaics in the Archeological museum in Naples. Each one is absolutely breathtakingly detailed with subjects that range from "beware of the dog in this home" to "we sell fish in this store" to reenactments of great battles to inctricate geometric designs.

Then today was the grandeur of Rome - the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel, St Peter's Basilica and the Coliseum. I am awestruck at the intelligence and inventive nature of those Romans. Breathtaking to actually see those two fingers just barely touching each other on that ceiling, to take in the stunning Bernini altar.....and, by complete and total surprise, to see the Pope in person!!!!! By mere happenstance, he was getting out of his car in a motorcade and entering his apartments just as we walked by. So many people were screaming his name and taking his picture. There are two simply huge TV screens permanently erected in St Peters square to capture his every move when he is in the public areas and everyone was transfixed.

Tidbits -- there are very strict rules regarding living and working in Vatican City. Tour guides have to be Catholic (of course), baptised, married, never divorced. Normal everyday people are allowed to live in Vatican City, but apartments and homes are very expensive. One of the perks to living there is that there are no taxes, including on gasoline. While outsiders pay the normal 1.30 Euros per liter (approx $8.00 per gallon (!!!)), Vatican City residents pay much much less.

I came full circle at the Coliseum -- While in Morocco in April, I saw the replica where The Gladiator movie was made and today I saw the real, real thing.

I've thought a lot about Bob these last two days. He was so much a fan of history and military history in particular. He would have loved Pompeii and the Coliseum. I know his catholic upbringing would have made the visit to the Vatican extra special, too. I bought his mom, Helen, a Peace Cross, commemorating John Paul II. Her 93rd birthday was October 1.

Tomorrow is Monaco and Monte Carlo. They tell me the table games (roulette and blackjack, my favorite) are only open at night, so I'll have to place my Monte Carlo bet at the slots. Wish me luck!

Night and day

This Emerald Princess is above and beyond any superlative description I can think of. The transition from Costa has been so wonderful - I even met lovely people in the ship terminal during check-in (and was called "delightful" by one older lady). I have a stunning cabin, D109, a kingsize bed, huge three cushion sofa with coffee table and side chair, more walk-on closet space than I know what to do with, two plasma screen TVs, a bathtub and a balcony that has a table a four chairs - gee whiz, waaaay over my head! The bed has a down duvet and lots of pillows. What incredible comfort! The transition from Costa to Princess has been like going from darkest night to brightest day!

My dinner table (set for 7 people) has only had me and one other couple for the first two nights, but the maitre'd says he's going to add two couples to us as the cruise progresses. My table mates now are simply wonderful people from Kansas City, where the gentleman was the President of Park University for 14 years. There is terrific, intelligent conversation (I try to keep up). They have traveled extensively and have been sharing their adventures while on an African Safari. They are going again in 2009 and say I should think about that trip. Too much!

Today is a sea day before our arrival in Naples and my tour of Pompeii tomorrow. I went to the bridge lecture this morning at 10am, played Mah Jongg at 10:30 (won two games (my favorite hand of 2 flowers, NEWS, and two kongs of dragons)), joined a team trivia competition at 11:15am (we got 15 of 20 answers right) and then broke away to come update the blog. Duplicate bridge begins at 1:30 this afternoon. There were so many at the lecture this morning, there will probably be over 16 tables!

Everyone is very friendly and nice, although there are indeed a few "travel snobs" who love to let you know every little detail of how fabulous thier travels have been. I still consider myself very lucky to be out here doing this at all. I thank you all for your support of me and for your continued encouragement in all that I do. I miss you all --- it's indeed a long time to be away from home!

All Rhodes lead to Rome

Those early Romans were everywhere! While docked in Rhodes several days ago, I took the tour to Lindos. On the way, we of course passed by the Roman ruins of the old walled city. I'm beginning to be able to use that one college semester of Art and Architecture History now. You remember me reminding you of the three different Greek column types in an earlier blog, well now I can pick out an ancient Roman fort with the best of them!

Lindos was by far the highlight of the Rhodes visit. Those early Greeks sure know how to pick a site for a temple! We must have climbed 8,000 steps (none of them the same size as the next, no hand rails, great drops to the sea, and lots of tourists trying to get both up and down at the same time -- yikes!) to get to the top acropolis, but once up there, it was stunning! Both the front and rear columns (Doric) of this small temple remain, along with the altar stone. All of this reminds me that my own home, built in the early 1980's, can hardly be considered old!

Some general observations I've noted over the past 11 days --
-the Turkish cabs are spelled Taksi
-some yogurt flavors are universal (black cherry, mixed berry, vanilla)
-those wacky plastic Croc shoes are everywhere! Even the old Greek ladies hawking embroidered tablecloths to the tourists in Lindos were wearing them!
-older Japanese couples are probably the most well dressed tourists....Chanel suits, gorgeous subdued REAL gold jewelry, perfect leather shoes and bags, walking slowly and regally, never seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere
-Barbra Steisand, George Gershwin and Frank Sinatra are universal
-the Italians have a different line dance for every song - mambo, samba, even polka. The really enjoyable watching is when two different groups, one at each end of the dance floor, start their own little group. It's kind of like watching the Sharks and the Jets have a "dance-off"
-every time this ship, the Mediterranea, leaves a port, we hear Andrea Bocelli sing "Time to Say Goodbye" over the ship's loudspeakers. It never gets old.
-Bridge really is an international card game. Yesterday I played with two French ladies and a Belgian man (really old, but sharp as a tack!). They all were very serious about their game and played like they had 17,000 Master points! You can imagine how distressed they were that they had to play with me! Thank goodness Stayman, Jacoby transfers, and other normal rules of play are used everywhere. (And thank you to all my bridge friends at home for having taught me the etiquette of duplicate bridge!)

It's raining in Dubovnik today. Tomorrow is Venice and my transfer to the Emerald Princess. As much as I feel like a duck out of water as an American surrounded by so many international others on the Costa ships, I'm sad to leave this atmosphere. Every now and then it's good to be reminded that we Americans are not the only people in the world. Sometimes another point of view is worth listening to.

I'm the "weakest link" on the Italian Weakest Link

So hard to believe that I was in Santorini this morning -- and really difficult to understand just how those Greeks built those little towns on top of that volcanic cliff! Wow. But it was just as beautiful as all the pictures that you've ever seen - whitewashed homes, Greek orthodox churches, blue domes. The ancient volcanic caldera held four cruise cruise ships at anchor this morning creating a traffic jam of tenders to the little port and the cable car. Adding 10,000 tourists to the 8,000 already living here made for more lines for everything!

I've had a bit of time to watch international TV over the past 10 days and have discovered that it's a lot like American TV. I've seen the Italian version of Dancing With the Stars, The Bachelor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Weakest Link. It's really scary that I could actually figure out one or two of the questions during the game shows and know which was the correct answer! But I only made it to the 50 Euro level before the language got away from me!

I played bridge for the first time today. We knew we were in trouble when an Italian man, who spoke absolutely no English whatsoever, seemed to have no idea of the concept of No Trump! I ended up playing one rubber of party bridge with an American honeymoon couple from Richmond, VA, and a British lady. The new groom and I won. We're playing again at 2:30pm on our day at sea, whenever that is. I seem to have lost all track of time!

Well, they're announcing our arrival into the Mykonos harbor now. This trip we get all the announcements in seven languages - they've added Japanese and Portuguese to the now normal Italian, German, Spanish, French and English! I'm off to join the lines for the shuttle buses into town!

Alone again, naturally

I'm back in Bari today, on the second leg of my three cruise adventure. This time I'm without my favorite sister, Mom and Brenda. I waved goodbye to them yesterday in Venice after an exceptionally internationally cosmopolitan afternoon. We four were having lunch on the Campo San Polo (I just love the whole idea of being able to say that!) when Brenda's cell phone rang. It was my cousin Bernhard from Germany. He and his wife Marion were in Venice, we told them where we were eating and they arrived at our table about 25 minutes later. Now the conversation began to include some German, along with our normal American. After about an hour, Brenda's cell phone rang again. This time it was her friend, Christina, from Pensacola, who happens to be Italian and had been visiting her mom in Genova. The two of them (Christine and her mom) were now in Venice, so Brenda told them where we all were and they soon arrived to join our little international club. Christina's mom speaks only Italian, so a great time of charades was had by all as we spent the afternoon chatting away (in various levels of American, German, Italian and universal sign language) in a little outdoor restaurant on a plaza in Venice. Amazing!

This Costa ship is a little smaller than the last - I think it only has 1750 Italians on board instead of the over 2000 on the last ship. This group either doesn't seem quite as pushy or I've just gotten used to it all. I woke up about 7am this morning, got dressed and went upstairs for coffee (I'm in a tiny little inside cabin hovel this trip. I thought it would be dreadful, but it's not too horrible afterall), then back to my cave to change into a swimsuit (thank you Brenda) and upstairs to lay in the sun and people-watch until noon. I've just finished lunch and now I'm off to find a quiet place to get in some good reading.

It's a rough life, but someone has to do it!