Christmas Markets on the Elbe: Prague Day 2
An Even Better Day Than We Had Planned
We woke up fresh and decided to walk to Prague Castle from Clock Tower Square. We had a lavish buffet breakfast with friends departing very early the next morning, and then we headed out to find Bus 194, which came within moments.
Our intention was to get off at the Astronomical Clock Square, from where we could cross the bridge and hike up to the castle.
Once again, Bus 194 traveled the back roads but did not stop at the Clock Tower Square, so we just stayed on, and discovered it took us up a steep hill to the German Embassy, where we got off. On the advice of some friendly Czech police, we headed straight up the hill, and then across what I call a meadow and AdventureMan calls a park.
They have the most beautiful manhole covers!
The first photo above is the road we have walked up. The second is the road we will walk up to get to the path that crosses the meadow. You can see the monastery in the upper right of the above photo.
It was cold and snowy, but we were bundled up and happy to be out hiking. I have my clunky walking shoes on, and although the path is treacherous, snowy, icy and slick, my sticky soles have a good grip.
We came to a Monastery with a fabulous overview of Prague, and met up with several groups of happy Germans.
We continue on towards the castle.
We had some good laughs, and headed toward the Prague Castle, happily all downhill. Entrance was free, and the castle, on this cold, snowy December day was packed with tourists from all nations.
There is slush and ice everywhere, and these crews are in all heavily touristed areas, trying to clear paths and streets so they will be less dangerous. Meanwhile, the snow continues. Magical for us, a pain for them.
We hurried through the castle, and headed down the hill back to the city, stopping only at The Best Christmas Shop in Prague (and I believe it!) and the Lobkowitz Palace, where we had hot drinks – hot chocolate with whipped cream, a hot ginger lemonade, fabulous and not too sweet. We split a half-sweet chocolate cake and delighted in the surroundings – lots of families with bundled-up children, and lots of people from other places.
As AdventureMan paid, I went out to use the rest room which had a turnstile and coin machine. I started to put a coin in and a woman stopped me and said “No! I saw you in the restaurant! Your chit will let you in free! Go back and get a chit!” so I went back and got a token, and when I got there, another woman said “No! No! Don’t put in anything! The code is 1-1-1-1, just put in the code.” So I did.
When I had finished, on my way up the stairs, I saw a young couple trying to figure out how the machine worked, and I, in turn, said “No! Just put in 1-1-1-1!” and they did.
As we headed back into the city, I found a shop with garnets and amber, and I had hoped to find some new garnet earrings to replace the pair I bought there in 1990, my first visit. The shopkeeper was lovely, and a great saleswoman, and when I told her I could not take the large garnets I had been looking at, she asked if they were too heavy, and I laughed and said “No! Too expensive,” and like my good jewelers in Doha and Kuwait, she offered to make me a special deal for Christmas.
I chose a smaller pair, and she still gave me a better price, so I was very happy. As we completed the deal, we asked her for the name of a good Czech restaurant, a place she might eat with friends, not fancy but with a good atmosphere, and she sent us just up the street and around the corner to Potrafena Husa, in a less traveled part of town.
We went there, and oh, what fun we had. I ordered the duck confit and ginger lemonade, and AdventureMan had a schnitzel and a beer. We both love the Czech beer.
We wandered through the market, and enjoyed one of the hollow hand-held cinnamon breads traditional at this time of year. They come with different fillings, but I just wanted the plain – it has cinnamon sugar on it and that is enough for me. I could eat them forever; they are so light and tasty; they taste like Christmas!
A great time, loved the experience of the Christmas Market, but it is time to think about our return. Once again, we were over 15,000 steps and getting a little anxious about making sure we were packed and ready for our departure tomorrow. We found the 194 bus, headed home, were held up by a narrow-street accident and six police cars, but finally made it back to the Hilton.
We packed, we organized, and just as I was lying in bed working on the Bad Schandau section of this journal, I got a text from Delta. Our flight has been canceled out of Prague.
No offers of help to rebook. I read the message to AdventureMan as I hurriedly dressed. I was in shock, and at first, AdventureMan thought I was kidding.
No, I wasn’t kidding. We needed help. We needed to get to the Viking desk in the Hilton and get some serious juice working to resolve this, to get us home. Fortunately, we had booked with Viking and used Viking travel. They are so good when things go wrong, and can make it right.
Eve, the Cruise Director who had made everything so smooth on the Beyla, is still with us, and as soon as we see her, we tell her our news and she gets right on a call with Viking Travel. Although the wait seemed excruciating, soon Eva had us booked on another flight getting us into Pensacola the same day, a little later but the same day. She had worked a miracle. Our bags would be picked up later, we had a later departure, and we were on Air France, our favorite airline.
AdventureMan mentioned that our pick-up time for the canceled flight also had another couple, so Eva called them. They had also been resting (it’s the demographic). They checked their messages and they, too, had been canceled. By the time we left, we saw just how capable Eva was, dealing calmly with so many anxious passengers who needed rescheduling.
Another passenger who had used the Hilton ATM to change money found a $16,000 charge on his card that he had not made, his card was blocked, and he and his wife could not use Uber, could not charge anything, food, drinks, anything! And, of course, he was very concerned about how $16,000 could be charged to his card when he did not do it.
One by one, Eva patiently handled these individual disasters, without drama, but with great calmness and competency. We admired her before, on the cruise ship, organizing and re-organizing as things came apart, always calm. Watching her in action with such a variety of needs only increased our admiration.
We had some goals for this trip. We wanted to enjoy the sights, eat winter foods, and find some garnet earrings. Done. AdventureMan wanted a real Afghan kebab for dinner, and we had seen a place near the Hilton where we catch Bus 194, so we headed out, ordered kebab from an Afghani young man who told us he works like a robot, just work, and friends, and send all his money home. We have heard this story so many times; these young men work so hard to support their families far away, not just with food but with money for school tuition, clothes, and their families’ many needs. The kebabs were huge, full of tasty vegetables, and heaped with lamb. We brought them back to the hotel and couldn’t eat half, they were so big.
Now, hoping and believing we really do have a flight tomorrow, we are packed, and hoping to get a good night’s sleep before rising early to get our bags out in the hallway for transportation to the airport. As a last-minute change, we are checking our carry-on bags and taking with us only what we need.
We agree, for so many reasons, this has been one of our best vacations ever. We loved the magic of the snow the entire journey and the walk over Glienicker Bridge. The Beyla is a small ship, and we got to know several people well, and have great conversations over noticeably great meals on board. We found that almost every Viking guide we had, particularly in Berlin, Potsdam, and Dresden, was outstanding. The markets were so much fun. The people were welcoming and engaging. We hate for this vacation to end.
Christmas Markets on the Elbe: Prague Day One
Bags outside the door by 0645, down to breakfast, back to the room to brush teeth, and get ready for the bus ride to Prague. It was a longer ride than I had anticipated, through snowy, icy roads and I regretted having both orange juice AND coffee with breakfast. I was eager to get off the bus in Prague quickly and find the nearest ladles’ room, and thanking God for getting me there in a timely fashion.
The Prague Hilton is huge. I am so thankful it is mid-winter, not even the peak of winter travel, and that it is not crowded. There is a large poker tournament going on. The Viking people have their own desk and helpers, we always know where to go with a question or a problem.
We set off immediately for our Prague tour, briefly on the bus which dropped us off near the Charles Bridge.
Our guide uses a Quiet Voice system, so we have ear-pieces on. We can hear her from about thirty feet or less, so while we are having our picture taken, we are also listening to her tell us stuff. Mostly to stick together as a group. There must be a hundred groups crossing the Charles Bridge.
So many tourists! You can’t imagine! We have crossed this bridge before, other years, even on New Year’s Eve Day, with our son – never like this. Prague is discovered.
We walked, crossed a small portion of the bridge with lots of tourists, walked a little around Old Prague – not going inside, and then, just around when the Astrological clock would be striking, then the guide took us down in the basement of the Bethlehem church for some kind of exhibition – we were free to use the restrooms and warm up, but we had hardly been out long enough to get cold. As we left the church, we told the guide we would leave and make our way back to the hotel on our own.
We eat the Bulgarians lunch
Ah! Free at last! We love roaming, and we were hungry. We found a wonderful restaurant, Deer, just about full, but room for us.
It was beautiful, and the beer was good, and we ordered deer, a consommé, and deer ravioli for me and a “fallow” deer for my husband. My consommé arrived, and it was light and delicious. Then our meals arrived, (sorry, we were hungry and forgot to take photos) and my husband’s was right and mine was not, but it looked great so I figured we might have been misunderstood and we ate our meals with delight.
As it came time to pay, the waitress brought our bill and AdventureMan looked it over – it was the original order, AdventureMan told her I had received, and eaten the more expensive meal, and would she adjust the bill so we would pay (more) for what we had eaten.
With some confusion, she went away, came back with the corrected bill – and told the people at the next table that there had been some confusion, and we had received their meal. We apologized profusely, and we were all laughing. They asked the waitress to please hurry the same meal to them and we had a great conversation, as we waited, them asking us if it had been a good meal and us assuring them it had been delicious. So much goodwill. They didn’t hate us for eating their lunch!
We found the main market, at the Clock Tower, and wandered around.
I checked Google and there was a bus from right at the market directly to our hotel, Bus 194, and we caught it. How cool is that? Equally cool is that in Prague, public transportation is free if you are 70 or older (some say 65). You MUST have ID with you to prove your age, but you ride FREE!
It took us through the narrow back streets of Prague, past interesting hotels and restaurants way off the beaten track. At one point the driver had to get out and move a garbage can in his way – the streets were VERY narrow. It was great fun and dropped us near the Prague Hilton.
We rested – we had already done 15,000 steps. We wanted to head to another Christmas Market. Confident we now understood the bus system, I asked Google Maps how to get to bus 135, but every bus that arrived with that number said (something in Czech) and DO NOT GET ON THIS BUS so we figured out they were going out of service. After waiting over an hour for one in service, we were really cold so we came back and ate a thoroughly mediocre expensive meal at the Hilton. Another day with over 17,000 steps – it has become routine on this trip 😁.
Christmas Markets on the Elbe: Meissen
We left Torgau early in the morning cruising slowly through the snowy landscape to Meissen, with an arrival just after lunch. We are all delighted for the opportunity to catch up – re-organize our suitcases, catch up on e-mails, just watch the Elbe drift by – so very rural, all the way. Churches. Monasteries. Fields. People are out walking their dogs. We love that so many wave at the boat.
We are right in the middle of the demographic on board. There are some young sixty’s. There is one woman, stalwart and brave, who is 88. We like her a lot. The people who have chosen this cruise are interesting; we all tend to switch around at meals and have gotten to know one another. When there are only maybe 90 passengers, you become familiar quickly. There is one group of maybe 22 people who were all from Philadelphia, worked together in a start-up back-in-the-day, and who have traveled together for years. They are also good mixers.
The big topic is The Next Chapter. Some of us have already downsized, some are in the process, and some are contemplating it. While I was not a big collector as a young wife, I do have treasures, some with which I have parted, and some of my Middle East treasures passed along to Little Diamond. The problem we all have is that we all have treasures our children and our culture no longer value. Times are changing, no one wants a buggy whip or fine china or crystal champagne glasses for 40 people, LOL.
We board the bus for the Meissen factory, but once there, we told Eve we would take off and we could make our way back to the boat on our own. I think she was taken aback, but she rolled with it after asking Gary “You don’t want to learn about porcelain making?” and then to me, in disbelief “You don’t want to buy some Meissen pieces?” “No,” I responded, “We just want to walk and enjoy our time here.” And she let us go.
We stopped and picked up money at the ATM, limited to under $500/day. That would be plenty, except that we are trying to gather funds for our June trip with the family. I asked some nice women, one with a baby carriage, how to get to the market, and they gave me simple directions. I can still speak and understand the simplest German, not the complicated German.
The town hall has numbered its windows like an Advent Calender, and they open to a different display with each day. We walked around the market – and then headed up to the cathedral on the top of the hill, a hike of several hundred steps uphill, with a few level areas where we could catch our breath as much younger hikers breezed past us. It’s humbling.
But what a thrill to reach the top, see the massive church complex at the top of the hill, look out over 180 degrees of vineyards, the Elbe, the old city of Meissen and the newer areas.
Sometimes, when you’ve done something like climb straight uphill on snowy, icy steps, and you’ve made it – it’s just great to be alive.
We slowly wound our way down the hill via the streets, and the steps, ending up back in the old market. Nearby, we found a cafe where we ordered the hot chocolate (it comes with lots of whipped cream) and apfelstrudel.
I actually like the decorations sold in some of these specialty shops better than the goods I see in the Christmas Markets.
The walk back to the ship was actually very short, but also windy and we were cold when we got back. I snuggled up under the featherbed for a nice, but short snooze. It was the Viking Explorers cocktail hour night, special drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and then the announcement of the German Night dinner and our Port talk for the next day’s visit to Dresden, 90% destroyed by allied bombers near the end of WWII.
Not my favorite dinner, but lovely for those unfamiliar with German food. Heavy emphasis on Bavarian fare, blue and white decorations, sausages on the table, first course of charcuterie, nice cuts of black forest ham, salami, and some very nice cheeses (sort of odd progression.) Then a buffet of primarily sausages and noodles, rot kohl, but also some sauerbraten and chicken schnitzel, which I had with green salad and a little potato salad. Skipped dessert, still happy with the afternoon’s apfelstrudel. Around 2030 my husband kicked me under the table to indicate he was ready to leave. Got things ready for the next day, got ready for bed, and had one of the best night’s sleep since we arrived.
Hiking for Petroglyphs in Mesa Verde
We got up early to head for the Ute reservation park center, where you find tours to take you onto the Ute reservation, only to find it was closed. It’s a beautiful morning, although there are some threatening clouds, so we had to nearby Mesa Verde, stopping at the Cortez welcome center where a kind lady tells us about the Spruce House petroglyph trail, a 2.4-mile trail, fairly easy, she tells us, which reassures me because I am in a skirt and sandals.
We love Mesa Verde. We’ve been here before, and we can see there have been a lot of major improvements since the last time we were there.
Some of the roads are still not open, due to damage over the winter, but the hike to the petroglyphs is open.
As we drive into the Spruce House parking lot, there is a great parking spot, and as we turn into it, there is a woman in the next car, pulling things out, and scowling at us like “go somewhere else to park!” AM couldn’t resist chatting her up; it looked like she had her entire household packed in her car and no matter how nice he was, she was crabby and negative in return. We couldn’t help but laugh.
We ask the Ranger at the Museum about the Spruce House trail and he tells us there is one place, just past the petroglyphs, that is a hard vertical climb, but the rest is easy.
It was not. This was one of the hardest hikes I can remember in a long time, with many steep narrow stone ascents and descents.
Just as we entered Mesa Verde, my camera battery had gone, so I only had my phone camera, not my bigger camera, which turned out to be a really good thing. By the time we discovered how hard the trail would be, we couldn’t really turn back, so we made frequent stops to calm our heart rates. Some hikers passed us heading back, some because they had tour times they realized they couldn’t make it if they completed the hike, and some just turned back because it was too hard.
We gutted it out. There were times we just laughed.
We made it to the petroglyphs, and appreciated the beauty of Spruce Canyon. We were on many narrow little trails on which a false step could result in a long, dangerous fall, which made us very intentional in our foot placement, and slowed our pace.
Just after the petroglyphs we came to the place the Ranger had described. People were turning back. There were places that required finding a place to plant your foot where you could lift yourself to the next level, raising the other leg.
That I could do! I do it three times every week, exiting the pool! It is the same movement! We waited for another group to pass us – me being in a skirt and having to raise it to execute the climbing moves up the rocks. We stopped a couple times in the climb just to catch our breaths, to slow our hearts, and to appreciate how difficult this was, and we were doing it!
Once we got to the top, there was a smooth, easy path back to the museum. We took it slow, our thigh muscles were aching from all the ascents and decents, and my hips were aching from the climbs. We were so thankful just to finish the hike, but we were laughing at the description of this hike as an “easy level trail.” We later learned it was listed as a strenuous hike, a description we would agree with.
Just happy it’s over. We made it. We made it!
On the way home, late in the afternoon, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant in Cortez which had intrigued AdventureMan; Gustavo’s.
We really liked it. I ordered three street tacos al pastor, and AM ordered the chicken mole.
We were both delighted with our orders; mine were small tacos with just meat and onion and cilantro, and a spicy sweet mustard sauce, absolutely delicious. AM’s mole was a WOW, with sweet tender chicken with a sauce that was decidedly chocolate but carried a big heat. As usual, we couldn’t eat it all, so we boxed up one of his chicken mole’s and an order of Gustavo’s lemon pie (it was more like a lemon tiramisu, with layers of pastry between layers of a mascarpone and lemon filling, amazing and unusual) to take with us for dinner.
When dinner came, we were still so full we just had a couple slices of the comte cheese and crackers for dinner, and that was enough.
Exploring Kelley’s Ancient Echoes
I got up early, caught up on e-mails, and lectionary readings, then AdventureMan got up and we had breakfast. We dressed for hiking, took our full water bottles and headed out, eager to explore the grounds at Ancient Echoes at Kelly’s. The Canyon of the Ancients is in our backyard! We are good hikers, confident hikers. We are eager!
We visited the old pueblo house and the underground kiva, saw Cecelia, one of the owners, making mounds for planting corn, beans and squash (the three sisters of the ancients in these parts), and asked her some questions about the grounds, and then headed off past the casitas, past up into the hills to visit more ancient ruins. It was shady and cool, and an easy path. “Just follow the cairns” Cecelia had told us, to the top of the ridge. Keep your eye on the spire.
We crossed the arroyo and headed up and down the trail until we reached the barbed wire at the top of the ridge, passing the ancient ruins. Deciding to turn back – it was getting hotter – we backtracked, following cairns (rocks piled in a deliberate style to guide trekkers) we crossed the arroyo and headed for a cairn on the opposite ridge. It was much more difficult, as we had to find a diagonal way up a sheer red stone face, which, huffing and puffing, we did.
Looking for the next cairn, AM found a circle of stones, and we looked at each other – we didn’t remember seeing a circle of stones before. We couldn’t find any more cairns, either. We roamed back and forth on the ridge, circling back to a tree where we would rest. It kept getting hotter, and our water was running shorter. In the steeper areas we were rock climbing, on hands and knees, not as easy as when we were younger. We crossed to the next ridge, from which we could see Kelly’s camp clearly, see our own suite clearly, but from which we could not descend because it was steep and ended in an overhang with a drop.
Finally, knowing where we needed to be, we headed back to the arroyo, and down the arroyo a little farther where we found our missing trail. We were so delighted to find our way home again after being on the trail over three hours more than a little afraid we would be “those elderly people who were found by the rescue team.” We were so thankful when we found the right trail. We were probably dehydrated as well as exhausted. We fell into bed and slept, awakening stiff from climbing up and down the hills and arroyo. We finished our BBQ sandwiches and spent the afternoon reading and relaxing.
Re-energized, we went into Cortez for dinner at the Farm Bistro, a popular local restaurant specializing in local sourcing. I had a yak burger, made from real local yaks, and AM had the French Onion soup and an Antipasto platter, with local meats and cheeses. It was very good, and a relaxing way to end our day.
We found the City Market and picked up parsley and garlic bread for the next day, and gassed up the car.
In the middle of the night, I heard the weirdest scratching, like something was in the walls. It woke AM, too, and we banged on the walls and told it to go away – and it did, then it would come back again. After about an hour and a half, we made it feel unwelcome enough that it never came back, and we allowed ourselves to sleep in. We told the owners the next morning. I don’t know what they did, but we were never bothered again.
Barcelona to Abu Dhabi: Four Days on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden
There are times, believe it or not, that even I, the word-smitten Intlxpatr, am at a loss for words. For one thing, while part of my writing is documentary, in case I get old and forget my great adventures, another part is because I really do love writing, and sharing what I have learned. For me, another part is that I have discovered as I write, I tap into a part of me that is figuring things out I don’t even know I am thinking, and I look at what I have written, and I am a little astounded, and then I have to ponder, mostly thinking “where did that come from?” Lastly, I try to be entertaining, in case anyone is reading this but me.
We never thought we were cruisers. We have always considered ourselves independent travelers, and we were fearless. On our first attempt at cruising, on a one-ship line that no longer exists (Voyages to Antiquity), we went on a cruise called The Passage of the Moors, starting in Seville, Spain, and going to a variety of places in Morocco, then returning to Spain. It was a real eye-opener.
In our hotel in Marrakesh, we had dinner with a disgruntled cruiser, a man who was annoyed we were spending so much time off the ship, touring cities and sites, and not spending enough time at sea. “This isn’t what I call cruising!” he complained as we ate exquisite food in our five-star hotel after our visit to the Djem al Fna.
AdventureMan and I were high as kites; we had exited the group after lunch in the caravansarai and toured the souks ourselves, ending with settling ourselves in a delightful restaurant overlooking the Djem al Fna and spending a couple hours enjoying the spectacle. We speak Arabic, we can read the signs, and we’ve been here before. We were high on being alone again, not part of the group, and creating our own brand of adventure.
Four days at sea is heaven for a lot of people. This part of the trip excited me, going along the coastline of southern Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and the coast of Yemen, places I have not yet explored and never dreamed I would have the opportunity. This was exciting to me!
I loved that we have these interactive maps in our cabins, so we know where we are in relation to the geography.
And this is what we saw:
Above are little islands off the southern coast of Saudi Arabia / Yemen.
Our greatest fun every day was hitting the spa, early in the morning. We always had it all to ourselves. I would awake early, head up to Horizons for coffee and catching up on e-mails, then go back to the cabin to find AdventureMan. We would go to breakfast. We would go to the spa. On our first day at sea, we had some excitement.
We spent about a half an hour in the pool, relaxing, exercising and soaking up some early morning sun. We are just finishing up and stretching out on a double lounge when the ship’s captain announced a Pirate drill.
A pirate drill! Passengers were asked to leave all outer decks and balconies and shelter in the interior of the ship. I made my way down to our room and sheltered in our bathroom, which is interior, to shower off all the salt water from the spa.
All this and it isn’t even 10:30.
We read a lot of books. We went through the Bab al Mendeb (the Gate of Tears) a choke point in the sea world, particularly strategic for transporting oil and gas. This is what Wikipedia tells us:
Etymology. Arabic بَاب اَلْمَنْدَب (bāb al-mandab) means “Gateway (Bab) of anguish”, or “Gateway of tears”; the strait derives its name from the dangers attending its navigation, or, according to an Arab legend, from the numbers who were drowned by the earthquake which separated Asia and Africa.
There were no announcements on board, no mention of the nature of the terrain through which we were passing. The majority of the passengers were either clustered around the tiny swimming pool or relaxing in their cabins.
Visibility is poor.
As we exited the straits and turned toward Oman, off the coast of Yemen, the waters became more turbulent.
As we were bouncing along in the back of a truck into Wadi Rum yesterday, we were talking with the Czech couple who had – just co-incidentally – been on several trips with this same ship’s captain. They had dinner with him now and then, and one of the things he told them is that most passengers who take the long cruises, the really long cruises, longer than our 21 days, get really bored and critical after the first couple weeks. The captain said they go to extraordinary lengths to keep the passengers from getting bored.
I cannot imagine. 21 days is long enough for us. There are activities. Today a woman is talking about Egyptian painting of the tombs, and another speaker will talk this afternoon about the future of weather. There are two women who teach bridge, and there is a crafts lesson this afternoon on how to make a ribbon bracelet.
Oceania’s major selling point is “the Best Cuisine at Sea.” There is a lot of emphasis on the food, the specialty restaurants, wine tastings, and special dinners with wine pairings.
We like good food. We like good wine.
We are going back to Toscana, the Italian restaurant, tonight. AdventureMan would like to try the fish he saw Buti deboning the other night. I like the angel hair aglio oglio pasta. They have good roast vegetables. We enjoy the meal.
The days at sea loom large and even good readers can go a little stir-crazy. There is a great library – and, as I said, a lot of focus on food, what will be served where, how it will be served, and who snagged reservations to the specialty restaurants.
The demographic on the Nautica is interesting. We learned from another passenger that 50% of the people on this cruise are first-time cruisers with Oceania (that would include us.) My guess is that most of us first-timers are destination driven, and we check that out as often as possible, talking with our fellow passengers.
Our fellow passengers are probably 60 – 70% American. The second largest percentage would be British or Canadian, and then there is a scattering of Australians, New Zealanders, etc. There are probably 2% Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. There is a Nigerian couple and the Czech couple, but both of those are now Canadian.
It’s an interesting mix and a very well-traveled mix. I haven’t met anyone on their first cruise. We are encouraged to “grab a drink and make a friend,” and it is easy enough to do; there are all kinds of opportunities to meet other people and get to know them, whether in eating venues or on shore excursions.
Mostly, we like to mix on shore excursions and up in the Horizons Lounge, where tea is served at four. We have actually only shown up for tea once – it is heavily attended on sea days, and we don’t like crowds. We head up to Horizons on days when people are elsewhere, and often run into people we’ve met on the excursions or even in our hotel in Barcelona. One kind woman and her husband spent a night off the ship with friends in Haifa; she shared a wonderful cracker recipe with me full of seeds and good things. It tasted of sesame and was light and healthy. Another couple is Ed and Alan, from San Diego, who won’t be getting off the ship until South Africa – a very long trip. They were supposed to go to Qatar, and then, suddenly, Qatar was scrubbed from the itinerary, and Saudi Arabia was added. Then Saudi Arabia was scrubbed and Bahrain was added. You have to stay flexible. We learn a lot by listening to our new friends.
Our housekeeper back in Pensacola, sends us photos that assure us our cats, Ragnar and Uhtred are feeling secure and doing well (Ragnar chews on things when he is anxious.) She tells us Pensacola is very cold – in mid-November! This is unusual, but the world is changing and we have to keep on our toes.
We eat our lunch at the Terrace, the weather is so much warmer, and the sea temperature and the air temperature are the same – 86 degrees F. The captain tells us how deep the water is underneath us – 1000 feet. There is a part of me that wishes he wouldn’t tell us.
We read during the afternoon and AdventureMan naps. Out on the balcony, it is almost too hot, and sultry. People are dressed in tropical prints, shorts, bathing suits and cover-ups.
The sun goes down very suddenly, and it is time to get ready for dinner. The FIFA World Cup in Doha continues to get mixed press, but Nautica will carry some of the matches, a really good call for Nautica, as this is a time when passengers can get bored and cause trouble.
On Sunday, we have a church service, interdenominational, held in the Nautica Lounge. The cruise director, Carson, tells us he originally trained as a Youth Minister, his family built a Baptist Church in Tennessee, but his sermon is very Episcopalian, very scripture based, on the two major commandments and The Good Samaritan. His message is that “we are to go and do likewise,” like the Good Samaritan, who nursed the stranger and cared for him. He tells us that we are 23 nationalities of passengers on board, and 49 nationalities on the crew. He tells us that when we travel, we meet the stranger and discover he is like us. It is harder to hate when the stranger becomes familiar. I loved the sermon. I am able to share it with AdventureMan when I get back to our cabin. We had minutes together before he left for his lecture on Egyptian Tomb artists.
When he got back we decided to go to the Grand Dining Room for a Sunday Brunch, which seems to be a big deal. When we got there, there was a long line, a big crowd, and the Grand Dining Room is entirely enclosed.
AdventureMan looked at me and I looked at him and we walked away, quickly, up to the Terrace dining room where we could sit outside. We discovered much of the food was the same, only not crowded, and plentiful. As we left, passed our table along to Miguel and Marguerita, our next-door neighbors.
It’s a quiet day. I did a couple Sudoku, and plan to go through and eliminate garbage photos. AdventureMan is catching up on sleep. It’s a great day for it.
I like sea days. They give me a chance to catch up. And actually, one is enough, two is enforced luxury, and by the third day, people start to go crazy.
We change times again, losing another hour. I get up early and go up to Horizons to have some coffee and catch up on e-mails. Join AM and we go to breakfast, most of the time at the same table. I eat oatmeal and berries, AM shares a corner of his croissant so I don’t feel deprived. We go to the spa, the highlight of our morning, and loll in the hot sloshing water and then sun for a while on the daybeds. It’s early morning still – we have it to ourselves most of the time, and we don’t worry too much about the sun being too strong early in the morning. The weather has changed. It is definitely hot. I feel lucky that it didn’t get hot and sultry like this until after we left Aqaba.
AdventureMan goes to a lecture on Egyptian magical beliefs; I finish going through all the photos and upload the latest. I teach myself how to Air Drop photos from my computer to my phone. I enjoy the rest.
AM is searching around on our screen (we usually watch the navigation page, as we are going through the Bab al Mendeb and we decide to try the Grand Ballroom for a change, for lunch. When we get there, it isn’t crowded and we like today’s menu. AM has an Indian variety meal, and when finished, asks for more samosas, which they bring him – a lot! I have the peppercorn hanger steak and a “pate’” which seems to be a cooked pate’. We both have chocolate mousse with a tiny amount of raspberry coulis. We are both delighted with our lunch.
He goes to a lecture; I go up to the tenth deck to try to capture photos of Eritrea, Djibouti and Yemen – photos are hazy but show distant mountains.
Dinner comes, I am so totally not interested, but we go to the Terrace for the Middle East Market special. The foods are actually pretty good. I just get tired of eating by dinner time.
I think I am a little bored, and my body tells me I need more physical activity. The walking track doesn’t do it for me. We spend a lot of time taking the stairs, which is good for us both. I see a lot of people really loving the cruising time, pool time, socializing, loving all the food and wine, going to tea . . . I am restless. I need to move. I am missing my laps in the pool!
We are eager to see Salalah.
AdventureMan and I often visit places that we see very differently. We have visited small villages where AdventureMan says “just kill me now! I would drink myself to death if I had to live here!” and I am already mentally buying sheep’s wool and learning how to spin it into thread and yarn, weaving on a large loom.
So I am thinking what I would do to survive if I had to live on a ship for a long time between ports. I think I would have to organize. It’s what I do. I would start a book club. I would find people interested in theology and start a monthly meeting sharing different viewpoints. I would find fellow Episcopalians and schedule early morning services or Compline – surely there is an Episcopal minister aboard among all these people on board. I would start a ports series, where we share with one another what we know about the upcoming port. We would find small tour operators to take us to out-of-the-way places, to meet with local craftspeople, or to have a meal with local people.
Organizing takes a while, you have to be patient. Once I had a few things going well, I would stretch, create some interest groups, like a stitchery group – only I would also include crew members who shared the same interest. While now, there were women teaching bridge, I could imagine a weekly match-up of all bridge players, including crew; it would be both democratic and keep things interesting. Challenging.
I like a little more purpose to my life.
Chasing Petroglyphs: Tour of the Tilted Rocks
We leave the Wall of Bones to go back to the visitor center to pick up our car and hit The Tour of the Tilted Rocks.
Most of the visitors in this late May time frame seemed to be people in our demographic, 60s and older, people out exploring our country as singles and couples. We saw a couple of groups, and a couple of tours, but most of the people we saw looked a lot like us – retired, with the luxury of time to go exploring.
Most of these people were, like us, physically fit enough to climb the uneven trails, climb a few slippery rocks and hike straight uphill to view the petroglyphs.
Leaving the Quarry Hall “Wall of Bones,” we got into our car for the “Tour of the Tilted Rocks” and spent the next couple of hours engaging with the spectacular scenery, helped along by both the brochure and the frequent guideposts along the way. We visited four separate petroglyph sites and countless sites of geological and paleontological interest.
A wealth of petroglyphs! I can see similarities in these glyphs to the Fremont glyphs we saw yesterday, but these are more on the level of scratch sheets, practice for the advanced figures we saw at the McConkie ranch. You can see some elementary necklaces. I overheard in a passing group a person say that square heads are men and more rounded heads are women. I’m not sure that is true, but now I have more to evaluate.
Yet another site; love this . . . headdress? Or is it a jug with flowers – and legs?
The shoulder – waist proportion appears to be still evolving here. I can see a crescent moon and indications that some figures are probably men. Or maybe fertile women, with the moon?
So does the round head mean this is a woman? Her body seems more elaborately patterned than others. She appears to be waving. In some cultures, the spiral indicates long life, but maybe it can also mean a trail of life or a giver of life? More questions than answers 🙂
As the day heats up, these climbs seem more aggressive. We have hats, we have water and the dry heat sucks the moisture out of us.
So, a square head with elaborate patterning, maybe slaying a deer? So no, elaborate patterning is not a female thing.
This site has a lot of lizards
I would love to know what this is about. An altar, with celestial bodies above? I wish I had a clue.
On the way back to Vernal, we had lunch at the Naples Country Cafe. I ordered the Naples Country Breakfast, and thank God for a helpful waitress who asked me what kind of gravy I wanted over it all. I hadn’t read it very carefully, just saw that it had a couple of eggs. She advised me to get the Junior version of it, and I asked for no gravy, no cheese. What arrived at the table was two eggs over easy on a plate full of hash brown potatoes, with a sausage, a slice of bacon and a piece of ham, and two slices of sourdough bread with homemade boysenberry jam. I was picky about what I allowed myself to eat, but I did eat all the jam, on half a slice of bread, because it was so irresistibly delicious.
We got back to our room mid-afternoon to rest or nap a little, and to pack up for our drive tomorrow down to our cabin outside of Moab, Trail’s End at Pack Creek, which we hope will provide four nights of spectacular night sky viewing.
My Secret Admirer Sends White Roses
This morning, just after I returned from my swim at the Y, the doorbell rang and my favorite florist delivered a dozen white roses from “My Secret Admirer.” AdventureMan didn’t bat an eye at the delivery. He knows I love white roses.
It’s been a great month. Last weekend we were in New Orleans for some Ethiopian food, walking around the French Quarter and Market, ice cream at Creole Creamery and grilled oysters at Superior Seafood – and then, more walking so that all that good food didn’t stick to us 🙂
It goes on – the new couch will be delivered tomorrow, God willing. Life is sweet.
People Who Smell Like People
I’ve just finished a run and I’m lying flat on the floor under the ceiling fan to cool down. This little Alaska girl is not wired for running in heat and humidity; I run on a running trampoline between the air conditioning outlet and the ceiling fan.
As I lie on the ground, hot and sweaty, the cats can’t get enough of me. Uhtred in particular, loves body smells. When we go on vacation, AdventureMan leaves dirty underclothes to keep him from getting too lonesome. To Uhtred, my sweat seems to be like some rare purfume; he is rolling and bumping on me, purring, kneading, clearly out of his mind with delight.
I find myself thinking back to the days in the early 1960’s when we moved to Germany. The war had been over for years, but it was still a post-war country, where we couldn’t eat ice-cream because there were brucellosus outbreaks among cow herds. And people smelled differently.
Our first housing was in a hotel on a busy street with a street car, and we learned to take the street car everywhere. For a young teen, it was a world of freedom. But people . . . smelled. We could smell their perspiration. The women didn’t shave and neither men nor women washed or dry cleaned their clothes as often as we did.
As a girl, our culture taught us that we were never to have any smell other than shampoo, soap or a light perfume. As teen-agers, we had an utter horror of perspiration, or any other kind of personal odor.
We got used to it. At some point, we just accepted the difference. It was just a part of riding the streetcar, or shopping, the people smelled like people. We didn’t even think about it.
Years later, we found ourselves living in Tunisia, and once again, people smelled like people. We noticed, but we understood and accepted that it wasn’t right or wrong, it was just a difference.
Now, there are times when I miss Tunisia, I miss Zambia, I miss people who smell like people. It also occurs to me that we Americans may also not alway be so hygienic in the future, where world-class fires destroy huge portions of large states, where water is increasingly scarce, where hurricanes destroy electrical delivery systems and pumping systems. We may not wash our clothes as often, we may wear our clothes longer between washes, we may bathe less frequently – and we may smell like people.
AdventureMan Does Yoga
“Move your spine in all directions at least once a day,” AdventureMan’s new yoga-instructor-via-Netflix advises.
AdventureMan has a whole new cadre of bossy women in his life. He has Julia, his Netflix advisor, he has Petrina, his expert masseuse at the YMCA who can tell just by touching him what he has been doing. She can be much more direct, and expects results. AdventureMan, who is a man who will not be bossed, is amazingly docile when it comes to these two women.
He also objects to bossy males, so when our yoga-naturals, Ragnar and Uhtred, join him in his exercises, we just laugh. They can bend in ways he can never aspire to, get their heads between their legs, roll and curl backwards. They love it when he cranks up the computer to do his spinal exercises. Cats have certain advantages doing yoga.
It all started months ago during COVID when I couldn’t swim at the Y and felt the need to DO something. I got out my mat, found a good program and started in. It was Yoga for Beginners, with Adrienne, very relaxed if you are not me. I used to do ballet, form is everything, and you strive for exactness. Trying to do yoga exactly is sort of the opposite of all intents, so instead of feeling relaxed when I finished, I had a migraine from trying too hard.
But AdventureMan watched and was intrigued. He likes privacy. He also has issues I don’t have, aches and pains that gentle yoga can help. He got a beautiful yoga mat for Christmas. We did yoga together a couple times, and then I was back swimming laps and he got into walking and yoga. To my surprise, it is July, and he is still faithful, both to Julia and to Petrina. He has lost weight. He has gained some balance and stability, and his spine is more flexible. I join him occasionally in the spinal tape; it is gentle and doable without pressing my OCD button.
No, these photos are not AdventureMan, just images that give an idea what the gentle art of yoga can help people do to develop strength and balance.
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