Venizia
Micky told me the truth. I just ordered caviar at dinner and poof!! it arrived with all the fixings. This cruise ship life is pretty good. Dinner was just the four of us—we have a table for 8, but the others didn’t show up the first night.
We spent today in Venice, just walking around. The cruise ships dock a couple of miles from the town center, San Marco Square, so there is a shuttle. It’s a water-taxi, naturally. Venice has done a wonderful job of keeping the city looking just the way it did hundreds of years ago—no new architecture here. Motoring down the waterway to the square, I kept thinking that this looked just like it must have when Marco Polo returned from China.
Looking down one of the canals--notice how the tower is leaning, as the city sinks into the mud and mire.
Once on land, the big difference is the thousands of tourists infesting the city. Venice is comprised of hundreds of islands, slowly sinking into the Adriatic Sea, connected by canals and hundreds of steep-sided bridges you are constantly climbing up and over. The ‘streets’ are for walking only, there are no vehicles. In the downtown/tourist area, every storefront is either a ristorante or a souvenir shop—although some of those souvenirs are very expensive Murano glass or Brioni suits. You can drop a lot of Euros here.
There are 2 or 3 steps under the water--because of the way the city is sinking
Okay, I can't pass up a fruitstand photo.
On the waterway, we passed a couple of serious yachts:
This is the most beautiful boat I have ever seen.
The big blue one appears to be from Latvia—it might well belong to a Russian billionaire.
At dinner tonight, we met our tablemates. Turns out that the two men are sports fanatics, so I may as well bring a book to dinner for the rest of the trip. When the conversation is about what is the worst trade the Giants ever made, I have no interest in the answer and nothing to contribute.
Dinner had another surprise: the much vaunted Crystal dining experience came up a big time loser when my entrée was dreadful and had to be sent back. It was a venison stew, and tasted like it had been on the stove for weeks. Fortunately, the salmon and halibut that replaced it were decent, if not great.
After dinner, we headed off to the big trivia contest. Today was the 20th anniversary of the launching of the first Crystal ship, the Crystal Harmony. The trivia contest offered an enormous prize—a very fancy, expensive dinner for the entire winning team in a special room. Sadly, the questions were all about the Crystal Cruise line, so my phenomenal breadth of useless knowledge was even more useless than usual, and Mike’s encyclopedic grasp of sports trivia had no value at all.
We managed to get 7 out of 10 answers, but the winning team got 9. One of the questions was “who is the president of Crystal Cruise lines?” and my guess of Hideo Watanabe wasn’t even close. (The answer turns out to be Gregg Michel. Spelling counted)
Wednesday is a full day at sea, so we get to play bridge. I’ll report the scores tomorrow.
We may just stay in New York
So here we are in the Admiral’s Club at JFK.
Gail has a glass of wine and a computer to play Bejeweled Blitz on. We may just spend the next two weeks right here.
We’re going on another adventure
Another day, another adventure
This has been a strange year. A tremendous amount of travel, ranging from the very primitive to the very luxurious.
Last month, I was travelling like a poor college student, staying in an “inn” with the bathroom down the hall, where each guest got his very own roll of toilet paper to carry and the towel, singular, was the size and softness of a postage stamp. It’s OK, I was on a volunteer/service trip and the experience was priceless.
Now, we’re off on the polar opposite of that trip–2 weeks of high class loafing on the Crystal Serenity with Micky and Linda Bandler. We fly to JFK, then Madrid, then Venice, where we get on the ship. Then stooging around the Greek Isles and the Black Sea until we land in Istanbul, and fly home through Madrid and DFW.
Everyone I know who likes to cruise just raves about Crystal, to the point where I think I should hear celestial harps and horns every time someone whispers the name “Crystal”. I’m sure it’s a nice boat, but it’s going to be hard to live up to the advance billing. Micky says I can have caviar at every meal–and if that’s really true, I’m getting the entire cost of the trip back in Beluga and Mallosol.
Cruise ships like to gouge you for everything–there is a day trip available to the Lamborghini Factory in Italy, and the cost is $1800 per person for the one day trip. No, you don’t get to keep the car for that kind of money, either. Internet access is ghastly expensive, too, but that won’t stop me–I’ll be posting as often as I can afford it. Maybe they’ll take some of their own caviar back in trade for wireless time?
Happy Birthday Lorene
Gail, Lorene and Joyce
Lorene Lamb had a birthday party tonight–she took us out to dinner, along with Dick and Joyce Hart.
Lots of people have birthdays, but not many of us will have 87 of them, as Lorene has. Yep, that tiny birdlike woman flitting rapidly around the Oakland bridge games bossing us all around is Eighty Seven Years Old. She was born in Alameda, lived just one year in San Leandro, and has spent all the rest of her life right here in Oakland. She lives downtown, in the heart of the renaissance, and walks almost everywhere–which probably explains her phenomenal condition.
We went to Hibiscus, another of the new, hot, hip, trendy restaurants opening in Oakland. Open for about 6 months, it is doing excellent business just across the street from the Ice Rink, at 1745 San Pablo.
The cuisine here is described as Caribbean-Creole. I started with the Spicy lamb with Grits, which I enjoyed completely although the lamb wasn’t even a little spicy, even for a noted spice sissy like me. Gail had the Romaine Salad, which was really just a Ceasar, but that’s fine with her. Dick and Joyce shared the Phoulourie, split pea fritters. I didn’t see any leftovers I could spear, darn it.
On to the entrées:
Gail and Joyce both tucking into a plate of Fried Chicken--there was plenty for both of them.
You’d expect Fried Chicken to be a standard at this place, and you’d be right. Both Joyce and Lorene ordered it, and they both took more than half of it home. The portions are enormous. The Chicken was great; their dinners also came with a fingerling potato salad that did absolutely nothing for me. Not particularly tasty, and with a strong coating of lemon juice which is just, well, wrong.
That's a big honkin' slab of pork chop.
I had the maple syrup brined Pork Chop. Nobody will ever leave this restaurant hungry, it was about the biggest chunk of pork I’ve ever seen on a plate. And I enjoyed every bite.
Gail had the Amerindian Pepperppot, (oxtail, pigs feet, short rib,
Tri-tip, onion rings, fries. What more could you ask for?
Down at the Farm
Great wine and food can make up for so-so bridge.
I played 2 sessions of desultory bridge yesterday with Tom Jacobson, but at least we were in Sonoma. The playing site was fine, the refreshments were great and we were close enough to the town square to enjoy walking around buying things between sessions.
The good part was after the game–Gail had played with Barbara, so the four of us drove over to Farm, an incredible restaurant on Highway 12 between Sonoma and Napa. It is part of a resort, strangely hidden from the road, but well worth finding. Tom’s wife Barbara joined us.
At Vesu, a couple of weeks ago, the complaint was that the place was ultra-modern and sterile. Well, Farm is ultra-modern and warm. There is an open arcade with cunning covered firepits and plush chairs, then the bar, then the dining room. The wine vault is part of the decor, with changing lights add to the mood without being intrusive.
The menu is California modern, but leaning towards heartier dishes rather than the more frou-frou, delicate variety. The wine list is very upscale California.
I started with a cold coconut-melon soup, beautifully presented in a bowl with all the different melon pieces cut into unique shapes, then the soup poured on at the table. The delicate and nuanced flavors well matched the artful presentation.
My entrée was the Liberty Farms Duck breast, to which I added the summer truffle supplement. The truffles were something new for me, but what’s life without adventure? They are much lighter in flavor and aroma than the winter truffles, but they cost about 1/5 as much, too. In any event, I enjoyed them, as did Barbara Jacobson, who had them on her lamb.
Duck breast with summer truffles
Same plate, 15 minutes later
Gail had the lamb as well, and it was truly spectacular. Tom scarfed down every bit of his filet, and Barbara Hanson polished off her olive-oil poached halibut.
The two Barbaras and Tom shared a cheescake; Gail and I had the cheese plate and a glass of very good Australian port. There were no leftovers here, either.
The tab wasn’t cheap: this is an upscale resort in the Plump Jack group (read:Gavin Newsom and the Getty family), but we would all go back in a heartbeat.
Outside the art gallery
Sternly rejecting formalism in a newly post-structuralist world, the artist here conflates the “I” with the “you”, forming a new solipsism from which to view reality.
Are there no proofreaders left, anywhere?
Story of a scam
If you post your email address in public and on websites and newsgroups the way I do, you get a lot of spam and scams and phishing attempts. I get enough offers of Viagra to turn the old folks home into the French Foreign Legion. Visit this site www.adinfusion.com and learn more. I’ll be collecting hundreds of millions from orphan accounts in Nigeria any day. But today was a first–I was invited to be the loser in a really well designed scam.
First thing this morning, I get an email ostensibly from a friend of mine–correct email address and all.
HELLO,
I’m writing this with tears in my eyes,I’m sorry i didn’t inform you about my trip,I had a trip to the United Kingdom(LONDON) and a bizarre thing happened to me.I was mugged at a gun point last night, it happened at the park of the Hotel were i lodged but thank God i wasn’t hurt,all cash,credit card and cell-phone were stolen off me…but luckily for me i still have my life and passports with me,I was able to make contact with the Uk Police and i was directed to the Embassy, but they seems to be taking things too slow.I need your help so urgently.. My flight leaves pretty soon but i am having problems sorting out the hotel bills I need a quick loan to get things fixed out here, I promise to refund as soon as i get back home.. please reply asap. Learn here the right way to pay off payday loans online.
Well, that’s a pretty sad story, and I’m the kind of guy who would help a friend, but there might be a question or two here. My friend is an educated woman, why is the grammar so poor? Wouldn’t she capitalize “i”? Why would an American use the British phrase “sorting out”?
So there is no doubt in my mind that this is just a scam–somebody hacked her yahoo.com mail account and sent this to everyone in her addressbook, hoping to find a few suckers to wire some cash.
Just for the heck of it, I replied, asking for directions to send help. Within a very few minutes, I got this miracle of run-on sentences:
I am so glad you replied back the hotel management has been kind to let have an access to a library to get across to anybody to help me since my luggages was also taken away,I am full of panic now and the police only asked me to write a statement about the incident and directed me to the embassy,i have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively and right now i really need your help cause my return flight leaves in few hours and am having problem in sorting out the hotel bills and i need you to loan me some Moneyfall so that i can pay the bills and get a flight back home tothe airport,all i need to sort the hotel bill and take a cab to the hotel is $1300…i promise you that as soon as i get back home i will def refund it back to you.
here are the details you will be needing at the western union to get the money wired to me below..
NAME:XXXX XXXXXX
LOCATION:LONDON UNITED KINGDOMKindly get back to me with the confirmation number(MTCN#)
i will be here waiting for you…THANKS
Success on the security theater front
I’m all in favor of not getting blown up.
I just have no truck with the modern “security theater” apparatus, which is designed to protect politicians and patronage jobs a hell of a lot more than it will ever protect us from bad guys intent on doing evil. “Security” is a new watchword which mean that the powers that be can do any damned thing they please, without explanation or justification. It is simply impossible to argue with anyone claiming that yet another intrusion into our lives is for our own good. And I’m really tired of companies who won’t talk to me until I answer too many damned intrusive questions, which are only for their marketing benefit, claiming it is for “security”.
So I was thrilled today to read this article, from James Fallows in The Atlantic:
Previously in this series here. A reader who works in the main Citibank building in Manhattan writes to report:
My office building is the world headquarters of Citibank. In the wake of 9/11 they decided they needed increased security and so have required all bags and packages to go through an x-ray machine. You could be carrying Dirty Harry’s revolver in a shoulder holster under your jacket,, or ten pounds of plastic explosive taped to your chest, but your attaché case had to be screened. Amazingly, after nearly nine years of doing this, they stopped this week, although the announcement from building management reassuringly told us that the x-ray machines are in storage and can be wheeled out at a moment’s notice.
Within my experience, this is just about the only occasion in which security theater has not been subject to a one-way ratchet effect — once a “security” measure is adopted, no matter how foolish it is, no one ever has the courage to discontinue it. Is there hope that the broader society will follow this brave beacon?
To the reader’s final question: maybe we can find out who had the guts and good sense to make this decision about one (important) building in one (very important) city, and unleash that person to work on the “Threat Level is Orange” charts that symbolize security theater at its most mindless. As always, we take our good news where we can find it. I welcome any similar accounts of the security-theater ratchet being reversed.
Fireworks by the lake
The Liberty Girls celebrate the Fourth
More ways in which Florida is different–they sell fireworks EVERYWHERE. Even the local grocery store has a display of them–with a big “No Smoking” sign attached, in spite of the fact that smoking is prohibited indoors anyway.
So while we were waiting for the official display to begin, there were private displays going off in all directions–and not just sparklers, either. Big one, soaring high in the air, whistling, screaming and exploding.
Then we can look to the southwest, and see the HUGE displays from the big parks, Disneyworld, Epcot, Universal. To the east 25 miles is the beach–and more fireworks.
Then, about 9:30, the city of Orlando sets off **its** display, right across the street from where we are all partying on the balcony. The experience is just breathtaking–the huge explosions echoing in the concrete canyons of the city, the smell of cordite, the almost endless procession of awe-inspiring pyrotechnics.
I used to watch the fireworks in Pleasant Hill, sitting on the lawn at Diablo Valley College. This is better by orders of magnitude.
Karl and Susan’s party was no slouch, either. About 20 people, some bridge players some not. Their old friends, Skippy and Tits showed up. That’s right, Tits. Her idea, not mine. And what grown man is named Skippy? Perhaps he’s the heir to a peanut butter fortune. Remember that they have friends in California whose kids are named Sparky and Kuhney. People with strange names seem to follow the Rowleys around.
I ate too many of Karl’s rimaki–bacon wrapped water chestnuts. Had a humungous piece of peach/blueberry pie. Multiple glasses of Bailey’s. We fly home in the morning, which is good because this is just about all the fun I can stand.
The Wildside of Orlando
Our fantastic waitress. Or the waitress of my fantasies. Works either way.
There are a few things I really like here, and the Wildside restaurant is one of them
Located just a couple of blocks from where Susan and Karl live, the Wildside is the kind of hip, happening, loud, fun place that I always wanted to fit into, but never did. Now I’m too old to care, but the place is still cool.
Where else can you get an order of gator bites? Yep, real alligator, deep fried and tasty. The Heineken girls will be there next Thursday, too.
The customers are a bit on the outrageous side, too.
As is normal for a tropical climate, the restaurant is as much outside as inside. Inside has is cooler and drier, but louder. Outside is balmy yet pleasant with large ceiling fans.
The food is pretty much on the macho side, with burgers and sliders and BBQ darned near everything, besides the gator. They do offer a couple of really good entrée salads: I had the Wild Thai and Gail had the Taco salads.
This being Florida, there is one mandatory item on the dessert list:
If I can't have a slice of key lime pie, I'm not coming to Florida.
Since we’re going home in the morning and having a party tonight, this was my last chance to get a slice of the local heaven. Yes, everyone else had to share with me, even though they chuckled at me when I ordered it.
Totally Unauthorized 