Cagliari, Sardinia

Yes, sardines are named after Sardinia. Well, probably. 

Our revised itinerary has taken us to the city of Cagliari on the island of Sardinia. I knew little about this island. It did get bombed by the British in WWII in an attempt to confuse the Italians and Germans as to where the next invasion would occur after the invasion of Sicily.

Viking did an admirable job of setting up a tour of Sardinia’s capital city, finding buses and guides for the passengers. Given the number of buses, perhaps 3/4s of the nearly 1000 of us opted for a hastily arranged excursion. Complicating the effort, I am sure, is that there was another cruise ship in town, a similarly sized one, the Silversea Muse. This is the first cruise ship other than our own we have encountered on this trip.

Our guide, a German-Sardinian (more German than Italian by accent) admitted she reluctantly accepted this assignment as she had just returned from Germany the previous day. She did a good job nevertheless although occasionally giving confusing rendezvous instructions.

The history of Sardinian is similar to that of Corsica until 1600 or so. The island avoided invasion by the Arabs but was even more subject to slaving raids by the Moors. A key difference with Corsica is that Sardinia was part of the Aragonese, then Spanish Empires for 400 years (with interludes of ownership by Savoy, Austria, the Pope, and others). The native Latin-based Sardinian language is described as a blend of Spanish and Italian. It was not until 1861 that Sardinian officially became part of Italy

With the collapse of the Roman Empire, Sardinians moved inland to the hills to avoid the Moor pirates and slavers. That is where the Castello or old town district of Cagliari is located.

Let’s move on to the photos of our tour.

Left: Our first photo stop was to view a church that I could never get identified. We did not go inside. I thought, oh no, this hastily organized tour is not going to be very in depth. I was wrong. The rest of the tour was excellent. Right: We view Cagliari from the heights of the hills outside the city.

Left: We passed these whimsical carvings in the rocks. Look closely. There are three creatures. Right: A less whimsical sculpture.

Most of our tour was in the Castello, the fortified old city.

The old palace and a newer apartment.

Our guide stated that the Castello is no longer a desirable place to live. She said it was too dark, that there was too much bureaucracy to get the approvals for upgrades and renovation, and there were ownership issues that are taking decades to resolve. As an example of the approval process, she said it took eight years to get her garage roof replaced.

Left: The province’s government headquarters. Right: The old town hall.

Left: The bishop’s residence, conveniently located between the political headquarters and the cathedral. Right: The Cagliari cathedral or Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta e Santa Cecilia.

The baroque interior of the cathedral.

Some of the dwellings in the Castello are in good shape and others not. 

Looking down into the lower town.

Left: Elephants in Sardinia? Probably not. Center: Many of the old town streets are still of cobblestone. Right: The Sardinian flag. Corsica has only one severed head of a Moor on its flag. The Sardinian flag has four. The natives really, really, really did hate and fear the Moors.

We walked down to the lower town, as busy as any modern Italian city. After some free time there, the buses return us to our ship.

As much as we regret missing a visit to Algiers, we quite enjoyed Cagliari. Tourism has come late to this island. Sardinia is experiencing a severe population decrease, caused by a low birth rate, emigration of young adults, and a lack of immigration. (This is one of the few Western European locales without much immigration from Africa and Muslim countries.) With the growth of tourism here, maybe that’s its future.

Another Day at Sea

We had another evening in the specialty restaurant of Manfredi’s. It was a great meal and even the house wine served was quite good. Overall, we’ve been very pleased with the food offerings on board this ship.

I don’t really understand the decisions the ship’s captain has made regarding our itinerary changes. The weather charts indeed show erratic conditions but seem out of synch with our at sea and port times. After a beautiful day in Cagliari, this day is at sea. The conditions are rough, although not nearly as bad (thus far) as the day we bypassed Marseilles. (The wind induced white caps are quite beautiful.) The distances between Sardinia to Mallorca then to Cadiz are about the same as between Sardinia to Algiers to Cadiz. Mallorca and Algiers are not far apart. Perhaps it was just too difficult to set up visas and tours a different day than originally planned when trying to visit Algeria.

Nevertheless, it’s off to Mallorca! And despite my gripes, we are quite enjoying this cruise.

Tunisia

I had a bout of insomnia the night before last, so my post on Ostia was a wee bit long. OK, way too long. I’ll do better with this post on our port stop in Tunis, Tunisia. I title this post Tunisia rather than its capital city of Tunis as we opted for an excursion that was on the outskirts of the town. I made a last minute change from a highlights tour of Tunis to a visit to the ruins of Carthage and to a Moorish village, Sidi Bou Said. The change also meant a change from a morning tour to an afternoon one. This was a mixed blessing. Well, more a mixed blasting—of cold, wind and rain.

There were to be two parts to our excursion. The first was a visit to several archeological sites from the Carthaginian and Roman eras. (Interesting that our Muslim guide used B.C. and A.D. and “before Christ” and “after Christ”, but not BCE and CE when quoting dates.)

First, a history reminder, at least for myself. While the Berbers were the first peoples of Tunisia (and are still here, if inland), our history lesson starts with the colonization of this area by the Phoenicians in 814 B.C. These became the Carthaginians, a major Western Mediterranean power—until the Punic Wars with the Romans, who destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C. Roman Carthage itself fell to the Vandals nearly six hundred years later but was reconquered by the Byzantine Romans a hundred years after that. The Arabs came and conquered Carthage in 697-698 A.D. The Arabs did their best to destroy anything Roman. The Ottomans took Tunisia in 1574 and the French made it a colony in 1881. Tunisia gained independence in 1956. I’ll leave out the parts about Barbary pirates and the like. Did you follow all this?

All this is to say that, unlike in Europe where Rome’s historical presence is well highlighted, only recently have the North African countries attempted any serious excavation and advertising of their pre-Arab history. And there are only traces of the once important Carthaginian empire. (Having said this, Tunisia is well ahead of civil war ridden Libya and autocratic Algeria in researching and beginning to preserve what’s left of its ancient past.)

Our first stop was to visit the ruins of a Roman amphitheater that once held 42,000 spectators. Only the foundation remains, all the marble and higher story bricks being reused elsewhere.

This lagoon was once the man-made harbor for the Punic Carthaginians. Bottom left: Hannibal has not been forgotten. Bottom right: Villas now line the one-time harbor.

Our most impressive visit was to the Antoninian Baths Park. Left: Under this Roman road is the final leg of an aqueduct that started 80 miles to the south, one of Rome’s longest, leading to the baths. Right: An access cover to the aqueduct.

Left: These small boxes once contained the bodies of Phoenician babies, recovered from the necropolis (right). The Punic necropolis is at the lowest level of the site. Above it is the Roman level, and above it the Byzantine level. Archeologists face the difficult decision as to how deep to excavate, hence destroying artifacts in the levels above. Recent rains have collapsed one section of this dig, halting work.

Fake news is not new. Roman propaganda claimed that the Punics sacrificed infants to their primitive gods. This was most likely not true. The small crypts merely contained the corpses of infants who died near birth, a sad but frequent occurrence for most of human history.

Remains of the once massive Antoninian Baths. Much of this was covered over the centuries by sands deposited from flooding from the nearby sea.

It was while approaching the ruins of the baths that the skies unloaded on us. The tour was brought to a wet and hasty end. Despite this, we loaded on our bus and headed to the Moorish village of Sidi Bou Said. This was to be a visit to an attractive community distinguished by its blue and white architecture. But the weather did not relent. The rain was accompanied by a surprisingly cold wind. The group cut the tour a bit short and we headed back to the ship.

I braved a few shots in the village, including the local mosque, from which the call to prayer emanated even during the downpour.

Our guide called these jalousie windows, from which female house residents could look out on the street while remaining unobserved. In my youth, our porch had what was called jalousie windows (with glass slats in our case). If the name sounds like ‘jealousy’, well, that is the origin of the word.

I finish with a picture of the relatively new Carthage mosque and the former St. Louis Cathedral, ceded to the Tunisian state in 1964 and now under renovation as a museum. There are few Christians in the country—except as tourists, of course.


I was going to mention in one of the posts that, after leaving Barcelona, the Viking Vesta has been the only cruise ship we’ve seen. I’m figuring out why. After missing Marseilles due to bad sea conditions, our weather has improved—until today. Unfortunately, the captain has announced we would not be sailing to either Algiers or Casablanca. Missing Algiers is for me a major disappointment. Visiting Algeria is not common. Sardinia and Mallorca are being looked at as alternatives. We’ll let you know the next post. 

Two Days in Malta

We’ve finally made it to Malta, a Mediterranean island republic (actually three inhabited islands) 50 miles south of Sicily and 190 miles from Africa. It’s the 10th smallest country in the world (and one of the most densely populated), but in terms of its history, its central location in the Mediterranean Sea has put it at a bayonet’s point of much military history since the the Punic Wars. Two heroic defenses stand out, but I’ll get to these later.

The night before our arrival at the Port of Valletta, Malta’s capital, we enjoyed our first meal in “The Chef’s Table”, one of the two by-reservation restaurants on board. It has a fixed menu, this time five courses of Asian fusion cuisine. We were quite pleased with it. We have one more reservation here before the end of the cruise. Overall, we’ve been pleased with the food on the Vesta, even a bit more than we enjoyed on the Yi Dun along the China coast. Ask me again in a week. We’ll see if the fruit stays fresh.

Malta is an oddity in its culture and language. The original root of the people is Phoenician-Carthagenian. With the defeat of Carthage in the Punic Wars, Malta was part of the Roman Empire (including the Byzantine Empire) until the islands fell to the Arabs in 870 A.D. Most Christians are aware that St. Paul was shipwrecked on the island on his way to Rome and, thanks to miracles attributed to him, a great number of the islanders became and remained Christians through the present. The island has 365 Catholic Churches or, as both our guides declared, a church for every day of the year. The Arabs controlled Malta for 220 years, before being defeated by the Normans. Yes, the same Normans that conquered Britain. The Norsemen got around. 

Malta became a tradable pawn in European politics until awarded to the Knights of St. John/Knights Hospitaller/Knights of Malta. (There is a much longer formal name). Once an order of medical doctors established to assist pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, the order was forced to militarize when access to Jerusalem was closed by the Muslims. The order relocated from the Holy Land to Rhodes after Acre fell. In 1527, Suleiman the Magnificant, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, assaulted the 7,000 knights on Rhodes with a force of over 100,000. It took six months to subdue the knights. Due to their heroic defense, Suleiman allowed them 12 days to abandon Rhodes. Big mistake. The order eventually relocated to Malta, where they fortified that island. In 1565, the Ottomans laid siege to Malta with 120 ships and 40,000 to 50,000 troops. The six or seven hundred knights, augmented by 7,000 or so other defenders including Maltese militia, held out long enough for the siege to be called off. The significance of this is that the Mediterranean did not become a singularly Ottoman-controlled sea, which undoubtedly would have changed the history of much of Europe.

What is curious to me is that while the Arabs controlled Malta for but 220 years, the language of Malta changed completely to an Arabic-based Semitic one (one of only three: Arabic, Hebrew and Maltese). Yet the island remained predominantly Catholic. This is just the opposite of, for instance, Albania, where the language remained Slavic while the religion became Muslim. Enough random thoughts. Back to our tours. 

Our stay in Malta was two days. I do wish more of the stops on cruises were multiple days. Two days is hardly an in-depth visit but it’s an improvement on the one-tour-and-done scenario typical of most land and sea tours. We signed up for one tour each day. There were a dozen tours offered by Viking. There was even a tour that featured a visit to 7,000 year old Neolithic/Megalithic excavations, including temples older than Stonehenge. I wish we could have participated in several more than we did, but we were happy with those we selected.

Day one was a tour featuring “Malta at War”.  It’s time to let my photos tell the story.

On our way to the old capital of Mdina we stopped at the beautiful (inside) Mosta Basilica. It has two claims to fame. Its dome has the widest diameter of any Catholic Church. Second, it is the site of a “miracle”. During WWII, a German bomb penetrated the dome during a church service, but failed to explode. No one was injured. (Several others bounced off the dome before exploding elsewhere.) 

Top: A 3/4 panorama of the interior. Bottom left: The dome. Bottom right: The floor.

Left: A picture of the puncture in the dome from the bomb. Right: Does this vehicle get celestial protection?

WWII tunnels and caves for air raid shelter under and near the basilica. Each resident was allocated two square feet of space. Large families could bring in a bed.

Monuments on the route to Valletta. The palm in the middle picture shows bomb damage from WWII, as did many of the other older palm trees.

The land side walls of Valletta.

The Lascaris War Rooms. If Malta had fallen to the Italians or Germans, the Mediterranean would have become a Nazi sea. From June 1940 to November 1942, the Axis powers attempted to bomb or starve Malta into submission, launching over 3,000 air raids. They came close to succeeding. Over 10,000 buildings were destroyed, mostly homes, and thousands were killed. The British, later joined by the Americans, kept a headquarters deep under the city of Valletta known as the Lascaris War Rooms. The services finally learned to work together. We were given a demonstration as to how, using radar and spotters, incoming raids were tracked and responded to.

The war rooms were used as the HQ (under Eisenhower) during Operation Husky, the allies’ invasion of Sicily in 1943.

Views from Fort St. Elmo (on the harbor side of Valletta) overlooking the harbor, the second largest in the Mediterranean. 

Scenes in Valletta

Left: A Maltese gondola. Note two men manning the same set of oars. Right: A bell damaged during WWII.

That evening, we watched a dance troupe from the Malta’s second largest island, Gozo. They finished in time to catch the last ferry (10:00 p.m.) back to Gozo. They were fun to watch but aren’t likely bound for Broadway.

Left: The evening show. Right: A major industry for Malta is rehabbing cruise ships. Tourism and gaming, though, are much bigger industries.

Our tour on our second day was to visit Malta’s two capitals: it’s old one, Mdina, and the new one, Valletta. It was relatively early Sunday morning, so the streets were quiet in Mdina except for the constant ringing of church bells. (Mdina is not a misprint. Its name is derived from the same Arabic origin as is Medina, meaning fortress city.)

Mdina and the nobleman’s entry gate.

Sights and close-up detail in Mdina. If you can spot the snake, you’ve identified St. Paul. Mdina is supposedly the “silent city” with no automobiles, but we encountered quite a few owned by local residents along the single Main Street.

Because of Sunday services we could not enter St. Paul’s Co-Cathedral (“co” with St. John’s in Valletta). One of its bells was really deep in tone.

I discretely (I hope) slipped into this church during a service.

Left: View from the Mdina wall. Right: The box on the home’s wall allows the occupants to look out unobserved. The small slit on the side is to view whoever is knocking on the entry door.

More sights in Mdina.

There remains a medieval section of the town (versus the dominant Baroque era construction). It’s at a lower level. The earlier Arab, Roman and Phoenician levels are layers buried below this.

Large, heavy knockers were a status symbol. Now, now, no pun intended.

I’ve lost track of the churches and buildings we passed.

Monuments as we again enter Valletta.

Left: The Main Street through Valletta. Right: The Maltese Parliament Building.

Sights in Valletta

Left: The president’s palace. Malta is a parliament republic, with the prime minister as the chief minister. The president is a nominal position. While Malta is in the EU, it is not in NATO. Like Ireland and Austria, Malta has non-alignment built into its constitution. The socialist PM Dom Mintoff expelled NATO in 1971.

Views from Valletta. A cannon fires every day at noon, except Sunday. The battery of cannons is to welcome friendly ships. A friendly ship would fire seven times. The city would respond with twenty-one.

In Valletta

St. John’s Co-Cathedral. We slipped in for a moment.

Left: We passed and briefly entered a Scottish rite church. The contrast with Malta’s Catholic Churches could not be more stark. Right: Buses were once color-coded by route so illiterate riders knew which bus to take.


Ostia Antica

As I mentioned in the finish to my last post, we opted for a tour of Ostia Antica, the first and for many centuries primary port for the city of ancient Rome and located on the Tiber River at its mouth. (Ostia means river mouth, for the trivia driven.) In fact, Ostia may have been Rome’s first “colona”, that is, their colony city built (as opposed to conquered) outside Rome. Ostia was prosperous for much of the time after its establishment, but, thanks to silting and flooding, always problematic as a port. Claudius and Trajan established a second port at Portus and Trajan later built what is now Rome’s primary port, Civitavecchia, soon after. Still, the city remained well populated until the end of the Western Roman Empire. The sea is over three miles away now and, thanks to a flood in 1557 that changed the course of the Tiber, Ostia is no longer on the river. The flooding had one benefit, at least to modern archeologists (and tourists), in that much of the city was buried and hence preserved .

Oh Where Has All the Marble Gone? The ruins of Ostia Antica are almost all of brick. Being a once prosperous Roman city, many of its structures, from temples to homes, had marble facades, columns, and the like. The marble was fine Carrara marble. During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Ostia became a de facto quarry for obtaining marble. One recipient: the leaning Tower of Pisa.

Our tour group was small, only fourteen people, which was quite nice. The consensus was that the tour guide was excellent but she was a very’a Italian’a accented’a guid’a who I struggled to understand. Nevertheless, it was an excellent tour overall. The day was sunny and warm, a beautiful day for a guided stroll through a fascinating site.

Between Frances and me is a stature of the goddess Minerva.

We started our tour by entering the “necropolis” end of the city, shown at the bottom of the layout.

There are many acres of buildings and grounds. Much has yet to be excavated.

Here we see typical brickwork, both in the walls and the floors. Inside structures, the walls would have been covered with decorated stucco or other covering.

Left: A casket in the necropolis. Right: I include this picture for my cat-loving friends (Brian, Curtis, et al.) Cats were brought in to control grain-eating rats. One story was that an entire boatload of cats from Africa was once imported for this purpose.

Left: Only a few statues survive although others may remain buried. Right: Buildings incorporated these corner stones to protect them from passing carts.

Ostia’s theater, outside and inside. Capacity was 4,000. Mussolini gave several speeches here to embellish his wannabe Caesar status. 

Left: A statue base with a history of Rome. Right: The arch in the wall is not decorative. (Remember that walls  were covered.) The Roman arch was not only for bridges, gateways and domes. In this case, the arch directs forces from the floors above to load bearing foundations. The arch was commonly used above doorways for the same purpose.

Left: Public toilets, women on the left and men on the right. Yes, there was once a wall in between. Right: A few dozen columns have been re-erected.

Many of the villas most certainly would have made the WSJ’s mansion section, with scores of rooms on multiple levels and a drained courtyard in the middle.

This is a restaurant with, on the right, a wine amphora and, on the left, one of two ovens.

Almost all the mosaics were covered for the winter. Several better-drained ones were viewable. Most of Ostia’s mosaics were black and white. On the left is the more common black on white. To one to the right is the reverse.

Left: A stone mason’s mark. Right: A mill stone for grain.

These are bus-window shots of two medieval fortresses we passed. The one on the left in Ostia and, on the right, at our port in Civitavecchia.

I’ll finish with pictures of these whimsical structures we passed as we left Ostia.










Corsica and Napoleon Bonaparte

What did I know about Corsica, beyond its heritage as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte? In truth, very little. I know a bit more now. Its history is a history of southern Europe. First colonized by the Greeks (glossing over the prehistoric peoples that undoubtedly proceeded them), over the last 2500 years Corsica has been occupied by, invaded by, raided by, and ruled by the Greeks, Etruscans, Carthaginians, the Greeks again (this time from Sicily), the Romans, the Vandals, the Goths, the Byzantines, the Lombards, the Moors, the Pisans, the Luccans, the Aragonites, the Genoese, and finally the French, ignoring the incursion of the Fascist Italians and then the Germans during WW2. Corsica even had a short-lived republic from 1755 to 1769, a year notable both as the year France took possession of the island and the year Napoleon was born. One result is that the Corsicans retain a certain antipathy to foreign domination. The sometimes violent independence movement is quiet now but not gone.

Corsica is now a major tourist destination and retirement destination. About 5,000 additional pensioners each year retire to Corsica from France, increasing its population to 355,000 from little more than half that only a few decades ago.

Still, it is its heritage as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte that makes Corsica famous and which the island embraces. The “Little Corsican” was the focus of much of our tour. (Actually, he was of average height for his time.) Our tour guide was a German-born Corsican who once despised Napoleon for his excesses but now has a more nuanced view.

Left: Corsica is a mountainous island with peaks over 6000 feet and numerous valleys. Many are snow-capped in the winter. Right: This monument to Napoleon Bonaparte is the largest of many in and near Ajaccio. Listed at the foot of the memorial are his military victories as well as several of his reforms, such as the Napoleonic Civil Code, still the basis of much of Europe’s and Latin America’s legal system (and Louisiana’s too).

We enjoyed just a touch of Corsica’s natural environment. We were at this stop long enough to enjoy but a short stroll along the several nature trails.

The Cathedral Santa Maria Assunta in Ajaccio is where Napoleon was baptized—the second time. Reputedly, as an at-risk sickly baby, he was first baptized in a private rite at home before his public baptism in the cathedral.

Left: The altar of the cathedral was dismantled and removed from a church in Lucca and sent to Ajaccio under the orders of Napoleon’s sister Elisa. Right: The cathedral’s baptismal font, used in Napoleon’s baptism.

An alley in Ajaccio and graffiti on a wall. IFF was/is a Corsican freedom fighting/terrorist organization and Yvan an IFF assassin who killed a local official and was himself killed by a fellow prisoner while in prison. Naturally, IFF conspiracy theorists blame the murder on the French.

Left: The Maison Bonaparte is Napoleon’s birthplace and now a museum. When the French conquered Corsica in 1769 (this took many bloody years to accomplish), the Bonapartes were fearful for their future. As part of the campaign to gain the loyalty of some of the more prominent Corsicans, seventy of these families were given French royalty status, including the Bonapartes. Right: Poor Napoleon II, “King of Rome”. The only legitimate son of Napoleon I and, at age 4, the unrecognized successor as emperor after his father’s abdication, he spent the rest of his short life under tight control in Vienna. He died of untreated pneumonia at age 21.

Left: Bonaparte in Roman senatorial garb. Right: A plaque showing France’s Legion of Honor, established by Napolean and awarded to 48,000 of his soldiers. It came with a pension, at least for those who survived his wars.

Left: A street in Ajaccio. Right: A memorial to Pascal Paoli, a Corsican statesman during Corsica’s brief period as a republic. (He was then exiled by the French.) He introduced elections of officials in which each eligible household had two votes in each election, implicitly including women in the vote.

Downtown scenes. (I’m running out of gas on this posting. 😊)

After our return to the ship, for dinner we dined in one of the specialty restaurants, in this case Manfredi’s, appropriately (for the moment) featuring Italian cuisine. Our course choices were excellent and the wine acceptable. Unless one purchases a “wine and beverage” package, “free” alcohol is limited to meals. The non-premium wine is mediocre, but we make do. The pours are not stingy.

Our next port? Civitavecchia, Rome’s port. As much as we would have enjoyed returning to Rome for the day (a ninety minute bus ride away), we chose instead to tour the ancient Roman port of Ostia.

An Unplanned Day at Sea

Goodbye to Barcelona and hello to Marseilles. Oops, not so fast. The ship is not going to make it to Marseilles, but more on that later in this post.

I left you all half way to our hotel late Sunday afternoon. Yes, it did rain, but with our umbrella and rain jackets, we did fine. Still, we were tired enough and satisfied enough that we did not seek out a restaurant for our last evening in town. A couple of tapa dishes and glasses of Spanish wine in the hotel bar were quite adequate for our needs. 

We got to the Viking Vesta via a taxi. This was partly to get a comparison of taxi vs uber rates in Barcelona, but mostly because it was raining fairly hard and a taxi was waiting to be hailed by the doorman just outside the hotel entrance. Good decision. As it turns out, the ride was about four euros more than the estimate provided by the uber app, but the drop-off location was not quite where expected (“B” vs “C” at the cruise terminal), a minor complication, perhaps, had we been in an uber. Bottom line? Go with uber in Barcelona unless 1) it’s raining and a taxi is right in front of you, or 2) you’re not sure where you’re going!

Viking Vesta

This is our second voyage on a Viking ocean-going ship, the first being our China coast cruise on the Yi Dun. The Vesta is slightly larger than the Yi Dun (998 vs 930 passengers) but the deck plan is quite similar. It’s also new, just six months since launch. We are in a smaller suite than we had on the Yi Dun and, while quite adequate, we miss the extra room, closet space (but with plenty of drawers), a second sink, and the like. I know, it’s a tough life we live. 😉

The Vesta, in Ajaccio

The ship feels crowded, at least in the restaurants and theater. Likely this is due to the fact we are at or near capacity, whereas on the Yi Dun, as best I recall, we were 2/3rds full.

Marseilles, We Hardly Knew Ya. 

Actually, we didn’t get to know you at all. Our first port of call was to be this city, but thanks to inclement weather we won’t get there. Ironically, the weather in Marseilles is expected to be fine. It’s getting there on time that is the problem. We’ll be finding out how the Vesta handles the expected high winds and heavy seas.  

Missing Marseilles is a disappointment, of course. We have been to France fairly often and to many regions of the country, but not this city.

Oh, what a night. If either of us slept at all, we didn’t know it. Our cabin is nearer the stern than forward, so we likely feel less of the rise and fall of the ship, but the shaking due to cavitation of the props occurs every fifteen to thirty seconds.  I tried to take a picture of the seas, but without a perspective to highlight the wave size, the effort produced no remarkable results.

All the elevators went offline during the heavy seas. The passengers are getting more exercise than anticipated.

I apologize for the random alternation between past and present tense. I’m a stream of consciousness note taker and editing is too much work.

So what did we do in lieu of visiting Marseilles? Very little, thank you. I finished my reading for the February meeting of the book club. We won’t be back in time for the meeting of the other book club I am a member of, so I’ll start on the March assignments. There are three talks scheduled today. We’ll see how many we attend.

Good port talk, the only talk we attended. We missed one as we napped to make up for our sleepless night, and the last for, oh, “no excuse, sir” is the only response (which my fellow West Point alums will understand). The port will be Ajaccio, Corsica, birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte and the capital of a semi-independent “collective” of France, and whose flag is the severed head of a Moor. 

We arrive at Ajaccio.

Barcelona

I lied.

Well, not really lied. I just prematurely predicted that my blog postings for the Mongolia-China-Tibet adventure would be my last. So here we are in Barcelona, spending a few days in this beautiful city before boarding a ship for a winter cruise of the western Mediterranean. It is my intention to reduce the size and frequency of my postings, but I can’t totally dismiss my masochistic urges to post at least a few pictures, accompanied by irrelevant and irreverent muses.

So why a winter cruise where the weather is colder (at least this year) and wetter than Texas? For one thing, there are way fewer tourists with which to compete. The second? This Viking cruise will include stops in several cities and localities that we have not yet visited, such as Corsica, Malta, Tunisia and Algeria. (I didn’t even know that Algiers was open to cruise ships.)

But we begin in Barcelona. We’ve visited here several times before. Our flights over, on British Air via Heathrow, were on time and smooth. The food served on both flights, in a word, was horrid. Two bites of the lamb (unchewable mutton?) en route over the Atlantic and one bite of the pasta on the Barcelona leg were sufficient to destroy our appetites. (Frances took one look at the pasta course and didn’t even try.) And the rolls would have made stale bagels easier chewing in comparison.

I start with a photo (left) of Frances, my sister Peggy, and my brother-in-law Curtis, taken during their visit with us over Christmas. The picture was taken in a delightfully lit and decorated downtown Georgetown. Right is the crème brûlée we shared at the restaurant Pepito in Barcelona our first evening in town. It was more decorative than functional as a dessert.

Fortunately, after our arrival at the hotel in Barcelona (via uber), we had a fine dinner at a nearby restaurant (Pepito) to make up for this. Or maybe we were just hungry. 

The hotel, the Majestic, is quite nice and we were upgraded according to the receptionist. We’ve no clue why, but for what we are paying, it was the least they could do. Our one complaint was that the mattress sagged on one side. It was quickly replaced.

In fact, after the fix to the mattress, I emailed the manager with a list of three more room issues that warranted attention, including a semi-functional WC sliding door, a dripping toilet (I couldn’t hear it, no surprise, but Frances certainly could), and a crooked yet immovable picture over the bed (in a room with striped  wallpaper to boot). All were fixed before our return on the day of our complaint. A bottle of champagne and a tin of chocolate-covered wafers were waiting for us. I might have preferred a comp on the bill or a decent Bordeaux, but we appreciated the thought.

So what are we doing with our several pre-cruise days in Barcelona? We signed up for two tours. The first was an afternoon tour of Park Güell, a large, engaging complex of walks, stairways, terraces and gardens designed by Antoni Gaudi in his usual whimsical style. The weather did not cooperate and we suffered intermittent rains, making the steps and walkways cautiously transitioned activities. Hence, we did not stick around after the tour to explore the park further. Maybe we’ll come back in 2033 (fat chance of that at our age) when the Basílica de la Sagrada Família is scheduled to be competed (fat chance of that also) to enjoy the park more.

Views of and in Park Güell. 

All our ground transport since starting this has been via uber. In Barcelona, the relations between uber and taxi drivers can be touchy, at least according to one of our drivers. Our trip back from the park, however, was in a cab that operates both as a taxi and an uber. For us, we like knowing what we are paying before entering a transport, not having to deal with settling up at the end of a ride, and knowing our route during our ride. 

Thanks to the rain, we again opted for a restaurant within a few blocks of our hotel. Silly us, we made a reservation for 7:00 p.m. at a tapa restaurant, Sense Seny. Why silly? Not unexpectedly, we were the first customers and the only ones for a good forty minutes. Many of you know that the Spanish like their suppers at 9 or 10 p.m. Our early arrival worked out well for us. We had delightful chats with the owner and the wait staff. I should add that the tapas were wonderful.

Montserrat Abbey

Our agenda for our second full day was more ambitious. We signed up for a tour of the Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey, to be followed by wine tastings and tapas at a regional winery. Montserrat Abbey is an hour’s distance by bus from Barcelona, in the mountains northwest of the city. If it was cold and wet in town, try visiting the mountains in winter. Fortunately, between our Patagonia jackets and rain shells, we survived. We also had an excellent guide, Carlos, whose English was perfect. No surprise here as he once lived in Missouri.

The views came and went with the layers of fog and clouds, but even when it rained, the precipitation was more drizzle than downpour. Still, an afternoon coffee was a welcome break. (We enjoyed this while several of the younger of our group hiked out to the “three crosses” overlook of the valley. In an earlier life, perhaps.)

Views while visiting Montserrat Abbey.

We waited a half hour before entering the basilica while Sunday services were in progress. TV screens and speakers outside the chapel allowed us to hear the boys’ choir and music of the service.

Top left: Picasso’s contribution to the abbey. Top right: The basilica entrance. Middle left: The interior. Middle right: The “Black Madonna”, by myth, 1300 years old; by testing 800. Darker than apparent from this photo, its color is due to centuries of candle smoke and layers of dark varnish and paint.  Lower left: The stained glass over the entrance is quite spectacular, but partially hidden by the balcony rail and chandelier. Lower right: Montserrat means serrated mountains, an apt name as demonstrated by this view of some of the peaks.

Our tour of the abbey complex complete, we headed to a winery, Oller del Mas, for the promised wine tasting and tapas. The winery is located in what was once a small fortress. This area was at one time the boundary region between Moorish and Christian Spain. The winery’s product is limited and distributed only locally. The white was quite good as was the fully-bodied red we tasted. More unusual was the sampling of a lighter red produced in a medieval style, which these vintners called super bloom. All the wines worked well with the offered tapas. We were sufficiently sated that even after our return to Barcelona, we kept our evening meal light. (Well, at least Frances did.)

The fortress/winery. The barrels look quite new but (right hand photo) the vintners are experimenting with methods developed from as far back as Roman times. It was the Romans who first brought wine making to the area.

When we arrived back in Barcelona, it wasn’t raining, so we decided to walk the mile and a half back to the hotel.

We made it half way back before the rains fell.


Beijing - Day 4: The Great Wall of China -- and Home

Our last full day in China! And what a better finale than a visit to the Great Wall of China. There is 10,000 miles of it and the section we visited was called Badaling. (About 5,500 miles of the wall is still well preserved.) The wall was started in the 7th century and variously expanded and maintained until the end of the the Ming Dynasty.

A funicular carried us to a place in the wall between two peaks. We walked up to the peaks in each direction, but went no farther as the inclines down (and up to the next peaks) would all have to be retraced. We're not masochists.

We're on the Wall.

A close and a long view of the wall, which stretched not only in both directions but meandered from mountain top to mountain top as far is the eye could see.

Note the slope of the walkway. The steeper slopes were both with and without steps.

Our travel group for the entire trip since departing the Yi Dun. There were several such groups, with different guides and often staying in different hotels. I believe our group lucked into the best possible hotel accommodations, perhaps because we had a veteran guide. The guide's job is not easy. Besides all the detailed planning and execution required, some travel group members are, shall we say, needier than others. Accommodations for some, particularly for those frequently needing wheelchairs, were a constant requirement. Our guide Richard (in the red jacket) handled it all expertly, although he admits that for two days after the end of these tours, he doesn't even try to speak with his wife while he decompresses. He earned his tips, for which I hope our contribution was satisfactory.

After a final Chinese lunch we had one more adventure before returning to the hotel that last night. We stopped at the Sacred Way of Ming Tombs, where thirteen of the sixteen Ming dynasty emperors are  buried. (Only one of the last fourteen is not buried here. Why that one? Our guide related to us that the politics of these dynasties makes "Game of Thrones" look tame in contrast.) Mostly, we strolled down a tree-lined avenue guarded by elephants, lions, camels and mythical beasts and admired the marble gateway known the the Great Red Gate, more than 400 years old. It was a tranquil end to the day's excursion and an end to our China adventure.

Left: We visited a jade production and sales shop. To the left the artisan is producing jade balls within balls. For better or for worse, many of our lunches were in establishments that were shops and an associated restaurant. Quite a few of our group purchased products and I, as always, was tempted. To the right, our last group lunch. We got to try a schnapps-like liqueur that I quite liked. I went for a second round, despite warnings about its potency.

A monument to the Ming emperors, enhanced, oddly, during the following Qing (Manchu) dynasty. The Qing dynasty sought legitimacy (being Manchurians rather than Han Chinese) by respecting its predecessor dynasty. The Qing dynasty did not overthrow its predecessor. Rather, the Ming dynasty ended with the Peasants' Revolt and the Manchu took advantage of the power vacuum by invading and taking control.

Elephants, lions, camels, mythical beasts and imperial advisors line the avenue. The picture on the left includes my own imperial advisor.

The tree-lined avenue and the 400 year old stone-arched Great Red Gate.

The next day we had a late afternoon flight back to the U.S. (SFO), so we wasted our last morning in our hotel room doing as little as we could. We succeeded. For our late breakfast I ordered my last Asian meal in Asia.

Getting out of China was as tough as getting in, with the usual lines for a tight security screening and immigration check (weren’t we emigrating?) and a packed airport tram in between. The United lounge is the Air China lounge, at the wrong end of the terminal, so that journey was our exercise for the day. Our flights were on time, early even, but we did not get home until 1:30 a.m. in the morning. We paid extra for Uber Comfort transportation and were picked up within four minutes of our request. Nevertheless, we are home, safe, tired, happy and once again going through the dreaded time zone readjustment that will disrupt our normal sleep patterns for a week.

Lessons learned: VPN, at least NordVPN, did not work at all in China and thus was a waste of money. I've cancelled our service. Plus, one gets inundated with upgrade options. On the other hand, cellular worked fine and, once I got hotspot set up, we had all the connectivity for both the iPhone and both our iPads that we needed, without restrictions. Hotel WiFi in China isn't worth connecting to as we could not get to anything useful on the internet. The exception was on the cruise ship. The connections in that case varied from fair near ports to nearly non-existent on the high seas.

I set up Alipay to use for purchases in China. It was easy to do, but I only used it once. Others in our group used it more often.

We've mixed feelings about Viking. The extensions, Mongolia at the front and China inland after the cruise, were excellent experiences. The tour directors for both extensions were outstanding. The cruise itself was also well done, although the all-Chinese crew put a different spin on the experience than one would get with the more typical international crew. Viking has more add-on costs than most higher-end cruise lines, which is an aggravation, but we went in knowing this was the case. (Viking is somewhat less expensive to book than cruise lines such as Regent, but the cost evens out when Viking extras and crew tips are included.) Our biggest complaint was the mediocre "included tours" as opposed to the extra-cost tours. Those extra-cost tours were generally excellent. Viking Air, for its part, needs to start talking with the rest of Viking. Still, we like Viking well enough to keep our reservation for a coming cruise.

We undertook this adventure with only carry-on luggage and modest backpacks. Nevertheless, we ended up checking our carry-ons for most of our flights, which more or less negated the advantages of limiting ourselves to such minimal luggage. Our suitcases were pretty stuffed, which had the advantage/disadvantage of leaving no room for purchases. Frances, in particular, is no longer an aggressive shopper. I am much more vulnerable to shiny baubles, especially expensive ones. There was this beautiful figurine I was eyeing, but the shopkeepers would not ship the purchase and it was too fragile to hand-carry for the rest of the trip and home..

While China is an authoritarian state, this did not manifest itself in our daily tours. Yes, security at airports and at most tourist sites was strict, particularly in Tibet. (You would not believe how many times we had to show our passports at attractions, particularly in Tibet and Beijing.) In all cases for us, the Chinese were friendly and welcoming, if they had any reaction at all to our presence. After all, we were just a small part of China's huge and growing tourist industry. China, at least the parts we saw, is a modern, fast-moving juggernaut of technology and and progress. Yet Frances would probably point out that the vast majority of women's toilets were still "squats", which she and the other women travelers in our group weren't ready to embrace. The saving grace was their use of the handicapped facilities, which had western toilets. The "bottom line" is that China is safe and inviting to visit, independent of national and international politics.

One slight negative was getting used to the "pushiness" of crowds, done without apology when contact is made. It's the Chinese way. I learned to cope, "when in Rome...", while Frances struggled with this throughout the trip.

It still awes me to see what has been achieved in just the last few decades in China. It makes one feel we, i.e. the U.S. as a nation, are worn out and dysfunctional. I pray that I am wrong, but when we landed at SFO, bypassed the non-functioning moving sidewalk, stepped on a sticky floor in the men's room, and shook our hands dry since the towel dispenser was empty, the contrast is startling. So my advice is: Don't worry about the complex visa requirements for China or of any danger while traveling in China. With one of the oldest civilizations in human history and with a population of over 17% of the world's total, we feel blessed that we finally added China, as well as Tibet and Mongolia, to our long list of experiences we have enjoyed in our travels.

Which brings us to my final comments. I started blogging our travel experiences in 2015 when Frances and I spent nearly six months exploring Europe. That was an adventure! A few of you have been readers of my blog since that beginning. It's come to the point where the effort of creating and posting our experiences is beginning to exceed the reward. That, plus the fact that we are transitioning from independent travel adventures, expedition cruises (think zodiacs), and often taxing land tours to more leisurely cruises and slower paced land excursions makes for potentially less interesting blog postings. Plus, I'm starting to feel my years at 79. (My 80+ year old friends, please quit snorting.) Hence, I'll be phasing out of the blogging business. How quickly and completely remains to be seen.

That doesn't mean we've quit traveling! In January, we again venture to the Mediterranean, this time to enjoy some new destinations to us, such as Malta, Tunisia and Algeria. In May, we stay in the U.S. with a cruise of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. The following year will include a cruise from Istanbul to Dubai (our third try at this), and we've rescheduled an oft-delayed trip to Japan. To quote Clint Eastwood: "Don't let the old man in!" Thanks for following us!

Beijing - Day 3: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

I had no idea the Forbidden City was so huge. I expected that of Tiananmen Square, billed as the largest public square in the world, but the Forbidden City was a surprise.

When visiting Beijing and vicinity, the two most iconic sights are Tiananmen Square-Forbidden City and the Great Wall. OK, there are 13,000 miles of Great Wall, but the best preserved and easiest to visit are sections close to Beijing--but that is tomorrow's story.

At 100 acres, Tiananmen Square can accommodate a million people. Once the "front door" to the Forbidden Palace, it is now surrounded by the Great Hall of the People, Mao Zedong's mausoleum, and other buildings and monuments (and a great bed of flowers).

We're in Tiananmen Square, facing north toward the Forbidden City. The crowds, we were told, were relatively modest that morning. Right: The Monument to the Revolutionary Struggle.

Left: The Zhengyangmen Gate Tower, on the south side of the square. This once was part of the city wall. Right: Somehow the "Old Bank Building" survives with some new purpose on the southwest corner of the square.

Left: The Great Hall of the People, on the west side of the square. Right: The Monument to the People's Heroes, a 124 foot tall obelisk, and the National Museum of China.

The Mao Zedong Memorial Hall. Right: The square sported an impressive and immaculately maintained bed of flowers.

There were many children visiting the square. The young lady on the right eagerly took our picture.

More sights in the square. We were cautioned to take only quick, distant photos of soldiers. All that we saw were trim, immaculately dressed and serious.

The Gate of Heavenly Peace with a smiling Mao on the north end of the square. This gate is actually only a first entry point leading to the true southern entry to the Forbidden City, the Meridian Gate.

We entered the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City, now called the Palace Museum. Within it are 980 buildings and 9,999 rooms. (Some sources claim there are "only" 8886 rooms. I stopped counting at about 10.) It’s all protected by a moat and a 32-foot wall. From the southern entrance, featuring a grand portrait of Mao, we exited an hour later through the Gate of Divine Might, exhausted, and two-thirds of a mile north of our starting point.

It was during the Ming dynasty that the capital of China moved from Nanking to Beijing in 1406. (Beijing had been the capital earlier under the Mongols, then called Dadu.) The Forbidden city was constructed between 1406 and 1420, using one million workers. It remained the home and governing center of both the Ming and Qing dynasties until the abdication of the last emperor, Pu Yi, in 1912. Pu Yi remained in residential quarters in the Forbidden City until evicted in 1924.

While many of the treasures of the Forbidden City were removed and relocated to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-shek's forces, the palace remained remarkedly undamaged during the various wars and revolutions of the 20th century. Even during the destructive Cultural Revolution, a battalion of troops were sent to the city by Chou Enlai to protect it.

We entered through a tunnel leading to the south entrance. Left: Rubbing the door knobs surely brings the good luck promised. Right: I caught the soldieers in a moment of non-cordinated motion. Even from a distance, I'm not sure the one guard was pleased with my picture taking.

Right: Outside the Meridian Gate. Right: The gate is actually a complex. Left: We approach the inner gate.

All the halls and palaces and temples had names such as the Hall of Complete Harmony, the Hall of Preserving Harmony, the Palace of Heavenly Purity and the Palace of Earthly Tranquility. I would fail any attempt to match pictures with the proper names.

I finally got a picture of a couple where both are in costumes. I'm talking about the couple on the right.

Turtle and cistern

Right: The Dragon pavement, a carved, solid marble slab of 250 tons leading to the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The slab was moved from its origin to this location in the winter on a road paved with ice.

A few more pictures of temples:

We exited the Forbidden City at its northern end.

Left: The moat that surrounds the Forbidden City. Right: Perched on a hill overlooking the City is the pavilion of Everlasting Spring. It would have been a good panoramic view of the Forbidden City from that location but, alas, there was no time for that.

The day ended with another meal in the hotel restaurant, where we used out last coupon. We had the best hot and sour soup we have had in our lives. No exaggeration. Another of our travel companions said the same thing independently. 

Only one full day left, but what a day we expect it to be, a visit to the Great Wall of China..

Beijing - Day 2: The Temple of Heaven

Our schedule for our second day in Beijing was remarkedly light, with an unrushed wakeup and excursion not far from the hotel and ciy center. The objective: The Temple of Heaven . Built in the 15th Century during the Ming dynasty as a Taoist complex, the central temple has a distinctive circular design.

The Temple of Heaven is the largest of four related temples in Beijing, along with the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Moon, and the Temple of Earth, which we did not visit. These are collectively known as the Four Great Temples of Beijing, which honored celestial bodies in ancient China. The Temple of Heaven was where the emperor would pray for a good harvest. This continued with the following (and final) dynasty, the Qing. Here endeth your lesson.

Entry into the temple complex

These two temple buildings, now a museum, surround the central temple. Inside the museum is both a history of the temple and a history of its restoration efforts.

Left: Photographs of before and after the early 20th century restoration. Right: A model of the temple's structure.

Pictures of three emperors: one MIng and two Qing. I think.

A more distant view of the temple and a closer one.

View of the inside of the temple. We were not allowed to enter this day.

Left: The altar inside the temple. Right: A view of one of the entry gates.

As always, I've included pictures of the costumes worn by other visitors.

After our visit, we all had a late lunch, in the now familiar format of courses served family style on a lazy susan. And, as always, despite how good the food was, the quantity was too much for us to consume. No one ever goes away hungry. Beer was offered (no additional cost) at these lunches. While Frances and I are not regular beer drinkers, the brews were quite light, so were excellent at helping us wash down these meals. Right: Yet another view of the skyscrapers near our hotel. Omitted from my blog are the many classical and otherwise attractive buildings in Beijing that we passed.

For our evening meal, we had not signed up for the optional cost Peking duck experience (we had Peking duck several times already this trip), so used one of our coupons in the hotel's restaurant. For the first time on the land portion of this trip, we went western, each ordering a hamburger meal. Well, almost western. The meat was Wagyu beef and it was (with the accompanying sides) too much to eat for Frances. I had no such problem.

There remained two major excursion for our stay in Beijing. The first of these, Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City, awaits us for the next day.