LAST BLOG THIS TRIP

TUSCANY:  On Sunday we docked at Livorno and were met at the end of the gangplank by our driver.  Seven of us piled into the van for a long, but pleasant, drive to the beautiful city of Siena.  We had planned on a visit to the Duomo, but were told at the ticket booth that we would not be able to enter until 1:30.  Since we were being picked up at 12:30 we wandered around and Betty did some Christmas shopping.

When we got back in the van our driver told us that because it was so late in the tourist season he had been able to get a reservation at Sant’Agnese Farm where we would stop for two hours for lunch.  We were met with great warmth by the owner and by the chef and we sat down for a four-course lunch with 6 flights of wine, as well as multiple oils and balsamic vinegars for tasting.

The first course had several antipasti items (paired with two different Chiantis) and we were given specific instructions on the order of eating.  Each item was drizzled with a different olive oil and therefore everything had to go in exact order.  Of the seven of us three were wine enthusiasts and two didn’t drink at all.  One woman complained that wine gave her headaches.  At this point the owner appeared very distressed and was clearly insulted that someone would suggest that his wines would cause headaches.  Betty and I calmed him somewhat (Italians can be emotional )by sincerely extolling the virtues of his wines .  The hypochondriacal woman eventually clued in and passed her glasses my way, and I made certain they stayed empty.  As an aside, I don’t understand why a non-drinker would visit Tuscany.  Perhaps there should be two lines at airports with happy people going directly onboard planes to Italy, France or South America.  Those who go through life without much pleasure would get in line for the direct bus to Iowa.

Our second course was a very tasty lasagna, matched with a Super-Tuscan.  The third course was pork served with fresh tomatoes and perhaps the most magnificent Merlot I have ever had (unusually tannic for a Merlot).  With this course we began tasting the balsamic vinegars.  The tomatoes were drizzled with an 8-year old vinegar and the pork served with a 16-year old vinegar.  Finally, we were served ice cream with honey and a 30 year-old balsamic vinegar that had the texture of a heavy cream.

After lunch we stopped at the very picturesque village of San Gimignano where I came to an ice cream shop that claimed to have won the world championship gelato competition in both 2006 and 2009.  I was so satiated from lunch that I sadly walked on by and accompanied Betty on a little more Christmas shopping.

MONACO:  We were supposed to anchor off Monaco and then be tendered.  However, the seas are too rough and we have skipped that stop and sailed directly to Marseilles.

MARSEILLES/AIX-EN-PROVENCE:  This morning Gerard and Marie-Claude picked us up at the pier and we spent a wonderful day, first in Marseilles and then at their home in Aix.  Marie-Claude prepared a magnificent lunch and Gerard matched that with first a bottle of his fine Champagne, then a very good Bourgogne, and then topped it off with an absolutely superb 2006 Chateauneuf-du-Pape.  We are now back on board and will soon have to go to dinner, where I still have one more California Cab which must be drunk tonight as we disembark at 8:00 a.m.  Hope we don’t fall overboard on the way back to our stateroom.

SHIPBOARD CREDITS:  On board one carries neither cash nor credit cards.  Everything (wine, stuff at the shops, gratuities) is charged to one’s account and then you either pay as you get off or spend the rest of your life in the ship’s brig.  However, as incentives to repeat customers the cruise lines (and also the better travel agents) offer on board credits which cover the previously mentioned.  Because we have been using the same cruise line and the same travel agent we ended up on this cruise with more credits than we could spend.  Despite my wine-ordering habit and Betty’s clothes buying need we were given an envelope with 245 American dollars in cash as we did our final check-out.  First time I have ever been paid to leave a hotel (albeit a floating one).

LAST BLOG:  I hope I haven’t overly cluttered your inbox with my musings.  My next Travel Whine should be posted in February.  In the meantime I look forward to seeing some of you and hearing from others.  And, if you need travel companions to anywhere interesting, Betty and I are available.

 

 

SICILY

TRAPANI/ERICE:  The morning sail into Porto di Trapani was very pretty.  Trapani is a small city at the base of Monte San Giuliano.  The city was heavily bombed in WWII and has been rebuilt with uninspired architecture.  However, the setting on a spit of land going out into the Mediterranean is very lovely.

The main attraction for tourists is to take the cable car to the medieval town of Erice that sits at the very top of the mountain.  The town was built between the 12^th c. and 17^th c. and after that there was no room for expansion.  People instead built in Trapani at the base of the mountain, leaving Erice as an unspoiled medieval village/town.  I assume that the interiors of buildings have been modernized but the exteriors are all untouched giving the feeling of stepping back several centuries in time.

The ship wanted $ 155. a head for a 4- hour walking tour of Erice.  Instead of paying that ridiculous fee a group of us simply got off the ship and found a local bus that took us to the base, gave us tickets to the cable car and a ticket for a pastry at the top.  The bus returned 3.5 hours later and the total cost was 18 Euros per person.  We had just enough time to walk through and around the town along very hilly streets that were made of very rough cobblestones.  However, I think anyone coming to Sicily needs to put this town on a list of places to visit.

Again we didn’t get back to the ship until post lunch, so we fortified ourselves with lobster and steak sandwiches at the pool-side grill.  This sustenance allowed us to do a short walking town of the old town part of Trapani.  Now we are trying to recover to the point that our feet will allow us to stand at a Captain’s cocktail party about to be thrown for loyal/repeat cruisers.  I shall try not to drink too much free wine in order not to snooze through the string quartet that will precede our late evening dinner in the Italian restaurant.

PALERMO:  Eight of us hired a van for a tour of Palermo, a city of 1,000,000 and home of the Mafia.  Perhaps the best part of the tour was simply driving around in traffic more aggressive than anywhere I’ve ever visited.  Betty and I happened to sit up front with the driver and it was more thrilling than any mid-way ride one could ever take at the fall fair.  The traffic was made worse by scores of protestors occupying various streets and many, many police hustling around in riot gear.  Palermo has very high unemployment and our driver told us that there are protests every day.  Today it appeared that it was high school students who were on strike.  They didn’t look particularly angry and perhaps just wanted a day off school.  Our driver does not have anything good to say about the government and several times longingly referred to Mussolini.  I wonder how widespread are such Fascist sentiments.

In addition to seeing the various sites of Palermo we drove to the nearby city/town of Monreale.  After returning to Palermo we had a pre-lunch visit to the catacombs (someone in our group actually requested this).  The catacombs stay at a constant temperature of 9 degrees Celsius,  which supposedly makes these underground rooms perfect for storing the 8,000 skeletons and semi-mummified bodies.  I kept thinking that this is a waste of this space and one could probably store at least 200,000 bottles of wine instead.

Once we felt sufficiently creepy we returned to the surface and our driver dropped us at a small restaurant for lunch.  Most people had pizza but I enjoyed pasta mixed with chopped, fresh sardines.  I realize that would probably not appeal to most but I enjoyed it. 

In a few minutes we will sail out of Palermo harbour.  We shall be sorry to go, but will console ourselves with a meal at the French restaurant.  A few minutes ago the sommelier called our room to query what wine I wanted brought from the cellar so that it would be ready for our arrival.

VALENCIA to MALLORCA

VALENCIA:  We sailed into the Port at Valencia in the morning and took a shuttle to the city centre.  Valencia is a pleasant, very clean city that has little excitement to offer.  A couple of hours of walking and we were happy to return to the ship for lunch.

OCEANIA MARINA:   We have cruised with Oceania several times before but this is the first trip on one of their brand new line of ships.  It is interesting to compare how cruise ship design has evolved in the past decade or so.  The staterooms are very similar in size but the bathrooms have become much larger with a walk-in shower separate from the tub (previously only a shower).    Restaurants are different in that the number of specialty/ethnic restaurants has doubled as well as each one being much larger.  The pool-side grill is also bigger (and on this ship the grill menu includes lobster as well as the usual hamburgers).  The main dining room is relatively unchanged.  The space to create new and larger specialty restaurants (Thai, French, Italian, etc.) comes at the expense of the buffet, which has greatly decreased the number of tables.  Apparently, consumers have become more sophisticated in their dining choices.

THE OTHER WHITE MEAT:  After the port stop at Valencia we attended a lecture onboard on the history of Spain.   Part of that lecture concerned the conquest of much of the new world, where the Spanish introduced two animals previously unknown in the Americas.  The horse, of course, was very useful to the Spanish in their military conquest of the natives.  The Spanish also brought pigs with them as a source of food.  When the Conquistador Cortez met the Aztec Emperor Montezuma they sat down to a meal of pork.  Montezuma remarked that the meat tasted just like human flesh, something with which he was quite familiar. 

PALMA DE MALLORCA:   We took the shuttlebus into the edge of the city (about 4 miles from the cruise port) and drove by yacht slips the entire distance.  Guess there is lots of money here although I do not understand the rich who seem to love to own expensive boats but who never seem to sail them anywhere.

Palma de Mallorca is a lovely city which seems to thrive on tourism.  We enjoyed both the hop-on/hop-off drive as well as just walking through the central district.  We got back to our ship after lunch had ended so simply had hotdogs at the grill by the pool.   There are probably not a lot of burger joints that have on their menu 4 different cognacs and two different Armagnacs   We are now sitting on our deck with glasses of wine preparing to watch the sailout.  Tomorrow we shall be at sea all day and will reach Sicily the next morning.

PROTEST IN BARCELONA

DAY 3 & 4:             After a leisurely breakfast we walked up La Ramblas and through the Eixemble area of Barcelona, slowly working our way toward Sagrada Familia.  After walking for two hours we arrived at Barcelona’s primary landmark.  The Sagrada Familia, for those not up on such things, is the partially completed cathedral that was designed by Gaudi in the earlier part of the last century and has been under construction for the past 90 years or so.  It was finally consecrated by the Pope in 2010 but there are many years of work remaining.

Certainly it is a very impressive structure (the choir loft seats 1,000) and arguably may be the last cathedral of this scale ever to be built.  After viewing the inside we made our way to the elevators for our scheduled trip up the Nativity Tower (we purchased our tickets on-line yesterday).  Upon arrival we were told that the Tower was closed “due to a technical difficulty” and that our money would be refunded to our credit card account.

Disappointed we went outside to at least have a view of the towers.  To our surprise we saw several young people rappelling hundreds of feet above the ground.  They were all dressed in green and were waving large banners with slogans.  Because they were so high up (to say nothing of our minimal Spanish) we couldn’t make out what the banners proclaimed.  However, once back to our hotel we enlarged our photographs and the desk clerk was able to determine that the protestors were from Greenpeace and they were upset over the Russian’s haviing imprisoned their activists.  Perhaps seeing this dramatic and death defying form of political protest was more interesting than what we might have seen had we been allowed inside the Tower.

In the evening we decided to take in a Flamenco show, partly because we had just attended one at Performing Arts Series in Antigonish, and I wanted to see if this show would be any better.  All I can say is that I preferred the one here, only because the performance was shorter.

On the way to the Flamenco show we walked past the Opera House just as the patrons were arriving.  That was an interesting sight as all the women were wearing floor-length gowns and several of the men were dressed in tails; and I was stuck at the Flamenco. While waiting the start of the show Betty suggested we should order a pitcher of Sangria (lots of tourist drinking Sangria at street cafes).  At the end of the show our pitcher was still ¾ full.  I wished I could have sent the stuff to Rob Ford.  If that wouldn’t turn him off drink I don’t know what would.

After the show the evening improved dramatically as we chose another Tapas place.  As there were no tables left outside we opted to take the 15% discount and free Cava to sit inside.  The food was spectacular, especially the pieces of rib steak smothered in foix gras and carmelized onions.

IN DEFENCE OF FLAMENCO:  I should have done my homework.  The main singer sounded to me like he was having an acute attack of appendicitis, and the principal dancer had a beautiful face stretched in a series of grimaces.  Google told me that Flamenco began after 1492; the year King Ferdinand declared that all Gypsies, Jews and Muslims would convert to Catholicism on threat of death by burning.  Flamenco is an expression of the pain and anguish caused by that declaration.

On Saturday the crowds increase dramatically and it is sometimes difficult to elbow one’s way down the street.  Restaurants raise their prices by about 25%.  Nonetheless we enjoyed the day walking through the El Born district to the Picasso Museum.  After seeing many of Picasso’s early works (representational not cubist) we had a curry at a little Pakistani Restaurant before taking the Funacular up Mont Juic (not very interesting).  Then we attended a band concert (with strange Sardanan dancing) in front of the main Cathedral.  Later this evening we had our last round of Tapas before leaving Barcelona.  At the Bar service was very quick and I got back to the hotel in time to watch Mount A’s last minute field goal to win the Loney Cup.  Ain’t technology grand.  I expect I was the only one in Barcelona watching that particular football game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BARCELONA

DAY 1:  All our flights were on time and we landed in Barcelona at 1:30 p.m., about 20 hours after leaving Antigonish.   We opted for the local bus into the city and were dropped at Playa Cataluyna, a square at the end of La Ramblas.  La Ramblas is a mile-long street, dividing the old city, and has both pedestrian and vehicle sections.   Our small hotel is situated on a side street about ½ km from where the bus dropped us.  Fortunately it was downhill so I managed to push our new ulta-light cases (the cases are light, not the contents).

The desk clerk was very chatty and noted that we were very fortunate to have paid Expedia in advance.  As there was a major football game (soccer) taking place last night all rooms in the city were filled, despite a quadrupling of the regular rates.   He then advised a walk through the Gothic district (just across La Ramblas) as a way to spend some time until supper.

Having been warned repeatedly that La Ramblas was the pick-pocket capital of Europe, I armed myself a credit card stashed in a zippered shirt pocket,  and we headed out to the labyrinth of pedestrian streets lined with small shops and tapas bars.  Despite the dreadful Spanish economy the streets were crammed with shoppers, street musicians, and only a few beggars.

Just as some church clock struck 7:00 our four feet announced that they were going on strike and would only take us as far as the next tapas bar.  We were met at the door by a young woman who informed us that she had one street table remaining and that we should cross the street and seat ourselves.  By the time we reached the table it was occupied by a young man seemingly having oral sex with his cellphone.  However, he was quickly evicted and our feet moaned sighs of relief.

Despite being very, very busy our young Argentinian waitress carefully described each of the items on a long menu and we eventually ordered plates of tomato bread, spicy potatoes, cod fritters, croquettes, and fried chorizo.  Soon our small sizzling cask-iron pans of food arrived along with the recommended bottle of house wine from Penedes.  The food was excellent, although the wine bottle was barely large enough to wash it all down.

Tapas bars price their food according to where it is eaten.  There is a premium price for outside tables, and a discounted price for sitting at the bar.  Nonetheless, the bill only came to 38 Euros.  Spaniards rarely tip and our lovely young waitress became quite emotional when I slipped her a 5 Euro note after entering my pin number on the card machine.

The above tapas bar was the traditional style but there is another type that we are hoping to try one of these nights.   At a Basque tapas bar one self-selects individual tapas from platters (rather than ordering  plates of tapas as we had done).  Each item is impaled with a toothpick and at the end of the night one multiplies the number of toothpicks by some constant (such as 1.95) and that is what is owed.

DAY 2:  We woke to brilliant sunshine and a temperature of 24 c.  Given the size of the crowds and the warm November temperatures  I can’t imagine visiting here in the summer tourist season.

Today we planned on touring the city on the hop-on/hop-off bus.  Our first hop-off was the Guell Park.  The Guell Park was designed by Gaudi in the early 20^th century as a housing development for the well-to-do.  However, it was a spectacular failure, in part because there was no public transportation, and eventually the development was given to the city.  There are some interesting sights, but some of Gaudi’s modernistic masterpieces are a tad strange.  The 350 foot long park bench made of broken dishes I found to be particularly underwhelming.

After a hop-off for a random lunch we continued until around 4:30; at which point Betty and I had a slight miscommunication and she got off the bus and I didn’t.    Eventually we met back at the hotel,  at which time we walked up La Ramblas stopping to buy a 1 Euro sandwich to have with our 3 Euro bottle of wine.  This should tide us over until dinner, which we expect to have after the guitar concert we are planning to attend at 9:00 p.m.

The guitarist played to standing room only and he was exceptional.  Perhaps Spanish guitarists are simply better than North Americans attempting to play Spanish guitar.    On our way to the concert we walked by a restaurant highly recommended by Rick Steeves.  The line-up to get in was half-way across the square.   After the concert we went back to the restaurant and although it was still full we did manage a seat.  The meal (shellfish bisque, salad, duck confit) and wine (Cava followed by Rioja) was superb and the price equivalent to going out for pizza at home.  I think one should never go to Europe without a Rick Steeves guide book.