JodockWorldTravel

January 24, 2023

We were so looking forward to our visit to Port Stanley today, but alas, it was not meant to be.  This is a stop that requires us to tender from the ship to shore.  Anticipated winds of 30 mph and more made that impossible, so our visit will have to wait for another day.  Here are some images I borrowed from the web to show you what we’re missing.

We have learned some interesting things about Port Stanley though.  The entire population of the Falkland Islands total about 3,350 people, roughly 2500 of whom live in the capital of Stanley.  Forty-nine nationalities are represented in the population. 

The Stanley Power Station uses eight generators to provide all of the island’s power, but the generators are beginning to be supplemented with wind power as well.

Perhaps the most unique thing we’ve learned is about their air flights.  There’s no formal airport in the Falklands.  Instead, flights are provided through the local military base near Stanley.  Individuals wishing to fly out of the Falklands contact the base, provide information regarding when and where they need to go, and wait.  They listen to the local radio broadcast to hear their name and the date and time of their flight!

Sadly, we’ll have to wait another day to meet the King penguins in person. They are one of five species of penguins that live in the Falkland Islands.

The weather has turned colder, and the seas are getting a bit rougher, as expected. As I write this post, we are sailing the Atlantic Ocean.  It is full of white caps and the ship is rolling from side to side.  Makes for a great night’s sleep!

With the cancellation of this stop we’ll have six days at sea as we make our way through Admiralty Bay, past Half Moon Island, through Paradise Bay and Drake Passage before returning to Argentina.  Looking forward to some beautiful scenery!

Punta Ninfas, Patagonia – January 22, 2023

Welcome to Patagonia, a region encompassing the southernmost tip of South America, shared by Argentina and Chile, with the Andes Mountains as its dividing line. We were on the Argentine side known for its arid steppes, grasslands and deserts – and Magellan Penguins!

We’re quickly learning it’s always windy in Argentina. Check out that flag behind Ken.

We drove an hour-and-a-half each way on deeply rutted dirt roads through these grasslands and desert areas, past miles and miles of estancias. Almost all of the land in Patagonia is privately owned and used for estancias.  Estancias, and the Gauchos that work them, are at the heart of Patagonian culture and lifestyle.  They are ranches or farms normally used for rearing Merino sheep.  Many cover vast areas of grassland.  It’s a hard life – there is virtually no fresh water in all of Patagonia (you don’t have to drill deep to find water, but it is salt walt, good only for livestock, bathing and sewer), so all drinking water and fuel must be brought in, and each estancia is responsible for providing its own electricity.  You need approximately 20,000 sheep to produce enough wool to support the estancia and its small workforce, which usually includes 3-5 full-time workers and several seasonal workers.

Along the way we passed a guanaco running through the grasslands.  Guanacos are related to llamas, and like camels are able to store water in their bodies for long periods of time. They’re usually seen in herds, so our guide was very surprised to see this one out on its own.

We finally arrived at Punta Ninfas (Nymphs Point) and its wonderful colony of Magellanic  Penguins.  Turns out not all penguins like the cold!  This species of penguin is native to South America, and is named after the Spanish explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, who was the first to record their presence in 1520.  They spend their summers along the coasts of Argentina, the Falklands and Chile, and when the weather turns cold they hit the water and head to Brazil.  Ken says these are his kind of penguins!

Magellanic penguins are very social and live in large colonies, sometimes containing as many as 200,000 birds, where they nest in burrows, under bushes.  They are monogamous mates who share parenting duties.  The female usually lays two eggs a season, which take 39-42 days to hatch.  Both parents sit on the eggs, rotating out every two weeks or so.  When the chicks hatch the parents take turns gathering food to feed them.

It’s a long walk for this colony to gather food. We are standing near their nest and they need to walk all the way to the blue ocean you see just below the sky behind us. Whew!

Baby penguins, like most birds, are born covered in soft downy fur, which they will lose after their first month or so.  By the age of 60-70 days they are ready for their first swim.

After our visit with the penguins we were served a traditional South American meal at El Pedral Lodge, a small estancia established by two Basque friends in 1923.  The lamb for our meal was prepared on a spit over an open fire and the chorizo was grilled in an outdoor brick oven.  So good!!

And Pam made a new friend who made her miss Sophie all the more!

January 23, 2023

Some of you have asked about the ship we are on.  We’ll take advantage of this day traveling the Atlantic Ocean to share some pictures and details.

On our last voyage with Oceania we were on Insignia, one of their smaller ships.  This time around we are on Marina, home to 1250 happy guests and 800 hard-working crew members representing 52 nationalities.  Marina was built in 2011, and has 15 decks (11 of which are passenger decks). 

Marina offers three specialty restaurants and an elegant main dining room.

With 6  bars on board (including barista and martini bars) there’s no reason to ever go thirsty!

There are lots of options for finding a quiet space to read or do Bible study.

If you’d prefer a little more action in your day you can take advantage of the pool, putt-putt, ping-pong, croquet, or a variety of other activities.  And yes, there’s even a casino.

If money’s not an option you can indulge in a variety of spa treatments.  The least expensive facial is $149; massages range from $199 – $699.

January 19, 2023

Montevideo is the capital city of Uruguay, a small country situated just between Argentina and Brazil.

Today’s tour involved a ride around the town and a visit to a local winery.  There’s not a lot of history or information to share, so we’ll get right to the highlights!

Views of the city

Juan Antonio Lavalleja organized and led an insurrection that resulted in Uruguay’s annexation from Brazil (they were granted independence from Spain in 1811 but had remained part of Brazil)

This statue pays tribute to the traditional transportation used by Uruguayan’s in days past – oxen pulling a cart.

We visited the Bodega Spinoglio, a fourth generation winery that specializes in Tannat grapes.  We enjoyed a walk around the grounds and were treated to a wine tasting.

Future plans for the winery include turning the silos in the picture to the right into airbnbs.  What a unique place that will be to stay!

Interesting fact:  until 2019 Montevideo was home to world’s largest ship cemetery. At the time there were more than 50 shipwrecks in its harbor.  Apparently, when an owner can no longer pay on the loan for the ship, or if the ship has liens issued against it it is a common practice for the owner to “abandon” the ship in some harbor away from the bank or lien interest.  Who knew?  In 2019 government officials decided these abandoned ships – almost all of which still have oil and fuel aboard – posed too great an environmental danger to remain in their harbor.  They began the arduous and expensive task of removing them.  They appear to be making progress; there were maybe 20 shipwrecks in the harbor when we were there.

January 18, 2023

The day to board the ship for our cruise has finally arrived, but first!  A city tour of Buenos Aires.  Here are a few of the highlights…

St. Martin House – a replica of the home of the gentleman responsible for negotiating the independence of Argentina, Brazil, and Peru from Spain.

Next, A visit to the Cemetery de la Recoleta.  This cemetery was established in 1822 as a mass grave site for slaves who had nowhere else to be buried.  During that time individuals were buried in the grounds of the church they attended.  Slaves were not allowed to be members of the churches, so there was no designated place to bury them.  The cemetery was closed for a period due to the spread of Yellow Fever.  It re-opened under the authority of the city manager.  Since then individuals may lease a grave site for up to 99 years. 

There is no limit to the number of individuals who can be buried at a single site – some sites have five floors to them – on the above ground and four below.  There are 4,780 individual burial sites; it is unknown how many bodies are buried here. 

If a site becomes abandoned, the city exhausts all avenues tracing family blood lines until they find someone related to the person whose name is attached to the grave.  That individual can renew the lease or let it go.  There are several sites like this around the cemetery.

Below, Eva Peron is buried here.  Peron’s relationship with Argentinians seems to be one of extremes.  People either love her or hate her – many love what she did but not how she achieved it.  She died from cervical cancer at the age of 33.  Her funeral lasted ELEVEN DAYS!  Hers is the only grave that always has flowers on it – every day of the year.  On memorial holidays hers is the only site individuals line up to place flowers on.

Below, This incredible tree was brought to the city in 1823 as a sapling from Africa by a group of monks

This obelisk represents Argentina’s independence. 

This pink building is the Presidential House, where the President works, but does not live.  The house’s pink color is a nod to the past when the river ran where the town square has since been built.  During those times Argentinians painted the buildings with the blood of animal to preserve the stone from eroding from the effects of being so close to the water.

Eva Peron made her famous “Don’t cry for me, Argentina!” speech from the last balcony on the left.

Of course, you can’t do a city tour without visiting a church, right?  This is the Metropolitan Cathedral, headquarters of the Archbishop.  St. Martin (remember the guy who brokered Argentina’s independence?) is buried here.  His tomb is manned by two royal guards.  Twice a day there is a changing of the guard, where two guards from the palace switch places with the two guards at the tomb.

And last but not least, what tour would be complete without shopping?!  We visited the La Bocca neighborhood, famous for its colorful houses made of wood and tin (with characters leaning out of balconies and windows – who knows why?).  It has tons of character and tons of shopping!

January 17, 2023

We said goodbye to Iguazu Falls this morning and made our way back to Buenos Aires.  After a day of travel we had just enough time to get showered and changed for dinner and a Tango show.

A little history…although Argentina and Uruguay are generally credited as the home of Tango, the origin of the dance are African, brought to Argentina and Uruguay through   former African slaves.  Its name, “Tango,” was the word used to describe musical gatherings of slaves that would take place in the lower-class districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. 

Our show included a variety of Tango dances, musical performances, and a traditional Boleadoras dance.  Boleadoras are instruments traditionally used to hunt animals.  They usually have two or three balls of stone or heavy bone that are each tied to its own rope and then joined together by a third rope – sort of like num-chuks.  Gauchos would use the Boleadoras to fell an animal they were hunting, aiming for its head or knees, then finish them off with a sword. 

January 16, 2023

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better…it did!  We were blessed with nothing but sunshine on Day 2 at the Falls.  Immediately after breakfast we trekked across the street and down the path along the Falls, enjoying fantastic views every step of the way.  The “crowning glory” of the Falls is the Devil’s Throat, an area where falls converge over  a span of 500 feet (nearly the length of two football fields) in the shape of a horseshoe and fall a thundering 30 stories to the pool below.  Each minute enough water flows down the face of the falls to fill 36 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Following lunch back at the hotel came the moment we’d all been waiting for – a Zodiac boat ride to the bottom of the falls.  “You WILL get wet,” they said.  They weren’t lying.  It was a blast!! 

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to capture the best moments of all on film because, well, we were too busy protecting our cameras/phones from getting as wet as we were.  We had a really fun captain who took us directly under the falls, not once, not twice, but just to be sure no one had been left out, THREE times!!!

We had some time between the boat ride and dinner to get cleaned up and enjoy this breathtaking sunset over the falls. 

January 13, 2023

SOUTH AMERICA HERE WE COME!

Having dropped Princess Sophie off with friends (30 days with her boyfriend, Rusty – woohoo!), we finished our packing and headed to the Pendrak’s official Park ‘n Ride for Jodock World Travels.  We nearly missed the connecting flight from Miami to Buenos Aires (kudos to American Airlines baggage handlers who got our bags from one gate to the next in less than 20 minutes), but it was an otherwise uneventful journey.

Our first day in country was all about getting settled in.  Our guide met our group of 14 at the airport, got us checked into our hotel and walked us to a delicious Argentine steakhouse for lunch.  These guys take their lunch seriously – empanadas and sausages as starters, huge servings of steak, chicken or pasta with multiple family-style side dishes, wine, desert; we were stuffed! – and when our guide told us restaurants wouldn’t even be open for dinner before 8:00 we understood why!  Argentinians eat lunch around 1:30, and dinner between 8:30 – 10:00 p.m.  Clubs stay open until 8:00 a.m., and clubbing is often followed by an “After.”  Not for the faint of heart!

We were on our own for dinner.  The 5:30 a.m. departure the following morning led most of us to feast on sleep.

January 14, 2023

Iguazu Falls (Argentina Side)

A domestic flight took us from Buenos Aires to the city of Iguazu (pronounced Eewahzoo).  We headed straight from the airport to the Iguazu Falls National Park.

The Iguazu Falls were born millions of years ago, likely the result of a volcanic eruption and from the slow but steady shift of tectonic plates.  It creates the border between Argentina and Brazil.  While the majority of the water that feeds the falls comes from Brazil, the majority of the falls are actually in Argentina.  Together, they make up the largest waterfall system in the world. The Falls consist of more than 275 individual falls, which flow over the largest basalt shelf in the world and are divided into the upper and lower falls. Iguazu Falls National Park is home to more than 1,000 different kinds of birds (including Toucans), 350+ species of butterflies (they are   everywhere), and 86 varieties of orchids.  Its wildlife inhabitants include monkeys, jaguars, pumas, cougars, ocelots, caimans (cousins of our Florida gators), tapers…just to name a few.  The park itself was established in 1939 and consists of approximately 300,000 acres, ninety percent of which is closed to the public.

How do the Iguazu Falls compare to other famous waterfalls?  Well, our own Niagara Falls are one third shorter than Iguazu, but Iguazu actually has less annual flow than Niagara.  Niagara has the fifth highest average flow of the world’s largest falls; Iguazu is sixth.  Iguazu is wider than Victoria Falls in South Africa, but Victoria claims the largest curtain of water.

We spent our morning hiking the upper falls, then stopped for a delicious lunch.  The forecast had called for rain, but we’d had beautiful weather.  We were preparing to head to the lower falls for the afternoon portion of our tour when someone looked out the window.  Oh! My! Goodness!  Clear blue skies had given way to a torrential downpour!  Such is life in a sub-tropical rainforest, our guide shrugged.

Ken braved the rain while Pam opted to stay behind and keep her skivvies dry – this was only day 2, after all.  Ken was rewarded not only with more beautiful views, but a visit from this little guy.

Our accommodations were inside the park, on the Brazilian side of the falls.  This required us to exit the park, go through the Border Patrol in Argentina and in Brazil before re-entering the park to get to our hotel.  We stayed at the absolutely beautiful Hotel Das Catarata’s, built in 1958 to reflect the architectural style of 1930s Brazil, with an amazing view of the falls from its front yard.  The interior woodworking was incredible – from the ceiling beams to the fireplace mantels to the staircases to the doors to our rooms.

We enjoyed over-the-top lunches and dinners here, in a beautiful restaurant that looks out over the pool.

We enjoyed a 7 day cruise with our 4 children, their spouses and 6 grandchildren for a total of 16 guests on the Disney Fantasy ship. I must say Disney does an AMAZING job entertaining ages of all levels. The only criteria we gave everyone was to meet us for dinner every evening at 5:30 to share their daily experiences. After the grandkids were introduced to their age appropriate area of the ship we only saw them at dinner. They would get up in the morning and just have a blast all day.

July 12, 2022

Stavanger is home to one of Europes most interesting Old Towns. The cobblestone streets are lined with the continent’s highest concentration of wooden buildings that date back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Over 250 surround the harbor area.

Stavanger is Norway’s 4th largest city with population of 140,000 people. It is also the home of the oil boom, which changed the entire economics of Norway. Norway was one of the poorest countries in Europe before oil was discovered in August of 1969. Since then, it is now one of the richest countries in Europe. As a result of the oil business, Norway has become a welfare state where proceeds from oil are invested into a pension fund to support people in retirement. Oil accounts for 40% of exports and is 20% of their economy. Norwegians have free healthcare, and full pensions for every person, with a payout of 80% of your average lifetime wage. Definitely, better than our Social Security payout. Although, they are still taxed on these earnings beginning at around 22%, or higher depending on your income.

We visited the oil museum at the end of our tour and learned about oil drilling. They were also exhibiting prehistoric dinosaurs as a special event.

July 11, 2022

Today was an amazing adventure of buses, trains, waterfalls and tunnels. There is no doubt Norway is the land of mountains and waterfalls. You are surrounded by mountains when looking in every direction and you can barely drive a mile or two before you spot the next waterfall. There is also an amazing amount of tunnels through all these mountains. The first tunnel we drove through was 11 kilometers long (6.8 miles). many more were between 1-5 miles long. Some were man made, but many were built using ”Big Bertha” a huge boring machine that can bore through a mountain in weeks versus the years it took to build them mwhich would have taken years

Today we took a bus from Eidford to a waterfall near Voss, Norway where we were a few days ago. we visited the same waterfall as before, except today it was sunny and warm.

After leaving the waterfall be arrived at a nice hotel near the top of the mountain. Here we had lunch overlooking a beautiful valley and farms below.

The train ride from Flan took us past many waterfalls and sheer cliffs. Norway is not only the land of waterfalls it is well known for the amount and length of their tunnels. We drove through several tunnels that were between 3-7 miles long! here are some of the waterfalls.

We ended our daily journey where we started in the town of Eidfjord. Take in these views from town.

July 9, 2022

Voss is an international ski town and home of the World Cup ski challenge. Voss is a one hour train ride from Bergen, Norway. They have trains that run from Bergen to Voss about every 90 minutes and tickets range between $13-$40 Euros depending on demand and day. It was a very scenic drive through the Countryside with many views of mountains and fjords. We stayed at a wonderful hotel in central Voss that just happened to have the finest restaurant in town. I hate to say it but the meals here were much better than anything we had on the ship.

There is a large 10+ person cable car that takes you from the base in town to the top of the mountain where you will find additional ski lifts that take you to many choices of ski runs. Here are some pictures of Voss and the surrounding area.

We also visited the local church built of stone in the center of town. Many people were buried in the church yard dating back to the mid 1800’s. Although the mainframe was made of stone the steeple was all wood, typical of most Norwegian structures.

On day two of our visit to Voss we took a tour that drove us through the countryside past MANY waterfalls, up, down and through mountains passing many local farms. We arrived in a small village to located on an inlet to more fjords. There we visited Hopperstad Stave Church. This church was originally built in 1130, over a thousand years ago. Can you imagine? The only way to this town back then was by boat! The church was refurbished in 1885 and it is an amazing wooden building. Stave churches were made completely of wood and only a few hundred continue to exist throughout Norway. 

After leaving the church we boarded a boat for our 2 hour journey through the fjords towards Jostedalsbreen Glacier. Attached are photos of our fjord journey and sites seen along the way.

Jostedalsbreen Glacier is being affected by global warming. In the 100 years from 1901 to 2001 the glacier receded 1 mile. In the last 10 years the glacier has receded the same amount!!!

Hope you enjoyed the tour of Voss and the fjords. Help yourself to an Aass beer next time you are in Norway.

July 8, 2022

Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of 280,000. It is also one of the wettest cities in Norway. It rains 240-250 days a year, wow. It was overcast with occasional drizzle during most of our stay, very much like Seattle. Like the northwest no one allows the weather to dictate your day, as we saw wonderful sites and met great people.

We also visited a local farm near Bergen. We were taken to a farm less than 15 minutes from Bergen. We were met at the farm by the owner and his local hand maidens. They were extremely gracious, courteous and welcoming. They showed us their horses and beautiful scenery. We watched as the sheep came galloping from the field to the house as fast as they could when they noticed the ladies with buckets of food. After a walk around the farm they took us into their home and fed us desserts, coffee and a very special treat, lefse. You may wonder what in the world is lefse. Lefse is a special Norwegian flat bread made from potatoes. My grandparents came from Norway and we used to have this treat all the time when we visited them. It is delicious after you butter it, sprinkle sugar and cinnamon, then roll it up like a crepe.

June 30, 2022

Shetland, Scotland.  Welcome to the land where the sun never sets – but you never know that  because the fog never lifts!  We arrived to what we were told is a typical summer day in Lerwick,  Shetland’s one and only town and home to one third of its inhabitants.   Even through the dense morning fog we could see that this is a land of beautiful rolling green hills dotted with quaint farmhouses and lots and lots of sheep!  Lerwick is the most northern and most eastern town in all of Scotland but situated in the North Atlantic between Great Britain and Norway it has a fairly moderate climate.  The record high is 74 degrees (1991), and the record cold is 16 degrees (1952 and 1959). It rarely snows in the winter and when it does it doesn’t stick around for long.  But the wind, oh the wind!  It’s the wind that will bring you to your knees and keep you indoors in those winter months.  It’s the wind and the salt air that accounts for the scarcity of trees and other vegetation.  You have to be a determined and creative gardener to grow things here – and able to shelter your plants from the year-round harsh winds.

Summer days are long and winter days are short.  The area gets 18 hours and 55 minutes of sun on the day of Summer Solstice, and five hours and 49 minutes on Winter Solstice.  But as I noted above, they only average fewer than 50 days of sun the entire year, so you might not even know the sun has come up on those winter days!

Modern-day Lerwick was founded as a fishing seaport to trade with the Dutch in the 1600s and the fishing industry continues to be the area’s biggest employer.   There are a lot of successful commercial fishermen here as well as a variety of other trades associated with “aquaculture,” a new term for Pam.   The area is most well-known, of course, for its Shetland ponies, and that’s where our tour took us today. 

It is believed that Shetland ponies arrived in the area by walking across the vast ice fields during the last ice age.  They were originally used as work animals and were thought to be particularly well suited for working in mines.  They are small, have a docile nature that makes them easy to train, and it is believed by many they have a sixth sense for danger, making them all the more desirable for the mines.  During the 17^th century the hair from the tail of the pony was also used to make fishing line and bird snares.  Today the ponies are used for riding for children or for breeding.  Despite the fact that they are no longer the income generators they once were they still outnumber inhabitants of the islands 4:1.

The first Shetland pony was exported to the U.S. in 1885.  The most valuable Shetland sold to someone in the U.S. was a stallion named “Sensation.”  His owner traded him for 640 acres of prime Texas land that later became a very prosperous gas and oil field.

Our next two days will be spent at sea.  There are supposed to be Orcas and seals in these waters.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and see one or two.  Wouldn’t that be something!

JULY 5, 2022

Lofoten is the name of the island meaning flat land and the city is called Leknes. There are 300 islands around this community and only 5 are inhabited. Lofoten (Leknes) is an island city that sits in a very green valley surrounded by high mountains. Fishing is the number one industry for the 25,000+ inhabitants of these islands followed by tourism with about 500,000 visitors annually. 
Here is a bit of history for you. Vikings never had horns on their helmets. This folklore was created by a German playwright in the 1800’s who wanted the Vikings in his play to look like barbarians so he added horns to the helmets. Amazing how art and folklore can distort history. 
The scenery you’ll see is very green, lush and mountainous. There a a few farms and most raise either cattle or sheep.

The second half of the day was spent visiting the largest and oldest Viking longhouse ever discovered in Norway dating back to 450 A.D. It was just over 60 meters long with 4 large rooms each varying in size. One room was a “drying/aging” room for meets and other foods, then a very large dining/cooking area with a huge fire pit with hanging pots and the like, followed by living area and then sleeping quarters. It is believed this was the house of a chieftain for his family and invited guests. They believe they lived and explored here for centuries until Norway became a kingdom around 872 A.D. At which point the chieftain picked up and moved to Iceland.

Unfortunately, many of the pictures will not be as beautiful as usual because Pam had to leave the cruise today. Her Uncle “General” (Sherman) is gravely ill and she chose to head back to Ohio and be with her lovely Aunt Dori for this difficult journey.

Tromso is an island town of 70,000+ residents located 217 kilometers above the Arctic Circle. They have 24 hour sunlight during the summer of the “Midnight Sun”  from May 21 – July 21 and during the winter solstice they have no sun from November 21 – January 21. During the winter the snow just continues to pile up. Imagine their scenario in 1997 when they had a record snowfall in one day (5 feet), wow! They have permanent snow on the ground basically from October to June.

The scenery around this town is absolutely amazing, as seen in the following pictures.

The Arctic Cathedral is located here. It was originally built with just wood and glass representing ice and allowing amazing views. When services began during the first “Midnight Sun” in summer (May 21 – July 21) many attendees began wearing sunglasses during service because of the light. The pastors said ”we cannot have that” so it was redesigned to add addition white peaks representing snow to reduce the light and eliminate the need to wear sunglasses inside. The original architect was beside himself and left town in disgust. The building is still gorgeous and really stands out in the town and has become a major tourist attraction. 

In order to get amazing aerial views you could ride a gondola to the top of the 1300 foot hill and capture the panoramic pictures you have already seen. You could also take this gondola with your para-sail, then climb the hill a little higher and take flight.

Next stop Lofoten, Norway.

We traveled to the farthest point north in the European continent. In comparison to the U.S. this is slightly farther north than Nome, Alaska. Fortunately, they were having a heat wave that day, it was 71 degrees. For a strange coincidence note this point is located at 71 degrees north latitude, hmmm.

We are traveling with our friends Keith and Kathy Snider. The globe sculpture behind us is the most famous marker to get your picture taken with to prove you were here. Furthest northern point of the European continent.

The visitor center had a nice restaurant and Arctic museum

These artistic disc and sculptures were popular are representing Viking expolration

June 29, 2022

As we pulled into Orkney, Scotland this morning we were greeted by its trademark wind, gray skies, and rain. Undaunted, Pam headed out to our scheduled tour of the mainland while Ken hunkered under the covers trying to sleep away a nasty head cold. Making our way by bus from the port to the west side of Mainland (the name of the island we were on, because “Why waste a name on this little piece of rock?” our guide said), we pass rolling green hills dotted with cottages, dairy cows, and sheep and here and there a windmill or two.

At first glance one might think there’s really not much to recommend Orkney. It is an archipelago made up of 70 islands – of which only 20 are inhabited – located about 10 miles off the north coast of Scotland. It’s actually closer to the Arctic than it is to London, has fewer than 22,000 residents and its largest inhabited island, Mainland, measures only 14-17 miles in any given direction. But check this out:  15% of the world’s seal population can be found in Orkney, it boasts the shortest available flight anywhere in the world (a 2-minute, 1.7 mile jaunt from Wastray to Papa Westray), it offers some of the best diving conditions and sunken ships for treasure hunting  it contains some of the oldest stone structures in the world, and thanks to the European Marine Energy Center may soon be known worldwide for its contribution to the development of clean, renewable energy.

Orkney is situated where the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean meet. They are uniquely positioned to harness wind, wave, and tidal resources to create clean energy. They are able to generate much more clean energy than their island community needs and are in the process of turning that excess energy into hydrogen. Next year they will launch the first hydrogen-fueled ferry boat. Expect to hear more about that as time goes on, and remember:  You heard it here first, folks!

Small island life can create tight-knit communities, and Mainland, Orkney seems to reflect that. Every Christmas, while we Americans are carving hams and turkeys and preparing to cheer our favorite football team to victory, the good people of Orkney are gathering at the local church, dividing themselves into two teams and playing their own version of football. Each team has about 200 men, there are no rules and no referees. One team’s goal is to get the ball across a line about halfway up the hill. The other side is trying to get it across a line that’s about halfway out in the harbor. If you’re not playing, you’re cheering the players on, and when it’s all over the winning team chooses an MVP. The MVP’s reward is hosting the entire town for a victory party – and no one goes home to change before the celebration begins.

Today’s excursion was all about Orkney’s ties to the Neolithic period. For those of us who didn’t study archeology, the Neolithic period is the last of three periods of the Stone Age. It is thought to have lasted about 1600 years, from roughly 4100 – 2500. It marked the first time in

Human history that man ceased being nomadic and began staying in one place for long periods of time. The first stone tools were introduced, crafts began appearing and we began domesticating animals. Probably the most famous monument from this period is Stonehenge. Orkney has several Stonehenge-like standing rock structures around the islands. We visited two:  the Stones of Stenness Circle and the Ring of Brodgar. There’s not much known about them, so there’s not much I can tell you. They’re a bunch of tall stones standing in a circle and dating back further than Stonehenge. That seemed to be the most important thing for us to know. The people from Orkney are very proud to have Neolithic relics older than that famous Stonehenge place. No one knows why the stones were built in a circle or what purpose they served. The most popular assumption seems to be that they were built for some kind of religious purpose.

The Stones of Stenness are thought to be the earliest henge monument in the British isles. Carbon dating puts them at about 5,400 years old. The Ring of Brodgar is slightly younger at a out 4,900 years old. Pretty incredible that something built circa 3000 BC is still standing. It wasn’t a great day for picture taking here, so I’ve scoured the Internet for pictures that will give you a better view.  Think about all the weather these stones have survived, all the wind and rain, storms, tsunamis, earthquakes, whatever….and still they stand. Impressive.

June 28, 2022

What a fun day!  Today we are in Edinburgh (pronounced Edenborough – and they don’t like it if you get it wrong), Scotland.  Edinburgh has been recognized as the capitol of Scotland since at least the 15^th century.  It serves as the seat of the Scottish government and parliament and is home to its highest courts.  Its Holyrood House is the monarch’s official Scottish residence, and the city has a storied history as a center of education, especially as it relates to medicine, Scottish law, literature, philosophy, the sciences, and engineering.  It is the UK’s second-largest financial center and its second-most visited tourist destination.  But the city didn’t always have such a “pristine” reputation.

In the late Middle Ages a wall was built to encompass what is now referred to as the “old town” portion of Edinburgh.  This provided excellent protection against marauders, but during the 1700s when the city was heavily reliant on coal for its heat and other uses that same protective wall trapped the smoke from the coal, creating an almost constant black fog over the city.  This earned the city the nickname “Old Smokey,” a moniker still associated with it today.  This is also the reason so many of the city’s oldest buildings have a dark cast to them – the build-up of the coal residue turned the stone structures black.

We spent our morning visiting Broomhall Estate, a 2500-acre working estate established in 1702 by the Elgin family, and currently owned and operated by the 98-year-od 11^th Earl of Elgin.  Our tour was conducted by Lord Charles Bruce, eldest son of the 11^th Earl.  The Lord is an incredibly knowledgeable historian and very down-to-earth guy.  When our guide greeted him as “Lord,” he replied, “Please, please, call me Charlie.”  “Charlie” spent 2-1/2 hours sharing the history of Scotland and his family’s part in it, deftly weaving the fabric of Scottish history into that of America.  He easily demonstrated his assertion that all of America’s founding fathers were either raised in Scotland, had Scottish nannies, were educated in Scotland, or had Scottish influences, or any combination of the above.  He drew direct parallels to the ideology of our traditionally American beliefs and those of the most influential thinkers of Scottish heritage.  The estate houses an impressive library of historic documents, meticulously catalogued and including such things as an original 1562 Bible, a 1776 Atlas, and first-edition prints of every conceivable important piece of literature from at least the last five centuries, including the very first book ever written on the subject of cultural anthropology.  The Lord refers to the library as an “economic diary” of Scotland, documentation of a philosophical dialogue showing who read what and how these books influenced their thoughts and behavior.

The Bruce family has direct connections of its own to America.  There’s a ledger and correspondence that show in 1826 a certain individual was living on the property and couldn’t pay his rent.  The gentleman and his family were evicted.  Twenty-two years later the man’s son immigrated to the U.S., where his son would make his fortune in the steel industry and stock market, eventually becoming the richest man in the world.  His name?  Andrew Carnegie.

Another of Lord Bruce’s ancestors, his great grand-father James Bruce, was assigned Ambassador to Canada.  He negotiated the first Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Canada – not the NAFTA of 1988, but the very first free trade act ever, the 1854 Elgin-Marcy Reciprocity Treaty, which created a period of free trade between the two countries that lasted until 1866.  It took 8 years and a LOT of alcohol, but he got it done, and over the next three months he negotiated similar agreements with China and Japan (reportedly using the same alcohol-fueled negotiation tactics).  Lord James Bruce led an adventurous and colorful life, and when he decided to write a memoir in 1790, he enlisted the help of the same individual who designed the American White House, James Hoban.

Lord Bruce’s grandfather was a playmate of Queen Elizabeth, and they have remained friends over the years.  He told stories his grandfather has shared about some of those playdates and of a time when his father was being taught in one of the rooms of the house when the Queen Mother came for a visit.  She poked her head in to see what was happening in the classroom and asked to meet the children’s tutor.  The next day the family was informed they would need to find a new tutor because the Queen Mother had hired theirs away to serve as governess for her children.  Lord Bruce was educated in that same room, along with around forty other children from the local area who came to the estate for their education.

Those who have seen the movie “Downton Abbey” may remember that its theme centered around a visit to Downton Abbey by the Queen.  Lord Bruce’s cousin was an historical consultant for the show and movie, and that premise was borrowed from an event that actually occurred during the 11^th Earl of Elgin’s childhood in the dining room we were standing in, when King George the VI and the Queen Mother came to dine with the 10^th Earl of Elgin and his wife.

I know this post is long, but I have barely scratched the surface of all of the history Lord Bruce shared with us.  There were fewer than fifteen people in our tour, allowing for a very intimate and free-flowing conversation.  It was wonderful!

July 27, 2022

Today is a day at sea, a day I imagined standing at the railing of our balcony or gazing out the many windows around the ship at nothing but water as far as the eye can see.  Well, there is water as far as the eye can see, that part I go right.  But that ain’t all there is.  There are also a whole lotta other boats way over there, probably travelling in a shipping lane parallel to the course of the Viking Mars (our ship).  I remember being surprised by that on our World Cruise, too, the number and frequency of shipping vessels we would be sharing the water with.  Maybe that should have been expected on this cruise as well.

What I definitely didn’t expect were the turbines.  Enormous turbines popping up by the dozens all along our route.  There’s just no escaping progress or man’s mark on the universe these days, even hundreds of miles out into the North Sea.

Turns out these windmills are part of the world’s largest off-shore wind project, a 3.6-gigawatt solar farm in the North Sea.  The project is using the world’s largest turbines – 13-megawatts and standing 850 feet tall, five times higher than the Arc de Triomphe – to generate power for more than 4.5 million homes in the U.K.  Each turbine’s blades measure 351 feet, longer than a soccer field, and can generate enough electricity in one rotation to power the average British household for two full days.  The project is expected to be completed in 2026 and will generate approximately 5 percent of the U.K.’s electricity when it is fully operational.  The windmills are located in an area previously dominated by oil and gas operations, so I guess that’s a good thing.  Wind power seems a lot less damaging to the environment than drilling, but still…there’s a part of me that wishes there was some space man hadn’t conquered, some place we could go and just gaze in awestruck wonder.

June 26, 2022

Greenwich, England

Greenwich, England served as a key location for Royals for more than 500 years and they have the historic buildings and stories to prove it.  We covered a lot of ground in our 2-1/2 hour walking tour and learned more than I have time/room to share, but below are some of the highlights.

First, an interesting bit of trivia.  Greenwich is located along the River Thames (pronounced Tims).  What I didn’t know is that a portion of the River Thames is tidal.  I didn’t even know it was possible for a river to be part tidal and part not!  In the case of the River Thames it dumps into the North Sea, and approximately 99 miles of the 215-mile river are tidal, including the portion that passes past Greenwich.  This means the height and depth of the river fluctuates, making bridges problematic.    Greenwich has solved this problem by building two-foot tunnels that run under the river!  I’ve included a photo that includes the entry to a tunnel on one side of the river and the entry/exit on the other side.  Originally built in 1902 and 1912 to accommodate 15 shipyard workers, the tunnels now see an average of more than 1.5 million visitors a day.  The tunnels are strictly pedestrian – you can’t even ride a bike or scooter through them.  Now on to the sights!

One of the first things you see as you approach the docks of Greenwich is the huge Cutty Sark clipper ship positioned on a massive slab of concrete.  This is the world’s only surviving extreme clipper.  Built in 1869 for the China tea trade and expected to last thirty years at best, this 150-year-old masterpiece made it fifty-two years as a working ship, was then used twenty-two years as a training ship and has served the last sixty years as a museum.  More than ninety percent of its hull is original construction.  During its time as a merchant ship, it visited sixteen different countries and traveled the equivalent of two-and-a-half trips to the moon in back.  In its first 7 years alone this ship hauled more than 10 million pounds of tea from China to the U.K.  Clipper ships have 3 distinctive design characteristics:  a long narrow hull; a sharp bow that allows it to cut through waves rather than riding atop them; and 3 raking masts (masts that angle forward from a straight vertical).  They were the fastest ships of their day.  The opening of the Suez Canal marked the end of the line for sailing ships in the tea trade, so Cutty Sark moved to hauling other goods, such as coal and wool. 

Cutty Sark gets her name from a Robert Burns poem that tells the story of a man being wooed by a scantily clad beautiful young witch in a tavern.  The witch uses all of her womanly wiles on the man, but he refuses to be charmed and runs away on his horse.  Being a witch, the woman is able to fly after him, but the man’s horse is faster and all she is able to capture is a handful of the horse’s tail as the man rides out of sight.  The woman is wearing a small nightshirt, known as a Cutty sark.  The figure head on the bow of this particular clipper is a woman with her breasts hanging out of her nightshirt and a fistful of horsehair hanging from her clenched fist, hence the name.

As we made our way through the outdoor market to Royal Park we passed by the Royal Maritime Museum, home to Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle.  This piece of art was originally created for a temporary display at Trafalgar Square.  When its time there expired, its cultural significance led the Museum to purchase it.  The monument is meant to be a replica of the ship of Britain’s most famous Admiral, Horatio Nelson.  The cloth used for its sails represent the fabric stolen from the African countries by the Dutch during the Colonial era (or that Nelson and his crew bought to repair torn sails, depending on the person telling the story).  It also reflects London’s cultural diversity as a result of European expansion.

We visited the Queen’s House, so named because – you guessed it – many queens lived there!  Legend has it James I of England gave the land the home is built on to his wife as an apology for swearing at her in public – two things a King was never to do (swear and humiliate his wife in public).  One could argue that he was unfairly provoked; after all, his wife had just accidentally shot and killed his best hunting dog.  But rules are rules, and the queen graciously accepted the apology and immediately went about building a statement piece of architecture as her new home.  Unfortunately, the queen died shortly after construction began.  The king soon remarried and gave the house to his new bride who become the first of many queens to live there, earning the home its name.

Finally, there was the Royal Observatory, perched high above it all.  The Royal Observatory was originally located at the Tower of London, but there was a problem with the birds.  Astronomers like to use outdoor telescopes to observe the nighttime sky; birds like to make deposits on outdoor telescopes…you see the problem.  The Royal Astronomer asked the King to remove the birds, but those of you who read yesterday’s post know that that was not going to happen (legend has it that if the Ravens are removed from the Tower the monarch will fall), so instead the King offered him the choice piece of real estate just above the Queen’s House.  Perfect.

The Observatory functioned as both a home and the Royal Observatory for nearly 300 years.  Between them, the first two Royal Astronomers plotted all of the visible stars in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and in 1884 it became the location of the Prime Meridian of the World, which separates the eastern and western hemispheres of the world and serves as the International Date Line, the boundary from which each calendar day starts.  The Observatory is also home to the first public symbol of time.  Long before the Prime Meridian and International Date Line sailors relied on the Observatory to help them set their watches and know when to set sail.  Using the position of the sun and other measures, astronomers would calculate exactly when high noon occurred.  They would then hoist a giant ball to the top of the mast on the roof of the building and begin dropping it.  This took a bit of time, so instead of signifying high noon, the ball was dropped at precisely 1:00 p.m.  This helped sea captains set their chronometers, a precision timepiece carried on a ship used in determining the ship’s position by celestial navigation.  Originally begun in 1833, this tradition continues today.

We managed to learn all of this AND pack in the new Elvis movie before returning to the ship to get cleaned up, toast our 17^th wedding anniversary and join Kathy and Keith for dinner. To top it all off Ken got to assist in the magic show we attended afterward. Great day!

June 25, 2022

Our plan for today was to move from the VRBO to the ship, grab some lunch there and then head to Windsor Castle for the afternoon.  Pam’s research indicated it would take a little less than an hour to get go the Castle, and we were even able to compare the cost of making the journey by bus, train (tube) or taxi. 

The first part of the plan worked great.  We were all packed and ready to leave the apartment before 9:00, and our driver wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 10:00.  We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves.  When the driver showed up at 9:15 we were feeling really glad that none of us are last-minute packers!

Getting from London to Greenwich was a piece of cake, so we arrived with about 45 minutes to burn before we could board the ship.  We found a little café and the guys started looking at our options for getting a taxi to the Castle.  Hmm…this site says it’s a 2-hour drive; this one says 48 minutes…this one says 2 hours, too… The man behind us, who is from London, overheard our conversation and said it would really be more like 2-1/2 hours each way, what with this being a Saturday and the transportation strike and all…  It didn’t take long for us to reach agreement that Windsor would need to wait for another day.  Not a huge deal for Ken and me because we’ve been before, but we were disappointed for Keith and Kathy and would have enjoyed seeing it again.  Oh well!  On to the ship!

Viking is providing us a terrific experience thus far.  Check in was easy-peasy, and after a delicious buffet lunch we spent some time exploring our new home.  It is beautiful!!!  The ship is only four months old, and we are only its third set of passengers.  Everywhere we turn there is something else to take our breath away.  Our stateroom is a bit larger than the one we had for the world cruise, we have the option of listening to a pianist, a cellist, or an acoustic guitar singer every evening before and/or after dinner while enjoying an adult beverage, and there is additional entertainment most nights in a large theater.  Tonight they are offering a movie, The Martian, with Matt Dillon (very appropriate since our ship is named “Mars” 😊), but after this the entertainment will be live.  They also have two additional theaters where we can watch different TED talks every day.  And get this – all of the public bathrooms have chirping birds being piped in. It’s hilarious. I think we’re going to like it here.  See what you think.

As I was collecting my notes for today’s blog, I suddenly realized what a busy day it was and completely understood why I needed to stop in the middle of it and take a nap! Some of you will get tired just reading about it, so I know you can sympathize!

We began our day at Buckingham Palace, said to be the Queen’s favorite residence, perhaps because two of her four children were born here. However, since the death of Prince Philip the Queen has spent less and less time here and in March of 2022, she announced that she had permanently moved out of the residence. It still serves as the administrative hub for the Royal Family and is where the Queen holds her weekly meetings with the Prime Minister.

We happened to be at the Palace just in time for the Changing of the Guard. The Royal Guard has been protecting the Royal Family for nearly 600 years. They were formed in 1656, raised to protect an exiled King Charles. They have served in every British military battle since. Members of the Guard protecting the Palace serve in two-hour shifts. During the ceremony, those members who are completing their shift leave the palace, led down the road by a miliary band or equestrian procession. Those who are beginning their shift are led by a military band from their barracks across the way to the Palace. When the two meet in the middle (behind Palace gates) they each present their arms to one another, the keys are exchanged, the new guards are marched into place and the old guard leaves. The only part of the ceremony visible to the public is the coming and going.

Next up was Westminster Abbey. Yesterday we visited the outside; today we did the inside. Owned by the Royal Family since 1066 (!), Westminster Abbey has been the location of every royal coronation but two since then (Edward V was killed in the Tower of London before he could be crowned, and Edward VIII abdicated the crown just 11 months after succeeding his father and was never crowned). It is also the final resting place of 30 kings and queens, 5 monarchs and lots of other very important people such as Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens and Robert and Elizabeth Barret Browning. George II of Great Britain and Ireland was the last member of the Royal Family to be buried here; since then they have all been buried at Windsor Castle after their death (just to be clear; I don’t want you thinking any have been buried alive). The last person buried here was not a royal – it was Sir Lawrence Olivier, who passed away in 1989. On a happier note, the Abbey has also hosted sixteen royal weddings including those of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip and, perhaps most famously, that of William and Kate.

Our final tour stop of the day was London Tower. Built by William the Conqueror in the 1070s the Tower has long been associated with terror and fear. For over 800 years prisoners would be marched here for all manner of offenses, ranging from minor to egregious, never knowing what their fate would be or if they would ever leave. Three queens were among some of the more famous prisoners, two of whom were Henry VIII’s wives, both of whom literally lost their heads – Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. The third queen, imprisoned for marrying without permission, starved to death before she could be executed. Nice, eh? The Tower is also where kings and queens would go to protect themselves and their possessions during times of trouble, and it is where the Crown Jewels are kept to this day. There’s an interesting legend attached to the Tower. Since its inception the Tower has served as a home to Ravens; legend has it that if they ever leave the Tower will fall. Even now there are seven ravens that call the Tower home, cared for by a Raven Master. Each bird has had one flight feather clipped to keep it from being able to fly away. When the Tower is not open to the public it serves as a home to the Raven Master and his family, a Resident Governor, a garrison of soldiers, a doctor, and a chaplain. There’s even a pub on site!

The day was capped off with a visit to London’s Theater district where we saw the play, “Come from Away.”  On 9/11 many of us watched in horror as terrorists commandeered two American commercial airplanes and deliberately flew them into the Twin Towers of The World Trade Center. Unsure of the extent of the threat then-President Bush shut down all American air space, leaving 38 additional commercial planes and their nearly 7,000 passengers with nowhere to go. “Come from Away” is the uplifting and heartwarming story of the tiny Newfoundland town of Gander that gave them a safe place to land and cared for them for nearly a week, until they could safely return to their U.S. destinations. It is a wonderful example of human beings’ capacity for kindness and compassion – and who couldn’t use a reminder of that these days? This Tony-Award-winning Canadian play opened on Broadway in 2017. I read recently that they announced on June 8^th that October 2, 2022, will be their last performance. I am so glad we were able to see it while we were in London.

Tomorrow:  Windsor Castle!

Welcome back, everyone! It has been a full 962 days since our last adventure – a cross-country road trip with our oldest granddaughter and next-to-oldest grandson – and 1,078 days since we stepped off the ship of our world cruise and we are SO excited to be back out in the world again! For those of you who may not know we are about embark on a 28-day Baltic cruise on Viking with our good friends, Keith and Kathy Snider.

We will board the ship on Saturday, June 25^th in Greenwich, England and set sail for our first port of call in Edinburgh, Scotland at 11:00 p.m. Sunday, June26^th. With an embarkation point this close to London we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to revisit one of our favorite cities. Keith found us a perfectly situated VRBO, located near Trafalgar Square and within walking distance of many of London’s main attractions. After catching up on our sleep we spent most of this first day reacquainting ourselves with the area, including stops by 10 Downing Street, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar square and the renowned Fortnum and Mason store in Piccadilly.

We learned about Fortnum and Mason from the guy who worked in the ship’s hair salon during our world cruise. He was from London, and when Pam commented that she was sad that the ship was not offering any excursions to London from the U.K. ports we were visiting he suggested we create our own excursion, get off the ship at the first U.K. port and then rejoin it at the next. What a great idea! And all he asked for his troubles was a tin of Fortnum and Mason shortbread cookies. They were so good! So, of course, we had to pick some up for the Baltic cruise. All these years Pam has just thought of this as a cookie store – we had so little time on our last visit we just ran in and ran out. There’s so much more to it – specialty candies and teas and preserves and and and….if you’re ever in London check it out!

On our way to dinner we decided to stop for a drink at a local pub. Turns out the place we stopped was a favorite of none other than Charles Dickens himself! The story goes that a pub has been on this site since the 1400s (at one time owned by the Crown!). In the 1800s Charles Dickens lived nearby and is reported to have spent nearly every night in the Red Lion, cozying up to a pretty barmaid. And now we’ve been here, too, though we weren’t cozying up to any barmaids, pretty or otherwise.

Dinner was a cruise along the Thames River, made all the more special because on our return journey they raised the Tower Bridge for a sailboat with a very tall mast to pass through. We were told they only raise the bridge 4-5 times a year, so we were really lucky to get to witness it.

All in all not a bad first day. 😊

Photos (in order): our cruise itinerary; taking off from Orlando; beautiful sunset from the sky (x2); flying into London; 10 Downing Street (x2); Big Ben; Westminster Abbey (front); Westminster Abbey (side); Entrance to Fortner & Mason (x2); Piccadilly (x2); in front of the Red Lion (aka Charles Dickens) Tavern; cruising down the Thames; Tower Bridge (x2); Kathy & Pam & the London Eye.

Thoroughly enjoyed a few days with my sister Lois and brother in law Mark in Key West, FL. We had a great day feeding the sharks followed by an excellent sunset meal.

Hanging out on the boat

Amazing sunset

Great times with our friend Corey in the Florida Everglades and lovely Marco Island. Great community with lots of outdoor restaurants and bars.

After 177 days, 36 countries, 24 time zones and 90 ports of call it’s time to bid our new friends and the amazing crew of the Oceania Insignia a fond farewell.  It has been an incredible experience; our minds are still reeling from the places we’ve been and the things that we’ve seen.  There’s a good possibility that the breadth of it all won’t truly sink in until long after we’ve turned this blog into a coffee table book and are browsing its pages sometime in the distant future.  One thing we absolutely grasp in the moment, however, is how very, very fortunate we are to have made what is, for us, this once-in-a-lifetime journey.

There was no time for long good-byes or farewell pictures today.  The ship docked at 6:00 a.m., we were off the boat by 8:00 and in a rental car and on our way to Orlando by 9:00.  We stopped to see a friend in Del Ray Beach, enjoyed a short reunion with our daughter and grandsons, retrieved our truck, returned the rental car and made it to our new home around 7:00 p.m.  Our two youngest grandsons will be coming to spend the weekend with us on Friday, and our youngest son and his daughter, Bella are scheduled to arrive from Washington on Saturday afternoon.  Further complicating things is that we begin a five-week road trip in less than a week, so we don’t have a lot of time to get moved in.  With that in mind, we immediately got to work doing laundry, setting up electronics and unpacking the kitchen. Fortunately, our daughter had worked with the decorator to have most of our other household goods delivered and put in place while we were still on the ship.  We didn’t even have to make the bed!

Our travels don’t end here.  We’ll be in our new home a grand total of FOUR DAYS and then it’s off on the aforementioned road trip with two of our six grandchildren.  Our oldest granddaughter, Bella, and second-oldest grandson, Michael, both 10, will be driving cross-country with us from Groveland, Florida to Puyallup, WA.  We have adventures planned all along the way and can hardly wait to get started.  Stay tuned for more updates from the road.

P.S. In January Ken’s phone provided him with a map of all of the places his phone had been in 2019. We’ve attached a copy of the map illustrating the places we visited during the cruise. It’s kinda fun to see it expressed this way.

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St. George was our final stop before we reach the Port of Miami and the end of this six-month adventure. What an extraordinarily beautiful location for our “last hoorah.”

Ken may have been the only passenger on the ship who thought to bring his golf clubs, but he was not the only avid golfer on board. As time went by word had spread that golf outings were being scheduled at various ports along the way, and by the time we reached Bermuda ten people had signed up. Pam was not one of them. She opted to check out the town first, then joined Ken for the back nine.

St. George is most famous as the first permanent English settlement to have been established on the island of Bermuda. The British landed here in 1609, and formally established it as an English territory in 1612. City streets are still only wide enough to fit a horse and buggy, and the area has lost none of its original charm or character.

While the guys enjoyed incredible views and gorgeous weather on the course, Pam visited King’s Square, home to St. George’s Victualling Yard, built in 1853 and used to store, prepare and package food back in the day.  In the 1800s the only means for preserving food for later consumption was by heavily salting it and storing it in barrels.  Each dockyard had its own victualling yard and cooper, or barrel-maker who was responsible for the manufacture and maintenance of all the dockyard’s barrels.  All that remains of the yard today are the walls that surrounded it.  It is surrounded by several boutiques where local artists sell a variety of hand-made crafts.

The area is also home to Fort St. Catherine’s, a coastal artillery fort active from 1612 into the 20^th Century.  Its complex contains what are said to be the oldest surviving structures built by the English in the New World.  It was last used as a premier base for the Royal Navy.  In 1950 the Fort played host to a production of Macbeth starring Charlton Heston.  Pretty cool, eh?

As we made our way out to sea, the Captain and crew hosted a Sail Away party, where everyone celebrated the near end of our journey by jumping into the pool fully clothed.  Why would anyone do that?  Crazy people!!!

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The New York skyline…what could be more exciting – or American!  We arrived at the Manhattan Cruise terminal, sailing along the iconic Hudson River.  The Hudson is a tidal estuary, where salty sea water meets fresh water running off the land.  It experiences two high tides and two low tides in any 24-hour period, each bringing with it a change in the direction of the water’s flow, explaining why the Native American name for it is loosely translated as “river that flows two ways.”

Cruising into the Harbor we passed under the George Washington Bridge, known by New Yorkers as the GW or The George, named after the nation’s first president and, at the time of its opening in 1931, the world’s longest main bridge span, a distinction it held until the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937.  A title it does continue to hold is that of world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge.  More than 103 million motorists cross her span every day. 

Off in the distance we could see Lady Liberty herself.  Most of us know that the Statue of Liberty was a gift to the U.S. from France, dedicated in 1887.   But did you know that it hasn’t always been associated with immigrants?  It was originally intended to symbolize the influence of America’s fight for independence, and ultimate liberation from English rule, on the French Revolution.  The French participated in and supported America’s fight for independence; that experience informed their own revolution and when that revolution ended, they used the U.S. Declaration of Independence as a model for their own document.  At the time, many Americans found a statue depicting America as a land of liberty a bit…ironic.  We had only recently abolished slavery and African Americans were still routinely attacked or killed; Native Americans were still fighting to maintain their land and protect their way of life; there was an existing ban on Chinese immigrants; and factory workers routinely worked 6-day/60-hour work weeks for poverty-level wages.  But newly arriving immigrants saw something else.  Oral histories recall their exhilaration at what they viewed as a welcoming sight, an indication of America’s welcoming spirit.

It wasn’t until the 1930s, when pro-immigration activists began using a poem written in 1883 as part of an effort to raise funds to pay for a pedestal for the statue that Americans began to universally associate the Statue of Liberty with immigration.  The poem, whose phrase, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” is so familiar to us now, was largely forgotten after funds for the pedestal were raised, but in 1903 a friend of the poet’s successfully lobbied to have it printed in its entirety on a plaque and placed at the base of the statue in memorial to its author.

We were only in port for 8 hours, and had never been to the 9/11 Museum, so that’s where we chose to spend our time.  Our tour began at St. Paul’s Chapel, AKA the Little Chapel That Stood, located just two blocks from the first tower attacked on 9/11.  It is said that George Washington came here to pray immediately after his inauguration.  The chapel was one of the few buildings to escape the Great Fire of New York in 1770.  When the Twin Towers were struck on 9/11, debris fell all around causing a sycamore tree in the corner of the church cemetery to fall, but instead of falling towards the building – as it rightly should have – and destroying it, it fell away from the chapel, sparing it once again.  The chapel became Ground Zero for aid workers and continued to operate as such for a full eight months after the attack.  Missing persons posters were placed on the fence surrounding the chapel grounds.

Constructed post WW-II, the Twin Towers complex was built specifically to promote world peace through trade.  At the time of the attack, 50,000 people a day were coming to work in 12 million square feet of office, hotel and commercial space among the seven buildings of the complex, representing 430 businesses from 28 different countries.  Each day these workers were joined by an estimated 80,000 visitors passing through the 5-acre Austin J. Tobin Plaza shopping mall below.  Another 10,000 people would visit the observatory at the top of Two World Trade Center daily. 

On September 11, 2001 nineteen men trained by Al-Qaeda simultaneously hijacked four passenger planes with the intent of using them to attack four major U.S. targets, killing as many people as possible.  2,977 people from 57 different countries died that day, including 412 first responders.  According to a news article written in 2018 nearly 10,000 more individuals who were in the World Trade Center or served as First Responders have been diagnosed with illnesses caused by the contaminants spewed into the air that day.

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum commemorates the attacks and pays tribute to those who lost their lives.  It is incredible.  As I write this it has been almost six months since we visited, and still I struggle to find the words to tell you about our experience.  Architects and designers have done a wonderful job of honoring those who died in the attack, and those who have passed away since as a result of injuries sustained or exposure to toxins.  There is a reverence to the exterior grounds that cannot be conveyed by the written word – at least not by me.  The museum itself is alive with the spirit not only of those who perished, but with the pain and agony of those left behind.  The visceral impact of twisted metal, fire engines liquified by the heat coming off the rubble, real-time videos of the events of that day cannot be over-stated.  Walking through a room filled with the photos of those lost as a result of the attacks, listening to recordings of friends and loved ones sharing their memories of them…is heart-wrenching.  We don’t have many pictures from the museum itself, because we were too overcome with emotion to be snapping photos. If you have an opportunity to visit yourself, we would highly recommend. It is an experience you will not soon forget.

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Welcome to Halifax, where “car” is “currh,” “bar” is “burrh,” and “furrh” is…you guessed it! “far!” We were fortunate that our Canadian friends, Nancy and Wayne, have a friend who lives here in Halifax and she graciously agreed to play tour guide for a day – a job she did quite well!

Elaine picked us up at the cruise terminal and made a made dash to Peggy’s Cove, getting us there before all the tour buses arrived. No one seems to know why Peggy’s Cove is so famous – we’re guessing it’s the beautiful location – but legend says it is named after the wife of a local fisherman. As a child, the wife was the sole survivor of a shipwreck near the mouth of the cove. She didn’t know her name and the family who adopted her named her Peggy, and began calling the waters where she was found Peggy’s Cove. Peggy’s Cove is home to Peggy’s Lighthouse, surrounded by a huge outcropping of granite rocks, great for climbing and exploring. We were greeted by a traditional bagpipe player. There used to be a post office inside the lighthouse, but they moved it to the gift shop a while back. You can still get the special postmark in the shape of a lighthouse if you mail a letter from there.

The nearby village has charming homes with brightly colored Adirondack chairs and wildflowers. Roadside vendors offer freshly boiled lobsters and lobster rolls, or you can get a fresh guy to take home and cook yourself. The area is home to many artists. One of them turned a granite slab in his back yard into an homage to Peggy’s Cove’s history. At the age of 70 he picked up his chisel and power tools and set about “releasing the figures sleeping in the rock for over 10 million years.” If you look closely at the picture you’ll see an inlaid plaque in the left side – this is a carving the artist did of himself and his wife. He also included his pet seagull. You’ll find him to the left of the angel’s wing.

We paid a visit to Alexander Keith’s brewery, in business since 1820. We were educated on the different malts used for different beer (but you better listen closely because these Halifax folk talk REALLY fast!), the differences between hop pods and pellets, and the process of brewing. There were plenty of generous samples, music and story telling along the way. It was really fun.†

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St. John’s is the oldest and most easterly city in North America.  It began as a fishing village and was particularly renowned for its abundance of codfish.  Reading the history of the area as we wandered through The Rooms, the town’s cultural museum I had to wonder what would make these people want to stay here – crossing a rough and unforgiving Atlantic ocean, water ways that would freeze over in the winter making it impossible to get in or out, bitter cold winds that would knock them off their feet, waist-deep snow they couldn’t drag a wagon through…why ever would you want to come here?  But come the Scotts and English did, joining the native Innuit, Innu and Mi’kmaq peoples to create the “New Scotland” or Nova Scotia.

We spent the morning enjoying this incredibly pedestrian friendly town (if there’s a person on the sidewalk, no matter where they are, cars will stop, just in case you want to cross the street there – it’s great!), catching glimpses of its history and character at every turn.  We learned about Screech, a Canadian brew created long ago by poor folks who couldn’t afford to buy a shot of the Jamaican rum arriving on their shores.  They’d sneak out back, gather up the empty rum barrels, then take the barrels apart and boil the wood to leech out the rum that had been absorbed by the wood.  The result is something like moonshine, with a very high alcohol content and, well, shall we say “unique?” taste.  Rumor has it the drink got its name when an American sailor was having a drink with a Canadian sailor.  The Canadian offered to share his alcohol.  He gulped down his shot and when the American gulped his he let out a screech and forever more the brew has been known as Screech.

Newfoundland is also known for its “jellybean” row houses.  In an effort to rejuvenate the downtown area in the 1970s someone decided to give the area a face-lift by painting the business in jellybean colors.  The idea was such a hit that man homeowners followed suit and now it’s part of the fabric of the community.

We visited The Rooms and gained an appreciation for the depth of community shared by the people who live here, their tremendous pride in their heritage and the difficult lessons they’ve learned along the way about how to blend their different cultures and beliefs.  Newfoundlanders love their music; a favorite pastime is Kitchen Parties.  Friends gather at one another’s homes, usually ending up in the kitchen (thus the name) playing whatever instrument they have handy.  Don’t play?  No worries!  Just grab the “ugly stick” and tap along.  No good host would open their doors without an ugly stick – a large stick (usually a mop or broom) adorned with a wide assortment of noisemakers that is tapped in time to the music being played.

Our afternoon was spent at Witless Bay where we saw puffins, minke whales, northern gannets and humpback whales.  The gannets helped us find the minkes – where there were gannets circling overhead there were minkes circling down below, stirring up the capelin (small fish).  When the minke surfaces to gulp his share of the fish the gannets immediately dive-bomb for their portion.   Gannets dive at a speed of 35-40 mph, their bodies straight and rigid, wings tucked close to the body but angled back, extending beyond the tail, piercing the water like machine gun fire.

The last stop of the day was Signal Hill, where the world’s first transatlantic wireless signal was received in 1901.  It was a full day!

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If you’re Ken what better way to end your time in Ireland than on a golf course?  With the help of the ship’s concierge, Ken and six of our fellow passengers made an early tee-time at the near-by Cobh Golf Club expecting 60-degree temperatures and morning rain.  Instead they got 65+ temperatures and beautiful blue sky.  It was a great day for golf and a gorgeous course.  And there was even time afterwards to stroll through the town, enjoy a pint and find a keepsake.

Tiny little Cobh’s main claim to fame is that it was the Titanic’s last stop on its way to New York.  It’s an interesting thing to take such pride in, but Cobh does, naming bars, restaurants and stores after the ship and offering a walking tour of the town that allow you the same experience Titanic travelers would have had before that fateful night.  Not quite the tone we were looking for, seeing as how our ship will be following that same course when we leave here.

From Cobh we set sail for St. John’s Newfoundland, a four-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean.  We’re headed home. The next time our feet touch land it will be North American soil. 

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Dublin, Ireland is known as the land of 1,000 pubs.  The establishments are the center of life in Dublin; they are where relationships are forged, deals are made, life events are celebrated.  It’s also the home of four Nobel-prize-winning novelists:  Yeats, Beckett, Shaw and Heaney.  And its Trinity College is host to the Book of Kells Exhibition. 

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book created in an Irish monastery around 1800 AD.  Latin text is supplemented with decorations like borders, initials and miniature illustrations.  It is considered the world’s most famous medieval manuscript and is an Irish national treasure.

As we made our away around town on a kind of self-guided walking tour we past Christ Church Cathedral.  One of the oldest houses of worship in the city, Christ Church has been serving its community since 1030, and not always just as a church.  In the 16^th and 17^th centuries the crypt of the church also served as a market, a meeting place for businesses and even as a pub!  A 1633 letter speaks of the vaults from one end of the church to the other being made into “tipping houses,” or pubs, for the distribution of beer, wine and tobacco.  In the 1870s a Dublin whiskey distiller donated nearly $40 million in today’s dollars to restore and save the church, which continues to offer multiple services to its community today, including on-line services.

Not far away is the Dublin Castle, serving as the seat of English, and later British rule in Ireland from 1204 to 1922.  After the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Irish War of Independence the castle was handed over to the newly independent Irish state and has been used for important national events, such as state dinners and commemorations ever since.  Individuals entertained at the castle include Benjamin Franklin, the Duke of Wellington, Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, Princess Grace, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela and Queen Elizabeth.  Every Ireland president since 1938 has been inaugurated at the castle.  Today it not only houses a museum of its history; it continues to house active government offices.

Finally, no visit to Dublin would be complete without a stop by Temple Bar (coming full circle to the land of pubs…).  Temple Bar is a district within Dublin that gets its name from an 18^th Century resident, Sir William Temple, a renowned teacher and philosopher who was provost of Trinity College and had his home in this area.  A barr was the term for a raised sandbank that essentially served as a walkway, a series of which were located in the area when Temple lived here, thus creating the initial reference to Temple Barr (spelling later changed to a single “r”).  Over time the Temple Bar area became a slum.  In the 1980s a bus company was going to develop the area into a large bus depot.  While plans were being developed the company offered buildings in the area for low rent, making it a great location for shop owners, small stores, pubs, etc.  The Temple Bar area was born.  When the bus company completed its planning and was ready to move forward with the depot, protestors prevented them from doing so.  Today Temple Bar is the happening place of Dublin, and the Temple Bar itself boasts the city’s largest selection of whiskeys.

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Having never been to Ireland the image we had in our heads was one of ragged cliffs, rolling green hills and sheep.  The area surrounding Belfast did not disappoint. 

Our tour today was to the Giants’ Causeway, a collection of what is said to be 40,000 basalt stones (we didn’t take time to count) of various formations located where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Irish Sea and created when a giant on the Atlantic side got into an argument with a giant on the Irish side.  Finn MacCool (gotta love the name) was on the Irish side.  Day after day the giants argued and hurled stones at one another.  Eventually the Atlantic giant had had enough.  He began throwing stones into the ocean between his land and Finn’s, creating a bridge for himself.  Finn saw what the giant was doing and went running to his wife.  “Oh my goodness!  What have I done?!”  he cried.  “That giant is huge!  I don’t stand a chance against him!” 

“Leave it to me,” his wife answered calmly.  “Climb in that crib over there in the corner and keep quiet.”

Minutes later the other giant was rapping on the door.  Mrs. MacCool opened the door, and the giant said, “Where’s that MacCool?  I’ve come to settle a score with him!” 

“He’s not home just now,” Mrs. MacCool calmly replied.  “Why don’t you come in and have a Guinness while you wait.  He’ll be back shortly.”

The giant entered the home and started to have a seat when he noticed the crib at the back of the room.  Curious, he went to say hello to the wee one.  There was Finnis MacCool, all diapered and cooing.  “Oh my goodness!”  The giant thought to himself.  “If the baby’s this big, how big must the father be?  I don’t stand a chance!”  And he ran out the door and back across the ocean, never to be seen again.  And this is how the formations that are the Giants’ Causeway were created.  Or maybe they were created 50-60 million years ago by an ancient volcanic eruption.  You decide.  If the scenery looks familiar maybe you recognize it from the latest ‘Star Wars’ movie, scenes from which were filmed here.

Along the way we passed by Dunluce Castle ruins, said to be the inspiration for C.S. Lewis’ ‘Chronicles of Narnia.’  Lewis grew up playing in these ruins, occupied by various Scottish clans until the town was abandoned in 1770.  Billy the Kid is also from this area.

We stopped to check out the Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge Ken was supposed to cross today.  Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), there weren’t enough adventurous souls to join him and the excursion was canceled.  Too bad, because Ken would have loved to do this – especially after he saw where it was located.  Fishermen used to have salmon fishing nets off Carrick-A-Reed Island.  The bridge was erected over a 98 feet deep and 65 feet wide chasm, giving them a way to get to those nets.  The bridge is made entirely of rope and originally had a rail on only one side.  Fishermen carrying their gear only had one hand available to hold onto a rail with, so a second rail was unnecessary.  Take a look at these pictures and imagine crossing that bridge with your arms full of fishing gear and only one rope “rail.”  There’s a reason Pam signed up for the Causeway tour and left the bridge crossing to Ken!

Ken couldn’t possibly be in the land of Guinness and not give it a try, so after trekking through the Giants’ Causeway we joined friends at a local pub where Ken sampled the Guinness and Ted put Irish whiskey to the test.

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Pam was sharing with the ship’s hairdresser, Mario, how disappointed she was that we would be so close to London when the ship docked in Southampton, UK, but not have enough time to do anything more than drive through.  Mario had the perfect solution:  get off the ship in Southampton, spend the next two nights in London, and get back on the ship at its next stop in Liverpool.  What a great idea!

We immediately set to work booking a hotel, train tickets and activities, only to receive a notification from the train company a few days later that a strike was planned and could lead to service outages.  Rather than take the risk, Ken stepped up to the challenge of driving a standard on the “wrong” side of the road and off we went.  What a fabulous 48-hour adventure!

A short cab ride got us from the ship to Hertz and minutes later we were on our way – Ken shifting and Pam navigating.  Two-and-a-half hours of white-knuckle driving and a few missed round-about exits later we arrived at the garage.  We tucked the car away and set out to find our hotel in Trafalgar square.  It took some doing, but we found it tucked away in an alley just off the square and had just enough time to drop off our bags, get a life-saving map and directions from the staff to the meeting point for our first excursion and grab a quick lunch at Burger King (of all places!).  It took all of three minutes to walk to the “tube” (subway station).  Thanks to our time in DC visiting Kim and Jack we knew just what to do to get our tickets and gain entry for the train.  Using the tube was a piece of cake, and the map helped us find the rest of the way to the tour – a visit to Windsor Castle!

It began to rain on our way to the Castle (what visit to London wouldn’t be complete without a little rain?) and continued for most of the time we were there.  We were supposed to have three hours at the Castle, but by the time we walked the mile-and-a-half from the bus to the ticket counter (okay, maybe we exaggerate – but only a little) and waited in the incredibly long line to get in, we were left with a little more than an hour.  It ended up being plenty of time, and we loved it! 

The plan was to be back at the hotel by 6:30, plenty of time to change and clean up before reporting for our dinner cruise on the River Thames.  Unfortunately, the bus got stuck in traffic, and it was soon clear there would be no time for changing.  Then it became clear there would be no time for stopping by the hotel.  Then it became clear we needed a new plan, or we wouldn’t make it at all.  Enter the life-saving map.  We found the pier the cruise was leaving from, the tube station nearest the pier, and the tube station nearest our drop-off point.  We mapped out the route, and when the bus finally dropped us off at a little after 7:00 we made the mad dash to the pier…but where was the loading point for the cruise????  Thankfully it stopped raining long enough for us to figure that out, and we stepped onto our boat, a little worse for the wear from the day in the rain and our frantic run for the boat, but just in time for a thoroughly enjoyable cruise.  The rain began again almost as soon as we sat down, but it stopped early enough for us to be able to enjoy some time on the top deck and get some good pictures.

We were up early the next day for our London in a Day tour that took us to the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace (the public is only allowed to tour the inside in July and August when the queen is on holiday), a tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower of London.  Along the way we enjoyed a great panoramic tour of the city and its many landmarks and incredible historic buildings.  We finished the day just in time to drop our things at the hotel and find dinner before hitting a London play.  We had dinner in this great basement chophouse that used to be a brothel and enjoyed terrific seats at a play that involved great acting and a story that wasn’t so great (for us).

We were out the door again by 7:00 a.m. Friday, taking ourselves on a walking tour of London’s Parliament Square, the House of Parliament, and Big Ben on our way to a self-guided tour of Westminster Abbey.  Our goal was to be on the road by 11:15, so it was important to be at the head of the line when Westminster opened.  Good thing we were!  We were third in line when we got there at 8:30; by the time the doors opened at 9:30 it was an hour wait from the end of the line – and growing.  We were in the car and on the road by 11:25.  With no time for bathroom stops or food we made it to Liverpool a little before 5:00 – only 50 minutes past the time we were supposed to have the car back, but 2 hours before the ship was set to sail.  The guy at Hertz gave us a ride to the ship and all was well. 

Word to the wise:  if you’re planning a trip to London you definitely need more than 48 hours.  Giver yourself at least 7-10 days, but if you’ve got 48 hours to kill, London’s a great place to do it!

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Today we visited a 14^th Century castle that has been occupied by the same family for more than 700 years.  The original castle was built in 778 by Charlemagne, but all that is left of it are a few wall ruins.  The current castle was built in 1306 by the nephew of Pope Clement V.  It is part of two fortresses built in the 12^th and 14^th Centuries inside a waterless moat.  The castle was built to be a fortress.  The moat has never held water and was never intended to; instead there are tunnels beneath it that served as an escape route for the family if the castle was ever attacked.  The purpose of the moat was to buy them time.  There were no windows in the original structure, and no doors in the entry way.  Its entry was hidden; by the time attackers located it they would have been pummeled by arrows.

Between 1860 and 1870 the castle was restored and somewhat transformed by the same architect who did Notre Dame and one of his pupils.  They added windows and doorways, converted old stables into a formal dining room for entertaining…all kinds of creative things.   All those changes remain in place today.

There is also a private chapel on site where the family still has private ceremonies like baptisms.  Absolutely nothing has been done to the chapel since it was originally built.  The paint on the ceilings and alter look as if it was placed there yesterday.  It is a compound of natural pigment, oils and egg whites.  The chapel was built facing the east so that when the light shines through in the morning it illuminates the stained glass creating a beautiful affect.

We were guided through the castle and its grounds by a very crotchety well-informed gentleman.  Pam commented to someone that he must be a member of the family; otherwise he would have been fired for rudeness long ago.  Turns out he is a member of the family!  He is a son of the current family.  The parents have both passed away, but one sibling lives in the main house of the castle, another lives on a vineyard owned by the family and this guy lives in the quarters above what used to be the stables and are now guest bathrooms.  Guess we might be a little grouchy with that arrangement, too.

We weren’t allowed to take photos inside the castle, but Pam was able to find some online that will give you a sense of its grandeur.  We were told that the family still uses the kitchen every single day.  It looked just like it does in the picture we’ve included here, so we’re not so sure we believe him.

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If you’ve been to Bordeaux but haven’t been here in the last five years you might not recognize it. We’re told the government has invested significant money sprucing things up and it appears they have succeeded.

We arrived in Bordeaux early one sunny Sunday morning to find people walking their dogs, joggers getting their morning run in, and cyclists enjoying a quiet morning ride.  As the day progressed we observed friends and families gathered in community gardens and open green spaces for impromptu picnics or enjoying the city’s “swimming pool,” large concrete area similar to what we call “splash pools” in the U.S., but with water seeping out of small openings throughout the pads rather than through fountains.  The air was filled with an unmistakable “chill” vibe, and it was immediately clear that whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey in life you are welcome here.  Floor to ceiling apartment windows were flung open to fresh air and sunshine, their small balconies beckoning the inhabitants to take a step outside while enjoying their morning drink of choice.,

We didn’t have any excursions planned for our first day here; instead we spent the day wandering the streets, admiring the many monuments around the city and drinking in the culture.  We passed by the Bordeaux Cathedral, dedicated to St. Andre, and its bell tower, Tour Pey Berland, topped with the beautiful gold statue, Notre Dam d’Aquitaine.  A service was underway so we didn’t get to see the inside, but you can just imagine how magnificent it must be.  At the end of the Quincones Square, the town’s principal square, we found Pam’s favorite statue, the Girondins.  Girondis is a monument to the memory of all of those who perished during the French Revolution when many people were killed for trying to implement democracy.  The French Statue of Liberty positioned at the top of the monument represents the triumph of the Republic in this very important battle.

After a relaxing day exploring the town we were treated to another Around the World Special Event – dinner at Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte, a 14^th Century winery purchased by a couple of French Olympic skiers in 1990 who knew nothing about the wine business, but loved the location of the winery and the fact that it was one of the few in the region that produced both white and red wines.  When they purchased the property, the winery was not known for producing quality wines, but the couple quickly set to work learning their new trade and by 2000 the reputation of the winery was beginning to change.  They are now viewed as trendsetters, using satellite imagery to determine when best to initiate the hand-picking of all their grapes, applying the latest optical sorting technologies.  They have a beautiful property that offered a wonderful setting for a delicious meal.

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Today we are in Basque country – Bilbao Spain.  Driving through this vibrant city today you would never guess that a little less than 30 years ago it was a town struggling to survive after the collapse of its steel and shipbuilding industries.  Bilbao rallied by investing heavily in culture, with the Guggenheim museum at the center of that investment.  The Guggenheim opened in 1992. Since then it has attracted more than 20 million visitors to the city, a phenomenon now known as “the Bilbao” or “Guggenheim effect.”

Our time was spent among the farms and green pastures about 40 minutes outside of Bilbao, visiting the world’s best collection of Rolls-Royces and other luxury vehicles housed on the grounds of an ancient castle.  Sound romantic?  It was pretty cool.

The castle and its collection were owned by Miguel de la Via and his wife, who made their fortune in the limestone quarries of the area.  They did not have any children but were very close to their nieces and nephews who now own and maintain the property, the cars and the quarry – the largest in Spain.  De la Via purchased the overgrown grounds and ruins in 1985 and set to work restoring the castle to its original grandeur.  He also bought adjoining property to protect his privacy.  All told the property includes about 50 acres bought to be the couple’s summer home.  It continues to serve that same purpose for the nieces and nephews and their families.

That same year he also began collecting his prized automobiles.  He was in his mid-20s at the time.  By the time de la Via died in 2009 at the age of 72 his collection had grown to 72 cars, 45 of which are Rolls Royces.  Along the way he hired a gentleman to help care for the cars.  That same man continues the job today.  His son began accompanying him when he was just 7 and joined him as an employee when he was 18.  He was our guide for the day. 

The cars fill a total of 6 showrooms and in addition to the Rolls include a Jaguar, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Cadillac Hispano Suiza and Ford Model T.  Among the more unique items is a stagecoach once owned by a Spanish Count who would use the stagecoach to travel more than 700 km at a time.  It would take two weeks to make the journey, so the Count had a toilet built into the stagecoach to make the trip a little more…comfortable.  There is also a 1936 firetruck that is one of only three of its kind left in the world.  There are two black Rolls Royces previously owned by the Queen mother.  One is a convertible, her summer car; the other a hardtop for winter.  He has a RR Phantom IV owned by the ruler of Kuwait.  There were only 18 of these vehicles made.  The collection includes a list of every one of the 18 vehicles paired with its original owner.

The most prestigious of the collection are kept in the castle’s Loizaga Tower, complete with a red carpet, chandeliers and classical music playing in the background.  This is where the first models of the Silver Ghost series can be found. 

Each of the cars is started every 1-2 days, driven at least once a week and cleaned every Monday and Friday.  Not a bad job, eh?

Following our visit to the museum we enjoyed a panoramic tour of Bilbao (including the famed Guggenheim museum) and made a short visit to the town square area of Bilbao before heading back to the ship.

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Suffering from a sinus infection Pam begged out of touring today, leaving Ken to explore the city on his own.  Facing a historic town of historic churches, old palaces, a 2^nd Century lighthouse, and unique fisherman houses, Ken made the only sensible choice – he headed straight for the castle!

Located in the center of the old town, the San Anton castle keeps watch over the entrance to the port.  Built as a means of defense for the Coruna people in the 16^th Century the castle today serves as an archaeological and history museum.  Ken had a great time exploring the grounds and enjoying the views before heading back to check on Pam (who’s doing just fine, by the way).

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We are loving Portugal!  Today we discovered the wonderful town of Porto.  We toured a beautiful old cathedral, visited a magnificent train station, learned the history of the area’s port wine industry, and felt the wind in our hair as we cruised under the town’s six bridges on a river boat.  We drove through the town’s Lion’s Square, passing by the world’s most beautiful McDonald’s (it used to be an imperial house; when it was converted to a McDonald’s they kept the original chandeliers and other items, making it the most unique McDonald’s you’re ever likely to visit), a church with the largest external panel of ceramic tiles in the city, and the skinniest house in the world. 

Just as Champaign can be legitimately called Champaign only if it comes from a specific region in France, wine can only be legitimately called Port if it comes from the Douro Valley of Portugal.  We visited Cockburn’s, in business in this same location since the 17^th Century, and the oldest Port wine manufacturer in the region.  Port wine earned its name in the 12^th Century when monks in the area began shipping their product downriver.  Buyers there began referring to it as Port wine because it came from the town of Port.

Once a 16^th Century Benedictine Monastery, the Sao Bento Railway Station has been in operation since 1901.  The tiles of the station were put in a place a few years later.  Along the top of the walls are scenes that depict the evolution of Porto’s transportation systems.  The blue and white tiles that decorate the walls illustrate the history of the city, including epic battles and important figures from the area’s history.  The artistry is incredible.

The skinniest house in Porto stands between two churches, one built in 1628 for Carmelite nuns and the other for an order of monks in 1768.  A law existed at the time that made it illegal for the two churches to share a wall (probably something to do with separation of the sexes), so rather than simply leave a 3’ wide space between the two they built a house there.  We’re told the house was actually occupied until 1980.  Talk about a tiny house!

Fun fact of the day:  JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame is married to a Portuguese man and lived in Porto for a while.  It is said that this where she got much of her inspiration for the imagery of the Harry Potter series…the uniform the students of Hogwarts wear is the same as the traditional Porto university uniform.  Rowling is also credited with saving a landmark bookstore from bankruptcy.  The story goes that despite being named the 3^rd most beautiful bookstore in the world, the store was scheduled to file bankruptcy the same week Rowling commented in an interview that its bookcase inspired the one in her book.  The bookstore became famous overnight.  Last year its sales topped $3M.  Pretty nice impact, eh?

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High on a hill in the mountains of Sintra, Portugal sits the beautiful Palace of Pena.  Originally constructed as a 15^th Century monastery that was severely damaged by an earthquake in 1755, the Palace occupies 85 acres.  Arriving at the palace gates requires one to navigate a lengthy series of hairpin turns on a steep and narrow cobblestone road before hiking an additional mile or so on foot up the steep hillside, but it is worth the effort. 

Like so many of the buildings we’ve seen along the way, the architectural design of the palace contains a great deal of symbolism.  The entry gate retains markings of its beginnings as a monastery:  the hand above the arch signifies the right hand of God presiding over the place.  Continuing up the walkway, another arch portrays the four stations of the cross.  Four wolfskins adorn the top of the same entry symbolizing the King’s Masonic membership, and snakes carved into the columns signify the union between the royal couple’s two countries, Germany and Portugal.  The first royal family moved into the palace in 1847.  In 1885 the King who was living in the palace was assassinated, along with his son.  His wife and remaining son immediately fled the area, taking very little of their possessions with them.  The state of Portugal assumed ownership of the palace and turned it into a museum, leaving it almost exactly as it was when the Queen and young prince fled.

After lunch in the town of Sentra, we headed to Caba da Roca, the westernmost point of continental Europe, long thought by some to be the end of the world.  When you stand at the edge of the 500-foot rocky ledge, with nothing but sea as far as they eye can see, it is easy to understand how one might draw that conclusion.  This cape is where north and south winds meet, and they are in a serious battle for superiority.  It’s all you can do to stand up straight as your blasted by gusts from all sides.  Not even the pine trees can grow here; the severe winds keep them from ever becoming more than mere bushes hugging the ground for survival.

Further along the coast is the seaside town of Cascais, known for its sandy beaches.  Cascais was the first “resort” city in Portugal and the first city in the country to have electricity.  American singer Brian Williams spent part of his childhood here, and has said his song, “The Summer of ’69” was inspired by his time in Cascais.

Oh!  And we learned something new today.  Do you know where the word “tea” comes from?  Turns out it is an anagram for:  Transportation Herbs Aromatic.  Turns out a Portuguese woman became the Queen of England in the 16^th Century, bringing with her love of herbs steeped in hot water.  The King would have the herbs shipped to England, and on the boxes was stamped: “Herbs Aromatic Transportation,” which became TEA.  You learn something new every day!

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We arrived in Lisbon just in time for our 1:15 tour to Obidos, a town whose history dates back to 308 BC.   Ken climbed the walls of the Obidos Castle, a 12^th Century fortification that played a major strategic and military role in Portugal’s emergence as a nation.  He walked the full mile of its exterior walls and enjoyed some fantastic views.

Meanwhile, Pam checked out the town’s trademark Ginja, a liqueur made from sour cherries grown in the area using a recipe developed by a local 17^th Century monastery.  The liqueur is served in edible dark chocolate cups, adding to its lusciousness!

Narrow cobblestone streets of whitewashed buildings that play host to well-established bougainvillea give the city its captivating charm.  We visited Parish Church of Sana Maria in the town’s Pillory Square offers, whose interior is decorated with the blue and white tiles Portugal is so well known for. 

It was a nice little town, and we were confident we had plenty of time to complete our visit and make it back to the ship in time to join friends for a sunset river cruise we had scheduled for tonight.  What we didn’t know was that what was originally billed as a 4-hour tour had been changed to a 5-hour tour, and that traffic would make that 5-hour tour a 6-hour tour.  Uh-oh!

We didn’t find out until we arrived at Obidos that the length of the tour had been changed.  We immediately emailed our friends to let them know that we would be about 30 minutes late meeting them.  When we began our return trip Google maps said we’d be back at 6:00.  We were originally planning to meet our friends at 6:00, so we breathed a sigh of relief – allowing time to run back to our cabin to drop things off and pick up some additional layers of clothing we should only be a few minutes late.  Ken continued monitoring the route as we drove.  Now it said arrival at 6:15, then 6:20, then 6:35, then 6:45…. this was not good.  We emailed our friends and told them to leave without us.  Ken had already called ahead to the boat rental company and told them we’d be 15 minutes late; now we wondered if we would make it at all.  Just as the bus pulled into the port parking lot at 6:45, friends of ours were exiting a taxi.  Pam flagged the driver down as he pulled away and arranged for him to take us to the river cruise.  Ken stayed with the taxi to be sure he didn’t drive away while Pam ran to the cabin for the extra layers.  Our awesome taxi driver raced to the sailing pier while Ken took a call from our friends and assured them, once again, we were on our way.  We finally made it to the sailboat at 7:25, and off we went.

Oh my gosh!  It was so much fun!  Pam has always sworn she would never get on a sailboat for fear of sliding off.  Turns out those fears were legit!  They say you need wind to sail, and we definitely had that!  It was a blustery 60 degrees as we headed out; good thing there was green wine (yes, green!) and beer to keep us warm.  The captain raised the sails and the tilting began.  Our friends Rich and Bob were on the wrong side of the boat for that and found themselves hanging on for dear life.  It was hilarious!  Pam was on the opposite side, but her turn was coming.  We laughed so hard we cried and witnessed a beautiful sunset.  It was well worth the effort to get there, and we’re so glad we made it!

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Seville, Spain is best known as the home of Flamenco dancing. One would think that we would take advantage of being here to witness some impressive displays of that dance, but by the time we arrived we were ready for a break. Instead of touring we opted for a quiet wander through the narrow alleyways and social courtyards, and a walk along its beautiful beach. It was a bit chilly for our tastes, but the locals didn’t seem to mind! The town square was just beginning to come to life as we made our way back to the ship, and that’s when we came across the fellow with the marionettes. Enjoy this little taste of Seville…

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Barcelona is one of our favorite cities.  It has an energy fed by history, incredible architecture and a genuine spirit of hospitality.  Having been here before we opted to keep it simple and do the hop on/hop off tour.  Here are some of the highlights…

Our first stop involved a gondola ride to a castle at the top of Barcelona’s one mountain, Montjuic, Castell De Montjuic.  What became a symbol of government repression began as a simple medieval lighthouse.  In the mid-1600’s Barcelona’s government ordered that a small walled fort be erected around the lighthouse to protect the city during a period of revolt.  Over time that small fort became a fortress, then a military prison.  Towards the end of the 19^th Century state repression of social uprisings was indiscriminate.  The castle was used as a place for imprisonment, torture, trials and executions.  During Barcelona’s Civil War nearly 1,500 people were imprisoned in the fortress; 250 were executed.  In 1940 the president of Catalonia was executed here – the only democratically-elected incumbent President in Europe to be executed.  Today it is a history museum.

Back on the bus we rode past the National Palace, now home to the National Museum of Catalan Art (NMAC).  The Palace was originally built as the main building and an architectural exhibit for Barcelona’s 1929 International Exhibition (like a world fair).  The Exhibition focused on industry, sports and art, and offered an opportunity for engineers and architects to experiment with new techniques.  As far as we can find out no one ever occupied the National Palace; following the Exhibition it was immediately converted into the NMAC, Barcelona’s largest museum of any kind.

The Plaza De Spaniard was also built as part of the 1929 Exhibition.

Built in 1900, the Las Arenas de Barcelona was one of three bullfighting rings in Barcelona and had a seating capacity of 15,000.  A declining interest in bullfighting led to the closure of the ring in 1977.  It reopened as a major shopping center in 2011with a huge rooftop viewing platform and is now one of the city’s main attractions for night-time viewing activities.

The Hospital San Paul was created in 1401 when six individual hospitals within Barcelona merged to become one.  By the end of the 19^th Century the city had outgrown the hospital’s original buildings, and this new complex opened in 1930.  It continued to serve the city uninterrupted until 2009 when a more modern facility was opened just down the road.  In 2014 the building was converted into a museum of art nouveau architecture.

Pam’s love of Barcelona is tied directly to its most famous architect, Anthony Gaudi.  Last time we were in Barcelona we made a comprehensive visit to his famous church project, La Sagrada Familia and walked through his apartment building, Casa Mila.  Her goal today was to walk through Casa Battlo, a second apartment complex he built, and the famous Park Guell.  Unfortunately, by the time we arrived at Casa Battlo there was not enough time to tour it and make it to the park, so we opted to get back on the bus and head straight to the park.  Alas, all the tickets for touring the park had been sold by the time we arrived.  Looks like we’ll just have to come back.  We did find some pictures of the park on the Internet, though, and are including them here.  And for those interested in knowing more…

In 1885 Gaudi was commissioned to design a “garden city” that would be home to 60 villas set amidst a massive park.  Only two of the villas were ever completed – one occupied by the developer who commissioned the project and the other by Gaudi.  Gaudi’s designs were a little too “over the top” for the aristocrats of his day, and the developer was never able to sell the additional plots.  After several years of trying, he turned to Gaudi one day and told him it was time to move on.  Instead of making this a residential area they would turn it into a public park where everyone could enjoy Gaudi’s creativity.  The park was opened in 1922 and handed over to the city in 1929.  Unfortunately, by the time we arrived at  

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What a fantastic day! Today we got brave and scheduled a personal tour.  We were joined by a couple of our new friends and had a perfect (and full!) day in Rome.

Our first stop was the Catacombs of St. Sebastian.  Discovered in 1920 the Catacombs of St. Sebastian were a 2^nd Century Christian cemetery for more than 300 years.  It contains three levels of burial crypts; the first level is 15’ below the surface. The third and final level is 45’ below the surface.  There are more than 7 miles of tunnels built into volcanic rock, and each tunnel contains a variety of tombs and relics.  Some tombs are for one person, some for an entire family.  Loved ones would have come to the tombs to honor their dead with flowers or sacred oils just as we do with flowers on cemetery graves today.  Graffiti on the walls include prayers, poems and tributes to the apostles Peter and Paul.  More than 600 individual prayers have been found.  Some of the tombs contain headstones telling us about the person(s) buried here.  There are many tombs for small children.  One crypt is for a 75-year-old Roman man who converted to Christianity.  St. Sebastian, for whom the tombs are named, was also buried here.  He was a soldier in the Roman army who created to Christianity after a Christian woman healed his wounds from a poison arrow.  The arrow was said to have gone all the way through his body, entering on one side and sticking out the other.  Having survived the poisoned arrow St. Sebastian was later persecuted and whipped to death for his beliefs.

In the 3^rd Century AD a mausoleum was built above the catacombs.  St. Sebastian’s remains were moved here.  In the 4^th Century AD a cemeterial basilica was built on the spot to pay tribute to the apostles Peter and Paul.  The chapel next to the Catacombs was built in 1612.  Only a portion remains today – the original building was three times larger than the one we visited.  The wooden ceiling is amazing, as is the artwork, including a bust from the famous Italian sculptor Lorenzo Bernini.

Our next stop took us from 12^th Century AD to 1^st Century AD.  We began with the Basilica of St. Clement, which was known to have been built on top of a 4^th Century AD basilica.  The original basilica was destroyed by the Normans in 1084.  The Pope repaired it as best he could, but it was found to be unsafe around 1100 AD.  The decision was made to fill it with dirt and use it as the foundation for the current church.  This was discovered in 1857.  What wasn’t know was that the 4^th Century Church was built on top of yet another building, a private residence from the 3^rd Century.  The residence was owned by a man named, coincidentally, Clement, a Roman who converted to Christianity and secretly allowed church services to beheld in his home.  A narrow alley separates this home from a 1^st Century AD building, thought to be an apartment complex.  Within that building is evidence of a Mithraic religious site, a religion that was outlawed in 395 AD.  The 1^st Century building provides the cornerstone of the entire complex of the current structure.  Yet another building was recently found below the 1^st Century building, but excavations have not yet begun.

Our final stop of the morning was the Crypt of the Capuchin Friars.  Made completely of human bones, this may seem a creepy place to visit, but when you understand the context and purpose of its construction, it’s kinda cool.  Created in the 18^th Century, the crypt contains the remains of 3700 monks arranged in a variety of ways to decorate hallways and six distinct rooms.  The bodies of the monks were exhumed because there was no longer room in the monastery’s small cemetery for new bodies.  The exhumed bodies had to go somewhere.  It is unknown who came up with it, but someone had the ingenious idea to use the monks’ bodies to create a positive representation of Christian faith.  The main message of the crypt became:  Death is nothing to be afraid of.  Where you are now is what used to be; where we are now is what will be.  The crypt became a place of honor, and a few more monks were buried among the bones, a tribute to their service and commitment to Christ.  Everything in the crypt is made from human bones – lamps, altars, wall decorations…everything.

Unfortunately, we were unable to take pictures in any of these first three stops, but Pam found some on the Internet that will give you some sense of what we experienced.

We had a wonderful lunch at a local Italian restaurant – SO much delicious food and great company at an incredibly low price – and then it was off for photo opportunities at the Piazza Navona, the Statue of Reunification and the Coliseum.  Our drive, Achile, got us back to the ship just 15 minutes past the All Aboard time, but they let us back on anyway.  It was a fantastic day!

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With a history that dates back nearly 3,000 years to the ancient Greeks who founded the Naples area during the 8^th Century BC, Naples is home to Pompeii and Herculaneum, two famous sites destroyed and conserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.  We visited these sites when we were here 6 years ago, so we opted for a visit to the city of Naples this time around.

Naples is also home to the Vesuvius Observatory which monitors seismic activity, gas emissions and other indicators 24 hours a day with the goal of knowing at the earliest possible moment when the volcano may blow.  Experts say there is a growing bubbling mass of magma, like a “boiling pot of soup” beneath the volcano, and it could erupt any time, but no one really knows. 

Our walking tour of Naples took us through the Piazza Plebiscito where the Santa Maria degli Angeli a Pizzofalcone (say that three times fast!), a Baroque-style church designed by Francesco Grimaldi, is located.  It is also where the San Carlo Opera House and Royal Palace are located.  Since the 17^th Century Napoleans have used the piazza to hold large festivals, ceremonies and military parades.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t go inside any of these great buildings, but we enjoyed admiring them from afar.

Not far from the piazza is the beautiful Galleria Umberto, built in the late 1800s as a covered walkway and operating today as a four-story shopping mall.  Sculptures, mosaics and extraordinary plasterwork cover the building from the floor to the ceiling.  Everywhere you look there’s something breathtaking to look at.

There are 3 castles in Naples, and we visited one of them, Castle Nuovo.  The castle was built in 1279 and throughout its history was used as a private royal residence.  Today it houses the city council offices and two museums.

We had a little time before we had to rejoin our group, so we opted to stop into a local restaurant/bar.  The bar was located inside; the restaurant was outside.  We placed our order at one counter, received a ticket to present at the bar, and stood at the bar to enjoy our drinks.  Ken stuck to his traditional beer, and Pam had her first taste of limoncello (potent stuff!).  While we were enjoying our beverages, food began appearing…first it was crackers, then the olives, then a whole plate of hot appetizers – all free.  Italians really know how to treat you!

Did you know that the very first pizzeria in the world was opened in Naples in 1830?  And the classic Margherita pizza originated here.  It was created for visiting King Umberto I and queen Margherita.  Wanting to make a more patriotic-looking pizza, the chef used red tomato sauce, white mozzarella cheese and green basil leaves as toppings.  The Queen fell in love with it and Margherita pizza was born.

We had just enough time when we got back from Naples for a quick stroll through Sorrento, where our ship was anchored.  Sorrento is one of our favorite cities and we couldn’t remember why we had signed up for this tour of Naples instead of staying here and enjoying beautiful Sorrento.  Guess we’ll just have to come back!

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Today we visited Delphi, Greece, situated 2,000’ above sea level on the slopes of Mount Paranassu, and believed by ancient Greeks to be the physical and spiritual center of the universe.

According to Greek mythology, Zeus sent two eagles, one from each of the Universe, and told them to find the “navel” of the world.  The two eagles went their separate ways.  They ended up meeting in Delphi at the same time and Zeus declared it the center of the universe (after all, two eagles can’t be wrong, right?).

Delphi became a sacred site and home to the most famous oracle, a high priestess who could foresee the future.  People came from all over Greece and beyond to have their questions about the future answered by the Priestess of Apollo.  To divine the answers, the priestess would crawl underground through a narrow corridor to a cave where she would stay until she received answers from the gods.  She would emerge from the cave often seeming to be dazed and confused or in a state of shock.  Only the high priest could interpret her sometime cryptic answers to the questions that had been posed.  According to one source, if the questioner didn’t like the answer given, he could often acquire “clarity” with the payment of a few more gold coins.

Today it is known that two faults intersect directly below the Delphi temple where the caves were located.  Geologists have also determined that hallucinogenic gasses rising from a nearby spring are preserved within the temple rock.  One of the gasses is known to produce a narcotic effect.  These findings are in line with the legend attributing the Oracle’s magic powers to vapors in the cave.  It was believed the steam in the cave produced a gas that, when inhaled, gave clarity of mind and allowed an individual to see the future.

The 3-hour drive from the port to Delphi took us through a great little village with narrow little streets.  There were quite a few gasps and heart-stopping moments as our driver maneuvered our giant bus down these streets, around parked cars, on-coming traffic and inattentive pedestrians!

Our visit included a tour of the Delphi museum and the ruins of the Delphi community.

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Today we visited Delphi, Greece, situated 2,000’ above sea level on the slopes of Mount Paranassu, and believed by ancient Greeks to be the physical and spiritual center of the universe.

According to Greek mythology, Zeus sent two eagles, one from each of the Universe, and told them to find the “navel” of the world.  The two eagles went their separate ways.  They ended up meeting in Delphi at the same time and Zeus declared it the center of the universe (after all, two eagles can’t be wrong, right?).

Delphi became a sacred site and home to the most famous oracle, a high priestess who could foresee the future.  People came from all over Greece and beyond to have their questions about the future answered by the Priestess of Apollo.  To divine the answers, the priestess would crawl underground through a narrow corridor to a cave where she would stay until she received answers from the gods.  She would emerge from the cave often seeming to be dazed and confused or in a state of shock.  Only the high priest could interpret her sometime cryptic answers to the questions that had been posed.  According to one source, if the questioner didn’t like the answer given, he could often acquire “clarity” with the payment of a few more gold coins.

Today it is known that two faults intersect directly below the Delphi temple where the caves were located.  Geologists have also determined that hallucinogenic gasses rising from a nearby spring are preserved within the temple rock.  One of the gasses is known to produce a narcotic effect.  These findings are in line with the legend attributing the Oracle’s magic powers to vapors in the cave.  It was believed the steam in the cave produced a gas that, when inhaled, gave clarity of mind and allowed an individual to see the future.

The 3-hour drive from the port to Delphi took us through a great little village with narrow little streets.  There were quite a few gasps and heart-stopping moments as our driver maneuvered our giant bus down these streets, around parked cars, on-coming traffic and inattentive pedestrians!

Our visit included a tour of the Delphi museum and the ruins of the Delphi community.

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Santorini, Greece was the site of one of the world’s largest volcanic eruptions in all recorded history.  The eruption occurred about 3600 years ago and left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits thousands of feet deep.  That caldera filled with water and is now the Aegean Sea.  The Santorini Volcano continues to be the most active in the area.  Its last eruption was in 1950.

About 70 miles away, the Minoan Civilization of Crete was believed to have been destroyed around 1600 BC by a giant tsunami.  An archaeologist investigating the theory discovered there had been a large volcanic eruption of Santorini Volcano around that same time and traveled to Santorini to learn more. His research uncovered the settlement of Akrotiri.  Archaeological evidence proves there was a major earthquake on Santorini two weeks before the volcano erupted.  It is believed the earthquake caused the people to abandon Akrotiri.  Twenty minutes after the eruption the tsunami hit Crete, and soon after the town of Akortiri was buried in volcanic ash.

Buried in 20’ of volcanic ash Akrotiri was preserved much like Pompeii.  The big difference between the two is that no human remains have been found in Akrotiri; archaeologists think this is because the earthquake served as a warning to the people that a major eruption was about to happen, giving them time for an orderly evacuation.  Akrotiri happened about 1,000 before Pompeii.  Prior to the volcanic eruption the sea level was much higher.  Today Akrotiri sits high on a cliff, but back in the day it would have been a sea-side town.

Archaeologists have discovered that Akortiri had a city sewage system, water supply, paved roads and multi-storied buildings.  The walls of the buildings were thick, providing good protection against the cold and against seismic activity.  The corners of the buildings were reinforced with wooden beams indicating they were familiar with earthquakes and knew that wood absorbs earthquake tremors.  The tallest building found to date is four stories tall.  Beautiful paintings and ornate pottery have been found, indicating that these were people whose basic needs were being met, allowing them to spend their resources on more luxurious items.  Furniture “molds” have been found that show what furniture might have looked like 3600 years ago.  Much of the furniture was made of wood, which has long since decayed, leaving behind in the ashes molds that can be filled with plaster for a recreation of the original furniture.  The ash was so tightly packed around the furniture artists can see the tiniest of details. 

Portraits of fair-skinned women with make-up and jewelry suggests there were privileged women (working women would have had more exposure to the sun).  Original ceramic jars with carbonized food particles provide insight to the diets of the people. 

Amazing what you can learn from a pile of dirt! Fun fact: volcanic ash is also a great construction material. Thousands of tons of it was bought from Santorini and used to build the Suez Canal!

After Akrotiri we had time to grab some lunch and wander around the town.  Santorini is situated high on a cliff overlooking the sea; there are only two ways up from the water or down:  walk or ride a donkey up/down a very steep set of stairs or take the cable car.  We opted to avoid the donkey droppings and took the cable car!

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On today’s tour history met technology as we visited the ancient walled fortress of the Doric Temple of Athena, built about 2500 years ago.  The walk from the parking lot to the fortress was beautiful and a bit adventurous, traveling down and up pedestrian-only cobblestone streets enjoying the whitewashed buildings of the town overlooking the sea below, climbing a steep hillside and 250 steps to reach our destination.  Once we arrived at the base of the fortress we were given special tablets that allowed us to see renderings of what the fortress would have looked like in its original state – just point the tablet a certain direction, click on the screen, and there you go.  We tried to share the experience with you by taking pictures of some of the screens -please excuse the glare on some of them.

Following our visit to Athena we stopped at a ceramics store that specializes in hand-made Rhodes-style pottery.  In ancient times decorative clay plates were a symbol of wealth.  The more plates a home displayed, the greater the owner’s wealth was supposed to be.  Sometimes the walls of an entire room would be covered in plates.  The artists at Rhodes Potter carry on the ancient craft, using the same designs found at archaeological sites.  They also recreate the famous “cup of justice.”  In ancient times young men would arrive in Rhodes to attend university.  Like young people of any era they were eager to celebrate their new-found freedom and independence and would often over-indulge.  To help them improve their self-discipline, the famous mathematician Pythagoras of Samos (famous for creating the saying, “Everything in moderation”) developed a special cup.  The cup has a line etched into the top of its inside lining.  Fill your beverage to this line and all is well.  Fill it beyond this line – even the slightest little bit, and the entire contents of the cup drains out a hole in the bottom!

Upon our return from the tour we made a mad dash to the Old City of Rhodes where on a reconnaissance mission earlier this morning Ken found an old castle that needed visiting.  We had a great tour of the castle and fell totally in love with the Old City before meeting some friends for dinner on a rooftop terrace.  It was wonderful!

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Welcome to Cyprus, land of Greek mythology and home to Aphrodite.  Cyprus has over 11,000 years of history; artifacts related to the Stone Age have been found here, and water wells found in Western Cyprus are believed to be among the oldest in the world.  Adding to its archaeological lure is the fact that it is located on one of only two land masses (Iran occupies the other one) created in the plate tectonic shift. 

One hundred million years ago Cyprus was completely covered in water.  It is this image of Cyprus having come from the sea that is believed to have inspired the legend of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess associated with love, beauty, pleasure, passion and procreation, who is said to have been born from the sea.  Almost all of the Greek gods were worshipped in Cyprus, but Aphrodite was the star of the show.  Archaeological evidence and inscriptions show numerous sanctuaries and temples dedicated to her.  We visited Pafos, home to the House of Dionysus, famous for the mosaics found during the excavation of a Roman nobleman’s villa from the 3^rd Century.  As impressive as the craftsmanship of the mosaics is how well-preserved they are.

The mosaics were created using small pebbles from the area’s stones.  Most of them contain scenes from Greek mythology and help tell the history of the area.  The oldest ones found date back to 600 BC; others are from the 2^nd Century AD.  While the older mosaics contain scenes from Greek mythology, the newer ones have Christian references, reflecting the introduction of Christianity in the area around 47 AD.

We stopped for lunch at a seaside restaurant in Kourion where we had time to play in the water.

After lunch we visited another site of ruins, which had a massive theater and a 5^th Century AD villa with 25 rooms.  The theater was built in the 7^th Century BC and is still used for performances today.  The villa provides evidence of how advanced folks were in the 5^th Century – pipes confirm they had running water; there was a large bath area with marble floors and evidence of a steam room.  It was pretty impressive.

And we learned something else today – the reason a fish is the international symbol of Christianity.  The Greek spelling of the word fish is an anagram for: Jesus Christ Son of God.  Pretty cool, eh?

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Our final two stops of the day were the wailing wall and the Garden of Gethsemane.

The Wailing Wall is the holiest place on earth for the Jewish people.  It is all that remains of the Second Temple of Jerusalem.  The First Temple was built in 1000 BC after King David conquered Jerusalem and made it his capital.  The altar of the temple is said to have been built over the exact place where God took the dirt to create Adam (Genesis 2:7), and the altar was where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his only son, Isaac (Genesis 22:1-15).  That temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, in 586 BC when he conquered Jerusalem and exiled the Jews to Babylon.  The Jews could return under an edict issued by Cyrus King of Persia, and by 515 BC they had completed the Second Temple, a replacement for the one destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.  In 70 AD the Romans destroyed that temple.  Despite having been back in Jerusalem for nearly 2,000 years they have not rebuilt the Second Temple.  One of the reasons is because it is believed that the Temple may only be rebuilt when the majority of the Jewish nation resides in Israel and when there is a Jewish king or prophet.  According to prophecy the Third (and final) Temple is to be built according to dimensions provided in the Book of Ezekiel, and correct placement of the altar is so critical the builders will need a prophet to confirm its location.

Tradition calls for individuals to write their prayer(s) on a piece of paper, slip it into a space in the wall, and express their prayer to God.  Twice a year the papers are collected by a local Rabbi and his team and buried on the Mount of Olives.

The Wailing Wall is in the Jewish quarter of the Old City (the 14 Stations of the Cross are in the Christian Quarter).  You know when you’ve reached the Jewish Quarter.  It is the only area whose entry is surrounded by armed guards and for which you must pass through a metal detector and have your bags scanned.  It’s a very sad comment that this community is under such extreme threat.

Our journey from the Wailing Wall to the Garden of Gethsemane took us past Mt. Zion, referred to in I Kings as the City of David, and the Mount of Olives, where Jesus ascended into Heaven. 

The Garden of Gethsemane is where Jesus prayed the night before his betrayal and arrest.  The olive trees that grow there today are said to be descendants of the seeds of the trees that grew there during Jesus’ time.  The garden is beautiful, and the trees are spectacular – there is no question they have been around for a long time!  It was here Jesus begged God to spare him.  It is impossible to imagine how conflicted and frightened he must have been.

The Church of All Nations was built next to the Garden and is said to enshrine the exact rock where Jesus prayed.   We don’t know how one can be certain of such things, but we appreciate the sentiment.

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We are in Monte Carlo today and we are in love – not with Monte Carlo, which would be easy enough, but with a little French town near it called Eze (pronounced Ez). 

Our time in port was limited, so we elected to skip the ship tours and just explore the local area with our friends Wayne and Nancy.  We took a solar-powered water taxi across the harbor and made a 30-minute walk up steep hills along the famed Formula One Monaco Grand Prix route, past the beautiful Casino Monte Carlo to the local bus stop.  There was no time to go into the casino, but we certainly enjoyed a view of the cars parked around it!  We paid 1.5 euros each (less than $2.00) for the 15-mile ride to Eze and were on our way.

Eze is a magical medieval city with a maze of steep, windy cobblestone streets and steps and stone cottages and shops literally carved into the limestone rock of French Alps.  Only the main street that leads into town from the highway can accommodate vehicular traffic.  There are a myriad of shops and restaurants throughout the town.  Their deliveries are made by what is essentially an oversized motorized square wheelbarrow.  Bougainvillea, honeysuckle, and other flowering plants and vines cover the rock faces of the buildings.  Trees join together to create canopies of shade over walkways.  The entryways of homes give the appearance that this is the land of hobbits, they’re so short. We can’t imagine anyone over 12-years-old who wouldn’t have to stoop to enter – except maybe Pam’s late sister, Sherrie, who was only 4’9-1/4”.  The views from the 1400’ cliffs overlooking the French Mediterranean are fantastic and it was easy to imagine ourselves staying there forever.  Alas, real life (well, our sort of surreal real life) beckoned and it was soon time to catch the return bus to Monte Carlo and the ship. 

In Monte Carlo we ran into another couple from the ship who joined us for lunch at a place located in the middle of a giant indoor market before heading up to check out the Royal Palace Princess Grace (American actress Grace Kelly) called home.  No pictures were allowed inside the palace.  It is filled with beautiful 200-year-old furniture, portraits of all the kings and queens who have come before, etc., as one would expect, and there is a photographic exhibit commemorating the initial meeting of Grace Kelly and the Prince of Monaco.  It’s an impressive display of antiques and royal history, but it didn’t seem particularly cozy to us.  We hope the section the current royal family lives in (not open to the public) is a little more inviting.

We were back on the ship in time to spend some time admiring the impressive array of some of the world’s most expensive yachts.  For a mere $50,000 – $150,000 you can rent one of these bad boys for the week of the Formula One race. A gun-metal gray boat generated particular interest among Oceania passengers. One rumor pegged it as a Russian spy boat, but it seemed a little too ostentatious for that. A little time with Google revealed that the rumor was partially true – it is owned by a Russian. Turns out it is among the top five most expensive yachts in the world and is owned by a Russian billionaire.

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Stations of the Cross (Jerusalem, Israel 05/27/2017)

We left Bethlehem for a 2-1/2 hour walk through Jerusalem, following the path of the crucifixion backwards from the end to the beginning.  It was quite an emotional journey.

We entered the Old City of Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate, one of seven entrances and the main gate to the Old City.  On the day of the crucifixion, Jesus travelled up an extremely steep hill to his destination at Calgary.  Entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which contains five of the 14 Stations of the Cross (locations focused on specific events that occurred on Jesus’ last day as he made his way from Prison to Calgary) we made a hard right turn and began the climb up a nearly vertical winding staircase.  It is impossible to understand the physical stress Jesus would have been under as he walked these same steps, carrying the weight of the cross as he climbed.

We visited each of the five Stations of the Cross located within the church and learned that the church is run by five different denominations.  Each denomination has a specific area of the church they are responsible for maintaining.  There are two huge wooden doors leading into the church, doors that have an equally large key. It is 12” long and weighs eight ounces.  When Muslim Arabs took over Jerusalem in   the 1187, they confiscated the key from the church and gave it to one of the tribe’s most prominent clans.  To this day the key remains in the hands of that same family.  Another prominent family of the time was given the duty of opening and closing the church, a tradition that also remains intact.  A member of the family comes every morning to open the church, waits on a bench by the door until it is time to close the church, locks the doors and goes home, then repeats the process the next day.  In both families the responsibility is handed down from father to eldest son.  It is ironic that access to a protestant church would be controlled by Muslims, especially in this region of the world.  The church is an amazing model of peaceful co-existence.

Leaving the church we continued follow the Stations of the Cross, passing each of the three places where he fell while carrying the cross up the hill, the place where Veronica wiped his face, where Simon tried to help him carry the cross…Easter Sunday may never be the same again.

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Israel and Palestine have long argued over possession of land in this region of the world with Jerusalem being the biggest bone of contention because of its religious significance.  Currently Palestine controls Bethlehem and Israel controls Jerusalem.  The two towns are situated right next to one another; the only indication you are leaving one and entering the other is the border patrol station with armed guards carrying AK47s.  Since 2000 Israelis have not been able to travel freely between Israel and Bethlehem.  Only tour guides and Arab Israelis may travel at will – Arabs because of their connection to Palestine and tour guides because of the importance of tourism to both states’ economies.

This incredibly solemn day began with a bit of levity.  It turns out Elvis isn’t dead – he’s alive and well in the desert of Nowhere, Israel! During the 3-hour bus trip from our port to Bethlehem we made a bathroom stop and discovered him drinking a coke inside this 50’s themed diner, “Jailhouse Rock,” blaring in Hebrew in the background. It was hilarious!

Reaching the Jerusalem/Bethlehem border brought us back to reality.  Immediately after crossing the border from Jerusalem into Bethlehem we were joined by an Arab Israeli guide who walked with us to The Church of the Nativity, built around the grotto where Jesus is said to have been born.  One of the many things we didn’t know before today’s tour is that during Jesus’ time on earth the people of Bethlehem lived in cave-like dwellings.  They also kept their animals in cave-live dwellings, thus the manger where Christ was born would have been a grotto like the one the church is built around.  We have been unable to determine how experts know that this is the exact location of Christ’s birth, but we’re told there has been agreement on it since at least the mid-200’s.

The church was originally built in 339, but it was destroyed by fire in the 6^th Century.  It was rebuilt in 565 and has remained largely untouched since then.  Over the centuries the compound has expanded and now includes three monasteries.  The church itself is built above the grotto where Jesus was born.  There is a gold star in the floor marking the location of the grotto below.  Visitors can go into the grotto, but we were unable to do so because a service was being held in it when we were there.  Services are also held in the main sanctuary.

We entered the church through the “Door of Humility,” a small rectangular entrance created during the Ottoman times.  The original door was more than 20’ tall.  It was shortened to prevent cart from being driven into the church by looters and to force even the most prominent of visitors to dismount from their horses before entering.  The revised height of the door forces any adult who enters to stoop to enter, thus earning it its name.

The Church of the Nativity is one of nine religious sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem protected by the Status Quo, an informal agreement among religious communities that no matter what happens in the world these nine structures will “remain forever in their present state.”

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An Open-Air Concert (Akko, Israel 05/26/2019)

Every so often Oceania treats all the Around the World guests to a special dinner event.  Such an event was held on May 26^th while we were in Haifa, Israel.

We were taken by bus to Old Acre (pronounced Akko), about 45 miles from the port.  Akko is one of the world’s oldest known inhabited sites.  Our event took place in the Hospitaller Compound, the ruins of a huge 12^th century Roman fort.  The entry way is lined with enormous fig trees estimated to be more than 500 years old.  The path led us to a large grass-covered courtyard where two knights were waiting on their trust steeds to joust for possession of the town of Akko.  A court jester set the stage:  one knight represented England; the other France.  The reenactment was of a battle that actually occurred.  The crowd was divided in half:  half the crown rooted for England, the other half for France.  The two knights pranced around the courtyard.  As Queen’s “We Will Rock You” began playing in the background, they dismounted and began swinging their mallets (the big round balls with spikes sticking out of them).  It wasn’t long before one of the knights had been disarmed.  Now it was time to unsheathe the swords!  France’s knight pulled out two.  Our guy (England) had just one.  Not much of a fair fight, but our Knight was the more skilled of the two and easily beat the Frenchman.  England was awarded Akko and we walked away to the strains of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”

We entered the Fortress and were instantly wowed by the size of the rooms we were passing through.  Holographs depicting fortress life as it would have been in the 12^th Century were being displayed on the walls of the different rooms.  We walked through one room after another, hearing the story of how the fortress was initially discovered.  We were told that there used to be a prison over the area of the fortress we were walking through.  A couple of prisoners were planning a break and were using spoons to dig a tunnel from their cell.  Things were going along just find until they hit what turned out to be the roof of the fortress, and all progress came to a halt.  They were found out and when prison officials investigated the tunnel, they realized there was something more here.  The rest is history.

We enjoyed a fabulous dinner under a beautiful sky with terrific entertainment.  A musical group recounted the history of Israel through song, narration and dance.  They began with clips of Tivia from “Fidler on the Roof” singing “Tradition!,” showed a newsreel of Israel receiving its independence, included songs like “Yesterday” (“…all my troubles seemed so far away…”) and traditional Israeli songs that went from haunting to invigorating.  We even had a sing-along.  It was a memorable night in a memorable location, and we loved every minute of it!

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How do we as Christians express what it is like to visit Nazareth and the River Jordan, to walk the lands we know Jesus once walked, to see views similar to those he would have looked upon?  Our tour today included a visit to the archaeologically confirmed home of the Virgin Mary, where the Angel Gabriel came to visit her, the location in Galilee where Jesus delivered the sermon on beatitudes to his disciples, and the River Jordan where he was baptized.  It was an incredible day.

The day began with a drive-by of Mount Carmel, where Elijah challenged 450 prophets who believed in another god to a contest to see whose god was truly watching over the people of Israel.  As the story is told in 1 Kings 18:22-39, the challenge required the deity to light a sacrifice on fire.  After the other 450 prophets failed Elijah asked that his sacrifice and the alter be drenched with water.  Then he got down on his knees and prayed.  Fire fell and consumed the sacrifice, the wood, the stones of the alter…everything.  The witnesses who saw this were convinced that Elijah’s god was the true God.

Our first official stop was the Sea of Galilee and the memorial that has been built to commemorate Jesus’ sermon on beatitudes, recounted in Matthew 5:1-11 and referred to as the Sermon on the Mount.  Beatitudes are attitudes all Christians should aspire to incorporate into their character.  There are eight beatitudes; the memorial is built with 8 sides and inside the memorial there is an alter in the center of an octogen with each of the eight beatitudes called out on a side.  It is a beautiful and serene location.

From here we visited the River Jordan.  There are two locations along the River Jordan where Jesus is believed to have been baptized, the one we visited near Galilee and another closer to Jordan.  Those who visit the Galilee location are met with an entry wall that contains the words of Mark 1:9-11 in a variety of languages.  More walls within the confines of the site contain the scripture in even more languages.  We don’t know how many are included, but it appears they tried to include every major recognized languages on earth.  Along the banks of the river are several baptismal areas; the guide who greeted us said they can do as many as 1,000 baptisms at a time.  Some people felt the area was a bit too commercialized, but for the Christians who come here to be baptized there is nothing commercial about it.  Some people save their whole lives to be able to make the trip here to be baptized.  We were fortunate to witness a few while we were there.

Our final stop of the day was the Church of the Annunciation, built directly over what would have been the Virgin Mary’s home.  During this period the people of Nazareth lived in caves.  In the lower level of this Roman Catholic Church is the grotto Mary was living in when she was visited by the Angel Gabriel and told of Jesus’s birth.  Services are regularly held in the church, and one was in process when we were there.

It was a beautiful day full of beautiful sites.

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The sun was just beginning to make its appearance as we entered the mouth of the Suez Canal, a journey that would take nine hours and see four armed Egyptian security guards join us on board, multiple coast guard escorts handing us off one to another at various intervals along the way, and a military helicopter escort that included repeated low-level fly-overs.  It was quite the event!

The Suez Canal connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.  It affords ships and boats a more direct route between the north Atlantic and northern Indian Ocean, reducing travel distance from, say, the Arabian Sea to London by 5,500 miles.  It is 120 miles long and contains no locks.

Archaeological evidence suggests this is not the first canal to connect these two seas.  A canal existed here as early as the 13^th Century BC but fell into disrepair.  Re-excavation was begun in 600 BC, but the project was abandoned.  More than 1,000 years passed before anyone tried again.  Napoleon Bonaparte considered digging a canal, but a French survey mistakenly determined that the waters of the Red Sea were higher than those of the Mediterranean.  The first part of today’s canal was finally built between 1860 and 1862.  The final canal became operational in 1869.  After years of fighting about it, the canal is now under the Suez Canal Authority’s control.  Under the Convention of Constantinople, the canal may be used “in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or war, without distinction of flag.”

At 79 feet deep, 673 feet wide and 120 miles long the Suez Canal is larger than both lanes of the Panama Canal and is therefore able to handle more traffic and larger vessels than the Panama Canal.  A typical day will see three convoys making their way through the canal, two southbound and one northbound.   To prevent erosion of the canals bank caused by the ships’ wake, the convoys travel at a speed of just 9 mph.  It is the goal of the Suez Canal Authority to move an average of 97 ships/day through the canal.  At an average fee of $250,000 per vessel that’s a hefty revenue stream!

In 2014 Egypt’s president launched the Suez Canal Corridor project aimed at increasing the role of the Suez Canal region in international trading.  Referred to as “The Great Egyptian Dream” because of the hopes pinned on it for improving the country’s economy after so many years of corruption and unrest.  When complete the project will include four canal cities, an industrial zone, fish farms and vessel repair and service centers.  We saw lots of evidence of this project along the way – we’re talking major construction!

Along the way we passed under the Suez Canal Bridge, also known as the Mubarak Peace Bridge.  It connects the continents of Africa and Asia.  It was a surreal experience to pass under that bridge and realize we were literally sailing within view of two different continents.  This was a totally different experience than the Panama Canal and we feel so fortunate to have experienced both.

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Egypt is the oldest tourist destination on Earth.  One of its major tourist attractions, Luxor has been called the world’s greatest outdoor museum.  According to our guide one third of all the world’s monuments can be found here.  Everywhere you look is another historic site.  Our visit focused on the Valley of the Kings, the Hatshepsut Temple, Colossi of Memnon, and the Luxor Temple complex.  Along the way we dined one the banks of the Nile River.  Pretty incredible.

From the 16^th to 11^th Century BC rock cut tombs were excavated for the pharaohs and nobles of the dynasties of Ancient Egypt.  Now known as the Valley of the Kings these tombs were created from the inside out and decorated with scenes from Egyptian mythology.  The pictures that remain provide clues about the beliefs and funeral rituals of the period.  To date 63 tombs have been discovered, ranging from simple tombs created for one individual to a tomb with more than 120 chambers, one for each of the Pharaoh’s children.  It is also where King Tut’s tomb is located.

Hatshepsut was only the second woman to rule Egypt, and the longest reigning female in its history.  She was the daughter, sister and wife of a king.  During her 20-year reign, Egypt prospered. Unlike other rulers in her dynasty, she was more interested in ensuring economic prosperity and building and restoring monuments throughout Egypt and Nubia than in conquering new lands. 

The Colossi of Memnon are twin statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III.  Built in 1350 BC they are all the remain of Amenhotep’s memorial temple, which once covered 86 acres.  The temple originally stood on the edge of the Nile floodplain and the annual floods have led to the temple’s destruction.

Last, but not least, the Luxor Temple is a massive Ancient Egyptian temple complex located on the east bank of the Nile River.  Built around 1400 BC, the complex includes several different temples dedicated to the rejuvenation of the status and position of kings, and a variety of chapels built by different dynasties.  King Tut even contributed some of the buildings on the property.  Leading to the entry way of the Luxor Temple complex is the Avenue of the Sphinx, an ancient road lined on either side with more than 50 sphinx statues.

Not only was it a day of amazing sites, it was also a day of amazing temperatures. We hit a whopping 121 degrees while visiting the tombs, and it just got hotter from there.  And let us tell you, 121 is HOT!!

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Petra is a historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan that lies in the basin o a valley that runs from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba.  It is believed to have been settled as early as 9,000 BC by the Nabataeans, a nomadic people believed to have originally been farmers.  The theory is that they were affected by a severe drought and wandered the desert for 30-50 years before entering the trade business.  During the winter months they would take camel trains across the desert to Mesopotamia to buy things from the silk trade route and bring them home in the spring to sell to the local people.  In this way they established themselves as an important trade center.

They were also extremely resourceful.  The area they settled in, though located in the desert, was subject to flash flooding.  It was the Nabataeans ability to control their water supply that allowed them to flourish in this valley.  The built dams to redirect the natural course of the flood waters into man-made canals and created aquafers to store the water for use during the dry season.

Rather than try to describe the natural magnificence of Petra, we’ll let the pictures do the talking.  It was an incredible experience to walk the cobblestone streets of the siq, the long narrow gorge leading into Petra, alongside people riding horses and donkeys and carriages – just as they would have 9,000 years ago, watching the play of light amongst the cliffs, and to see these amazing structures carved out of the stone walls – no nails, wood or any other material used.  Everything you see was carved directly out of the mountain itself, all out of one piece of rock on the side of a mountain. 

After visiting Petra, we went for a 4×4 ride in the desert of Wadi Rum, famous for its association with Lawrence of Arabia.  In 1917 Aqaba (where our ship docked) was the invading Turk’s last outpost on the Red Sea.  Lawrence of Arabia and his 1,000 recruits planned a counterattack that required them to pass through this area of Wadi Rum.  The story is too long to recount here, but if you aren’t familiar with it, we’d encourage you to Google it or watch the movie.  Lawrence is quite the hero in these parts and there are many things named after him.

We finished the day with a traditional Bedouin meal eaten under tents in the middle of nowhere, listening to traditional Bedouin music and enjoying traditional dance.  It was a great day!

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The skyline of Dubai is a feast for the eyes, and the many attractions offered throughout the city will feed the rest of your senses.  In the late 1990’s government officials made the decision to move Dubai from an oil-based economy to one rooted in the service and tourist industries.  To be successful they believed they would need to create over-the-top experiences that would garner international recognition and encourage outside investment.  It looks to us like they’ve succeeded.  Dubai is a city of “tallest,” “biggest” and “best” of just about everything.  Here are the highlights of our 6-hour visit to this beautiful city…

Atlantis at the Palm – Located on the Palm Jumeirah, an artificial cluster of islands shaped to form the outline of a palm tree under a crescent sun or moon, whichever you prefer.  Its construction increased Dubai’s shoreline by 320 miles.  It is the world’s largest artificial island and is referred to by some as the eighth wonder of the world.  It was created using 7 million tons of rock and dredging 131 million cubic yards of sand.  The total amount of sand and rock used is enough to build a two-foot thick wall around the circumference of the earth three times.   A 6-lane sea tunnel connects the “trunk” to the “crescent.”  More than 44 million gallons of water had to be displaced to build the tunnel, and more than 2,000 fish were captured and relocated as part of the project.  Thirty thousand tons of reinforcing steel and 110,000 tons of rock were used to build the tunnel.  It took six years to build the islands at a cost of $12 billion, and no time to fill it with high-end condos, hotels, office buildings and retail space.   It is amazing!

Dubai Eye – Currently under construction, the Eye will be the world’s largest Ferris Wheel when it is completed.  At a whopping 700 feet tall, it will easily eclipse the current record holder located in Las Vegas, which is only 550 feet tall. 

Mall of the Emirates – An 800,000 square foot shopping and recreational mecca billed as “the world’s first shopping resort.”  It houses more than 600 retail brands, a massive amusement park and an indoor ski resort where the temperature is always right for a downhill run and you can rent not only your skis and boots, but the parka, gloves and goggles to go with them.

Burj Khalifa – The World’s Tallest Building stands 2,722 feel tall and has won numerous awards/recognitions, including:  World’s largest light and sound show staged on a single building; world’s highest nightclub; word’s tallest free-standing structure and tallest structure every built.

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Fujairah is one of the seven independent city states that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE).    The UAE is a monarchy controlled by the royal families of each of the seven emirates, with the royal family of Abu Dhabi acting as the head of state.  Each emirate has an elected parliament that creates laws and manages government business, but the royal family has the final say on everything.  Oil is the country’s #1 export (they export 2 million barrels/day), but it makes up only 7% of the country’s total revenue.  The royal families have income from their own businesses and (supposedly) do not keep the country’s oil revenue for themselves; instead that money is redistributed to the local people in the form of free healthcare, free education through college, and – an especially nice perk – a free 3-4 bedroom home when they marry.  The government owns all the land, so individuals actually receive a 99-year lease on the homes and are free to sell them and purchase something else any time they like.  The population of Fujairah is 80% foreigners and 20% locals.    Foreigners do not share in the government benefits, may not hold more than 49% interest in any business there, and must leave the country when they turn 60.

Today’s tour included a stop by the Fujairah Fort, one of the oldest and largest remaining castles in the country.  The royal family lived here consistently until 1975, when a new palace was built nearby. 

Next stop was Friday Market, so named because it was originally only open on Fridays.  There came a time when they decided to try being open two days a week; that went so well they tried three.  That went so well they tried four…and now they’re open seven days a week, but they still call it Friday Market.

Final stop of the day was Al Badiyah Mosque, Fujairah’s oldest surviving mosque.  It is uncertain when the mosque was built because the mud and stone structure contains no wood.  It is impossible to do radiocarbon dating on mud and stone, so…. archaeologist believe it may have been built around 1446 AD.  The mosque still hosts daily prayers.

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NOTE: We’re having problems downloading some of the pictures for this post. Check back later for more photos.

Mumbai is a city of extremes.  It is home to both the most expensive home in the world – a 27-story, 400,000 square foot monstrosity valued at between one and two BILLION dollars (6 stories, by the way, are just for cars) – and the world’s second largest slum.  It is the wealthiest city in India with the highest number of millionaires and billionaires.  At the same time 55 percent of its population (over 1 million people) live in slums and 25 percent live on less than $1.25/day.  Those living in the slums are hard-working people; there are 5,000 business and 15,000 factories located within the slums. 

Mumbai is also home to the Dabbawalas, a unique lunch deliver service that has been in operation for more than 130 years.  Every day around 10:00 a.m. men riding bicycles and pushing carts collect tiffins (stackable metal tins filled with food) from homes as far as 30 miles away and deliver them to the nearest railway station.  The tiffins contain no names or addresses – of the sender or the recipient.  They are labeled using a system of symbols and colors indicating where the tiffin is picked up, which train station it is going to and the final address where it is to be delivered.  The tiffins travel on the train and are met at the other end by another set of Dabbawalas who load them up and deliver them in time for lunch.  In 130 years not one lunch has ever been late.  This all started when a single banker decided he’d like to have home-cooked meals for lunch in his office. He hired a gentleman to pick lunch up from his wife and deliver it to him every day.  Now 200,000 lunches are delivered every day.  Pretty impressive! 

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After the sunrise visit to the Taj Mahal and the morning visits to Fatehpur Sikri and Agra Fort, Pam went to a marble in-lay factory and jewelry store where several famous tapestry are housed.

The marble inlay artwork Agra has become famous for originated in Italy. Visitors from Italy would bring gifts of marble inlaid with colored glass or semi-precious stones to the Mughal Emperors. The Emperors enjoyed these gifts so much they demanded their artisans learn this craft. This is the same artistry that is used extensively throughout the Taj Mahal. Today the craft is handed down from one generation to another, but only through the males of the family. Craftsman are very proud of the work they do and want to keep the tradition within the family; women will marry and enter into other families, taking their skills and family heritage with them, so they are not allowed to learn the art of marble inlay.

The factory we visited creates doors, tables of all shapes and sizes, artwork, cups, picture frames…you name it, they’ve got it. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the gallery, but the few Pam was able to take in the demonstration area will give you an idea of the quality of workmanship. The marble is made into the shape of the finished product and covered in a red paint that will wash off when the design is complete. The paint allows the craftsmen to better see the design in the marble so that they can properly place the glass or stones. The craftsman then carves out the portion of the design where the stones or glass will be placed using nothing but a putty knife. Anything else would be too abrasive. Other craftsmen take larger pieces of glass or stone and grind them down to pieces no thicker than gold leaf. The pieces of stone or glass are then layered into the design to create the finished product. Everything is done by hand. It is a very laborious process and the finished products are not cheap.

Zardozi embroidery is one of the most ancient forms of artwork. It was used to adorn the clothing of Indian royals as far back as medieval times. Elaborate designs are created using gold and silver wire with copper and silk thread. Sheikh Shamsuddin was a famous painter in India who was taught Zardozi by his father. He spent years creating the masterpieces that now live in the jewelry store Pam visited, kept in glass cases behind metal roladdens in a dark room. There was a collective gasp when the first tapestry was unveiled, but when the second one was shown, “The Good Shepherd,” the group was speechless. We were not allowed to take photos, but Pam was able to find some on the Internet to share. These 3-D tapestries are all done by hand and are made of nothing but fabric and thread. The shading, the relief…it’s all layers and layers of thread. Shamsuddin’s dedication to this work cost him his eyesight. Born with perfect vision and no health issues he was completely blind when he died.

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While Ken visited Fatehpur Sikri Pam headed off to the Agra Fort.

The Agra Fort was the main residence where all of the early Mughal emperors lived. The Mughals are the people who built and ruled India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh from the early 16th Century to the mid-19th Century. This is where the Emperor who built the Taj Mahal lived with his family. At one time the Fort included 500 buildings and as many as 20,000 people a day would be on the grounds. In the evening most of those individuals would return to their homes outside the gates, leaving about 500 or so who lived here on a full-time basis. Only 30 of the original buildings remain today, and 75% of the Fort is still used by the Indian Army, so not all of those buildings are open to the public.

We were able to see the exterior of the building where the Emperor and his wives would have lived. We walked through the building that would have housed the apartments where the Emperor’s children would have lived, and we visited the courtyard where the people would come to air their grievances to the Emperor or make requests of him. Those granted an audience would share their complaint or request with the Prime Minister who would then stand on a platform and share the information with the Emperor, who was seated on a throne overlooking the courtyard. Windows were provided for the women to watch the proceedings from inside.

Emperor Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal, was born here and died here. He was very fond of the eldest of the four sons he had with Mumtaz Mahal and planned to give up the throne to him. Another of his sons wanted the throne for himself and killed all three of his brothers and declared his father unfit to rule so that he could have it. He put the Emperor under house arrest and kept him in his home at Agra Fort where the Emperor could see the Taj Mahal from his balcony. The Emperor died eight years later.

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Following our visit to the Taj Mahal, Ken visited Fatehpur Sikri and Pam visited the Agra Fort.

Fatehpur Sikri was founded as the capital of the Mughal Empire in 1571. The city was built in celebration of the birth of the Emperor Akbar’s first son. All of the buildings are built entirely of red sandstone, and we were once again struck by the incredible craftsmanship on display in the detail of the carvings and paintings.

India is an incredibly hot place. To help keep things cool, the Emperor had canals incorporated throughout the city, both inside the buildings and among the buildings and courtyards. Some of the interior canals were filled with rose water that worked much like our room deodorizers do today. Others had clear water that was available for drinking. If one got thirsty, you could kneel down and scoop up a palm of water any time. The canals also helped to keep things cool. All of the buildings were built with four entrances to allow for the greatest amount of air circulation. It wasn’t air conditioning, but it was better than nothing!

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We rose at 3:30 a.m. today to witness the sun rise at the Taj Mahal – an experience that was totally worth the sleep deprivation.  The Taj Mahal is the centerpiece of a 42-acre complex which includes a mosque and a guest house and is set in formal gardens surrounded by walls and massive gateways.  We entered through the east gate.  It took more than 20,000 artisans and laborers nearly 22 years to build the complex at a cost of nearly $830 million in today’s dollars.  According to our guide that was the equivalent of one year’s worth of taxes at the time the complex was completed in 1653.  The Taj Mahal itself is the ivory-white mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna River where Emperor Shah Jahan’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, is entombed. 

As the story is told the Emperor met his future wife at a local market when she was just fourteen years old.  She was selling silk and glass beads in one of the booths there.  He was struck by her beauty, and then by her wit when she engaged in some lively banter with him.  Five years later the two were married.  The Emperor had a total of four wives and a harem of concubines, but Mumtaz Mahal was his favorite.  It is said that she travelled everywhere with him, including military campaigns.  The Emperor and Mumtaz had 14 children together, only 6 of whom survived.  She died from complications associated with the delivery of her 14^th child.  The Emperor was so distraught he vowed to build a monument to her.

A less well-known story theorizes Mumtaz, who it is well-documented had a keen mind and participated in many of the Emperors business and military decisions, bested the Emperor in a high-stakes game of chess where the Emperor gambled the throne.  It is suggested the Emperor was horrified that he had lost the throne and wanted it back.  He pushed Mumtaz, causing her to fall and sending her into premature labor, which ultimately led to her death.  He was so wracked by guilt that he built the Taj Mahal as a sort of penance and apology to Mumtaz.

The Emperor commissioned 32 architects to offer their best designs for the project.  The finished product is a combination of the features the Emperor liked best from each of the proposals.  The mausoleum is constructed entirely of white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones to form intricate designs.  Its central dome is 240 feet high.  Love poems from the Quran are inscribed in calligraphy around the arches of the entrance, with the size of the letters increasing from the bottom to the top to give them the appearance of all being the same size.  Additional writings are found inside the tomb and   around other areas of the mausoleum.  Inside the mausoleum, in the center, is an octagonal marble chamber adorned with carvings and semi-precious stones where symbolic tombs for Mumtaz and the Emperor are displayed (the real caskets are buried below).  The Emperor had originally planned to build a smaller version of the Taj Mahal for his own tomb on the opposite side of the river and join the two buildings with a bridge.  Unfortunately, his son intervened before he could do that (more on that in the next post) and when the Emperor died his son had his body entombed next to his favorite wife instead.

We visited the Taj Mahal again at sunset. The last few pictures of the post are from the evening visit.

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We are on our way to the Taj Mahal, by way of New Delhi. Yesterday (May 6th) we left the ship to fly from Cochin to New Delhi, then boarded a bus from the airport to our hotel. What an adventure that was! Traffic is bumper to bumper, and there are no traffic signs or signals, and no one directing traffic. Our guide said they don’t need them here – they use “logic.” He said the recently agreed to some common rules of the road and that has made things much better. People used to be honking their horns, making angry gestures at one another…you don’t see that anymore, he said. When we commented that we still heard a lot of horns honking he responded, “You hear horns honking; I hear communication!”

Today we made our way from New Delhi to Agra, which is nothing like Delhi. Nearly 50% of Agra’s population live in slums or squatter settlements. Cows roam the streets defecating when and where they please. Everything is matted in dust. There is no rhyme or reason to the traffic. The dirt roads have no lane markings, and there may be six lanes of traffic with cars going both directions in all lanes, weaving in and out and around one another to get where they want to go. If they bump into one another along the way, no one bothers to notice – they all just keep on going. It’s crazy!

Our hotel is an oasis in the midst of this chaos…sidewalks surrounded by beautifully manicured bright green lawns and hedges and 5-star accommodations. Somehow, this doesn’t seem right. During dinner we were entertained with a “Kathak” dance. In ancient times traveling bands of storytellers (Kathaks) would communicate stories of epic battles and mythology through dance, songs, and music. Dancers tell their stories through their hand movements, footwork and facial expressions. Their feet and wrists are adorned with small bells and their movements are harmonized to music.

A nation of more than 100 ethnic groups, Myanmar has struggled with Civil war for most of its years of independence. It has been under direct or indirect military rule since 1962. Between 1962 and 1974 it was ruled by a revolutionary council that brought almost all areas of society under government control. During this period Myanmar’s economy plummeted and it became one of the poorest countries in the world. The country’s first non-military president since 1962 was elected in 2016, and there are major efforts underway to improve life for the average citizen, but Yangon unemployment continues to be at 26%, the majority of the population has access to electricity only 6 hours a day, and there is an average of 50 children per classroom. Most children leave school around 3rd grade when they are old enough to get a job to help support the family, which leaves the area with a graduation rate of only 4%.

We wandered around the town a bit during the day, then enjoyed a cultural dinner and dance in the evening. Our traditional meal showcased the country’s most famous dishes – steamed rice, curried fish, beef and chicken, a light soup and vegetable soup topped off with watermelon. The cultural show involved music and dance. Myanmar dancing involves posturing of the hands, feet, hip and head. There are approximate 2,000 different ways to move during the performance, each of which may be connected to one of 13 movements of the head, 28 kinds of expressions with the eyes, 9 movements of the neck, 24 movements of each individual hand, 24 movements involving both hands, 38 movements of the leg, 5 different acrobatic movements, 8 ways of turning the body or 10 styles of walking. Whew! That’ a lot to remember!

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The Ao Phang Nga National Park is an area of the Andaman Sea populated with more than 80 limestone tower karst islands.  Tower karst are tall rock structures that form as near-vertical joints.  These particular formations were created more than 300 million years ago when the tectonic plates between Thailand and Malaysia collided. 

Phuket was experiencing its first rain in two months when we stepped off the ship, and it was forecast to continue throughout the day, so we were a little concerned about whether we’d be able to see much.  We needn’t have worried.

We loaded into colorful flat-bottomed boats with noses that rose up out of the water.  Overhead was a sign that read “James Bond Island.”  We slowly made our way through Mangrove forests – impressive in and of themselves – eyes peeled for any of the 52 varieties of poisonous snakes that live in Thailand (including a jumping Cobra – REALLY??!!!).  We didn’t know if any of them lived here, but Pam wasn’t taking any chances!  Before long, our eyes were drawn to faint outlines of limestone rising out of the water in the distance, and then we were surrounded.  These formations are spectacularly beautiful and appear across the water with no rhyme or reason to the pattern.  The clouds were lifting, and the rain had stopped, but we still couldn’t see the top of some of the islands as they disappeared into the sky. 

We came to what we though was a cave we would be passing and discovered it was actually a low-hanging arch, complete with stalactites, and we weren’t just viewing it, we were going through it!  On the other side of the arch the water opened up into a beautiful bay.  We passed two islands where scenes from two separate James Bond movies were filmed – “The Man with the Gold Gun” and “Tomorrow Never Dies.”  Looking across the horizon of the bay was like looking into another universe…tower karst dotting the landscape shrouded in clouds…it was so cool.

We visited Ko Panyi, a Muslim water town built entirely on stilts at the base of one of the karst.  Established in the 18^th Century by Nomadic fisherman the village is now home to 367 families, all of whom are Muslim and direct descendants of the original two founders.  Despite seeming like it is out in the middle of nowhere, the town is actually less than five miles from Phuket and is able to tap into its water, electricity and internet capabilities.  173 children live here and there is a school that goes from kindergarten through age 16.  In the late 1990s the town found itself struggling to support itself.  The postman suggested they invite tourists to the village.  Today the town hosts 5,000-6,000 visitors per day.

As we were leaving the town we passed by a cave with hieroglyphics.  Our guide said the drawings have been scientifically verified as being more than 3,000 years old and were drawn with ink made by mixing sap and animal blood.

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Now known as the Silicon Valley of the East, Penang has its roots in the tin industry.  Our today began with a visit to a museum that was once the home of one of the fathers of that industry, Chung Keng Quee.  Chung came to Penang as a 20-year-old peasant boy and made his fortune in tin and other industries.  Along the way he became one of the most influential citizens in the country’s history, creating a secret society that influenced business, politics and military activities.  The Penang Peranakan Mansion was built as a home for his four wives, ten children and the family’s many attendants (each child had his/her own nanny).

The home was built using materials from all over the world.  There are Chinese carvings, marble statues from Italy, timber from Burma, windows from France, Venetian mirrors and iron railings and pillars from Glasgow.  We lost count of the number of rooms the house has, none of which are small.  There are beautiful outdoor courtyards, a room specifically designated for the family’s gambling activities, and a separate temple, built to house the ghosts of departed ancestors.  That area of the house continues to be owned by the family and Chang’s descendants still come here twice a year to pay homage to those who have passed.  The temple has its own entrance away from the main house with images of the patron immortal gods of gangsters (gangsters have immortal gods?  Who knew?) painted on the main door.  Immortal gods stand guard at either side of the entrance and there is an altar with twelve urns depicting Chang’s ancestral line.  This is where meetings of Chang’s Secret Society would meet and where they would carry out initiations.

Chang’s family lived in the house until it was requisitioned by the Japanese during WWII.  The house remained empty after the war and fell into disrepair until another Chinese immigrant bought it from a fifth-generation Chang and restored it.  It now houses 2,500 artifacts from the Chung area the new owner has collected over the years, examples of how Chung himself may have decorated it.

Next up was the Kek Lok Si Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia.  A massive complex, the property was developed between 1890 and 1930.  There are several large prayer halls and pavilions, but the largest attraction is a seven-story pagoda that houses ten thousand golden buddha statues.  Buddha should feel very loved by the people of this area.

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A relatively young city-state, Singapore gained its independence in 1963 and accomplished the remarkable feat of transitioning from a developing country to a developed country in just one generation.  It is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, but listen to what other designations it has achieved:  most technology ready nation; world’s smartest city; world’s safest country; second most competitive country; third least corrupt country; fifth most innovative country…these guys have it going on!  Despite the high cost of living ninety percent of the homes in Singapore are owner-occupied.  The city is beautiful and clean and a place we would love to revisit. 

Our day began with a trishaw ride.  A trishaw is a bicycle with a side car and an electric motor.  They first surfaced in Singapore in 1914 and were once a major form of transportation.  Today they are used mostly by tourists.  Our driver seamlessly maneuvered his way through the busy streets from Burgis Street through Little India and back again, cars seemingly happy to make room for him.  After the ride we walked through an area that offered four houses of worship in less than a half-mile stretch:  Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu.  Their proximity to one another is emblematic of how inclusive this city-state of 5.6 million (a million of whom are foreign workers) is.

We rode a bumboat down the Singapore River, past renovated Colonial buildings and warehouses now teeming with trendy restaurants, bars and boutiques and a thriving night life.  Bumboats are flat-bottomed boats that were once used to transport dirt and waste (and occasionally food supplies) to and from ships located off shore.  Originally powered by sail, oars or long poles, the boats now have electric motors which helps keep the river water clean.  This is a good thing since it is also the city’s drinking water. 

Our final destination was the Marine Bay Sands Skydeck, a viewing platform situated at the top of the iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel, owned by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation.  The hotel is built in what was once part of the bay.  It took the equivalent of 18,500 football fields worth of sand to create the ground on which it is built and 3 years to build at a cost of $8 BILLION dollars.  The hotel boasts a convention/exhibit hall that is more than 1.3 million square feet; 800,000 square feet of shopping; a museum; two movie theaters; 80 upscale restaurants and bars; the world’s largest atrium casino, and, oh yeah, 2,500 hotel rooms that rent for $700 or more per night.  One of the lounges has a marque that promotes itself as Singapore’s largest nightclub with an indoor Ferris wheel and 3-story slide.  The place has proven so popular that it paid for itself within three years and continues to enjoy a 98% occupancy rate 365-days/year.  The property has three huge towers on top of which sits a boat-like structure that houses the Skydeck, a patio bar and restaurant, and a 490-foot long infinity pool.  This place is seriously over the top and 30 minutes was not nearly enough time to explore.

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For most of its life Ko Samui was an isolated, self-sufficient island community.  It didn’t even have a road until the late 1970s.  It could take an entire day to walk the less than ten miles from one side of the island to the other.  An economy originally based on subsistence agriculture, fishing and coconuts has been replaced with one based on tourism.  There are now more than 2,000 hotels covering the island’s 150 square mile radius, and in 2017 they saw more than 2.5 million visitors pass through.  This is putting tremendous pressure both on the area’s infrastructure (2.5 million people generate a LOT of waste!) and the local culture as they struggle to remake themselves from a simple farming and fishing community into a place everyone wants to visit.

The waters surrounding Ko Samui are a beautiful turquois blue, and so shallow our ship had to anchor far out in the bay.  We had a 30-minute tender ride to shore and were looking forward to visiting what we thought was going to be an elephant preserve where we might have an opportunity to ride the elephants.

We visited a home-based coconut factory, an elephant camp (their version of a zoo – and we didn’t get to ride the elephants), and a local waterfall.  We were shown how rubber is extracted from rubber trees and turned into useable rubber products (rubber trees were first introduced to Ko Samui in 1899 and for a time rubber was an important part of their economy but overplanting and decreasing rubber prices has led to a decrease in the rubber business).  Lunch was served at a kind of funky bar place set just off the beach, and then it was off to the Big Buddha, a 39-foot gold painted Buddha that sits at the top of a 100-step staircase adorned with the body of a dragon on either side of where handrails would normally be.  It wasn’t quite what we were expecting, but it was okay.

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We first visited Bangkok in April 2017 as part of a land tour through China and Thailand.  The King had passed away the previous October and the country was observing a year of mourning.  This year the country is preparing for the coronation of the new king.  He has been ruling since immediately after his father’s death, but in Thai culture before the new king can be coronated there must first be a period of mourning and then the royal astrologist must determine the best date for coronation based on astrological considerations that will best position the king for a successful reign.  The new king’s coronation involves several weeks of activity, culminating in his coronation scheduled for May 4^th of this year, followed by several more ceremonies including the Royal Barge Procession.

The Royal Barge Procession is a 700-year-old tradition reserved for significant cultural events.  A fleet of 52 barges manned by 2,082 oarsmen will make their way down the Chao River past the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and The Grand Palace to the Temple of Dawn.  During the procession the oarsmen will pace their strokes to the rhythm of beating drums.  Our tour today followed the reverse route the royal procession will take and ended at the Royal Barge Museum.

The Temple of Dawn takes its name from the Hindu god Aruna, often personified as the radiation of the rising sun.  It is a gorgeous massive collection of structures with incredibly detailed ornamentation that totally lives up to its name.  The first light of the morning reflects off the surface of the temple with “pearly iridescence.”

Continuing down the river we passed several other temples, including the Emerald Buddha.  Along the way we saw several people fishing, including some using spears!  We passed make-shift homes resourcefully constructed of a variety of materials and stilt houses leaning precariously to one side or the other, looking as if all it would take is one strong wind to wipe them away. 

The Royal Barge Museum is not a museum in the traditional sense; it is a covered dock where the barges are being restored in preparation for the coronation activities.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures while we were inside the museum, but Ken got some excellent photos from a distance.  Artisans were actively working on the barges while we were there, taking painstaking care to ensure perfection in every tiny detail – and there are is a LOT of detail!  Each barge is assigned to a specific member of the royal party, with a specific role to play.  They are outfitted with the same type of raised and covered cushioned seating associated with the litters you see royalty being carried on by elephants or four individuals on foot.  The barges are true works of art.

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The Mekong River is a 2,700-mile body of water that flows from the Tibetan Plateau through six different countries:  China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.  It is a major trade route between China and Southeast Asia.  The Mekong Delta is the area in southwestern Vietnam where the river approaches and empties into the sea.  It was also the site of a massive and successful attack launched by the North Vietnamese against U.S. and South Korean troops.

We expected to hear a retelling of the battle that occurred here and some reference to the war, but there was no mention of it at all.  Instead, we were bussed to My Tho, where we were loaded onto boats and carried across the river.  Once there we walked through a very rudimentary and manual candy making operation to a canal area where we were loaded into sampan boats (flat-bottomed Chinese boats used as river taxis) and taken on a 20-minute ride up the Mekong.  There was an individual “paddling” at the front of the boat and one at the back.  They weren’t paddling in the traditional sense of moving the paddles to displace the water and move us forward; instead as often as not the paddles would make contact with silt and our handlers would have to push us along the canal.  Along the way we passed make-shift staircases that appeared to lead nowhere and stilt open-air houses.

When we arrived at our destination, we made our way back up one of those make-shift staircases, and down a covered walk way.  There was housing on one side of the walkway, with a ditch between the walkway and the houses.  A man was up to his waist in water, removing silt with his hands and stacking it on the bank.  Our guide said they have to do this to create a barrier for the rainy to season to keep their homes from flooding – much like we use sandbags during a flood in the U.S.  We were served tea and fruit and treated to a musical performance, then moved on to another covered area where we tasted honey tea and a variety of local candies.  Then it was back to the original boats.

We stopped for a traditional lunch that started with fried spring rolls, which were delicious, then moved on to the main course:  deep friend elephant ear fish served in a fresh spring roll with cold rice noodles, cilantro and pineapple.  It was actually really good, but the presentation was not so appetizing.  The entire fish is speared onto a board and deep fried – head, eyes, fins, everything.  One of the women peeled meet off the fish’s bones and placed it in the spring roll with the other ingredients before serving it to us.

On the way back to the ship we had a photo op at an iconic 19^th century temple with beautiful gardens, and giant buddha statues all around.  Our guide didn’t provide us any context for this stop either, but during the remainder of the ride back to the ship we did learn some interesting things about Vietnam.  There are 54 different languages spoken across Vietnam. Saigon is home to 7 MILLION motor bikes.  It is the most popular city in Vietnam; everyone wants to live here unless they can get to the U.S.  The locals refer to the city as Ho Chi Minh City only when speaking of official buildings or events.  When speaking of their home or more sentimental aspects they refer to it as Saigon.  The best jobs are given to members of the Communist party, but there’s more to becoming a member than simply signing up.  You must be interviewed, and three generations of your family are vetted – if anyone in those three generations lived in South Vietnam before it was unified or served in the South Vietnamese Army you cannot join the party.  Another educational day.

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Saigon served as the main headquarters for U.S. operations during the Vietnam war.  Today’s tour included a visit to a section of the tunnels the North Vietnamese used in their operations and of that war and a war museum that tells the story of the war from North Vietnam’s perspective. 

Gunfire punctuated the air as we made our way through the grounds of the Cu Chi tunnel complex, evidence of an on-site firing range that affords visitors the opportunity to fire weapons used during the war, including the M16 rifle, the AK-47, and the M60.  The constant rat-a-tat-tat added an eerie feel to an already surreal experience.  As we made our way through the 83° heat loaded with 85% humidity, summer clothes clinging to our sweat-laden bodies less than ten minutes off the bus, we tried imagining what it would have been like for our soldiers wearing full battle dress uniform, Kevlar helmets bobbing on their heads, 50 lb. rucksacks on their backs, toting rifles, ammunition, radio equipment, etc., on constant alert for enemy forces, booby traps and landmines.  How does such an experience not play with your mind?

We were shown the small trap doors used to gain entry to the tunnels, flat against the earth’s surface and camouflaged by leaves, dirt or shrubbery. Viet Cong soldiers would drop down into the opening, landing in a crouched position and make their way through the tunnels by crawling on their hands and knees or walking in a bent-over position.  Some of the tunnels contained sleeping quarters, meeting areas and cooking areas.  Crude ventilation was provided by creating air holes that were disguised on the service as termite hills.  U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers initially mistook the small air holes in the “termite hills” as termite burrows.  For those below, it was hardly life at the Ritz.  Air, food and water were scarce.  There were ants, centipedes, spiders and scorpions sharing the space.  Most of the time soldiers would spend all day in the tunnels and come out only at night, which is also when they added new sections to the tunnels.  It would take a team of 3 an average of 5 nights to dig a new leg.  Sickness was rampant; malaria was the second leading cause of death among the Viet Cong, after battle wounds.  According to a captured Viet Cong report, “at any given time half of a unit had malaria and one hundred percent had intestinal parasites of significance.”

We also saw a variety of booby traps that employed punji sticks, extremely sharp wooden or bamboo sticks arranged in substantial numbers to inflict maximum harm.  As a testament to how lethal they were, in 1980 members of the United Nations agreed to ban them from use as a military weapon. 

The War Remnants Museum, previously named the “Exhibition House for U.S. and Puppet Crimes,” and then “Exhibit House for Crimes of War and Aggression,” (are you sensing a theme?), pulls no punches in presenting the North Vietnamese view of what it calls the U.S. War of Aggression.  Their version is substantially different from ours, recounting how the U.S. attacked North Vietnam without provocation because we wanted to make South Vietnam a U.S. territory and the Viet Cong stepped in to save the day.  Gruesome pictures are provided to document the atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers (and there is no denying they did occur).  Quotes by U.S. Presidents and military officials are provided without context to give entirely different meaning to the words they spoke. 

As we walked the museum Pam kept thinking, “What do you believe and why do you believe it?”  Our guides in Vietnam were very open about their disdain for North Vietnam and shared their own stories of the horrors inflicted on them after Hu Chi Minh took control of South Vietnam and the country was “unified.”  They referred to the information in the museum as propaganda, and said everyone in South Vietnam wants to go the U.S.  When we drove by the U.S. Embassy at 7:30 in the morning there was a line around the block of people already waiting to apply for a Visa to the U.S. and our guide said it is like this every day.  When Pam asked our guide about the difference in how vocal the South Vietnamese are in opposing Communism compared to the Chinese, he said, “We were a democracy before we were Communist.  We remember what that was like.  We know it’s better.  They want us to be quiet and forget, but we are not going to be quiet.”

It was a day we will not soon forget.

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Prior to the Vietnam war, Da Nang served as the country’s capital.  Thirteen different kings reigned during this period, between 1802-1945, under the Nguyen Dynasty.  Our tour today focused on the Citadel, the “court” of the dynasty.  Modeled after the Forbidden City in Beijing, the complex took 27 years to complete and in its prime boasted a total of 150 buildings within its 1,000-acres.  Ten different gates, each with tiled dragons over the entry way, lead into distinct areas of the grounds, with different points of entry for the King, soldiers (men), women, and animals.  The buildings had bamboo roofs crossed with golden rods positioned to reflect the yin and yang of the universe and were all painted using the same five colors, each of which reflects a specific element of the universe (fire, earth, water, metal and wood). 

Seventy percent of the Citadel’s buildings were destroyed during the war, first in 1947 when the North Vietnamese and French battled over the area, and again in 1968 during the Tet Offensive.  Today only ten of the original 150 buildings remain; however, there is a major restoration project underway and the full complex is expected to be ready for touring by 2035.

Our route to the Citadel took us over the Dragon Bridge.  On Friday and Saturday nights the dragon spits water and fire out of its large head.  It’s quite the spectacle.  Since we were here on a Tuesday, we missed the fun, but Pam did find some pictures to share. 

Following our visit to the Citadel we stopped by the Pagoda of the Celestial Lady, built in 1601, then road the dragon boats across the river for lunch.  We made our way down the embankment balancing on loose stones, walked a plank with a large crack down the middle, and entered a boat with plastic lawn chairs and plenty of air between the slats that made up the bottom of the boat.  It was an adventure!

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Hong Kong is a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China but, as part of the agreement made in 1997 when the British returned control of Hong Kong to China, it has a different political system than mainland China. Hong Kong Basic Law stipulates that Hong Kong shall have a “high degree of autonomy” in all matters except foreign relations and military defense. Hong Kong has a major capitalist service economy, meaning that it is highly focused on privately owned service sector offerings such as financial services, hospitality, retail, health and human services and information technology. It has a free market economy, which is very different from Shanghai’s social market economy where individuals may own a business but the government maintains ultimate control of the company’s assets. This difference has allowed Hong Kong to maintain low taxation and free trade, which in term has made it one of the world’s leading international financial centers with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. It also explains why so many Chinese want to live here. Every day an average of 450 Chinese people migrate to Hong Kong from other areas of China.

We had a limited amount of time here, so elected a Hop On/Hop Off tour to see as much of the city as possible. The rain that met us last night stuck around for the day, so it wasn’t a perfect day for picture taking, but we were able to get a flavor for the city at least.

One of the first thing we noticed was the number of women gathering on small blankets or pieces of cardboard everywhere we looked…under overpasses, along sidewalks. These are the nannies and other young workers of the town whose only day off is Sunday. Each Sunday they have little picnics around the city and catch up on gossip and the goings-on of one another’s life.

The city is a mish-mash of old meets new with older apartment buildings nestled in between newer modern structures, making use of every square inch of land. City side streets are incredibly steep and narrow; if you live here and choose to walk anywhere you’ve gotta be in pretty good shape!

Because of our limited time we stayed on the bus for most of the tour, but we did get off to ride the Peak tram, Hong Kong’s oldest and most famous funicular railway. It climbs 1,300 feet above sea level in 8 minutes with a grade so steep it makes it seem as if the high rises are falling as you pass them. Despite the steepness the tracks are lined with stairs all the way up for those who choose to walk. When we arrived at the top we were met with a massive shopping center and had to ride SEVEN escalators to get to the actual viewing platform, which offers 360 degree views. The clouds interfered with our ability to fully enjoy that view, but we got the idea.

By the time we were ready to make our way back to the ship it was pouring rain. We grabbed a couple yellow ponchos offered by the bus company and caught the Star Ferry back to the mainland and our ship.

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We arrived in Hong Kong to cool weather and the threat of rain. It is a city of tall buildings and shopping for days! The Hong Kong Ocean Terminal, where our ship docked, empties into one of the biggest shopping centers we have ever seen – four stories with more than 700 shops and 50 eateries, and it was PACKED! We had a few hours to kill between our arrival in port and a scheduled special event, so we spent a little time exploring. Armani, Dolce, Versace (for kids, even!), Tiffany….we weren’t doing any buying but plenty of other people were – and they brought their suitcases with them to do it! Our evening tour guide explained that things are much less expensive here than in Shanghai, and it’s close enough the Chinese can hop the ferry over in the morning, spend the day filling their suitcases and get back home in time for dinner. That’s some serious shopping!

Oceania sponsored another exclusive event for its Around the World travelers tonight – a dinner show at the Hong Kong Hockey Club, originally founded in 1884. One of the oldest institutions in Hong Kong, the Club offers horse racing and sports betting for overseas activities like soccer. We enjoyed performances by a youth opera group who were kind enough to perform their songs in English and even did one portion of the program to the tune of Farra Jacka! The kids were very talented and the make-up and costumes were gorgeous.

The kids’ performance was followed by a Face Changer. We tried to load videos with no luck – it sounds kind of boring, but it’s actually pretty cool. The guy does traditional dance and in the blink of an eye changes the mask on his face with no more than a quick nod of his head. Pretty cool.

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Many of you have asked about life on board the ship, so we thought we’d take advantage of a little down time and tell you!

We’re trying to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so on most of the days we’re in port we have something scheduled, either an excursion through the cruise line or something we’ve arranged on our own. Our schedule on those days is dictated by the our arrangements; sometimes we have to be ready to check in for the tours by 7:15 a.m., sometimes by noon. That is usually determined by what time we arrive in the port.

It took us a little while to develop a routine for the days we’re at sea, but after three months we think we finally have it figured out. Pam rises early (usually between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m.) and does her Bible study, journal and the blog. If there’s time she also walks 3 miles/day. Ken’s up by then and may have done his own 3-mile jaunt. We get ready for the day and head off to breakfast, usually in the main dining room where we can enjoy yummy pancakes or eggs and bacon or lamb chops.

The ship offers lots of activities throughout the day – lectures, bean toss, mini-golf competitions, painting, crafts, trivial pursuit, cooking demonstrations, etc. We don’t usually partake of these things; we do more of our own thing. We meet our friends El and Terry in the card room at 10:00 and play double deck Pinochle until 1:00, when El has to leave us to go play Bridge. If the weather’s nice we may head to the pool for a couple of hours; if not, we’ll read a book in the library or maybe hook up with some other friends for Mexican Train or Phase 10. Occasionally there will be a lecture we’re interested in and we’ll do that instead. At 3:00 it’s time for Ballroom Dance lessons (yes, Ken’s taking dance lessons!). There’s about 20 people the class, and after four weeks we’re actually getting to be pretty decent.

By 5:00 we’ve dressed for dinner and are playing SkipBo, Cribbage or Backgammon and enjoying Happy Hour in one of the lounges as we listen to the band or piano (depending on where we’ve gone) in the background. This is also an opportunity for us to practice our dance moves, but we haven’t been brave enough to try that yet.

We almost always share a table at dinner, regardless of the restaurant we’re in. Our options are the main dining room, the Polo steakhouse or Tuscano Italian restaurant. All are excellent, but Ken’s favorite (of course!) is Polo and Pam really likes Tuscano. Dinner is usually at 6:30, and depending on the conversation may go until 8:30 or 9:00.

There is entertainment every night. Sometimes it’s the ship’s string quartet or pianist, sometimes it’s the ship talent singing and dancing, sometimes it’s a musician, comedian or magician from outside, and sometimes it’s a movie. From 8:30 – 9:30 you can dance to the music of the ship’s band. We did that for the very first time ever a couple of nights ago and had a great time. We pre-arranged with several of our classmate to be there at the same time and make our debut together, so it was a lot less intimidating, and it was a good time. On the nights we don’t go to the show we may choose to play games with friends, read or watch movies we’ve downloaded when we’ve been in ports with high-speed internet.

Every few weeks the ship does something special for all of its Around The World guests. Sometimes it’s an evening reception with free drinks and appetizers; sometimes it’s an 11:00 reception with a beautiful display of appetizers and deserts. Most recently it was sushi and seafood. We’ve never seen so many lobsters!!! One day they prepared a special brunch for us. What an amazing display of talent. Every decoration was made by the culinary team on board – the most incredible food art – from ice sculptures to chocolate to fruit and vegetables – very impressive!

It’s a rough life and we are thoroughly enjoying it!

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More than 50 skyscrapers fill the Shanghai’s skyline in Shanghai’s Pudong financial district. The newest and tallest has 128 floors, and at the beginning of 2019 was the 2nd tallest building in the world (after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai).

Shanghai’s skyline comes alive at night with millions and millions of dancing, changing lights. Nearly every building puts on its own coordinated light show and our boat was docked in the perfect viewing location – all we had to do was take a stroll around the deck. Vegas ain’t got nothin’ on Shanghai. Beautiful!

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Since we’d been to Shanghai just two years ago and saw most of the city’s highlights then, we opted for something a little different this visit. Zhouzhuang Water Town is an ancient town about 20 miles southeast of Shanghai. It is one of the most famous water townships in Shanghai, a cluster of ancient towns dating back more than 900 years. Originally developed during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1911), the town still has its original layout with narrow flagstone roadways leading to tranquil shady areas where cozy lanes weave their way through more than 60 brick-covered gateways. A total of 14 arched bridges of various styles connect one side of the canal to the other. Sixty percent of the buildings are original.

Six-person gondolas ferried us from the entry of the Town about midway down the canal. The clouds in the sky did nothing to diminish the allure of the quaint villages, as we traveled under Cherry Blossom canapies and observed the quiet stirrings of locals just beginning their day.

Exiting the gondolas we began the return journey on foot, meandering through shops offering hand-made musical instrument, silk-embroidered artwork, hand-painted parasols, hand-crafted jewelry, clothing, etc. We passed unique tea houses with extravagant seating areas that hung out just over the canals. Each business was housed in brick enclaves probably taking up less than 300 square feel of space. We stopped by the Great Qing Post Office, founded in 1903, and home now to a museum that traces recounts the history of China’s mail system, dating back more than 3,000 years. Inside is a series of paintings that depict the Chinese version of the Pony Express. We also stopped by a Chinese Medicine store, where more than 1,000 herbal remedies fill the shelves. We wondered past food vendors selling smoked pork, pigs’ feet, quail that looked like tiny birds, and many more unidentifiable items.

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Welcome to Kagoshima, Japan, the first city to introduce western civilization to the Japanese and gateway to trade between Japan and the rest of the world – and home to Sakurajima volcano, an active volcano that has been continually erupting since 1955.

We began our day at the base of the volcano and made a much more civilized climb to viewing points than when we visited the volcano in Nicaragua.  This climb included stairs, viewing platforms, and picnic-like shelters, and although we were blanketed in ash from time to time there was no pelting by lava rock or pebbles imbedded in our hair!  The views were stunning!  We even got to see the volcano erupting.  No[PJ1]  massive lava flows, but you can see the smoke coming out of the crater in a couple of the pictures.  The last time the volcano spewed was 1914.  Smoke clouds reportedly reached as high as 59,000 feet and ash landed as far away as Russia.  Scientist predict another massive explosion within the next thirty years, and i1t seems to be affecting the population.  Our guide lived here when she was a little girl and said the population then was around 8,000.  Today it’s 4,200 and shrinking.

The constant eruption of the volcano makes life interesting for the residents.  The ash is very heavy and wet, so it solidifies quickly and can be damaging to everything it comes in contact with.  Residents are constantly sweeping it up, and the city provides them with special bags to put the ash in for disposal.  The roofs of the houses are built without gutters or spouts because the weight of the ash would tear them from the roof; tombstones and crypts have roofs over them to keep the ash from destroying them, and the mandarin oranges the area is known for all have paper bags wrapped around them while they are hanging from the trees.  It’s an interesting site!  On the plus side the volcanic soil is nutrient-rich making it perfect for growing the mandarin oranges I mentioned earlier and giant radishes – and I mean GIANT.  The largest radish on record here is a whopping 68 lbs.!

We visited the Shoke Shuseikan museum, which tells the story of the Shimadzu family and how they forged international relationships over a period of 800 years that allowed them to gain access to information and inventions that informed and fueled Japan’s own industrial revolution.  Across from the museum is what was once the Shimadzu’s summer home, a sprawling Japanese garden created by the family in 1658.  The grounds include the family home, the original “tin roof” gate that only the lord and his eldest son could enter through (everyone else had to use a different entrance), Japan’s first gas lamp (it’s as big as a garden shed), a reverberatory furnace and a Satsuma Kiriko glassworks factory and store.

The reverberatory furnace was built by Samurai using pictures from a Dutch textbook and combining Japanese craftsmanship with western knowledge.  It’s a process furnace that isolates the material being processed from the fuel used to process it.  It was just beginning to be used in smelting operations in the late 17^th century and would have been cutting edge when it was built.

Satsuma Kiriko is a highly regarded form of cut crystal glass.  It is made by layering colored glass over clear glass and carefully cutting patterns into the outer layer to make the colored glass look like it is melting into the clear glass underneath.  It was created by one of the heads of the Shimadzu family, and for about 100 years after his death it was a lost art.  In 1985 the family resurrected it, and it has since been declared a Traditional Cultural Craft Product.  It ain’t cheap, though.  The little glasses you see in the pictures cost around $950, and the big bowl is more than $10,000.  Beautiful to look at, but our pockets aren’t that deep!

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After returning from Miyajima (see previous post), we enjoyed a traditional bento box lunch and made our way to the main event of the day, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. To help the 45-minute drive go a little more quickly our guide taught us how to make origami samurai helmets. Ken was an excellent student, don’t you think? This is where the hijinks ended.

During WWII Japan’s Second General Army and Chugoka Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima. The Army Marine Headquarters was located in the port. The city had large military supply depots and was a key shipping center for Japan. On Monday, August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. local time the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city. Seventy thousand lives were immediately lost and the city was leveled. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park pays tribute to those who died and advocates for world peace. It is situated in what was once the busiest area of the city, and includes the A-bomb Dome, the shell of what remains of what was a grand structure built in 1918 as an exhibit hall commandeered for military offices during the war. The building is exactly as it was immediately following the bombing. Hiroshima rebuilt after the war and proclaimed a City of Peace by the Japanese Parliament in 1949. It is now a thriving city with 6 rivers, 93 bridges and more than 1.2 million people. The stark contrast of this bombed-out building against the vibrancy of the city as it stands today is a constant and sober reminder of what human beings are capable when we fail to make an intentional effort to preserve peace.

Across from the Dome is the Peace Bell. On its surface is a world map with no national boundaries. This is to symbolize that we are all one world. Visitors to the bell can ring it using a wooden log that hangs outside the bell. Where the log makes contact with the bell is the elemental symbol for atomic energy. On the opposite side is a mirror to reflect the heart of the person ringing the bell. Near the bell is a pond. After the bombing lotus leaves were used to treat peoples’ burns and sooth their souls. Lotus seeds were planted in the pond and every year around ugust 6th they bloom.

Near the Peace Bell is the Atomic Mound, where the ashes of the 70,000 people who died are buried. Inside the mound lies a vault that contains the ashes of roughly 70,000 individuals whose ashes were unclaimed because the entire family had perished or because they were never identified. Every year, Hiroshima City publishes a list of people whose identity has been learned, hoping that relatives will emerge to claim the ashes. Of the 2,432 individual containers of ashes identified and originally placed in the vault in 1955, 824 remain unclaimed.

Continuing toward the Peace Memorial Museum we passed through the Children’s Memorial, built in memory of the children who died. Every October school children from around Japan create paper cranes, in chains or in works of art, and bring them to the Memorial. Just past the Children’s Memorial is the Flame of Peace, which will continue burning until all nuclear weapons have been destroyed. Next to the Flame is a marble coffin with the names of all who have perished and continue to perish as a result of the bomb are listed, including those of U.S. POWs. New names are added every year. When you look through the center of the structure covering the coffin, you can see the previous monuments lined up in a straight line, an avenue of monuments with a single purpose.

Finally we arrived at the Peace Memorial Museum, committed to preserving the memory of that day and encouraging us to never allow it to be repeated. The pictures from our visit speak for themselves.

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Said to tbe one the top three picturesque destinations in Japan, Miyajima is an island near Hiroshima famous for its production of brushes of every size and kind – from the tiniest make-up brushes to calligraphy brushes to paint brushes – and the beautifully unique Itsukushima Shrine.

The shrine is unlike any we’ve visited before. Built on pier-like supports, its 20-plus buildings extend out over the sea are all connected by a single walkway. The walkway has slits built into it to allow for the changing water levels between low and high tides. In addition to the gated entrance found on land, this shrine also has an O-Torii (gate at the entrance of a shrine that signifies the separation between the common every-day life and that of a sacred space) situated out in the water. During low tide you can walk from the shrine to the O-Torii. We were there during high tide and could not do that, but we thought it was probably cooler when surrounded by water anyway.

The shrine was originally built in 593 in what is called the Shinden style of architecture. Two spiritual dogs stand guard at the front entrance, signifying the Alpha and Omega, protecting the grounds from evil spirits. Every aspect of the temple is designed with purpose, from the colors, to the buildings to the direction things are facing, everything has meaning. Our guide’s knowledge was impressive, but it was too much information for us to keep track of. We do remember that the bridge you see in the pictures was built solely for the use of Imperial messengers. No one else was ever allowed to use it, and it is closed off from the public.

While we were visiting someone was participating in a sacred ceremony. Our guide said people often arrange for these ceremonies to show their appreciation when a particularly significant prayer has been answered.

As we exited the temple our nostrils filled with the delicious smells of the outdoor market area. Local specialties include maple cakes, which you can watch being made much like you can the donuts at Pike Place Market in Seattle, and grilled oysters. There are loads of oyster beds in the waters surrounding Hiroshima, and the folks here clearly know what to do with them! Unfortunately, we did not bring any Japanese Yen with us, so we were restricted to buying things at places that accepted good ol’ American plastic. Starbucks, anyone? Check out Pam’s name spelled in Japanese.

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Tokyo is the world’s most populous metropolitan area. The most recent census puts the metropolitan population at 13 million people, and at least 2 million of them were there to welcome us during our visit today. We have never seen so many people continually in one place. It was like being in a non-stop Seattle Seahawks crowd exiting the stadium times ten with no breaks. It was crazy!

We began our day at the Imperial Palace. A famous local Shogun defeated a rival Shogun in a village far away. To celebrate his victory and demonstrate his power the winning Shogun tore down the defeated Shogun’s home and brought the stones to Tokyo one by one and incorporated them into this palace. Although it is built on the Imperial grounds, it was never intended to be a residence. The Emperor lives in a home in the trees behind the Palace, as do his two adult sons. The palace is used by the Emperor for entertaining and for special ceremonies. The Palace is surrounded by a large wall and moat, just like a castle, and those invited to visit the Emperor enter here and make a long journey to get to his actual home. They enter using the bridge in the front of the photo, walk through the archway to the left of the picture of the bridge, then make a right and continue onto the metal bridge directly behind the first bridge (you can see it if you look closely) and follow that bridge into the woods on to the Emperor’s home. Quite the journey. Commoners are allowed to access the bridges twice a year, when they can stand at the end of the bridge and wave to the Emperor- once on the Emperor’s birthday, and on the first day of a new year. Similar to the Queen of England, an emperor has no political power. It is the Prime Minister who actually leads the country, but the Emperor is a treasured figure head and deeply respected.

We were here during Tokyo’s Cherry Blossom festival. The trees have special significance for the Japanese, signifying new beginnings. People come from miles away to view the trees. One of the favorite viewing sites is on the grounds of the Imperial Palace – the festival is the only time commoners can access the grounds – and they will wait in line forever and walk three miles one way to see them. Around the city they stake out space under the trees with blankets (much like Americans do with lawn chairs for parades) for Cherry Blossom “parties” of their own, little picnics with friends and family.

Next up was a visit to a Shento shrine. Before entering we had to cleanse ourselves with water from a special station, washing first our right hand and then our left, then rinsing our mouth to cleanse our spirit. We were privileged to witness a wedding in progress while we were at the shrine. The big white head dress the bride is wearing is to hide her horns, because everyone knows that when a woman gets angry she grows horns out of her head and we wouldn’t want those to show on her wedding day! The shrine had all of the features of those that we have visited before – three golden crests representing the family crest of the emperor to whom the shrine is dedicated, decorated sake barrels, beautiful buildings. This particula shrine also has ropes made of rice. The ropes are adorned with paper lightening bolts. The rope is tied between two Camphor trees. The lightening bolts represent rain, and tying them to the rice rope represents a prayer for good harvest. Tying them between the two trees represents unity, and newlyweds traditionally have their picture taken here for good luck in their marriage.

We finished the afternoon up by visiting another temple and outdoor market, where we were joined by 2 million of our closest friends.

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What a great welcome to Tokyo!  As we entered the port we were greeted by the Tokyo fire department, and then tonight Oceania hosted a special event for all of its Around the World travelers.  We were treated to a traditional Japanese dinner theater performance at the magnificent Hotel Gajoen.   The hotel originally opened in 1928 and is famous for housing thousands of Japanese works of art, especially those related to the era of Emperor Hirohito’s reign.  From the moment you step through the front doors you are swept to another world, passing through corridors lined with lavish wooden Japanese murals, strategically placed cherry blossom trees, intricately carved wooden columns…it was all so lavish and beautiful.

As we entered the conference hall Geisha dancers accompanied by a fellow Geisha playing a shamisen (like a small guitar) were performing traditional songs and dance for us.   Throughout dinner we were entertained by a special, individualized performance by the Miyabiya performance group.  They kicked the show off with a Kabuki dance to Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”  It was great!  There was an incredible magician whose tricks included completely changing his appearance by simply making a 180 degree turn right in front of us.  He was terrific!  There were more Kabuki dancers, more Geisha dancers, a Ninja warrior, a Samurai…. they pulled out all the stops.  Dinner was a bit of an adventure…raw fish and raw eggs are not our usual fair, but overall it was a very impressive and enjoyable evening.

On a separate note, there is a tremendous amount of new construction going on near the pier. Our guide explained that these are condos being built to house athletes that will be coming for the 2020 summer Olympics being hosted by Japan. We’ve included a picture of the construction – multiple high rise buildings – and every single unit in every single building is already sold. New owners will move in as soon as the athletes have vacated. Incredible!

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Kobe, Japan, home of the world-renowned Kobe Beef.  Unfortunately we did not have the opportunity to sample this local delicacy, but we did get to visit more temples and shrines!  😊

Our tour began at the Todai-Ji Temple where the world’s tallest Buddha lives inside the world’s tallest wooden building.  The buildings we visited are the third iteration of the original structures, and they are not a complete replica of the original compound.  Inside the temple there is a very detailed wooden model of the full original complex built by local juvenile inmates.  The buildings that are now in place were built over 300 years ago, using the same materials contained in the original buildings.  It’s impressive to think about the expertise and labor required to build these things 300 years ago; imagine doing it in 728 A.D.!  The Buddha itself is over 300’ tall, making the building probably five or six stories tall.  In the original complex there were two towers on either side of the Buddha building that were more than seven stories tall. 

On either side of the main Buddha, are two other Buddhas.  These two Buddhas represent the on-going quest to reach full enlightenment.  A major tenet in Buddhism is letting go of the greed associated with our earthly being.  The Buddhas on either side of the main one are draped in fancy clothing and jewels, demonstrating that they have not yet mastered this requirement of enlightenment.

The temple is in the town of Nara.  Immediately upon entering Nara we were struck by the number of wild deer roaming about the town.  They were everywhere!  And when we arrived at the temple, their numbers were multiplied.  Deer are considered sacred animals here and are given free reign.  There is an annual ceremony for removing the antlers of young males, but other than that the deer are pretty much left alone.  Their numbers would qualify them as a nuisance in the U.S., but not here.

The Kashuga Taisha Shento Shrine was originally built in 768 to entice the gods to protect Nara.  The shrine is famous for its lanterns – there are thousands of them – a symbol of illumination, a guiding light on the path of enlightenment.  Most lanterns are built of stone, purchased by individuals who place their personal prayer over the candle opening, believing that this will gain them favor with the gods and increase the chances of getting the desired answer to their prayer.  There are also copper and gold lanterns in the shrine, some purchased for as much as $20,000.  There are several decorated sake barrels at the entrance to the shrine, representing the breweries in the area who donate their first batch of sake to the shrine for use in special ceremonies throughout the year.  Another cool feature is an 800-year-old wisteria vine.

Like Todai-Ji, these are not the original shrine buildings.  It, too, has been rebuilt many times over the centuries, always in keeping with original building techniques.  The shrine is refurbished every 20 years, partly to ensure the integrity of the buildings, but also to ensure that the carpentry skills continue to survive from generation to generation.

Our final stop of the day was the Osaka Castle Museum, an eight-story home originally built in 1321 to house the family of a famous Shogun.  The castle is protected by an enormous stone wall, much of which is original, and a moat.  Inside is a Shogun museum that includes shogun artifacts, figurines in battle scenes, and displays that provide historical narratives using 3-D characters.  Pretty cool.

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What an emotional day.  The Battle of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest of WWII.  More than 200,000 individuals lost their lives, over half of them civilians, and the island of Okinawa was all but obliterated.  The battle has been nick-named the “Typhoon of Steel” because of the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of the Japanese kamikaze attacks and the overwhelming number of allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island.  The U.S. dropped more than two million bombs over a period of 83 days.  When the fighting ended all of Okinawa’s buildings, its physical history and artifacts, and 25% of its population were gone.

We visited the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum, devoted to promoting peace by reminding all who visit of the atrocities and absurdity of war.  Located on Mabune Hill, next to the “suicide cliffs” where many Japanese soldiers chose to jump their deaths rather than surrender, the museum includes an outer area with a semi-circular avenue of stones similar to those found at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.  It includes 32 memorial monuments engraved with the names of those who died in the Battle of Okinawa, organized by nationality or ethnicity.  The stones are located near the exact place where Japanese Commander General Mitsuru Ushijima committed suicide rather than surrender to the U.S. troops.  It is impossible to describe what it felt like to stand in a space where so much terror was experienced and so much death occurred.

The inside of the museum is beautifully and effectively done.  It is incredible respectful to the memories of those who perished and so clear in its mission to promote peace.  It doesn’t cut the Japanese or the Americans any slack for their part in the Battle, an includes a number of disturbing photos from the time.  It also includes testimonials from those who were there, people who experienced the war at all different ages.  You can listen to the words of someone who was 5 years old when it happened, 10 years old, 20…each offers a unique perspective.  One of the stories Pam listened to was from a woman who was about 12 when the battle occurred.  She was hiding in a tunnel with her five younger siblings.  They were suffering from dehydration and malnutrition but were afraid to leave the tunnel.  She finally convinced them to crawl out and their worst fears were realized – they were found by U.S. soldiers.  The soldiers immediately gave them water and offered them two squares of chocolate each.  The children did not speak English and could not understand what the soldiers were trying to tell them.  They didn’t know what chocolate was and were certain it was going to kill them but agreed that it was better to eat it and die together than face whatever else might lie ahead.  They ate the chocolate and it didn’t kill them.  Then the soldiers brought them milk.  It was incredible to hear her relive the experience.

After the Peace Museum we visited the Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters, a series of tunnels constructed using hoes and picks that still exist in their original form.  Visitors are able to see replicas of the commanding officers’ room, staff room, generator room, etc.  One hundred seventy-five men committed suicide here (are you seeing a theme?), but not before their Commanding Officer sent a telegram to the Navy Vice Admiral commending the people of Okinawa for their cooperation and self-sacrifice.  Every single civilian – whether they were 3 years old or 80 – was conscripted into service.  Near the end of the war, they were all given grenades, and many were forced to participate in mass suicides.  It is such a sad story.  Throughout the museum hang chains of 1,000 origami cranes, created to represent grief for those who passed and a prayer for the peace of their souls and of the world.  A group of Japanese Navy cadets were there at the same time, and it was kind of cool to share the space with them as they absorbed lessons for their own future.

We had the same guide today as we had yesterday.  She was a young girl living in Nagasaki when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb there.  At one point Pam asked her how, given this history, she could be so welcoming and gracious to Americans.  Soda answered, “It was war.  People do horrible things in war.  And we started it – we bombed Pearl Harbor first.  Japan had nothing after the war, nothing.  I remember going to school and getting the powdered milk the Americans provided to the school.  It was the only nutrition I had.  You saved my life. After the war the U.S. was the only country that came to help us rebuild.  And instead of keeping Okinawa as an American territory and killing the Emperor, as China or Russia would have, you let Japan keep Okinawa and you let the Emperor live.  I love Americans.  They are the kindest people in the world.”

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Whatever we were expecting in Japan, it wasn’t this!  An island of fewer than 60,000 residents, Miyako- Jima is considered one of the most picturesque destinations in Japan.  It’s about 190 miles southwest of Okinawa and home to some of the most beautiful water we’ve seen thus far – right up there with Rangiroa.

Our tour guide was a 74-year-old retired middle school teacher who was very familiar with the area and had a terrific sense of humor.  She explained that the reason the sea water is so clear and blue here is because there are no rivers on the island, no waterways delivering silt or any type of foreign materials into the sea waters.  Whatever the explanation, the water is breath-takingly beautiful.

We drove through town where we passed two small rocks, similar to headstones, the tallest of which was a little less than 4’ tall.  These stones have been in place for hundreds of years.  In 1603 Miyako-Jima found itself beholden to both China and Japan.  Japan owned the island, but China was providing protection from foreign invaders.  Both demanded heavy financial support from Miyako-Jima.  To meet the obligations the government placed a heavy tax on its citizens.  Anyone as tall or taller than the stones was required to give 80% of the fruits of their labor to the government.  Farmers had to give 80% of their crops; women were generally employed in textiles and had to give 80% of anything they made to government.  This tax continued until 1903, 300 years(!), until a group of citizens rose up in protest.

Our travels took us across the Irabu Ohashi Bridge which connects Miyako-Jima to Irabu Island.  At a little over two miles it is Japan’s longest toll-free bridge.  It is considered the “Bridge of Dreams” because it was 40 years in the planning and took nine years and nearly $360 million to build.

Once across the bridge we visited the Makiyama Observatory, where we climbed 75 steps for a terrific view across the sea to Miyako-Jima.  Afterwards we traveled back across the bridge for the highlight of the day, a semi-submarine ride.  The boat took us within inches of the coral below, where we saw formations of every shape and size, and a variety of fish.  Pam even saw a small shark, but we weren’t quick enough to capture it on camera.

We drove along the Higashi-hennazaki Cape, designated a Place of Natural Beauty.  The low, rocky cape has spectacular views and a gorgeous park area with a light house and walking trails.  There is an amazing variety of plants, from lilies to sticker bushes to pineapple trees, and incredible rock formations and boulders.  It’s not clear if the boulders have always been there or if they were brought ashore by one of the many typhoons experienced in the area, but they were a beautiful touch and enjoying the path was a perfect way to get in some steps in.

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Taipei, Taiwan is located within the Ring of Fire, a string of volcanoes situated around the edges of the Pacific Ocean.  It has the highest number and density of mountains in the world – 286 of which are 9,800 feet or more above sea level.  Our tour today took us away from the city and through some of these mountains and past Taiwan’s tallest dormant volcano, Xiaoyoukeng (zow-you-king).

The day began with a steady rain, but that didn’t prevent us from stopping at one of the areas beautiful gardens known for its cherry blossoms and azaleas.  We were too late for the azalea blooms, and a little early for the cherry blossoms, but even through the rain we could appreciate the beauty each adds when they are at their peak. 

The area is known for its hot springs and sulfur deposits, and that was the focus of our tour.  We were making our way to the Calla Young Garden Resort to enjoy their sulfur baths.  Along the way we stopped by Xiaoyoukeng.  Volcanic activity in the area has created openings in the rock where hot sulfurous gases escape, creating puffs of steam.  It was pouring rain while we were there, and the area was enveloped in clouds, so we weren’t able to see the steam then, but we did witness it from a distance when the clouds began to clear later in the day.  What the rain and clouds didn’t hide was the overwhelmingly distinct odor of sulfur.  Phewee!  The sulfur from the volcano feeds into the hot springs we were about to visit, reputed to provide a number of health benefits.   A soak in a sulfur hot springs is said to stimulate your immune system, alleviate the pain and swelling of a different type of arthritis and reduce your blood pressure. 

After lunching on a number of interesting food options, we made our way to the baths.  Everyone was required to don a swimming cap; bathing suits, however, were optional.  There were four sulfur hot springs options, each a different temperature and on of which offered a string of “massage” beds.  It was like sitting on an open water bed of hot tub jets.  There was also a regular swimming pool for cooling off, and massage showers.  The showers were hilarious.  You have the option of choosing a moderate pressure or a more intense one.  Pam opted for moderate, which was bad enough, but when Ken went for the “vigorous” massage we thought he was going to be jetted all the way back to Taipe!

The resort overlooks a very pretty river valley, providing a beautiful viewpoint for the surrounding mountains.  Towards the end of our visit the rain stopped and as the sun began to peek through the clouds we were able to see the steam rising from Xiaoyoukeng off in the distance, a nice end to a good day.

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Kaohsiung, Taiwan is a beautiful city with much to offer.  Our half day tour barely scratched the surface. 

The two main religions in Taiwan are Buddhism and Taoism, a reflection of the part India and China have played in the country’s history.  The influence of these religions is felt everywhere, from the many temples that populate the landscape to the joy and humility of the people you meet. 

Our first stop was The Spring and Autumn Pavilions are a Taoist temple complex situated on Lotus Lake, the Tao goddess of mercy, riding a dragon.  According to legend, Guanyin appeared to her followers riding a dragon through the clouds.  She instructed them to build a representation of her between the two pavilions and in 1953 they did.  She is joined by two of her “assistants,” Dragon Girl and Sudhana.  In Chinese culture dragons symbolize favorable power and strength.  They have control over water, including rains and floods.  Only the emperor was allowed to wear the image of a dragon on his clothing.  If anyone else did, they would be beheaded – pretty good incentive for following the rules! 

You can walk through the body of the dragon Guanyin is sitting on.  Entering through the dragon’s mouth is supposed to bring one good luck.  Inside the body are carvings of the 32 manifestations of the Bodhisattva, individuals who are on the path to Buddhahood but have not yet reached it, or who are able to reach Nirvana but delay doing so out of compassion for others.

Near the Spring and Autumn pavilions is a tortoise pond.  People buy small tortoises and release them into the pond, believing doing so will gain them good “merits” with Buddha.

Across from the pavilion complex is the Chi Ming Palace, a temple built to worship Confucius and Guan, the god of war.  After a short visit there that included a very complex explanation of the ritual of praying to the gods, we made our way to the Confucius Temple, built during the Qing dynasty and designed to resemble The Forbidden City in Beijing.  At the front of the property is the 10,000 Foot Wall depicting all the activities Confucius mastered during his life – education, archery, music, teaching, travel, etc.  The wall is so named because of something one of his students once said about the amount of knowledge Confucius had, comparing it to the height of a 10,000-foot wall. 

Our last stop of the day was the Chizin Old Street market, located across the street from a shoreline park where individuals were riding motorized bicycles, walking with family and friends or enjoying the songs of street entertainers.  There were a number of food vendors along both sides of the street, and inside the covered market area there were lots and lots of fish vendors offering fresh fish, pickled fish, smoked fish, dried fish…. just about any kind of fish you can imagine!

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Manila is the capital city of the Philippines and the most densely populated city in the world.  It is also one of the most polluted.  According to Wikipedia, pollution alone causes more than 4,000 deaths a year in Manila, and the Pasig River that flows through its corridor is one of the most polluted in the world.  It is also said to be one of the wealthiest regions in Southeast Asia but based on what we saw today that wealth must be concentrated among a very small segment of the population.  We were struck by  extreme poverty, the number of ramshackle metal shanties occupying every spare inch of space.  As our guide described life for the average citizen many people on our bus commented on how “cheap” everything is – a gymny (a shared cab that can hold up to 16 people – the brightly colored vehicles in the pictures below) can be had for less than 10 cents a mile, an average McDonald’s meal is about $3.50,  city apartments rent for $300/month, it’s about $5/day to park if you drive your own car to work – but when you’re making $350/month these things aren’t quite so cheap.

Our 8 hour day began with an introduction to the motorcycle police that would be escorting us on our tour – not for security purposes, but because when you’re the most densely populated city in the world traffic is a problem.  Not “can be” but constantly is.  Our live about 30 minutes outside the city and told us they have to allow themselves at least 4 hours to get to work every day – each way!  They take the bus or a gymny.   This creates the potential for serious problems for cruise ships that operate on very strict schedules.  They need their passengers returned from their tours on time.  To make sure that happens the city assigns police escorts to pave the way for the tour buses and ensure they get back to the ship when they’re supposed to.  If the buses are late they have to pay big fines and run the risk of losing the cruise ship’s business.  We were in the second of three buses so we weren’t able to see the lead motorcycle, but friends in the front of the first bus said they were quite entertaining – the way they stopped traffic to allow the buses to move against the flow of traffic using the wrong lane, preventing people from pulling out in front of the buses, etc.

First up on the tour was a stop at St. Joseph Parish Church, where we saw and heard the world’s only bamboo organ.  Built in 1824 by the Parish’s first priest to accommodate the Filipino climate, 902 of the organ’s 1,031 pipes are made of bamboo.  It has required repairs and refurbishment over the years, but it’s pretty impressive that an instrument like this built nearly 200 years ago continues to be part of the every day life of the church and has such a beautiful sound.

Next we visited a fruit and vegetable market.  Nothing too extraordinary to report here except that for some reason the Manila government requires all tour buses to stop at this location and allow visitors a chance to make a purchase.  Some folks bought bananas or flowers.

Our main destination was Tagaytay Ridge, an area overlooking the bay below and the world’s smallest active volcano.  There is a smaller volcano in Mexico, but it is not considered to be active, so Mount Taal (an ironic name for the smallest volcano, don’t you think?) wins the title.  Unfortunately, the air quality made it difficult to see the volcano clearly, but Ken did get some pictures.

Our return trip included a drive through the walled city of Manila, a one quarter square mile area built in the late 16th Century to protect the city from invaders. It was protected by Fort Santiago and served as the seat of government and political power, and was the center of the area’s religion, education and economy.

When we entered our stateroom Pam was greeted with a nice birthday surprise.  Our stewards even made her a cake!  We couldn’t eat it, but it was pretty creative. 

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Puerto Princesa is the capital of the islandprovince of Palawan. It has been called the cleanest and greenest city in the Philippines, a result of its stringent anti-littering and conservation policies. With a population of only 210,000 it is the most sparsely populated city in the the Philippines. There are plenty of cars and traffic, but the most common mode of transportation for the local people is the tricycle, a covered 3-wheel motorbike used to taxi individuals from one point to another at a cost of about 9 cents/mile. Cashews and tourism are the main industries in the area, and although there is a thriving downtown area most people live in more rural outskirts of the city. Seventy percent of the land of Puerto Princes is forest; only 30% has been developed, and the law prohibits foreigners from owning property here. There is an active volcano on the island that fuels hot springs, which provide the water used for bathing, cooking etc., and there is wide-spread use of solar power.

We started our day hoping to find a way to visit an underground river Ken had heard about. After a little investigating he discovered a woman on the cruise had booked a private tour, and when he saw her across a crowded room he approached her to learn more. It turned out her group had some available seats and she quickly invited us to join, subject to her guide’s approval. The park has strict limits on the number of visitors it allows each day and we had to be sure we would be allowed in. The guides got the okay and we are so glad they did!

As with all of our best stories so far, this journey began with a steep and windy road. The park was far from the pier. It was nearly noon when we boarded our vans, and we had to be back by 6:30, so there was no time to waste. Our driver was a young Mario Andretti on steroids, weaving in and out of traffic, cutting through parking lots to avoid traffic lights, whipping around the curves of the roller coaster road, making the 2-1/2 hour drive in just 1 hour and 45 minutes. The ride was so adventurous our fitness devices credited us with traveling more than a mile and taking more 3,000 steps along the way!

The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park is one of the new 7 Wonders of Nature, an initiative begun in 2007 to create a list of seven natural wonders as chosen by people in a global poll. It encompasses approximately 55,000 acres with a full mountain-to-sea ecosystem with eight intact different types of forests. The highlight of the park is an underground river system that flows directly into the sea, with the lower half of the river subject to tidal influences. At nearly five miles long, it is the longest navigable subterranean river in the world. To access the river we first had to cross the ocean. We did so on motorized outrigger canoes, passing steep limestone cliffs along the way. We arrived at a pristine beach, where we descended the canoes using a stepladder and waded through knee deep water to the shore. We journeyed another 600 yards or so through a riverine forest to the most beautiful lagoon where we were fitted with hard hats and loaded into 6 person canoes powered by young men using long poles to guide them.

We entered the mouth of a cave and were immediately mesmerized by the beauty of the stalactites and rock formations. We were surroundedfa by flying bats, the silence of the cave broken only by the faint echo of bird calls, the only light provided by our guide’s small flashlight. Above us hung thousands more bats. It was magical!

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What a wonderful and full day!

We began our day at the Blasinga Waterfall, near Ubud. After paying the nominal entrance fee we made our way down an outdoor corridor, lined on either side by tall bamboo poles. We emerged in a multi-level tropical paradise, complete with infinity pools, tiki bars, and bamboo swings. We could hear the waterfall but would need to walk down two more levels before we could actually see it. It was incredible! On the opposite side of the river local folks were already beginning to gather at the pool at the bottom of the falls for a day of fun. It was really cool!

The weather, however, was hot! hot! hot! as you’ll notice in the pictures from our next stop – the Kemenuh Butterfly Park. I’ve never seen so many butterflies of all shapes, sizes and colors. The park is small but impressive, designed for conservation and education, and to attract the highest number and variety of butterflies possible. Included in the park is a small garden shed where the pupa/chrysalis are kept to protect them from the birds and lizards that would otherwise prey on them in the garden. Here we saw the various stages of butterfly development and met the Giant Moth, a beautiful creature with a very short life span. It is born without a mouth and no way to take in nutrition, and lives only 24 hours. Being a butterfly is a hard life – even the other butterflies in the park have a life-span of only 5-7 days.

Next up was the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. The intent of the Sanctuary is to preserve the area based on the doctrine of Tri Hita Karana, a Hindu philosophy of maintaining a happy life through harmony with others, harmony with the environment, and harmony with the Supreme God. Home to approximately 900 Balinese long-tailed monkeys, the park is filled with beautiful sacred trees and is the site of three 14th century temples.

No visit to Bali is complete without a visit to at least one temple. Our final stop of the day was an historic temple whose name we do not know, where we were both required to don appropriate attire (wrap skirts kindly provided by the people at the temple). Thanks to our wonderful driver and guide, Fepi, we were able to fit a lot into our five hour day before it was time to return to the ship and set sail for the Philippines!

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Bali, Indonesia…white sand beaches, clear blue water lapping the shore, mountainous backdrops…not the Bali we visited today. Our Bali was incredibly crowded, with serious amounts of traffic, dirt and poverty. It was a far cry from what we expected, but it had much to offer.

Bali is land of many, many temples. It is said to have as many as 50,000, and after our visit here I believe it! In addition to the historical and community temples, there are individual temples at every place of business, every Hindu home, along important roadways, along sidewalks…they are literally everywhere. The temples are a reflection of Bali’s number one religion, Balinese Hinduism. Balinese Hinduism follows traditional Hindu philosophy and incorporates the traditional Balinese belief that objects, places and creatures all have a distinct spiritual essence. There are many gods in Balinese Hinduism, and homage is paid to them throughout the city in the forms of huge monuments. Our first stop of the day was to the Cultural Park, which is beautifully situated in the middle of the city, offers a tremendous amount of history and is home to a number of these monuments.

The main feature of the park is the Garuda Wisner Kencana statue, one of the world’s largest and highest monumental statues. It is made of copper and brass and stands 400′ tall, has a wingspan of 210′ and weighs in at a whopping 900 tons. It sits atop a large convention center-type building and can be seen from miles out at sea.

Following our visit to the park we stopped by one of the most famous beaches in the area, Pandawa Beach. It is surrounded by steep cliffs. Carved into the side of one are six statues with alters, a statue for one of each of the five sons of the Hindu god, Pandu, and one of his wife.

The afternoon was spent at a bird sanctuary, followed by a traditional Balinese dinner and ceremonial performance and fire dance. The variety and color of birds was amazing, and the performances were impressive. The costumes were incredibly detailed and vibrant, and the fire dance was the most unique we’ve ever seen!

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Komodo Island is probably the most untouched of all the places we’ve visited so far. There is only one small fishing village on the island, located an hour’s walk from the pier that we tendered to. There are no roads and cars are forbidden. Fewer than 20,000 people are allowed to visit each year, and aside from a small café and little shopping area where the locals hawk their wares there are no commercial interests on the island. As we approached the bay, we could see small fishing and houseboats reminiscent of Hemingway’s day dotting the horizon and hear children playing in the distance.

We began our journey in the main camp of Loh Liang, translated as “Big Dragon Nest.” Our group of 20 or so was accompanied by three guides. Agus provided the narrative for the day, and two other gentlemen carried big sticks in the shape of a tall “Y” to protect us from the dragons. Before we entered the forest, Agus pointed out lemon basil plants and had everyone crush the leaves in the palms of our hands and spread them all over any exposed parts of our body. This would be our natural bug and mosquito repellant. It worked great!

Indonesia is the only place in the world where Komodo Dragons can be found. They are scattered among five islands. Populations range from three on one island to 1,373 here on Komodo, for a total count of 3,013 dragons. They have existed for more than 40 MILLION years, but they were discovered by humans just a little over 100 years ago. They are said to have been the inspiration for the movie, “King Kong.”

Komodo Dragons can grow to nearly 10 feet in length and 300 pounds. They are generally solitary animals that live on meat, can run up to 20 mph, and swim up to a mile at a time. They have massive shoulders and wicked long, sharp claws that they use to take down their prey. They have a keen sense of smell, which they use their tongue for, and can smell food from as far as five miles away. Their large, curved serrated teeth are considered their most deadly weapon, and their bit is poisonous. We were fortunate to see quite a few of these guys, one of which walked right in front of us. It was a great day!

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Today we are in Darwin, Australia, home of the world’s oldest living culture (the Aborigines have lived here for 60,000 – 70,000 years) and jumping crocodiles!  The day greeted us with an amazing sunrise, warm temperatures and EXREME humidity!

Saltwater crocodiles are among the largest and most dangerous crocodiles on the planet.  Females generally grow to a maximum of 10 feet and 180-220 lbs., but males will continue to grow their entire lives.  They’ve been known to grow as large as 20’ and weigh in at nearly 2,400 lbs.!  These are some big guys – and we are part of their food chain.  Yikes!!! 

We travelled a little over an hour away from our ship, passing wetlands, orchards and fields as we went.  Darwin is only 121 feet above sea level, and tides in the area reach 20-30 feet, so much of the land we passed becomes flooded during high tide, with water coming right up to the roadway.  We saw Brahman cattle grazing in fields, geese with their baby ducks and we even saw a Wallaby, but he was quickly spooked by the bus, so we weren’t able to get a picture of him.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the saltwater croc is that it lives in saltwater.  It especially likes the brackish waters of the Australian rivers that combine river and sea waters, like the Adelaide River we visited.  They live in the waters, coming to land only to hunt and lay eggs.  They will eat literally anything, frequently taking down cows and buffalo in the area, and can jump up to 6’ in the air to catch bats and birds.  A female will lay about 70 eggs at a time, but only 6 or so will make it to maturity and it is the temperature of the nest that will determine the gender of the baby – 86° for females; 89° for males.

There are about 200,000 saltwater crocodiles in Australia these days, 50 of which live along the stretch of the Adelaide River we visited.  Our guides claim to know all 50 crocodiles, differentiating them by their color, missing limbs (they will eat each other – ugh!), scars, etc.  As we boarded our boat there was a huge croc – probably 6-8 feet – loitering by the boat.  “Trolling” might be a better word!  The skipper said this was a “rogue” croc, one they do not recognize who only showed up a couple of days before.  He certainly looked like he was waiting for one of us to become crocodile bait, and the skipper was extremely nervous, advising us to keep all body parts and possessions inside the boat and to remain seated in the front row. 

It was a short excursion, but we were able to get some decent shots of the crocs jumping.

Enjoy!

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Pam has never been able to master the art of the snorkeling mask and breathing tube, so she opted for a different kind of adventure.  She went on a Sea Walk!

She donned her wet suit, put on a weight belt, and descended into a “holding pen” in the ocean space below the platform.  There she waited as a pressurized helmet was lifted over her head via crane (these puppies are HEAVY!) and settled onto her shoulders, making her look more like she was preparing for a space walk than a sea walk.  She made her way down another set of steps, completely submerging herself in the sea below, her helmet tethered to the oxygen chamber above.  Staff guided her along a metal rectangular platform that allowed her to mingle with the fish without having to deal with that pesky snorkeling mask.  There were professional photographers there to help capture the moment, and Pam augmented their photos with a few of her own (see if you can tell the difference – ha!).  Pam’s pictures prove that giant fish in the professional photos really was that big – no photoshopping here!

It was a fantastic experience lasting a short 20 minutes.  She would have stayed all day if they would have let her. 

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