Adventure to the end
Home at last, but not without excitement.
Sunday morning, Mike had arranged a car to the airport from the same company that provided the guide on Saturday. Since it turned out that we were going at the same time, we told the guide to make it a car for 4.
So there we were, 5:15 a.m., in the dark of Istanbul, and this little tiny car drives up–it might hold us, or our luggage, but most assuredly not both. The driver, seeing the situation, pulls out his phone and tells us the he will have another car there in 2 minutes–which is just impossible for me to believe, I know it will be half an hour at least, and we don’t have that kind of time.
So we yell at the doorman, and, after two or three tries, we get him to whistle up a taksi (local spelling), and off we roar into the night.
Istanbul is a huge city, 14 million or so, and has hideous traffic problems, but we enjoyed only open streets as zoomed to the airport. A porter got our bags and we headed into the cavernous building and the flight home.
27 hours later, we landed in SFO, tired, sweaty, over-fed and ready for home. Except that I had to get our bags off the carousel, and they never came down. Yep, they did it again. It turns out that the Iberia agent in Istanbul only bothered to route our luggage as far as Dallas. American Airlines is on the case, they’ve seen this before, and they promise that the bags will be delivered here by noon today. I’m not holding my breath, but I’m much more confident than I was in Ethiopia. At least they didn’t promise to send a message to Cairo.
The very last leg, which should have been a piece of cake at 9:30 on a Sunday night, was stop and go most of the way–we had the good fortune to arrive just as the Giants-Dodgers game was over. We finally made it, and collapsed into our own bed. It was a great trip, and it’s good to be home.
Sitting at the Ritz
We’re done, the cruise is over. Got off the boat this morning, spent the day touring the city and now we’re at the Ritz until 5:15 am tomorrow, when the car comes to get us and take us to the airport.
Thursday
A sea day. We slept late, ate lunch and played bridge. For the first time this trip, I got to play with Gail. We sat N/S, Micky and Linda sat E/W. We came in 2nd, they were just dead average. This was the most important competition on the ship, as far as I’m concerned.
It was a formal night, and we didn’t want to do it, so we had reservations at the Japanese restaurant again. Still fabulous, and there were 8 of us since our tablemates from the dining room joined us. One thing a Japanese cruise line knows how to do is sushi.
Friday
We docked in Istanbul, the end of the line for this cruise. But we didn’t get off until Saturday, so there was one more day of “cruise” left. Gail and I are really getting into this lazy vacation life–we didn’t move out of the cabin until lunchtime. The tour we booked was a cruise on the Bosporus, as if we hadn’t spent enough time sailing in the last two weeks. It was fine, though. There are many, many stunning mansions and fine home along the waterfront, on both the European and the Asian side, and we enjoyed slowly sailing past and gawking.
The final dinner on a ship is mildly emotional, as you are saying goodbye to your tablemates who have become friends who say they will keep in touch but nobody ever does. I finally got to know one of them, Dave Rosenfelt, who turns out to be a popular author of mysteries and thrillers–which is the dull part, as he is also completely insane on the subject of rescue dogs and lives with 27 of them. I may read his books, but I won’t be visiting his house. We talked about his process for writing, and he just starts off and writes–no outline, no plan, no nothing. He doesn’t even know who did the crime when he starts, that will come out as he writes. Sort of like the way I play a bridge hand.
Saturday
They took all our luggage off the ship last night–we just have the clothes we are going to wear today. So get up, shower, eat a last breakfast in the dining room (Gail tried the hash, I’m sticking to cereal and berries. At least one sane meal a day.) Walk off the ship, meet Micky and Linda in the baggage hall. Find our bags, get a porter and then find the guide we hired for the day.
Hiring a private guide is hardly an extravagance–we had a guide and a driver, Mercedes van, all to ourselves, for about 1/4 the cost of a ship’s tour.
So off we went, to do the classic Istanbul tourist route–Topkapi Palace (home of the Sultans. Huge palace and grounds, fantastic architecture and design, mind boggling collection of jewels. It’s good to be the king.), Hagia Sophia (enormous cathedral turned mosque turned museum. 1400 years old. ), Blue Mosque (enormous, stunning building. 6 minarets, the most in the country, fantastic blue tile work inside, hence the name. Still in use–we had to remove our shoes, and Mike and I had to put on wraps because we were in shorts.), and finally, the cisterns, an ancient water system under the city, build of marble, lit like Disneyland. Very interesting, and best of all it was cool down there. The city was a steam bath today)
Then we got dropped off at the Ritz, for an afternoon of relaxing and trying to shower off the heat. Dinner was at a fine local restaurant recommended by the hotel–we didn’t even order, just told them to bring us food. We had many different kinds of appetizer and a dinner plate of various meats to build little sandwiches or Turkish tacos out of. It was tremendous.
The taxi ride home was an adventure–although we are staying in one of the best and most famous hotels in the city, in a 40 story building next to a football field, our taxi driver got lost, so we got a scenic tour of the city. We know that it wasn’t just a matter of giving the tourists the expensive long way–I paid him considerably less than the meter (but more than the trip to dinner cost) and there was no objection. I always enjoy an adventure.
So we have to be up before the sun tomorrow, flying from Istanbul to Madrid to Dallas to home. The Bandlers are going through Munich and Chicago–it’s a race to see who gets to SFO first.
Odessa, Ukraine
Odessa
Odessa—what Paris would look like if it was on the Black Sea. A beautiful city, wide tree lined streets, classy boutiques and sidewalk cafes with real tables and chairs, not the plastic junk you too often see.
You can tell Odessa is a prosperous place by the autos—not a Lada or Yugo or Trabant in sight, but plenty of Mercedes, Range Rovers, BMWs, a Rolls Royce, two Lincoln stretch limos and an enormous older bright red Cadillac Eldorado convertible.
The women in this country tend to wear dresses more than pants, and the passing parade is tres chic. The (very) warm weather brings out the shortest skirts, too.
Gail and I didn’t take a tour in Odessa, just the Crystal shuttle into the center of town. Walking around, I noticed that each building seems to be responsible for the sidewalk in front, and they were almost competing to have the best marble and finest designs. We headed off to find a museum that was on the map, but it was either closed or moved or just not marked so we wandered around gawking instead.
The Ukrainian language is written with Cyrillic characters, which are based on the Greek alphabet, so it isn’t readily apparent where you are or what anything says. With a little work, you can figure some things out. The Greek delta Δ is a D. Phi Φ is an F. Pi Π is a P. Rho, which looks like a P, is really an R. Their C is pronounced “s”. The tricky one is H, Greek Eta , which is really an “n”. Consequently, PECTOPAH is really restaurant—for someone who likes puzzles this is kind of fun.
We ate lunch al fresco at a PECTOPAH on the sidewalk. Nothing fancy—we were at Zara Pizzeria, which sounded enough like my name that I couldn’t resist. The food was nothing fancy, or great, but we enjoyed the people and car watching. They offered free wi=fi, so I was able to connect my phone and play some of my word games that I can’t on the ship.
Feeling kind of lazy as this trip winds down, we took the shuttle back in time to catch the afternoon movie, The Last Station. Helen Mirren is always excellent, even if I did think her character was an incredible drama queen.
Dinner was slightly strange—our regular tablemates were off at the Italian restaurant, and we had dinner with two “floaters” who sit at a different table every night. We had met them before and expected a pleasant dinner, when the woman got off on the subject of her controlling 85=year old mother. Thirty minutes later, I was ready to hang myself as the story droned on. Maybe that’s why they are floaters.
After we escaped, we went to the movies again. The evening entertainment was It’s Complicated. Anything with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin has to be good, and so it was, although one can hardly believe that Meryl couldn’t get a date in 5 years.
Today is at sea, as we head back to Istanbul to wind this excursion up. The big challenge match is this afternoon—Micky and Linda are playing together; Gail and I are planning on beating them. I’ll let you know tomorrow.
Sevastopol, Ukraine
Sevastopol is only 70 nautical miles from Yalta, so we motored up here verrrrrrry slowly last night. We are anchored in the harbor and will take tenders onshore today.
We are going to visit location related to war today—both WWII and the Crimean war. First up is Balaclava, a small city with a protected port area, which was the site of a secret Russian submarine facility built during the cold war.
We were supposed to stop on one side of the town for a bathroom break—although we are in fairly new buses from Mercedes, Neoplan and Hyundai, they don’t have onboard toilets. The guide gave us tickets to pay the entry fee, but the first place we went claimed that there was no water and they were closed. So we spent 10 minutes of our trip walking through the city to find another toilet—a miserable, stinking place, but better than nothing, slightly. The men managed manfully, but the women were unhappy with the squat toilets that seem to be standard in this country. Then back on the bus to cross to the other side of town and visit the submarine pens.
Designed to withstand a direct nuclear attack, the facility is a canal dug under a mountain of granite. Submarines could sail in, then be maintained and armed with nuclear weapons in safety and secrecy. The doors at one end of the canal are 150 tons. 1000 workers could fit inside, and survive 30 days with no outside contact at all in case of war.
Deep inside the sub pens, for some incongruous reason is a museum devoted to Crimean War artifacts. No, it doesn’t make any sense. But they showed us a movie about the war (1854-1856. Russia good, England bad. Russia wins.) We looked at buttons and coins and uniforms and medals and sabers. Then we left.
Next stop was the top of a hill overlooking Tennyson’s “Valley of Death”. Today, it looks like the Napa Valley, a broad stretch between the mountains covered in grapevines. In 1856 it was a sea of blood as a misguided British attack was slaughtered by the Russian forces. Then it was the place where Russian forces overcame Germany in the Second World War.
The Valley of Death. After the Crimean war, it was the scene of a slaughter in WWII, as well.
The bus took us back to the dock, and I tried to get the group to wander into town and find a restaurant, but although I ran it up the flag, nobody saluted, so we went back to the boat and enjoyed the buffet.
The afternoon movie was some Miley Cyrus dreck and there is no bridge on in-port days, so we just kicked back, wrote blogs and napped. There was no big show tonight, but the rock band had a Beatles tribute night and I had my Beatles suspenders with me. It was a match made in heaven.
Yalta, Ukraine
A reason to cruise--the view from our balcony this morning
Woke up this morning to find us docked in Yalta, Ukraine. It’s a beautiful city, built on high hills that come right down to the water with no plains between, skyline of grand old houses and new apartments, punctuated by the bright golden domes of the Orthodox Cathedral.
The domes are really gilded with pure gold.
Before we could go ashore, I had to get our passports back from the front desk—normally they keep them for the duration of the cruise and handle all the immigrations issues at once, but Ukraine insists that everyone carry his own passport going ashore.
Which was the usual bureaucratic joke, of course. As we disembarked the ship, a very bored and disinterested Ukrainian immigration official briefly glanced at them while she chatted on her phone, and that was that.
Our tour here was to the Livadia Palace, the summer palace of Czar Nicholas before he was killed in 1917. It was also the location for the historic meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin in 1945.
Czars lived pretty good, as you might well imagine. The place is large but not absurdly so, beautifully designed and built. It sits high on the hill, overlooking the curve of the land and the Black Sea, cooled by breezes and surrounded by 68 acres of parkland. The vast formal room that was used for the conference is an architectural delight: balanced, airy, well-lit yet still comfortable. The royal apartments upstairs were impressive without being forbidding.
Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill sat in this very room.
Taken in the garden of the palace.
FDR had a downstairs room converted into his bedroom, being unable to climb the stairs. Stalin and Churchill stayed elsewhere. There are many photographs downstairs of the conference and its attendees, while upstairs are photos of the Royal Family, especially the only son, Alexi.
After our visit to the palace, we made our way back to the seaboard—with some amusement as our enormous bus (manufactured by Hyundai of Korea and decorated with hideous curtains and valences) struggled to navigate the very narrow streets filled with oncoming traffic.
Walking along the waterfront is interesting because of the people. There are thousands of tourists here from all over Ukraine and Russia, who flock to the tiny areas of “beach” as early as 6:30 in the morning to begin cultivating their skin cancers. The men wear tiny speedos, even the guys built like me. That’s not a good look, by the way. The women aren’t wearing much more, but that bothers me less. The beach is jammed, the water is jammed, it just doesn’t look like fun to me but thousands of them are doing it so I guess it’s alright.
This is only a small area where the people were enjoying the beach.
That's my room, 9th deck towards the stern
Walking back to the ship seemed like forever in the baking heat, but we made it, barely. We have come all this way to sit in the ship’s movie theater and watch Tina Fey and Steve Carrell in Date Night, but even Gail was laughing so it must be a great comedy.
After an adequate dinner (more caviar!) in the Dining Room, the evening entertainment was the pianist who narrated our transit of the Bosporous two days ago. He has a routine we have seen before, two years ago on the Celebrity Infinity rounding South America, and it hasn’t changed a note. A “musical trip around the world”, he plays music from 19 different countries accompanied by a drummer and a bass player and a slide show. It isn’t very deep entertainment: Micky and Linda left and went to bed early.
So that was day 8 of our trip. Next up: Sevastopol. We were supposed to start at 8:30, but got moved up to 8:15 because for some reason we can’t dock there but will have to anchor out and take tenders into shore. Better get to sleep early.
Nessebur, Bulgaria
At dinner on a cruise ship, there is often talk of who has “done” what country—and much associated bragging about having “done” this region of the world or that.
We spent today in Bulgaria, but it would be the grossest stretch of the word to claim that we in any possible sense of the word have “done” Bulgaria.
The biggest drawback of cruising is this dropping in like an extraterrestrial for a short visit and promptly leaving. You see very little, don’t meet anyone, don’t really get any sense at all of where you are or who lives there. You couldn’t learn less about the country if you stayed on the ship with a telescope.
Modern resort condos and a yacht club--the mark of the resort area
Our ship docked in Nessebur, a resort city. After a 50 yard stroll, we instantly boarded busses and headed out to the boonies, to visit some tiny burg where we theoretically saw how the people live here.
The drive was most interesting. The buildings here show a clear differentiation—before the end of communism, and after. The older places are simple brick blocks with tile roofs; the newer are the same modern architecture you see all over Europe, all done in bright pastels. Even the older homes all have two satellite dishes.
We passed many fields, of course. They grow a lot of sunflowers here, for the oil. Apparently, they are even making sunflower oil fuel. There are vineyards here; this is big wine country. Due to the economic situation, we saw a number of them which clearly had been left unattended for quite some time. It’s quite a sight, accustomed as we are to the perfectly manicured grape vines of Napa.
As in many places in the world, the young people are leaving the small villages here and moving to the big city for opportunity and adventure—the village we visited was down from a population of 1000 to just 200. On the other hand, now that Bulgaria is part of the common market it is convenient for people from the rest of Europe to come here to retire cheaply or buy second homes.
So we get to this little burg, and they show us a house. The old guy who lives there has a table full of chachis and souvenirs for sale right in front, of course. For some reason he shows us an ancient carding machine (to prepare the wool for spinning), then we troop into his house to see the room his ancient mother lives in. She sits there shaking a can trying to solicit tips until the guide tells her to knock it off. Across the street, four other women are selling handmade homespun socks.
This old poltroon was working every possible angle to score a tip
Another hundred yards down the street is the restaurant where we are to have our lunch. They put out a spread of some kind of local pancake, rolls, the local yogurt, fruit and cheese. Hardly gourmet, but I liked it.
The view from the back of the restaurant.
A potter working in a tiny stall, trying to sell souvenirs.
After we ate, it was back to the bus for the ride to the ship. There were a few minutes available for shopping in the port, but the same old tourist junk doesn’t interest me, so we got on the tender and motored back home.
Serenity sailed at 2, and the bridge game started at 2:30. The usual shipboard level of play left me pondering the heretical thought that I don’t really need to play every day—I could be taking piano lessons or decorating eggs or learning the rhumba.
Dinner tonight was at Silk Road, the ship’s Japanese restaurant. It was spectacular—by far the best food on the ship. We’ll be eating there at least one more time, and I’m looking forward to it.
The show tonight doesn’t look interesting, so we’re staying in, watching a movie on the TV and doing laundry. Just another domestic evening on the Black Sea.
Another day at sea
Saturday: We left Navplion yesterday right after everyone got back, and steamed through the night. Today, we are going though the Dardanelles and the Bosporus.
The Dardanelles straits are first: ranging from .75 to 4 miles wide, we passed through them early in the day. This is the area of the world where the Crimean war was fought, with Gallipoli on our left. My knowledge of history is woeful, but there is a huge monument here to the 250,000 who died.
After the Dardanelles, we enter the Marmara Sea, about 7 hours later we come to Istanbul. I felt like we were on a watery freeway, for all the ships going in the same direction with us. The amount of sea traffic here is stunning.
During the middle of the day, I listened to the lecture from Howard Fineman, Newsweek magazine writer and frequent NBC talking head. He spoke about the fractionalizing of the media due to the internet and how that impacts our political system. I see him often on MSNBC; it was fun to see him in person.
Lunch was the Grand Buffet—an ostentatious display of the culinary arts from the kitchen. Watching the people attack the food like a ravening horde amused me—this is a cruise ship, after all. You can have anything you want every night, as much as you want. Yet when they put a tray of lobster tails out, these people behaved as though they had never had the chance to eat a lobster before. The artistry and design of the food was magnificent, but it was severe overkill as far as I am concerned.
We played cards in the afternoon, for lack of anything better to do. The standard of play is so hideous that all you can do is laugh—but not at the table, at the poor rookies who are dropping tricks left and right. Micky and I had a 64% game, coming in second by a mile to the 74% someone else racked up. Gail and Linda won the other direction.
Around 5 pm, we approached Istanbul and the straits of the Bosporus. These straits are the dividing line between Europe and Asia—the older, business oriented section of Istanbul is in Europe, while the newer, mostly residential, part is in Asia.
Passing through Istanbul was beautiful and awe-inspiring. We were fortunate that the ship picks up a concert pianist who is Turkish but American educated (so his English is flawless) and very knowledgeable about the history and geography so he narrates the transit of the straits in the morning and the evening.
At dinner, we went to the specialty restaurant, Prego. This is basically a mediocre Italian restaurant with incredibly obsequious service. Gail ordered the carpaccio, and the maitre d’hôtel proceeded to make a major production of adding fresh lemon juice, then he added the oil, then he added the balsamic vinegar, then he came back with the black pepper. I thought for sure that this was a Monty Python sketch, and he would next appear holding a live duck to wave over the food for some mysterious purpose. For all that, my Insalata Caprese was bland and tasteless, and my fish the same. There is no extra charge for this restaurant, except for a nominal $7.00 for the staff. Tonight, we are trying the other specialty restaurant, Silk Road, with supposedly great Japanese food. Since this is a Japanese cruise line, perhaps it will truly shine.
The evening show was bland. Not bad, just bland. The ship’s dance instructors did a routine more athletic than rhythmic, the cruise director brought out his dummy and did a ventriloquist act, the singer from two nights ago reprised Old Man River, and there was a comedian whose specialty is to be non-offensive. No, really, it says so right in the ship newspaper.
Next stop: Nessebur, Bulgaria.
Navplion
Remember Good Morning Vietnam? Robin Williams is doing the weather report and he says “It’s hot. Damn hot. Africa hot.”
Well, in the last 6 weeks I’ve been in Africa, and I’ve been in Greece, and Greece is hotter. Much hotter. The thermometer on our “air conditioned motor coach” (as the brochure describes the bus at every stop) read 40° C this afternoon—104º Farenheit. Damn hot.
Navplion is a beautiful port city, which was in fact the first capital of Greece. Many of the older homes are gorgeous neo-classical palaces built during the time Venice ruled the area.
Fortress built in the harbor during the Turkish occupation
Our tour today was a bus ride to Corinth, to see the canal. This body of Greece is a land mass connected to the European continent by a small isthmus. Starting 2500 years ago, people wanted to cut a channel across that isthmus, to connect the Ionian sea with the Aegean sea, thereby avoiding the need to sail entirely around the body of the nation. Finally, in 1893, the same company that constructed the Suez Canal, run by Ferdinand de Lesseps, completed a 6KM canal, and the two seas were joined. It is not large enough for cruise ships or tankers, but many smaller ships make use of the canal, at tolls ranging up to €3000.
Westward view of the canal
So we looked at the canal, chugged an ice cold coke at the local cafeteria, and got back on the bus. They took us to some tiny winery to sample the local product, which wasn’t very impressive, and back to the bus. The ride through the countryside was pretty; they seem to be much more active and professional at agriculture here than they were in the last stop. This is citrus and grape country—hot and dry. It looks like the hills in southern California, but a bit rockier.
It isn’t really fair to make fun of their English, but I just can’t resist. Given the taste of the wine, this may not be an error….
While this area of the country is nicer and better developed than the last one, there is still too much trash by the road and too much graffiti on the buildings. The cell phone service continues to be impressive, with solid coverage almost everywhere. Part of our drive was on a new toll road, which was just beautiful—and much safer than the small side roads. I assume that it is standard for Greek drivers, but I noticed that our bus driver simply blew through the stop signs—not slowing down and rolling through as you or I might, but full speed ignoring the signs completely. Just a little added adventure for our day.
More caviar at dinner. I’m homing in on just the right mix of egg yolk and onion and have learned to keep a roll handy because I don’t much care for melba toast—who the heck was Melba anyway, and what has she done to my toast? The braised lamb shanks were succulent, and the evening cheese plate was magnificent, paired with an Austrian trockenbeerenauslese, one of my favorite dessert wines.
The show tonight was a rehash of Hollywood musicals, and not at all bad. It takes a certain hubris to think that the male singer can handle the role of Tevye, from Fiddler on the Roof, the Julie Andrews role from Victor Victoria and the emcee from Cabaret, with completely different ranges and styles, but I guess you do the best you can with what you have.
We’re hitting the sack early tonight to be up in time to watch as we transit the Dardanelles in the morning. I get to play bridge with Micky at 2:30, and we’re going to the Italian specialty restaurant for dinner. Should be another great day.
Katakolon
Docked this morning in Katakolon, Greece, a tiny town of 600; most of the homes here are summer places belonging to Italian gentry.
Despite its tiny size, Katakolon receives 700 cruise ships a year, which explains why the main street is entirely souvenir shops. The ships pull into port and disgorge their tourists who take buses to Olympia, the home of the original Olympics, and another great place to buy tourist junk.
If you want to actually see Olympia, you have to take the tour that walks 30 minutes over uneven ground to get to the ruins—that isn’t likely to be our style. So we took the bus that goes sort of near there, stops at hotel overlooking the valley for coffee, juice and pound cake, then goes straight to the tourist shops. It’s super hot here, about 95 today and humid. Even walking around the shops was too much for us, I know we would have hated the other tour.
Greece has been in the news about their economic crisis. Our guide told us that the nation has a population of only 10million, and there are over 700,000 government employees, an entirely untenable situation. As a result of the economic austerity measures imposed by the rest of the European Economic Community in exchange for a bailout, the price of gasoline has risen by 50% in the last month. They are paying €1.50/liter, about 15% more than the price I saw in Italy. That’s about $6.90/gallon, if I counted right.
All those public employees don’t seem to be doing much in terms of keeping the country looking good—there is more trash alongside the road here than I have ever seen in a presumably first world country. This lack of pride in the way their nation looks is not a good indicator, I think, of their drive to reform their system and get back on a good economic track.
Back onboard, some major napping broke out. We woke up just in time to rush down to dinner, where there was more than just sports talk at the table. We all had a good time today in Katakolon, although Micky and Linda were exhausted from hiking in the baking heat.
The evening entertainment was a man named Michel Bell, who was one of the Fifth Dimension 40 years ago and has made a career in theater and cabaret. Safe, secure and workmanlike, just like the company ordered.
Late night, we went to the 50’s and 60’s revue, and I even got Gail to dance with me a couple of times. Tomorrow, we hit Navplion, Greece. Another day, another adventure.
Over the bounding main
Sailing southeast today, down the eastern coast of Italy towards Katkolon, Greece. The Adriatic is as smooth as glass—not even the tiniest of whitecaps to be seen. It feels like this boat is on roller skates, just gliding smoothly to our next port.
Having nothing to do today, we did it well. For some reason we woke up at 5:30 this morning, which became 6:30 due to a time change. Room service brought breakfast, or a reasonable facsimile; they got most of the order right.
Cruise ships are amazing in what they can do with their huge manpower. The upstairs buffet was transformed into the “Asia Café” today—different linens, different uniforms, different almost everything. And right after lunch, they tore it all down and it was if nothing had happened. While the Asia Café was there, though, they put out a very nice lunch with foods from all over Asia. Not surprisingly, I concentrated on the sushi.
After lunch was bridge. Not bridge as we know it, but the cruise ship variation. Seven tables, five rounds of 3 boards. Including us, there were perhaps 4 pairs who were experienced players; the rest were beginners/social players. The standard of play is very poor, but everyone is happy to be there and the game moves smoothly.
Since this was the first night at sea, it was a formal night. I got all duded up, and wore the red, white and blue shoe with matching socks.
We started caviar for everyone. I could get used to this, although I had to press them for the blinis the menu promised but the waiter forgot. Then I had an excellent veal chop and Gail had the Black Cod. We had a formidable cheese plate for dessert, and toddled off to the evening show.
Cruise ship shows are aimed at elderly middle Americans. Simple, pure, corny are the key virtues, and the show delivered on cue. Nobody will ever be offended at one of these shows, or particularly stunned by the creativity. Tonight was a revue of Rodgers and Hammerstein music—nothing new, nothing challenging, just solid old standards that everyone knows the words to coupled with workmanlike production values.
Tomorrow we dock at Katakolon, Greece. It’s a town of 621 people, our ship will more than double their population. We’re taking the easy tour, Micky and Linda are going on the one with lots of walking on uneven surfaces. They are going to Olympus, and I think Micky is expecting to see Zeus himself. I hope it works out for him.
Totally Unauthorized 