Bozeman, Montana and the Museum of the Rockies
The Museum of the Rockies not only has fabulous exhibits, they also have a wonderful gift store with unique and reasonably priced things to take back for grandchildren. Many locally made items are available.
How many places have to space to recreate an entire dinosaur skeleton outside?
Don’t you love this sign? During our two visits, we saw buses of school children arriving to tour the museum.
I was fascinated by the sheer number of relatively complete dinosaur fossils they have, and especially the teeth. There is something about these teeth that gets into my head. I can’t let myself think about them too much.
These teeth in particular creep me out.
The problem I have with the Museum of the Rockies is that there are diverse exhibits, and it is a lot to take in. There is an entire pre-history section, with great documentation and contextualization to help you understand what you are seeing. There is also a local history section of settlement and pioneering.
This is a horrible photo exhibit. It talks about the Indians and what they thought of the invaders and that pile on the right is buffalo skulls. One of the dominant ideas was that if the pioneers could kill off the buffalo, the First Nation peoples living there would move on; their major form of protein was the buffalo. To that pile on the right is thousands of buffalo skulls. The bodies were just left to rot.
This is a photo of the early Hamilton Camp Store in Yellowstone NP at Old Faithful. This building is still standing and is used now as a General Store and gift shop. I love preservation of well constructed old buildings.
The Museum of the Rockies had a knockout visiting exhibition on Genghis Khan. It was very thorough, and lush with fabrics, and textiles, and objects we have inherited from the time of the rule of the Khans. Things like passports, playing cards, charcoal. We found this exhibit fascinating.
The items of daily life
Mongolian warriors
Ritual dancing masks. No, the masks don’t dance, people wearing the masks dance.
Dinner our first night in Bozeman is at the South 9th Bistro, one of the few restaurants I have ever found on Trip Advisor with a full 5 stars. Every contributor had happy, wonderful things to say about the food there. We have heard the food in the park is poor, so we are willing to spend a little more for a memorable meal our last night outside the park for a while. For us, eating well is part of our travels.
We were welcomed warmly, and seated. We had reservations. There are other people in the restaurant, and they all seem to be having a great time, but subdued, rumbling conversations, not boisterous or loud. We get recommendations on wines, and love the wine we get. We order the seafood ravioli, the heirloom beet salad, the steak au poivre, and “The Beast,” a very chocolate-y dessert. I forget to take photos, we are so into the food, except for the beet salad.
At the risk of sounding effusive, everything was wonderful. It was a great evening. The steak was divine; the sauce creamy and peppery and the meat so tender I didn’t even need the steak knife. At the end of the trip, we went back and ordered almost exactly the same dinner, it was so good.
Our hotel is the Best Western Plus Gran Tree Inn. When you enter to check in, it seems all woods and stone floors and beautiful finishes. When you go to your rooms, it is like there is this beautiful entry but the rooms are all kind of tired, not at all what would go with the nice entry. I don’t think we would stay there again.
Bozeman, Montana and Feed
Our room isn’t ready, so we head out to lunch and to visit the famous Museum of the Rockies. Remember how yesterday I had a passing though of bad omens? Those thoughts are well past. We love being in Bozeman. The air is cool, but not cold. People have been very kind and helpful to us here. We are hungry, we don’t know where to go and my husband sees this innocuous looking place and says “Let’s go there.”
Wow.
The place is bustling. You order at the counter and they bring the food to your table. Behind the counter is an open kitchen, including a whole area for their baking. They have a display counter full of pastries and muffins and some breads. Most of the people eating there seem to be regular customers. You can smell coffee, and it is good coffee.
You can get your own water from a dispenser; even the water is good. Finally our meals come, soup and salad for my husband, salad with trout for me. One taste and we are in heaven. Part of it is that the bread is SO GOOD.
We decide we will have breakfast there the next morning; sometimes when you find a place this good you just want to stick with it.
We feel re-energized. We are close to the Museum of the Rockies, it is starting to drizzle, the Museum sounds like just the thing.
Great Adventure: Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks Trip Map
This is an overview of the Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks great adventure 🙂
Before we even checked in to our hotel in Bozeman, we hit the Walmart. I had broken a part of my sunglasses, and the Walmart had an optical shop, where a very kind optician wouldn’t even charge me for fixing them. At the same time my glasses were being fixed (just a little screw) we picked up “car food.” Everyone has their own ideas of what that might mean, but for us it meant peanut butter and crackers, apples, little oranges, wasabi peas, roasted peanuts, chocolate, ice cube gum, Ghost Pepper Rice Chex mis, and some bottled water which we refilled from the faucets in our room. Wyoming and Montana water was really cold and delicious. We also picked up a few paper plates for microwaving. We had brought plastic utensils with us.
I learned several things about myself this trip; I can’t begin to assign levels of importance. I learned that while I am fit, and can still hike and travel well, I am comparatively more fit in Florida than I am in Wyoming and Glacier National Parks. There, I am about average. There are a lot of women my age still hiking and moving comfortably.
I learned I can hike in my sandals, and I much prefer it. I know we are supposed to wear closed toe shoes while hiking, but they make my feet . . . tired. Unfree. I have great sandals, and I hike in them. My feet didn’t get cold, even hiking in freezing temperatures. If I really needed to, I could wear socks with my sandals. My feet don’t like being confined 🙂
I learned that the lighting in my house is low, and that I have more wrinkles than I thought I had. I’m not sure how much I care. When I am out hiking, I don’t care at all, it is only when I am walking into a social situation that I even think about it.
I learned that AdventureMan is still my favorite travel partner; he is almost always game for anything I suggest, he doesn’t mind stopping and watching animals for a long time, he likes to eat really good food, and he is mostly patient with me when I make a navigational mistake. When we get to someplace, he almost always appreciates the research that went into making this a really cool stop. Occasionally, when the hotel or experience is not what I would have hoped, he is philosophical about it, and so it matters little. He comes up with some good suggestions, like the Rocky Mountain Museum, and going back to a very expensive restaurant we loved. I like everything optimal. It doesn’t always happen, and I am a pragmatist, I know everything can’t always be optimal.
Great Adventure: Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, Begins with Bad Omens
“If you want to stay at Old Faithful Inn, you need to reserve NOW,” my friend from Wyoming told me in the locker room of the YMCA.
It was only September, I wasn’t planning to go until late May.
“No really, you have to reserve far in advance if you want to stay in the Inn; my daughter warned me,” she counseled me.
So I checked online. Holy Smokes. The kind of room I wanted was not available. Several kinds of rooms were already sold out. My friend was right. We started researching, and making reservations. September was almost too late.
And then, as we got closer to departure, what to pack? How much to pack? My friend was not around to ask, but we were watching the weather reports. We each took larger suitcases than we normally do, because we knew we needed heavy clothing. I took a light jacket, a heavier wool coat and a rain slicker. Coats take up a lot of room. It’s hard to imagine needing a coat when you live in Pensacola and the temperatures are hitting in the 90’s this May.
The day of departure comes, and we have it all together. We are ready.
The taxi doesn’t show. We always give ourselves plenty of time, but this has never happened. AdventureMan gets on the phone, he is barely civil. I’m afraid the taxi isn’t going to come at all. The wait seemed like it took forever, but it was really only 45 minutes, during which I had to strictly discipline myself not to think that this might be a bad omen for the trip to come.
We were quickly through check-in and to our gate. Our flight goes smoothly. We have to stay overnight in Dallas/Fort Worth to catch the one flight a day out to Bozeman.
We land in Dallas/Fort Worth and the second half of travel hell begins. I have read the instructions, I have to call the hotel and they will send a shuttle. I call the hotel – five times. There is a screeching and static that makes it almost impossible to hear, but eventually I hear the receptionist confirm that she will send the shuttle.
We wait an hour. Then we see the shuttle! But he is in the wrong lane, he is in the fast lane, far away from the pick up lane. We jump up and wave, and jump and wave. He drives by, very fast, not even a glance in our direction.
I call the hotel again, and tell the receptionist what happened. She said the driver said we weren’t there. I’m not going to argue. We were there. I ask her to send the shuttle, that it’s already been over an hour we’ve been waiting. AdventureMan is getting hungry and cross. I am feeling responsible – I do the trip planning. I do everything I can to insure success, but sadly, I am not in control of everything.
Another half hour goes by, it is getting dark, and the shuttle shows up, already having seven people. We take our seats, and the driver picks up two more people, who have to stuff themselves in between people who are tired and hungry and hot and not as gracious as they might be. The driver radios in, “Yes, now every seat is filled,” and maintains constant radio contact with the dispatcher, driving erratically, at one point scraping the side of the van as we go through the toll gate. I am buckled up. If there is a terrible accident, I want to survive.
The passengers are from several hotels; the hotels have gone together to have a joint shuttle. We are first off. Check in goes smoothly, but we opt for a very early shuttle, not knowing if it will really arrive as it is scheduled, not wanting to face another wait like today.
We ask about nearby restaurants. There is a Whataburger in a nearby gas station. Or we can order delivery. Only one restaurant is in the folder upstairs, and when we call to place the order, we get the same screeching and static; they must have the same low-budget phone system as the hotel. We give up. We go downstairs, find frozen entrees we can microwave and eat in our room. We are eager to get our clothes off, get bathed, and get to bed. We have an early start the next morning.
Our room, by the way, is beautiful. It has a sitting area, and good beds with nice linens. It is quiet, and serene and comfortable. I’m not even going to tell you the name, because I have told the manager my concerns about the shared shuttle and the phone system, and told him that his hotel is lovely but he has those two systemic problems. A wise manager will deal with those issues.
The next morning we are up and out in minutes, and the shuttle, with an older, quieter driver is waiting for us, even though we are early. The trip to the airport is efficient and uneventful. We catch a breakfast at a Friday’s near our gate, and our flight to Bozeman goes smoothly. All is well.
Strassbourg and Colmar: Christmas Markets on the Rhine
The medication that made my throat not hurt also made my heart run fast and beat loudly, and made me not sleep. I remember there are some cold medications that do that to me and stopped taking it, but after a really bad night, I had to tell AdventureMan I really could not go into Strasbourg for the day, I was really sick.
He was shocked. We have been in and out of Strasbourg and Colmar all our grown-up lives. We would stay at the Officers Circle in Strasbourg, just a short walk from downtown. We had so looked forward to this part of the trip, so . . . he knows I am really SICK.
I spend the day sitting up, sleeping. I couldn’t breathe. Remember how thankful I was for the constant supply of really hot water in the showers? I was so sick, I took a 15 minute shower every hour or so, so the steam could help me breathe. I think I ate something in the casual restaurant, or brought some soup back to my room, but I didn’t want to be around people and expose them to me.
By late afternoon I was better. Having stopped taking the pills for my sore throat, I discovered my throat wasn’t that sore any more and that mostly it was all in my chest. I was also able to sleep, well, as long as I was sitting upright, which helped me recover.
So this is what I have to remember Strasbourg by:
AdventureMan said he had a rotten day in Strasbourg. It was drizzly, and I wasn’t with him. He ate some Persian food, and found some cookies to bring back as gifts, but his heart wasn’t in it. He brought me this wonderful mug from the Strasbourg Starbucks. Remember, I am a Seattle girl, as well as an Alaska girl. I love the mug.
So. The next day is Colmar, and I am feeling so much better and I am really happy to be feeling better but I know I have a long flight coming up to get us back to Pensacola, and I don’t think I am better enough to risk a relapse by going into Colmar for a whole day. AdventureMan takes off, and this time, he eats mussels in wine for lunch, simple, but one of our favorite French dishes. I spend the day on the boat, but I do eat, and run into one of our friends and we take a walk in the area where the ship is docked. So here is what I saw of Colmar:
You do remember that the French designed and gifted us with our beautiful Statue of Liberty? I believe the sculptor came from Colmar, anyway, this Statue of Liberty parody stood in front of a motorcycle shop we could see from the ship. It was a great walk, maybe a mile round trip, to get a good shot of it, because there were gates and walls we could’t get past on the docks to get there directly, so we had to walk around.
I felt well enough to attend the ships gala dinner farewell that night, eight courses and I can only remember the dessert, which was flamed, and it took forever to flame the top of the creme caramel for every guest. One of the really good things about Tauck’s river cruises is the small size of the group guarantees you will get to know at least a few people with common interests during the trip. We found many who were independent in nature, as we are.
One thing we don’t understand is why the cruise lines don’t mention some of the more cultural experiences to their groups. I remember when we took the “Empires of the Mediterranean” tour with Viking, and we found the tour in Kotor very slow. We had a book and a map and took off on our own, finishing up at a fabulous archaeology museum. We sat on the steps outside, afterwards, people watching in the place, and several later Viking tours went right by, the guides never mentioning this fabulous museum was even there.
Yes, we like history and archaeology, and learning about how ways of doing thing evolved, and also, I find some of my best gifts in museums, unique items, not available in catalogs, many of them handmade, and lovely jewelry and scarves, authentic and hand crafted. I can only speculate that these attractions cannot be monetized, and are therefore ignored. You could say that it is the travelers responsibility to seek this information for him/herself, but it would be a courtesy to your shipboard guests and an enhancement of the port experience to mention some of these better museums, especially when they are very well done. We had the same experience in Seville; we found two museums that were totally fabulous, a lot of thought and creativity had gone into preparing the exhibits, and there were exquisite pieces on display, if only one knew to look.
I had told one of the women we had met of the Unter den Linden museum in Colmar, and its fabulous Isenheim triptych by Matthias Grunewald, housed in an old convent. They came back to the ship thanking us for the experience. None of the guides had ever mentioned it. Wow.
OK, enough of my travel editorial. Sorry! Sorry! Oh, wait. It’s my blog. I get to say what I want 🙂
Because of our large, roomy closet, packing was a snap, and the next morning we awoke in Basel. Our bags were already collected, we just had our day packs and handbags with us. We chose to have breakfast served in our room, which was lovely, and headed to the airport with plenty of time.
This is what Basel looked like as we prepared to depart the ship:
It began to rain, more like sleet, and as we headed to the airport, it got heavier and heavier. It was a great time to leave. My staying aboard through Strasbourg and Colmar had enabled me to shake most of whatever it was I had caught, and the trip home was comfortable, except for the normal hellish trek through Charles de Gaulle. We found the lounge in our terminal; LOL, trust the French to have chocolate mousse in their airport lounge, don’t you love it?
We are still talking about this trip. We think we might do it again some year, and maybe with our grandchildren, to show them some of the places we’ve known and loved in a low tourist season.
MS Inspire: Christmas Markets on the Rhine
Once we board the bus in Heidelberg, we are in new territory. The night before, we had packed all our bags and left them in our stateroom, carrying only a day-pack. This bus will take us south, into France, and to a new ship, the MS Inspire, which will carry us the rest of the way down the Rhine to Basel, where the trip will end, after hitting Baden-Baden, Strasbourg and Colmar, cities we have often visited in the past.
Our room is exactly the same, only with brighter colors, the colors of Klimpt, reds and golds. We have a little Christmas tree on our table.
Down the hall, in the casual restaurant, Arthur’s, is a tree totally decorated in owls, making me think of Hogwarts, and the messenger owls.
They have a simple breakfast buffet in the morning, and lots of hot fresh coffee. There is a much more elaborate breakfast buffet in the dining room, but this is close, and handy to our room. From afternoon on, they have a samovar full of gluewein available to all passengers, and boxes of Christmas cookies. So hospitable, LOL.
The ship is elaborately decorated. They must have had so much fun.
No rain, but mystical French fog and mist.
We didn’t do a lot of real “cruising” on this trip – one time it was 45 minutes!
The day we didn’t go to Baden Baden, I tried the hot tub. It was the hottest hot tub I have ever felt, I could hardly get in it was so hot, and couldn’t stay in. But it was beautiful!
Hotel Ernst in Cologne/Koln, Germany
We are refreshed, we have eaten good German winter food, and . . . I am ready for a bath. We check into the hotel and our bags have already been delivered to our room. Our room is a long walk, but we don’t mind. We have discovered that there is THE elevator, and around the corner another, secret, less used elevator. Our room is on a very quiet corridor.
We can see the cathedral from every window in our room, even from the bathroom 🙂
Look at that lovely inviting marble bath tub 🙂
Hmmm. Very clean and modern looking, but . . . not so much for privacy.
Oh yes! I do love a good closet.
I remember keys like this when I was a little girl. No no no – no key cards for the Ernst.
This is the view from the terrace coffee room, looking over the cathedral and the crowds coming and going for the markets.
AdventureMan heads off to see a war museum and I head for that gorgeous marble tub. As I am exiting the tub, AdventureMan returns and we settle in for an afternoon nap. We snooze about an hour and wake up only a little hungry, not big hungry, and decide to try the Chinese restaurant next door.
When we moved to Pensacola, our son sat us down and said “There is something terrible I have to tell you. Pensacola has no really good Chinese restaurant.” He watched our faces for signs of horror.
We love Pensacola’s seafood, and the really good little Vietnamese restaurants we find here. But oh, I yearn for Chinese, and love my trips out to Seattle where I can find a great meal or two.
We leave our hotel and head for the Peking. We know we’ve made the right choice, as we head up to the second story, we are behind a group of about twenty Chinese people, carrying bags of wrapped packages, some sort of party. They are in a separate room.
The Peking is up above the McDonalds
Table overlooking the cathedral and square
Peking Hot and Sour Soup
Peking Crispy Duck – wow! We thought we weren’t hungry, but this duck was so good we ate every bite.
Our first day and evening back in Germany are wonderfully fulfilling.
As a final bonus, the Hotel Ernst is gorgeous at night.
I love this misty, eerie photo of the Cologne Cathedral at night.
Christmas Markets on the Rhein
Horrors! I haven’t written since pre-Thanksgiving?? That’s the way my life is going, and I just have to take a minute when I can find it and keep up.
You may all think of aging, retiring grandparents as people sitting in rocking chairs on their porches, just waiting to die. The truth is very different. Retirement, at least early retirement, can be one of your most active times of life.
It is in our case 🙂
We made a choice. We have our grandchildren every day after school. It is delightful, and it is hard work. For me, it means having to carve out time for the things I want to do early in the day. AdventureMan picks up the grandchildren, brings them to our house, makes a healthy snack, supervises their homework and manages their time and experiences. I support AdventureMan, and specialize in hugs, intensely personal discussions, and rough-housing. I can make them laugh uncontrollably. I can cry with them when the world is dark and incomprehensible. I can help them have faith in themselves. I can encourage them to try, try again.
So, from time to time we run away and play, AdventureMan and I.
One of our favorite things we get in the mail are travel brochures. Most of the time, we don’t care, but the really good thing is that from time to time we get one that ignites our imagination, and we are both all in.
“Here’s what I want to do,” I said to AdventureMan, thrusting a Tauck tours brochure into his hands. “I want winter food. I want to wear winter clothes. I want to see the Three Kings Cathedral in Cologne again, and that glorious candelabra in Aachen. And look! It goes to Heidelberg! Strassbourg! Colmar!”
Here’s why we are still married after all these years. AdventureMan reads through and his eyes light up and he looks at me and says “You want to do this?” and I say “Yes!” and minutes later he is on the phone and we are committed. And we are dancing for joy.
Although we tend to be frugal by nature, history and habit, we are also pragmatic. If the flights are domestic, under four hours, we go economy. When we go overseas, we go business, and we make sure the seats go flat so we can sleep.
Our flights go smoothly, and we arrive relatively rested and excited. AdventureMan sends me off to change money while it is convenient, and I come back to discover I’ve kept a growing group waiting for me. Yikes. I apologize profusely and then just keep a low profile. Tauck is a little plusher than our Viking trips; we have a limo that we share with one other couple from Dusseldorf to Koln. The trip is quick, and we arrive at the Hotel Ernst efficiently. Our baggage is already there.
People check in, and we discover that everyone has a room except for us and one other group, and as things happen on these trips, the other group and us had a special relationship for the rest of the trip. We were both independent travelers. Our room was unlikely to be ready for a couple hours.
I’d like to tell you that I was a good sport, but I was not. I wanted a shower. They offered me to shower in the spa and I was not happy with that. They were really trying to please me, and I was trying, but I was not happy.
AdventureMan, who knows me well, said “I think we need a walk,” so I gave the hotel people the number of my brand new International-equipped iPhone, specially bought for times like this, and out the door we went. Out the door of the Ernst looks like this:
This is the magnificent Cologne Cathedral. The Hotel Ernst faces the Cathedral.
The world looks new and fresh. I take a deep breath and smile again, it smells like home. We find our German comes back as if once again, we lived here and spoke it regularly. We walk, I take pictures, and when we find the Fruh, we know it is time to have our first meal back in Germany.
There is a method to our madness, when we choose a travel destination. This, for us, isn’t about Christmas Markets, although those are beautiful and fun. This is about feeding a need deep in our souls, a need for winter, a need for winter food and walking in the cold air wrapped in our heavy German coats. No, it isn’t rational. Yes, it’s the way it is.
Walking into Fruh is like walking back in time. We could be in Heidelberg, or Mannheim, or Wiesbaden, or Kaiserslautern, or any of the German towns where we have been so blessed to live.
Cologne is very proud to have it’s own beer, and you find it everywhere. It is served in tall thin glasses. I don’t drink a lot of beer, but I can drink a small glass of Kolsch. AdventureMan says the Bavarians call the glass a “test tube” because of its long, thin shape.
At first, we didn’t know. When AdventureMan tried to order a Pils, the waiter said in a loud, brusque voice “Kolsch! Kolsch! We only serve Kolsch!”
Cologne is not so much a tourist town. The tolerated u with grace; we speak German, but they treated us as outsiders. We know the difference. We didn’t mind so much; we are outsiders now.
I wanted you to see the menu, also known as Tageskarte, or daily menu. I also like to look at it and sigh; these are not foods you find in Pensacola. They are not foods you find, for the main part, at restaurants in the United States that call themselves German. Brusque loud voice and all, we are delighted to be at Fruh. They are all the winter foods I was hungering for so nostalgically, deer medallions, goose, heavy winter cauliflower soup . . . ahhhhhhh. . . .
We know we are in the right place. The locals fill in, with their shopping bags, meeting up with friends, we feel at home.
I had Hirschmedallions for my first meal, little deer steaks, with broccoli. This is new to me. I don’t remember food being served with broccoli before.
AdventureMan had Schweinesteak, pork steak, and a big bowl of home made potato fries. This is more the heavy, vegetable free cooking I remember.
As we ate, the hotel called to say our room was ready. On our way from the Fruh to the Hotel Ernst, the Weinachtsmarkt, the Christmas Market by the Cologne Cathedral, was beginning to open, and I saw my first vendor of roasted chestnuts.
We all sing nostalgically about “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” but the truth is, no matter how much my French and German friends rave about roasted chestnuts, I don’t like them. I don’t like their texture. I am sort of intellectually delighted to see my first chestnut vendor, but not really excited to eat any of them.
Accidental Early Adaptor
Yesterday was a stressful day. It happens every now and then. The last one was when Ragnar-the-street-cat ate the cord to the foot pedal on my Pfaff and I had to get it fixed. While I was in the store, I bought a new Bernina (the price was right and it was the machine I had always wanted, very quiet.) The problem with new technology is that you have to learn new ways of doing things. The old ways don’t work. It stretches you and it stresses you.
AdventureMan has been after me to update my iPhone. We are about to travel again, and he wants us to be accessible. He is right; it is my turn to upgrade. I’ve had my iPhone since 2011, and it works wonderfully. I am happy. It does everything I need it to do . . . except it doesn’t work overseas.
I’ve dragged my feet. To me, a phone is a tool and the tool I have does everything I want it to do, including . . . making me not too accessible. But (audible sigh) I know he is right. What if there is an emergency and they need to contact us?
I am also skeptical. When we upgraded AdventureMan’s phone, we went on the Viking Ocean Cruises Wake of the Vikings trip (which was awesome) and his new phone didn’t work, didn’t get texts, didn’t get phone calls, while my old phone occasionally got texts (I believe it was a Wi-Fi thing for me).
But I also know that AdventureMan is wise; things happen. We often take off from the group, and if our connection changes, if the shuttle back to the ship changes departure time and we are not on it, it causes all kinds of complications.
So Thursday night, AdventureMan said “Our travel time is getting close, and what are you going to do about your phone?”
He is a smart man. He knows how to ask me in an open-mannered way so I don’t go all defensive and nasty because I am feeling cornered and inconvenienced and wary of having to master a new technology when I have a lot of other things going on right now.
“I’m going to do it tomorrow,” I tell him. He is satisfied. He knows that when I say I will do something, he can count on me to do it. I didn’t sleep well; I was full of dread.
So I am working at my computer when AdventureMan gets up and says “So when are you going?” and I know that the day has a limited number of hours and some of them are already committed and I really need to do this, so I do.
When I arrive at the store, the door says the store opens at 10:00, but it is 9:30 and the door is unlocked and people are waiting inside for customers, and tell me to come in, it is a special sale day. I get a really great guy, Mark, and tell him what I need.
He was astonished. “You’re not here for the NEW iPhoneXR?” he asks, like he cannot believe what he is hearing. I tell him what I need, and he says “You need the new iPhoneXR.” He tells me all the things it will do, and then starts showing me how it will work. I tell him what I need is a phone that will work in these countries, and he shows me two ways it can work, both of which I feel comfortable I can do.
And the phone is beautiful. And handy. Within five minutes, I have said “yes” to the phone, have picked out chargers and phone case and protectors, and he is transferring all my phone stuff from the Cloud to my new phone. Of all the things that delight me, at the time, one is that I found a sturdy pink phone case that sparkles; my granddaughter will love it and think I am very cool. It makes me laugh; I am not a woman who would ever have carried a pink sparkly phone in my professional life.
The phone “recognizes” me. I no longer have to put in a code, but I have a back up code for when I need it, like I guess if I’ve been on a four day binge and it doesn’t recognize me, or . . . if I’ve been on an all night flight, which can have the same physical impact as a four day binge (those of you who know me know I am totally joking about the four day binge; I barely drink a whole glass of wine now.)
What I love, having played with it for a day, is that it is so easy. My eyes are really good, except for reading, and the screen of this phone is large and the writing is very readable. There are Tips! They tell me all the things I can do, whether I want to do them or not. There is Siri, whom I don’t intend to use, but I set it up because you never know, I might.
(Big internal debate – who? whom? Siri is not a real person, but I would say “I don’t intend to use her” which means “whom” but who even uses “whom” anymore?)
So I just tried Siri, “Siri, open Google Maps and take me to Cologne, Germany?” and it took a couple steps, but . . . it’s a miracle! It worked!
“Siri, what is the water level of the Rhine River in Cologne, Germany?” (Blah blah blah blah “take a look!”) and the German website, one among many that she found, showed the water level in Koln to be . . . 74 cm. Hmmm. Not really enough to float a ship.
Our trip no longer shows on the company website. We have heard nothing. I am guessing they are both praying for an extended rain and scurrying to arrange alternatives should the water levels not rise high enough to float the boat along some of the narrower passages of the Rhine, which is experiencing historical lows following one of the driest, hottest summers ever in Europe.
AdventureMan and I avoid bus travel like a plague. It is too restricting on people who like to move, it is claustrophobic and not-private. On the other hand, you see a lot more on the road, and since we are really going because we miss the winter in France and Germany, on a bus (or two) we will have more actual time on the ground, eating winter food, wearing our winter clothes, more time to walk, God willing.
And . . . I have a new iPhoneXR, and I actually love it.
Sleepy Little Doha
My husband used to travel in and out of Doha for years before we actually moved there. He would tell me stories about “sleepy little Doha,” before-natural gas Doha, in a country that was not the richest country in the world. The international community then was so small that they would gather at the American Ambassador’s residence on Fridays for drinks and a cook-out, casually exchanging information and gossip on a lazy afternoon. This was also pre 9-11, when the need for mind-numbing security was not so imperative.
I received the above photo in the mail today, and I laughed out loud and showed AdventureMan. We were there when the Sheraton Hotel was “way out there” in the middle of no-where. A new mall with a Carrefour had opened near the Sheraton and was visible from the dhow parking in mid-Doha.
Look just above the dhows, to the left of the white building with green windows and you will see a flat building and Carrefour on it.
The pyramid on the right is the Sheraton, once the hottest hotel in Doha. To the left, you can see the white building with the green windows, which almost disappears now. I want you to notice how relatively bare the skyline is, and this is 2005.
These two buildings used to be the tallest on the Corniche.
You can see them in the lower right of this photo, dwarfed by all the new sky-scrapers. At the far left, you can see one of my very favorites, a (formerly) tall building with a mosque built jutting out in the middle. You can barely see it now; it used to be one of the most prominent buildings on the Corniche.
This is what the building looks like when not surrounded by giants.
This is what it looks like now, almost indistinguishable from the buildings surrounding and overwhelming it.
I used to meet a friend every Tuesday morning and walk the Corniche. We watched the buildings going up, tributes to the huge amounts of cash pouring into the Doha economy and the huge egos that need to build huge towers to put their names on. As they were being built, there were constant fires, mostly electrical, which challenged the fire department and killed the low-paid laborers. American firms seeking office space brought in experts to inspect buildings before renting them, to be sure modern, safe construction practices had been used. Most of the new high rises had been built with severe deficits, unsafe concrete, unsafe wiring, failure to allow people to evacuate safely in case of an emergency and elevators that barely worked even when brand new.
We particularly laughed at the giant phallic silver building front and center.
The extreme heat and humidity of Doha is hard on even good construction, drying out sealants on the windows (allowing dust and water to penetrate), peeling facades, making buildings a mere twenty years old look dingy and severely weathered. One relatively new building had windows popping out in its first five years.
On a hot night AdventureMan and I would have dinner downtown, often at The Majlis, and then go out to the Corniche and board one of the dhows decorated with strings of Christmas lights for a cooling ride along the coastline, where the breezes would blow and Sleepy Little Doha would sparkle.
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