The day began, at least for me, at exactly 2:31 a.m.; shortly after for Concetta. Although my son Rob makes fun of us for wanting to be at the airport two hours early, we like it that way just in case anything goes wrong. So, we were grateful when Rob graciously agreed to stay over night and drive us to the airport. We were on the road by 3:30 a.m. and reached the Reno airport thirty-seven minutes later. The new check-in facility is just wonderful. We walked right up the United Airlines ticket counter where a very pleasant man met us, took our passports and flight information sheet, and did all the touch-screening on their computer for us to accomplish our check-in. Almost before we knew it, we were on our way to the passenger gate.

The flight was far from full on this first let of our journey, though we did have a neighbor in our three-seat combo. I worked pretty hard in the trip’s planning stages to make sure we had assigned seats near the front of the plane. Concetta and I always observe the "one carry-on, one personal item" airline mandate, which the ticket agents were very vocal about enforcing as we neared boarding time. Once again, almost before we knew it, we were on the plane and airborne.

If you intend to be an air traveler sometime in the future, think seriously about investing in some expensive ear phones for listening to the in-flight movies and TV shows. Even if you don't intend to watch that sort of visual drivel, you can tune into the airplane's sound system while you read your latest Tom Clancy novel. We have found that headphones are well worth the money, especially if you need to drown out any screaming infants.

The flight to Denver was smooth and pleasant. We took advantage of the free coffee and water, but did not buy any snacks. I always pack a granola bar in my small “personal item” bag to provide a few calories when needed.

The coffee here at the Caribou Coffee place is pretty good, should you have occasion to be strolling the Denver airport anytime soon. In just over an hour we will be boarding our flight to Toronto. I always-always-always schedule two hours between flights. Most of the time you can get by with less, but when you need those two hours, you really need them. Last year on our trip to the U.K., we sat for over an hour on the tarmac at the Reno airport while they repeatedly "re-booted" the airplane's electrical system. Had we not had the two hour layover in Salt Lake City, our whole trip to Edinburgh would have been scuttled.

The 21st century has definitely arrived. How do I know that? Well, it’s because I’m sitting here in seat 26C on an Air Canada Airbus typing on my laptop. No big deal you say? Well, yes, you’ve been able to do that for years. But wait, I’m not only typing on my laptop at 30,000 feet, but I’m also charging the battery at the same time. And, in addition to that amazing feat, I’m simultaneously charging my world phone battery. All this while watching a business piece about Walmart on my seat-back TV.

Is this any way to travel?

Is George Bush an awful public speaker?

Of course, they don’t let you do any sending or receiving of signals from the ether so connecting to my Facebook account or blog is still not possible. But hey, at this point I’m willing to wait.

[thirty minutes go by]

Okay, I’m tired of the business news about Walmart, I’m switching to Jazz. In the mean time a word about the world phone. On our first trip to Italy in 2006 we immediately learned that having no way to communicate with anyone in the U.S. or in Italy was a big disadvantage. We couldn’t call ahead to the hotels where we had reservations, nor could be field calls from home should an emergency arise. And trying to figure out Italy’s weird and not so wonderful phone system was just too mind boggling. In Italy, some phone systems won’t talk directly to other phone systems. Granted, each of these systems has their own phone cards that you can prepay for and then insert in the proper public pay phone, but we found figuring all that out a big pain. So, when we went to the U.K. in 2008, we signed up with the “Brightroam” company. With Brightroam you purchase an unlocked world phone, any number of prepaid minutes for your intended length of stay, and the necessary computer chip to make it communicate in the given area where you’re headed. And that’s it. The only other charge is a tiny fee that they charge you every year to keep you as a client. But that’s it. No monthly charges and nothing more to buy unless you travel to a country where your computer chip doesn’t work. In that case, you just go online and order the proper chip, it comes by courier, and you’re off and traveling again.

For the trip this year I found that our U.K. chip did not work in Greece and Italy. So, I just ordered the proper chip, put some more money on the prepaid account, and when the chip arrived I just switched out the U.K. one and inserted the Greece/Italy one. Then, to tie up all the loose ends, I forwarded both our U.S. cell phone numbers to the world phone U.S. connection number and I was all set. Brightroam provides you with both an international phone number and a 866 number in the U.S., which makes it easy for you to leave your phone number with family for emergencies. On the horizon, Brightroam tells me, is a plug-in for your laptop that will allow it to connect to the internet using your Brightroam phone. I’m absolutely going to be interested in that 21st century bit of wizardry.

For those of you who are quite accustomed to bashing the airlines for poor service and late flights, I have to tell you that our United Airlines flight from Reno to Denver took off on time, provided us great service, and arrived in Denver fifteen minutes EARLY. For the Denver to Toronto leg, I booked Air Canada. Once again our flight took off on time, provided us with excellent service, and landed early. So far the only thing I can think to complain about is the youngster in the seat ahead of me from Denver to Toronto who wanted to test the very limits of the construction of his particular seat. He bounced against the seat back so regularly that had I been prone to seasickness, I might have needed a barf bag. It truly made typing on the laptop an adventure in accurate keying.

So, anyway, here we are in Toronto. We breezed through customs, at least we would have if I had properly filled out the customs form declaring that I was not transporting firearms and vast sums of cash. But once through that minor snafu, Concetta and I easily found our gate, the WiFi hot spot, and now we're just deciding whether to get something to eat or wait the two plus hours until our flight takes off for Athens. I'm sort of hungry, but then I'm always hungry. I tried calling Athens yesterday to confirm with our lodging hosts that we were still coming, but, as the kind gentleman I reached at the answering service was quick to point out, there was no one around with whom I might talk since it was close to midnight there. So, we're just going to show up at the Lotus Hotel tomorrow morning and see what happens. Our next hot spot after Toronto may be the back of Zorba's cab or something. But wherever, I'm sure it will be challenging.

Ciao for now, or should I say, (fill in Greek here).

My goodness those trans-Atlantic flights are looooooonnnnng! We got up occasionally and walked to the very rear of the plane just to stretch our legs, but you still go just about bonkers when you spend nine hours in such a tiny space.

Once again, our Air Canada flight took off right on time and arrived just when they told us it would. The service was pretty darn nice, though the food wasn't anything you'll see written up in Travel and Leisure. The plane's layout consisted of seats in 2-5-2 row configuration. I reserved one of the two-seat setups, which meant we didn't have anyone seated with us. Even better, our flight had almost no babies. In fact, I only saw one woman with a baby and she sat way in the back of the plane and I don't think the baby ever made a sound. The biggest disappointment was finding out that our Boeing 767 did not come equipped with the latest seat-back computer screens. There was only one big screen in our immediate area and it was playing an old Will Smith movie about rampaging robots. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning they played Russel Crow's rendition of Robin Hood, but I slept through most of that one, which didn't matter since I'd seen it anyway. So, the bottom line was, the flight was boring in comparison to our first two legs, but we had each brought along our reading books so we stayed entertained. We arrived in Athens about 11:20 a.m.their time. We sailed right through customs, baggage claim, and the cab hailing ritual and were soon on our way to central Athens.

We were told that the ride to Athens from the airport could take an hour and were advised by an Canadian-born Athens school teacher on our flight that we should pay about forty Euros for the ride to our hotel. So, when we got to the hotel that's just what I gave him. He murmured something about the cost of the toll bridge so I gave him another five (also to be expected according to the teacher) and he went happily on his way. I always hold my breath when dealing with cab drivers in foreign countries, especially ones who don't run their meter (I didn't even see a meter in our cab today), but our experience was totally positive. He didn't seem to speak a word of English so I tried out my limited Greek, which he may not have understood since he didn't respond. I did do something smart on a whim yesterday. I printed out the name of our hotel and the address on a small piece of paper which I just handed to the cab driver. He stared at it for several long moments, then got out of the car and went to consult a fellow driver. When he came back he said he knew where to take us (I guess that what he said, anyway). I'm sure glad I had the paper to give him as explaining where I wanted to go would have been completely useless in this instance.

I chose the Lotus Hotel in Athens because it received good write-ups on the web. Some of the downtown hotels can be in fairly rough neighborhoods. The room at the Lotus turned out to be beautiful with everything looking pretty new and modern. The elevator actually held ALL our bags and us, which is something you seldom see. Elevators in Europe tend to be sort of phone-booth sized and you have to make multiple trips to ferry your luggage to your room.

The WiFi in the room works sometimes, which is about all I can say for it. For some reason the blog stalls when I attempt to load it, making me try over and over again. Still, I'm on the site now so if it lets me save this entry, I'll be happy.

This evening, I'm hoping for some real Greek food and music. This is where the fun begins.

Today was our first full day in Athens and it started out great. Our Hotel, the Lotus, is just nothing short of terrific. Everything is new and clean and bright, from the all-marble bathroom, to the crisp new bed linens. We didn't have much luck with the internet, but I suspect that it had something to do with my using an American DNS rather than a Greek DNS. In other words, if I put in www.google.com it would usually never load. But if I put in www.google.gr it would load pretty quickly. Of course, knowing that didn't help me when my web site and blog site are solidly U.S.

One of the best things about the Hotel is the breakfast. My goodness, it was a banquet! They literally had something for everyone and every taste. Naturally I went right for the Greek yogurt and honey, something I've missed since I was here over three decades ago. But they also had all manner of hot dishes like eggs and bacon and potatoes. They had baked tomotoes to keep the Brits happy, too. After my double helping of yogurt and peaches I also tried the custard, which was excellent, a cheese pie, and some sort of coffee cake which I would have eaten more of but just didn't have room. After breakfast, the Hotel staff kindly voluteered to babysit our bags while we went exploring.

The concierge promised that it would be easy to find the nearby metro station and ride it into the old part of the city. Well, he turned out to be right on. Within minutes we had found the metro station, bought our tickets, located the right train, and were on our way. Four stops later we emerged into the sunlight percisely at our destination, the new Acropolis museum.

Wow! What a place. Four floors are devoted to all the artifacts from the Parthenon and surrounding digs. The museum itself is perched atop an ongoing dig (photo top right). To keep from disturbing the site, the building was erected on concrete stilts (photo bottom right). They've provided glass floors in some spots so you can view the archeaologists going about their work. Terrific, terrific place! After strolling the museum all morning, we had a very nice lunch in the museum cafeteria. The lunch was made even nicer by a Greek woman and her young daughter who invited us to sit with them and talk about life in Greece. After lunch, Concetta and I climbed the long stone path to the top of the Acropolis to see the Parthenon.

Though much abused over the twenty-five centuries since its construction, the temple is still nothing short of magnificent! Though we strolled completely around the perimeter of the Acropolis, the best thing we discovered was to find a resting place and just gaze at it.

All too soon we noticed the daylight waning. It was time to jump on the metro and retrace our steps to the Lotus Hotel, grab our bags, hail a cab, and make the afternoon dash down to the port of Pireus and our home for the next two weeks, the cruise ship Aegean Odyssey (photo above left).

Tonight, as I sit here in the ship's computer room, I have encountered a bit of a problem concerning the blog. Though this shipboard machine on which I am typing this account works much better than I experienced with the Lotus Hotel's connection, the IT folks have locked out the USB ports making it impossible for me to add photos. I'm not sure how I'm going to remedy this problem. (Note: as it turned out, no fix was found for this dilema)

Today was the day that we had signed up for a tour of the Acropolis, the Acropolis museum, and a whole bunch of other stuff that we hadn't already done the day before. You may remember that Concetta and I climbed the Acropolis and saw the nearby museum yesterday. Even though we knew we'd be doing it again today, we figured that you can't possible see it all in one day. Plus today we we're going to have a guide who came complete with a sound system for each of us so we could tune into a running narrative on what she was describing.

The crowds were bigger today for some reason, but it was worth the second attempt to get our guide's input. These new sound systems they have for tours are really great. You can stand thirty feet away and still hear what the guide is saying. Very cool. In the afternoon the group was treated to a visit to the National Archaeology Museum where we got to see a great many of the artifacts that Heinrich Schliemann looted from Greece and Turkey in the late 1800s. Schliemann was the man who first dug at the site of Troy, which is one of the stops on our upcoming voyage.

The boat leaves Pireaus, Greece, tonight between 10:00 p.m. and midnight (I don't plan on being awake to see it happen) and tomorrow we're going to be visiting Mycenae located about 90 kilometers southwest of Athens. In the second millennium BC, Mycenae was one of the major centers of Greek civilization, as well as a military stronghold which dominated much of southern Greece. The period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae. I've been trying to add to my Greek vocabulary. Today I learned that “katalaveno” means "I understand," a handy word sometimes when dealing with non-english speakers. Hopefully you actually DO understand. I also learned how to say excuse me, which is “signome” with the emphasis on the "no" part. Only problem is most of the crew on the ship are from the Philippines and don't speak a word of Greek. So you only get to practice on the shop keepers and restaurant people out in the community.

The weirdest thing is the written Greek language. If you want the "p" sound you use a figure that looks like an upside down "u." If you want an "r" sound, you use a p. Upside down "y"s have an "L" sound and an "s" uses a figure that looks like a backward "3." I figure it may take me awhile to get the concept. Concetta and I enjoyed a great dinner on the fantail of the boat tonight, the scene bathed in the glow of the lights of passing ships. I told her that John Riise and I had sat very near that same spot back in 1973 and drank ouzo with a couple of chaps name Amed and Mohammed when we were just youngsters. Seems a world away now, but no less real. The summer breeze on the fantail was intoxicating, just as it was all those years ago. So, for now I wish you (fill in Greek), good night. It's pronounced cah-lee-nee-tah.

Well, it looks like the lack of photos on the blog is going to continue as long as we're on the ship. I talked to the cruise coordinator today to voice my complaint about being locked out of both the USB ports and the CD drive on the computer. She told me that their computer system functioned out of England and they were very, very afraid that one of the passengers would infect their system which not only runs the passenger computer room but the ship's systems as well. As idiotic as that sounds, I suppose that I'm not going to be able to circumvent them. I thought about unhooking their computer some quiet night and hooking up the laptop, but I suspect that I wouldn't be able to get out anyway. So, I'm going to have to wait until we get to our Rome B&B before I can post the cruise photos. Sigh!!!

Today we had our first experience with riding the Aegean Odyssey’s small boats (photo right) into the shore since the ship could not approach the land due to shallow water. I have to tell you that it immediately took me back to 1973 and my voyages on the good ship, MAR. The smell of the diesel, the salt spray, the rocking of the boat, all thrust me right back to my 20-something years on an ocean-going, 60-foot ketch. Damn, I found that I really missed those feelings. There's nothing like living aboard a boat, nothing in this world.

Once on shore, we boarded buses that would take us to the site of the ancient civilization of Mycenae which flowered circa (c. 1600 BC – c. 1100 BC). Mycenae is a cultural period of Bronze Age Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. These dates correspond to the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, it is the historical setting of much ancient Greek literature and myth, including the epics of Homer. This was really impressive stuff here when you get to view jewelry and toys and weapons and tools that were crafted several THOUSAND years ago.

Lunchtime found as back at the nearby port city of (fill in name) for a fantastic lunch in a bougainvilla-festooned patio (photo bottom right) amid a wonderous labyrinth of tiny alleys filled with exotic shops, pergola-shaded restaurants, and a host of colorful sights and smells. We wanted spanakopita (spinich pie) but they had run out. So, we chose the cheese pie instead, which turned out to be slighly less exciting. Still, we finished off with our absolute favorite, Greek yogurt and honey, so everything was right with the world.

After lunch, we boarded the buses for a 40-minute ride to the ancient theater of Epiduarus (photo below). Wow, just like you've seen in those Rick Steves travel shows on Greece, their stadiums are awesome.

The Epidaurus stadium was constructed entirely out of cut stone, sat as many as 20,000 people, and had acoustics so fine that the actors could be heard easily in the loftiest seats. Those seats were a fair distance above the stage, let me tell you. I know because I climbed all the way up there to take a picture. Awesome is just too mild a word. It was just incredible!

We had quite a ride on the little boat described above when we wanted to reboard the ship this afternoon. The wind had kicked up a good bit and our boat, filled as it was with thirty or forty people, was bobbing around on the those waves like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. But Concetta, prone to seasickness sometimes, came through it just fine. Having lived aboard a boat for a year, I realized what we were in a tight spot more than many of the passengers I imagine. I marveled at how calm they remained as our little shuttle boat rose and fell with each wave. Still, everything turned out all right and the boat and deck crews brought every passenger aboard safely.

Concetta and I finished the day out on the fantail where we could eat dinner and watch the lights of the Greek mainland receed in the distance. The service on this boat is absolutely outstanding. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. Most of the employees appear to be from the Philippines. We questioned our waiter tonight and he told us he has a wife and four kids at home, but that there's not much employment there. So, he works on the ship eight months of the year and is home for four months. This particular waiter has singled us out for exceptional treatment and he’s just the happiest guy you could find.

The last thing we did tonight is have lifeboat training -- the training that we missed last night because tour bus was so late getting back. I had to reflect that I spent three years in the Navy and one year aboard the yacht, MAR, and had never had a life preserver on. Life can certainly be filled with irony.

Our ship's newsletter laid out the day's activities pretty well so let me just quote: "Today, we jump forward in time as we leave behind the magnificent Classical sites of Athens and Mycenae. We now explore the Byzantine Churches of Monemvasia. The two main attractions are the 13th century A.D. Church of Christos Elkomenos (photo right) and the Agia Sofia (photo bottom right). This includes a trip to the wonderful Byzantine city of Mystras and the remains of ancient Sparta."

Once again Concetta and I maintained our ritual of rising before 6:00 a.m. and greeting the rosey dawn from the fantail of the Aegean Odyssey. We've found that there is simply no substitute for this premier breakfast location. If you haven't seen or read about it, the Mediterranea is a wonderful place to take in a sunrise or sunset. It has something to do with the minute particles of Sahara desert sand in the atmosphere. I remember thirty-five years ago when I was living aboard the MAR here in the Med that we enjoyed some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets I had ever seen anywhere. I can attest that those runrises and sunsets are just a beautiful today.

Our tour for the day involved climbing aboard the Odyssey's small boats and making the short voyage to the quay. From there we set off on a ninety minute drive up into the mountains by bus. As you've read, our goal was to visit a couple of very old churches near the town of Mystras as well as see the site where ancient Sparta once thrived. There's not much left of Sparta since the real estate developers moved in (yes it also happens in Greece), but still the little town that sits atop old Sparta is very picturesque and appears to be thriving. Once we reached Mystras, it turned out that you had to be part Sir Edmund Hillary and part mountain goat to fully appreciate the ancient religious buildings perched on the hillside above the town. As we climbed, it was not hard to see that the ancient stone paths had been trod by a lot of feet before ours. Fortunately, everyone made it up and back without turning an ankle or tumbling over the low stone walls that lined the path.

Today's outting brought it home to me once again that the very best sunlight in all of the world falls right here in Greece. It almost seems to take on a etheral quality, like you're looking past the confines of the real world into something beyond. The white-washed buildings seem to glitter and sparkle like someone had photoshopped them and upped the contrast level. We've all seen achingly blue skies in Nevada, but here in Greece the sky is so blue and radiant that you find yourself simply staring at it for long minutes at a time. The volcanic hills leap from the surface of the earth like they only just appeared a few minutes before. And the olive groves, grape vineyards, and citrus orchards are so green and verdant that they almost don’t look real.

Once off the mountain, our tour leader took us to a nearby outdoor restaurant nestled in the foothills near old Sparta. Neatly arranged for us beneath a wonderful old pergola crowned with a lively tangle wisteria vines our hosts had provided neat white-linened tables. We spent a wonderful hour and a half eating spanakopita, cheese pie, greek salad, baked chicken and potatoes, and a wonderful light dessert that I will be thinking about for years to come. That, together with a frosty mug of Greek beer on the front end, and strong, black Greek coffee on the back end provided us with one of the most memorable dining experiences Concetta and I have ever had.

The ride back to the harbor was long -- ninety minutes -- but provided a little siesta time after our big lunch. At one point I thought I had lost my sun-blocking sombrero, having left it at the restaurant, but the next bus after us rescued it and the two of us were reunited when the bus reached the harbor. After that it was a quick dash back to the ship, a shower, and the afternoon cocktail party. A little two much champagne, together with the ship's gentle roll as we began our overnight voyage to Crete, made it a tad difficult for me to make my way to our usual dinner spot on the fantail. Tonight, we opted for sharing a table with a delightful couple from Chicago and the four of us got along famously until the stewards had packed up most of the tables but ours. Thus ends yet another fabulous day in the sparkling world of the Aegean.

Tomorrow morning, we should be dropping anchor in the harbor of Heraklion, Crete, someplace that I haven't seen since I set off into some pretty storm-tossed waters from there in 1973 and very nearly didn't make it to my next port. If you want to read about THAT voyoage, pull up the web site at www.tomdavis.me, click on memoirs, and then click on the story entitled, "Sinking." In those days my nickname was, "Blue" for the blue hat I always wore. So, enjoy. I'll see ya on the flip side.

The last time I found myself on the island of Crete, which was in late 1973, John Riise and I had requisitioned the MAR's Honda 70 motorcycles and had set off into the interior on our own. Today, Concetta and I had to depend on transportation that was a world away from those trusty Honda 70s -- namely, a sixty-passenger bus that tended to fill the narrow lanes and village streets from curb to curb. Oh, well, what can you do?

The morning's destination was the ruins at Knossos, Minoan King Minos' palace discovered in 1878 by Minos Kalokairinos,a Cretan merchant and antiquarian. Though the ruins have been "restored" (photo above right) to show you what some of the King's palace looked like in it's heyday, using rather modern building materials, it's still a fascinating place to learn about how these ancient peoples designed what was then a very modern dwelling using water and sewer construction methods that are largely unchanged today. This in a palace that was built some 3,500 years ago.

As you probably remember if you ever took a Greek mythology class in high school, Knossos is the location of the infamous labyrinth, an elaborate maze-like structure constructed for King Minos and designed by the legendary Daedalus (of wax wings fame) to hold the Minotaur, a creature that was half man and half bull. We touristas didn't have any luck stumbling on the entrance to the labyrinth.

After Knossos, we once again loaded into the bus and took to the narrow mountain roads (where we tried not to look down to often) in search of a remote monestary (photo left) full of centuries old religious frescos (not usually my cup of tea) and a great Greek taverna overlooking the Aegean Sea (now that's more like it). Stopping at the taverna gave me another chance to order that wonderful Greek beer called "Mythos" which I had sampled for the very first time just yesterday and am already crazy about. Since they have to deal with busloads of folks at lunchtime (six busses by the time we left), the taverna basically serves a "family style" lunch in an amazingly brisk, efficient fashion that fairly takes your breath away. We had the usual spanikopita and cheese pie appetizers, wonderful Greek salad (no lettuce in these babies), and bread with yogurt sauce which was just incredible. Soon after the waiter arrived with a hot dish of pork and potatoes which I skillfully put away as expeditiously as possible. The final course was fresh fruit and coffee, both of which were fantastic. I would have loved another half hour to sit and sip that wonderful coffee, but our guide was staring pointedly at his watch so I grudgingly had to down those last few sips and reboard the bus.

During the time we were on the road our cruise ship had upped anchor and sailed due East from Herklion Harbor toward the town of Aglios Nikolaos where it planned to meet us as we finished up our day in the Cretan interior, including our stop at the Lassithi Plateau archeaological site of the Malia Palace. Though this second palace on our route was not nearly as impressive as our first of the day, Knossos, I did find it interesting for their use of a combination of volcanic, or igneous rock, and sedimentary rock in the form of limestone. The limestone had once been deposited on the sea floor in pre-historic times and had since been raised above see level due to the irresitable forces of plate tectonics which results when the African plate pushes northward against the Aegean plate. This process basically forms a "wrinkle" in the land under the Mediterranean, thrusting beautiful Crete above sea level and providing a wealth of easily-worked building materials. This process also causes the volcanoes that dot the Mediterranean, one of which we will be visiting tomorrow -- the island of Santorini. The last eruption at Santorini was just 85 years ago.

Since the ship was not in evidence when we pulled into Agios Nikolaos (photo below), Concetta and I went in search of -- what else? -- ice cream. I decided that I just had to have some ice cream and strawberries (photo left). Along with a double espresso, it sounded like a fitting ending to a pretty interesting day. After ice cream and a nice chat with several of our fellow passengers who wandered in for ice cream just after us, we set off into the town proper to do some window shopping and photography. I decided I needed a more flamboyant hat band for my sombrero (the one I nearly lost yesterday), one that might help me keep track of it better. After buying the hat band and some Ouzo for sons Robert and Jason, we headed back to the boat for a shower, a lecture on volcanoes and earthquakes in the Aegean, and a very relaxed dinner on the fantail of the ship with the twinkling lights of the harbor and nearby city to cast a romantic glow across our dinner rendezvous.

Thanks to everyone who has kindly wrote in on Facebook with compliments on the blog. It makes it easier to stay up 'till 11:00 p.m. if I know you're enjoying it. And, of course, if you have any questions about what we're seeing, don't hesitate to let me know and I'll try and answer them. Someone asked how I'm liking the food and I can say without hesitation that I'd rather eat Greek food than just about any other. My only major disappointment with the shipboard fare is that they have made no effort to stock real Greek yogurt which I love, and which is unlike anything you've ever tasted from a the dairy section of your super market. Concetta and I always try to order it when we're on shore at lunch time.

The boat provides almost any food you can ever want at no additional cost with the exception of hard liquor items. Those you have to pay for. To encourage you to do just that, the ship has a daily "special" drink available which, to date, we haven't taken advantage of. You can have all the wine you want, which is what we usually drink anyway, so we're really set. I'm eating way more sweets than I normally do at home so I suspect that will have some work to do when I get home to lose my “vacation weight.”

This is the first time I've been aboard a boat, of any size, since I left the MAR in 1974. The roll of the deck under my feet, the smell of the salt air, the velvety breezes off the sea, even the rumble of the diesel engines, all make me miss that time of my life tremendously. There's simply nothing like living and working on a boat. The oh so humbling feeling of sailing out of sight of land in a small craft with nothing between you and eternity but a few inches of wood cannot be easily conveyed. You simple have to try it to know what I mean. If you're out there and you're young enough, do it. You won't be sorry. Were I young again, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Well, it's coming up 11:00 p.m. once again. I'll have to say goodnight.

Ciao, tutti.

This morning we woke up to our ship, the Aegean Odyssey, tying up in the flooded cauldera of the sleeping volcano that sometime around 1600 B.C. erupted violently and turned a once thriving bronze age civilization into a Pompeii-like dead zone. The volcano completely destroyed the center of the island of Thera leaving only a crescent-shaped set of cliffs (photo right). For several hundred years nothing lived on the destroyed island as the ash cloud had covered everything to a depth of thirty or forty feet. Still, after a time, people began to re-populate the island remnant. Now some 12,000 people inhabit the lofty cliffside villages.

Thera, or Santorini as it's most often called, was one of my very favorite stopping places back in 1973 and 1974 when I was a crewman aboard the sixty-foot sail boat, MAR. Our mission then was to make a documentary about the Mediterranean, a task that required much schlepping of heavy cameras and tripods through narrow streets and up and down hillsides. On Santorini our instructions then were to set up a shooting location on the long, winding concrete path that snaked from the harbor to the lofty heights above, a journey that required mounting six hundred steps (photo right) before you reached the summit. The Captain, one Chuck Tobias, had selected a donkey to carry HIM to the village above and he wanted me and my shipmate, John Riise to film him as he rode. "No problem," we said, and we carried the gear a hundred yards away and set up our camera for the shot. Our plan was to do several "ride-bys" with the donkey which would require Chuck to halt the four-legged fellow after each take so we might take him back to the starting line so we could film Chuck riding by again.

That's what it said in the fine print. However, no one consulted the donkey. Maybe Chuck just needed to know how to talk to him in Greek, who knows? But the upshot was that the donkey refused to halt between takes. Once started up the mountain, his intent was to finish the journey as quickly as possible. This naturally required John and I to break down the equipment, dash ahead of the briskly trotting donkey, and then set up for another take before Chuck and the furry fellow reached us. Not knowing whether any of the takes were being successful in our shooting haste, we just kept doing our dash-ahead all the way up the mountain. By the time we reached the summit neither John nor I could walk. We just collapsed on the pavement. The hell of it was, in the final movie the donkey scene ended up on the cutting room floor. Jeeze!

Still, I have some very fond memories of Santorini. This island is one of the most photographed places on earth. I suspect that almost everyone has at one time or another seen a calendar shot of the beautiful whitewashed buildings perched on the edge of the shear cliffs overlooking the deep blue waters of the volcanic harbor. The villages from a distance look like the whipped cream icing on a slab of chocolate layer cake. Fortunately, today we got to ride buses to the top so I didn't have to repeat the donkey-chase episode by navigating the six hundred steps. That left me with plenty of energy to do some photography and sight-seeing. There's a really great museum on the island filled with all the things that the archeaologists have found on the sourthern in the village of Acrotiri. Concetta and I hoped that we would get to see the dig itself, but five years ago a tourist was killed by a collapsing room section at Acrotiri and now no one gets to tour there. Still, the museum had some exceptional frescos (photo above right), pottery, and craft work.

After the museum we were allowed to roam the cliff-top villages by ourselves. Except for a few minutes of rain that blew in unexpectedly, we had some truly great shooting weather with lots of blue skies and fluffy clouds in the background. On Santorini, everywhere you point the camera the frame is filled with a rainbow of colors against the brilliant white exteriors of the houses (photo right). I love the bright blues and greens and reds of the shop entrances, spectacular purples of the bougainvillea, and the yellows and peach colors of the awnings and umbrellas. Everything is so very colorful that Santorini is simply a photographer's dream come true. I'm so sorry that the IT Neanderthals on the Aegean Odyssey have prevented me from showing you the photos. If you were a photographer, one look at Santorini and you'd be booking your flight tomorrow. Do browse the internet and see what I mean.

For lunch today I wanted to completely avoid the sexy restaurants perched right on the edge of the cliff that are inevitably frequented by every tourist who makes the trek to the top. So, Concetta and I walked inland until we found a restaurant where nearly everyone inside looked like they stepped out of the movie, Zorba the Greek. "This is just what I was looking for," I told Concetta. And so it was. I had the moussaka and Concetta had the stuffed Zucchini, both of which turned out to be wonderful. I had my usual Greek beer, Mythos, but we were too full to even think about dessert. However, a little later, after an hour or so of walking, we dropped into a coffee and pastry shop and finished out our lunch with some strong, black Greek coffee and a good-sized piece of baklava. Dear me, this has to be what heaven is surely like.

This afternoon, once we had ridden the cable tram (photos right) from the cliff-top to the harbor, caught the shuttle craft to the ship, and gone aboard to drop our gear and shower, we sat in the bar and relaxed. I've been trying out a new drink called a "Sidecar," which is sort of like a whiskey sour, but better in my estimation. Concetta had the champagne cocktail, but she drank it all before I got a sip so I can't tell if it was good. I suspect that it was.

This evening we sought out our usual dinner location on the fantail, though the wind was strong enough to blow the silverware off the table. Fortunately, our new friends from Chicago invited us to share their table that was a little more sheltered. For the next hour we regaled each other with stories of our work and home lives, drank a lot of wine, and generally got better acquainted, which was nice.

Right now, the ship is gliding through the dark swells of the Mediterranean toward our next destination, the island of Rhodes, a definite favorite of mine. Back in 1973, John Riise and I did much exploring amongst the ancient battlements of the port city that were established by the Knights of St. John the Baptist during the crusades. Though it was not allowed, my shipmate and I managed to climb down and sneak inside the massive walls where the crusaders held off Suleiman the Magnificent. Enthralled, we wandered through the darkened tunnels where the knights gathered to fight the Turks all those centuries ago, every now and again stepping over round stone catapult projectiles the size of beech balls. If you love history like I do, Rhodes is definitely where you can rub elbows with it.

Well, once again it's coming up 11:00 p.m. I suspect that Concetta has grown tired of waiting for me and is fast asleep. So, for now, I'll say, Kalini'ta (good night).

Concetta and I just got back to the Ship after spending the afternoon strolling the narrow lanes and alleys of the ancient city of Rhodes (photo right). While most of the passengers elected to return to the ship after our half-day tour of the various "culturally important" areas of the city, we decided to stay and try to get off the beaten path and explore the places where few tourists go (photo 2 right). It was fun, though you immediately become aware that where the tourist doesn’t go the buildings don't get maintained very well and things tend to look a little run down. Still, it was fun. About sunset we stumbled across the "Romeo café” and the proprietor coaxed us into taking a seat in his charming outdoor restaurant where he proceeded to dazzle us with both his charm and his food preparation (photo 3 below). I was hoping for a gyro (lamb, tomatoes, onions, and cucumber-yogurt sauce wrapped in a pita) but ended up sharing a Greek Salad and plate of Cod and vegetables with Concetta washed down with my usual Mythos beer. Everything was really tasty.

At home I always have to laugh when a restaurant advertises Greek salad. Usually, they have no idea what to actually serve. Most times, Greek salad is comprised of tomatoes, onions, Greek olives, feta cheese, and cucumbers. Ours tonight also had green bell peppers sliced paper thin and a sprinkling of shredded cabbage, though the latter two ingredients are often not present in a normal Greek salad. Over all this one always finds a very light dressing of olive oil and vinegar. And there you have it. The next time you order Greek salad and it arrives looking like mostly lettuce, send it back.

This morning, our destination by tour bus (photo 4 below) was the tiny ancient city of Lindos (photo 5 below), which hugs the coast about an hour east of Rhodes. Lindos is the place in Greece, our guide told us, that the fighting men of Rhodes sailed for the Trojan War in 1300 B.C. or so. Let me tell you, Lindos was a trip and a half. Our plan as a group was to climb the mountain that fills the skyline in Lindos all the way to the top to see the fort constructed by the Knights of St. John the Baptist. These knights (not to be confused with the Knights Templar) were the Crusaders whose job it was to serve as doctors and hospitalers to both crusaders and pilgrims. This fort was constructed at the top of a natural (most likely volcanic) outcrop above the city known as the Acropolis (photo 6 below). As our guide has been fond of telling us, virtually every city in Greece of any import has its own acropolis. The one in Athens is just the most famous.

Anyway, starting in Lindos, Concetta and I set off on foot to climb the stone path to the top. Nowadays, Greece is customarily inundated by tourists during the high season. And, since September is still considered the high season, we found a veritable sea of buses already parked when we arrived at 10:30 a.m. and a small (make that large) army of tourists climbing right along with us. Since there were also people descending the stone path, the width of which measured about four feet when it wasn't even narrower, the trip up turned out to be a fairly harrowing experience. Greeks don't believe, it would seem, in hand rails of any kind, even though the drop-off is considerable in some places. Still, we made it to the fortress and had a very nice time taking pictures and exploring the grounds.

One of the things I've been noticing since we arrived in Greece is the incredible transformation that is taking place in the look of Greek houses. I'm not sure when it happened, but according to one of our guides the Greek government passed a law that said Greeks had to begin building more earthquake proof houses and commercial spaces, this because the people were fond of building with rubble stone (with or without mortar) and absolutely no structural steel of any kind. So, the first earthquake that comes along, the whole village ends up reverting to a pile of stones in the street.

In the past, Greece had some of the most picturesque housing anywhere, most often looking similar to Spanish-style housing with white stucco exteriors and red tile roofs. Unlike Spanish style, the doors and window trim will be painted a bright green or blue and the whole effect is quite colorful and charming. Now, with the new earthquake regulations in place, Greeks are building (and when I say building, I mean EVERYWHERE you look) structures that are a mixture of Hollywood, California "modern" in 1955, and a Soviet Union tenement apartment from the same time period. It's bizarre! They start construction by erecting something that looks a lot like a parking garage with its concrete posts and horizontal concrete floors. Their houses may have two or three of these floors. Then, they fill in the spaces between the concrete upright pillars with clay bricks, done in a sort of "I don't have to be neat since I'm covering this with stucco anyway" technique. The effect is to have the masonry look rather haphazard and sloppy. THEN, they may only finish one of the two or three floors with actual walls and they may leave the second and third floor with just the bare parking garage look to it. You can tell that they have been living in the bottom floor for some time since the place looks very lived in. So it's not like they halted construction temporarily so they could go on vacation or something. All of this is pretty sad, at least to me, when you consider that the Greeks pretty much invented classic architecture.

Rhodes looks very different than the last time I saw it in 1974. According to our guide today, the population of Rhodes was about 20,000 people back when I was there. Now the population has tripled to around 60,000. Like Nevada, the island of Rhodes enjoys around 300 days of sun a year. They also get 20 days of rain. He didn't tell us what happened for the other 45 days, but whatever it is, folks are flocking here to take advantage of the good weather and the economic opportunities that tourism brings. Our two waiters tonight were both from out of town. One was from Thesalonika in Macedonia, quite a voyage from here. Both told us they came here to take advantage of the tourism trade. They, and everyone else we talked to, puts in seven day weeks for seven to nine months in a row. No days off, and very long hours. They must do this, most of them, because there is no work in their home towns. All the wait staff here on the ship work that same three quarters of a year, then they go home and spend one quarter with their wifes and children. Very tough way to make a living, I'd say, but they all seem very upbeat about it.

Well, I'm headed up topside because they're moving the ship to a new slip tonight and I thought I'd try to capture some part of it on film. So, I'll say goodnight. We're headed for Mykonos and Delos tomorrow and those are two places I'm really looking forward to showing Concetta.

Ciao, tutti.

This morning the wind is blowing force six down the tidy teak decks of the Aegean Odyssey as we plough our way upwind toward the tiny islands of Delos and Mykonos. I was just up standing on the bow with a fellow passenger and we had to lean against the pilot house to keep from being swept aft. It made me think of that scene in the Titanic movie where Kate Winslet stands on the very bow with her arms outstretched. As you might guess, the surrounding seas are a mass of whitecaps and I couldn't help but visualize myself back on the MAR in 1973 as we fought our way out of Mykonos harbor late in the season amidst just such whitecaps. We had our mainsail up for both propulsion and stability and we hadn't gone very far when a tremendous gust of wind tore the top of the sail away from it's rope edging and we had to quickly lower it. The loss of stability with the sail down caused the boat to pitch and roll with even greater ferocity and we had to come about and return to Mykonos and the relative safety of it's harbor. Later, we would hire a Greek fisherman to come aboard with his mending needles and put our heavy sail back together again. He was as brown as the inside of a walnut, wore a faded black Greek fisherman's cap, and carried tools old enough to have been used to mend sails for Odysseus on his voyage to Troy 2,300 years ago.

From Wikipedia we learn that: In the United States, winds of force 6 or 7 result in the issuance of a small craft advisory, with force 8 or 9 winds bringing about a gale warning, force 10 or 11 a storm warning (a tropical storm warning" being issued instead of the latter two if the winds relate to a tropical cyclone), and force 12 a hurricane force wind warning (or hurricane warning if related to a tropical cyclone). A set of red warning flags (daylight) and red warning lights (night time) is displayed at shore establishments which coincide with the various levels of warning.

This morning Concetta and I did something we haven't done in, well, maybe we've never done it; we slept until nearly 9:00 a.m. I was so astounded that I had to check my watch against our cabin clock to see if the darn thing had stopped last night or something. But no, it was right on. We had to sprint to make breakfast which ended at 9:30 a.m. It's a good thing that we didn't have a tour today or we'd been left on the boat.

And now a word about what we're doing on this cruise. If you've ever contemplated cruising, but have been deterred (as we were) by the thought of spending any time at all living on something the size of a aircraft carrier, these smaller cruise ships are the way to go. Presently, there are 333 passengers and 118 crew members on board. So few people allows you to really get to know some of each of those groups. We've made friends with a number of passengers and have had some truly lovely dinners and breakfasts with them. We’ve also become quite chummy with several members of the crew. I know by the end of the voyage we'll be trading addresses and phone numbers with many of them.

Booking, as we did, a cruise that is in part put together by the Archaeological Institute of American, we are naturally thrown together with a fairly atypical bunch of people. Everywhere you look passengers are carrying, reading, or talking about books. Yesterday we had lunch with a man and wife who, before retirement, were both chemistry professors. The wife was even head of the chemistry department. At times hanging around all these academics can be a tad intimidating, but most of the time it's very, very rewarding. Our recent breakfast table guest, who was the lecturer on geologic plate tectonics and volcanology, turned out to be one of the most fascinating people I've met in years.

The crew are the most agreeable service folks we've every been around. If you think about the surly unhelpful clerks and wait staff you deal with in many U.S. businesses nowadays you'll probably not believe me when I tell you that these folks are exactly the opposite. We've been absolutely thrilled with their professionalism and eagerness to please. Granted, they are all hoping for good tips, but isn't that what tips were meant to be about? First comes the good service, then the reward for good service. The U.S. has somehow perverted that idea.

According to what I've been told while on board, this is about the smallest ship that is reasonably affordable. When the ships get down to what I would consider an even more attractive size -- like 100 passengers -- the cost supposedly ratchets up significantly. Still, should we decide to try another cruise sometime, I intend to research the idea of a smaller ship.

For those of you who are anxious to hear about the food here on board, I would say that it's on a level with Nevada's casino food. Which is to say, that it's not bad, just not anything that you're going to find in the upcoming issue of Bon Appetite magazine. Concetta and I have always found something on the menu that we like, though sometimes it looks better than it tastes. As for my own preferences, I have tried to stick with mostly light fare -- fish, vegetables, and salads -- not because I'm trying to show off my willpower, but because the desserts are so good I've been unable to pass them by. Every evening I look forward to their dessert selection, be it the excellent bread pudding, the cheese cakes, the flans, or just a triple-scoop of ice cream. They do have fruit for dessert, but I haven't been tempted by it yet, to which I'm sure my waist line will readily attest when we get home.

Well, I guess I'll close for now. Concetta is reading up in the lounge and I better go see how she's doing. They just announced on the intercom that the force 6 winds have precluded our visit to Delos, so we will be heading straight to Mykonos. I'm sorry to be missing Delos as it's one of the few places in Greece you can go which is not tourist oriented. It's purely an archaeological site. Mykonos, on the other hand, is largely a young person's island. On Mykonos it's pretty much non-stop hedonism. They have lots and lots of gay bars, nude beaches, and twenty-four-hour-a-day fun. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you're not 20 years old, you're probably going to concentrate more on the shopping.

So, for now I'll say, hasta la vista (until I see you again -- in Spanish) since I don't know how to say that in Greek.

Ciao, tutti.

Back when I was making my living (if you can call $50.00 a month a living) as a crewman aboard a sixty-foot wooden sailboat in the Mediterranean, Mykonos easily qualified as one of the most interesting and exciting of our ports of call. I actually visited the island twice, both in 1973 and 1974. At that time Mykonos was on its way to becoming a premier fun spot in Greece for world-traveling twenty somethings. Tavernas abounded amidst the maze of tiny lanes and alleys that made up the town's thoroughfares. One, called the Minotaur, was my favorite, not because of the alcohol sold there, but for their signature dish -- waffles, peaches and whipped cream -- which tasted wonderful to a sailor far from home. But I also loved the Minotaur for its homey atmosphere, complete with books and places to read as well as listen to music. The Minotaur was where I was sitting when I first heard Pink Floyd's album, "Dark Side of the Moon." Lovely Album that even today invokes in me those long ago feelings of wanderlust.

Mykonos was exciting for another reason: the entire town is not designed on a grid system as are most towns, but like a giant maze, with streets wandering in a seemingly aimless pattern. Back in 1973, it took me several days to figure out how to go into town to find the Minotaur and then get back to the boat in any reasonable amount of time. Generally you had to just wander until you accidentally found your destination, then wander again until you found the waterfront. While it was fun and intriguing at first, it soon got to be irritating when I spent most of my time lost. Still, after those several days I began to recognize landmarks and navigate the town more quickly.

Last night our trusty ship, the Aegean Odyssey, pulled into Mykonos harbor and announced that we had several hours to spend there. HOURS? I couldn't conceive of even being able to enjoy that short a visit in view of my previous experience. Nevertheless, Concetta and I, along with the Chicago couple with whom we've become acquainted, set out to find a dinner location, realizing that we simply wouldn't have enough time to do any sightseeing.

The transformation in Mykonos over the past four decades has been nothing short of incredible. They've added giant piers where the big ships can dock. In the past ships had to anchor out. With at least a half dozen ships in port, all ablaze with hundreds of lights, the whole harbor area looks like one giant carnival ride. Mykonos town itself looks like Disneyworld on steroids. Whereas forty years ago the lanes and alleys were lined with tiny shops selling handmade leather and linen items, now you find huge emporiums selling everything from fine jewelry and watches, to expensive paintings and clothing. In those bucolic early seventies, you found a few quiet restaurants tucked away under shady arbors, most with just a handful of customers. There you might easily find someone playing Greek bouzouki music and a couple of old Greek fishermen dancing. Now, the restaurants are big business. Not only are there seemingly dozens of them, all containing dozens of tables, but each one is filled to the brim with tourists speaking a dozen languages. I was skeptical that we would be able to find any traditional Greek food, but we actually had a very fine meal at a charming, if slightly "rockus," establishment under a flower-covered arbor chosen by Concetta and Katherine.

Unfortunately, all too soon, it was time to return to the ship. I would have liked to wander the maze-like alleys for a couple more hours at least, even though I knew that the Mykonos of my youth was dead and gone. The quiet little lanes with the old Greek women sitting in the doorways of their shops do not exist anymore. Only handsome Greek gods, modeling the latest in leatherwear, and curvaceous, miniskirted goddesses in form-fitting fashions, lounge in the doorways. If you're looking for the ancient, dusty relics of Greek history, you won't find them here. However, if you're reading this and happen to be just a couple of birthdays past your teens, I think you'd be crazy NOT to find your way to the island somehow, some way.

As for me, well, I'm off looking for the dusty relics of ancient Greece again. As Mykonos grows smaller off our stern and finally disappears into the mists of the Mediterranean morning, I say antio Sas! Goodbye, maybe for the last time. It was good to see you again, but the glitz and glitter of your new face is not for me. Ahead lies the island of Samos, where in classical antiquity there existed a center of Ionian culture and luxury, an area renowned for its Samian wines and its red pottery. Yes, it's time to go and discover more of ancient Greece, drink a little wine, and reflect on what has been.

Antio Sas!

What do you call a guy who can speak Turkish, English, Russian and Bulgarian? Well, I can tell you what we called him and that's Mehmet (photo right). Mehmet was our guide for the last two days and an astoundingly educated and articulate Turkish man. We just love him. He seems to know just about everything there is to know about Turkish life, culture and history, and -- get this -- just about as much about American life, culture and history as we do -- sometimes more. He actually seemed to know things about the U.S.A. that I had long forgotten. I had to sort of slink down in my seat so he wouldn't call on me for the answers.

Anyway, after our usual breakfast on the ship's fantail this morning, as the sun dawned red and orange over the harbor here in Kusadasi, Turkey, we loaded up the buses and headed for Aphrodisias some two and a half hours away. Now I'm sure you're going, "two and a half hours -- ugh!" But let me just tell you that the countryside in Turkey reminds me greatly of what southern California looked like when I was a kid there in the 1950s. Thirty-five percent of the natives (says Mehmet) are involved in small-farm agriculture. As you travel the highway north toward Aphrodisias, farm after farm growing olives, figs, oranges, grapes, strawberries, corn, and a host of other fruits and vegetables line the highway. Just to the west, is a small range of mountains much like California's San Gabriels. Right next to the highway runs a narrow-gauge railroad. As I sat there, gazing out the bus window at the passing countryside, I couldn't help but draw a parallel to California as I know it existed one hundred years ago when orange groves and grape vineyards covered the San Gabriel Valley. In my mind, the tracks easily became those of California's Pacific Electric red streetcars that serviced the far flung communities in the L.A. basin. The many Turkish farms looked just like photos I've seen of their counterparts in California. It was like time traveling. All the serenity and beauty of old California is right here in living color in Turkey.

Speaking of living color, large parts of the country, even as it was in Greece, is covered in olive trees. They're everywhere. I'm sure you probably eat olive oil on a regular basis. Everyone does nowadays. Its health benefits are widely advertised. But on our ride yesterday our guide filled us in on some of added benefits of growing olive trees. First of all, our guide told us, the first pressing of the olives is used for the oil you find in your supermarket. Extra virgin, if you please, says Rachel Rae. But did you know that the second pressing, made predominately from the olive pits, is used here in Turkey for frying food in restaurants and Turkish homes? Yes, the guide said, this oil makes the most delicious fried potatoes in the world. And there's more. The pulp that is left from the second pressing is used as winter fuel, the burning of which produces a blue smoke hanging over village after village, a smoke that smells like fried potatoes.

The olive trees must be kept at a reasonable size to facilitate olive harvesting. So, the trimmings of young shoots that result from keeping the growth of the trees in check is used to feed the sheep and goats, which, the guide informed us, makes for a most delicious milk. The woody parts, that are left over from trimming or when trees must be cut down, are used for barbecuing, a process that makes for equally delicious lamb chops. Now I’ve had Turkish goat’s milk and I wouldn’t recommend it. But the lamb barbecue sounds yummy.

So, there you have it. I'm not sure that olive trees will grow in northern Nevada, but I may check it out. If you see blue smoke coming from my chimney, you'll know I succeeded.

But more on our trip to Aphrodisias: Aphrodisias, as well as the site of Ephesus we visited yesterday, are absolutely FABULOUS archaeological sites. In most ways, they are on a par with Pompeii in Italy. In some ways, even better. First of all, the sites are huge, combining both outdoor and indoor displays, reconstructions, restorations, and ongoing digs. If you like towering marble pillars, hundreds of yards of marble walkways, and simply awesome frescoes and mosaics, you'll like these sites.

Today was extra special for our lunch stop. At just past 1:00 p.m. we were treated to a spectacular lunch at a roadside restaurant that encompassed many courses including Turkish beer, shiskabob, homemade pita bread, and prize-winning baklava and Turkish coffee. The meal took place under an arbor that featured drying peppers for decoration above our heads. Just a short distance away, green and purple ripening grapes hung from trellises and a strolling minstrel playing a three-stringed instrument called a Telli (photos below right) serenaded us while his pet parrot perched and danced on the instrument's neck.

We found our Turkish hosts to be extremely friendly and helpful and made our stay memorable. When it didn't look like the waiters would get enough Turkish coffee distributed before the buses started pulling out, I ventured back into the kitchen and the owner himself insisted on making me a custom Turkish coffee to order. I complimented him on his outstanding service AND his outstanding coffee.

It's hard not to love Turkey. Let me tell you, I could easily see myself buying ten acres of olives and setting up a retirement retreat. And, if YOU'RE interested, foreigners are allowed to own real estate, though Mehmet tells me that that prices have definitely started to rise.

There was something else that made today's drive extra special. Some of you know that Concetta and I have been long-time Fiat owners. We purchased our first Fiat before we were even married back in 1977. The perky green sedan Concetta drove to work for twenty some odd years still rests peacefully in the sanctuary of our garage. Other than that one example and the parts car in our back yard, seldom do we ever see an example in northern Nevada of a Fiat 131 Mira Fiori sedan. They are definitely on the endangered species list. But much to our surprise, as we headed north out of Kusadasi this morning, we immediately began to see numerous examples of our beloved old car. By the end of the day we had encountered perhaps more than a hundred. Now I know where all those Mira Fioris went to die. Well, except they're not dead. They're alive and well and living in Turkey. Hooray!

At this moment, the Aegean Odyssey is gliding north through the "wine dark sea" as we make our way along the Turkish coast toward tomorrow's destination of Troy. At this point I have not done any reading on Troy so don't know what to expect. In fact, tonight's lecture on the subject is taking place without me as I type this blog. So, you and I will find out together what tomorrow brings. Until then, I bid you good night and good traveling. I don't know how to say any of that in Turkish, so you'll have to be content with boring old English. Or, if you prefer Italian,

Ciao, tutti.

Well, yesterday turned out to be quite a day. First of all, the ship had a big, big problem just tying up to the dock. The current and the winds were so strong that we had two big tugs alongside (photo left) trying to maneuver us into position, but for hours and hours they couldn't seem to pull it off. It took until noon to finally have the gangplank safely on shore. That, of course, put us hours behind schedule. Our first bus trip of the day was to Troy. I wasn't really sure what to expect at Troy. You hear about it all the time and see movies about it, but you never hear much about the current archaeological site. So, when we arrived for our tour, now taking place hours late, it came as a surprise that there really isn't much to see at Troy. Unlike Ephesus and Aphrodisias, there aren't impressive mosaics and frescoes to ooh and ah over. There isn't much in the way of fortifications. What you see is largely small stone walls, rather crudely done, and a giant reproduction horse waiting patiently for tourists to climb in inside and have their picture taken (photo left). I'm glad we came to see it, for who would want to come all the way to Turkey and not see it. But if you only have so much time, you're better off with Ephesus or Aphrodisias for the shear size and quality of those sites.

Since we didn't get to Troy until 1:00 o'clock or so, we didn't get back on the boat for lunch until well after 2:30 p.m. We were certainly hungry by then, but since Concetta and I have been having a little stomach distress the last couple of days, we didn't even care.

After lunch we reboarded the buses and headed for Gallipoli. Once again, we have reached a subject that I know little if anything about. I know Mel Gibson did a movie, but aside from that, the Gallipoli battle site was an entirely new experience for me. To visit Gallipoli, we had to drive all our buses aboard a ferry and ford the Bosporus. That was pretty exciting. Turkey is the only country (says Mehmet, our guide) that sits atop two continents. For some reason I expected Gallipoli to be some kind of level battlefield where the participants charged at each other on horses or fired on each other with tanks or something. But that didn't turn out to be so. The place they took us to see was perched atop a tall mountain with a sweeping view of the Bosporus and the surrounding countryside (photo left). Evidently, the British, Australian, New Zealanders, and others were forced to fight their way up this steep terrain and they died by the hundreds and thousands. And it wasn't just a simple charge to take the summit, the Brits were dug in for nine long months. When all was said and done, huge numbers of soldiers, both allies and Turks, had been killed and for a long time no one even came to bury the fallen. Very sad tale. Today, the Turkish government has erected a very impressive and, more important, sensitive group of memorials to all the participants on both sides. Well worth a visit and I wish we'd been able to spend more time there.

Today we're off to visit Istanbul, so stay tuned.

Ciao, Tutti.

Istanbul turned out to nothing like what I expected. My God! When you look up pandemonium in the dictionary, you'd absolutely have to find a picture of Istanbul. I've never, ever seen this many people in one place at one time in my whole life. It makes Disneyland look like the reading room at your local library. There is such a profusion of trains and buses and taxis and every other type of motor vehicle on the streets, you wonder how anyone gets anywhere. Naturally, since we're motoring around in a fifty or sixty-passenger bus, I'd swear that the driver was never going to get to pull out into traffic, let alone drive anywhere. But drive he did. We spent the morning visiting various mosques where you have to take off your shoes to enter, and the Topkapi palace (photo right) that served the last twenty-five Turkish sultans. The palace was built in the fifteenth century and went through a succession of remodelings up to the nineteenth century. The grounds are beautiful (photo right), but Concetta and I had to beg off touring the three rooms to which they allow you access as there were just too many people trying to do the same thing at the same time.

The high point of today's tour was our lunch stop at a downtown four-star Istanbul Hotel where we were treated like royalty. White table cloths, bottomless wine glasses, dozens of salads and main course choices, and a dessert table that simply went on forever truly dazzled all of us. Though we had to hurry on to our next appointment, I would have been perfectly happy to spend the rest of the afternoon on there terrace chatting and sipping their delicious coffee.

Contrary to what I would have thought, Istanbul is incredibly popular with foreign tourists. For our afternoon's entertainment, we ventured into the covered bazaar, (photo belowe right) originally founded by Mehmet II (namesake of our guide) in 1461. The bazaar turned out to be one giant sensory overload. There are 4,500 stalls in this bazaar selling everything from genuine fake watches, leather goods, and designer fashions, to the crafts of little old ladies selling hand-made lace and, well, you name it. The bazaar is just an explosion of colors and sounds and sights and smells in every direction you look. We stuck to the main artery of the "Souke," but every few yards side arteries took off left and right that held the promise of equally fascinating adventures. I swear you could go into the bazaar and not re-emerge for hours, maybe days. My only objection to venturing out into a largely tourist environment is that the Turkish vendors are very aggressive, much more so than in Greece. Oh, they're not particularly threatening. On the contrary, we felt quite safe. Everywhere, the Turks appeared to just love Americans and other tourists and had a smile ready for all of us.

As we near the end of the shipboard part of our vacation, a few thoughts on our experience are in order. Doing one of these academic cruises is both extremely rewarding and extremely frustrating. Using today's Istanbul trek as an example, we didn't get to experience any place thoroughly enough. That was true all the way along. Because of the amount of people that all the various tour groups are cranking through these archaeology sites and museums, the guides just move you through way too fast. Of course, since this type of

activity tends to be pretty tiring, it can also be a plus if you don't want spend too much time on your feet. But for the academic who wants to learn about the history and the culture of your destination, I'd have to suggest that you read about it way in advance. You won't have the time (or the energy) to learn it on the fly. I would have to say that one of these marathon academic cruises is most valuable when taken as a way to acquaint one with what's available in a given area. But you have to come back at some point and spend some time in order to absorb all there is to absorb.

The biggest problem for me in taking these whirlwind tours is that I think the photography has suffered. I simply don't have time to study the area and come up with the most advantageous shot. Time after time I've fallen behind the group as I climb to the top of a nearby knoll to look for the best shooting angle. So far I haven't been left behind as the bus pulls out, but I know that I've probably missed some good shots in the process. Once again this year I brought the Nikon D70s with the 18mm-200mm lens. It's quite a bit heavier than your average point and shoot, but I like being able to use a polarizing filter for those bluer skies. The wide range zoom lens makes it easy to shoot from however far away I need to be. Hopefully, when we get to Italy and I start posting some of the photos, you'll find something you like that will encourage you to visit Greece and Turkey. They are really wonderful countries.

Well, I guess that's about all for now. I'm headed off to bed.

Ciao, tutti.

This morning Concetta and I had perhaps our most memorable experience yet as we boarded a tour boat (only partially filled, thank goodness) for our trip on the Bosporus. The morning was clear and bright, and the sun was low on the eastern horizon making picture-taking very nearly perfect. Just to prove this theory correct, I enthusiastically snapped 277 photos.

The Bosporus is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world. Literally hundreds of pleasure boats, fishing boats, liners, freighters, oil tankers, tugs, and sight-seeing boats are in motion at any given time. All the traffic from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean passes right through these narrow straits. Our cruise took us as far north as the point of land known since the days of the Silk Road as the "Golden Horn." Nowadays, there's a bridge that ties Europe and Asia together at that point (photo left), a vast suspension bridge that seems to float over this ancient Bosporus bottleneck.

One of the hotels we passed, according to our guide, was voted the best hotel in the world for two years running back in the 1990s. I would never have expected that, which is the point I've been trying to make about Turkey. So much of it is unexpected. It's beautiful and friendly and exotic and photogenic. And that’s just for starters.

We've had several meals here in Turkey, two that were sort of "picnic style," and one in the very upscale restaurant, the Picasso. All of our meals have been simply outstanding.

Every Turkish person with whom we've had any contact has been friendly and polite and willing to bend over backward to make us happy. After the cruise our busload of happy tourists got to visit the local Egyptian spice market (photos left). You may remember that the Grand Bazaar we visited yesterday was so crowded and overwhelming that it was hard to appreciate its many splendors. Today was different. Today we truly enjoyed our experience in the smaller, less crowded spice bazaar. The sights and smells were intoxicating. We were even treated to free pomegranate and apple tea from the vendor where Concetta had bargained a (big) fistful of Euros for spices.

Concetta and I have decided that we simply must come back to Istanbul when we're not being hurried along by a tour guide and rent a palazzo for a week or two. For one thing, we didn't get to see the archaeological museum as the tour took place simultaneously with the Bosporus tour. But the bottom line is, you just can't see Istanbul in a couple of days. There's so much more to experience away from the madding crowd, out where the Turkish people live, out where you can relax over a glass of Turkish tea and just watch people walk by from the four corners of the world.

Tonight we're meeting our Chicago friends for Champagne in their cabin followed by dinner in the upscale restaurant on board. They're celebrating their first year of marriage (after having been together many, many years). We haven't told them yet, but we're going to be celebrating a wonderfully long relationship as well. October eighth will mark our 33rd year of marriage. Our partnership has been a grand romance from day one to the present. What better place to reaffirm our vows than in a truly romantic part of the world.

Ciao, Tutti!

This afternoon we visited the island of Skiathos, one of the islands (along with Skopelos) that served as the film location for the movie, “Mama Mia.” Unfortunately for those of you who were hoping that we might get to see the actual film locations, the ship’s crew dumped us on the quay with barely an hour to sightsee and we didn't get very far away from the harbor before it was time to board the shuttle and return to our home away from home. Still, from what I saw in that short length of time, Skiathos would be a nice place to have an extended visit sometime in the future. From what I hear, as with most of the "popular" Greek islands, Skiathos has become very commercialized and has sprouted street after street of shops selling largely useless trinkets and touristy junk. Still, the setting is beautiful with the red-roofed white houses clinging precariously to the steep hillside that soars just few yards from the harbor quay. We found the yacht harbor filled with colorful Greek fishing and sightseeing boats, which immediately drew my photographic attention. The rosy, soon-to-be-setting sun was making the boats sparkle and glow against the backdrop of the blue Mediterranean and the green foliage of the hillsides. After taking my pictures, Concetta and I set off into the interior of the town hoping to grab a few photos of the colorful shops. To our delight, the first thing we happened upon was a beautiful fig tree full of "burstingly" ripe figs. Now I've been checking every fig tree I've come across since we first left Athens two weeks ago. For the most part, I've had less than stellar success. But today we finally hit pay dirt. These figs were so large and ripe they were falling to the ground. A little sticky when you're also trying to juggle a camera, but yum, yum, yum.

All too soon my watch told me that we had to head back to the harbor to catch the last shuttle boat to the ship. We would have liked to have spent hours and hours exploring Skiathos, but it was not to be. We did hear a funny story while we were sitting on the shuttle boat waiting for it to fill with passengers. One passenger was describing to her friend how she'd gone into a shop to look at blouses and made the mistake of showing a little too much interest in one particular pretty, but, as she described it, rather skin-tight, revealing blouse. She thought that the blouse looked much too small, but to make the clerk happy she agreed to try it on. Here's where the real trouble began. She said the blouse was so skimpy that she decided to take everything off on top in order to give the blouse the best chance of fitting. But to her horror, once she had the blouse on, she couldn't get it off. It was about this time that she glanced at her watch and realized that she was in danger of missing the shuttle boat. With time running out, but not wanting to damage the blouse, nor wanting to expose an embarrassing amount of skin, she just bought it and wore it back under her jacket. As you can see, our fellow passengers can be as entertaining as the planned entertainment.

Tonight everyone had to pack their luggage and put it outside their cabin doors for pickup by the porters. I kept back the camera, of course, and Concetta kept her purse and our tiny backpack just for essentials. Otherwise, everything else is supposed to show up on the quay tomorrow before we disembark. We were lucky when our Athens hotel called a cab for us when we were leaving for the ship two weeks ago. We were lucky because the driver spoke very good English. This made it easy for us to strike a deal with "Ianni" to return on the 21st and pick us up. We got his business card with his phone number and while we were waiting to up anchor on Skiathos, I called him and confirmed the time for him to show up (thank you world phone). That should make it easy for us to get from the ship to the airport where our flight to Rome leaves tomorrow afternoon.

So, the cruise is coming to a close and the question arises, would I do it again? All things considered, I'd have to say yes. The whole experience was not perfect, not by a long shot. But we had a ton of fun! I loved the staff here. I met a "boat-load" of really fascinating people, including every conceivable personality type and background. Last night I sat next to an environmental lawyer at dinner. The night before, a bee-keeper. Several mornings ago we had breakfast with an enchanting, elderly English lady who can both read and write Greek, though she says she has a bit of trouble with the speaking part. Greece was the favorite destination of her and her husband for many, many years. Now that he's passed away, well, she just keeps coming back by herself. In fact, we met lots of ladies doing this adventure by themselves. Of the 333 passengers on this voyage, over one hundred were single.

We chose this adventure because it was being sponsored, at least in part, by the Archaeological Institute of America. That meant that there were a number of very learned folks doing lectures at various times each week whenever we weren't out prowling around ancient cities and the like.

I really, really liked that part and would do something like this trip again if the opportunity arose. My only real complaint, as you know, is the lack of computer sophistication is really unacceptable. Not only do they keep you from uploading photos, but they lock out utilities like the highlight and copy routine. You can't access Microsoft Paint, which would be handy if you wanted to capture photos from the Internet. Totally senseless. So, in my eval, I guess you can guess that I harpooned them big time on their antique technology policies. I won't be taking another cruise with them unless they can guarantee in writing that WiFi is in every cabin.

Anyway, it's just about midnight and I have to turn in. I hope to type a few words before we disembark, but I'm not sure I'll have the time. So, when next you read this we hope to be in Rome. So, until then, I'll say, Ciao, Tutti.

Yesterday’s parting from all our new friends proved just a little sad. We found that we’d even grown quite fond of many of the ship’s crew in the two short weeks we’d been on board. To the ship’s crew with whom we had become especially close, we handed out small gifts of money and an enameled pin showing Nevada’s state seal that Concetta had found at the LCB gift shop. We certainly salute those folks for making our stay aboard pleasant and, for many of them, going out of their way to make us feel special. To our fellow passengers we handed out our “travel cards,” a sort of international business card, with our phone numbers and the address of the web site in hopes that we may hear from some of them again.

Less than an hour later we found ourselves standing at the passenger drop-off point, shaking hands with Ianni, and marveling at how we had somehow circumvented disaster. Not only had the strike not caused us to miss our flight, but Concetta and I had been treated to the dream cab ride. Since we had chosen Ianni for his ability to speak English, we not only enjoyed the scenery but had a nice conversation in the process. Ianni’s cousin lives in Detroit, he told us, and he plans on visiting the U.S. next year. We wish him well. If any of you are planning a trip to Athens, be sure and get Ianni’s phone number from us. He’ll treat you right.

Concetta and I had a couple of hours to wait at the Athens airport I used the time trying to connect to their network so I could update the blog. Unfortunately, it took me a while to figure out just how to do that. By then, the laptop’s battery was all but dead. Fortunately, Concetta found a free charging station that we could use to charge the battery and, while the laptop was connected, I had a little time to update Facebook but not the blog.

Right now I’m typing in our room in our Rome B&B (photo left top) which, much to my dismay, does not have a WiFi connection even though they assured me when I reserved the room that it would. I guess they fell behind in their installation schedule. So, I have typed this account into Word Perfect and then when we went to the main house (photo left bottom) for breakfast I uploaded it to the blog.

Cheers!

Yesterday, our intended destination was the ancient town of Ostia Antica, southwest of Rome. Since our host spoke wonderful English – his having spent fifteen years in various cities in the U.S.A. – we decided that his instructions to take the Via della Mare from the A1 Auto Strada were clear enough that we didn’t need to engage our GPS. You can probably guess how that turned out. Even though it seemed we were doing just fine and headed straight for Ostia, we ended up in the Village of San Marco with not the slightest notion of which way Ostia might be. We stopped at the Park in San Marco, and, just to stretch our legs, set off to explore and take a break before we tried to stop being lost and figure out how to get to Ostia. The first thing we stumbled on was a pyramid. Though not quite as large as those famous ones in Egypt, it was nevertheless pretty darn visible over the other buildings. Sorry to tell you that we never did find out what the significance of the pyramid was to the city of San Marcos. The next thing we discovered was a trolley museum (top photos right). Now I’m sure if you know anything about me, you know I’d never pass up such an opportunity.

The museum happened to be adjacent to the train station. So, we thought, the logical thing to do was ask the ticket agent how to get in. The agent was only too happy to assist us by opening the gate so that we might pass through, even though you normally had to have a ticket. Of course, we didn’t know that’s what was she was doing so we waited for her to appear to escort us. When that didn’t happen, we went back to the window and once again she said that she’d help us. This time we noted the open gate and succeeded in gaining entrance. Soon we were prowling around the museum grounds with yours truly snapping loads of photos of all the old rail equipment. That is, I was snapping away until I began to notice a certain nervousness on the part of the museum guards. But I shrugged off the notion and went on shooting. Moments later, the guard approached me and explained in Italian that I had to stop shooting. When I indicated that I didn’t understand him, he started repeating the English word “impossible” and pointing to the camera. I got the point, then, and put the camera away. Later, as we left the train station, Concetta pointed out the large sign showing a camera and the universal sign for something that’s not allowed, the circle with the diagonal line through it. Then we understood. You weren’t supposed to take photos of the trains. Just how the guards decided to extend this prohibition to the museum’s antique trolleys from the 1920s and 1930s is way beyond me, but the photo shoot was fun while it lasted.

By the time we arrived back at the car, we had decided that we needed to ask someone how to proceed to Ostia. I approached a group of park maintenance workers and presented the question. Now you've all seen that bit in "Romancing the Stone" where Michael Douglas tells Kathleen Turner, "Lady, you're way the Hell and gone from Cartagena." Well, that's just about how the much amused maintenance workers reacted to my question about Ostia. Still, they did sort of point in the general direction we should travel. So, we jumped in the car and set out. But after another twenty minutes of wandering in what turned out to be largely the wrong direction, I suggested that Concetta feed the GPS some fictitious address in Ostia and we’d see if we could get the show on the road. And that’s just what we did. Then for the rest of the morning we headed in the general direction of Ostia, we thought, which seemed to work well until we reached an intersection where signs indicated that Ostia was in BOTH directions, left and right. You can probably guess what happened next, we took the wrong/right direction. Thankfully, I decided to try the other right direction after only traveling in the wrong/right direction for ten minutes or so. Once our direction was reversed, we soon arrived at Ostia Antica.

If you’ve ever been to Pompeii, I can tell you that Ostia Antica looks about the same with some distinct differences. First of all, not as many people go there. I was absolutely overjoyed to see only one tour bus when we pulled into the parking lot. The bus turned out to have disgorged a bunch of fairly well-behaved German teenagers whom we found wandering the site in small groups not paying much attention to the wonders of archaeology. They seemed, in fact, to mostly be paying attention to each other, which we didn’t mind at all. Other than the one tour bus, I counted perhaps another dozen cars in the parking lot and that was about it. So, we spent the entire afternoon wandering amongst some wonderful ruins which appeared to cover a tract of land roughly equivalent to eight or ten football fields. Most of the buildings had been constructed with Roman red clay bricks (photo 3 above right) which in ancient times had been covered with either plaster or thinly sliced marble (photo 4 above right). Not many of either of these wall “dressings” were still in evidence, but it was nice to be able to see the ancient construction techniques. One thing that especially impressed me was the Roman’s practice of constructing walls with nice even layers of brick on both wall facings, but they used rubble mixed with concrete to give the wall width and strength. You could easily see that absolutely nothing went to waste. If they had to knock down some earlier wall or building to erect a new structure, they always used the broken building materials of the old structure to fill the voids between any new walls. That’s got to be one of the earliest incidences of recycling I know about.

Another big difference between Ostia and Pompeii is that Ostia is covered with very large trees (photo right), ones that I think are called “umbrella pines.” These trees provide lots of shade while you stroll around appreciating the ancient Roman workmanship. Today, it was pretty overcast for good pictures, but it surely made for some nice cool walking underneath those pines. Even better, there’s so much mint growing on the ground around the city that each scuff of our shoes would fill the air with that heady aroma. Very nice.

Day before yesterday when we tried to drive from the airport to Zagarolo where we’re staying, we ran smack dab into rush hour. Naturally, we spent over two hours stuck in traffic. Today, I convinced Concetta that we should stay around Ostia and drive back after the dinner hour. That turned out to be a great suggestion as we stumbled onto the "La Villetta" restaurant in the nearby village of Alicia that, at least to our eye, appeared to cater mostly to local Italians. During the course of our ninety-minute stay, we never saw another tourist enter. We had a great dinner of “antipasti di mare,” bread, spaghetti, pizza, salad, local wine, and, at least for me, a nice double dose of espresso for the drive home. The owner didn’t speak English very well so it was an opportunity for Concetta and I to use our growing vocabulary of Italian phrases. “Due bicchiere di vino, per favore,” I said, and he knew just what we wanted. The wine tasted quite young, we thought, but still very nice. Earlier in the evening we’d been treated to a sample of similar wine when we mistakenly stumbled into a wine wholesaler when we thought the shop was a restaurant. The proprietor handed us a cup and told us to sample any of the many stainless steel barrels on display that we wanted, at least I guessed that’s what he said. He didn’t speak a word of English, either.

So all in all, the day went pretty well. We might have gotten lost a lot, but serendipity has always been one of my favorite ways to discover life. On the way home, though we made a couple of wrong turns, we made it to the B&B in record time since rush hour had long since turned into the dinner hour. So there you have it. Another day in paradise.

Ciao, Tutti.

Our goal yesterday was to reach the tiny southern Italian village of Cenadi by dinnertime. In the end we made it, though at times we had our doubts as to whether it would be dinnertime yesterday or today. Relying on our GPS, we easily – though carefully – navigated our way out of Zagarolo, the village outside of Rome where our B&B lay amongst an absolute maze of tiny lanes and alleys full of ninety-degree bends no wider than our VW sedan. However, once on the A1 towards Napoli, we made really good time, stopping only for potty breaks and the occasional leg-stretching exercise for the driver.

You can go pretty much as fast as you want on the Italian Auto Strada. I know this because no matter how fast we’re going, the big BMWs and Audis go whizzing by us in the left lane like we’re dragging a sled-full of bricks or something. We don’t go any faster than 140 kph, and usually even slower than that. If we try to go faster, our little GPS unit becomes uncomfortable and starts to beep us until we slow down.

Our B&B for the past two nights turned out to be located in a very pleasant setting among a forest of olive trees. You can’t eat olives right off the tree, of course, but we did take full advantage of the fig and apricot trees. We even loaded up a small bag of the figs and apricots to eat on the road today. When we first arrived at the B&B our fellow travelers turned out to be a friendly chap from Malasia and a very nice couple from Newcastle, England, just down the road from where Concetta and I visited in 2008. I happened to mention the wonderful fruit just outside our doors and discovered that none of the three had ever eaten figs. After a tentative try, both the men decided that figs were just about the sweetest thing they’d ever had. Of course, when I went to collect a few for our drive today, I discovered that my new friends had virtually cleaned out the whole fig crop. I had to work hard to find the half-dozen we took with us.

Our most memorable adventure yesterday turned out to be when we got off the Auto Strada and went looking for a bathroom and a cup of coffee. After ten minutes of wandering around a big commercial warehouse area, we finally found our way up to the tiny village of Nola nestled in the foothills of southern Italy. We easily found a bright and clean café and went inside to see if they had restrooms. Naturally, as fate would have it, not a single person in the café spoke English. And even though Concetta spoke Italian until she was four or five, she doesn’t speak Italian now. So, between my limited speaking ability born of three semesters at Western Nevada College, and Concetta’s tentative understanding ability we managed to carry on a twenty minute conversation with the five people in the café. You won’t believe me when I tell you, but those folks were having so much fun with us they didn’t want us to leave. Yes, it turned out to be great fun, well, except for the bathroom. We discovered that when you tuned on the light in the bathroom a strobe light came on that flashed on and off incessantly until you left, making it exceedingly difficult to perform any necessary tasks in there. Ah, Italy!

The balance of the day was spent going flat out on the Auto Strada, well, at least some of the time. Unfortunately, the highway folks hadn’t been apprised of our coming for they had large sections of the A3 under construction. They’re putting in new tunnels and bridges and generally making the highway wider and the tunnels bigger. Of course, that usually meant that opposing traffic lanes were combined on the portions not under construction. It really made for some slow going for long distances.

Once we got close to Cenadi, we switched to twisty-curvy mountain driving so we had to slow down even further. Sometimes the GPS would get a little confused, but for the most part we didn’t make any mistakes that we couldn’t immediately correct. Concetta’s cousin, John, who normally lives in Canada, has an apartment in a house in Cenadi (photo right). He and his wife, Helen, are going to be our hosts for the next several days. We’re hoping to get them to come to Sicily with us as Concetta and I have never been there.

So, here I am sitting in John and Helen’s living room talking to the internet via John’s Vodophone, Now this thing is cool and requires no monthly payment. It’s a “ pay-as-you-go ” model

which you load with minutes when you get ready to go on vacation and then you never have to rely on you B&Bthumb-drive-sized “Uplink” device. (or the local MacDonalds) for your internet connection again. I’ve already decided to go with John into the nearby seacoast town of Soverato where he acquired his and buy one A.S.A.P. This is just what I’ve been wanting all along. Finding a good connection has been a royal pain this trip, a mistake I hope to never experience again. And, while the uplink tends to be slower than wireless hot spots I’ve experienced in the past, it does work. When you’re trying to write a blog and upload photos so folks can see where you’ve been, that can be important.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Ciao, Tutti!

Well, if you looked outside our Cenadi villa window this afternoon you’d swear that you’d been somehow transported overnight to the Florida Gulf Coast. The window vista is filled with a Florida-like palm and, just to make Floridians feel at home, the rain is pouring down like hurricane season has just arrived and plans to stay awhile. Our plans to go to Squillace for food and photographs have been squashed. But since it’s been some hours since breakfast, the girls are busily fixing our luncheon feast of pasta with fresh-caught tuna from Soverato and homemade wine from Franco downstairs.

Franco, the builder of the multi-unit building in which John and Helen purchased their town home, is one of those do-anything guys. It doesn’t matter whether it’s doing all the bricklaying on this three-story building, laying tile floors, or making his own wine, he does each with equal enthusiasm and expertise. At one time Franco had immigrated from Cenadi to Canada and spent his career as a contractor and jack of all trades. Then, at very early age, he retired, came to Italy, bought a piece of property from his grandmother, and built this marvelous building full of very nice town homes. The building still has three units available for sale and Franco would dearly love Concetta and I to purchase either the three-bedroom unit or one of the two two-bedroom units. Since it’s raining so hard outside and Franco can’t be working on one of his projects, he prevailed on me to come and see the three units. Like Goldilocks, I found the three-bedroom unit too large and the smallest two-bedroom unit too small. But the larger two-bedroom unit I found to be jusssssstttttttt right. The units are all concrete and steel, which makes them very earthquake proof, and they have tile floors throughout. The exterior is all brick and stone for low maintenance. Truly, it would be an ideal getaway place in Italy if we could afford the purchase price of $120,000 Euros.

We’ve entered full retirement mode here in Cenadi, Italy. After madly dashing from archaeology site to museum to mosque to castle to ancient battlefield in Greece for two weeks, Concetta and I now find ourselves here in Cenadi doing nothing but, well, eating. We’re staying with Concetta’s first cousin, John, and his wife Helen who normally live in Toronto, Canada, but who have a wonderful town house in the mountains of Calabria. Here, their villa overlooks thousands of acres of olive groves and grape vineyards, chestnut forests and fig orchards clear to the sea in Soverato some twenty miles away. The days are mild and the nights are cool, perfect for sleeping ‘till 8:00 a.m., giving us just enough time to manage breakfast before it’s time to go find the perfect Italian restaurant for lunch. Yesterday, the only thing we accomplished besides eating, between 8:00 in the morning and 10:00 at night, was a trip to Soverato to look for saffron and a trip to Chieravalle to look for a Vodaphone satellite link for my computer, neither of which did we find.

Concetta said to tell you she especially enjoyed the porcini mushrooms in her pasta yesterday. These special mushrooms are just now in season but can’t be picked, so we’re told by the resident authorities, until nine days after it rains. Through some twist of fate, we’ve arrived at just the right moment for enjoying the those much sought-after delicacies.

This morning, we're visiting the village of Squallaci to see what photographic opportunities present themselves, but really to search for the next memorable lunch spot. The weather here has been a tad rainy, but is just so pleasant that all you want to do is walk the quiet country lanes or sit and chat over coffee. If you wanted a quiet place on the planet to get away from it all and just sort of get back to nature, you could do no better than Cenadi or one of the nearby villages. The taxes, they tell me, are low and the living is easy.

Not much more to write about just now, but stay tuned for unexpected adventures.

Ciao tutti.

Yeah! The rain finally cleared up for ten or twelve minutes – long enough for us to dash to the car and head down the mountain to drier climes. Thankfully, the rain clouds didn’t follow us and we emerged in the town of Pizzo by the sea under blue skies (mostly). The beauty of the drive down the mountain through fern-festooned glades and arboreal tunnels of huge overarching trees put everyone in high spirits. The Calabrian mountains with their verdant, rolling forests and meadows and sweeping views of the sparkling Mediterranean, makes you want to buy a piece of ground, build a cabin, and raise figs and grapes for the rest of your life.

The first seaside place we visited was La Piesa de Piedigrotta. Here, seventeenth century shipwrecked sailors tunneled into the sandstone cliff face and fashioned a church complete with carved statues of saints and other religious figures (photo right). I didn’t try to count them, but there looked to be a least a hundred carved sandstone figures in sizes varying from a few inches tall to life-sized in a room on par with any small Italian village church. Outside, the storm-tossed waves of the Mediterranean crashed against the rocks, but inside, in the dark serenity of the church, you could easily imagine those poor shipwrecked souls working feverishly to influence the God who had seemingly abandoned them.

Leaving La Piesa de Piedigrotta, we found a parking place in Pizzo and picked our way along the highway full of speeding Fiats to find the stairs to the cliff-side piazza several stories above us. The highway had no sidewalk, so we had to plaster ourselves next to the guardrail and hope we would be able to jump out of the way should an oncoming “macchina” get too close. Thankfully, we made it without incident and had soon gained the sunny heights above where a double row of side-by-side restaurants and an ocean of yellow, blue, and white plastic chairs greeted us (photo right). Each restaurant came complete with it’s own “pitchman” who stood at the edge of his particular eatery and beckoned you to come sit down. “Sorry,” we told them, “we’re just enjoying our passagiata” (stroll) on such a beautiful Calabrian day.

Our game plan was to finally choose a restaurant and have a bit of pasta and wine, then explore the tiny streets and alleys of Pizzo for an hour or so, then find another restaurant for our ice cream and espresso break. Our secret agenda that caused us to seek out Pizzo in the first place was to taste their famous “Tartufo,” a chocolate ice cream concoction that simulates in size and shape and color the Tartufo mushrooms (truffles). We weren’t disappointed. The Tartufos were absolutely to die for. I didn’t order one, but John and Concetta did and I got to taste hers. It was wonderful and light and as solidly chocolate as you could ever want.

That evening, after we had arrived back in Cenadi, we were invited to Tony Montesano’s next door for Italian torta and homemade wines and liqueres. My absolute favorite is Tony’s Nocello, a dark sweet liquid made from the green outer husks of ripening walnuts. Tony says that in order to get the perfect Nocello, you have to harvest the walnuts on June the 23rd exclusively. No other day, according to Tony, will produce as fine a taste. He makes only a few bottles each year and, sadly, his small supply is already promised for this year. I told him to please, please reserve a bottle for me for next year and he could name his price.

This morning we're off mushroom hunting in the forest so I have to close and get my boots on. 'Till next time, I bid you

Ciao, Tutti.

For the last five days we’ve been enjoying a wonderful visit with Concetta’s cousin, John, and his delightful wife, Helen, at their vacation town home in Cenadi, Italy. To give you a bit of insight into what Cenadi is like, visualize miles and miles of low rolling hills with virtually every inch covered in vegetation of some sort. Olive groves march off in orderly rows in just about any direction you look. Fig trees grow everywhere, both in gardens and along the edges of farm fields. Around every bend in the road you see a wonderful profusion of grape vineyards and gardens nestled in beside “rusticos,” ancient rock houses. And wherever you don’t see carefully tended gardens and orchards, you see wonderful stands of chestnut trees, wispy fern-covered fields (where the wild mushrooms hide -- photo right), and many other species of trees I couldn’t begin to identify. Amongst all this beauty you find, just here and there, tiny villages full of wonderful old stone and stucco houses with red-tile roofs, bright colored entryways, and even brighter-colored laundry hanging from ancient iron balconies. Below those balconies, lay skinny two-lane roads, so narrow that you have no choice but to slow the pace of your life down and take in some of this rustic beauty, even if it’s for just a moment.

We love to come to Cenadi for the people as well. On either side of John and Helen’s house are good friends named, of all things, Montesano. As some of you know, Concetta’s last name is Montisano. The spelling was changed from the original Montesano spelling when the family immigrated from Centrache, a town just down the hill from Cenadi, nearly a century ago. Though the neighbors are probably not relatives (Montesano being the third most common name in the area), we have come to love those folks like they were our own relatives. Frank and Isa on the north side are the family who are offering to sell us an apartment in their building if we would like to have a base in Cenadi from which to explore Italy more thoroughly in the future. Yesterday we had a marvelous lunch with Frank and Isa comprised of such a quantity and variety of wonderful food that I didn’t want dinner five hours later. From Isa’s pasta, fried peppers, wild chicory, lightly battered mushrooms, and to-die-for salads, to Frank’s homemade wine, we feasted like Kings and Queens for at least two hours. For dessert Frank brought out a plate of home-grown figs and other fruits (photo right) that was a beauty to behold. That, along with ice wine and a triple dose of espresso made me want to sign the purchase agreement right then and there.

And then there’s the Montesanos on the south side, Tony and Maria. Lovely folks they are and no mistake. The Montesanos “south” always have us to lunch or dinner when we come to visit, and this time was no exception. On Monday the four of us (Me, John, Helen, and Concetta, met at Tony and Maria’s for a whirlwind feast of everything from pasta to roast chicken with rosemary potatotes, stuffed eggplant (photo right) to garden-grown salad. Of course Tony had his own homemade wine as well. In fact, just last night I was privileged to photograph Tony and his nephew, Giovani, carrying crate after crate of freshly-picked grapes to dump into the hopper where the stems would be stripped off (photo lower right). Tony is 70 years old, but he could work circles around me. After putting his thirty or forty crates of grapes through the stem-stripper, he went to his nephew’s house to do the same job. After that, it was a friend’s turn. He told me he didn’t finish stripping grapes until 10:30 p.m. What a guy. Before we left, I had a chance to get to know Maria better by sitting with her on her patio for an hour and stripping the dried beans out of the center of a pile of string bean hulls for use in next year’s planting (photo lower right). As a reward, Maria gave me a package of beans to plant in my garden next year.

Of course, it was very hard to say goodbye to John and Helen, but since they’re getting ready to fly home to Canada, we had to bid them a very fond farewell and bon voyage. They made us very, very welcome over the past few days, even taking us sight seeing and shopping and letting us use up a bunch of their satellite Internet time. Breakfast was our favorite time of the day as we sat and planned the day’s events. I’m sorry I forgot this morning to sample their fig yogurt (for some reason the market in Soverato gets loads of such flavors), but the coconut was terrific. John and Helen are lovely hosts, and we hope to visit them again some time soon.

Around 9:30 a.m. we had the car all loaded and Concetta and I headed off down the mountain into some dazzling blue skies and toward the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean. We hit just a couple of miles of fog as we gained altitude at one point, but most of the drive was heavenly. We didn’t have to rush since our goal was the east coast of Sicily, and we decided that we could easily do that in half a day.

The journey to Sicily turned out to be a tad more complicated than we thought, but by 3:30 p.m. we had reached our destination village of Taormina, just down the road from Messina where the ferry boat deposited us. We were expecting close to pandemonium in our ferry experience, but in truth, it wasn’t that bad. The Italians are sometimes a bit stingy with their road signs, which can make for some tense moments, but for the most part we purchased our ticket, got in the proper line, loaded up when the ferry docked, and got off without so much as a single problem. We had been warned that all hell can break loose when you’re trying to exit the ferry because they try to funnel four or five lanes of traffic off the ferry to one lane exiting the disembarkation point. In our case, we boarded fairly early in the process, got placed right behind an ambulance with the blue lights vigorously flashing, and when it exited so did we. In fact, we were the number one “civilian” car through the exit. Some piece of luck!

So, our next bit of uncertainty resulted from my insistence on not making any reservations for Sicily. I wanted our choice of lodging to be based solely on accident if possible. Though that sounds a bit daft, I like at least occasionally to let serendipity take control to see just what adventures can result. Before we left this morning, and quite at the last minute, John gave me some Internet searches that Helen had performed some time ago when she wanted to go to Sicily. From that stack of searches, Concetta and I picked out a likely target for our night’s lodging based on whether they had Internet or not. As fate would have it, we found the Hotel Angela without much difficulty, drove up and parked right in front, and discovered that they indeed had space for us, though only for two days. We would have liked three days, but I’m hoping that someone ends up cancelling. If not, we’ll head off down the road to see just what other adventures we can turn up. At the moment our room is located high up on a cliff face overlooking both the Mediterranean and the slopes of the active volcano, Mount Etna. It almost seems that we have a view that goes on for several lifetimes. I’m not sure what our plans for the evening are going to be, but the hotel runs a shuttle down the mountain to the old part of Taormina where there are a vast selection of restaurants and shops. So, pardon me while I finish getting dressed. I’m starting to get hungry and I haven’t eaten anything but a banana since breakfast.

Later: The photo above right was taken from our bedroom patio after we returned from dinner. Quite by accident, I think Concetta and I stumbled onto the very best restaurant in Taromina. We got the full white table cloth treatment followed by the best ravioli I've had in years and years. The wine was superb, the service excellent, and the view was much like what you see above. We stayed the full course from anti pasti to gelato and coffee. I could eat there forever. When we were done, the hotel called for us with the van. What a place!

Tomorrow we'll probably explore a bit around here and then, who knows? Stay tuned.

Ciao tutti.

This morning Concetta and I decided to spend our day in old Taormina strolling the narrow lanes and alleys, visiting the shops, and – what else? – scoping out the best place to find a bit of pasta for lunch. Our Hotel, the Angela, offers breakfast at 8:00 a.m. on the terrace so we didn’t have to jump out of bed until well after after 7:00 a.m. After a light meal of granola, yogurt, scones, and fruit – and, naturally, several cups of black coffee, we headed for the hotel van which was headed downtown at “half nine,” as the desk clerk put it. My intention was to get some photos before the sun gained its straight overhead zenith in order to get those bluer skies and longer shadows to accentuate all the wonderful old stone buildings and colorful shop fronts.

In one way, we felt a little bad for not seeking out some tour or other that was headed for an archaeological site or ancient Greek ruin or something, but the truth is we’ve grown a little tired of ruins and decided that we’d just wander the town and take photos and look for food. It turned out to be one of the nicest days we’ve had on this adventure. We had no time limits and no destinations. We looked at ceramics and local wines and baby clothes. We had time to wait until the proper “models,” like girls in long summer dresses, wandered into my photos, or until everyone wandered out of the photo. I always look for colorful “models,” those who have on bright oranges and reds and blues, which usually means I have to count on Americans to walk by. For some reason, Europeans tend to like black, a color that doesn’t do a thing for color photographs.

The best thing we visited this morning was an open-air Roman theater (not quite ruins) that dates back a couple of thousand years (probably built on the foundations of an earlier Greek theater) and has by far the best setting of any of the ancient theaters that we’ve visited. The seats are cut into a hillside hundreds of feet above the Mediterranean and the theater audience would have as a backdrop to the actors the wide sweep of that awesome blue sea far, far below (photo below right). The grandeur of it takes your breath away.

The second best thing we stumbled over today turned out to be the “parco publico” (municipal park) that clings to the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea perhaps six or seven hundred feet below (photo below right). The park has been designed with long tree-shaded walks, bright flower gardens, and dozens of nooks and crannies where you may find a comfortable bench and enjoy a quiet conversation. In a city full of buzzing motor scooters and busy little Fiats dashing to and fro, the park came as a wonderful, oasis-like surprise.

After a lovely hour in the sanctuary of the park, our tummies told us it was time for that bit of pasta. Minutes later we had retraced our steps into the heart of the old city and had chosen Il Baccanale for our lunch. I settled on the lasagna. Concetta passed on the pasta and chose an omelet just for a bit of change. For dessert, along with our espresso, we decided to share a lemon ice just because it sounded so cool. Our restaurant hosts, for reasons unknown, treated us to a glass each of almond liqueur, which I promptly added to my espresso for some extra kick. As we had done all day, we took our time with lunch and didn’t resume our wandering until after 2:00 p.m.

Concetta was anxious to spend some time on our terrace with her book so around 3:00 p.m. we made our way back to Hotel van’s pickup spot and we were back in our room by 3:30 p.m. There, we checked our email, got our showers, and spent the balance of the early evening taking it easy – or rather, Concetta took it easy. I’m here composing the blog. LOL.

Around 7:30 p.m., we walked up the road to a dinner spot we’ve heard about from the front desk staff to see if we could finish off the evening with some more wonderful Italian food. It turned out to be a great decision. The walk was lovely in the moonlight, augmented by the lights of the city far, far below. Once at the restaurant, we were given a table overlooking those same city lights. The ambiance was perfect, with a great view, wonderful Italian dinners of freshly-caught fish, and a nice cup of coffee to round things out. Our first day in Sicily was one to remember.

Buona notte. Ciao.

Friday morning dawned clear and beautiful from our patio at the Angela Hotel on the Island of Sicily overlooking the cloud-shrouded Mount Etna volcano. We headed down to breakfast as usual, but we sensed since the hotel staff had not contacted us about our stay having been extended due to some last-minute cancellation from another guest, that we would have to leave our new-found haven. Concetta and I thoroughly enjoyed our breakfast on the terrace overlooking the volcano nonetheless. Around ten, we loaded up the car and headed down the mountain. We were lucky once again as the hotel van was headed for it's morning drop-off and was going just the way we wanted to go. Thanks to the van, we had no trouble finding our way to the main highway for our trip back to Messina and the ferry.

We had plugged in the GPS to guide us but for some reason we kept choosing the wrong routes and making the little machine irritable. Finally, we turned it off and used our wits to find the ferry. With the Davis luck running high, we found the ferry entrance, presented our ticket, and boarded just as the doors were ready to close. We were, in fact, one of the last two or three cars allowed on board.

When we first boarded the ferry for Sicily we sort of cowered in the car unwilling to get out and leave our possessions to the unknown. This time, we locked the car, and climbed the stairs to the upper decks so we could enjoy the voyage. It was great. Then, when we unloaded, we easily found our way out of the embarkation area and down the road to our next destination, Reggio Calabria. There, Concetta wanted a chance to see the 6th century B.C. bronze Greek statues at the local museum. We thought we had found at least the general location and, after finding a killer parking spot, we set off on foot to the museum. We stopped several local residents to ask the location, but finding no one who spoke English, we were faced with the prospect of being unsuccessful in our quest. However, on our last try, we stopped a man in a bright orange shirt and asked him about the museum's location. Thankfully, he knew exactly what we wanted and pointed us in the correct direction. Retrieving the car, we drove there in less than ten minutes (photos above right) and spent a wonderful hour viewing the exhibits, though no photographs were allowed inside the museum.

After our museum visit, we talked about just where we should go at that late hour -- around 2:30 p.m. -- that would allow us to find a hotel. Even though it seemed like a long shot, we decided we'd make the dash for Sorento and, however late we arrived, we'd book a stay for three days and do some exploring around Napoli. At times, I certainly regretted our decision, as the sun sank lower and my lunch of one banana and half a scone began to play on my mind. Finally, after battling traffic through a dozen construction sites and the Friday-night madness of the Sorento coast, we arrived at our destination, the Villa Maria Hotel in Sorento, the hotel where we stayed four years ago. It was nice to be back on familiar ground.

Thankfully, we arrived in time at our Sorento hotel to find dinner still in progress and a room ready and waiting for us. It's always hard to "wing it" in a place as popular as Sorento and I had little confidence that we'd find a vacancy. But luck was with us once again and we now have a cozy room on the third floor (photo above right). Concetta and I drank a whole bottle of Italian red between us for dinner so this blog may have an error or two that I've missed. But, for now, all is right with the world. We've traveled several hundred miles today from the foot of the Mount Etna volcano to the foot of the Mount Vesuvius Volcano. Things can only get more interesting from here. Until then, I bid you Buona Notte! Ciao.

Four years ago when we visited Sorrento with Concetta’s sisters, Phyl and Paula, Concetta and I visited the Isle of Capri, which is just a short ride by jet boat from the mainland. That particular visit, we had a simply marvelous time exploring the village of Capri that lies several hundred feet higher in elevation than the harbor. Though most tourists opt for the tour busses or taxis that line the quay waiting for customers, we chose instead to hike to the top and take photographs of the beautiful gardens that seem to be everywhere along the way.

This year we weren’t quite so lucky. We hadn’t been on the jet boat (photo above left) more than a few minutes when a tour pitchman descended on us and talked us into spending twenty Euros apiece to get the “special treatment” that only he could provide. I was initially going to send him on his way, but the couple with whom we had been sitting proclaimed that they were going to do it and why not give it a try. The only thing that interested me was that he promised to take us higher on the mountain to visit Anacapri, another, smaller village that we had missed on our first visit since it’s very difficult to get there on foot.

As you might guess, good ol’ Luigi sang to us, told us wonderful stories, and generally entertained us as we boarded his tiny bus and made our way up the most precarious piece of highway you’ve ever seen. This ribbon of blacktop promised to allow two buses to pass safely while clinging to the cliff-face hundreds of feet above of the bay (photo left), but I don’t think I was the only passenger holding my breath at such encounters. After we arrived at Anacapri, ol’ Luigi shamelessly spent the morning herding us from one relative’s shop to another’s just to let us “take a look.” Midday, we found ourselves in his cousin’s restaurant for lunch where we had a small plate of pasta, a glass of wine probably imported from China, and some sort of indefinable frozen dessert.

It was about this time that Concetta and I parted company with Luigi’s and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring on our own, which is what we should have done in the beginning. Unfortunately, by then the sun had drifted behind a bank of clouds making photography impossible, so we did a little window shopping, strolled the tiny lanes that descend into the canyons, and then rode the funicular railway back to the harbor and caught the ferry back to Sorrento. As days in Italy go, it was not one of our best. But hey, we’re getting ready to venture out into the alleys and lanes that wend their way from our Sorrento Hotel down to the cliffs above the sea. We’ve had some very fine dinners while wandering down there, and I have high hopes for a repeat performance.

Ciao tutti.

This morning Concetta and I set out to undo the questionable karma we had accumulated yesterday on our visit to the island of Capri. Our plan was to visit the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in downtown Napoli where many of the archaeological finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum are displayed. Now Napoli is one of those cities that most people, even Italians, will advise you to avoid if you’re driving your own car. Take the train. Take the bus. Hire a cab. But under no circumstances should you drive yourself. Naturally, the intrepid Happy Wanderers enthusiastically ignored that advice.

The drive to Napoli started out perfectly normal. We set the address of the museum into the GPS and it quite correctly set our direction sort of northeast from the Hotel. After fifteen or twenty minutes we found ourselves on the outskirts of Napoli at a “Y”. We probably should have wondered when the GPS insisted on the right fork when the left fork pointed to our destination, but we went ahead and followed the direction indicated by the GPS. An hour later when we’d only gone a couple of miles, we finally turned off the GPS and began navigating by intuition. In between, we were as close to completely lost as you can get in Italy, which is pretty darn lost. For at least thirty minutes the little electronic wonder had insisted on returning us to the same "no outlet" street with a big piece of earth moving equipment sitting in a field where the road ended. No matter how we tried to outwit it, the device would see through our subterfuge and take us back to view the earth mover again. We did see some mighty fine urban gardens in our continuous circling and re-circling, which is something I didn't expect.

Actually, I don’t usually mind being lost. I’ve had some great experiences and stumbled on some very interesting sights while lost. This time, however, was different. This time – at least after the first half hour – I got the distinct impression that the GPS was out to have a good time with us. The first thing you have to understand is that the GPS has a hell of a bad time pronouncing Italian street names, which are not only ten syllables long, but have inflections on different syllables than Americans are used to hearing. So when the GPS says turn right on Colle Grimaldi Su Mare, it comes out sounding like CollegrimaldisumaRE, emphasizing the very last syllable as though it was the most important. So, while you’re trying to figure out just what the darn thing just said, you’ve passed the intended street and the GPS immediately begins to fire more directions at you in order to correct your previous lack of expertise.

Now, I have to tell you that I actually like driving in Italy. Even though I’ve driven in both Rome and Florence, which are probably just a tad easier than Delhi, India, I really haven’t encountered any insurmountable problems. In my experience the Italian drivers are more polite than American drivers. While driving with them you just have to learn to assert yourself or they will not let you into the stream of traffic when the highway engineers funnel five lanes of traffic down to one and don’t bother to provide any merge signs. You just have to “nudge” your way out just like they’re doing. Piece of cake.

But there is one thing that truly terrifies me when thinking about driving in Italian cities: the thought of being funneled into a one-way alley that proceeds to get smaller and smaller until it deadends. Finally, you can’t go forward any more and there’s no room to turn around and you’re just sure you’re going to be stuck there for days.

In the end we were lucky. Even though the GPS sent us down a one-way, dead-end alley where the Passat could barely squeeze between the parked cars on both sides, we managed to turn around and get out again. Yes, through some miracle of fate there was a spot at the very end of the alley just big enough to accommodate a king-sized bed which I somehow managed to turn that darn Passat by creeping three inches this way and three inches that way in a tight little arc until I could finally retrace our route and escape. After that, I say, bring on Delhi, India. I’m ready for it.

Anyway, after my heart quit beating at twice it’s normal rate, we ignored the advice of the GPS until I had found the A3 on the Autostrada on my own and once again pointed the car toward Napoli proper. Once on the A3, the GPS had no choice but to behave itself, so we turned it back on and it soon deposited us in the driveway of the Museo.

Since most guide books tell you to be very careful in Napoli, I suppose that many people avoid going there. But I have to tell you that Concetta and I had an extremely enjoyable morning there viewing the artifacts from the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum (photos right). They have some of the most magnificent statuary that we seen on the trip. AND, they have some absolutely terrific displays of coinage that was uncovered, sometimes in the hands of victims of the pyroclastic flow from the volcano, and sometimes buried “secretly” under houses where the owners had their own private bank. One of our favorite displays was the glassware (photo lower right). I bet you wouldn’t even think that glassware existed two thousand years ago, but it did. We were just dazzled by the workmanship and the intricacies of design.

While were at the Museo something just amazing happened to us. We looked up at one point to find a young woman standing nearby whom we knew. We had only recently been keeping company with her as she was one of the staff members on the Aegean Odyssey on which we had taken our cruise to the Greek islands just a few weeks ago. The ship had embarked a new set of passengers in Athens after we left and was now cruising the coast of Italy. Incredible that we should be at the Museo on exactly the same day at the same time.

After navigating our way back out of Napoli, we set our course once again for Sorrento and a late lunch. To your great joy, we managed to find an Italian restaurant that advertised “slow” food on their sign and we spent a very pleasurable hour munching on Paninis and drinking wine and talking with a couple who hailed from, of all places, Long Beach, California. I can tell you if you’re thinking about traveling to Italy, or to any country for that matter, the best thing about the trip will turn out to be the folks you meet along the way. Last night we spent dinner with a couple of guys from Quebec, Canada, who regaled us with tales of their travels together much as we regaled them with ours. They were completely delightful, and we could easily have spent a several hours with them. The food was just so-so, which surprised us since we’d eaten there four years ago and remembered it as being better, but the instantaneous comradeship we enjoyed with our dinner mates will stay in our memories for many years.

Lastly today, while walking back to the hotel after lunch, we stumbled onto a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition that, while small, was very interesting and wonderfully quiet and lightly attended (tough to find during tourist season in Italy). It also allowed me to practice some Italian on the museum attendant who spoke as many words of English as I did her language. So, here we are, about to enjoy our last night in Sorrento. We’ve had our ups and downs here, but I’d have to say, mostly ups. One lesson I learned is that you should always take a map along even if you’re relying on the GPS. Then, even if the GPS manages to lose you, you’ll still be able to visualize where you are at all times. If you come to Sorento, please don’t come during the high season. I’d wait at least until October, though days may be too cool for sun bathing. But hey, to heck with sunbathing. There’s just too much to do in Italy to sunbath anyway.

Ciao tutti.

Today started early, about 5:30 a.m., as Concetta and I made ready to tackle the last leg of our Greek/Italian adventure. We tried to get into the breakfast room just when it opened because our hotel, the Villa Maria, is playing host to a couple of busloads of Brits who've proven to be a tad noisy when cooped up together in the small dining room.

Though the food is certainly nothing to brag about at the Villa Maria, the hotel is clean and the staff friendly. It turned out that the extra nice room they gave us when we arrived late WAS a tad expensive, but not quite as bad as I expected. We did enjoy having the nice patio attached to our room.

Today started early, about 5:30 a.m., as Concetta and I made ready to tackle the last leg of our Greek/Italian adventure. We tried to get into the breakfast room just when it opened because our hotel, the Villa Maria, is playing host to a couple of busloads of Brits who've proven to be a tad noisy when cooped up together in the small dining room.

Though the food is certainly nothing to brag about at the Villa Maria, the hotel is clean and the staff friendly. It turned out that the extra nice room they gave us when we arrived late WAS a tad expensive, but not quite as bad as I expected. We did enjoy having the nice patio attached to our room.

Sorrento is a tough place to move around because there's only one road in and out. With all the Italian guys and girls on their motor scooters, the tour buses, delivery trucks, zippy little Fiats, and pedestrians stepping into the street from all directions definitely slowed us down a bit. Probably best to arrive or leave on a Sunday on that day the streets were much less crowded.

Our little GPS decided to have a go at us one more time as we motored toward Napoli where we would catch the A3 to Rome. Once again, though the sign said go left for Napoli the GPS said go right for another chance to get completely lost amid the ancient neighborhoods surrounding the waterfront. This time, though, we ignored the little prankster and relied on our intuition to head us north.

Once we reached the A3, we really started to pick up speed. In the past the maximum speed I felt comfortable traveling on the Auto Strada was 140 KPH. Even at that speed the German cars sailed by me in the left lane like I was peddling a bicycle. Today, since the road was so smooth and the traffic so light, I cranked the big Passat (photo left) up to 160 KPH and we got to Rome in super quick time (and with very few cars passing us).

Our first mission once we got to the Rome airport was to find the Airport Hilton where we would be staying. I wanted to check in and take the bags to the room before we returned the rental car. All this worked exactly as planned. The check-in went very smoothly. We made contact with the porter who would drive us to the airport the following morning and we were in our room by just after lunch time. Our next task was to return the car, which always makes me nervous. But this time, with our Avis car, the clipboard guy briefly looked the car over, had me sign a credit card slip, and told me I could leave. I've never seen anything so easy. (Note: once we got home we realized that the car company had tacked on an extra $400.00 or so that I failed to notice when I signed the check-in document. I contacted AVIS to see what they want-

ed to do about the descrepincy, but they declined to do anything since I'd signed the checkin sheet. So......I guess I wont' be doing business with that company again.)

Our next task was to go to the Continental ticket desk and check on our seat assignments, a job which should have been dead easy. Au contrar! Because U.S. carriers demand a higher level of security in check-in, they now have their own terminal. For awhile we tried to walk there, occasionally asking non-English speaking passersby where terminal five might be. Finally, an oriental flight attendant, in her broken English, let us know that we had to ride a shuttle bus there. Since the shuttle bus stopped just scant feet from where we were standing, that turned out to be easy. But when we arrived at terminal five, things didn't exactly look right. I tried asking the shuttle driver if he would be back to pick us up, but he just shrugged.

Here things got even more alarming. When we went into the terminal, we found not a soul working there. We looked at each other. The scene reminded me of those sole-survivor films where everyone in the city is dead and only one person is left to wander the deserted streets. Now and again a janitor or similar workman would appear and disappear just to show us not EVERYONE was dead, but for the most part the terminal remained empty. Right about then an elderly couple appeared at Concetta’s elbow and informed us that the terminal was closed for the day and no one would be back until the next morning. They, as it turned out, had bought a $50.00 cab ride from Rome to the airport to change their flight only to find the terminal closed for the day. Their only choice was to go back to their Rome Hotel -- another $50.00 cab ride -- and return the next morning. We felt extremely sorry for them.

Soon after we four gathered in the parking lot and tried to interest someone, anyone, in our plight. We really didn't know if anyone would be back for us. Certainly there was no reason for the shuttle bus come back to a closed terminal. The elderly couple tried to use the "wheelchair ordering" intercom to the main terminal to get information, but the person at the other end kept insisting that we tell her whether we needed a wheelchair or not. The exchange would have been pretty amusing if it hadn't been so tragic. Finally, the elderly couple wore the intercom person down and she finally conceeded that the shuttle would indeed come back for us.

As it turned out, once Concetta and I were back in the room we easily pulled up our Continental reservation and seat assignments on the PC (finally our last night in Italy we have in-room Internet access for which they demanded ONLY twenty-eight Euros – choke!) and all looked in order, which I could have accomplished in the first place. But I wanted to have a real person in front of me just in case I had to argue for a certain seat setup that the computer refused to give me.

So, here we are, just chilling out at the Airport Hilton and taking it easy. We are both genuinely sorry that our adventure is over AND very thankful that we will soon be back in our boring old existence –- at least for awhile. We will like not having to be incessantly looking for the universal "WC" wherever we go. So, I hope you've enjoyed hearing about some of what we've experienced. I apologize for the lack of photos this time. I was very disappointed to learn that the Aegean Odyssey had locked out the passenger's picture uploading ability. In the future, I will have to be even more vigilant in ferreting out suitable hosts for our traveling pants. For now, I bid you the Italian "do-all" greeting,

Ciao, and buona fortuna (good luck) in your own travels in the future.

As I think I've said previously in the blog, I spent quite a bit of time on the planning end of this trip working with the airlines. This involved the on-line reservation via Cheapoair.com (whom I'd never heard of before) as well as spending much time on the phone with the airlines themselves.

The most time was probably taken up with insuring that at least two hours existed between the landing of one flight and the taking off of the next flight. I'm an absolute fanatic about having sufficient time between flights to cover any contingency. When there are three legs outbound and three legs inbound on your journey, the slack time between flights can become critical. On this particular trip, we didn't have any problems outbound with the planes being on time. But inbound two out of the three flights were an hour late or more, which would have been disastrous if I hadn't booked intelligently.

I also spent much time on seat selection. Though many might think selecting seats is not that important, I always insist on having the aisle seat and the middle seat for Concetta and me rather than the window seat. This insures that you don't inconvenience anyone who might want to sleep the whole flight away. On this trip, it took at least an hour on the phone on two different occasions to finally nail down the seat assignments for all six flights. Thanks to all that careful planning and diligent phone work, the flying part of our trip came off flawlessly.

Like anything else that lots and lots of people want to do at the same time and place, flying can be a gigantic pain. One of the things that made our experience as pleasant as possible is the carry-on luggage. You see some folks who buy the biggest darn carry-on bag possible in order to, what?, put something over on the flight crew? Then they struggle and struggle to get the stupid things on board and into overhead bin. Take my advice, check your main big bag and buy a carry-on about half the legal size with a good set of wheels and a telescoping handle and let it go at that.

Our carry-on bags are easy to get on the plane and easy to get in the overhead. Don't put anything in them but some clean underwear and socks in case they lose the checked bag for a day or two and all your “essentials.” Into mine when the computer and the Nikon, two things I wouldn't dream of checking, and all the electric stuff like phone and laptop chargers, etc. Into Concetta's went the above-mentioned clothes, the medicines, the GPS unit, her headphones (always wonderful to have on an airplane), and other personal items.

We also take what the airlines call a, "personal item." Naturally, for Concetta the personal item is her purse. For me, I have a small bag about eight inches high, six inches wide, and five inches deep that holds my reading book, my headphones, the passports, the boarding passes, my journal, my glasses, and a bunch of other stuff like a tiny flashlight and a bottle of Tylenol. This bag, which is Swiss and found at Target, proved just perfect for sliding under the seat ahead of me.

By the way, our checked luggage is a rolling duffel bag which has a telescoping handle. This soft-sided bag has a host of separate compartments, won't be damaged from having a ton of other luggage piled on it, and with the handle extended it's easy to put your small carry-on above it for wheeling both around the airport. To make them extra visible on the turnstile, we bought a couple of those fluorescent yellow canvas belts that you wrap around the bag and clasp. We also use the TSA-approved combination locks on the the main zippers to deter crimes of opportunity.

Yesterday, you may remember that I booked us into the airport Hilton in Rome to make our appearance at the terminal at the required hour extra easy. That turned out to be a wonderful idea, one that I intend to use in the future. Staying at the Hilton allowed me to get rid of the rental car the day before, thus cutting down on the stress that always results from trying to turn in the car and get to your flight in the same time period. The Hilton had a van and a very helpful driver who deposited us at the proper terminal at the proper time and we were on our way.

So, until next time, I bid you Ciao -- and happy traveling.