walkerjanem – Page 3 – Jane and Dave’s Adventures

Blue Ridge Parkway and Tail of the Dragon: 9/26 to 10/3/2020

We left home about 1:00 PM on Saturday, September 26, 2020, heading north in my “new to me” 2018 Porsche 911 Carrera S, Cabriolet. We spent the first night in Brunswick, Georgia, and reached our first destination, Roanoke, Virginia, on the next day.

Last year, we traveled on the Skyline Drive and parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway, but did not finish. If I remember correctly, we got off in Ashville. So most of this trip is new territory.

Dave had ordered a couple of books on the Blue Ridge Parkway. One gave information at various mile markers, “Guide to the Blue Ridge Parkway” (guide or guide book), and the second gave information on hikes along the parkway. Unfortunately, book #2 did not get much use.

We intended to head south and get on the parkway about mile marker 122, but the parkway was closed at that entrance due to repairs and maintenance, so we got on the parkway at mile marker (mm) 136, driving southwest to the end at mm 469.1.

Dave had previewed the guide and highlighted points of interest. There are many overlooks with beautiful views. Some of the exhibits are closed due to the coronavirus, but all the beautiful, long views are always open 😁.

Monday, September 28, 2020: The section from mm 136 to 292, covered agriculture and rural life. We will not finish the whole section in one day. Dave has our trip split up and we will spend 4 days traveling to the end, mm 469.1. There are many cemeteries along the parkway, mostly family cemeteries from the settlers in this area. Lots of children, who died in their infancy, are buried in these old cemeteries. A few cabins also survive, as well as interesting, little snippets about the settlers. For example, Sweet Annie, a widow, had frequent soldier guests which her neighbors took a dim view of. We saw an old one room school house, Kelly Schoolhouse, which is no longer in use.

This cabin was just past the school. It was used by the Trail family in the 1890’s.

The Trail family lived in this log cabin in the 1890’s. mm 154.5

We did see some wildlife over the four days – deer, wild turkeys and chipmunks. This is the best photo, though – and only deer.

We stopped to see the Mabry Mill, which is the most photographed spot on the parkway. There is a walkway past several interesting exhibits of rural life. The demonstrations were closed due to the virus.

At mm 189.9 was a cabin belonging to the sister in law of Orlena Pucket, who lived in a cabin adjacent. Orlena delivered more than 1,000 babies in her career as a midwife, delivering the last baby in 1939 at the age of 102! Orlena herself bore 24 (!) children, none of which survived much past 2 years of age.

We had hoped to visit the Blue Ridge Music Center – but it is currently open on limited days due to the virus, and not on Monday when we were there.

We ended the day at mm 215.9, and stayed in Galax, Virginia.

HOTELS during Coronavirus: Our plan for the whole trip is to stay in Hilton properties, mostly Hampton Inns because we have generally found them clean and comfortable. Our first two nights, our room had a sticker on the door indicating it had been cleaned and sanitized. Hampton’s usually have a breakfast buffet, but our first two nights they offered us coffee and a bagged breakfast. Galax, VA Hampton was much looser in their protocols. No sticker on the door, and a wide open breakfast buffet. We had brought breakfast bars, and that’s what I had every morning. Dave could not pass up the biscuits and gravy, so this was his one splurge. I was pretty shocked as throughout the whole trip, with this one exception, there were social distancing markers on the floors, and in the elevators. One other breakfast buffet buffet was open later in the trip, but the only allowed one person or one family at a time. There was coffee available, and 2 out of the 8 mornings, the hotel did not have “dark roast” because of the coronavirus (?)…don’t quite understand this oddity.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020: The weather today is lousy. It is rainy and foggy and we can’t see anything.

We crossed the state line, leaving Virginia and entering North Carolina. We passed the Cumberland Knob area which is where construction of the parkway began in 1935. More than 100 men were involved in the construction, The first section was 12.49 miles heading south from the VA/NC state line. We plugged along, and Dave read from our guide about the places we were passing, but since we couldn’t see much we didn’t stop. The guide does have interesting stories about the settlers in this area. Martin Brinegar earned money by making shoes by hand and selling them for $1. James Caudill, a 16 year old from Elkin, NC was the first to settle in the Doughton Park area arriving after the Civil War ended. He sired 22 children by his first two wives. His third wife outlived him even though he lived to the age of 98. One of his sons, Martin, raised 16 children. Dave had researched a winery in this area. It was rainy and foggy, so we decided to exit the parkway at mm 246 and find the winery. This was the Thistle Meadows Winery. It didn’t opened until noon, and we arrived a few minutes early. The proprietor saw us, came out to the car with a big umbrella and said he was ready for us! We were offered a choice of 6 wines, 1 ounce pours, out of a total of 17 wines they had in stock, for $5. We both sampled, and opted for 6 of the 10 dry wines, and we pretty much chose the same wines. This winery does not grow their own grapes. All the wines we tasted were good. As a bonus, he offered us one pour each of his sweet wines. I tried “Topia Red” which was a coffee flavored, port style wine. Since Dave had stepped away for a moment, I chose “Horse Stomp Red” for him to try. It has the taste of raspberries blended with a white Zinfandel, and enjoyed with chocolate. He liked it and bought two bottles of the “Horse Stomp Red” as well as a bottle of “Devils Garden White” which is their Chardonnay, and a bottle of “Feather Bed Red”, a Cabernet Sauvignon. Some other folks wandered in and did tastings while we were there, probably looking for entertainment on this rainy, foggy, day. We got back on the parkway at mm 246, and continued on to mm 258.7. There is a “Northwest Trading Post” here. It is a gift shop specializing in handmade crafts. While we perused the crafts, we did not make any purchases, but took advantage of the restrooms. Since we could not see anything, we decided to leave the parkway here, and drive straight to Boone, which is where we planned to spend the night. We ate a late lunch in a cute cafe, Our Daily Bread, and ended up getting take out pizza for our dinner. Just a dreary day.

Wednesday, September 30, 2020: We got back on the parkway at mm 291.8 and backtracked to am 285.1. Fortunately, it is a beautiful, sunny day. A little cool for us…the mornings have been in the upper 40’s. We are not early morning people, which is good, because by the time we get going, it is in the 50’s. There is a lot of information about Daniel Boone in our guide. He was born in Reading, PA in 1734, to a Quaker family, the 6th of 11 children. His aunt taught him to read and write. He received a rifle for his 12th birthday. When he was 16, his family moved to the Yadkin Valley in NC. Five years later, he left to take part in the French and Indian War. He later returned to marry his sweetheart, Rebecca Bryan. He helped cut the Wilderness Road 300 miles from eastern Virginia through the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River. The settlement at the end of the Wilderness Road was named Boonesboro in his honor. He moved his family to KY, later to Louisiana Territory, ending up in Missouri with his grandchildren. He dies in 1820 at the age of 85. Boone’s trace, at mm 285.1, is where it is said Boone crossed the Blue Ridge. We turn around, and head southwest again. MM 289.8 is the Yadkin Valley overlook, elevation 3830. Yadkin Valley was the home to Boone’s family.

The section from mm 292 to mm 380 is called Grandfather and Black Mountains.

We stopped at mm 294. This is Flat Top Manor, the summer mansion home of Moses H. Cone. He purchased 3800 acres, near Blowing Rock, NC during the 1890’s and early 1900’s. His mammoth textile mills produced high quality denim. He died in 1908, only a few years after completing his mansion. The 23 room mansion was filled with art and objects from Asia. Most of the furnishings and lumber were hauled by oxen from Lenoir, NC. The Cones were almost self-sufficient, with their own dairy, vegetable gardens, carbide gas plant, and local employees. The mansion, open Thursday through Sunday, was closed when we were there on a Wednesday ☹️. Otherwise, it is a visitor center, with craft exhibitions and demonstrations. we did wander around the closed mansion, peered into a couple of windows, admired his view from the sweeping front porch, and walked down to the carriage house (where the public bathrooms we’re located).

After leaving Flat Top Manor, we pass the Sims Creek overlook. A man named Hamp Sims lived nearby. He slept in a coffin and enjoyed scaring visitors who stopped by. We stopped at a viewing spot for Calloway Peak, the highest point on Grandfather Mountain, 5,964 feet, otherwise known as Grandfather’s nose. We were not able to picture a “nose”. We drove on the Linn Cove Viaduct.

I have to confess that this is a stock photo from the internet, because we couldn’t find a place to stop. The Linn Cove Viaduct is 1,243 feet long and marked the official completion of the parkway. It was the missing link, left unfinished for 20 years because of easement problems and environmental issues. Hugh Morton, owner of a Grandfather Mountain, refused access because the earlier proposals would have caused severe damage to the rugged and rocky Linn Cove area of Grandfather Mountain. The compromise was an elevated roadway, as S-curve skirting the perimeter of the mountain. The design required connecting 153 precast sections that were built off the mountain and matched to fit the preceding section. The advanced construction technology eliminated the need for blasting, an access road, and heavy machinery.

We stopped at the Grandfather Mountain Overlook. Grandfather Mountain is the highest mountain in the Blue Ridge, elevation 5,939 (or 5,964 according to our guidebook). It’s name is from the jagged peaks that create a profile of an old man (if you have a good imagination). Grandfather Mountain is one of the oldest mountains in the world.

At mm 316.4, we stop at Linville Falls. Finally, we are going to do a little hike. Linville Falls is one of the most famous waterfalls in the Blue Ridge.

Dave had researched another winery, the Linville Falls Winery. So after our little hike, we exited the parkway at mm 317 and after a little effort, we found the winery. The directions on the website were not very good, so we turned the wrong direction. After driving around awhile, we stopped and asked for directions. The location was actually very close to the parkway, we just should have turned right instead of left. It is a very pleasant location with tables outside, offering nice views. The only negative was they had two fire pits and we did not like the smell of the smoke. We found a table with minimal smoke heading towards us. Because of coronavirus, they are not doing “tastings”, but offer “flights” of four 2oz pours for $12, and you get to keep the glass as a souvenir. Dave and I shared the “flight” and purchased some cheese and crackers to cleanse our palates which turned out to be lunch. The wines we chose for our flight were: Brandy Aged Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Sauvignon, Red Barn Blend, and Petit Verdot. Since I was driving, I did not want anymore wine, but Dave had a glass of one of the wines we tasted, Petit Verdot, and the waiter kindly brought me a bottle of water. Dave really liked the Petit Verdot, so we bought a bottle. As we went to leave, Dave inquired whether the glass his wine came in was ours to keep, too. The waiter said “no, but what am I going to do if I come out after you leave and the glass is gone?”. Of course, I took that as meaning it was ok to take the 2nd glass. Dave felt guilty and left him a nice tip. After our wine stop, we got back on the parkway and continued.

There are several references to the Revolutionary War and Civil War in our guide, especially from this point forward.

We stopped at Gillespie Gap, on the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. In 1780, British Major Patrick Ferguson sent word to American Colonel Isaac Shelby that if the rebellion did not cease, the British Army would march over the mountains and “hand their leaders, and lay waste to the country with fire and sword”. American Colonel had contacted fellow Revolutionary leaders and rallied their forces to go on the offensive against the British. Shelby and fellow Revolutionary leader Jon Sevier led a group of 1,100 soldiers through Gillespie Gap en route to face British Major Ferguson, meeting at Kings Mountain, SC, where they won a crucial victory. Major Ferguson was killed. The important victory by the group, remembered as the Overmountain Men for their march to the battle, was one of a series of events leading to the British surrender at Yorktown.

There are 26 tunnels on the parkway in North Carolina, and we are at the Little Switzerland Tunnel which is the northernmost tunnel in NC.

We stop to read about groundhogs, frequently known as woodchucks or “whistle pigs”, which are the parkways most frequently seen animal – but we don’t see any. At mm 342.2, we read about the Black Mountains, the highest range in the East with an average elevation of 6,000 feet. We stopped at the Mt. Mitchell Overlook which is the highest mountain in the east at 6,684 feet. My. Mitchell is part of the Black Mountain range.

At mm 361.2, we get a view of Glassmine Falls. The 800 foot falls are so named because at the base of the falls is an old mica mine. Mica is also known as isinglass, and by the locals as glass.

At mm 370.3, we entered the Ashville Watershed. The watershed is one of the largest city owned watersheds in the a United States. This watershed supplies 30 million gallons of water daily and protects one of the few remaining spruce-fir forests in the area.

A long, productive day, but we end the day in Ashville at a Hampton where we’ve stayed before, and dinner at a Carrabbas’s where we’ve eaten before.

Thursday, October 1, 2020. MM 380 to 390 is Ashville and vicinity. We have been to Ashville and visited the Biltmore estate previously. Getting back on the parkway, we stop at the Parkways newest visitor center. We had hoped to see the film shown here, “The Blue Ridge Parkway -America’s Favorite Journey”, but the film is not being shown because of coronavirus. There are some large scale photos and exhibits, but they are roped off to keep people from touching anything. Moving on….

MM 390 to 469 is High Mountain Wilderness Views. This last section boasts the highest peaks on the parkway. We drive at elevations above 5,000 feet. This section has several tunnels, as well. According to our guide, there are black bears in the Blue Ridge. This doesn’t surprise me because we saw a black bear last year. According to our guidebook, black bears do not hibernate. They sleep a good deal in the winter, but their metabolism remains normal. In true hibernation, body temperature drops significantly and heart rate slows to one or two beats per minute.

We enter the Pisgah range, and stop to check out the Mount Pisgah Inn. The complex is along the parkway and includes rooms with balconies and private porches, a restaurant, a gift shop, camp store and restrooms.

Our next stop is at Cherry Cove at mm 425.7. In September, monarch butterflies fly through this narrow gap as they journey toward Mexico. Other butterflies can’t attempt such distances, but monarchs are more like migratory birds, able to fly several thousand miles. We see people on lawn chairs, watching to see the butterflies, even though it is October.

Wolf Mountain Overlook at 424.8 looks at the last stronghold of wolf in the area. The last remaining wolves were shot by farmers in the early 1900’s. Today, wolves have been reintroduced in Great Smokey Mountain National Park.

The highest point on the parkway is Richland Balsam Overlook. We had a little picnic lunch here. We had purchased sandwiches from the Mount Pisgah Inn camp store, and ate them looking out toward Richland Mountain, elevation 6,410.

We briefly drove through the Waterrock Knob Overlook, but remembered stopping there last year. There were many cars here, so we would not have stopped because there were too many people for us to social distance. On the way up to the Overlook is a plaque honoring engineer R. Getty Browning, who played an important part in the present day location of the parkway through NC.

As we traveled this section today, and approach Cherokee, NC., there were references in our guidebook of the Cherokee Indians. Apparently the Cherokee sided with the British during the Revolutionary War, and with the Confederates during the Civil War. At mm 458.9, the Cherokee a Reservation can be traced to a band of Cherokee who took refuge in the Smokies when their tribe was forcibly removed to Oklahoma.

I have not attached many long view photos, because they just don’t capture the beauty.

We end the day at the end of the parkway, mm 469.1, and drive 2 miles to Cherokee. Cherokee is interesting, but not particularly pretty. There are casinos, which is the only place you can get alcohol as Cherokee is dry. Therefore, no chain restaurants, only Mom & Pop places that serve meals, but no adult beverages. And, lots of restaurants did not make it with the shut down due to the coronavirus. We did not want to go to the casino just to eat, besides the fact it was valet parking or pay to self park. So we got fried chicken from a grocery store for dinner.

Friday, October 2, 2020. We are about 90 minutes away from the “Tail of the Dragon”, on US 129. Deals Gap is a mountain pass along the NC-TN state line, bordering the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Just south of the gap is an unincorporated community that shares the same name, located at the intersection of US 129 and NC 28. The area is popular with sports car and motorcycle enthusiasts who cross the gap into TN to drive along “ The Dragon”, famous for its 318 curves in 11 miles. Before we get to Deals Gap, we saw a line of convertibles heading south that must have been part of a club, and a bunch of Porsche’s, also probably part of a club, assuming they drove the “Tail of the Dragon” early. We got to what I consider the southern starting point about 11:00AM, and perused the store. There is a huge statue of a dragon outside, with parts of vehicles attached that had wrecked on the 11 mile road. There are lots of motorcycles here, and several sports cars. But more motorcycles.

We headed out, and fortunately there was no one close behind me and no one too close in front of me. I was following a car, but he was moving pretty good, so not an issue. The curves are curvy, but banked pretty good. At one point Dave saw a policeman on a motorcycle on one of the curves. It was a fun drive and I’m glad we did it. While this stretch of road is famous for its curves, there are lots of curvy roads in North Carolina. Last year, the road driving to Chimney Rock was pretty curvy!

Time to head home! Just to prove that I do let Dave drive my car:

We arrived home Saturday evening about 6:30PM.

Bangkok to Singapore 2018

01/21 – 01/23/18 We left Englewood about noon for our flight out of Miami. Dave wanted to get to the Business class lounge at the airport so he could watch the Patriots game before boarding our flight to Bangkok via Zürich. Unfortunately, as we were chatting away, Dave took River Road (out of habit to go to the Tampa airport) instead of 776 to Veterans Highway, adding a little time to our trip. Fairly uneventful trip to Miami, except I had two maps open, a general map of how to get to Miami from earlier in the day, and one for the rental car return address. Of course I opened the wrong map and it took us to downtown Miami. Dave kept saying it didn’t seem right, and I kept saying that’s where the directions are taking us. So our drive ended up being a little longer than expected. That may have been a good thing, because when we got to the airport business lounge, the Patriots were losing. Fortunately, they pulled it out, and our vacation was
back to a good start. Dave enjoying a glass of wine sitting on the plane.

The business class lounge at MIA was not very nice. It wasn’t very clean and the furniture seemed old and uncomfortable. However, the business class ride on Boeing 777-300er was very nice. Our seats folded flat into a bed, and it was the first time I actually got some sleep on a plane. Dave got some sleep, too. We landed in Zurich about 10:30 am local time, which is 4:30am Florida time. The airport is like a maze to us, maybe because we haven’t been here before. The weather in Zurich was not very nice – rainy and about 40 degrees. We went to the business class lounge to freshen up a bit, and then inquired about going into downtown Zurich as I had read there is a very fast train into the city. We had about a 7 hour layover, so plenty of time. We had brought warmer clothes in preparation of going into Zurich – older clothes so we could throw them away after Zurich. It took us awhile to get out of the airport and get tickets for the train. I think it was about 12:20 by the time we finally boarded the train and left the station. Arriving downtown Zurich, it is a huge train station and it took us awhile to figure out how to get out of the train station. We’d picked up a map when we bought our round trip tickets (about $15usd per person) and the map had a little walking tour. We walked on Cobble stones in the old town, and along the Limmat river, down to Lake Zurich. We had some very pretty long views of the mountains in the distance with snow on top, but pictures were hard because the weather was so lousy. We saw swans and ducks swimming in the very clear river water. We saw lots of fountains. There were lots of cute little boutique shops and restaurants, as well as some very high end stores (Hermès, etc.).

Picture is of pine cones surrounding door of flower shop.

You could eat outdoors at many of the restaurants, and some places had a fuzzycover on the chair to keep you warm (40 degrees, remember). We thought the food prices were pretty high, $20 for a hamburger, $5 for an iced tea, etc. we did not convert any money, so we couldn’t spend any money. Dave read where Zurich has overtaken Tokyo as the worlds most expensive city. We tried to go into a church as they had stained glass windows made by Marc Chagall. But there was a charge and they only accepted Swiss dollars or Euros. We walked around for about 90 minutes, and it started to rain harder, so we decided to head back to the airport. Before our little excursion into Zurich, I could tell Dave was dragging his feet a bit – but after we got the train tickets and got on the train, he warmed up to the idea. We had planned to walk around longer, but the weather was just too wet. Dave is great with directions and did a great job following the little walking tour, however, our map got very wet.

I was surprised that we did not see more people on our walk in Zurich. I also thought the airport didn’t seem very crowded. We got back to business lounge at Zurich airport, and I asked Dave if he was apprehensive about leaving the airport to go into downtown Zurich. He said no, it just seemed to him that I was a little unprepared, but then he found my research notes and realized I had researched taking the train from the airport into the city.

Another great flight in business class from Zurich to Bangkok. Arriving in Bangkok, where the temperature is about 90 degrees, we are surprised to see very few people in shorts. Our luggage arrived! Always good news. Interestingly, the TSA locks were gone from one of thebags. Nothing seemed to be missing – I guess they didn’t like old people’s clothes 😁 .We went to the information booth and asked a young woman there to write the address of our hotel in Thai so we could show it to the taxi driver. We got $10,000 thai baht which was about$333USD and paid about $10usd in conversion fees. But we wanted to have money to pay the taxi driver. Taxi driver was pretty good, but did not speak much English. He used google maps to find our hotel, and looked up their phone number to confirm it was the right hotel. He called the hotel, probably to ask directions, but spoke Thai, so no clue what he said. Lots and lots of traffic on the highways. I think our hotel is about 40km from the airport. We were told at the airport it would take about 40 minutes, which was probably about right. The taxi fare was under 400 baht, but Dave gave him 500 baht, apparently a generous tip from what I’ve read. We are still struggling with converting Thai baht to USD, however, the food prices seem very reasonable. Dave was checking the room service menu, and lamb curry was under $10USD.

We ate in a hotel restaurant, and had a shrimp Caesar salad sandwich (!), a Crab meat sandwich, Coke Zero and a coffee for about $17 USD. Considering it is in the hotel restaurant, I thought that was reasonable. The area surrounding our hotel is what I would call big city back streets. Lots of little, kinda dirty, shops. We ventured out and took a little walk, saw some street vendors, what looked like a school and a Buddhist Temple complex. One of the buildings was very pretty, but the picture did not come out the best. Probably because it is another dreary day and just after taking this picture, it started to rain big drops.

We headed back to the hotel, making a stop at a 7-11 (yes, a real 7-11) to pick up a few snacks, and then it really started to downpour. We held out until the rain let up. Seems like the rain is following us.

The hotel is along a river, and has a nice pool area. There is a river boat shuttle that takes you to a sky train, which you can then take to a mall. We may try that tomorrow. We checked out visiting a vineyard, and they are just too far away (3 or 4 hours). So no vineyard this trip.

It is Tuesday afternoon, about 4:00PM, which means it is Tuesday morning, about 4:00AM in Florida. We are back in the room and a young woman just brought us some fresh fruit. We spoke to a guy in the lobby earlier, and he told us about an area near the hotel that sounds like it is “vibrant” in the evenings, about 5 minutes walk away. We were actually headed that way this afternoon to check it out when it started to rain. We got within a block or so and saw a Ferris wheel close by. Maybe we we try again later.

01/24/2018 To digress a bit….back at the airport with the taxi driver….he could not fit our luggage into the trunk, so he put our two big bags in side by side at a 45 degree angle, and tied the trunk lid down with a bungee cord. As we were bouncing along the road on the way to the hotel, I commented how glad I was that we got all our luugggage. Dave said, “We’re not there yet…..”. Fortunately, all our luggage made it.

Last night, we really ran out of steam. It had quit raining, and I suggested we go walk some more so we could stay awake. Dave didn’t like that idea and suggested we go eat. Again. So we went back to the hotels casual restaurant. I was not hungry, but we both ordered appetizers – I got some chicken satay with a glass of water and Dave got calamari with ….a few glasses of wine 😳 . The chicken satay was good, came with a little salad, peanut sauce and toast points. The calamari looked more like onion rings. It was huge! There were some pieces that looked like chunks of squid. It was all very good. We walked around the hotel a bit, saw fireworks in the sky which must have been in the area by the Ferris wheel. We could see the Ferris wheel turning. Dave is a little afraid of heights, and maybe he didn’t want to go there because he knew I would want to take the Ferris wheel. Well, the week isn’t over yet…we will see. Lots of traffic on the Chao Phraya river and some of the boats are decorated with lights. Also saw some barges. I stuck my toe in the hotel swimming pool – too cold for me! We went back to the room and crashed by 8:00pm.

Wednesday – we slept in, amazing since we went to bed so early. We had breakfast bars in our room, but included breakfasts start tomorrow, as we will be on our tour.

We decided to take the riverboat shuttle and catch the sky train to the shopping area, downtown Bangkok. As we waited for the riverboat shuttle, the sky kept getting dark and darker. We felt a few drops of rain and decided we would wait out the rain and catch a later shuttle. We sat in the lobby and read for a couple of hours, and the rain passed by. We hopped on the shuttle, arrived at the sky train location that takes you downtown Bangkok, and headed towards the sky train entry. On the way, we were stopped by two different gentlemen offering to help us. Being the suspicious type that we are, we listened politely to the first guy, who later said he worked for the hotel, and kept moving. The second guy was near the ticket booth at the sky train. He warned us that a protest was going on until 2:00pm and we wouldn’t be able to go to the shopping area until after 2:00. The first guy told us that too, but not the reason why, so I was assuming it was siesta time. We told the second guy that we wanted to eat, too, and he recommended a couple of places, and noted another shopping area on our map. He recommended taking a tuktuk, but it didn’t look very far, so we walked. The man was truly being helpful and we found that many people would see us looking at our maps and would try to help us. Very friendly, nice people -so far. We found the first place he suggested,Robinson’s, pretty quickly. It was a large building with all kinds of shopping inside, similar to a Macy,s, and eating places on the outside, including a McDonalds. We went in and the basement had lots of food options including a grocery store. We checked the menus and opted for MK Restaurant, apparently a chain. We sat at a little table and they poured us a glass of liquid. Dave asked what it was and the lady told him “tea”. I have never tasted tea that tasted like this. I’m pretty easy, but I didn’t like it. We started ordering off their electronic menu. We ordered pork shumai, which we were familiar with, shrimp, and a soup with green noodles, pork and shrimp wontons. We had to cook our shrimp ourselves in the provided hotpot. We also ordered steamed wonton stuffed with pork, crab and vegetables. The waitstaff saw us fumbling with chopsticks and brought us forks. This meal was about $9 total. We visited the grocery store and were trying to compare prices. It was a bit difficult because, for instance, the meats were priced in Thai baht of course, and also in kilo’s. Our brains were just a bit too tired to do the conversion, until we got to the wine section. There, we quickly determined wines were more expensive. Columbia Crest was about $30 USD per bottle, whereas in the US you could probably get it for $12 or $13 per bottle. Then we continued walking to “Thai Center” as the second gentleman recommended. We got in a lot of walking, taking in the sights around us. We saw lots of street vendors along the streets, pretty much blocking the sidewalk, selling anything and everything you can imagine. Lots of street food vendors, but we saw them washing the dishes in wash tubs basically in the street which really turned us off. There was a lot of traffic which made crossing the streets a challenge. The wires above the streets made me wonder how I was able to get internet at all while in Thailand.

After walking a long way, and never finding the Thai Center the second gentleman told us about, we saw the sky train station, decided we’d had enough fun, and headed back to the hotel. While riding on the sky train, we did pass a nice looking shopping area, but we were hot and tired and ready for a break. The sky train took us back to the pier and we caught the hotel’s riverboat shuttle back to the hotel. The crew on the riverboat gave us cold towels and cold water on the ride back to the hotel, which was very welcome.

We went back to our room, cooled off for a bit, and I convinced Dave to head to the Ferris wheel area. It was about 1/2 mile from our hotel, also along the Chao Phraya River, and called Asiatique. It reminded me of The Dome flea market (maybe when The Dome closed, the vendors came here?), except much bigger and a little nicer. It was like old warehouses that had been converted. It was lit up beautifully. Lots of booths with vendors selling all kinds of merchandise, and several restaurants that looked pretty good. We did ride the Ferris wheel, and they let us go around 4 or 5 times! I guess I was surprised because we only went around once on the London Eye when we were in London. You could see a long way from the top, but mostly it is just tall buildings, the river and river traffic. There is a lot of construction going on in Bangkok. Even at the airport, it looked like they were either building a new airport or doubling its size. We decided we may come back here to eat one evening, but wanted to try the hotels menu for dinner tonight.

Back at the hotel, we ordered a couple of appetizers – spring rolls and fried chicken in Thai herbs, and our favorite Thai entrees – Green curry with chicken and Penang curry with chicken. The spring rolls looked like shrimp wrapped in rice paper. They provided a plum sauce. The fried chicken was pretty much what you would expect, and we had a chili sauce, like those you get in the US, sweet and hot. We were a little disappointed in the entrees. Partly because there were not as many vegetables, and also a slightly different taste. It was good, but I am beginning to believe I prefer Asian food American style ☹ . Tomorrow we meet up with our tour group.
Ferris wheel as seen from our hotel parking lot.

View from our room. Note how hazy…not sure if it’s smog or just humidity. And, a picture of some of the interesting architecture. Some of the buildings are decorated and painted colorfully.

01/25/2018 – This morning we met up with our SmarTours guide and fellow travelers. There are 19 in our group, with 10 of us going to Cambodia after Thailand and 9 going to Phuket. We later discovered that one couple who is going to Phuket is also going on the same Princess cruise as we are.
Our tour guide said there are 7 million people in Bangkok and 90% are Buddhists. There are 33,000 Buddhist temples in Thailand and 400 are in Bangkok.. The Buddhist temples can be identified as they are colorful and well decorated.

This mornings tours were all about Buddha. There is only one Buddha, but Buddha is represented in many different poses to send messages to his believers. We visited 3 different temples to see different Buddha’s. Buddhist temples are called “Wat”.

The first Buddhist temple we visited was Wat Traimit to see the golden Buddha. It weighs 5.5 tons, is over 700 years old, however, it was not discovered until 1957, when it was being moved, that it was a gold Buddha. It had been covered in plaster to protect it from invaders. During a move, the Buddha fell and plaster chipped off, revealing the gold underneath. All around this Buddha, and others we visit later in the day, are donation boxes for various charities. At this temple complex, and others we visit, there were more Buddha’s on display, but the golden Buddha is the most important one at Wat Traimit. In another building in the complex was a Buddha, and a monk. It appeared the monk was counciling someone. The monk put a white string bracelet on the gentleman when he was done talking to him. Our guide said 4 times a month, people can seek out the monk to get guidance as to what the Buddha’s teachings mean. The 4 days are determined by the moons phase, and we were “lucky” to be visiting on one of the 4 days so we could observe the monks ministering to the faithful.
The second temple we visited was at Wat Benchamabophit which houses a sitting Buddha in a “frame”. The frame is representative of an “aura”.

Again, lots of donation boxes are around the Buddha. In the temple complex are replicas of many other Buddha’s, and each had a description of what the Buddha’s message was. The ones pointed out by our guide were a skeleton Buddha and a walking Buddha. There are also bells in the temple complex that people would ring, but our guide said they were for decoration.
The last Buddha we visited was at Wat Po, and was a reclining Buddha. This complex is the largest, covering 20 acres. The reclining Buddha is 150ft. long and 50 ft. tall. The Buddha was constructed first, and then the temple built around him. This Buddha was built in 2939, and other than its size, the bottom of its feet were decorated with mother of pearl. In this temple complex are many stupa’s, which are depositories for the creamated ashes of followers of Buddha. There can be many ashes in one stupa. The person or family requests the ashes to be placed there and makes a donation. Our guide did not know the donation amount. Some of the spots were marked with pictures of the deceased, dates of birth and death. Another area in this complex had 4 much larger stupas which represented the first 4 kings of Thailand, but their ashes were not in these stupas.

After visiting the temples, we had the option to go on a canal/river ride on a long tail boat to visit the canals (Khlongs). The canals were built before there were roads to provide transportation. We elected to do this tour. Our long tail boat was a little different than some we have seen on the river. Those long boats have a car engine on the back and a very long tiller. I have not been successful in getting a picture of one of those yet. It was hard to understand our guide as the motor on our boat was very loud. We visited the Royal Barge Museum. Here, 8 of the kings 50+ barges are kept on display. Each of the barges has a special purpose, and only the king can ride on the fanciest barge. They are all hand made “masterpieces”, with beautiful designs. They are row boats, no motors. For certain celebrations, all 52 barges travel on the river in a parade, but that only happens rarely.

After the Royal Barge Museum, our boat headed down a canal, and we saw homes where the canal people live. Some of the homes look very dilapidated, but a few are very nice. In this canal are catfish which people feed for good luck. Our guide gave us loaves of bread so we could feed the fish. I will never complain about our little lizards again! We saw 5 to 6 foot river monitor lizards along the bank, in back of people’s houses on their docks, and in the bushes. They looked as big as Florida alligators. Apparently they eat fish, but I would not want to encounter one. They have sharp teeth and big claws. He may be hard to pick out in the photo, but he is there, laying on the right side of the dock. The water in the river and canals is filthy. I thought our guide said the houses have septic tanks, but when some of the houses are built totally over the water, I wonder how that is possible.

We got back to the hotel around 4:00pm. Even though our guide stopped at a street vendor to allow us to buy fried chicken, we passed. We were ok with the chicken being cooked in the hot oil, but I could only picture the chickens we saw in Mexico that had sat around for days in the heat, before being consumed. Dave and I went to the casual eating spot in the hotel and had a Chang beer and shared a crab stick sandwich. Dinner was scheduled for 6:30, so we did not want to eat too much. We went back to the room and rested for a bit before our Welcome Dinner.

Dinner was a buffet with all kinds of options – sushi, stir fries, fresh seafood, lamb stew, etc. Also some yummy desserts. Of the 19 people on our tour, another couple is from Sarasota! Another couple we met is going on the same Princess cruise to Bali that we are going on! Small world!

01/26/2018 –

This morning we did a tour of the Grand Palace. At one time, the King of Thailand lived here, but no more. I asked our guide why the king didn’t live here, and I didn’t understand her answer. It seemed like she was saying there was nothing for him to do here.

The grounds of the Grand Palace, covering 60 acres, are fully built out with several buildings, including what was once a royal residence, a coronation building, a guest residence for visiting heads of state, Buddhist temples, administrative offices, stupas,etc. All the buildings are highly decorated, some covered in gold or gold leaf, gems, ceramics, etc. While this picture doesn’t exactly show a building, it does reflect the high decoration on the outside walls of the buildings. They definitely glitter and are beautiful. The palace grounds cover 60 acres, and I could not even count how many structures there were. Each king seemed to build another building or stupa to honor something or someone. The Royal Guesthouse, where Bill Clinton and the queen of England have stayed, was originally built to house the crown prince. There is a stupa which is covered in gold and contains ashes of Buddha. Not all of his ashes, just a portion of the Buddha’s ashes. The Thai Year is 543 years ahead of our calendar year, as they started counting when Buddha died. So it is Year 2561 (2018 + 543).
One building was originally a Royal residence built by the 5th king, King Rama V in 1877 it was built by an English architect, but a Thai style roof was added. It had 3 floors. Currently the first floor is a weapons museum, the second floor is used as a reception hall and state banquets, and the 3rd floor holds ashes of Kings IV to VIII, and principal queens. There is another room on the third floor which holds the ashes of lessor queens and members of the royal family.
King 9 died in 2016 and his body laid in state for 1 year. Then he was cremated and his ashes are held on 3 different places – somewhere on the grounds of this Grand Palace, a temple where he was a monk, and another temple. The current King, #10, has not had his coronation yet, to allow for mourning of King #9. The kingship passes to first born male. If the current king does not have a son, then it passes to his brother. It is always kept within the family. King 10 is 66 years old, and his first 2 children were girls. His 3rd child is a 13 year old boy. His first daughter is 39 and has a different mother from his son. So, while I have not researched it yet, with principal queens and lessor queens, apparently the king has more than one wife!!!!!!
One of the highlights of a visit to the Grand Palace is to see the emerald Buddha. It is small, approximately 2’ x 2’ and carved out of a single piece of stone. It sits high up on a throne and is highly decorated. The emerald Buddha has 3 costumes – one for winter, summer and monsoon season. Today he was dressed in his winter costume, which will be changed in March, by the king. There are 3 doors to the temple where the emerald Buddha is housed. Regular visitors go in on the left and out on the right. Only the king can enter the center door. It is regarded as the most important Buddha in Thailand. It was probably made in the 1400’s. It was very hard to see as it sits pretty far back, with all the decoration in front including two 9 ft. Buddha images. As everywhere around the Grand Palace, there are very large crowds.
At all the temples in Thailand, there is a dress code. Men and women have to have their knees and shoulders covered. You have to take off your shoes before entering the temple building and men must remove their hats. On most of our tour, you were practically shoulder to shoulder with other people. Almost all tourists visit the Grand Palace, so it is always this crowded. Our guide said when it was first opened to the public, in the 1940’s, Men had to wear business suits, and women had to dress up, too.
The emerald Buddha cannot be photographed from inside the building, but you can take photos through the open doors before entering. The image is so small since it sits so far back, the pictures just aren’t that great.

Photo of Emerald Buddha in winter costume
After visiting the Grand Palace, we took our wonderfully air conditioned bus back to the hotel. It was very hot today, The bus driver’s assistance gave us cold towels and cold water to cool off. We arrived back at the hotel around lunchtime, and our guide recommended a close by restaurant for lunch. Dave and I decided to try it. We each had a very large bottle of beer. Dave had pad Thai with prawns, and I had hot and spicy soup with prawns. We could have had it with chicken, but I told Dave I’d rather deal with tearing the heads off prawns than wondering what part of a chicken I was eating (reference China – chicken heads and feet!). I told them I wanted it spicy, and Dave reiterated that I liked my food spicy. Well, mine was spicy! Not too spicy that I couldn’t eat it, but close. It was very good, none the less. I tasted Dave’s pad thai, and it was very good. I normally don’t like pad Thai, but his had good flavor that was not all nuts. Unfortunately we forgot our cameras, so no pictures of lunch.

Photo of street scene with sidewalk vendors.
In the evening we went to dinner and a show, inclusive. The traffic getting there was horrendous. At one point we were literally stopped for 15 minutes or so. It took over an hour to drive from the hotel to the show.The show is basically the history and diversity of Thailand. The dinner was a buffet, and had a lot of choices. After dinner we visited an outdoor area next to the theatre. Some of the performers were dancing, two elephants were on display, and there were mock ups of homes in different parts of Thailand from 100 years ago. The name of the show is Siam Niramit. We moved into the theatre, and saw a film about the king that died in 2016. The Thai people really love their kings. After the memorial to the king, we all stood for the national anthem. Then the show began. The stage is suppose to be one of the highest in the world, with over 100 performers and 500 costumes. We were pretty impressed with the show – quite an extravaganza. One scene showed a person living on a canal. In the morning, he rolled out of bed and into the canal for his morning bath. There was actually water running along the front of the stage to mimic the canals. There were “boats” moving in the canal., it rained and stormed with lightening. Other scenes had people flying in the air. The elephants were on stage. It was quite the show, and very entertaining. Cameras were not allowed in the theatre, as they have a CD they want you to buy. Going home, traffic was much better -9:30pm. We were back at the hotel in about 20 minutes.

01/27/2018

We had a very early start this morning.our wake up call was at 5:30am, and we had to be ready to start our tour at 7:00am. The hotel has a very tasty breakfast with lots of choices. For Asians, lots of noodle choices. But, they also have an American breakfast. Most days, Dave and I have a ham and cheese omelette, sometimes adding additional ham on top. Also, dollar size pancakes, bacon, sausages, French toast, danish, fruits, etc. obviously, we don’t eat all of that, but we do have a good selection. !We get on the bus for a little over an hour ride to the train market. Vendors are set up on both sides of the railroad tracks, but trains come thru 8 times a day. This morning we were there for the 8:30am train. Just before the train comes, the vendors pull up their stuﬀ to get it out of the way of the train. People are all over the place. The walkways are very broken up cement, and there are some lines which you can sort of make out which I assumed were to indicate where the train passes. We could hear the train coming as it blows its horn. Everyone kinda squeees back against the buildings as the train passes. I would guess there was 6 inches between me and the train! I took a video as the train passed. Dave surprised me because he is a very cautious person, and although he had an escape route planned, he stood right next to me as the train passes. The train moves slow, but probably not as slow as you would expect with all the people and activity on and next to the tracks. As soon as the train passes, it is back to business as usual, and vendors are pulling their goods back out to the tracks.!

I had heard of this market, so it was exciting to actually see it.!Back on the bus, and our next stop is a place to show how coconut sugar, which our guide also calls brown sugar, is made. It is the sap of coconut tree ﬂowers boiled down. We tasted a sample and it is very sweet. Our guide said it is too sweet to be used in coﬀee, but it is used in cooking. The coconut sugar stop also gave us a chance to use the bathrooms, which our guide calls the happy room. We drive some more to a boat dock for a ride on a long tail boat. Each boat holds 8 people, but our guide arranged it so we only had 4 people in the boat. The guide also calls them speed boats. As I described earlier from seeing them on the river by our hotel, these boats are pretty narrow. There is a big engine sitting on the back, exposed. I thought it was a car engine but the guide said it was a truck engine. Then there is a long pole out the back which is used for steering the boat. The driver is in the back of the boat gondola style, using this big engine and rudder. We rode for about 30 minutes, and while we saw one water monitor, it was not as many as the Bangkok canals. The water is ﬁlthy, and the canal is narrow. There are houses and shops along the sides of the canal. Some are very nice houses, and others are not so nice – rich and poor. However, we did not see as many dilapidated houses as we saw on the Bangkok canals. Our destination is the Damnoensaduak ﬂoating market. At the ﬂoating market, there are two sections. One where we depart the long tail boat which has the usual trinkets and some beautifully carved teak furniture. Dave and I loved one piece that was a bar. It cost $2,100 USD (after some negotiation) including shipment to US. We did not but it, but it was deﬁnitely a work of art and beautiful. From there, we walked down a pathway that had vendors on both sides. Some of these vendors were a bit aggressive. They were selling all kinds of trinkets and clothing. One vendor had python snakes and you could have your picture taken with the snakes. No, thank you! Many vendors were selling food, too. At the end of the walkway was a road, and on the other side of the road were more vendors, many of them in boats lining a canal. Dave and I steered clear of the food, but Dave bought a hat for about $5USD, and I bought two pairs of pants. One pair is what I would call wrap pans and they cost about $6.75USD and the other pair is kinda like capris, but with elastic at the waist and bottom. The second pair cost $4.25USD. We negotiated the prices down considerably. I wanted the pants to wear when we visit temples and I need to have my knees covered. We saw one gentleman who is part of our group and he was eating noodle soup that he bought from one of the ﬂoating vendors. Later, he threw up on the bus. We’ll have to see what happens to him, and if he is still on our tour tomorrow….! Our guide bought some food for us from the markets to sample, so hopefully it is all safe. She gave us some grapefruit which is much more “bland” than our grapefruit – nowhere near as acidic. She also gave us little silver dollar size coconut pancakes, “one-bite” bananas which are tiny bananas, and crunchy crepe-type snacks. !After the ﬂoating markets, we drove to the largest Stupa in Thailand. Our guide has also been calling the stupas pagodas. This stupa is located in the Thai province where Buddhism started. The guide said it is 350 feet tall, and contains relics of Buddha, including some of his ashes.

There previously was a white stupa there, but it started to deteriorate. One of the Thai kings built this bigger stupa encapsulating the earlier stupa. Buddhists are suppose to walk around the stupa 3 times, clockwise, to reach heaven. We only walked around it once. The guide said you walk counterclockwise for a funeral. We drove outside Bangkok today, almost what I would call suburbs, and then into further environs. We didn’t stop, but we saw tree farms. Trees would be planted on long islands with ditches on each side for irrigation. We also saw ﬁsh farms where it would be large sea water ponds with machines that would put oxygen into the water. We also saw sea salt farms. The salt is harvested from sea water and sent to processing plants, I assume to better clean it. Other tidbits of information we heard from our guide today – – – unemployment rate is .5% – lowest paid job is gas station attendant that pumps gas. They would be paid the equivalent of $10 USD for 8 hours of work. You cannot live on that, so you would seek out other addition jobs, or be supported by Family. – life expectancy for women is 75 and men is 70. We got back to our hotel about 2:30pm. There was an optional dinner tonight which Dave and I decided not to participate. It was a cruise on the river with an Asian dinner. We are leaving Bangkok tomorrow morning at 7:30 am and we want to be organized. We can have a very good Asian dinner at our hotel 😁� . !This is the best picture of a long tail boat that I have:

01/28/18

Last night we had dinner at the hotel. It was a beautiful evening and we sat outside. We had some music and a duet singing oldies and doing a good job of it. Dave and I both had pineapple fried rice – mine was with shrimp, Dave’s was with shrimp, crab meat and pork! They were both very good. We also had chicken satay for an appetizer which we decided was their best appetizer.

This morning after breakfast we left Bangkok. We have a few stops before we get to our hotel tonight in Phitsanulok, Thailand, which is a one night stopover on our way to Chiang Rai. We have another one night stopover before we get to Chiang Rai. Our tour stops at sights along the way.

Driving this morning, we saw more rice fields. The rice cycle is 4 months. A lot of the work is done by hand. Rice is the biggest export item from Thailand.

We visit Ayutthaya which was the second capital of Thailand (the first capital was Sukhothai which we visit tomorrow). Ayutthaya was the capital for over 400 years, and during the Ayutthaya period, there were 34 kings. Bangkok is the current capital and the 10th king is the current king. Ayutthaya was invaded by Burma, and in 1767 Burma burned the capital city and melted down their golden Buddha. Our first stop was the ruins in Ayutthaya of the Royal Palace. The royal palace grounds had stupas as does the royal palace in Bangkok. We wandered around looking at the ruins. As in many European cities, the structure was first made from bricks and then covered with plaster. There are many stupas, and many are leaning precariously. There is restoration work currently going on, and we were not able to visit the sitting Buddha which is in one of the buildings due to the restoration work. There are 3 big stupas which are believed to hold the ashes of a couple of kings from the Ayutthaya period, as well as Buddha relics. Thai people visit and leave offerings on the ruins walls because they believe the ashes are in the stupas.

Next we visit a Buddha head in a tree. This is on the sight of another temple that was burned in Ayutthaya when conquered by Burma in1767. This is pretty much what it sounds like. The head was made of sandstone, probably in the 1600’s. One theory is that looters were taking the Buddha and the head fell off. Eventually the tree grew up around the head. It looks like a banyon tree, but I’m not sure. We could walk around the grounds of this temple, also in ruins. We could see where at one time there were many Buddha images (statues) along the walls.

We drove further, and our next stop is what is known as the monkey temple. Again, this temple is in ruins, but there are hundreds of monkeys on this site which is probably no more than 1/4 square mile. There are 3 towers here, called prangs in the Cambodian style instead of stupas. They look more like bullets. There are carvings In the prangs that look like monkeys. We went inside one structure, and there were two Buddha statues missing their heads, draped in orange cloth. The whole area smells like monkey droppings because they are so thick. These are long tail monkeys, which are native to the area. Apparently visitors to the temple, and now tourists, feed them, so they stay in the temple confines. They can be aggressive if you have something that attracts them. I saw a monkey jump on a girl’s back, I think because he was attracted to a button on her top. One man with our group had three monkeys jump on him and he thought it was because they were attracted to his water bottle. I am happy to say Dave and I were not jumped by monkeys.

Our guide then had the bus driver drive an hour to a beautiful, if remote location for lunch. There were other buses there, but it seemed remote. The grounds were beautiful with fountains, flowers, orchids in the trees. The Lunch was buffet style with a soup, rice and various stir frys to put on the rice. My drink was pineapple juice. For dessert we had fingerling bananas with coconut, fresh pineapple and a coconut cream little pot. One of our tour members is having a birthday today, and the guide brought a birthday cake. Needless to say, I was stuffed. The meal was 200 Thai Baht which is about $6.70 USD per person. Drinks were additional.

On the bus, out guide gave us some tablets which reminded ,e of tums. One of the kings lived where he had more fresh milk than he could use. He did not want to waste the fresh milk, so he had the milk made into these tablets. They do taste like milk, but have maybe a slightly more sweet taste to them.

While we were riding on the bus, the driver makes a sudden stop where a vendor on the side of the rode is selling food. It turns out that he is selling fried rice rat. Thai’s eat these rice rats. Our guide is holding a fried rice rat in tongs.

We arrive in Phitsanulok which looks like a decent sized city. Our hotel looks like it was very nice in years past, but now seems a little dated and old. We check in and then quickly meet our guide in the lobby. She is going to take us to see the most beautiful sitting Buddha in Thailand it is also the last day of a temple festival, so there are vendors selling all sorts of stuff all over the place. This Buddha is made of gold and has an aura like the Buddha in Bangkok. Apparently one of the Bangkok kings wanted to bring this Buddha to Bangkok, but the local people were very displeased. So the sitting Buddha with aura in Bangkok is just a replica of this Buddha.

In order to take a picture, you must be sitting with your feet not pointed at the Buddha. This . Buddha’s fingers are same length which is sign of exceptional person. This Buddha looks peaceful and beautiful.Painting in back is of angels so Buddha looks like he’s in heaven.

After visiting the sitting Buddha, we walked around a bit, visited the mall which is adjacent to our hotel, and then finally ate dinner in our hotel restaurant. Dave has fried pineapple rice with seafood (again) and I had stir fried noodles with shrimp. Dave’s pineapple fried rice was good, but last nights was better. My stir fried noodles reminded me of mall food. It was good, but had the same taste as Chinese food in the mall.

01/29/18 Happy Birthday, Ray!

Breakfast this morning was a little bit of a challenge. Dave was able to get an omelet – ham but no cheese 😁. I actually had fried rice because there are eggs in fried rice. I also had some fruit. The coffee has been very good so far.

Our first stop is a Buddha factory to see how Buddha’s are made. The large ones can take 3 months. The Buddha’s are not purchased,but rented. Big ones are donated to temples. Only small ones are kept in houses. Small ones only take 3 days to make. The procedure is make a mold, cast, and then polish. There was an interesting old Mercedes parked in the Buddha factory lot.

Heading to Sukhothai, the first capital of Thailand, and10 kings. Most important is King #3 because he invented Thai alphabet in 1283. There are 44 letters in the Thai alphabet and 21 tones or vowels. The capital complex covers 70 square kilometers. At one time, 1 million people lived here. King #3 was the king of happiness. He has a bell, and if people needed to see the king, they would ring the bell. The king would try to solve their problem to make them happy. The name of this capital city is Sukhothai which means rising happiness. The capital in Ayutthaya became more powerful, so Sukhothai was eventually deserted. King #3 also did away with taxes. Later today, we visit a ceramic kiln and King #3 was responsible for bringing the ceramic industry to Northern Thailand.

I am learning more about Buddha’s than I thought there was to know. Four basic body styles: standing, sitting, walking and reclining. The long ears represents long life, which 2500 years ago was 80 years. The point on his head represents enlightenment. The curly hair represents wisdom. The Buddha’s with the fat round tummy are Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. it is still the same religion, but different slant like Catholics and Protestants. Thai buddhaism is more conservative where the Dali lama is more flexible. Different artists from different periods give Buddha’s different facial features.

We stopped for lunch in Sukhothai at a local restsurant, Kira Lom Fon. It was very nice and clean, but still outdoors. We were served more food than 10 people could eat. The picture is what was served family style for 4 people. We had a coconut milk soup with chicken and lemongrass, chicken red curry, stir fried sweet and sour with fish, stir fried chicken with nuts, stir fried glass noodle with egg, and rice. For dessert we had bananas, watermelon and papaya. The price was 250 baht which is a little over $8 per person.

We are traveling north, and our guide said there are differences between people in the north and south of Thailand. Food in the north is not as hot and spicy as food in the south. People in the north move slower than people in the south.Yesterday we traveled about 230 miles, today we traveled about 150 miles, and tomorrow we will travel another 140 miles to get to Chiang Rai. The roads are two lanes – no interstate highways. We traveled into the mountains today, so windy roads. There are lots of motor bikes on the roads and the driver honks at them and then passes, but does not go entirely into the other lane. A lot of the motor bikes travel on the paved shoulder. When passing other vehicles, the bus kinda goes down the middle of the road, and if he meets another car, that car moves onto the shoulder. Also, traffic in Thailand drives on the “wrong side” of the road.

So something must be going around the bus. Everyday we have more sick people. Today, there are 4 people that are sick. Something we are not loooking forward to…..our guide keeps stopping at pharmacies to get medicine.

Our last stop before Lampang is a visit to an ancient kiln. The 3rd king of Sukhothai sent people to China to learn how to make ceramics in the 13th century. The area where the soil had enough clay was about 40 kilometers north of Sukhothai and the 3rd king sent his son the crown prince to govern this area. The kilns are along the Yon river. The Yon River was used to transport the finished products. Over 200 kilns have been found. About the 16th century, production terminated due to dominance of Chinese ceramics, politics and wars.

We drove a little further to a private museum. The owner was from Laos and was very poor when he immigrated to Thailand. He eventually became involved with textiles, which is where he earned his fortune. His most famous item is a more than 100 year old sarong, contains gold strands, he bought from Cambodia for $5,000 usd. In 1998 he recreated a copy of the sarong for his daughter to wear at her wedding. The recreation cost over $13,000usd to make. Attached to the museum was his store where he sold clothes including sarongs.

Other interesting tidbits we learned on the long bus ride:

-The Thai word for pumpkin is fuck.

-The Laotians and Thai languages are similar and they can understand each other. There is about 80% overlap of words.

– The national flower is “Golden Rain”

-Teachers are not well paid as they work for the government, but they have good benefits. They cannot live on their teaching salary, so they also work as tutors, and tutors are well paid.

-School age 7 to 19: 6 years in primary, 6 years in secondary which is provided by the government. There is a dress code.

-you must pay for college

This area in Northern Thailand (Lampang) produces a lot of teak. The hotel we are staying in tonight is made of teak wood and has a lot of teak carved decoration.

01/30/18

Today we are traveling to Chiang Rai. We drive for about 2 hours and our guide discusses Thai politics and tells us a little more about the king. Sounds like the politicians are corrupt, just like everywhere else. King 10 has been married 5 times. His second wife, daughter and 4 sons live in the USA. The son from the 3rd wife, a commoner, is the crown prince. They are divorced, too, and it sounds like she is not suppose to see her son. The guide does not know why the firstborn son of the 2nd wife is not the crown prince. Maybe because the mother of King 10 did not like wife 2. King 9 was very loved and only had 1 wife. He was king for over 70 years. King 10 has not had his coronation yet because the country has been mourning King 9, but I think king 10 has big shoes to fill.

After about 2 hours drive, we stop for a coffee break at the largest lake in Thailand. I think the name of the town is Phayao, as it is in Phayao province. But, I think the main reason for the stop is coffee and potty break. The lake is fairly shallow, only about 5 feet deep. The coffee shop makes interesting designs with milk foam on the coffee. Our guide offers us a sample of dried bamboo worms. No, thank you! Several try them and they are crunchy. But Dave and I pass.

While riding on the bus, our guide asks questions about what she has previously discussed, and then awards beers at lunch. I’ve won two beers! She does it for fun – it is not serious. One day she asked one of our bunch if she could remember everyone’s name. I’m glad she did’t ask me!

One of her tidbits – Thailand has a color for everyday:

Monday yellow

Tuesday pink

Wednesday green

Thursday orange

Friday Blue

Saturday purple

Sunday red

We ate lunch at another outdoor restaurant that was out in the middle of nowhere, but in Chiangrai province. We had Chicken curry, stir fried fish with chili pepper, stir fried mixed vegetables, fried chicken (which our guide calls KFC chicken), stir fried yellow noodle with kale, cabbage and carrot, vegetable soup, and rice. The food was very good and as usual, I ate too much. The name of the restaurant was Yung Kaow restaurant in Chiangrai.

We went to the Golden Triangle which is the meeting point of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.

Laos and Thailand are divided by the Mekong River, the 10th longest river in the world, Laos is also separated from Myanmar by the Mekong River. Thailand is separated from Myanmar by the Ruak River. The Golden Triangle is like a “Y” with Myanmar at the top, Thailand on the left and Laos on the right. Golden because opium trading. Opium smokers used gold to buy the opium, thus the golden triangle. The wife of King 9 opened an opium museum to try to teach the people the dangers of using opium. Opium use is illegal. Ruak river joins the Mekong river here. The name of the town is Chiang Saen. We took a boat ride on the Mekong River and from the river we saw casinos in Myanmar and Laos.

On the boat are pictures of US Servicemen who caught a huge catfish in the Mekong River. It looks like the fish is about 10’ long. These giant catfish are close to being endangered, now. We went to a market in Laos where they sold all kinds of knock off purses – Michael Kors, Prada, and Coach. The also sold really weird bottles of whiskey which contained cobras, scorpions, and all kinds of other bugs and obnoxious specimens. They offered free samples of some kind of alcohol with snakes and bugs.

One gentleman from our group took a shot of one of these bottles that had a lizard in it. He said it tasted like cheap whiskey. It was the same man that ate at the floating market and threw up on the bus. I guess he will eat anything. Our guide could take us to this market even though it was in Laos because it is considered a special economic zone. The vendors in Laos were more aggressive and there were children begging. It was obvious that Laos is a very poor country. We did not have to go through immigration, and I don’t think our passports were stamped, however, we had to give up our passports before the boat ride and we got them back when we returned from the boat ride.

We ride on the bus some more to get to Mae Sai which is the northernmost point in Thailand. Again, all kinds of vendors all over the place. Many are selling what they are portraying as jade, but who knows. At this point, there is a narrow river (stream) separating Myanmar from Thailand. It is a border crossing town.

Back on the bus, it is about an hour to our hotel in Chiang Rai. Our guide is giving us food samples again. The first sample is banana chips with Thai apple inside. The Thai apple is jellied. It is very good. The second sample is a broad bean. It is not as sweet as the banana chip with Thai apple. Seems like the broad bean would be a good snack when drinking beer.

No one sick on the bus today – hopefully the bug has ran its course. We are in Chiang Rai tonight. One thing I have found interesting is our hotel in Bangkok, and the one we are in tonight, have windows into the bathroom. I have no desire to watch Dave as he sits on the throne, and less desire to have him watch me as I sit on the throne. Fortunately, both hotels have blinds that can be drawn over the opening. Dave is having Chardonnay withdrawal as what wine we have found is only drinkable (not good) and not cheap. Also, haven’t found Absolute vodka. So, looking forward to the cruises for the booze …..😁.

01/31/18 Happy Birthday, Timbo!!!!!

This morning we took pickup trucks to go visit the villages of Thailand hill people. These people are refugees from China, Tibet and Myanmar. The pickup trucks are similar to the ones in the Caribbean that are fitted out with benches in the bed of the pickup truck. it was quite cool this morning and the pick up trucks are open in the back.

Our first stop is at a Village with long neck people, Long Neck Karen. The women wear brass rings on their necks. The are not actually stretching their necks, but pushing down their shoulder blades. They start putting the rings on at 5 years of age and keep adding rings until the women are 25 years old. I think it is a total of 24 or 25 rings, weighing around 13 pounds.. The rings are very heavy, and some women have to wear cloth underneath the rings to protect their skin from the brass. They wear the rings until they die. They cannot remove the rings or their necks would collapse and they would die, as they do not have the muscles in their necks to hold up their heads. These women used to wear gold, but gold is too expensive, so now they wear brass. The men work as farmers and the women work with textiles, selling their products to tourists. We had to pay about $3 to get into their village. We saw a little school with about 4 or 5 kids age 4 and 5. They knew the English alphabet and Thai alphabet. They could also count to 10. When the women go to town, they wear scarves on their necks to cover the rings so they don’t look different. There were a total of about 50 people in this village. Most are Buddhists, but some have converted to Catholicism and there was a Catholic Church nearby. The reason they wear the rings is for beauty. Some of the women also wear the rings on their legs. The women wear the rings until they die and they are buried with the rings.

The houses are all very simple wooden structures with grass roofs.

At the entrance to the Long Neck Karen village was another group of people, the Akha. They wear decorated headdresses, adorned now with aluminum but used to be silver. These woman also sold handicrafts to the tourists. They originally came from Tibet.

We got back in the pickup trucks and drove to another village, Yao people. It has warmed up, so now riding in the back of the pickup is much more comfortable. This village was bigger with about 200 people. These people wear embroidered hats and skirts, with a red scarf. One woman was smoking something, probably tobacco using a piece of bamboo. It was a very interesting contraption. We were able to enter her home and see the bedroom and kitchen, which were the only two rooms. The floor is dirt. Most of the houses here are simple houses made of wood with grass roofs, but at the entrance to this village, someone was building a cement block house. These people originally came from central China.

We got back on the pickup trucks again, and drove to a tea plantation for a tea tasting. The plantation was on a hilll, with beautiful long views. It felt very peaceful. The tasting room was modern and clean, as were the bathrooms (we have experienced several squattiie potties so it is always nice to see western toilets). We tasted 3 different teas, but they all tasted like tea to me! However you could buy tea drinks, ice cream and desserts. I has a Thai Tea Frappe. It was essentially sweetened tea blended with ice and topped with whipped cream. It was good – Dave tasted it and he thought it was good, too!

Then we headed back to the hotel for a buffet lunch. There was lots of choice for about $6. It looked like the same dishes that were out this morning for breakfast! Asians eat the same food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Some people from our group are going to the night market tonight, but we are just going to hang out. The night markets have the same trinkets, and we have no intention of buying anything. Besides, our hotel in the next town, Chiang Mai, is suppose to be very close to their night market. It sounds like tomorrow will be a lot of shopping and not much touring as we leave Chiang Rai and drive to Chiang Mai.

02/01/18

We had a bonus last night that was a surprise! We saw a full lunar eclipse of the full moon!

Breakfasts the last few days have been a little more challenging. Not that I am missing out on food…Dave is still managing to get ham omelets (no cheese). I am eating some kind of white fruit which our guide says is yam.

Our first stop is at the White Temple in Chiang Rai. This is a private temple, and definitely the product of the owners imagination. Most temples are colorful and highly decorated. The White Temple would be brilliant in the sun. It is all white and decorated with pieces of mirror. He has depicted what he views as evil, which is mostly western symbolism. Inside the temple are murals, one of which is the twin towers in the midst of attack. I did not see it but our guide said there were two evil eyes – George Bush and Osama Bin Lafen. But there are many other symbols of the West with Superman, Spider-Man, even Jack Sparrow, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Angry Birds, Minions, etc. the message that super powers cannot rescue you from evil. The floors were gold colored mosaic tiles. At the very entrance to the temple were sculptures of hands reaching up representing greed. Then you cross a bridge representing crossing into heaven. We had to pay 50 baht to visit, which is about $1.67. The bathroom (happy room) was in a yellow building, the only non-white building in the complex. It was beautiful and clean with western toilets, and mosaics on the floors and walls.

At all the Buddha temples, you must cover your shoulders and knees. You have to take off your shoes and hats. Another tidbit is that Buddha was born in 623 B.C.

Back on the road we made a potty stop at “Cabbages & Condoms”. They give away condoms for free. All profits are donated to charity. They sell food, coffee, snacks, etc., and when you pay your bill you get a free condom.

Our guide entertains us on the road by discussing monks, funerals and weddings. Every man has to be a monk for some period of time. The normal time is 3 months, but if cercimstances don’t allow 3 months, it can be arranged for a shorter time. Monks have to be men. “Lady-boys ( guides terminology) cannot be monks or serve in the military. Monks have to be 20 years old to be mature enough to obey all 227 commandments. Boys aged 7 to 19 can be novices. Novices and monks shave all their hair. Monks walk from 6:00am to 7:30am and collect food from people who want to feed them. They eat whatever they have been given. They eat twice a day, at 8:00am and at 11:00am, but some only eat once a day at 8:00am.

Funerals are 3 to 7 days. Then the body is cremated. Half the ashes are thrown into the river and the other half are put into a stupa at the temple. The mourners walk counter clockwise around the temple 3 times.

The weddings used to be arranged, but no more. The groom pays a dowry and pays for the wedding. The monk reads the bride and groom palms to tell them when they can get married. They have an official ceremony with monks in the morning. In the evening they party and the bride wears a gown and the groom wears a suit.

I won another beer for lunch today. I have done very well, winning a beer almost every day. I feel guilty 😳.

The lunch was a buffet again. Lunches have been plentiful and very reasonable. Today the price wea about $7.00 per person. I feel stuffed. They actually had French fries on the buffet today, but the rest was Thai food. To be honest, I’m beginning to crave a McDonalds hamburger. However, some people ordered American food from the menu at the restaurant last night, and they said it was raw….

Our first shopping stop was at an umbrella making factory. They showed us how they make the umbrella starting with paper made from the bark on the tree to the finished product. Princess Diana visited here in 1998 and they made a huge red umbrella in her honor (6 meters in diameter).

The next shopping stop is for Celadon ceramics. First we visit the factory and then the showroom. This is dangerous because I love dishes and ceramics, but we did not buy anything.

Next we stop at “The Biggest Jewelry Store” in the world. Rubies are a big export item for Thailand. First we looked at the factory, and then the showroom. There is tons of beautiful jewelry, but out of my price range. The largest amount of tourists that come to Thailand is from China, and I think the store is set up for the Chinese.

Our last shopping stop is a silk factory. First they show you how silk is made, from the cocoon to the thread. Then you go into the store where there are clothes, scarfs, etc. Dave and I bought silk pillows when we were in China a few years ago and we would love to find new ones, but they did not have them at this silk store.

Chiang Mai is the “rose of the north”. 2000 sq feet condo would cost 2 million baht, or about $70,000 usd. Most expensive city in Thailand is Phuket.

Only 600,000 America tourists come to Thailand, which is way down on the list out of 29 million tourists in total. China sends the most tourists and India is second.

I can only send a maximum of 5 photos in the emails. Today, I barely took 5 photos! Most days, it is hard to pick just 5.

02/02/18

Last night we walked to the Chiang Mai night market. It is just like all the other night markets we have visited! Except, it did not seem like they were willing to negotiate. I inquired about the price of something and then walked away. They did not come after me as they did in other markets. We ate at the hotel. Thai food again! It’s good, but I am looking forward to western food…..In a few days, we leave for Cambodia, and I bet it is the same Asian food as we have been eating the last 10 days.

Our guide told us we dodged a bullet – they had several hours of rain in Bangkok resulting in flooding. We have been lucky so far. After the first few days of rain, it has been partly sunny, and no rain. There is lots of smog, or what I think is smog, so we do not see bright sun often.

I have managed to pick up some chest congestion, but I am not feeling sick….yet. Just coughing ☹️. I worry about Dave because he gets sick easily. So far he’s good.

I was having some issues with a private tour I scheduled in Pattaya. There were 8 in my group, and one couple cancelled – due to lung cancer. The tour operator cancelled two couples instead of just the one. I think there is some confusion because there are two people named “John” in the group. After several emails, I think it’s resolved.

We have had the same bus, same bus driver, and same bus attendant since day one. Apparently, the bus driver and bus attendant sleep on the bus. Our guide gets a hotel room. I’m not sure where the driver and attendant shower or bathe. We also heard that the bus attendant had a small child. At the end of our tour, they will drive the bus back to Bangkok.

Today we visit the last two temples. I am a bit tired of temples and Buddhas. But here is another buddha tidbit. The Buddha was born and died under a sala tree, but he was enlightened under a boda tree, which looks very much like our banyan tree, except it doesn’t have hanging roots.

The first temple is the most sacred temple in Thailand, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. It is 3000 ft above sea level. The 6th King of the Lan Na province, which includes Chiang Mai, put ashes of the Buddha on a white elephant and where elephant stopped is where he built a stupa to hold the Buddha’s ashes. Under this statue of the elephant, are ashes of people who have died. They make a donation to the temple, and then the family can put their ashes at the bottom of the monument.

It is on top of a mountain, with beautiful views. Our guide said it was heaven on earth. We took a funicular to the top of mountain, but could have walked up the steps (ha). The stupa was built in 1376. The stupa is 33 feet in height. Buddhists Walk clockwise around the Buddha 3 times. The first time is for the Buddha, the second time is for the Buddha’s scriptures and the third time is for the disciples. 3 is an important number for Thai Buddhists and they do things in 3’s.

After the temple, we visit a Jade factory. They show us a video about the two types of jade, and take us into the factory wher people are working, carving the jade. They have a lot of jade carvings in their showroom as well as a lot of jade jewelry all for sale, of course.

The second temple we visited, Wat Suandok, was built in 1371, originally on a flower garden. It is called the flower garden temple. It is on the campus of a university and there are lots of monks around.

It is very rare for a monk to attend university. This temple was built by the same King as the first temple we visited today. He had a daughter who became a concubine of the 5th King of the Bangkok Province when she was 13 years old, and then Queen consort when she was 27, but the king died 3 years later. The 5th king of Bangkok was called the European king because he visited Europe and brought a lot of European ideas back to Thailand. After the King died, the Queen Consort retuned to Chiang Mai sand brought some of those European ideas to Chiang Mai. The Wat Suandok is considered the royal graveyard because there royal family ashes are in stupas here.

All the temples, except the White Temple, are decorated very colorfully. They use little mirror tiles and tiles made of colored glass, so it catches the light and is shiny and glittery. The white temple just used little mirror tiles, so the temple looked white and silvery, but it would also catch and reflect the light beautifully.We drove through the Chiang Mai old city. It was a capital in 1296 and was surrounded by a moat. There are some brick ruins that are still standing, and the moat still runs around the old city. But our guide says there isn’t much to do in the old city. They are preparing for a flower festival which starts tomorrow, and there are lots of flowers out already. We have seen some beautiful orchids, and there was a section of about 1 block that was lined with all sorts of orchids, apparently for a contest. But Thailand must be a great place to grow orchids as we see them all over.

Our guide talks about the Thai New Year, which is April 13. They celebrate for 3 days (3 again). They also celebrate our New Years on January 1.

She has a recommended place for lunch, which is close to our hotel, but everyone says they would rather just go back to the hotel. Dave and I are ready for “anything but Thai food”. So we walked to McDonalds and had a Big Mac. Actually there are two McDonalds within walking distance. Apparently the closest one only sold French fries and drinks! So we had to walk to the further one to get our American Food fix.

We have some free time this afternoon. Our guide says if we want to go to the old city to see the Flower Festival, we should take a red pick up truck. There are no buses, but these red pick up trucks serve the purpose. I’m not sure how far the go, but there is a sign on the outside that says 40 baht, which is about $1usd. We also see motor cycle driven Taxis.

This evening we went to a Kantoke dinner and show. The dinner is served in bowls on a tray, and each tray is shared between 4 people. They come back several times with additional food to refill the bowls.

After dinner we have a show os dances performed by the hill tribes. They dress in the costumes of their tribes. Some dances are performed by younger women, some by mature women, and some by men.

All the costumes are traditional. Our guide tells us that when she was in school, she had compulsory dancing classes. They train their hands so they can bend their fingers back. In watching the dances, their hand and hand movements are very beautiful one dance was called the fingernail dance, obviously emphasizing the hands.

02/03/18

Only 13 of 19 on our tour this morning. 2 ladies have been gone for a couple of days and our guide sent them to the hospital this morning – apparently diarrhea that won’t stop ☹️. Another couple, the wife was not feeling well, and another couple opted to go to the flower festival instead. I have developed a cough, but feel ok.

We visited the Marsa elephant camp this morning. Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants – about 4 tons compared to 5 tons. First, we fed some elephants sugar cane and bananas. . Each elephant has a mahout, or trainer. One mahout told us his elephant was 93 years old, and didn’t have any teeth. The mahout didn’t have many teeth, either. Then we saw them take some elephants into a stream for a bath. The elephants came over to where we were sitting and sprayed water (mud) on us! Then our guide heard a knocking and said it was time for the elephant show. Our group of 13 were the only observers at the show! Our guide said it was because it was the first show. I noticed later when we walked by that for later shows every seat was filled and the theater was packed. I call it a theater, but it was all outside. The elephants moved logs, gave a mahout a Thai massage (😁), and other tasks. They played soccer, threw darts, and painted. The elephants that painted paint the same picture each time. We watched an elephant paint a tree. After the show, I asked how much they wanted for the paining -$100. Later in the day, after our group leaves, i am sure it will be $50 or less, as they had lots of paintings hanging in the store that cost less than $50. Next we rode an elephant. Dave was very hesitant, but did it because I asked him to. The ride was actually pretty exciting, more so for 2 couples in our group. It is suppose to be a 40 to 45 minute ride. There were 10 people from our group that elected to ride the elephants, with 2 people on each elephant. At one point on the ride, the elephant stops, the mahout gets off the elephant and takes pictures using your camera. The last two couples were getting their picture taken when one of the elephants got spooked. A male elephant was spinning and knocked down another female elephant’s mahout, who ended up bloody. The female elephant took off, and did not have a mahout. The male elephant mahout took his elephant a different route than the rest of us, I assume because his elephant was not playing well with the other elephants in our group. Our mahout looked back and saw the mahout-less elephant, who was moving along, getting in the mud, and gave its riders a mud bath. After several minutes,the bloody mahout came running to catch up with his elephant. The mahout did not look so good, and I hope he is ok. The one couple lost their camera in the scuffle, but eventually got it back. Our mahout seemed to take charge during the event. He was calling out to the injured mahout, and was on his cell phone. Our mahout told us he was from Myanmar and had been a mahout for 8 years. Our elephant was a male with very long tusks, 36 years old. After all the action, the elephants walked into the water and get drinks from the stream while we were riding them. Dave said at the end that he was glad he took the ride. Me, too. All our couples got back safe, but I do wonder about the injured mahout.

Our next stop was an orchid farm. There were actually lots of plants there, and butterflies, but their big attraction is orchids. They showed us how they propagate orchids, and showed us rows and rows of orchids. I’m sure Ted would have known what all the orchids were, but we just looked at them for their beauty. We also walked through the butterfly enclosure and saw several butterflies up close! I looked around but didn’t see any cocoons…but I probably just didn’t look hard enough. They had a shop and jewelry made from orchids.

We had lunch at a small restaurant near our hotel. Dave and I both tried something different – mine was an appetizer, something like minced chicken wth garlic on toast. He had chicken with crab meat and vegetables. He could not find any meat in his dish. Neither was something we would order again. So I got a dessert – mango and sticky rice. It is served with a sweet coconut flavored syrup, and was very good.

This evening we had a Thai cooking class. First we met the chef at a market.

The Chef said this was the last wooden market in Chiang Mai. This market had a wood roof. The newer markets are all cement.

It was very interesting to learn how to choose vegetables and eggs. He showed us the difference between coconut cream and coconut milk. They gave us a few minutes to shop, but I wanted to try bubble tea, so I spent my time buying bubble tea. It was very good, but also very filling. It is Thai tea, milk, ice and tapioca – but not like our white tapioca. It was black and gummy.

We are a group of 16 – 3 people are still sick, one husband stayed with his sick wife, and one of the sick ladies is joining us tonight. I really feel bad for them because you come all this way and end up spending your time in bed at the hotel. I am wondering how they will deal with traveling tomorrow. 1 sick lady and her husband are flying to Phuket. 2 sick ladies are flying with us to Siem Reap. Hopefully we are not seated next to them.

Anyway, after visiting the market, we go to the cooking school. It is out a distance – probably 30 minutes drive- from Chiang Mai. When we get close, we leave the bus and travel in vans the last ten minutes. It is really in a remote location and the road is pretty much one lane. Once we get to the cooking school, it is set up nicely. It is open air, but covered by a roof.

We each have one burner and a work area, as well as pots and pans and cooking utensils. The first thing the chef demonstrates is sticky rice. We don’t cook it, but he tells us how. It is a long process – first you soak it at least 4 hours. Then steam it for 1/2 hour. Add flavoring if desired and let sit an hour to allow the rice to absorb the flavoring. This sticky rice will be part of our mango and sticky rice dessert. If I would have known, I wouldn’t have had mango and sticky rice at lunch today. We move on to the first course which is Tom Yum soup. The soup I made in the cooking school was much better than the Tom Yum soup I had at the hotel in Chiang Rai. The next course was Penang curry with chicken, to which we added pumpkin. The next course was chicken and cashews with onions. Then our dessert of mango and sticky rice. All the food was delicious, even though I cooked my own! I was stuffed! Our chef was the owner of the cooking school, and he gave us his cookbook. Everyone had a good time, except the one sick lady who tried to tough it out. She ended up laying down in the chefs house, and throwing up on the bus ride home 😳. Our guide and bus attendant have had their hands full with sick people this trip. I’m hoping Dave and I can hold out. We are using hand sanitizer like crazy, and washing our hands every chance we get.

Tomorrow we get to sleep in. We don’t leave the hotel until 11:30 for our flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia, via Bangkok.

02/04/18

Travel day….we left the hotel in Chiang Mai at 11:30am and got to our SmarTours guide in Cambodia at 7:30pm. Only 10 from our original group of 19 is going to Siem Reap. The other 9 are going to Phuket. Getting from the plane to the SmarTours bus in Cambodia took a long time. First we flew from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and then Bangkok to Siem Reap. Our Chiang Mai to Bangkok flight was delayed, otherwise we would have access to the airline lounge in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. We had to fill out visa forms, landing cards and immigration forms on our 35 minute flight from Bangkok to Siem Reap. In those 35 minutes, we were also served a meal. After landing in Siem Reap, we had to take a bus to the terminal in Siem Reap, we had to walk down stairs outside and then into the terminal. First we have to stand in a line to present our completed forms, passport, and money to get our Cambodian visa on arrival. Then our passport is passed through about 10 gentlemen’s hands, while we wait, all bunched up, for our passport. Then we stand in line at passport control, which takes forever. Finally, we get past there and grab our bags, and give our completed customs form to a man collecting them. Finally, we are outside the terminal. The whole process took at least an hour, maybe more. You will appreciate the speed at American Airports once you have traveled to Southeast Asia.

Our guides name is “De”, spelled Dy. We have a small bus with seats for about 20 people (our group is down to 10 with the other 9 going to Phuket).

Dy informs us our tour tomorrow morning will start at 8:00am.

2/05/18

There are many Chinese tourists in Cambodia. Our guide tells us it is partially because of Chinese New Year, but apparently they have a lot of Chinese tourists year around. Dy does not seem to like the Chinese tourists very much. He arranges our day so we visit temples when there are the fewest Chinese tourists.

I was always under the impression that Angkor Wat was in the middle of the Cambodian jungle, somewhat remote. That is not true. You visit Angkor Wat and other temples with hundreds if not thousands of other tourists. There are over 1000 temple ruins. Most temples in the Siem Reap region are 800 to 1000 years old.

In order to visit the temple, you have to get a ticket with your picture. They do check your ticket at each temple. Our tickets are good for 3 days and cost $62. US dollars are used extensively in Cambodia and the ATM machines, at least in Siem Reap, give you USDollars. Items in grocery stores are priced in USDollars. However, if you buy something and need cahage, the bills willl be US dollars, but coins will be Cambodian.

Our guide has told us there are still land mines along the Thailand border, left over from the war.

The first temple we visit is Ta Prohm which has trees growing on top of it and the roots of trees intertwined with the ruins. Ta Prohm is the modern name for this temple. It was originally called Rajavihara. The temples were really never lost, but discovered by Europeans, specifically the French. Prohm is a family name and Ta is old person, so it was probably where “old man Prohm” lived. This temple is famous as Tomb Raider was filmed here in 2000. The trees and roots are otherworldly. The king at the time, Jayavarman VII, ruled 1281 to 1320, and built this temple for his mother. The trees growing out of the ruins are spung trees, which have long roots. There are also some iron trees, so called because the wood is so hard. This temple was a Buddhist temple, but abandoned in 1600’s due to war with Burma. Cambodia lost this territory to Burma. All the temples were ransacked and anything of value was taken. The temple covers 1 square kilometer and 30,000 people would have lived within the walls of this temple. There are carvings of something that looks like dinosaurs (!) and also Apsara, which are dancing girls. The dancing girls were carved in all the temples we visited today.

The 2nd temple complex is Angkor Thom. Anchor Thom means big city, and accommodated 50,000 people. It was built by the same king and is his Royal place as well. Angkor Thom had 5 gates: 2 on the east, 1 each west, south, and north. There is a bridge to cross over into Anchor Thom with guard heads on the left and demons heads on right. There is a long terrace wall with carved elephant images. The temple in Anchor Thom is Bayon, which is 800 years old. It originally had 54 spires with 4 smiling Buddha faces on each side of the spire.

There are only 37 spires remaining. Anchor Thom was built by the same king, Jayavarman VII. He as 54 when he ascended to the throne, thus the 54 spires. Ashes of the king were put in the spires. The temple is guarded by a mythical figure resembling a lion, Singha, and the king of snakes, a cobra, called Naja. The royal palace in Angkor Thom had two swimming pools – one for men and one for women. The king only had one queen, but hundreds of concubines. The guide said this king was originally Hindu, but his queen was Buddhist, and he converted to Buddhism.

As we drive, we see lots of termite hills. Dave saw a bunch of monkeys, and I guess there are many monkeys, but I was too slow to see them.

We stop for lunch, and at this point, all the Asian food looks the same. Dave and I shared an Anchor beer, which is a Cambodian beer. At lunch, he asked Dy to check the score of the super bowl, and got the bad news. He seems to be taking it pretty well.

Our last temple. Is Angkor Wat, the biggest Hindu temple in the world. It covers 3/4 square miles and was built 900 years ago. It used to be one of the 7 wonders of the world, but not now. It was built 1113 to1150 from stone 40 miles away. 400,000 people built temple with 3000 to 4,000 elephants.

People had to support the king to build the temple. The king, Suryavarmin II, that built Angkor Wat was a young but smart king. He was only 15 years old when he ascended the throne, but was very powerful. It was built for a Hindu god, Vishnu. There is a moat that surrounds Anchor Wat which is symbolism for the ocean. Our guide said the water in the moat actually protects the foundation of the temple. There are carvings depicting heaven, earth and hell. Hindus believe in reincarnation and karma, so your life’s deeds are weighed and if bad outweighs good, you are sent to hell. When reincarnated from here, you are generally an animal. If you were a liar, you would have your tongue cut out and be reincarnated as a mute. If you killed chickens, you’d come back as a chicken. All of this was in the carving around the temple. Dave and I hiked up to the corridor surrounding the central spire. There are about 45 very steep steps. This is after you have walked up several levels already. They only allow so many people up top at one time, but our guides timing was good, and we had a very short wait before our climb. Up top we were able to enjoy some long views.

At some point, the Angkor Wat temple had been converted to a Buddhist temple, and we saw a standing Buddha statue and a reclining Buddha statue up top in the upper corridor. It was a large space, and you walk around the outside.

Our guide told us at some point in the future, you would only be able to walk around the temples, not climb through them like we did today.

Back at our hotel about 4:0pm. Dave is checking out a replay of the Super Bowl to figure out why the Patriots lost ☹️.

02/06/18

The plan is more temple ruins today. Renovations are being done in many of the temples. Not total restoration, but more stabilizing
The first temple we visit is small and old. The name is Preah Ko and it was built around 880. It is a Hindu temple. There are many statues of bulls around this temple. There are six spires,
three in front which are taller than the three in the back. Of the three in the front, the center one is to honor the king, one is to honor the kings father and one is to honor the kings father in law. Of the back three, the one in the center is to honor the queen, one is to honor the kings mother and one is to honor the queens mother. There is a statue of a bull in front and I asked why the bull was facing the temples. It is because the bull was bowing to worship the gods.
While driving to the next temple, our guide discusses the government. Cambodia is a monarchy/parliament. The king is figurehead. The real ruler is a prime minister. The prime minister has no term limit and the current prime minister has served for 33 years. There is an election every 5 years. While there is freedom of speech, if you speak badly about the government, you will be arrested. The capital of Cambodia is Phnom Penh and you see a lot of

nice cars there because of corrupt government officials. The tax on shop owners is 10% of income. There is no tax on people who make less than $300 per month.
The Doctors in Cambodia are not very good. People go to Thailand or Viet nam for healthcare. Average life expectancy is 62 – 65. People don’t smoke, because they know the dangers of smoking, but they drink. Phnom Penh is 200 miles from Siem Reap. School is free thru high school, and kids go to school only 4 hours per day, Monday through Saturday. There are no restrictions on the internet, but don’t write anything bad about government. There are 3 neighboring countries – No issues with Thailand and Laos, but Viet nam has disputes particularly about borders and immigrants from Viet nam. Many of the immigrants from Viet Nam are illegal.
Cambodia grows 8 million tons of rice, of which they consume 6 million tons and export 2 million tons. In a year, they can grow two or more crops, but usually just one crop because rice needs a lot of water. Agriculture is main industry, 2nd is textile or garment factories. Items such as Keene sandals are made in Cambodia or Viet Nam, but only for export. Cambodians cannot buy these items unless they order from US and pay shipping. Many factories in Cambodia are owned by China. China supports Cambodia government and military. Cambodia owes China 7 billion dollars. China is mining the gold out of Cambodian mines.
Our guide talks about the weddings in Cambodia. The groom pays for everything, including a dowry to the brides mother. Weddings last 2 days, and there is a big wedding party, often 1000 guests. After the wedding, the newlyweds often live with the brides parents until they have enough money to buy a house of their own.
We see Water buffalos and our guide tells us they are for working and eating. Dave is thinking about that Big Mac we had – was it really all beef or all water buffalo?
The next temple we visit is Bakong which is much bigger than Preah Ko. It was built in 881. It is also a Hindu temple, with phallic symbols statues. There is a moat and wall around the temple. The moat represents the oceans and the wall represents mountains. There are statues of 12 elephants – 3 levels of elephants, one in each corner.

Even thought this was originally a Hindu temple, it is in ruins. About 100 years ago, a Buddhist monastary was built on the grounds and is in existence today. We climbed tall, steep stairs to the top of this temple.
After visiting the second temple, we went to a Cambodian handicraft school. The government is training students in the arts of ceramic, silverworking, wood carving, etc. We saw the school workrooms and then had an opportunity to support the students in the showroom.
After our visit to Angkor Artisans, we had a break for lunch and a little rest. Our guide dropped us off at a restaurant that must cater to tourists, based on the way it was set up. 6 out of the 10 of us opted for lunch. We were the only ones in the restaurant at first, and then at least two more large tour groups came in later. The food was good. I had red chicken curry and Dave had chicken pad Thai, which he said was the best he has had on the trip. After lunch, our bus took us to the hotel for a one hour siesta.
The bus picks us up again, we have about a one hour drive to the most beautiful temple. It is 1050 years old and called the lady temple, or Banteay srei temple. This temple is not large, but has incredible carvings. All the statues and valuable items have been carted off by invaders,

thieves, etc., but many of the carvings remain. It was not built by a king, but by a counselor. It is called the jewel of Khmer art. The carvings here are exquisite.
Leaving this last temple, Dave spotted a huge, black scorpion. At first he thought it was rubber, but after pestering it enough, it moved so he knew it was real.

Our last stop was at the temple Prerup for sunset. The temple is in ruins,like the rest. The sun was not very bright because of the pollution, and obscured because of trees.

Nonetheless, Dave and I gave it the benefit of doubt and found a decent viewing spot. As the sun descended, it faded out more and more. So well before sunset, we gave up and headed back to the bus. Much to our surprise, everyone gave up well before us and they were sitting on the bus waiting for us! We are definitely spoiled with our beautiful Florida sunsets.
The road driving to and from the temples are terrible. Lots of bumps.
One thing I wanted to mention is that at each temple, sometimes at each entrance, is a band made up of land mine survivors. They play for donations. Their music sounds “Cambodian” but is very moving. Glancing at them you can spot those with missing limbs. Dave always carries the money, and I was glad to see him make a donation.
For dinner tonight, we walked a treacherous path to a restaurant, “Madamn butterfly”. It was an outside setting, but very elegant and the food was very good. Unfortunately, neither of us brought our camera,
We are templed out. All the temples today were Hindu. They are all in ruins. Kudos to our guide, he took us at less busy times. As we sit in a restaurant, or in the hotel, we see tour buses like crazy. They just come one after the other. I thought snow birds in Florida were bad – this place is worse. It is not remote, and there are visitors like crazy.

02/07/2018

This morning’s itinerary was to go on a boat ride on the biggest lake in Cambodia and Southeast Asia, Tenle Sap lake located in the center of the country.
As we drive, our guide talks about the Khmer Rouge and Civil war in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. He is too young to have lived during that time, but his parents did. His parents were forced to work hard to grow rice, they could not complain. They were given very little food to sustain them and many died of starvation. Polpoi and the communists evacuated people from cities to country to work. The Khmer Rouge regime killed 1.7 million people. The killed the educated and the wealthy. China supported Khmer Rouge. When it was over, the Khmer Rouge military changed uniforms to Cambodian military. The current prime minister has been in office 33 years, and was part of the Khmer Rouge regime. His party is still in power.
We stopped at a village where houses are on stilts, up in the air, maybe 15 feet.
In the monsoon season, the water will be up to floor, or nearly. These families use large nets to catch fish, then put them on frames or skewers to dry in the sun for a couple of hours. Then the

fish are smoked for long term storage. Some of the fish are sold and some are consumed. The
fish are a small type of catfish.
Saw small children scrambling up and down the stairs – no railings. The people were very friendly and the children would wave and smile at us. Our guide told us to bring these people any clothing that we were planning to throw away as they are very poor. However, these people are very small and Americans are very big comparitively – maybe they will remake the clothing getting two pairs of shorts out of one of our shorts.
Then we got to the port and got on boats that sit in a long canal, and rode through the canal. It is a long way through the canal to the lake. There are many more stilt homes along the canal. These people are fishermen and we see their nets and fish traps.

Just before the lake, we see a floating village where the people live in houseboats. This village is comprised of about 1000 families which are 60% Cambodian and 40% Vietnamese. The Vietnamese are illegal immigrants. They live on the water because they don’t have to pay taxes. They have immigrated because there is no room in Viet Nam. Viet Nam population is over 70 million people. The floating villagers have TV’s, and cell phones. They use solar power or batteries for electricity, but have no bills. They are fishermen. They move their homes with the water, going where the water goes, as the level of the water changes dramatically with the seasons.
We pass a spirit house, which is a small building very high up on stilts. It is for the spirits to reside in, and for people to go to the spirit house to pay their respects.

Some people grow green beans along the canal. We see irrigation machinery. These people live in stick houses built close to shore. They build the houses before planting season and then tear them down at harvest, rebuilding each season.
We saw one building out in the middle of a big field with no other houses around. There were a lot of motorcycles there and our guide said it was the local Starbucks.
We have not seen many 7 11’s in Cambodia. We see a lot of little markets along side the road. One thing we see is various bottles filled with a yellow liquid on stands being displayed. Our guide told us this was gasoline for the motorbikes.
Once we enter the lake, the boat captain shuts off the engine and our guide tells us a little more about the lake. The lake is 40 feet deep now but 60 ft deep in monsoon, in the center. In the dry season, it gets even more shallow. The most common fish is giant snakehead fish but there are also catfish, carp and other fish. There are many fish traps on the water. The fishermen build a trap, use a plastic bottle to make it float, and then put sticks or vegetation on top to identify trap. Sometimes the traps have flags on them.
The children of every age seem to be very used to the water. They are born on the water and live on the water. They run all over the place, up and down ramps on the stilt houses, where there are no rails. There are schools on boats in the canal leading to the lake, and children row
their boats to and from school.

While on the boat, there is a driver and a young boy, about 10 years old. He helps the driver docking, loading and unloading the boat. While we were cruising along, the young boy came around and was giving us neck massages.
After we get back on land we went to an outdoor restaurant. It seemed very nice and clean. We did have a few red ants on the table which we flicked away. There were areas with hammocks set up in areas covered with a roof, and large comfy chairs lined up, too. Our guide said they were there so you could rest after eating. The food was very good, again. Most of us ate Asian, but one guy in our group had spaghetti with garlic bread. Dave and I had chicken in Khmer spices, ordering the same thing. It took a long time for Dave to get his food – everyone else had been served. My chicken with Khmer spices had a red sauce, but Dave had a green sauce. We don’t know why!
After lunch we went to a memorial for the killing fields, which is a reference to all the people killed by the Khmer Rouge. It was a former jail, but a Buddhist temple now. The Buddhist

monks picked up all the skulls and bones the found and put them in a stupa with glass walls. There are placards telling about the many people killed all over Cambodia. This is just one of the places where bodies were found in pits. Our guide told us a few gruesome stories about how people were killed. Visiting this site was a sad way to finish our tour of Cambodia.
We are flying to Singapore, on a two hour flight, but we lose an hour because Singapore is one hour ahead of Thailand and Cambodia.
Getting into Singapore was much easier than Cambodia. The immigration official asked us if the governor of Florida was a republican or Democrat. Interesting!
We checked into our hotel, and Singapore is much pricier than Thailand or Cambodia. Dave got a glass of wine and I got a Singapore Sling for about $23usd.

02/08/2018

Lily’s Artwork! Just had to share!

Lily is just 5 years old! She definitely has talent!

Abu Dhabi to Milan 4/14 to 5/15/2019

April 14 to 16, 2019 Abu Dhabi

Months before our trip, I looked into the Visa requirement for the countries we plan to visit. Besides reading other people’s experiences, I checked the US website, and each country’s website. We will be sailing on Celebrity, and Celebrity uses VisaCentral as their vendor. I checked VisaCentral’s website and sent them an email. All my sources indicated the UAE visa would be obtained on arrival at the airport. Visas for Oman and Jordan would be obtained by the ship. Currently, we don’t need visas for the European Union.

About a month before the trip, I got no less than 5 emails from Celebrity advising me I needed visas. I got the same 5 emails from my travel agent because Celebrity forwarded the same visa letter to my travel agent, who dutifully forwarded it to me as instructed by Celebrity. Each time I dutifully checked VisaCentral and each country’s website to see if something had changed…it hadn’t. In this letter from Celebrity, the letter stated we need to bring 2 copies of the UAE visa when boarding the ship. I was assuming, based on all my research, when we arrive in Abu Dhabi and go thru passport control, that they are going to give me some document which I will copy at the hotel so I can have my 2 copies for Celebrity when we board.

We get to the Ft. Myers airport for our first flight and try to check our luggage with the Delta representative. He tells us we need a visa for Abu Dhabi. I show him my emails from VisaCentral, and the UAE government website that says we get our visa upon arrival in Abu Dhabi. He says he can’t accept that, and whatever he is looking at on his computer says we need a visa. After going around with him for about 5 minutes, he calls a higher up at Delta who says we don’t need a visa (Delta – please update your documentation for your gate people), apologizes, and checks our bags through to Abu Dhabi.

Finally, we are on our first flight from Ft. Myers to Atlanta…the beginning of about 20 hours flight time. We get close to Atlanta and the pilot tells us the Atlanta airport is closed because of storms. So we circle about an hour and finally land. We had plenty of time between flights on purpose so if there are delays, we are covered. After grabbing lunch at the Atlanta airport, we boarded our flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam. As takeoff time comes and goes, the pilot comes on and says the co-pilot has not arrived at the airport yet as he was delayed by the same storms that closed the airpot earlier. So we got to sit on the plane an extra hour, making our airplane seat time about 22 hours. Again, we had plenty of time in Amsterdam, so the delays did not affect our trip overall. Just a long day with no refreshing sleep. Finally we get to Abu Dhabi and have to wait in line another hour to clear passport control, which is where the visas should be issued. The guy stamps our passports, and Dave is asking him for our visas, since we’re suppose to have 2 copies for Celebrity. The passport control guy says, “You don’t need a visa”! So….we don’t know what will happen when we go to board our ship. Hopefully someone has told Celebrity that we don’t need visas for UAE. We shall find out tomorrow, but needless to say, we are very confused over this visa issue.

Tuesday, April 16: This morning we walked to the Sheik Zayed Mosque. It is about 1.5 miles from our hotel and took us about 35 minutes to get there. We had a nice sidewalk, but did not see anybody else walking! The roads are very nice, too, with several lanes for traffic. As we approached the Mosque from what I think was the west, we did not see an entrance. We saw some signs for parking, and walked to the north. We passed one parking entry, but the pedestrian gate was chained and the car entrance did not open for us. So we continued walking around the mosque and finally found an entrance on the north side. A security guard told us we could not enter there, we had to enter at the south parking lot. This mosque is huge and is suppose to be the 3rd largest mosque in the world, holding 40,000 worshippers. So, walking half-way around from the north side to the south side is a very long walk, but we did it. We actually found a slightly open car gate where we slipped in and saved ourselves several steps. The mosque is beautiful, as are the grounds it sits on. There are hoards of tourists visiting, so we had plenty of company. I worried much about what to wear as there is a very strict dress code. I ended up wearing my blue jeans, a short sleeve top with my black jacket to cover my arms. I wore a scarf that my cousin Sandie gave me YEARS ago, babushka style. I was afraid I could not have any hair showing, but I just needed a head covering, so I was dressed fine.

If you don’t have the proper clothing, you can borrow (rent? I heard there was a charge but I don’t know for sure) an outfit that covers you from head to toe with an attached hood to cover your hair. Men in shorts, sleeveless shirts, or otherwise considered inappropriate were issued a white robe, similar to what Arabic men wear that covers their legs and arms. Dave was dressed fine and didn’t get a white robe. We entered the visitor area with the masses, and completed a little form asking for sex, age, citizenship, tourist or resident on a machine that then spits out a ticket which you have to carry with you on your tour as it is scanned at different points along the way. Finally you walk to the mosque underground, utilizing moving sidewalks. We are able to see the outside of the building which is beautifully decorated, and then inside to see the prayer room.

Beautiful tiles outside sheik Zayed Mosque

The mosque covers 241,241 sq. ft, and holds the worlds largest carpet at 60,500 sq.ft. and 47 tons. The mosque also has the worlds largest chandelier which is from Germany. The chandelier measures 33feet in diameter and contains 1,000,000 Swarovski crystals.

World’s Largest Chandelier 33 feet in diameter with over 1 million Swarovski crystals

There are two identical, but smaller chandeliers, with all 3 hanging in the prayer room. The chandeliers are absolutely beautiful and colorful – not clear glass as I was expecting. There are shallow water ponds surrounding the mosque. The clear water ponds have tile bottoms, so they are very pretty, and calming to look at. Our whole visit took no more than an hour as there isn’t much else to see. There was no charge to visit the mosque.

Sheikh Zayed was very important to Abu Dhabi. He was the first president of the UAE and oversaw Abu Dhabi’s transformation from a small desert city to a modern but conservative city. There is lots of construction and building going on in Abu Dhabi. From my perspective, which may not be true, the lower level jobs – maids, wait people, etc, are held by immigrants. The more professional jobs, ie bank teller, are held by Abu Dhabi’s – in full Arabic dress.

We walked back to the hotel, grabbed some lunch, and got ready for our desert barbecue. Our driver picked us up about 3:15. I had arranged the tour, and found another couple to join us from our Cruise Critic message boards to split the cost. Unfortunately, the day before we left Florida, the other couple sent me an email saying they had to cancel the tour and the cruise due to a medical emergency. At that late time, we couldn’t find another couple to join us, so it ended up being a bit pricy for just the two of us. We headed out of Abu Dhabi to the desert with our driver Faisal (I’m probably butchering his name). It was close to an hour drive and he turned into the sand. He let air out of the tires for more traction. While there were many, many Toyota Land Cruisers, our driver and one other driver stayed together and away from all the other Toyota’s. Driving over the dunes, “dune bashing”, was much more fun than I imagined. It was like being on a roller coaster with the Toyota slipping, sliding and turning to 45 degree angles. There was sand blowing all over the place. Following the other driver gave me some comfort because I could see what was coming next. Dave asked him if he ever tipped one over and Faisal said no, never! We dune bashed for 30 minutes or so and stopped for a break in the middle of nowhere on top of a dune. We took a few pictures and started talking to the people in the other car…amazingly, it was a lady I met thru the cruise critic message boards, Violet! They are Canadiens but have a condo on Placida Road at Fiddlers Green. She and I met up for lunch one day at Leverocks. It was really amazing that Violet and her group were in the other car. After some pictures and talking to Violet and her group, we got back in our respective Toyota’s and did some more dune bashing. Somewhere in the middle of the desert we stopped at a camel farm and saw a large group of camels. Some were roaming loose, but pregnant females and young camels were behind fences to protect them. Two of the loose camels were very friendly and wandered up to us for some petting and pictures. Camels are raised for their meat, however we haven’t seen camel on any menus. There were several donkeys around, and the donkeys are used to carry in supplies for the camels. The donkeys were wandering, loose, also. I’m assuming it is because this is were they get food and water, so there is no need to wander off. As we finished our camel visit and were walking back to the cars, a whole caravan of Toyota’s pull up for their camel visit. We were very glad we were there alone. Hard to get one on one with a camel when there are 100 other people wanting to get one on one with the camel 😁. More dune bashing, and then we get to the “camp” for some entertainment and our desert barbecue dinner. Again, we are the first Toyotas there, ahead of all the other Toyotas, and our drivers pick out a table for us front and center. We also get to all the different activities first. Violet is traveling with her husband, Charlie, her sister Mary, and Mary’s friend, Gail. Mary, Gail and Charlie rode camels….it was less than 5 minutes. The just went in a little circle. Then we could have dune boarded, but since this is the very beginning of our vacation, we all passed as we didn’t want to fall and break something. Next we tried on Arabic dress. The ladies put on long black robes as you see Muslim women wearing and black headscarf’s. Our hair is not suppose to show, but my hair did not cooperate. The men put on long white robes, with a red print headscarf and a black rope gizmo that holds the scarf in place. I asked Faisal why some men had the white head scarfs and others had this red print one. If I didn’t get this backwards, men from Saudi Arabia wear the white ones. While in full Arabic dress, we got to hold a falcon! I think he was fairly young as he was not too large.

After the falcon, We ditched the Arabian dress as it was just too hot. Gail, from Violet’s group, got a henna tattoo, which was very pretty. I did not get one. Gail and Mary walked to the top of a dune to watch the sunset….Dave and I chilled. We have seen plenty of beautiful sunsets in Englewood. Soon our buffet dinner was ready. I’m sure I don’t remember all the choices, but the food had a Lebanese slant. We had lavash bread, hummus, tabouli, macaroni, rice, two vegetarian curries, chicken, lamb, bread pudding, apples, and oranges. Sodas, water and coffee were free. Hard liquor was available for about $6 a shot. They had beer for purchase, but I don’t know the price. After dinner we had entertainment by a belly dancer and a man that danced. Both dancers were really good. We were all quite impressed. I can’t remember the name of the dance that the man did, tabouli (?) dance, but it reminded me of the twirling dervish’s of Turkey. He kept spinning the whole time. I’m sure that sounds weird, but both dancers were really amazing. People could hang out and dance on the stage afterwards, to Arabic music, but we elected to leave. Actually no one got up on the stage to dance. I think everyone left, but, again, we got out of there before all the other Toyota’s left. Dave told me that he was glad I wanted to do the desert barbecue because he enjoyed it much more than he thought he would.

April 17, 2019 Abu Dhabi

Today is our last day in Abu Dhabi. We board our ship and head to Dubai. Abu Dhabi is a very clean, modern city. One thing that amazes me is the speed limits. As we drove to the desert yesterday, the speed limit was 170 km, which is about 100 mph. Today we were driven around “downtown” and the speed limit was 80 km, which is about 50 mph, in the city!

We need to get from our hotel to our ship. Our concierge arranged a half day tour, and the driver would take us to our ship. Dave and I had picked a few things we wanted to see in Abu Dhabi before leaving. The first stop was Capital Gate which is also called the leaning tower of Abu Dhabi. It has an 18 degree lean, which is supposedly 4 times more than the leaning tower of Pisa. There is a Hyatt hotel in this building…but not sure I’d like to stay there! Sorry it isn’t a better picture, but it was a bit hard to capture.

Our driver took us to a souk, which was not on our itinerary. The stuff in the souk was beautiful…carpets, jewelry, clothing, etc., but we are not in the acquiring years (😁). We looked around with a guide, but did not buy anything.

The next stop was Emirates Palace. This is actually the old palace which has been converted into an EXPENSIVE hotel. Dave had to have on long pants and, of course, I had to be dressed conservatively also. I did not realize the palace and hotel were the same location. As tourists, we were allowed into the public areas of the hotel, which used to be the palace. The place is huge with guards all over the place to make sure us peons did not get into the hotel guest areas. Beautiful crystal chandeliers were hanging all over. Nowhere as big as the mosque, but beautiful nonetheless. There is a new palace for the royal family, but our driver said guests of the royal family stay at the Emirates Palace/hotel. This hotel covers such a large area that guests are given bicycles to get around. Picture is of the new palace.

After the Palace/hotel, we went to the Heritage Village. This was an area showing what Abu Dhabi culture used to be. We walked through a recreated desert area with the different types of housing. Of course there were vendors selling all kinds of Arabic goods. There was a museum, which contained costumes, tools and historic pictures. One picture was of Abu Dhabi in 1960. Abu Dhabi in 1960 was a few tents and huts in the sand. There were no roads, buildings, sidewalks….nothing. Today, there are many large buildings, great roads and sidewalks. I enjoyed the museum more than any other sights at the Heritage Village.

Our last stop was the Qasr Al Hosn, which is the oldest building in Abu Dhabi. It is a fort built in 1793. Unfortunately for us, it is under renovation, so we were only able to drive close by.

We were disappointed with our driver, as his English was very difficult to understand. While we enjoyed Abu Dhabi, we do not feel like this is someplace we have to come back to.

We got on the ship, and were disappointed that our stateroom does not have a sofa. Only an oversized chair which also folds out to a single bed. Our balcony is very nice and we have nice furniture. As we look over the side, we see many jelly fish!

April 18, 2019 Dubai

To follow up on the visa issue, we checked in to our Celebrity cruise with no problems. All they wanted was our passports which the ship holds until the end of our cruise. It is very frustrating that Celebrity kept sending emails for no good reason.

We booked a private tour in a Dubai with Dubai Private Tours. Our guides name was “Shah”.

I felt like we saw a lot in our short time in Dubai. We really liked Dubai. We were with our guide about 6 hours. I was a little concerned at first because Shah talked non-stop, and was full of information and details about Dubai and the UAE. However, I got used to his endless information and thought he was a really good guide.

Since our guide met us at 8:00am, there was not a lot of places open until after 9:00. He walked us through the souk Madina Jumeirah, but most of the stores were closed. This souk is also known as Little Venice. Supposedly it is an authentic recreation of an ancient marketplace with traditional Middle Eastern style and ambience. Somehow, to me, being inside and air conditioned, I don’t get the connection as an authentic recreation of an ancient marketplace. But, because of the hype, it was on the tour. We did not spend much time here.

Next was a photo stop of Burj Al Arab Jumeira, the most expensive hotel in the world. It is a 7 star hotel, with a helipad at the top, which is on the top at the left in the photo. Unless you have a reservation, or a guest, you cannot even get on the grounds of the hotel. The building looks like a large sail. Our stop here was along the beach and allowed me to dip my feet in the Arabian Gulf, if you are in the UAE, but also known as the Persian Gulf if you’re in Iran.

On the beach in front of the Burj Al Arab Jumeira

Then we drove to Palm Jumeira Island, which is the man made island that looks like a palm tree. The trunk portion of the tree has lots of tall buildings, most of which are hotels. The palm fronds are villas owned by rich people. Our guide said the villas cost $3 to $8 million USD. If villa owners also own boats (yachts), they cannot dock them by their villas, they have to dock them in the marina. The palm tree part of the island is surrounded by another man made island in the shape of a crescent. We accessed the crescent by means of a tunnel, but there is also a monorail that travels the length on the Palm Island and out to the crescent. There are lots of hotels on the crescent including an Atlantis hotel. However, the king of Dubai is building another Atlantis hotel that is twice the size of existing Atlantis.

According to our guide, Jumeira and Jumeirah means it is owned by the king.

We drove up to the Kings palace gate, but there is no admittance. There are horse statues on the kings gates because the king loves horses.

Leaving Palm Jumeira Island, we drove to the Burj Khalifa, which is the tallest building in the world. It is 2,722 feet total height. This is another building where access is restricted, so to go up into the building, you have to buy a ticket. The cost of the tickets depend on how high you go, and whether it is during prime or non prime hours. The cheapest ticket is $36.75 per person to go to floors 124 and 125, and the most expensive ticket is $143.00 per person to go to floor 148 during prime hours. We did not go up into the building. Actually our guide took us through Souk Al Bahar, a mall next to the Dubai Mall, and we were able to get pictures of the Burj Khalifa. The Souk Bahar looked like a mall in the USA, except some of the goods had an Arabic flair. But, there are lots of US companies, stores and restaurants in Dubai. We saw Applebee’s, Trader Vic’s, McDonalds, 5 Guys burgers, etc. We did not go into the Dubai Mall which is billed as the largest mall in the world, and is connected to the Burj Khalifa.

Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world (2019)

We walked through the Bastakiya Quarter which has several museums. We found it had several artists studios selling their art. We walked into a couple of studios, but did not spend a lot of time here, either.

We rode an Abra which is a water taxi across Dubai creek (man made) to visit the spice and gold souks.

I would say the spice souk is a couple of blocks long, with some stores on side streets. There are no cars, all pedestrian walkways. Our guide stopped at one store and explained all the different spices. It is amazing to me that there are probably 100 vendors, all selling the same spices. We sampled a date with an almond in the center, covered with chocolate which was very good. We also sampled some dried lemon, candied ginger, figs, pistachios (California, salted, saffron flavored and one other flavor I can’t remember), and two types of almonds. We ended up buying some pistachios and the chocolate covered dates with an almond in the center. We probably bought a pound or more of pistachios and 6 chocolate covered dates for $10. We just filled a bag with the pistachios and supposedly our guide bargained the price for us…but who knows. As he walked with us in the souks, he knew many of the vendors and kept telling them we were Australians. Later he said Australians never buy anything, so when he said we were Australians, the vendors would leave us alone.

After the spice souk we went to the gold souk. This is a place where we spent some time! They had beautiful jewelry. We did not buy anything, but I sure enjoyed looking. I saw a pair of diamond earrings I liked, but they were about $4,900, so a little rich for my blood. No wonder I liked them! Our guide did not walk with us here, so we wandered on our own. According to our guide, there are no pick pockets and the gold sellers are very honest.

We rode the Abra back across Dubai creek and headed back to the ship.

Some of the things that our guide told us:

Only about 15% of Dubais population are Arabs. The rest are immigrants. Immigrants have to report every 2 years to renew their visa. If the immigrants do not have a job, or if they have an infectious disease, they are deported. There are many more men than women in Dubai.

Dubai is very safe because if you do something illegal, you are thrown in jail and if you’re an immigrant, you are deported. He claimed there is literally no crime. He said there are cameras all over which are watching. Phone calls and social media are monitored.

If 2 Dubai people marry, they are given a house and $40,000. But if its a marriage between a local and an immigrant, they don’t get anything. This is to encourage citizens not to intermarry.

They pay about $2.90 for an equivalent of 1 gallon of gas – similar to what we pay in US.

Alcohol is available in clubs and hotels, but Muslims do not drink alcohol. Also, Muslim men do not wear gold. Gold is only for women.

I mixed up the male headscarves – white represents UAE, and red represents Saudi Arabia. The black rope around the top of the men’s headscarf was originally so they could tie down their camel. These days it is more to hold down the headscarf. It is not Muslims that wear the robes, but Arabs. There are lots of Muslims that are not Arabs. Muslim men are not suppose to show their knees or elbows.

Stuff about the king that I can remember. He has had at least 6 wives, but can only have 4 at a time. Right now he has 2 wives. He has 24 children. He is a big horse fancier and always strives to have the biggest and best. Supposedly this is because in horse races, nobody remembers who came in second. His first born son died young of a heart attack, but the British press insinuated it was the result of heavy drug use. The crown prince is 37 years old. The royal family does not release any information about themselves or what is going on in their family, so it is unknown whether or not the crown prince is married. The successor to the king does not need to be the first born son, but it must be a male relative – brother, son, nephew – who ever the king thinks will be a better king.

April 19, 2019 Muscat, Oman

Today we have a ships tour, “Panoramic Muscat”. We had chosen a walking tour, but it was cancelled. In the Arab world, their weekend days are Friday and Saturday, and Sunday is a workday. So I believe our walking tour was cancelled because so much is closed on Fridays. In reality, it is pretty warm today, so a walking tour would have been very hot. Panoramic tours are generally bus rides, and stops for photo opportunities, and that held true today.

Our first photo stop was the Omani opera house. It was a big marble building with expensive shops attached. It was closed today, so we only saw the outside. Apparently the Sultan is a big fan of opera and has his own orchestra.

The next stop was a photo opportunity of the grand mosque. The mosque is closed to visitors on Fridays, so we could not visit the inside. The capacity is 20,000, but only room for 750 females. Women do not have to attend mosque. They can pray from home. This mosque used to have the largest single piece carpet, but now it’s the second largest after the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. The chandelier used to be the worlds largest, but now it is second to Abu Dhabi, too. Dave and I thought the landscaping was very nice.

We drove to the Mutrah Souq for some free time to shop. This souq happens to be close to the port. All the souq’s we’ve visited are basically the same: lots of vendors selling pretty much the same goods. It reminds me of the now defunct Dome, or a flea market with lots of vendors with small booths. They had spices, jewelry, clothing, souvenirs, etc. we wandered around, but did not buy anything.

Our last stop was a photo opportunity of the Al Alam Palace. The sultan does not live here, but meets visitors and does business here…it’s the ceremonial palace. The Sultan is in Muscat today as evidenced by the flag flying above the palace.

Our guide was a 25 year old who was educated in Oregon. He said Oman is 50% Omani’s and 50% ex pats. The average monthly wage is $1500. He indicted the Omani economy is not so good right now. Their main exports are oil, gas and fish. Most of their oil and gas goes to China and Japan. He wore the white robe and a smaller, round cap.

He said his cap was due to the African influence, particularly Zanzibar, and is considered casual wear. More formal headdress for men would be a turban. He said women generally wear colorful clothes. The women wearing the black abaya are due to Saudi influence. Most of the women we saw were tourists, but I did see a few Muslim women wearing black. Maybe we saw one woman wearing a white scarf on her head and colorful clothes. I’m not sure if she was an Omani or a tourist. Our guide also pointed out two huge yachts that belong to the Sultan. Apparently the Sultan sailed to Libya on one yacht at onetime, and hasn’t used either yacht since.

Today’s port call was only 5 hours, and we did not think there was much to see in Oman. We were invited to watch the sail away from the helipad on the front of the ship. That is always a neat event, they give free Champaign, and the crew walks around and introduces themselves to the passengers for a one on one conversation. However, Dave wore his Patriots cap and we were cornered by a Canadian passenger who wanted to discuss sports.

We got our pirate letter, and will have a drill tomorrow.

Procedure for cruising through the Gulf of Aden

Today is our 34th anniversary. Dave sent me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and we are going to eat at a specialty restaurant tonight.

My flowers from Dave for our 34th Anniversary

April 20 – 25, 2019 Sea Days and Petra

We had 5 sea days traveling from Muscat, Oman to Aqaba, Jordan. We really did not do much – read, attended some presentations, drank a lot of adult beverages and caught colds ☹️. We were just beginning to feel congested, and at dinner when sharing pleasantries with our waiter, he told us he had a cold and had gone to the ships doctor! So, we knew where we caught the cold! Onboard is David Weimers, who worked in Hollywood. He gave some interesting presentations on celebrities and movies. He also worked at a Disney World on some of their animations. We’ve only caught one evening show, due to feeling exhausted from our colds. Did not want to share our disease 😁.

The ship took the pirate issue very seriously. At sunset, lights were dimmed, exits to the outside decks were blocked. During the daylight hours, all open decks had security guards posted watching for pirates. We also traveled in a convoy with two other cruise ships. We could see the other ships as we were traveling. The good news is that there were no issues and we are safe. For Dave and I, this part of the world is fascinating and we are really sad that it is such a hotbed. We are glad we could take this cruise and visit some interesting places. While we are definitely in a Muslim/Arabic world, everyone we have had contact with has been very nice (maybe because they are making money from us?). Anyway, very enjoyable so far.

We did some walking on the ship to try to keep in shape at least a little bit. I had been using the “steps” app on my phone. One day I decided to try the “map my walk” app. Imagine how shocked I was to find out we walked 19+ miles in an hour! Then I realized the app was capturing the ships movement and we had only walked a little over 3 miles.

We had attended a presentation on Petra, and were warned we would have to walk 3 miles. That scared off some people and they cancelled their tour. Dave and I were ready!

Our ship docked about an hour early. We were taking a ships excursion, and wanted to be on one of the first buses. We went to the meeting location to get our stickers about an hour early, and we were already on bus #2! We could understand most of what the guide said. He was born in Jordan and educated in Russia! He was good in that he really did not get into any politics. After leaving Aqaba on the bus, most of the scenery was of desert, with hills. It was amazing the long views we had of the desert. Our guide said Jordan had many historical, biblical sights. One of those is the tomb of Aaron, Moses brother. The tomb is the white building on top of the hill. This is one of two sites claiming to be Aaron’s tomb.

Our guide, Ceia, also talked about the Bedouin’s. Generally they are a nomadic people and live in tents. We did see tents in the desert, with camels and goats around. Our guide said the black tents were the Bedouin’s and the colored tents are gypsies. The government built housing for the Bedouin’s to encourage them to be more permanent. Some have moved into the housing but some still live in tents.

Many of the women we see are covered. If we had stayed in Aqaba, women were advised to cover their arms and knees. Muslim men are also suppose to cover their arms and knees. But many of the women wear black coverings, and the temperatures in Aqaba were mid nineties, and it is not the hottest time of the year yet. While walking in Petra, I saw a woman, covered in black, carrying a baby totally wrapped in what looked like a wool blanket. I will say the temperatures in Petra were cooler than Aqaba because it is at a higher elevation …. I would guess upper 70’s. Ceia said Jordan is 94% Muslim and 6% Christian. In defense of the treatment of women, Ceia gave us many statistics on the number of businesses are owned by women, Jordan gave women the right to vote before Switzerland, women have to have a certain percentage of seats in government, if a father/husband dies women still receive his salary for the rest of their lives or until they remarry/marry…etc. I’m sure he mentioned more, but those are the ones I remember. Ceia also said a Muslim man is allowed to marry a Muslim woman, a Christian woman or a Jewish woman because those religions believe in one God.

After driving about 1.5 hours, we took a bathroom break, which also happened to be a souvenir shop. Dave and I were not tempted…besides, Jordan seems to be very expensive. 1 Jordan Dinar is equivalent to $1.40.

We drove about 15 minutes more (which tells you the bathroom stop generated some Jordanian dinars to the tour company or Celebrity). Our lunch was at a very nice Marriott, served buffet style. I thought the food was good, but Dave is a little more finicky because we had no clue what we were eating. I think one of the dishes was lamb, but could have been goat or camel….

Finally we get the the entrance of Petra. The altitude goes from about 4400 feet down to 2600 feet. It is all downhill going in. It is not known exactly when Petra was built, but the city prospered as the capital of the Nabataean Empire from the 1st century BC. The Nabataeans grew rich through trade in frankincense, myrrh, and spices. It was a center of trade and caravans passed through Petra making it a large, commercial trading center. Petra was later annexed to the Roman Empire and continued to thrive until a large earthquake in 363AD destroyed much of the city in the 4th Century AD. Also in the 4th Century AD, the Nabataean’s converted to Christianity. The earthquake combined with changes in trade routes, eventually led to the downfall of the city which was ultimately abandoned. By the middle of the 7th century Petra appears to have been largely deserted and it was then lost to all except local Bedouin from the area. At the end of the 12th century, after the conclusion of the Crusades, groups of Bedouin’s camped amongst the ruins of the ancient city, and fearing the arrival of treasure hunters, kept its existence secret for many years.

One version of the “rediscovery” of Petra was that in 1812 a Swiss explorer named Johannes Burckhardt set out to “rediscover” Petra. He was an expert in the Arabic language and Islamic religion, dressed up as an Arab and convinced his Bedouin guide to take him to the lost city. Another version that we heard was that Burckhardt was looking for another ancient city and stumbled on Petra. Regardless, Petra became increasingly known in the West as a fascinating and beautiful ancient city, and began attracting visitors.

Just after we passed the entrance to Petra there are horses, and carriages. I am not totally sure how this works….Ceia said the carriages were not available, but the horses were included in our tickets…however you are expected to tip the horse’s owner at the end of the ride. But it seemed like the ride was not very long….maybe the equivalent of a block, which is not very far in the scheme of things.

We started our walk, downhill, and quickly learned that most of the monuments we would be seeing were actually tombs. First we see Djinn blocks which are square, 20 to 30 feet tall, considered by the Bedouins as the seat of spirits guarding the city. The Djinn blocks are generally considered to be tombs either left unfinished or stripped of their original decoration.

Next we see “The Obelisk” tomb which is actually two stories. The top is the Obelisk Tomb and the bottom is the “Bab al-Siq Triclinium”, which is believed to have been used to serve banquets each year to honor memory of the deceased. The Obelisk tomb has five niches carved into the walls, presumably to hold 5 bodies.

In ancient times, Petra was a green city with fountains and gardens. The Nabataean’s had built a dike (Wadi Musa river? I think) and water conduits to divert the water to supply the needs of the city. The dike diverts the river water into a 280 foot tunnel and then into the conduits, partly made of terra-cotta pipes. The Nabataeans built a bridge over the dyke to allow access to the Siq.

We walk some more and enter the “Siq”. The Siq is a narrow passageway between tall rock walls which is the only easy way to enter the city. The rock walls of the Siq are 280 – 290 feet tall and in some stretches only 10 feet apart. The walls of the Siq have carvings, voltive niches and even ancient graffiti. There are carvings representing gods, but lack descriptions to designate which gods.

After about 1.25 miles, we finally get a peak at “The Treasury”. The Siq opens up into a big open area in front of the treasury, who official name is “al-Khazneh al-Faroun”, which means, the Pharaoh’s Treasury. It was a belief among the Bedouin tribes that an unnamed pharaoh had hidden a treasure in the urn crowning the facade. The facade has numerous bullet holes from useless attempts to take possession of the supposed treasure. However, it is probably most famous because of its position at the end of the Siq and its exceptional state of preservation because it is deeply set into the mountainside and protected from erosion and the elements. Indiana Jones has helped its claim to fame, too. It is 92’ wide and 131’ tall, and two levels. We could not go inside, but were told the lower lever has 3 rooms which originally were stuccoed. Some scholars say this was a tomb of a Nabatean king, others say it was a temple. Dating the structure is debated also. The prevailing theory is it was built mid-century BC to hold the remains of Aretas III (85-62BC) or Obodas II (62-59 BC).

This is not the end of our tour. I thought our guide would leave us at this point, but he continued on with us pointing out more points of interest. Continuing down we go through an area called the outer Siq. We see another group of tombs called the Street of Facades. Some of these tombs have stairways carved into the upper part, believed to be stairways to heaven.

The next point of interest is a Roman styled theatre which could seat between 6000 and 8000 spectators. The area where the theatre stands is at the edge of the urban area. The tombs would have been built outside the city center, but there are a few rooms dug out of the rock above the theatre. These rooms are distinguished from tombs because they lack carved facades.

Just past the theater we stop at a vendor selling refreshments and some souvenirs. The road continues to the area of the ancient city, and across the road and up a hill from here are 4 more tombs. Our guide is leaving us at this point and gives us the choice to walk back to the entrance, continue on to the ancient city, or walk up to the tombs. We check with him as to the best option and he recommends walking up to the tombs because it gives you a view of the ancient city. Of our bus of 40, Dave and I are the only ones walking to the top. It is 200 steps (I counted). These tombs are called the Royal Tombs. The first tomb, and the one we could enter, is the Urn Tomb. It is called the Urn tomb because of the large urn carved onto the top. We could only enter the ground floor, but it did have two levels. The inside was a large cavernous room and the ceiling was multicolored rock. Dave thought it had been painted, but I think it was natural. There was some black on the ceiling which I think may have been from fires inside. To the left of the Urn Tomb is the Silk Tomb. It is called the Silk Tomb because of the multicolored veins of sandstone on the facade. The two other tombs in this grouping are the Corinthian Tomb and Palace Tomb. The Corinthian tomb has many columns but is in a poor state of preservation due to erosion. The Palace Tomb resembles homes of the Hellenistic rulers, consists of three levels, and is believed to be the tomb of the last Nabatean king, Rabbel II (70 – 106 AD), but is not proven.

While there is still much more to see, we have to get back to our meeting point so we don’t miss our bus! It is about 3 miles to this point, so we have to walk back about 3 miles, uphill. I have to mention the carriages, which our guide said were unavailable. While we are walking, these carriages come racing by us. It is truly a miracle that no one (especially us) gets run over. There isn’t much warning, but you can hear them. The area where you walk is very uneven, with lots of stone, making walking difficult. Apparently the Romans “paved” the walkway in some areas, but that just means they laid down some bigger, flatter stones. I was in shock when we left the treasury area and I saw a man with a walker. He was really struggling with the rocky path. There are plenty of vendors selling everything along the path, but there are restrooms, too. There are many people visiting. I could not believe the number of buses when our bus pulled into the parking lot! It was packed!

One other thing our guide mentioned was that the Bedouins lived in the tombs and rocks until 1985. Then the government built them some homes and evicted them from ancient Petra. Ceia said some people (Bedouins) remember which tomb they were born in!

Petra was phenomenal. I would love to go back because I don’t think we saw even 1/2 of it. Dave and I love historic stuff, especially if it’s not in a museum.

My steps app showed we had walked over 6 miles. We left Petra about 6:00PM and had about a 4 hour visit. It was a 2 hour drive home on the bus with the required stop at a souvenir shop for a bathroom break. One of our previous guides told us these shops pay big dollars for tours to stop, even if no one buys anything. We got back to the ship about 8:30, pretty exhausted. Our bad colds were not helping.

As we drove to the port, it was night, and we could see lots of lights, which our guide said was Israel. If you look at a map, Aqaba, where the ship docked, is at the very end of Jordan with Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as very close neighbors.

Tomorrow is a sea day, and then we have the Suez Canal.

April 26 – 27, 2019 Suez Canal

We left Aqaba and headed south around the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula and then north in the Red Sea to the Suez Canal. As we got closer to Suez, we saw oil platforms, which we had not seen previously.

At the end of the day, Friday, we were approaching the entrance to the Canal. About 11:30PM, the ship dropped anchor to await its morning slot to transit the Canal.

Approximately 50 ships a day transit the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal cuts through Egypt, so we had Egypt on both sides of the ship. The Canal reduces the journey from the Arabian Sea to Europe by over 5,000 miles. Supposedly the first Canal between the Red Sea and the Nile River was dug about the 13th century BC. Cleopatra may have sailed in a Canal between the Red Sea and the Nile River. Napoleon considered the feasibility of a Canal, but his scouts incorrectly concluded the Red Sea was 30 feet higher than the Mediterranean. The current Canal was begun in 1859 and finished in 1869. There are no locks on the Suez Canal, with seawater flowing freely through it. There are two lakes, the Great Bitter Lake and Little Bitter Lake. In general, the Canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer.

The first ship through the Canal was suppose to be the imperial yacht of French Empress Eugenia, followed by the British ocean liner “Delta”. But a British navy ship navigated to the front of the line under cover of darkness and was the first ship to navigate the canal. The captain was officially reprimanded but secretly lauded by the British government.

The Canal was owned by the United Kingdom and France, until 1956 when it was nationalized by the Egyptian President, an event that led to the Suez Crisis. This led to the Israelis striking and then the British and French. Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviets supported Egypt. Eisenhower cautioned Khrushchev to refrain from direct intervention and threatened Israel, Britain and France with economic sanctions if they persisted. The threats did their work and the Israelis, Britain and France withdrew. However, the Canal continued to figure prominently in the conflicts between Egypt and Israel during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. The Canal was closed during the Six-Day War of 1967, when several vessels were sunk in the waterway, blocking the shipping lanes. The Canal was reopened in 1975 after an international task force had cleared it of obstacles. Unrestricted Israeli use of the Canal was secured in the peace treaty with Egypt in 1979.

Ships transit the Canal in convoys. We were the second ship in a convoy of 21 ships, starting about 5:30am. I believe only the first two ships in our convoy were passenger cruise ships and the others were container ships.

When we reached Great Bitter Lake, there were 11 ships that had entered the Canal before our convoy, but were at anchor in Great Bitter Lake until our convoy of 21 ships passed, then they would continue after our 21 ships. I don’t know why they had to wait and then follow us … it sounded weird, but that’s what we were told. A total of 57 ships transited the Canal today.

The Canal is a little over 120 miles long, and is a “no wake zone”. We went through at about 9 miles per hour. There were two tug boats on each side of our ship all the way through. Before entering the Canal, 4 technical Egyptian crew boarded our ship and two pilots. About midway, the two pilots were relieved and two more pilots boarded the ship. I have no idea why we needed all these people and two tugs ($$$$ probably or the Egyptian full employment plan). At 9 mph, it took over 11 hours to transit the Canal.

The west side of the Canal has a lot of development and is very green. This is because of irrigation from the Nile river. The east side of the Canal has little development and is all desert, the Sinai. However, some of the larger cities are expanding and development is starting on the east side. At one point there is a new city with residences for 750,000 people. Supposedly there are tunnels under the Canal so people can move from one side to the other.

We passed under the Al Salam bridge which looks a lot like the I275 bridge over Tampa Bay. We did not see one car on the bridge. But just past the bridge was a ferry transporting vehicles from one side to the other. Not sure why they could not drive over the bridge.

We exited the Canal at Port Said, which is also a port for cruise ships. We did not stop there as we are on our way to Athens, but have been to Port Said on previous Egyptian cruises.

April 29, 2019 Athens

Our plan it to DIY Athens. Our ship is docked in Terminal B at Piraeus which means we will have to take a port shuttle bus to Terminal A and then walk to the metro. We took the metro from Athens to Piraeus previously, and we remember that it is a long way. Actually there was construction going on then, and we got on the metro going the wrong way and almost missed our ship! Today we had plenty of time. We decided to head out about 9:00 AM, and it is a long walk to the metro, if you can find it! It is about a two mile walk. The first building we saw was actually a train station, not the metro. The ticket agent pointed us to go back across the street. We crossed the street, and again a lot of construction, so not sure where we were going. We were following another couple headed to the metro, and finally found the right building. The Greeks do not make it easy! We got our tickets – actually full day passes for 4.5 euros each, so if we decided to use public transportation in Athens we could, and we would already have our tickets back to Piraeus. We took the green line toward Athens and transferred to the blue line at Monastiraki. Then two stops on the blue line. We were heading to Mount Lycabettus which has a beautiful view of Athens. We left the subway and walked the wrong direction because everything was in Greek (imagine that) but ended up by the Hilton where we stayed a few years ago. We took advantage of the Hilton and took a bathroom break and gathered our bearings.

Dave has a phenomenal sense of direction and once he gets his bearings, he rarely if ever gets lost.

I was also able to use the Hilton WiFi, and pull up directions to Mount Lycabettus from the Hilton. We knew there was a cable car to the top, so our mission was to find the entrance to the cable car. We started walking, and knew we were on the right road. What we didn’t realize was we had to walk up about 500 steps to get to the entrance to the cable car. Usually I count steps, but today I didn’t. All I can say is that there were a lot of steps…I was pooped. We kept looking for the cable car entrance, afraid we missed it. But no, it was just higher up. We were so tired when we finally got to the cable car entrance that we bought round trip tickets for 7.5 euros so we could ride part way down. We got to the top, and of course, there were quite a few people. The views are wonderful. We could see the Acropolis and the ocean.

There is a Greek Orthodox Church at the top, too, and today was Orthodox Easter Monday with a service going on at the church. A priest was walking around sprinkling holy water and soliciting donations. We could not get close to the entrance of the little church. There is also a restaurant which seemed pretty reasonable according to the menu which included an entree, salad and glass of wine for 13 euros. However, we planned to go to our favorite restaurant in the Plaka area, and it was only about 11:20am, so a bit too early for lunch.
We rode the cable car back down, which was only partway down, and started walking towards the Plaka. About 2 minutes before noon, we got to Syntagma Square and happened to catch the changing of the guard. The Greek Soldiers have a very unique ceremonial walk.

Changing of the Guard at the Unknown Soldier’s Tomb in Athens

We have seen it before, but it was cool to catch it again. After the crowds disbursed, I spotted Violet, the Canadian lady I hooked up with before the cruise and the same lady that we ran into in the Abu Dhabi desert. I walked up to her and asked her if she knew the way to a Englewood
😁 . Her group had a guide, and were headed to the Plaka area, too.
Lots of stores were closed today since it was Greek Orthodox Easter Monday, but we did find a pharmacy that was open so we could stock up on cold medicine…which is in Greek…so I hope it works. Finally got to Plaka. This is a big tourist area with lots of souvenir shops. It covers several blocks, up and down a main drag and side streets, too. We wandered a bit and eventually found “our” restaurant. Unfortunately, ownership has changed ☹ .

The old Greek who gave us ouzo was not there any longer – a much younger ownership. The name of the restaurant is still the same, Thespis. It has a beautiful, long view of mountains, I think to the northeast.

View of mountains from “our” restaurant in Athens

If we didn’t have umbrellas over our tables, there is a view of the Acropolis to the west, too. I had lamb kabobs and Dave had sea bass…plus 1/2 liter of white wine and 1/2 liter of red wine. It was a very nice lunch. After lunch we walked through the Plaka some more, but the merchandise is really junk. So no, we didn’t buy anything, but we looked. I was hoping to find a nice jewelry store, but the nice ones were closed today because of a Greek Orthodox Easter. We found another area that billed itself as a flea market, and wandered through there for awhile…same junky souvenirs, but fun to look at. What is neat about Athens is that you run into ruins that are fenced off and protected as you are wandering around. We saw a little church that was protected but the Plaka area was built up all around it.

When walking around, you can look up and get a glimpse of the acropolis from many locations, this one near Plaka.

I really enjoy the DIY trips that Dave and I do. It is much more enjoyable than being herded around with 40 people. However, those big group tours have their place, but we have been to Athens several times and actually stayed at the Athens Hilton for three or four days in the past, so more fun to pick a sight and strike out on our own.
We headed back to Piraeus on the metro and has no issues getting back to our ship, except for the 2 mile walk. We actually got back about 4:00PM. The Qsine specialty restaurant manager was by the elevators looking for people to come to his restaurant tonight. It is normally $45 per person for the specialty restaurants, so we negotiated with him for a rate of $29 per person! Looking forward to dinner!
Tomorrow we strike out on our own again. The ship docks in Katakolon, Greece which is the port for ancient Olympia. We have rented a car and plan to drive ourselves to ancient Olympia.

April 30, 2019 – Katakolon – Olympia

Happy Birthday, Nicole! I am so lucky to have a great daughter in law and today is her birthday! I hope she enjoys every minute!

Some random thoughts….the metro from Piraeus to Athens was disgusting, making Chicago subway cars look pristine, but the other metros we were on were clean and nice. I found this strange because I had dirty Kleenex and could not find a trash can to dispose of them.

Wandering around the ship, not only tonight but other days as well, I have found it interesting that people are dressed in Arabic clothing. For dinner, one couple wore the whole she-bang ….man in white robe with headdress and woman in black robe with black head covering. Similar folks out on the deck while transiting the Suez Canal. Walked by a woman with mans headdress in coffee lounge, with shorts and t-shirt. I really should have taken pictures.

Today we docked in Katakolon, Greece which is the port for Ancient Olympia. This is really a small Greek town. A Greek billionaire, John Latsis, wanted to make the citizens rich, so he built a cruise ship port. It worked! Today there were 2 big ships in port…ours and a Costa ship. We had pre-rented a car from Avis so we could do our own thing. To be honest, I am more the “let’s rent a car that you drive” than Dave is. But he agreed in a moment of weakness, so here we are. He kept asking me about parking at the Ancient Olympia site, but according to trip advisor and cruise critic, there seemed to be two lots for parking.

We rented the car and got instructions. The rental guys told us not to put in more than 15 euros of gas as we’d never use more than that. It was a manual Volkswagen and off we went. The directors were simple enough. Drive 7 km to the first stoplight and turn left, then drive 3 km to the next light and turn right. Drive 27 km more and we’d be there.

At the first stoplight, we turned left and the car died just past the intersection, but blocking traffic. In the midst of the honking and narrow, narrow roadway, we were at a standstill. Could not figure out the problem. Dave was concerned that it was the 192,000 miles on the VW we had just rented. Some guy got tired of honking and came up to the window and stuck his arm in. He did all the things Dave did, but finally the car started. Yeah, but, what does this mean for the rest of our journey? We make all the required turns and stops and arrive in ancient Olympia. We could not find the entrance or anywhere to park. We found one spot, but a policeman nicely told us to move. He told us we had to drive back into the “town”, so we did. We followed the buses and taxis, but never saw a parking lot. After driving around a bit, we saw a space behind a building and in front of a dumpster and decided to park there. Then we had to figure out where to go to get to the site. We followed some people, and came upon a large Museum building. We used their facilities, still looking for the archeological site. Finally we saw a large bunch of people gathered and figured out they were in line to get tickets! We stood in a long line and finally get our 12euro per person tickets. They do not have maps. We walked and enter the site. What really struck me was how large of an area this site covers, 5000 acres. Very little reconstruction, and lots of ruins. There were several plaques to tell us what we were looking at, because otherwise we would never have known.

The first inhabitation of this site was about 3000 BC. The site became a sanctuary to Zeus, built about 1000 BC. A massive statue of Zeus, ranked as one of the 7 wonders of the world was located here. The olympics were part of the celebration of the festival of Zeus, held every four years from about 776BC to the 4th century AD, when the Roman emperor abolished pagan festivals. Another Roman emperor had the temples destroyed in 426AD, then earthquakes in 522 and 551 further damaged the site. Mudslides and silt from the Cladeus River eventually covered much of the area, helping to preserve the site.

We saw the ruins of the temple of Hera, where the Olympic torch is lit for each new olympics.

The temple of Hera held the disk of the Sacred Truce, which all athletes had to swear to, basically saying they would not cheat.

At the entrance to the stadium there used to be “Zane’s” statues, which is plural for Zeus. These statues had the names of athletes that had offended the Sacred Truce , and their offense. You go under an arch to enter the stadium. A marble (?) line makes the starting point.

The track is 200 yards long and the stadium would hold 40,000 – 45,000 spectators.

We saw ruins of statues erected by past winners commemorating their wins at the Olympic Games.

After the stadium, we saw the ruins of a house built for Nero.

In what seemed to be the center, we saw the temple of Zeus.

As we walked back towards our starting point, we saw where a building had covered rooms for the athletes and in the center was an open area that was filled to be used as a swimming pool. The athletes would oil their bodies and apply powder. Another building, ruins but recognizable, had been turned into a church in the 5the century AD. I could imagine this building being a church.

Ruins which became a church in the of 5th century

We finished walking through the ruins and visited a museum. Inside were many artifacts from this site, doing back to 3000BC. Many of the statues from the Olympic era were there. While missing parts, you would make out the intent. Having said that, there were several headless statues that had descriptions of who they were….how would they know if the heads were missing?

Overall, it is interesting, but because of the lack of documentation, maps, whatever, the site was a bit underwhelming. No parking, no organization….the area encompassed is huge. Dave felt the cost of upkeep would be very large. There were many people there visiting, as the lines to get tickets were very long. After leaving the site, and walking back to the car, we stopped to get a gyro. Suddenly it turned very cold, and Dave went back to the car to get our jackets. Still uncomfortably cold while we ate. Otherwise, it had been another beautiful day.

We drove back to Katakolon with no issues and returned our car. We only put 10 euros worth of gas in it. Then we walked the main drag of Katakolon. Lots of souvenirs shops, but a leather purse caught my eye. We let a few moths out of Dave’s wallet and we bought the purse…and more cough drops ☹️.

This was our last port. Tomorrow will be a sea day and packing day, and then the next very early morning we disembark in Rome.

Even though we have been fairly inactive, we have enjoyed this cruise. It is hard to not like food anytime, beverages anytime, room cleaned twice a day, etc. I could get use to this!

I hear people coughing and hacking all over the ship, so it’s not just us. The drugs I bought in Athens seem to be better than the contact I bought on the ship. We’ll keep doing drugs and plugging along. Today we walked almost 6 miles, so we are doing pretty good, considering.

May 1 – 2, 2019 Sea Day, Disembark, Florence

May 1 is our last sea day, and it is a bit sad as the end of our cruise approaches. About 10:00 am the captain come on the intercom system and announces we are heading into the Messina Straights. He says, “it is not as long as the Suez Canal, thank goodness!”. The Messina Straights is the water between mainland Italy and Sicily. It is narrow and you can see land on both sides of the ship. It only takes about an hour to go through the Messina Straights. In another hour, we approach the Stromboli Volcano. This is an active volcano that erupts, the last one that I am aware of was in January, 2019. However it “burps” every 20 to 30 minutes. It always has white steam coming out, but when it “burps”, the smoke is black.

We saw two burps as we cruised by. The even more amazing thing is that Stromboli is on a small island, probably built up from lava, and there are bunches of houses! I don’t know why someone would want to live on an island with an active volcano!

May 2 is our disembarkation day. We have rented a car in the port city of Civitavecchia and plan to drive about 3 hours to Florence. Because of our colds and hacking, we were awake early, but planned to leave the ship about 7:30am. We got down to the exit, and Dave realized he forgot his hat in the stateroom and had to go back and retrieve it. There is a shuttle from the ship to the port exit, and a mad rush to get on the shuttle. We ride and ride and ride, and Dave says this doesn’t look right. We had rented a car in Civitavecchia previously, so Dave knew the location of Hertz office. We get off the shuttle and Dave says this is not the same port exit as last time. We have our suitcases and overnight bags, and start hoofing it. I had the location of Hertz on google maps, but not the distance. We are walking…it is not easy for me to pull 55 lbs. of suitcase plus my overnight bag. Dave has about the same. We keep walking, and resting, and walking. Finally we get to Hertz which was over a mile from where the shuttle let us out. Again, walking a mile is no big deal….but pulling the suitcases made it a challenge. We got the car, a diesel, automatic, Opal station wagon. It has navigation, so while Dave is figuring out how to get out of Civitavecchia, I’m entering our destination. Sure enough, we see the port exit from a couple of years ago about 2 blocks away from the Hertz office. Don’t know why they let us out where there did, but it caused us some pain.

So we get out of town and use the cars navigation to drive to Florence. Our hotel is very close to the Duomo, so we know it is probably in a restricted driving zone. It is a little over 3 hours drive – we made a few wrong turns, but the cars navigation system got us back on track. We get into Florence, the traffic is heavy, the streets are narrow, and the cars navigation system says you have arrived at your destination….but, we are not on the right street and definitely don’t see our hotel. We drive around a bit, restart the car navigation, and get a message that basically says, “your location is in a restricted area” and doesn’t take us any further. Fortunately, I had looked at the directions on a Google Maps before we left the ship and lost access to WiFi. Using Google maps, I was able to direct Dave to the hotel. Yes, it was in a restricted area, but we were able to check in and then park the car in a garage. Whew! We did it!

We walked around Florence a bit and got our bearings. My plan is to get a SIM card for my phone. We asked the reception guy where we could buy one and could not figure out where he was sending us. Dave is very apprehensive about my getting a SIM card, but I think it will be helpful as we drive around Italy. We saw an apple store and popped in, and asked where we could buy a SIM card. He sent us about 2 blocks away to a TIM store. Very busy place! I took a number and there were 14 people in front of me. Finally they call my number, a nice lady helps us, and then asks for my passport. What? They need my passport? She told us when we come back we don’t have to wait in line, just come directly to her. So we walked back to the hotel, got our passports, and walked back to the TIM store. The lady took us right away, installed my new SIM card and I have data!

We plan to go into the Duomo, but tonight just walked around it….it is HUGE! There is a great lunch place close to the hotel.

There are lots and lots of restaurants with lots of great wine. Dave complains a little about watching his carbs as he devours his ravioli for lunch, and pizza for dinner ….. 😁😁😁! Hey, we’re on vacation in Italy! The land of wine and carbs!

May 3, 2019 Florence

It is a rainy day in Florence. It rains and then stops, then rains again, then stops. Sometimes we think the sun is coming out, and then it rains hard!

Dave and I have been to Florence several times, so on this trip we hoped to see a few things we had missed in previous trips.

Our hotel offers breakfast, so of course we eat breakfast at our hotel. We paid extra for a superior room with a balcony, which we cannot use because of the rain ☹️. We are close to the duomo, and actually have a glimpse of the top. The room is good size for being a European hotel room. Our shower is smaller than the one on the ship, but we have a bidet! Dave and I are both still coughing and hacking, and we think maybe we caught a second bug while in our weakened state.

After breakfast we headed to the duomo, Florence’s Cathedral, as we had never gone inside. Yesterday when we walked past, it had a huge line. Today is no different. We waited in line 1.25 hours to get in. The good news is that entry to the duomo is free. It was begun in 1296 and not finished until 1436. The exterior is marble panels of green and pink, bordered by white. It is huge!

The floor area is 89,000 sq ft. As we waited in line outside, we felt most of the cathedral needed a good power washing. It appeared the front had been cleaned recently, and the green, pink and white marble was beautiful. After we finally are let in, I think we are surprised by the bareness! It is a huge open space inside.

If I remember correctly from previous visits to old European churches, people stood during the sermons. When we were in Athens and walked to the top of Mount Lycabettus, the people were standing for the orthodox Easter mass – there were no seats in the church. In the Duomo, they do have seats…some rows of pews, but several rows of plastic chairs. Obviously added over the years. The seats do not fill up the floor space however, so I am sure some people attending mass today have to stand. The floors inside the duomo are beautiful green, pink and white marble, too. There are 44 beautiful stained glass windows by the greatest Florentine artists of their time. The dome was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.

We had planned on climbing the bell tower which had 50 less steps than climbing the Duomo’s dome (414 vs 464), but I just did not feel up to the climb.

After visiting the duomo, it is almost noon. We head back to the hotel for a bathroom break, then head out for lunch before our reserved 2:00 Academia visit. As we are eating lunch, Dave checked the documentation from where I purchased the tickets online. It says we need identification. Of course, we did not bring any. When we are out walking about, we only carry what we absolutely need. So after lunch, we make a quick trip back to the hotel to get our passports. Fortunately, it is only about a 10 minute walk from out hotel to the Accademia. We get back to the Accademia and of course they do not ask for identification! We debated and then spent 10 euros for an audio guide. It was useless. We had no map, so we could not tell what number to hit on the recorder. Fortunately I had downloaded a Rick Steves audio tour of the Accademia, which was great. I was surprised the Accademia was not huge. I was thinking it would be like the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, but it was no where near that size. Upon entry, the first room contains a state called “Rape of the Sabine’s” which depicts the legend where ancient romans stole women from a neighboring tribe. This statue shows a Roman warrior trampling a husband as he carries off the wife. This is actually a plaster model of the actual statue. In this room, as well as throughout the Accademia, are several works which describe the artist as opposed to the work. Next we go into the gallery that contains David. It is a long gallery with other works/statues lining the sides. These statues are called the prisoners….they are unfinished works of Michelangelo and are called prisoners because the unfinished works seem to be fighting to free themselves from the stone. There is a bust of Michelangelo created by one of his students. Michelangelo was born to a poor but Nobel family. His family did not support his desire to be an artist, but at the young age of 13, the ruler of Florence nurtured his talent by making Michelangelo a member of his household. The amount of famous works by Michelangelo is incredible, at least to me: the Sistine Chapel, designing the dome of St. Peter, the Pieta, David, plus many others. The actual statue of David is 14 feet tall. This statue seems to capture a David as he is sizing up Goliath. He has a stone in his right hand and his sling is over his shoulder. His hands look a little too big for the body, but supposedly represents the hand of man powered by a God. It really is phenomenal and you can even see veins on his hands. I am no artist, but viewing this statue is impressive.

The rest of the museum is not impressive. There is a room of musical instruments, and another room with plaster statues and busts from the Academy art students – not sure how old these are, looked like several were from the 1800’s. We saw the main attraction, which was very impressive, and then left.

We stopped in a coffee shop for some hot tea (for me & my cold) and a glass of wine. It was still raining off and on, and we considered our options. We decided we’d walk to the Ponte Vecchio bridge. The Ponte Vecchio is a medieval stone bridge over the Arno River lined on both sides with jewelry stores. There are a few very nice jewelry stores, but most are selling costume jewelry or worse.

Still raining, so we headed back to our hotel for a break before dinner.

May 4, 2019 Florence

We head out after breakfast this morning for Piazzale Michelangelo which is a little park overlooking Florence with wonderful views of the city. We walk about a mile and decide we are overdressed as yesterday was cool, so we wore warmer clothes today. We decide to go back to our hotel and change. When we head out again, Dave decides we should save our legs and take a taxi. It is quite an uphill climb, so that was a good decision. The view from Piazzale Michelangelo is as promised. Actually, we have been to this overlook before on a ships tour, years ago. But today, on our own, we have plenty of time to enjoy the view. There is a replica of Michelangelo ‘s statue of David in the Piazzale. The view looks across the Arno river towards the duomo.

We climb higher to the San Miniato Church, up about 100 steps. According to legend, the martyred St. Minias, for whom the church is named, was beheaded on the banks of the Arno in AD 250. He picked up his head and walked up the hill to the place the church now sits, where he died and was buried in what became the first Christian cemetery in Florence. In 1018, this church was built to house St. Minias’ remains. This church is over 1000 years old! Although the area has built up around the church, it still sits in the middle of the cemetery with crypts and tombstones. Most are centuries old, but we see a few more recent burials. It is still a restful, peaceful place. The church has a green and white marble facade.

Inside, the floor is tombstones from long ago. Downstairs is the crypt holding the remains of St. Minias. This church seems more decorated with frescos and statues than the duomo. It appears the church is having a video show of some sort, so not the best photo.

The church is much smaller than the duomo, but with a very interesting legend.

We sat in the courtyard of the church, enjoying the beauty of the view of Florence in the distance and pondered what to do with the rest of our time in Florence. We are not interested in visiting museums of paintings, and we have seen much of Florence on our many visits. We decide we have seen and done those things that we wanted to do here. We decide to walk back to the touristy part of Florence and have lunch. On the way, we stumbled onto a beautiful rose garden.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. A little window shopping and walking around. We got caught in a downpour and had to step into a wine bar for a glass of wine to avoid getting drenched.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant recommended by our Hotel. It is not in the “tourist zone”. We got there about 7:30pm, without reservations. The waiter said he had a table as long as we were done by 9:30pm. 2 hours – no problem! Two “local” ladies sat next to us, and when they heard us speaking English, asked where we were from. So one lady has a place in Florence and Sante Fe, New Mexico. Her friend was native Italian. They were amazed we found this place because generally no tourists eat here. They did have an English menu, though. Anyway, it was neat to talk to them and they were very nice. We did have a hard time finding the restaurant because the addresses did not seem to go in sequence. Maybe that’s how they keep tourists away 😁.

A photo from yesterday, in the Loggia della Signoris, which is a big plaza. There are several statues/replicas in this plaza. The original David was here before it was moved to the Accademia, now there’s a replica here. The original statue of The Rape of the Sabine Women, is here, while the plaster model is in the Accademia.

May 5, 2019 Florence to Siena

We checked out of our of our Florence hotel. Our car was parked a few minutes away, but because of the restricted zone, it would be a long drive to get it out of the garage and drive back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. We peaked out of the hotel and it wasn’t raining, so we decided to walk to the garage, 5 minutes away. Of course it started pouring before we got to the garage ☹️. We headed to Siena, but since we could not check in until after 3:00pm, we decided to do one of Rick Steves self guided driving tours – Crete Senesi Drive. It is a back roads loop south of Siena. We drive to Siena and start the drive. The scenery and landscape is just beautiful. This is perfect because it is cold with intermittent rain. This is Tuscany. As we drive we can see the beautiful estates up on hills with trees lining the long driveways. Dave put in an offer on this villa:

It is so difficult to capture the beauty of landscapes in photos. There are many little pull-off area where we can stop and admire the landscape. We see a couple of other cars ….but not many….and 2 are stopping and taking pictures just like us. The first big stop is in a little town by the name of Asciano. We park and walk to the tourist information building. There are very few people here. We got a map of the town, basically one main drag. As we get ready to leave the tourist information building, we hear honking and beeping like crazy. It seems to be a road rally for Fiats! There’s probably 50 of them enjoying their ride down the restricted traffic road in the center of town. So of course we watched the parade of Fiats! Gosh they are small cars! Barely enough room for 2 people. One sporty looking one drives by that has a back seat with a lady crunched up in the back seat. Most of the drivers were “mature”, as were the fiats!

After the parade goes by, we see a restaurant recommended by Rick Steves and stop in for lunch. Lunch had been pizza for the most part…and wine of course. The pizzas are very thin crust, probably about 12” in diameter, and definitely meant for one person. Dave can eat about 3/4 of his, and I generally eat about 1/2. After lunch, we finish our walk about town, passing the old fascist headquarters which is now the police headquarters.

Fascist headquarters turned into police station

While it still looks very rainy, we manage to miss the rain at this stop. It rained as we were parking and then stopped. It rained while we were eating, but then stopped. On our way back to the car it was drizzling, but did not pour until we were in the car.

Our next stop along this driving tour is the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore. The Abbey is closed between 12:00 and 3:30, and we arrived about 3:00. It is a bit if a walk, downhill, to the abbey, and although it is just spitting rain a little bit, it is chilly – probably about 50 degrees. We walk downhill through the woods to the abbey, and see they have a wine tasting just under the abbey. Of course this is wine from grapes grown by the monks. We go down and taste a couple of wine and support the monks by buying a bottle of wine. By the time we finish tasting and buying wine, the abbey is open.

According to Rick Steves….Bernard Tolomei (1272 – 1348) was the son of a wealthy Sienese family. He moved to the hillsides south of Siena to become a monk. One day he had a vision and took it as a sign to build a church., and founded the Olivtan order. Tolomei was made a saint in 2009. His original humble church is now a brick monastery complex. Entering the church, the choir seats are designed with inlaid wood. The artist, who completed the choir chais in just two years is called the “Michelangelo of Wood”. The woodwork is amazing and each chair is different. One panel depicts a skull, a common symbol for Agam, often shown in Italian paintings at the base of Jesus cross, reminding us that Jesus died to atone for the original sin of Adam. Dave and I have wondered why there is usually a skull in Italian pairings which show a Jesus on the cross, and now we know why! It was dark in the choir area, so we could not get a picture of this magnificent work. The Cloister has 35 frescoes, and Rick Steves gives a description of each frescoe, telling what the picture means. From all the European churches we have seen, it was really interesting to look at the frescoe and understand the message of each.

After looking at the frescoes we head back, uphill, to the car. We get in, and it starts hailing! We decided to shortcut the rest of this driving tour and head to our hotel in Siena.

Our hotel is inside the city walls, so the hotel has to register our car with the police! We have a very nice room, but we are looking at construction outside our window! The hotel gave us a welcome drink – white wine for a Dave and Prosecco for me.

May 6, 2019 Siena: Montepulciano and Montalcino

The weather Monday is still very cool and possible rain, whereas Tuesday is looking better. So on Monday, we decide to do our wine tour and tour Siena on Tuesday.

We drove from Siena to Montepulciano. We have been here before, but this is one of two of Dave’s favorite wine cities. Driving to Montepulciano gives us more time to admire the beautiful Tuscan landscape. It really is gorgeous to have long views across the landscape with villas and driveways lined with cypress trees. We park in a different parking lot than last visit, and we do Rick Steves walking tour which we didn’t do before. Last time, we just went for the wine! It is a hill town, and we get the opportunity (😩) to walk uphill a lot. I would not say there are any exceptional sights, but there are interesting ones. We see the insides of churches, one of which is elliptical in shape. In the church, the frames around their big art pieces are art, too, drawn to look 3 dimensional. In Montepulciano, Montalcino (visited later today) and Siena, all have marble columns. At one time they all had a she-wolf suckling human twins (Romulus &Remus), but in Montepulciano the column now is topped with a lion holding a Medici shield. The Medici’s were a very rich and influential family in the history of Italy.

Marble column in Montepulciano of Lion with Medici Shield

There is a clock tower topped by a popular character in Italian theater, but looks a little like Pinocchio to me.

Montepulciano is known for Nobile wines, which is not as famous as Brunello, which comes from Montalcino. The most popular wine tasting showroom is Contucci Cantina, which we visited in the past, and Dave was not really impressed with their wines. This time we opted for De’Ricci Cantine, which Rick Steves calls the most impressive wine cellars in Montepulciano. You enter through a non descript doorway, and then walk down, down, down amongst barrels of wine in a cellar like atmosphere. I was wondering where we were going to end up, as I had visions of having to walk back up all these stairs. Finally we ended up in the wine shop where we were able to sample their wines. The wines were very good, the people very friendly, and we were much happier with this wine cellar. We did not have to walk back up through the wine cave/cellar. There was a back door, and while we had to walk uphill quite a distance, it was an incline instead of stairs. It was getting late and we had not had lunch. There was a wine shop that offered wine tastings with cheese, so we thought we’d do that instead of lunch. Not one of our better ideas. The cheese was good, the service was slow, the wine was expensive and not very good. Time to leave town.

Leaving Montepulciano, we drove to the other big wine town of Montalcino. Montalcino is not as large as Montepulciano, but is another hilltown which means climbing up and down the streets. Montalcino’s famous wine is Brunello, which can be very pricy. Last time we were here, Dave tasted wine in the fortress and in a shop with machines. You buy a card in advance, insert it into the machine, and get a sample of wine. Depending on the wine, you would be charged accordingly for the sample. It is a smaller town, so no walking tour. We went to the fortress first, and it was pretty packed with people tasting wines….probably because it was inside and they had a heater going (it’s chilly here – which I’ve probably written about daily). There are also (gross) waterclosets here, which is better than nothing. We decided to move on. There are too many choices to wait in lines for wine tastings. We set out to find the shop with the machines. After walking literally up and down several streets, we decide that shop doesn’t exist anymore. But, Dave finds another wine shop that catches his eye. (In every Italian town about every 3rd store is a wine shop). They charge for tastings, which varies in price, depending on the bottle. He samples a couple, and then buys a different Brunello that he has had in the past.

Our mission is accomplished! One wine from Montepulciano and one from Montalcino and a wonderful drive through Tuscany. We drove back to Siena for a brief rest and then find someplace for dinner.

May 7, 2019: Siena

Our hotel, Pensione Palazzo Ravizza was once the residence of a noble. It has beautiful gardens in the back with irises and lilys in bloom. The room is very nice, and large for European rooms. The shower is great, bigger than the ship and the hotel in Florence! Breakfast is OK…the hotel in Florence offered scrambled eggs. Our Siena hotel offers a more European breakfast with fruit, bread, cheese and sausage.

After breakfast, we do our Rick Steves Siena walking tour. It starts in the big Il Campo, which is basically the city square, except it is not square. It is the seat of government. It is shaped like a clamshell, and people sit all over the bowl like area. The city hall has a 330 foot city tower attached, which was unusual for the time, 1340 AD, as usually only churches had towers. The tower represents the rise of a secular society.

Every year a horse race is held here, with various neighborhoods competing. The square is filled with 60,000 people on the inside and the horses run around the outside of the clamshell, but inside the buildings lining the square. There are no rules, and the jockeys frequently fall off. The winner is the first horse to cross the finish line, with or without a rider. There is a large fountain in the square which was an engineering project in the 1350’s to bring fresh water to the city. It is named the Fountain of Joy for bringing fresh water, completely free.

We walk through various Sienese neighborhoods and past nobel palaces of old to visit the Duomo. On the way, we see one of the columns with a she-wolf nursing human babies, Romulus and Remus. According to legend, Siena was founded by two sons of Remus.

The Duomo has dark green and pink marble, similar to Florence’s duomo. Originally the duomo was intended to be much bigger, but building was halted due to the bubonic plague, which killed about 1/3 of Siena’s population. The church has some very interesting artwork, including a Michelangelo statue.

The floor mosaics are detailed, and protected so people don’t walk on them. The mosaic picture we took today is of the she-wolf, the symbol of Siena. But, one of the mosaics, which I remember from our previous visit, was the slaughter of the innocents, when King Herod killed the babies.

There are frescos in one room, the Piccolomini Library, from the 1400’s. These frescoes have never been restored but are beautiful and vivid as if they were freshly done. These frescos celebrate the life of one of Sienas hometown boys, who later became Pope Pius II. The pulpit is made of Carrara marble. The panels, from 1268, are the work of Nicola Pisano, carved in the style of an ancient sarcophagus. These panels tell the life of Christ.

As Dave and I walk thru the duomo, seeing Michelangelo’s statue, the frescos, the mosaics….we realize we have toured this duomo on a previous visit to Siena. We still continue our tour of the duomo visiting the crypt, and baptismal.

Rick Steves walking tour then takes us past some more nobel palaces and overlooks. One of the churches in Siena that we opt out of visiting is the a Church of San Domenico, which contains relics of St. Catherine…a thumb and her skull. St. Catherine, born in Siena, helped convince the pope to move the papacy back to Rome. She is revered, along with St. Benedict, as the patron saint of Europe. Her universal message was that this world is not a gift from our fathers, but a loan from our children.

May 8, 2019 Siena to Pisa to Cinque Terre: Monterosso Al Mare

Dave has been very disappointed in the TV’s in our hotel rooms. In Florence, the picture was awful…it kept flickering. We did get some English channels in Sienna. We’re in Monterosso al Mare, and there are NO English channels….no matter how long he channel surfs 😁.

We left Sienna this morning and drove to Pisa. For some reason, Dave’s internal compass had him get off the autostrada a few exits too early…but he will probably disagree with me. Fortunately I had my phone, but due to some construction, we did a few circular routes. We ended up in the FREE parking lot we were looking for, and actually got a good space. I have to say the navigational system in the car is a bit weird. When we left Montalcino yesterday, it took us down a gravel road….there were NO other cars, and we ran into a bunch of hikers who were as surprised to see us as we were to see them. We surely thought the navigation system messed us up, but we finally got to a main road and all was well. We went through a long tunnel today, and it said we were “off road”. Then we got traffic alerts suddenly out of nowhere, in Italian, so we had no idea what the alerts were telling us, even though the navigation is in English.

Anyway, we got to Pisa, and I had ordered tickets online to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

The area is also known as The Field of Miracles. We have been here before, but could not do the climb. Back then, the tower had “girdles” holding it up. Of course rain was threatening when we were at Pisa! Welcome to our vacation! We had to leave my backpack in the cloakroom which they would not accept until 15 minutes before our scheduled climb. We were scheduled for 12:45pm, and arrived in the cloakroom at 12:25pm….so we had to wait. Just past 12:30, they let us put my backpack into a locker, then we walked over to the tower to wait in line for our chance to climb. Dave and I counted a few different steps, but starting outside, I counted about 270 steps to the top. When they first let you in, you go into the center in a large open space/room to wait a bit – I suppose for other people to come down. You can really feel how tilted the tower is, even in this room. I think they let people up every 15 minutes. I’m not sure how many people are in each group…maybe 30. After awhile they tell you that you can start the climb, or wait. We started the climb. As we got closer to the top, the steps were not as steep, and Dave thinks this is to adjust for the tilt. The steps are very worn, so many people have made this climb. We did break a few times, and others did too. There are a few landings where you can look out, so we took breathers there. After about 235 steps, there is a big landing where you have to walk around the outside of the tower before heading up the last 37 steps. At the top is a big area ringed with huge bells.

Huge Bells on top of LeaninTower of Pisa

Outside of the bells is another walkway around the outside of the tower. Dave did not do the walk around outside the bells because he is somewhat afraid of heights and did not feel safe. It was a really cool view, not only of the Field of Miracles, but also the countryside. After enjoying the views and reveling in the fact we made it up, we headed back down. The whole up and down and walk around took about 35 minutes once the let us into the first room.

I bought the ticket that also let us tour the cathedral. The cathedral was interesting, as Italian Catholic Churches are. The ceiling was unique with many golden squares. Looking towards the front of the church was a big mosaic of Jesus shining above the alter.

Inside Cathedral in the Field of Miracles

The marble pulpit is very similar to the duomo in Siena, including the sculptured panels of Jesus’ life. I am amazed at how similar they are. I need to do more research to see which came first. In the right transept is the whole body (remains) of St. Ranieri, a Christian who lived in poverty in the 12th century. Above his body is a marble sculpture depicting the coronation of Mary, with figures of Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit shown as a white dove. This sculpture is moving.

Marble sculpture depicting the coronation of Mary

We are done with our visit to the church.

The whole field of dreams is surrounded by a stone wall. Up one side is a walkway. On our previous visit, aggressive vendors were all along this walkway. Apparently the vendors have now been banned from inside the wall, because they are all outside the wall, now. Just outside the main entrance into the Field of Dreams is a ….. McDonalds. The vendors are still aggressive. We walked back to the car and started to make our way to Monterosso Al Mare..in the rain. At one brief moment today, the car’s outside temperature gauge showed 20 degrees Celsius, which is about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. As soon as I pointed this out, the temperature dropped ☹️. And as we got closer to Monterosso al Mare, it got rainier, colder and foggy!

Part of the road was Autostrada, but when we got within about 25 miles, we turned onto a narrow, windy road that only had a center line occasionally. Dave would pull over when he could to let cars go by us, because we were not familiar with these windy roads and could not go very fast.

Oh, one other point about Italian roads…there are no shoulders, but there are little pull offs every so often. It was rare that we saw a pull off without a car…because men stop to do their business (#1) in all these pull offs. Dave wondered if toilet paper was available!

The road from the autostrada to Monterosso was very windy, and we were not sure about the parking situation. Rick Steves book told us about a parking lot above the town, so I plugged it into my google maps. At first we found an above ground parking lot at 2.5 euros per hour to park….pretty expensive for our 4 days here. We put in enough money for 1 hour to allow us to find our hotel. The roads in the town are restricted and heavy fines are levied if you drive in a restricted zone. Several other people were wandering around trying to figure out the parking situation, too. Finally we just decided to head to our hotel on foot and see what direction they gave us. As soon as we walked another 100 feet, we saw there was an enclosed parking garage and figured this is where we were suppose to be. But we’d already paid for our 1 hour, so off we went to find our hotel. The hotel was about a 10 minute walk downhill, but then it was up about 20 steps when we got close. We checked in, the receptionist explained how to do the parking and took us to our room. We paid extra for this room…..it is a penthouse with terrace. That means, we have to walk up stairs to get to our room. Yes, it is about 79 more steps up, for a total of 99 steps UP. We do have a great terrace…the room is just OK…but we’d enjoy the huge terrace if it would quit raining and warm up just a little! We go back to move the car into the daily parking lot instead of hourly, and haul our luggage 10 minutes to the hotel and then up 99 steps. Believe me, this was no easy task.

We found a nice restaurant fairly close to the hotel and had a bottle of wine. We are feeling much better.

May 9, 2019 Monterosso al Mare

Monterosso al Mare is one of the Cinque Terre towns. The five towns are along the sea on one side and mountains on the other. They are connected by hiking trails, a boat in good weather, and a train. You cannot drive from one town to the next, and there are very few cars in the towns as it is a restricted zone. There is a movable planter that blocks the road, and only cars with the proper authority can pass.

So far we have only visited Monterosso al Mare, which is where our hotel is located. I think it is the biggest of the five towns. We thought we would be doing some hiking, but apparently there have been some landslides and all the trails are closed except one.

Today we walked all around Monterosso al Mare, and it was market day. On market day you see everything being sold from vendors with trucks. They move from city to city each day. They sell clothing, bathing suits, hats, cheese, meat, flowers, vegetables, etc. Everything you can think of…kinda like a Walmart on wheels. The veggies looked great. One bin had red, yellow and green peppers that were the biggest I’d ever seen. Look at them compared to the carrots!

Vegetables for sale in the outdoor market

We wandered up and down the streets, stepped into a little church, and just people watched.

Monterosso al Mare has an old city center and a new city center. To go from old to new, you either need to walk through a tunnel which is under a mountain, or walk over the mountain. We decided to go to the new city center and we walked through the tunnel. We had a nice lunch sitting outside….I had gnocchi with lamb ragu and Dave had lasagne. Of course we both had wine. Then we set off to explore and admire the view. The water views are beautiful. It is a little too cold to swim, but a few people were lying on the beach sunbathing as the sun was nice and warm today. This shows all 5 villages, but hard to pick out from photo.

We wandered to the north end of town where the trail to the next city starts. It had barricades, but of course a few people were walking it anyway. This trail goes to Levanto, which is not considered a Cinque Terre village. However, the trail splits and goes up to a statue. We started up, and saw some neat views and some unusual homes. The trail is mostly steps upward, but there are some sections that are just inclined. Unfortunately we did not have any water, and we had just had lunch with wine….so after about 150 steps upwards, we ran into another couple coming down. They indicated it was still quite a distance, heading up. We decided seeing a statue wasn’t worth it, so we went back down and strolled through the new town looking for someplace to buy water. Got some water and decided to head up to the church of the Capuchin Friars and hilltop cemetery. On the way up there is a viewpoint looking over the sea with a statue of St. Francis and a wolf, looking out at the sea. It is a nice place to break from all the steps upward. We continue on and finally get to the church. It is a former monastery now manned by a single caretaker friar, who we see out and about on the grounds. On the right side of the church is what we would consider a Christmas scene with lots of little houses with Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in the stable. On the right side of the church is a painting of the Crucifixion, attributed to Anthony van Dyke, a 17th century Flemish master who lived and worked for years in nearby Genoa. Art historians suspect that at best it was painted by someone in the artists workshop. I believe this church is from the early 1600’s according to a plaque at the entrance.

Another 100 yards up is the cemetery. The cemetery is inside the ruins of a castle. In the 13th century, the villagers would have huddled within this castle, hidden from view of the sea and pirates. This castle is the oldest part of Monterosso al Mare. It is interesting how graves have been built into the walls and crevices of the former castle. There are many levels, many graves, and not in neat rows. Rich families have their own little tomb buildings. At the very top, the castles keep or last refuge is where the priests are buried in simple graves.

After wandering around the cemetery a while, we head down. Rick Steves says all the paths down lead into the old town, so we go down a different way than we went up. I counted the stairs down, but must admit I sometimes got distracted by the views. It was about 400 steps, and that did not include the steps up and down the many levels in the cemetery in the castle ruins. At the bottom, in the car restricted area of the village is a hearse. I am thinking someone did not think we would make it….

We are definitely getting a workout. Each time we walk up to our room, it’s 99 stairs! We go up and down at least 5 times a day. Needless to say, I’m feeling it in my legs. Especially after climbing the Leaning Tower yesterday…that was a walk in the park compared to Monterosso al Mare, which may be the most level of the Cinque Terre villages. I am using the “step” app on my phone, and “map my walk” app occasionally. We are easily doing 7 or 8 miles a day, which isn’t much until you add in all the steps up and down, and climbing.

Tree on our way up to our hotel, walking through one of the “streets”.

This is a cute, enchanting village, probably with too many tourists. We are heading into the weekend, and my guess is that there will be plenty more tourists.

May 10, 2019 Riomaggiore and Manarola

Today was another up and down day 😁. These little villages are build as terraces up the mountain sides … nothing is level. I don’t think we will miss hiking the paths between the villages because hiking in the villages is challenging. As you walk in these villages you can hear and sometimes see, water rushing beneath your feet. Walkways were built over the streams, replacing old arched bridges.

We opted to buy a 2 day Cinque Terre card that allows unlimited use of the trains that run between the villages (2 to 4 per hour), as well as free use of public bathrooms (otherwise 1 euro per visit), and many other accesses that we won’t take advantage of like access to the walking trails (most of which are currently closed)…well, maybe…we have 2 more villages to visit, and the Cinque Terre card also covers little shuttle buses that run from the train station to the main square. So far we’ve always walked, but you never know.

The WC (toilets) that cost 1 euro or the Cinque Terre card are very clean, always have toilet paper, soap, running water to wash your hands, and towels. Frequently an attendant checks the bathroom after each use so it always stays clean. Good job Cinque Terre!

Our 2 day Cinque Terre card was 29 euros per person, which seems a little pricey, but it’s giving us what we wanted.

We got a bit of a late start today, but walked to Monterosso’s new town, bought our tickets, and boarded the train to the southernmost village, Riomaggiore.

Rick Steves is our tour guide as usual, and we follow his suggested walk. For these little villages, the high points are the fantastic views – of the Mediterranean Sea, of the houses terraced on the sides of mountains, the street scenes, and the villages’ Catholic Church. The church in Riomaggiore was established in 1340, but the current building was rebuilt in 1870. This church is dedicated to St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of Genoa, the maritime republic that once dominated the region. Rick Steves recommends a little shop for a snack, so we check it out. The husband is a fisherman and the wife serves up his fresh catch. There were a few options, but we felt safe with the calamari…but the sign said they had fresh anchovies from Monterosso al Mare today, so I asked her to throw in a couple of anchovies so I could try them. This fried snack is served in a paper cone with a couple of long wooden picks and a lemon slice. No sauce, but perfectly salted. I tried the anchovies and they were delicious! These were nothing like the oil and salt preserved ones we get in a restaurant. They were so good I convinced Dave to try one and he liked them, too. We walked down to the towns marina, and there were fishing boats along both sides of the walkway. This is because the water is quite rough and they can’t fish. When the boats need to come out of the water, it is a team effort. An alarm is sounded and anyone with a boat helps move the whole fleet.

Fishing boats pulled out of the water due to rough seas

We continue our walk on a bluff above the water, to get a peak at Riomaggiore’s rocky beach. The waves were splashing up on the narrow walkway making it slippery, so we only got a peak at the beach. A few tourists were sitting on the rocks, but no swimmers. This is not a sandy beach, but good sized rocks. Rick Steves says they are football sized! Yet, Europeans lounge on them.

We walk (up and down) back to the train station and catch the train to the next village south, Manarola. Even though we had a little snack, we’re hungry for a light lunch. Getting off the train you walk through a long tunnel, used in WWII during air raids. At the end of the tunnel is a little cafe where we got what they called panini’s, and some wine, of course. The panini’s were on a large round, fresh, but a little chewy, roll. A young couple sat down next to us, saw our Rick Steves book and said they were following him, too. They were told that Rick Steves is in the area now, too. This couple is from LaGrange, Illinois, which is very near to where I grew up. After lunch, we do our Rick Steves walking tour. First he takes us down to the picturesque harbor. Again, boats are lining the walkway. Dave is wondering how they get the boats out of the water and up on this walkway. I saw a big crane and wondered if that’s what they used. Sure enough, Rick Steves mentions in his book to look for the I-beam crane used for lifting the boats in and out of the water! Manarola does not have a sandy beach either but offers deep water swimming. One of its “beaches” has a ladder, shower and rocks to sit on. Walking away from the water is a town square built over the railroad tracks. In the middle is a large circular mosaic depicting the varieties of local fish. We continue, heading up, towards the church. We pass a little waterfall, and the water continues down the Main Street, now covered with pavement. There is a waterwheel along the walkway, reminiscent of how mills were powered in the past. I don’t think this one was a working model. Finally we get to the church, which is in a square with a church, bell tower and a community meeting building. This is the Parish Church of St. Lawrence, dating from 1338. St. Lawrence is the patron saint of the Cinque Terre. There are two paintings in the Gothic style, but they are from the late 15th century. After visiting the church, we head for the Manarola Vineyard Walk. The walk is along one of the mountains and gives you the opportunity to look back down on the village. Again, fabulous views.

View of houses from Manarola Vineyard Walk

You can see large rocks on the roofs to help hold the roofs down during windstorms. Continuing our walk, we end up at the cemetery. This cemetery is located on a little peninsula above the Sea. It is in a wonderful location, very peaceful. You are not allowed to walk into this cemetery, which is ok with me as I think it is respectful NOT to be a tourist in a cemetery even though I frequently am. All I can say is, I think it was a wonderful, final resting place.

Walking down from the cemetery is a little park, again with wonderful views of the water. We continued down the stairs to get back to the train station, as we have finished our visit to this little town.

We took the train back to Monterosso al Mare, new town, and walked back to the old town. There are fewer tourists here. We found a gelato place, splurged on a gelato and sat on a bench in the plaza with the local old folks. We fit right in.

For dinner we are in Monterosso al Mare, the village we are using as our home base. We find a restaurant not too far from our hotel, and on the menu they have…fried anchovies! Of course I had to have them. I liked them with a little lemon and salt. Notice I have already eaten a few….but I didn’t eat the tails!

May 11, 2019 Corniglia and Vernazza

When we got up this morning it was totally overcast. This was a bummer because rain was not forecast until this evening. “Weatherbug” indicated no rain today but “Accuweather” forecasted a 70% chance….Accuweather was most accurate ☹️.

It had not started raining this morning, so we took the train to Corniglia, which is the village in the center. We plan to visit Vernazza today, too, which is the most popular of the villages. We know Corniglia will be a short visit, so that leaves us plenty of time for Vernazza. Corniglia is the smallest of the five villages. It is also the highest elevation wise, and the only one without a harbor. Per Rick Steves, according to legend, the town was settled by a Roman farmer who named it for his mother, Cornelia, which is how Corniglia is pronounced. He also says that the ancient residents produced a wine so widely exported that vases with Corniglia stamped on them were found at Pompei, which is over 400 miles away.

Corniglia is 385 steps up from the train station. Today our Cinque Terre card paid off, because we took the little shuttle bus, which is free with the Cinque Terre Card, up to the village and we did not have to walk up those 385 steps! It really is a tiny village with one main passageway through town, little walkways up to residences and with absolutely no cars!

The bus drops you off at the town square. The main walkway is Via Fieschi, and we head up this walkway. There are many little shops, all selling the same things: food & wine (remember this little village was known for their wine), gelato, and souvenirs. We stop for a honey gelato at one of Rick Steves recommended shops, and it is tasty. We reach another little square that has a WWI memorial sitting in front of what looks like a church. It is actually the Oratory of Santa Caterina. I learned this today – an oratory is used by a service group doing social work in the name of the a Catholic Church.

Up the stairs in back of the oratory is a viewpoint, again with great views. Today we see boats on the water. The little fishing boats are not out – the boats we see look more like boat tours. The water is not as rough as it has been, but the fisherman did not go out. These villages all have viewpoints with stunning views. Continuing on, we reach the end of town viewpoint,

named Santa Maria Belvedere for a church that once stood here. Not sure what happened to the church.

At this point we had seen everything we wanted to see in Corniglia, so we backtracked the walkway to our starting point, which was the bus stop. We had always planned to walk down, but were surprised how many people were waiting to take the bus down! Our walk down was fine, and we discovered the steps were “short steps”, so probably 4 or 5 inches compared to the normal rise of steps. However, it was still a long way up or down.

At the train station, we caught the train to Vernazza. Rick Steves calls it the jewel of Cinque Terre. There are bigger crowds in this village. Lining the streets are the usual shops – food & wine, gelato, souvenirs. On October 25, 2011, this village was buried under 13 feet of mud. All these villages are built in ravines with walks built over the rushing waters. On October 25, 2011, heavy rains directed flash floods through the middle of town. Every building on the main drag had to be rewired, replumbed and reequipped.

It has all been cleaned up and back to doing business as usual. As we walk down the Main Street, we pass a small stone chapel where Mass is celebrated on special Sundays.

At the end of the walking street, we reach the harbor which has a large square. Vernazza is Cinque Terre’s only natural harbor. The fishing boats have been pulled up into the square and they are not in the water today – apparently only the larger tour boats are out there in the sea. From the harbor, we see the main sights of this village. There is a church with an unusual entry – you enter from the east side next to the alter instead of in back of the church. This is because the church was expanded in the 16th century and the piazza on the west was overtaken with the expansion. In the harbor, we see the red storm flag which indicates bad seas. You can see the castle which is in ruins now but was the towns watchtower during the pirate days, and a Nazi lookout in WWII. The British bombed it to chase out the Germans.

It started to rain when we were in a Vernazza, and we were looking for a place for a late lunch. Everyone else was looking for a place out of the rain, too. The few places we saw, even though outside and covered with umbrellas, had people smoking cigarettes which we did not want to deal with. So, we decided to go back to Monterosso al Mare. The train dropped us off in the newer town and as we were walking back to the old part of town, we saw a spot with a view and tables inside. Dave had some great looking bruschetta, and I have ravioli in walnut sauce (which was great!).

We explored old town Monterosso al Mare some more, and checked out all the little shops. Actually bought a Christmas ornament, as well as more wine to take to Bellagio with us. Then we went back to our hotel to chill until dinner and organize our luggage as we are checking out in the morning.

This afternoon on our walk about, we were checking out the menus from different restaurants. Dave saw a pasta at one restaurant, Via Venti, he wanted to try – it was a pasta stuffed with sea bass. So that’s where we went for dinner. I had a pasta with a pesto citrus sauce and prawns. As it turned out, my pesto citrus sauce was delicious, but Dave was not totally happy with his.

We liked Corniglia, but it is very small. We were disappointed with Vernazza….for all the hype, there wasn’t much there. Overall, we enjoyed our visit to Cinque Terre. This is definitely not a place for people with mobility issues. There are lots of stairs, and the walkways are not always smooth. The villages are all just so cute with the painted houses built on terraces on the sides of the mountains. What gorgeous views! We are really happy we chose a Monterosso al Mare as our home base. Because it is the largest of the villages, there was just more to do.

This is actually a picture taken in Corniglia…because it is overcast, the picture does not reflect how beautiful the views were.

May 12, 2019 Monterosso to Bellagio

Happy Mothers Day!

Driving from Monterosso al Mare, we see our first glimpse of the alps.

It is about a 4 hour drive, and then once we get to a Bellagio, we have to get situated. Our hotel is in a “ZTL” zone, which means you need special permission to drive here. Fortunately, the hotel registers us with the police, so we are good. But we still have to find a parking space and get our luggage to our room. We opt to pay 18 euros a day for parking, and we have a spot very close to the hotel. Our car has a primo view of Lake Como 😁.

Our room is very nice with a huge terrace facing the lake.

It is a corner room, so we have views in two directions.

Another view from our Bellagio hotel terrace

Now, if the weather would only cooperate. It is very windy today, and it feels chilly with the temperature in upper 50’s. After checking in, it was late afternoon. We wandered up one of the little streets and had a panini and glass of wine to hold us over to dinner. We wandered through the streets and the shops in Bellagio have more upscale goods. Since I am partial to glass and Dave is partial to wine, we checked out all the glass, ceramic and wine shops. Then we headed back to our room to unpack a little and chill.

Our plan was to relax and enjoy our terrace over the next 3 days, but the weather may not cooperate.

Tonight we walked around Bellagio, checking all the menus for dinner. We chose one, and despite our intentions, we sat outside. However, our table was right under a heat lamp, so it was very cozy. We both ordered menu items with fish from the lake. I had a regional specialty which was fried fish with risotto. Dave had grilled lake fish with side dish (potatoes and spinach) and he won the prize tonight. The waiter expertly prepared his cooked fish table side, removing almost all the bones. Dave’s fish was delicious. My dish was very good, but Daves was better.

Other random thoughts:

Much nicer cars as we drive near Milan…Porsche’s (😁), Ferrari’s, and Aston Martins. Dave thought he saw snowflakes, but the temperature is a little warmer, mid 60’s, so I think it was flower pedals or seeds or something similar.

We filled up the car with diesel the other day, and gas cost about $7 a gallon. You can check my math…it was about 1.62 euros per liter. Many of the gas stations are manned, and they fill the tank for you, like in the old days, but they don’t clean the windshield or check the oil. There are a lot of self service gas stations, and the price is a little less…maybe 1.52 euros per liter. The self service stations have no one around. Not even in the building, or anywhere. Also, no toilets!

I am surprised how integrated Siena, Pisa and Cinque Terre are. The salesperson at our favorite wine store in Cinque Terre was Asian, and very nice and friendly! She remembered Dave every time he entered her store…probably because he was her best customer! In Siena, one of our our waiters was from Antigua. At Pisa, all the aggressive vendors on the walk from the parking lot to the “Field of Dreams” were black (The last time we were in Pisa, all the aggressive vendors were Italian). At our hotel in Cinque Terre, most of the workers were Asian and Black. So far in Bellagio, everyone seems to be Italian. Just interesting because I think I expected everyone to be Italian.

May 13 – 14, 2019 Bellagio

Dave had to get up early (7:45am) and feed the meter for our car. The parking is charged from 8:00am until 8:00pm. Interestingly, the same cars are parked next to us today as yesterday.

Our hotel room includes breakfast. It’s nice that they offer eggs!

Lake Como is very large. We have a resident mama duck who rests just outside our terrace. We have seen lots of ducks and even a couple of swans. Dave took a bathroom break at one point, and the bathroom attendant was feeding some baby ducks. I knew with all the mamas and papas around, there had to be some babies.

The lake looks very clear, but locals say it is too dirty to swim in it. We saw a hotel that literally built a swimming pool out in the lake!

Hotel swimming pool built out in Lake Como

At one point, I got a chance to stick my toes in the water and it was cold! Lake Como is of glacial origin and one of the deepest lakes in Europe at 1300 feet deep. Supposedly the residents say it is shaped like a man and Bellagio is the crotch 😁.

On Monday, we wanted to take a ride on the lake, so we took a ferry to visit Villa Carlotta.

Because of lake taxes and high maintenance costs, owners of once elite villas have been forced to turn them into hotels or open the doors to the paying public. Villa Carlotta is supposedly one of the finest properties on the lake and has lush gardens. It is especially pretty this time of year as the gardens are in full bloom in the spring. The villas first floor is filled with sculptures, the second floor has special exhibitions which currently are photographs mostly from around Lake Como, from the early 20th century. The third floor has rooms with early 19th century French furniture. My favorite part are the rooms with the furniture. To me, it takes you back in time and you imagine how people lived in the early 1800’s. The villa has had several owners. Originally built at the end of the 17th century, in 1801 it was bought by Gian Batista Sommariva. From what I gather, he was a big supporter of Napoleon. There are busts and pictures of Napoleon in the villa. But Sommariva was passed over by Napoleon, and Sommariva lost favor resulting in his decline. Sommariva was a collector of art, and it was under his ownership that the villa became a showplace. Sommariva also began transforming the surrounding park into a garden. He died in 1826, and his heirs sold the villa in 1843 to Princess Marianne of Nassau who gave it to her daughter Carlotta (thus the name) as a wedding present upon her marriage to Georg II of Saxon-Meiningen. It was Georg who enriched the gardens. The gardens are really lovely and it is unbelievable to think of people wealthy enough to have magnificent gardens such as these, on this beautiful lake. Not sure how big the villa is, but the whole property is 17 acres. It had a fabulous ceiling in one room….Dave caught it in this selfie!

Mirror catching photo of tourists (aka selfie😁)

After touring the villa and gardens, we were hungry, and rode the ferry back to Bellagio for a very late lunch. I tried the Aperol Spritz which everyone seems to be drinking and found it very good! I have a new beverage! It was such a beautiful day that we spent the late afternoon lounging on our terrace, after I got another Aperol Spritz to enjoy on the terrace. Then we walked around Bellagio shops some more, before having a late dinner at our hotel.

It is so beautiful at night to see the twinkling lights across the lake.

On Tuesday, we took the ferry to Varenna, which is smaller than Bellagio, and Rick Steves choice of a base around Lake Como. We’re happy with our base in Bellagio.

Rick Steves has a suggested walking tour, which we did. One of his tidbits is that natives claim this is as far north as olives grow. He comments that many of the villas were owned by the regions “improverished nobility who were born and bred not to work. Eventually they were unable to pay for the upkeep of their sprawling houses and some of the villas have been bought by the regions nouveau riche (ie George Clooney). The most interesting site in Varenna for me was the Chiesa di San Giorgio Church (13th century) baptistery which dates from the ninth century. It is rarely open for visitors, but was open today. It is a small “church” and on the walls were paintings of the stations of the cross.

Chiesa did San Giorgio Church in Varenna

We wandered around Varenna some more and decided most of its shops were eateries of some type. There are many neat little walkways, similar to the ones in Bellagio and also in the Cinque Terre villages. Note the stairs….

We decided to head back to Bellagio. For some reason our ferry tickets were for the car ferry…maybe because it was the next ferry back to Bellagio. But it was cool because we got to see some unusual cars ….. a lotus, an older Austin Healy and an old Datsun! Also, it made an extra stop before Bellagio, so we had a longer ride on the lake.

Rick Steves says the Lakes region is where you go to take a vacation from your vacation. This was our plan. A couple of days to chill before heading home. Although windy, the weather has been sunny and warmer yesterday and today, so we have been able to enjoy our terrace – watching the lake, ferries, people, etc., and enjoying a few adult beverages.

Tonight we are doing something we rarely do…eat at the same restaurant. We went to a restaurant, Bilacus, Sunday night, and the food was so good, we decided to go back tonight, our last night. Last night we ate at the restaurant in our hotel, and we were disappointed. I had fish from Lake Como, and I don’t think it was fresh.

Tomorrow we drive to Milan, spend one night, and fly home Thursday.

May 14 – 15, 2019 Bellagio to Milan

May 14: On Monday night, we had dinner in our hotel because Dave was not feeling 100%. Our hotel is supposed to be “primo”, but we were very disappointed with our dinner. Dave had a lakefish dinner on Sunday night that was excellent at Bilacus , so I ordered the same dish at our hotel restaurant. I don’t think they used fresh fish. So this afternoon when we were out and about, we went past Bilacus planning to make a reservation, but it was closed for the afternoon…open for lunch and dinner, closed in the afternoon. We stood there a moment pondering, and one of the workers came by….we asked if we could make a reservation and he said yes, and took our information. This evening when we went back, our previous waiter recognized us and welcomed us. They sat us outside as close to a heat lamp as possible, but also had blankets at each seat. The waitstaff were wonderful. For our first course, we shared a pasta and king prawn dish which was delicious. Then we had the lake fish dish. The chef came out and deboned it for us. I was not up for a sweet desert, so we had a cheese course. OMG, it was great! I had Gorgonzola and Dave had pecorino. Their sommelier recommended a couple of ports and we had one of each. The cheese was served with walnuts, crackers and honey. It was the perfect meal! Then they brought us a lemoncello shooter to finish our meal, gratis! What a great end to our vacation, and what a great celebration for my birthday. We have been following Rick Steves all over Italy, and the chef told us he was at the restaurant just one hour before us and showed us his picture with Rick, on his phone.

May 15: we drove from Bellagio to Milan. The road along Lake Como driving to and from Bellagio is treacherous. Sort of two lane, maybe, with no center line in most places and idiots driving down the middle of the road whether there’s a center line or not! I’m not sure I remember how far it is, but I will guess about 25 miles that took us 1.5 hours! We drove through Como, which is a bigger city than I expected. We got to the airport with no issues, but had a very difficult time finding gas to fill the rental car. All the stations we found were unmanned and you pay in advance. They do take Italian credit cards, but rejected Daves. So how many euros do you feed the pump if you have no clue how much gas it will take to fill it up….trial and error. Then returning the car was fun because the GPS was taking us to the wrong destination. We finally just followed the airport signs, but once we got in the Hertz lot there was no signage, so unclear as to where to go. Bottom line, it took us much more time to get settled in Milan than we thought. We purposefully did not get tickets to see the last supper, which was a good thing. Our concern was not knowing what time to choose for the reservation. We stayed at the Sheridan at the airport, and the train to downtown was just below the hotel. 20 euros per person, round trip to go into Milan.

We found the duomo and got tickets for visiting the Duomo, the Duomo rooftop terraces and the archeological area for 17 euros per person. Our ticket also included the duomo museum, which we knew we would not have time to visit, but could not be excluded from what we wanted to see. The Duomo is huge. It is the 4th largest church in the world. It was built to hold 40,000 people, the population of Milan at the time. Construction began in 1386 and continued to 1810 with final touches added as late as 1965. The detail is unbelievable, with over 2000 statues inside and over 1000 outside, plus tons of adornments. It was built from top to bottom with marble.

We visited the rooftop first, which is all marble. I am wondering how all this weight is supported. We paid a little extra for our ticket to take the elevator to the top instead of walking the stairs. We still had to walk up some stairs, but not from the ground. There are views of Milan, and the Piazza del Duomo 20 stories below, but the duomo’s spires, topped with statues, and all the embellishments kept my attention. To illustrate the detail, at one point, there was a little dove carved from marble, on the floor hiding behind a post. The central spire is a 15 foot golden statue of the Virgin Mary, 330 feet in the air. The church has 135 spires, all different, with a statue on top of each one. How did they get them up there? And, how did they get Mary up above everything else? Amazing!

After the rooftop, we walked down the stairs into the duomo. There are 52 pillars, 100 feet tall, which support the ceiling. The ceiling looks like it is carved, but Rick Steves says it is actually painted. High above the altar on a cross, there is a little red light. This is where a nail from the cross of Jesus is kept. Napoleon crowned himself king of Italy at this alter and supposedly had the nail in his crown.

Look for the little red light just under the white sheet

There are stained glass windows all around the church, which tell the biblical stories. One of the windows dates back to 1470, and some are more modern with one from the 1980’s. Some are stained glass but some were replaced with painted glass because of being destroyed by wars.

We visited the crypt of St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), the 16th century bishop who inherited a half finished cathedral and re-energized the project. His body is inside a glass coffin.

We visited the archeological area which is always interesting to me…I love looking at ancient ruins! The spot where the duomo sits has been a spiritual place for over 2000 years. In 2014, archeologists discovered the remains of what might have been a temple to the goddess Minerva. What we can see today are the ruins of a baptistery, the 8 sided paleo-Christian Baptistry of San Giovanni, along with the remains of a little church, dating back at least to the 4th century. At that time, you could not enter the church until you were baptized, and you did not get baptized until you were 18. So the little church would have served those that were not baptized. There were also tombs unearthed in this area, probably for important people because they wanted to be close to the church to help them get to heaven.

We finished our tour of the duomo and walked through the Galleria, which is a high end shopping mall next to the Duomo. Needless to say, Dave walked me through there pretty quickly 😁. While all the stores have the names of high end designers, we didn’t see a jewelry store on the main level! It is an open air, four story glass domed arcade. I took a few pictures to send to Erin to get her thoughts…I don’t think she was impressed.

Thanks to my cousin Sandie alerting me to the bull. In the center of the arcade are several mosaics. One of them is Milan’s city symbol, a bull. For good luck, you are suppose to spin clockwise two times, while standing on the bull’s testicles. Of course I did!

With so much spinning, the mosaic has to be replaced every couple of years. I must say, that particular area of the bull was well worn when I did my spin.

Walking out of the Galleria you enter a little Piazzale with a statue of Leonardo da Vinci, unfortunately, surrounded by barricades so you could not get close. He spent 20 years in Milan and one of his accomplishments was re-engineering Milan’s canal system.

Leonardo’s statue looks at the famous LaScala Opera House. We were there too late to get a tour of the opera house, which opened in 1778. Tickets go on sale two months prior, so no, we did not go to the opera.

Dave thought the electric trolleys still running through Milan were interesting. Some of the cars seem to be quite old, but we also saw some new ones.

We took the train back to our hotel, had a late dinner, and mentally prepared for our trip home (finished our last bottle of wine).

Cuba 8/21 – 8/25/17

Monday, August 21, 2017 Embarkation Tampa, FL Royal Caribbean “Empress of the Seas”

We left home about 10:00am and drove to Tampa. We parked in the public lot at Channelside. It was $75 for our 5 day cruise, paid in advance. The location to the port is very convenient. We were sitting in Windjammer’s by noon, having lunch. Upon boarding, we were given glasses to view the solar eclipse. Lots of people were topside, taking peaks at the eclipse thru their Royal Caribbean supplied glasses. The peak of the eclipse here in Tampa was 2:49pm. Tampa only had about 80% coverage, but the sunshine was noticeably less bright than normal. About 30 minutes before the maximum, Dave remembered he left his hat in the car. So he left me up on the top deck watching the eclipse and got off the ship, got his hat, and made it back in time to see the maximum eclipse coverage. All aboard was 3:00, so he didn’t have much time to spare.

After the eclipse, we met up with fellow cruise critic’s in the Viking Lounge. Only 8 folks showed up which was not surprising as our roll call was not very active. We only met for a short time as we were kicked out of the Viking Lounge to go to our muster drill at 3:30pm. The good news was that we didn’t have to bring or wear our life jackets.

Dave got pretty hot standing out in the heat with no breeze. Me, too, but it affected him worse. At 4:00pm we went to a talk on shore excursions. It was billed as a talk on Cuba, but it really was about the ship’s shore excursions offerings.

While in the “Cuba” talk, the ship sailed away from Tampa-probably about 4:15.

We have some status on Royal Caribbean, mainly because of our cruises on a Celebrity. Our Celebrity status gives us Diamond status on Royal Caribbean. One of the nice perks is we get 3 free drinks each (Dave and I are both Diamond status) between 5:00 and 8:30pm. Their vodka is New Amsterdam, so I had a martini and tried it. It tasted OK. I like Absolute better, but could drink the New Amsterdam martini. We sat at the pool bar and I was amazed at the pours.

There is no way I could have drank 3 of their martinis. I think it had 4 shots of vodka! Dave was not crazy about their house Chardonnay offering, but he suffered through it. While waiting for our drinks, an old geezer sat down next to me and started talking to me. AND, I wasn’t even in my car! Turns out he was a funeral director…I hope he didn’t look at me as future business – especially in the short term! Later, I found out he was actually sizing up Dave….if you know what I mean….After we got our first round of free drinks, it was about 6:00pm and we could see the I275 Bridge in the distance.

Dave as we are approaching Sunshine Skyway Bridge

We went up to the top deck to watch as we sailed under the bridge. Dave said there was not much clearance. Lots of people were up there to watch going under the bridge, and the ship blared its horn as we went under. I can finally cross that off my bucket list as I have always wanted to watch as we sail under that bridge. It is about 2 hours from the dock. The last time we sailed under the bridge was a New Years cruise and we got too cold waiting outside, so we missed the sail under the bridge.

After going under the bridge, we went back to our stateroom, took quick showers and changed for dinner. It is an all casual cruise – no formal night – but Dave still put on long pants and I brought dresses to wear to dinner. Dinner was good – we both had pistachio encrusted salmon. After dinner we watched some entertainment in the atrium – basically name that tune. Thanks to Dave, I won a Royal Caribbean pen. Then we went to the show, which was an introduction to the entertainment onboard. They did feature a comedian and he was funny, but I don’t remember his name. Actually, his website is something like “what was his name?”, so I guess I’m not the only one that can’t remember his name. After the show, we went back to the atrium for more entertainment. This one was “finish the lyric”. We observed. Actually, we recognized most of the songs, but not all.

We went by the library, and it had the fewest books of any ship’s library I have seen. Dave did not find anything to read. Back in our stateroom, Dave is unhappy with the temp. I am ok, but he is concerned that he won’t be able to sleep as he thinks it is too hot.

The Seas are very calm. Could not even feel movement on the ship.

Tuesday, August 22, 2017 Key West, Florida

Today we will dock in Key West, but not until about 1:00pm. We got up about 8:00, showered and went to breakfast in our Diamond breakfast location. The rest of the ship is having brunch starting at 9:30am, but we are happy to just go to breakfast. There is a separate location for Diamond and above, so we took advantage of our Diamond breakfast. I had a smoked salmon omelet, which is my favorite. Dave had pancakes and sausage. We did note them turning away a lot of people, whom I assume did not have the status that we have (thank you Celebrity). After breakfast we went to two talks on Cuba. Many of our questions were answered, and we made a shopping list for Key West. We decided it would be a good idea to take a light backpack – of course that is one thing I didn’t bring, so we put that on our Key West shopping list. Also, did not bring our hand sanitizer, so we planned to buy that in Key West. Also, some water, an umbrella, and a few snacks.

By the time the two talks were over, we had docked in Key West. The ship docked right in Mallory Square. How convenient, except we would not be there for Sunset. We decided we would eat/drink lunch off the ship, a little late, as we had reservations for Chops, the specialty restaurant at 8:00 and we wanted to be hungry. So after disembarking we headed for Hemmingways House. I had been there once before, in a prior life (🙂), but did not remember anything except there was a swimming pool. So, we toured Hemmingways House. He had 70 six toed cats, and they still have 55. We saw cats all over the place. They definitely make themselves at home. We saw the house, his pool, and the place where he wrote 7 books in 7 years, which was a separate structure at the back of his property.

After Hemmingways House, we were hungry and started to try to find a place to eat. The first place we saw, and many after it, were outdoor eating establishments. It was pretty hot, so I was on a mission to find someplace air conditioned. We tried Sloppy Joes, but it was packed. We wandered down Duval, and discovered “The Rum Runner” no longer existed. So we decided to walk to the “Conch Republic” which is an outside venue, but has great mojitos. And that is where we landed. Fortunately, with lots of fans, we had a little air movement and it was OK. I had a mojito, and Dave stuck to his wines. We shared some fish tacos, but Dave was still hungry, so he had a side of fried fish.

After the “Conch Republic”, we finished our Havana shopping list at CVS, and then boarded the ship. It was about 5:00, so we showered and dressed for dinner, and set about to get our 3 free drinks. The pool bar is the best for generous pours, so we went there first. I asked if I could get a mojito as one of my 3 free drinks. The bartender said no, but he would make me one anyway 🙂.

Then we barhopped a bit, watched out the windows to see if anyone was running for the ship, listened to some trivia, and finally made our way to Chops for our 8:00PM reservation. As usual, Chops was great. I had lamb and Dave had steak. We decided to reserve another night, so we are going again Friday, which is our last night on the ship.

After Chops, we had had enough to eat and drink, so we went to our stateroom to chill.

Tomorrow is Havana. It is a late arrival – about 1:00PM, but we think we are ready!

Wednesday, August 23 Havana, Cuba

This morning we attended another lecture on Cuba, but not sure we learned any new information. We grabbed a bite to eat in the buffet before arriving in Cuba. We watched the sail in, seeing the ship that Tim and Nicole will be on in two weeks. It was leaving as we were arriving. Havana looks like a city in disrepair. There have been many years where the buildings had no repairs or maintenance. As we learned much later in the day, the people vote, but there is only one political party. It reminded me of St. Petersburg, Russia. Except, the people in St. Petersburg hated the Americans, and were obviously unhappy people. The people of Havana are friendly, happy and optimistic. I saw several young men who were sporting the newest haircut fad which is cut very short on the sides and longer on top. One other thing we were told – the government does not want people to bring in “donations” as it is going to breed a culture where people are waiting for the ships to come in to see what they can get. Unfortunately, that is already happening. We had young boys hassling us asking for candy. Well meaning people don’t realize what behavior they are encouraging.

Anyway, we arrived in Havana. We had a ship’s tour, so we were one of the first groups to get off the ship. We had to go thru security, where we were scanned and anything we were bringing off the ship was scanned. Again, they do not encourage you to being “donations”. Then we went thru immigration. Not sure what they do, but my immigration officer took much longer than Dave’s. You do have to fill out a visa form. We were told that they would collect the visa, but they didn’t collect them as we exited the first time. After getting thru immigration, we walked down a long hall. At the end of the hallway were the money changers. US citizens are taxed higher than anyone else. Everyone pays a 3% exchange fee, but US citizens pay an additional 10% surcharge. So for every $100 we exchange, we get 87 Cuban “CUC’s” or convertible pesos. We got our 87 CUC’s, and boarded our bus.

Unfortunately, our tour guide was very hard to understand, and we did not get much out of our tour. We did take the tunnel to go to the adjacent island to see the Jesus statue.

It is a pretty phenomenal sight. It was carved out of marble by a woman. Next to the park with the Jesus statue is a military, civil patrol building, with big signs saying do not trespass. After the Jesus statue, we drove on El Malecon, which is the 7 kilometer road along the harbor front. Here you will see the setups for Carnival as well as the US Embassey. Lots of people walk along the harbor front. We also saw the capitol building here, which is very similar to the US Capitol . However, our cruise director said it was 1 foot taller, so it is different. We drove into the city cemetery. Here we picked up a local guiide. Along the entrance road in the cemetery , where we pulled in, were monuments and chapels built by the wealthy. There is also a monument to firefighters, as 29 firefighters lost their life battling a fire. The firefighters monument is the tallest one in the cemetery, and no future building is suppose to be higher. The firefighters responded to a fire in a building containing illegal explosives. The fire set off the explosives and the burning building collapsed on the fire fighters killing them. This incident is very memorable in Havana because our guide tomorrow will point out the building to us (a new building was built on the site). Our guide also explained the burial procedures to us, and indicated that dying is free in Havana. You only pay for the flowers. Of course, this is assuming your family already owns a plot. The deceased is buried in a pine box for two years. At that point, the body has decomposed, and the bones are put into a box inside the gravesite. She took us to the most famous grave. A woman died during childbirth, and was buried with the stillborn baby between her legs. When they dug up the grave 2 years later, her corpse was cradling the baby in her arms. This was a miracle. Now people come to her grave to pray.

After the cemetery, we went to Revolution Square. People gather here for political speeches. It is a huge open area and next to the square, lots of the old cars are parked next o the square. Our guides have told us that most of the old cars are actually taxis. Also, probably few, if any, original parts. They have been very creative with keeping these old cats running.

After revolution square, we rode on the bus to “Centroid” which is basically a flea market. Dave and I are not interested in this stuff. It is apparently hand made by locals

We wandered around for awhile and then went back and sat on the bus. Before getting on the bus, we evaluated the distance back to port (we considered walking), but decided it must be too far. As we later found out, it would have been very walkable.

The bus left us at the port about 6:00PM, and our tour to the Tropicana started about 7:45 PM. We hurried and went to the buffet to get a bite to eat, and then went to our stateroom to change for the Tropicana.

We were gathered in the appropriate spot by 7:45PM, which was our meeting time. We were #27. Interestingly, there were buses for #25 and 26, also 28 through 32. Upon arriving, we got seated in the second tier where people on buses 31 and 32 got seated in the first tier, or right against the stage in front of us. I later determined that our second tier seats were perfectly fine. The show itself was interesting with music, dancing and singing. Lots of ladies butts (😁), but they were not busty. One act had men in thongs – but of course, not as revealing as the ladies. The dancers wore beautiful costumes. My 3 favorite acts were:

Two women used an apparatus and did amazing balancing feats.
Two men did amazing balancing feats, without an apparatus.
A story of love where others were trying to keep a couple of young lovers apart. Near the end, the girl makes an amazing leap and is caught by the other performers.

Tropicana Dancer walking around audience as part of parade

Each table sat about 12 people. The seating is tight and people are packed in. One man in a motorized cart could barely make it through the aisle to get to his table. We were given a welcome glass of champagne. We had 2 buckets of ice for everyone (12 of us at our table) to share. We did request a refill of ice which we got (it was very hot outside). Then we got one can of cola per person, and every 4 people got a bottle of rum to share. I drank most of my rum over ice because I was concerned with the caffeine in the cola. I did add a small amount of cola, but not much. Other tables were able to order additional drinks, but our waitress never offered. The people at the table in back of us must have ordered bottled water, and I don’t know what else. Each person at the table also got a little dish of nuts to snack on. We did pay a little addition money for “VIP” seats, but I think everyone got the same drinks and snacks. The venue is outdoors – I don’t know what happens if it rains. While there is a main stage, there are performers on different levels, including the bar. So you need to look around.

At the end of the evening, there was about 1/3 bottle of rum left from the couple we were sharing with. Dave grabbed it and we brought it back to the ship and our stateroom.

During our talks on Cuba, we were told that the ship would not confiscate rum because they consider it a souvenir. We had no problem carrying bottles of rum onto the ship and into our stateroom. As a side note, with our Diamond status on Royal Caribbean, we get 3 free drinks each night, plus other drink discounts,. This will be our lowest bar bill ever.

And now the rest of the story, or how Dave got upset with me….😳. We are still on the ship as I write this, so I may still be headed to jail. While drinking our rum at Tropicana, out of Havana Club logo glasses, I decided the glasses would make nice souvenirs. I was going to just stick them in my purse, but Dave nixed that. So I asked a waitress if I could buy them. She did not speak English, so she didn’t know what I was asking. A lady at our table across from me spoke fluent Spanish, and asked me what I wanted. I told her, and she said she would ask for me. This was early in the evening. As we were getting up to leave at the end of the evening, the lady at my table had gone somewhere, came back and said “The waitress said they don’t sell the glasses, just take them”. At this point, I don’t know if the “just take them” part was coming from the waitress or the lady, but I didn’t need any more encouragement. I carried them in my hand with my little jacket hiding them as we walked out. I was very willing to buy them, so in my rum soaked mind, that made me less of a thief. Meanwhile, Dave is very unhappy with me and keeps telling me that iI’m going to jail in a Cuban prison and reminding me about the American kid that tried to take a poster in North Korea. There is a little more to this story….but it happens tomorrow.

By the time we are back on the ship and ready for bed, it is 1:00 am and we have a 7:45 am tour tomorrow morning. A short night for us…..

Thursday, August 24, 2017

This morning we are doing a walking tour. A short sleep last night – in bed at 1:00am and up at 6:00am. We are still docked in Havana. Each time we get on or off the ship, we have to go through immigration. Getting off the ship, after the face to face with the immigration officer, everything you are taking off the ship is scanned and you go through airport type security by Cuban authorities. Getting back on the Ship, you and your possessions are scanned again, then the face to face with the Cuban immigration officer, then an additional scanning by the cruise ship security as you re-board the ship. At this point, the Cuban immigration officials still have not collected my visa, but they have collected Dave’s. Dave still thinks it is because they are going to throw me in jail. Yesterday, our guide told us that if someone is caught stealing a cell phone, they get 10 years in prison. How long in prison if you steal 2 Havana Club logo glasses? Anyway, my passport was stamped, and the Cuban immigration officers just look for the stamp after your first trip through. So I still have my visa. Later today, they gave my passport a second stamp.

So we get off the ship and meet our guide for our walking tour. His name is Ramon, his English is self taught, and we are his first group of Americans. I’m sure he has led Canadians and Brits before. Unfortunately, he is hard to understand, but not as bad as our guide yesterday. He walks us around, very slowly, through some of the squares in Havana and points out various monuments and buildings, quoting Cuban history and dates, for about 2 hours (it is a 4 hour tour). One thing we did pick up is that the Cubans are still rationed. I think they get 5 eggs per adult per week, and 6 lbs. of rice. Not sure what else is rationed. Ramon did point out a little store, with a big sign that said they did not accept CUC’s which was the currency tourists are suppose to use. The locals use CUP’s, which are worth about 25 times less than CUC’s. Dave and I hang in there on the tour – even though we are a bit bored – because what else are we going to do. He did lose some other people who bailed out and went back to the ship. So after about 2 hours of this slow wandering, he took us to a (state run) rum and cigar store. Here we could buy….rum and cigars! We made our donation to the government of Cuba, and then stopped in the hotel next door to take a little break. We could get something to drink, use the bathrooms, and/or sit for a few minutes. The bathroom was unisex, and had toilet paper. We were advised many times to bring tissues as many bathrooms do not have toilet paper.

Another side note here – when we were on the tour buses, the buses were very new, Chinese buses. I didn’t use the bus bathroom, but we were told to use the bathrooms on the bus if we needed to, and those bathrooms would have toilet paper.

After our rest stop, we walked some more and met up with a bus to continue our tour. Our bus driver was a little guy – maybe only 5’ tall, but he looked like Geraldo Rivera. We even saw someone get their picture taken with him! Anyway, he drove us to a bar.

This bar had signs that it didn’t open until 8:00PM, but I think during the day it caters to tourists. Here we got some free samples. It was billed as a pairing of rum, coffee and cigars. So, everyone got a cigar, a shot of rum, and a little cup of coffee. Dave was able to order a coke. It was 3 CUC’s (on the ship they’re $3.84). They had a band playing and singing Cuban music. Afterwards, 2 girls came around offering CD’s for purchase. We did not buy. Then back on the bus. Just before boarding the bus, I saw a guy pushing what looked like a clothing rack. It looked like he had long stings of garlic and onions. He saw me trying to take his picture, so he smiled and paused a second so I could get a good picture.

Pushing a cart filled with garlic cloves

All the people we came in contact with were very nice and friendly. Even walking on the streets, people would say hello, even school kids. I didn’t see any homeless people – Dave said he saw one guy sleeping in a doorway. The also keep the streets very clean – no liter. I did have to step over dog poop a couple of times, as there are dogs that wander around. The dogs don’t bother you, but we were advised not to try to pet them as the dogs are not used to human interaction.

The bus took us back to the area near the ship, and we did a little more walking, this time to a square that had more expensive type stores, an outdoor coffee shop, etc. Then we walked back to the square where we started from, San Francisco Plaza, which is right across from the ship. Ramon pointed to a hotel and said they had good mojitos. It was about 12:30, so we got back on the ship, and had lunch. There was one more thing I wanted to do – and that is have a mojito in Havana. So now we are going out on our own in Havana.

We walked back into San Francisco Plaza, and into the hotel our guide recommeded. They had a gift shop, so I bought one postcard to mail to Sandie. She always asks me to mail her a post card. So, Sandie – watch your mailbox! The postcard was 1.5 CUC’s, but that included “local” postage. I didn’t have a pen, but the lady at the reception desk lent me one, and directed us to the post office. Again, very nice, friendly people. The post office lady sold us a stamp for .5 CUC’s and even put the stamp on the card for me.

We walked back to the hotel for a mojito and Cuba libra. It was an inside courtyard, and the drinks were 4CUC’s each.

We walked around a bit more, and the doorman (for lack of a better description) at Hotel Rachel enticed us in telling us there was a rooftop bar. So up we went up an ancient elevator to the roof. Service was slow, but bartender was very nice. He said mojitos were 4 CUC, but for us only 3.5 CUC’s 😁. We enjoyed sitting up on the roof. It was hot, but we were sitting in a covered area, so it was OK. This is where Dave and I found our mission! Or, what we were going to do with the rest of our afternoon.

Remember my Havana Club glasses? Dave and I decided we would try to find some legal ones and buy more. This is the rest of the story…assuming I don’t get thrown in jail once I return to Tampa. At least Dave is liking the Havana Club glasses souvenir at this point. So we started wandering around in the touristy area, tshirt shops and other stuff. We walked, walked, walked. Finally we stopped in one shop that looked promising, but wasn’t. A young woman in the shop tried to be helpful and sent us a few blocks away to where she thought we might find the glasses. She was so nice we gave her a 2CUC tip. And then we walked, walked, and walked some more.

Another side note – while walking through these touristy areas, we were approached several times by locals trying to sell us cigars. We were warned many times, by ship crew, our local tour guides, and stuff I read online on Facebook and Cruise Critic, to never buy cigars from people on the street as they are fake. One person on Facebook said his tour guide hooked him up with a local on the street – and he bought fake cigars.

So as we are walking, we are approached by a guy who we initially thought was a crew member. He spoke very good English. He is just friendly and talking to us, telling us to be sure to get back on the ship on time. We decided to ask him where we might find Havana Club glasses. He sent us 3 or 4 blocks away to Sloppy Joes bar. He thought they might have a gift shop where we could buy the glasses. He even walked us 1/2 block to get us on the right street. Then, he asks us for 20 CUC’s, for the baby…as they are still rationed….we gave him 3 CUC’s and headed to Sloppy Joes….and then it started pouring rain. We got very close, and could see the sign for Sloppy Joes, but hung out at a bus stop shelter with 20 or so other folks trying to stay dry. Finally the rain let up and we went to Sloppy Joes. No, they don’t sell the glasses. But, the very nice bartender (he really was very nice) took our map and suggested we go to the Museum of Rum, and even marked the location on our map. Fortunately, it was near our ship, so we headed back to our ship. As we got close to the ship, it was about 5:00. Dave said he bet the museum closed at 5:00, so we abandoned our mission, and with have to live with our 2 illicit, sin-scarred Havana Club glasses that I swiped from Tropicana.

We got back on the ship, ate dinner and went to the show. This show was one of the best we have ever seen in our 17 years of cruising. Not only us, but you could tell the whole audience enjoyed it. It was a band from Toronto Canada and they played 50’s and 60’s songs. They were young – maybe in their 30’s. The lead singer was really energetic. Dave thought he was going to have a heart attack just watching him! The bass guitarist had a bit of a John Lennon look. They got a standing ovation and came back for an oncor. They were really good. They are billed as Toronto’s premier rock and roll cover band, “Rookie”.

Tomorrow is a sea day, so I don’t expect to have anything for my blog. We have reservations for Chops, the specialty restaurant. Tomorrow is August 25, Lily’s birthday. We plan to see her Saturday after we get off the ship. Unless I get thrown in jail. If that happens, you all will probably know, because I’ll be calling everyone I know for bail money. 😳.

Final thoughts on Cuba

People in Cuba are very friendly. The immigration people were serious, and did not interact with you, but they were not unfriendly. The only people that I felt were “cold” were the money changers at the port. People on the street, in shops, bartenders, post office, etc. were all very friendly.

We were on Royal Caribbean, so some of my impressions may be different than someone traveling a different way or a different line. We were given one bottle of water for each excursion, because it was so hot. Dave and I bought more water, and carried it in our first excursion, but it was not needed. The one bottle was plenty. However, it may have been different if we had a full day excursion. Ours were only Half day or 4 hours. The ship also recommended taking snacks in sealed packages. Fruit, sandwiches, unsealed cookies, etc. would not be allowed into Cuba. All your possessions are scanned entering and leaving the port area by Cuban officials. We bought some peanuts, but never needed them. Again, maybe because we took the shorter excursions. Even our walking tour stopped so we could rest. I’m pretty sure we could have bought a snack at the hotel where we had our rest stop if we wanted.

I used a light, nylon, string backpack to carry tissues, hand sanitizer, water and anything that we purchased.

You are advised to bring an umbrella or rain gear. This is a good idea. It rains most afternoons – kinda like Florida. We lucked out the first day – no rain. So the second day we didn’t go prepared and could have gotten soaked. We lucked out and found shelter when it rained, but then we were stuck there until the rain stopped.

The Cuban people are culturally mixed. There are Cubans who have fair skin and some are very dark. According to our guide Ramon, this is because they have a very mixed heritage that includes other Caribbean people, Spainards, British, Africans, Chinese, etc. The Cubans had African slaves. There is a big hotel being built and our discussion leader on the ship told us they brought in Indians from India to do the labor because if they used Cubans the materials would have ended up in Cuban homes!?!?!?!

There are many dilapidated buildings, some still occupied. Apparently in 1959, Cubans could no longer buy or sell homes. As children married, the just added bedrooms, and sometimes the building became unstable. Some homes are very nice and some have been rehabbed. To me, it reminded me of St. Petersburg Russia, and the influence of Russian communists. Russia has pulled out of Cuba, and now Cuba is friends with the Chinese. Thus the nice, new Chinese tour buses. The children in school used to learn Russian but now they learn Chinese. English is not universally spoken, but those Interacting with tourists seem to speak some English.

We did not have a problem with mosquitoes. Someone told us that the government actually goes into private homes and spray for mosquitos. The streets are very clean with no liter. There are dogs that wander. Sometimes they do their “business” in the streets, so you have to watch for that. We also saw some cats, and a few chickens. These animals are not used to human interaction and we were told not to try to pet them.

We did not have any problem with drinking beverages with ice cubes, however we only got drinks from hotels.

The dress code for the Tropicana is for men – long trousers and closed toe shoes. We bought our tickets for Tropicana through the ship. I understand it is much cheaper to buy them online directly from Tropicana, but then you are arranging your own transportation to and from the Tropicana. When we arrived, we were seated at tables of 12. Each person is given a welcome glass of champagne. Then they brought a can of cola (not a brand you would recognize), and a 700 ml bottle of 7 year old Havana Club to share between 4 people, whom you may or may not know (so there were 3 bottles per table). We also had two buckets of ice to share among 12 people. It was very hot, and we used a lot of ice. We asked for our ice bucket to be replenished, and it was. Each person got a small dish of peanuts for a snack. Some tables were able to order additional items, i.e. bottles of water, but our waitress did not speak English and did not offer. Our tickets did not include dinner, either. At the end of the evening, our bottle of rum still had about 1/3 left. No one else seemed interested, so Dave picked it up. We carried it back to our stateroom with no problem.

Royal Caribbean did not confiscate bottles of rum bought in Havana. They considered them souvenirs and allowed us to bring them back to our room.

I did not see any homeless people, and Dave thought he saw one. As a discussion leader on the cruise said, the rations are enough to live on. This discussion leader also said the average monthly wage is the equivalent of $42 (US) per working adult. I think about our tour guides that received tips – probably at least $5 per person for half day tours, with at least 20 people, which would be $100 for 1/2 day of work. I wonder if they have to turn that money over to the government or something, because the locals are only suppose to have CUP’s. CUP’s is the money for locals. Tourists use CUC’s, or convertible pesos.

The people did not seem to be lazy. Even though the government takes care of people, they work. Cuba has a very high literacy rate.

The Royal Caribbean Empress of the Seas staterooms are small. This ship has been refurbished expressly for these short trips to Cuba. The shower is tight. I don’t know why, but the water in our shower was lukewarm at best. No amenities in the bathroom other than bar soap and liquid soap in the shower. We enjoyed having Diamond status on Royal Caribbean. We got free internet for one device for 24 hours. There are other benefits, but we enjoyed the internet and 3 free drinks, between 5:00pm and 8:30pm each evening. There’s also a one time buy one get one, and a 20% discount on one drink. We had a special venue for breakfast, and Diamond Plus and Pinnicle had breakfast in the Chops restaurant. We were not impressed with the food in the buffet. Today they were suppose to have chicken noodle soup. When I went to get a bowl, there were no noodles in the chicken noodle soup. So, they needed to replenish the soup. The Crew were very good and all our needs were taken care of. In the restaurant we always had to give our room number, and then the staff would call us by name.

Room service now has a $7.95 service charge for everything except a continental breakfast. Lunch was never served in the dining room, but you could go to Chops for $15 per person for lunch. Chops is $35 for dinner, but they do run specials. On Tropicana night, when most of the ship went to Tropicana, Chops had a 2 for 1 special. We booked at embarkation and got a 20% discount. I like the internet fees are for 24 hour periods and generally run $14.95 to $19.95 for one device for 24 hours, rather than requiring you to purchase so many minutes. I think it was $14.95 if you bought it before getting on the ship. On the last day, they offered a $9.95 special.

There are very few balconies on Empress of the Seas, all junior suite or higher, so we had an ocean view stateroom. There was a lifeguard at the pool, which I haven’t seen on a ship before. Probably because too many parents are not watching their children…..

You are allowed to bring into the US 2 liters of rum and 100 cigars. However when we came thru customs, I told the customs officer that we had 3 bottles and he did not make us pay duty.

Do not buy cigars from street vendors. We were warned many times that these cigars may be fake. The street vendors use all sorts of things, other than tobacco, to fill the cigars. The tour guides will take you to official (government?) stores that sell cigars, rum and coffee. One of the official stores that we went to gave samples of the rum to taste. One of our shore excursions took us to a bar where we were able to sample rum, coffee and cigars.

We did not see any supermarkets, or convenience stores. I am not sure where the locals shop. The Cubans are still rationed. One guide told us they get 5 eggs per month and 6 lbs. of rice. He did point out a “hole in the wall” which was a store. There was a sign that said “we do not accept CUC’s” which is the currency tourists use. Locals use CUP’s. It was dark and dingy. Against one wall was a blackboard with items listed and I assume their prices.

Caribbean Cruise 10/8 – 18/2019

10/8/19: We are booked in stateroom L222 on the Crown Princess, cruising round trip out of Fort Lauderdale with Ray and Celeste who are next door in L226.

Balcony door is open between our staterooms

Ray drove from Englewood to Fort Lauderdale. As we drove on Alligator Alley, we checked the weather and saw there was a big rain and thunderstorm over Fort Lauderdale, but fortunately, it dissipated before we got there. We parked at an offsite facility that Ray had arranged. We drove in, they unloaded our luggage from the car and onto a shuttle, and off we went with about 6 or 8 other people on the shuttle. We were dropped off at the dock in a short time, and proceeded through the Princess embarkation. That all went smoothly and quickly. We had received information before the cruise that boarding would be delayed until 2:00PM due to the ship arriving from overseas and having to be inspected by US immigration. We arrived at the port about 1:00PM, and boarding started about 1:30PM. That was a bit of a disaster as everyone got up to be boarded at the same time. So actually getting on the ship took awhile. After we were finally on board, we grabbed a hamburger from the grill in the pool area. It was actually a really good hamburger. We explored the ship a little and kept checking for our luggage, which didn’t arrive until after we left for dinner. We have “anytime dining” and had dinner about 6:00PM. We returned to our stateroom, unpacked, watch the Rays beat Houston on TV, and went to bed. We have adjoining staterooms and the room steward opened the balcony door between our staterooms.

10/9/19: Princess Cays – We are scheduled to arrive at 9:00AM. It is a tender port which means we are suppose to get tickets to take the tenders, shuttle boats actually, from the ship to the island. But of course, tender tickets were not checked, or collected, so lots of rude people just got in the shuttle line making the rest of us who follow the rules, wait. Princess Cays has swimming beaches, snorkeling areas, trinket stores, bars, equipment rental, etc. It can be a fun beach day. They serve lunch there, too. I brought my new full face snorkel mask, and Celeste and I planned to snorkel. Dave and Ray hung out on beach chairs in the shade. Celeste and I had to walk a little distance to get to the snorkeling area. Then we had to swim around a building built in the water -I think it may have been a lifeguard station- to get to the profitable snorkel area. We saw lots of colorful fish and coral. Celeste saw a barracuda, but I didn’t see him. My favorite fish was a beautiful blue one. It was deceiving how deep the water was. It looked like you could reach down and touch the bottom, but I could not stand up. So we were swimming or floating the whole time, probably 45 minutes or so. I had a slight drip into my full face mask, around my right eye, which was stinging because I wore my contact lenses. I also felt the need after awhile to take off the mask to get a deep breath, but I wanted to stand to do it and couldn’t. And, I needed to blow my nose! Because of those discomforts, after about 45 minutes I’d had enough. If there would have been a spot to stop, stand, and get a breath of fresh air, I think I would have continued longer. I really enjoyed seeing the fish and coral. I only saw one small conch shell. The water was beautiful and clear.

After snorkeling, a Celeste and I visited some of the shops but didn’t buy anything. We went back to the guys and decided to go back to the ship instead of eating lunch at Princess Cays. A few other people were going back, too. We figured we’d have the ship to ourselves. Boy, were we wrong! Lots of people apparently didn’t go ashore. We spent a quiet afternoon, sat on the balcony, and explored the ship. We went to the “Elite” happy hour which is for frequent cruisers and suite passengers. Ray and Celeste are one status level below us, but nobody checked ID, so they went to the happy hour with us. Then we went to dinner. We were much happier with our waiter, Ricardo, although the dinner menu wasn’t great. Celeste, Ray and Dave had shrimp cocktails for an appetizer, but the shrimp were small. Celeste had the “always available” chicken, which was dry and rubbery. Dave had the “always available” salmon, which was also dry. Ray and I had a seafood stew which we thought was very good. It contained pieces of fish, shrimp, scallops, and clams in a clear broth. After dinner, we went back to our staterooms to chill as we were tired and the evening entertainment was a vocalist which did not inspire us.

10/10/19: Sea Day – Dave and I went to the dining room for breakfast and were underwhelmed. Ray and Celeste went to Horizon Court (the buffet) and really liked it. Dave and I will have to try it. I have a bit of a phobia about the buffet because of germs, but I’ll try it anyway. Dave and I went to a lecture on the Bermuda Triangle. Little did I know our ship is traveling through the Bermuda Triangle! The lecturer was only “OK”, and I found it somewhat interesting, but Dave about fell asleep. Just a disjointed and hard to follow lecture. Since we are going to the Crown Grill Dining Room tonight, one of the specialty restaurants, Dave and I had a light lunch at the International Cafe. I had green pea soup and a little orzo salad, and Dave had a ham panini and chocolate chip cookies. Dave was disappointed because they heated the panini, but it was still cold. Ray and Celeste ate at the Horizon Buffet. In the afternoon, Dave and I went to the Pyramid Game show. The game is similar to $10,000 pyramid. Passengers volunteer and if they guess 6 words, they won a plastic Princess coaster. Actually, even if they didn’t win, they were given plastic Princess coasters for participating. Watching was an entertaining way to spend an hour.

We went to dinner at Crown Grill, a specialty restaurant. I had Tiger Prawn for an appetizer, black and Blue soup which was French onion soup with blue cheese, and sea bass for my entree. Dave had a lobster cake, shrimp bisque, and a filet. Celeste had the tiger prawn, black and blue soup and Lobster. Ray had the black and blue soup and surf and turf. We all opted out of potatoes and they served mushrooms, asparagus and creamed spinach family style. We all liked the asparagus, so they had to bring more. The food was very good and very filling, but of course we had desert. Dave, Ray and I chose a bite size sampler of all the deserts and Celeste had a milk chocolate peanut butter bar.

We missed the early show and were too tired to wait for the late show. Dave and I wandered around awhile, spent some money in the casino, and ended up watching the Patriots beat the NY Giants in our stateroom.

10/11/19: St. Thomas – Ray and Celeste booked a submarine excursion, but Dave and I planned to wing it. We arrived in St. Thomas about 8:00AM. Dave and I took our time and got off the ship about 10:30AM. We had a few things we were thinking of doing. One thing was the 99 steps, which I guess is actually 103, that leads to Blackbeard’s Castle. However, Blackbeard’s Castle was closed today. There is a gondolier that goes up a mountain and supposedly has good views, but the gondolier was not running today. The last thing on our list was to go to Mountain Top which is famous for their banana daiquiris. It is an inside “mall”, which was good because we were having some rain showers. Lots of tour operators were hawking their tours, all for the same price of $25 per person, and one of their stops was Mountain Top. We opted for an open bus and took one of the tours. The guide stopped at a couple of overlooks and pointed out sights in Charlotte Amalie. He also pointed out islands in the Atlantic and Caribbean Seas. He took us to one overlook containing Drakes Seat which is a green bench with a great view over Magen’s Bay. It is a vantage point where Sir Francis Drake was suppose to have looked out for enemy ships of the Spanish fleet. We went to Mountain Top and we both had banana daiquiris. I bought a $10 visor for rowing, and Dave bought a rum sampler. The tour came back down the mountain and drove through downtown Charlotte Amalie before returning us to the shopping area by the ship. We got back to the ship mid afternoon, showered, and went to the Elite happy hour. Again, Ray and Celeste joined us at happy hour with no issue. Sometimes the crew checks ID, but not on this cruise. The hors d’oeuvres were shrimp and the cocktail of the evening was a Bacardi Limon Mojito. After happy hour we went to dinner (more food ugh). Dave and I had the fish entree and Ray and Celeste had the steak entree. Dave and I wandered the ship a bit and then went back to our stateroom.

10/12/19: Dominica – We signed up for a shore excursion which included a drive through a rain forest and then tubing down a river. There were 10 of us in a van. We were the last to get on, and there was one seat near the back and the other three up front. Dave offered, but I took the seat near the back. Unfortunately, we drove up a mountain on a very windy road and I ended up with a headache and feeling woozy, but managed not to throw up. The driver gave a commentary, but I could not hear a word he said. It was a pretty miserable ride. Finally we got to the tubing venue, ran by a company named Hibiscus.

The river was a little low, but there were several guys accompanying our group. The guys from Hibiscus would help us if we got hung up on a rock or stuck somewhere. It was a pleasant afternoon and I think we all enjoyed the tubing.

Then we had an hour long drive back to the ship, but this time I traded seats with Dave and sat closer to the front, so the ride back was better, but still a windy road. We got back to the ship about 1:30PM, and we were all pretty hungry. We opted to keep our wet clothes on and grabbed a burger in the pool area. It tasted pretty good! After lunch, Dave and I got off the ship and checked out the vendor tents, but did not buy anything. The port is in an industrial area, so there really was no place to walk, and not many vendors. We can see a business area, and I think there’s suppose to be a shuttle to the town, but we decided we’d rather get our showers and get out of our wet, stinky clothes. Went to dinner in the Michelangelo Restaurant and got out preferred servers, Ricardo and Nicolae. I had Seafood Stew, Celeste had Chicken quesadilla, Ray and Dave had Chateaubriand. After dinner, we went to a production show…Disco. We always enjoy the production shows…lots of singing and dancing. After the production show we went to a game show…”Is that your final answer?” Which is a take off of “Who wants to be a millionaire?”. They do it a little differently, using one team of 5 people. Each person answers the question independently until they miss and then the next person sits in the hot seat. Amazingly, there was a winner! Then we were all off to bed as we have an early port call in Grenada.

10/13/19: Grenada – our ship is having a thruster problem and the captain is concerned with potential strong currents in Grenada. So instead of docking, we are going to tender in.

View of our ship sitting wayyyyy out! We had to tender in.

It is a short port call, from 7:00AM until the last tender at 1:15PM. We have a ships excursion, and meet in the wheelhouse at 7:00AM (we got there at 6:50AM actually). The ship didn’t get cleared until about 7:30AM, but then finally we were on the tender heading to port. Our tour bus had 14 people and a really great guide, Valerie, and driver, Dragon. Dragon was talkative and supplemented Valerie’s commentary. We left the port area and headed up a mountain to Fort Frederick. It is a backwards fort, built with the cannons facing inland to defend from inland invaders. Before we get to the fort, our bus breaks down and we have to wait for a second bus. In not too long of time, maybe 15 minutes, we are back heading to the fort. There are beautiful views from the fort, but really not much else to see. Soon we go to leave and find we are switching buses again. Not sure what was wrong with the second bus. The air conditioning in all 3 buses was not very good. Anyway, we are driven around for probably an hour while Valerie points out various points of interest and Dragon stops at various viewpoints. Finally we reach a Spice Plantation. We are shown various spices and where and how they grow. Loofa is actually a vine that grows on a tree. We see what cocoa looks like before it is processed and Valerie describes how it becomes chocolate. Of course we bought a couple of chocolate bars. The outside air seems a bit better than the stuffy air conditioning, so we open all the windows on the bus. Then we go to a nutmeg factory. Because it is Sunday, no one is working, but we get a tour. Only 4 of the 14 actually go on the tour, but Celeste and I were 2 of the 4. The guide told us he walked 4 miles to get to the factory today. He seems very knowledgeable and gave each of us a handful of nutmegs. After the tour, Dave and Ray found a little market and we got some much appreciated cold water. Then we are off driving a long time again, through the mountains while Valerie and Dragon point out plants and trees bearing various fruits or supplying various spices.

I forgot the name of this tree, but the bark was colorful.

After driving a long time, we enter Grand Etang National Park and visit a crater lake. There are monkeys in the trees as we exit the bus.

We are given a complimentary drink here And the choice could be soda, water, beer, or rum punch. Dave, Celeste and I chose the rum punch, but Ray got a beer. The rum punch was very tasty. We walked to an overlook and saw the lake which is in an extinct volcano crater. There is a lady on our bus that is not feeling well….she is diabetic so not sure if it is a diabetic issue, diesel fumes on the bus, car sickness from driving in the mountains, or something else. We left the crater lake and we’re driving to Annandale Falls, when this lady gets really sick. Valerie and Dragon drive to a house where they apparently know the homeowner, but no one is home – probably at church. Fortunately, another neighbor sees Valerie and Valerie asks them if this lady can use their restroom. So we sit stopped for awhile, until the lady and Valerie return. The lady is given lots of plastic bags in case she needs to throw up. We proceed to our last stop which is Annandale Falls. The waterfall has a drop of 30 feet and the pool beneath the falls looks very inviting.

However with our bus problems and our sick passenger, our tour is running late. So we have a quick stop at the falls.

There are 3 guys there who describe themselves as members of a jumpers club. Of course they are looking for tips. All 3 guys jump into the pool from the area at the top of the falls.

Looked like fun and the water looked very inviting for all us hot sweaty people on the bus. It is already 1:00PM, and our tour should have been over by noon. Lots of phone calls from Valerie and Dragon’s boss wondering where we are because we are running so late. Of course, all of the passengers on the bus were not concerned as Princess promises to wait for late returning passengers on ships tours. The last tender was suppose to be at 1:15PM, but we didn’t get back until about 1:30PM. They told us to have our ships card out for identification and then kind of rush us to the tender. All of Princess’s tents and signage is down, and this is the last tender so the port crew will return with us on this tender. We get on the tender and wait. Apparently they are waiting for 1 more person. They tell us it will be about 15 minutes. One of the crew brings us cool washcloths to help cool us down. The sick lady is wheelchaired out of the heat and back to the building which has air conditioning. Finally, at 2:00PM we see the sick lady being wheelchaired back, but not the person we were waiting for. Apparently they decided to wait until 2:00PM and that was it. We got back to the ship and Dave asked the crew about the missing person and they confirmed that they left one. Later, we hear an announcement that the entertainer for the evening didn’t make the ship and the evening program was a comedy presentation instead. I am thinking it was the entertainer that the shuttle was waiting for. We didn’t get back to the ship until 2:30PM and we see the sick lady with her face in a big plastic bag with medical personnel from the ship. We had not eaten since 6:00AM, and had dinner reservations in Sabatini’s, one of the specialty restaurants at 5:30PM. We decided to change Sabatini’s and got a reservation at 7:30PM instead. Then we grabbed a quick, light lunch and noticed the ship hadn’t moved away from anchor. The ship continued to sit at anchor for another hour….we did not leave Grenada until about 3:10PM. Dave and I went to the international Cafe and Ray and Celeste went to Horizon, the buffet. By the time we all ate lunch, took showers, cleaned up, got dressed, we had about 30 minutes to chill before time to go to the Platinum happy hour. Tonight the hors d’oeuvre was sushi and some kind of cherry cocktail. But since we were going to Sabatini’s we didn’t want to snack too much. We headed to Sabatini’s a little early, 7:15PM, but they seated us right away at a table that was freezing! We were all very cold, so finally they moved us, and the second table was much better. Celeste and I had artichoke soufflés and Ray and Dave had calamari appetizers. For our pasta course, we had spaghetti with seafood. There was lots of seafood and not much spaghetti, which was fine with all of us. For our entrees, Celeste and I had lobster 3 ways, Ray had a huge veal chop, and Dave had Saltimbocca. Finally, for dessert I had tiramisu and a tiramisu martini, Celeste had a chocolate mint martini, Ray had a tiramisu martini and Dave had a tart. We all enjoyed every course and had a nice time. However, because we had all gotten up very early, we retired to our staterooms after dinner. We can sleep in tomorrow morning. We are not scheduled to arrive in Bonaire until noon, and all aboard is 7:30PM.

10/14/19: Bonaire – arriving in Bonaire is very picturesque. It is the cutest island so far, and not as many mountains.

We do not have a planned ships excursion. I thought we might take a taxi tour, but that did not happen. Not sure what there is to do in Bonaire other than swim, snorkel or dive. From our balcony on the ship, we could see people in the water nearby, apparently learning to dive. The water was clear and beautiful. We did not do much. We walked around the small business/shopping area and checked the shops. Many were closed between 12:00PM and 2:00PM for lunch, and we were there about 1:45PM. Celeste and I bought a couple of visors that were $5 each, and I got some Visine because my eyes were still kinda bugging me. We are docked close to town, but the town is pretty small, so it only took an hour or so to see what we wanted to see. We got back on the ship and chilled for the afternoon, going to happy hour for sushi and a “deep sea martini”. For dinner, we sat at Ricardo and Nicolae’s table again. They had a new server they were training, Lucas. Ray had Minestrone soup and veal scallopini. Celeste had 2, yes, 2 bowls! of the chilled peach and Prosecco soup and a seafood dish with a long Italian name (it was Italian night) with shrimp, scallops, and garlic for the entree. For dinner, Dave had prosciutto, shrimp cocktail, and veal scallopini. I had a seafood antipasto, chilled peach soup with Prosecco, and the same seafood entree as Celeste. Then we went to another production show that was Motown music, which we all enjoyed. Afterwards Dave and I walked around a bit, and ended up getting an Absolute Citron and a glass of wine to take to our room.

10/15/19: Curaçao- Our last port. The ship arrived at 7:00AM, and we had a ships tour starting at 9:00AM. We had a big bus with pretty good air conditioning today. Our guide was Daneek and the driver was Hortencia. We started with a bit of a scenic drive with Daneek pointing out buildings, forts, sculptures, etc. we were given a photo op from the top of Queen Juliana Bridge.

Crown Princess in port from top of Queen Juliana Bridge

Our first stop was an Aloe plantation. They have been producing aloe products for 22 years and use all natural materials. The life of an aloe plant is 10 years. Before they can start to harvest aloe fronds/branches (?), the plant has to be 2 years old. Then they cut the bottom fronds/branches, leaving the center to grow some more. If the plant shoots out blooms, they are cut off as the flowers zap the energy from the plant. A lady demonstrated how they harvest the aloe. First they cut the end and let the bitter red liquid drip out. What remains is like a gel with sticky goop. She cut it in small pieces to let us taste, and it literally had little to no taste, maybe a little bit like a cucumber. Then we went into their store to try some aloe juice and testers for their products. They make all kinds of lotions, soap, skin creams, shampoo, and juices. We did not buy anything, but their products are available on Amazon. The next stop was a chichi(?) factory. In Curaçao, a chichi is the oldest daughter. Basically it is a plaster figure of a fully endowed woman, and they are painted by locals. They also make a plaster figure of a man, which represents the firstborn male, called a bobo (?), and he has a large belly. The last stop, and probably the reason we signed up for this tour, was a visit to the Curaçao liquor factory. They explained how the liquor is made, which is basically from the peels of Valencia oranges with sugar, cloves, cinnamon and several other “secret” spices. When finished, it is clear, but food colors can be added, which does not change the flavor. It is sold as clear, blue, yellow, red or green. They also sell the liquor flavored with chocolate, rum raisin and tamarind. The taste of the unflavored liquor is similar to triple sec. After our tour, we were given (small) tastes of blue, chocolate and tamarind. All were very good. We could also buy cocktails, and being very hot, I bought a frozen blue something. It was margarita mix and vodka blended with ice. Then the blue Curaçao liquor was put in the bottom of a glass and the flavored, blended ice was poured on top. It was very tasty. Dave bought a sampler package of the 3 flavored liquors, and a small bottle of the clear liquor to see how it tastes in margaritas as compared to triple sec. After the Curaçao liquor factory, we headed back to the ship with our guide pointing our more places of interest.

Many of the old houses are made from local sand and stone, and have to be replastered and repainted every two years, so they are very expensive to maintain. At one time, they were private residences, but now house businesses because of maintenance costs. We got back about 12:30PM. Ray and Celeste visited some of the local vendors in the port area. Dave and I wanted to do a little walking tour, so we got back on the ship, grabbed a hamburger for lunch, and headed back off the ship. We wanted to cross the channel on their famous floating bridge. First we walked through the Renaissance Mall and Rif Fort which is an area filled with souvenir shops and bars. We continued walking along the channel, passing more local vendors. We were heading to the Queen Emma Pontoon Bridge. This pedestrian bridge is the oldest and longest floating bridge in the world, built in 1888, resting on 15 pontoons. It swings open some 30 times a day, and has the nickname of “swinging old lady”, to let big oil tankers, container and cruise ships in and out of the harbor. I have to note here that our ship, Crown Princess, was docked at Mega pier, which is on open water. When we got to the floating bridge, it was in the open position. However, when the bridge is open, there is a free ferry that runs and takes passengers across the channel. So, we rode the ferry.

While on the ferry, we watch a large cargo ship passing through channel with tug alongside.

We also see the Queen Emma bridge starting to close.

Queen Emma pontoon bridge starting to close

On the other side of the channel are more shops and stores, bars and restaurants. We were heading to the Ronde Market, one of the places pointed out by our tour guide. It is a big round building with lots of little stalls with various vendors. I saw hairdressers, clothing, food, bottles of some kind of potion, fruits, vegetables, art….a little bit of everything. But, unfortunately, nothing I wanted to spend money on. We walked back towards the Queen Emma floating bridge, and along the way, at 2:00PM, we heard bells ringing. There is a clock on a wall, with bells beneath, and beneath that was a little diorama that moved on the hour. We only saw the last few seconds, unfortunately.

The white box at the bottom has a little diorama on the hour

We got to the bridge, which was closed, so we could walk across. When we were about 1/3 of the way, the horn sounded which meant a boat was coming and the bridge would open. Dave started to hustle as he was concerned we were going to get stuck on the bridge. As we got to the other side, the bridge was on an angle with the shore, and we had to step across about 6” of open space. The bridge was not opening fully, just enough to let a small boat through. But there is a fence to keep people from walking onto the bridge when it is operating, which was closed and we weren’t sure how to get out. Fortunately it opened to let us through. So, kind of exciting bridge crossing. We headed back to the ship, but made a stop for a couple of local beers. They tasted very good because the beer was cold and we were hot.

Supposedly local beers, but Briton was brewed elsewhere, FOR Curaçao

We got back to the ship and rested a little, took showers, and then it was time for our 5:00PM happy hour. The hors d’oeuvre was smoked salmon and the drink was a Tito’s lemon drop. After happy hour we went to dinner in our usual Michelangelo dining room with Ricardo and Nicolae.

‘We had lots of food and drink, as usual. Ray had shrimp cocktail, seafood chowder, and a meatball, rice and bean entree. He had chocolate sorbet for dessert. Celeste had a short rib starter, coconut pumpkin chilled soup, Steak and chocolate sorbet. Dave had shrimp cocktail, seafood chowder, salmon with a side of the meatballs, and a soft chocolate chip cookie with a scoop of ice cream, all covered with chocolate sauce. I had the seafood chowder, a small portion of the coconut pumpkin soup, and pork belly. Celeste and I did not care for the coconut pumpkin soup. Dave did not like the seafood chowder but Ray and I thought it was good. We had planned to go to a game show, but I wanted to stop by our stateroom first as my eyes were bothering me and I was going to put drops in them. By the time I put drops in my eyes, we decided not to go to the game show. Dave wanted to watch the world series on TV. We received our disembarkation tags, but they were wrong – they showed we transferring to the airport! So Celeste and I went to customer service to get them changed.

The next two days are sea days. We all are planning to read the books we brought. Maybe we’ll catch a lecture or show. We have reservations for the specialty restaurant tomorrow night….just what we need…more food!

10/16 – 17/ 2019: Sea Days – ship is heading back to Fort Lauderdale and we enjoy 2 days of rest and relaxation after 5 port days in a row. On Wednesday, we walked the deck for exercise and had reservations for Crown Grill in the evening. Ray had surf & turf, Celeste and I had lobster and Dave had a steak. After dinner, Celeste did some walking to get her steps in. Dave and I wandered the ship and ended up making a contribution to the casino. On Thursday, we packed. Dave and I went to a game show – “True or Moo” which is actually “True or False”. Celeste and I went to the finals for “Voice of the Ocean” and heard 6 really talented, male, passenger vocalists. We were surprised there were no females. Then we had dinner with Ricardo and Nicolae for the last time. We all had surf & turf, except instead of lobster, it was 2 very large shrimp. Not much entertainment this evening, so we went back to the stateroom to watch TV, read and relax.

10/18/2019: Disembarkation – what a mess! They let too many people off the ship at once, so the luggage claim and customs was packed. Probably took an hour to go through all the lines and finally exit the terminal.

Road trip September, 2019

We drove the Porsche to Illinois to visit Dave’s family. We got great gas mileage, up to 32.4 mpg. The whole trip was 3772 miles, and we averaged 29.4 mpg overall.

We left about noon, Tuesday, September 10, 2019, arriving in Ottawa, IL on Thursday to have dinner with Dave’s cousin Julie, 2 of her boys, Patrick and Michael, and Michael’s girlfriend, Ashley. Julie looked great! We had pizza, some wine, and a great evening.

The next day, Friday, we drove to Normal, IL planning to have lunch with Dave’s sister, Anne. Unfortunately Anne was not feeling well, so we did not get to spend time with her. Before heading to LeRoy, IL to surprise Dave’s brother, Steve, we stopped at Schnuck’s, a grocery store in Bloominton, IL where Steve’s wife, Pat works. We wanted to pick up some wine for the weekend. Leaving Schnucks, we ran into Pat! She was picking up a prescription. We were able to follow her home to LeRoy. When Steve arrived home, he was surprised!

We stayed with Pat and Steve Friday through Monday and had a great visit. Pat and Steve’s kids and grandkids were there for Steve’s birthday dinner, and Stevie, Jamie and Lacy came back Sunday. We played some Mexican dominos and card games.

Monday morning we were up early to start home, but had planned several stops along the way.

Our first stop was the Jim Beam distillery in Clermont, KY. We toured the distillery and at the end of the tour, we each got to sample 3 different bourbons. Dave and I both preferred the flavored bourbons over the straight stuff. The honey flavored bourbon was probably our overall favorite.

We continued driving and stayed in Bardstown, KY. The next day was a long day driving to Front Royal, VA where we spent the night. Front Royal is the entrance to the Shenandoah National Park and the Skyline Drive.

Wednesday we drove the length of the Skyline Drive, and started the Blue Ridge Parkway. The leaves had not started turning yet, but it was a fun drive with the top down, although a bit chilly at times.

There are many stops and overlooks along both the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is a fun drive with lots of twists, turns, and “spiral” curves. Also pretty slow driving. I think the Skyline Drive was 129 miles long, and the Blue Ridge Parkway is 469 miles. We drove the whole length of the Skyline Drive, and the first 106 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway before taking a break and spending the night in Salem, VA.

Thursday morning we utilized the interstates and drove to Ashville, NC, and then Alt. 74 to Chimney Rock State Park. Chimney Rock is a 315 ft. granite monolith.

After visiting Chimney Rock, we drove back to Ashville, NC to spend the night.

Friday morning we got back on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Ashville,NC and drove the last ~100 miles to the end. The road along the Blue Ridge Parkway reaches higher elevations than the Skyline Drive. The highest point along the Skyline Drive was about 3000 feet, and the highest point on the Blue Ridge Parkway was 6053 feet.

While driving our last leg of the Blue Ridge Parkway, we saw a small bear in the road. He was bigger than a cub, but not full grown. Maybe left Mom in the spring. When he saw us, he scrambled up a tree right next to the road. Of course I stopped and we watched each other, simultaneously watching out for Mom, just in case. He tried to hide behind the tree, and then came down, still peaking from the back of the tree. He was only about 15 to 20 feet away from the car.

Leaving the Blue Ridge Parkway, we drove to Bryson City, NC where we had reservations at a B&B for the night, and Saturday tickets for a ride on the Great Smokey Mountain Railroad. The B&B was in a house built in 1906, right on the main drag and only 1 block away from the train station. Unfortunately, we only got the “B” because the proprietor, Luke, had an early morning meeting out of town. Luke was an interesting character and we had a nice stay. He did make coffee for us, so I had coffee and a breakfast bar for breakfast which was fine. Luke gave us a discount on the room since breakfast was not included.

Saturday morning we boarded the train. We were given drink cups that had free refills for the entire journey. We also had prepaid for a box lunch which was a bbq sandwich, chips and a cookie. The train ride was from 10:30am until 3:00pm. The train stopped for a 1 hour break at Nantahala Outdoor Center. We had been to the Nantahala Outdoor Center over 25 years ago with Tim and Erin, and did a raft trip on the river. The place is much bigger today than 25 years ago. We wandered around a bit and then reboarded the train for the final segment.

Our car is the Piedmont, just to the left of the stairs.

The train hostess said there were 800 people on the train, and they had added extra cars for our journey. They were having a wine tasting, but we could not get a reservation for the wine event because it was fully booked. I think there were about 25 cars in total.

After the train ride we drove about 200 miles to get past Atlanta, and spent Saturday night in Locust Grove, GA. Sunday morning we got up to drive the last 500 miles home, arriving late Sunday evening, September 21, 2019.

Our Travels

For many years, I have written little journals about our travels. I have started this webpage to consolidate those trips so we can refer back and remember the wonderful and sometimes, not so wonderful, experiences. Also, our friends and relatives have suffered through reading my journals, and now they will be able to follow along by reading updates posted here.