Katakalon, Greece

Emergency alarm blast

One blast from the emergency alarm.

I jump up from the bed, saying to Jerry, “This is not a drill.”

Maybe the alarm is an accident.

No. There is another blast. I turn on the light.

The light works. How many blasts was that?  I think we are supposed to count.  Six short blasts, one long one means go to the muster station. Oh, God.

I walk to the window and look out. It is still dark night and there is nothing to see, Good sign. I look at my watch and see that it is 6:20 am.

Jerry heads to the bathroom. I walk to the cabin door.  I listen and hear nothing.

Remember your CERT (Community Emergency Response Training.) Don’t burn your hand on a hot door because you might need to use your hand.

I brush the back of my left-hand hand across the door and then the door handle. Cool to the touch. I open the door a crack. No smoke. I step forward a little and see normal light in the corridor and nothing else.

How many blasts was that? I don’t think the last one was long. It must be a fire and not muster stations.

“Jerry, where are the things?” I wave my hands up and down over my torso unable to remember the words life vest.

Jerry says, “The life jackets are under the bed. We have to get dressed.”

I go into the closet and get underwear, socks, and my athletic shoes. I put on my wedding band and watch.

Dress warmly. If we end up in lifeboats, it could get cold and we are halfway across the Atlantic so we could be in the lifeboats for days. Why doesn’t the Captain say something? How bad is this? What am I going to put on?

Then the familiar voice from the bridge comes on. “We had a strong indication that there was a fire in a section of the ship.” He explains that the procedure is to sound the alarm. However, it has turned out to be a false alarm and we should all go back to sleep.

Relief. Joy. No fire. No lifeboats.

Jerry does manage to go back to sleep, but after an hour, I give up and turn on the computer. I am very happy that I am sitting here in the darkness, listening to Jerry’s even breathing, and wishing my son a very happy birthday.

Funchal, Madeira

Another port in which we expected nothing and were pleasantly surprised.  Funchal is on the island of Madeira, a small island in the Atlantic off of Portugal. The city is renowned for its flowers, which were not only in bloom everywhere, but there was also a competitive event underway. In the island in the center of the main street, people were laying “carpets” of flowers on a background of cedar branches with a judging taking place the day after we left.  The aroma of the flowers and the cedar makes the display doubly appealing.

There is some road construction between the dock and the center of Funchal, so there was a shuttle provided. While technically it would be an easy walk, the road construction had turned it into an unappealing trail. We were pleased to take the shuttle that dropped us off a block from the flower carpets and the Hop On/Hop Off bus. We often use the HO/HOs because they are an easy way to cover a large part of a city in a day at a reasonable price and see the important things for tourists to see.

We chose the Yellow Bus, although we usually choose the Red City-sightseeing line. The Yellow Bus has two routes, one around the city and another that travels a bit out of town as far as Camara De Lobos. You may have heard of that town because Winston Churchill spent time there and painted the charming houses built into the hillside.  We rode the shorter in-town route in the morning, returned to the ship for lunch, and went back on the shuttle again to ride the 90-minute out of town route. There really was not time enough for us to do hopping, so we just rode both routes round trip, enjoying the sunshine on the open top deck and the ride.

Not only flowers are growing everywhere, there are also banana trees in big farms and in little yards. There are many hotels and restaurants because Madeira is such a popular vacation destination.  It is clearly a prosperous place and one that looks like a place to visit more than once. Even if I return, I will not be taking the famous basket ride down the mountain or the gondola ride up and down. The bus ride was adventure enough for me.

Piraeus for Athens

We have lost track of how many times we have been to Athens but it is enough so that we no longer feel a need to visit ruins. It is enough to see them in the distance while we are enjoying the city. So without the pressure of sight seeing, we left the ship late in the morning and headed for the Piraeus Train Station. We can never remember exactly where the station is, but we know the general direction. We walked along the harbor past ferry terminals until the neighborhood began to look like an area where the train station would be. And then we asked a few people which way. It took about 30 minutes to reach the station and buy tickets. (And for those of you who know the story, we did it without screaming at each other in the middle of the street.)

In 17 minutes the train took us to Monastriaki  Square, which looked familiar right down to the fresh strawberries for sale at the first cart outside the Station’s entrance. We walked to the right toward the Acropolis and turned at the first street that took us past Hadrian’s Library and the Tower of the Winds. We strolled among the shops and restaurants in the Plaka for a while, sitting on a stone wall to watch a crew filming a scene on a side street. We ended up by the entrance to the new museum.

Our main purpose in visiting Athens was to return to Scholarhio Restaurant at 14 Tripidon Street for lunch in the Plaka and we easily found it. Lunch was even better this time even though it was too cold to sit on the outside balcony. We sat inside and chose six out of the 12 dishes on the vegetarian tray and enjoyed a wonderful feast.

Bodrum

Sometimes the best ports are those for which we have low expectations. Never having heard of Bodrum before seeing the name on the itinerary for this voyage, I expected very little. What we had was another wonderful day.

Expecting nothing, we took our time, had a leisurely breakfast, and slowly made our way ashore. Thom, the Cruise Director, had announced that there was a complimentary shuttle boat to the Castle of Saint Peter, an ancient fortress overlooking the harbor and we headed to the embarkation area. The ferry was just the right size for a 15-minute ride across the harbor from Prinsendam’s dock to the Castle dock. The sun was bright and temperatures were in the low 70s with a light breeze. We rode on the open deck on the upper level of the ferry.

At the Castle, we had intended to be diligent tourists and walk through the structure, admiring the history and archeology of the site. At the entrance, however, we found out that only Turkish Lira were accepted for the admission fee of around US$14. (Had we been properly motivated, we could have walked to the money changer and received the exact amount of money to pay in Turkish Lira.) So we were off the hook for the diligent tourist thing. Instead, we admired the scarves, jewelry and trinkets being sold along the dock beside the Castle. There was one tent filled with about eight women making thin bread, filling it with seasoned potatoes and cooking it on skillets heated by bottled gas.

At the end of the dock, the city center began. The city center shopping area is clean, safe, with wide sidewalks lined with shops selling more jewelry, leather goods, artwork – a variety of merchandise, as well as cafes and restaurants. The menus sounded appealing and the cooking food smelled really good. We looked at leather vests and jackets, rings, necklaces and had fun not buying anything.

We could have had lunch in Bodrum, but it is so much easier for me to eat on the ship that we walked back along the beaches and ate in the Lido. After a quick lunch, we were back in the City Center at a café with wi-fi, so Jerry had a cup of Turkish tea to get the password for the wi-fi. With the seven hour time difference, we had to wait until close to time to be back on board before we could start using Skype to call our kids. This time we were able to talk to the two we missed the last time and two others and my three grandsons. Talking to our family makes us very happy.

Now the ship is under way with an early arrival tomorrow in Kusadasi and Ephesus.

Alexandria

Egypt! What a great time to be here!  We are only the second ship to stop here in three months. Prinsendam docked in a cargo port beside a very new passenger terminal. There was a complimentary shuttle provided to take people not on tours into the center of the city. Since we have been to Egypt before and seen Cairo and the pyramids, we decided to take a ship’s tour of Alexandria in the morning and do whatever presented itself in the afternoon. In addition to having already been here, I was a bit anxious about the wisdom of our being here this time, wondering if the situation was stable enough so a ship’s tour seemed like a good idea.

Our tour took us to the main sights and sites in Alexandria, but the highlight of the tour was the spectacular library. This new one was built a few hundred yards from the first Alexandrian library, which was burned in antiquity, can’t look it up now. The new building is massive with space enough for 8 million books. Not to say that the library is not digital. Check out the website – just Google it.

Alexandria is a city of great diversity with 7 million people from many countries and religions living in harmony. It is relatively clean for an Egyptian city with very little trash on the ground. It is crowded though with an insane way of driving. There is one traffic light in the city and it didn’t seem to be working when we rode past. Pedestrians, buses, taxis, cars, trucks, horse drawn wagons, scooters, all seem to be in motion and somehow they work out right of way and the traffic moves. There is also a lot of horn honking and occasional yelling out the vehicle window.

The other site we liked seeing were the Roman Theater and baths. The theater was built by the same man who built Hadrian’s Wall separating Scotland from England. The tour guide said that there are so many layers of past cultures that every time there is digging for a construction project another new ruin is discovered.  

After the tour and lunch back on board, we shopped at the vendors just outside of the pier area. We bought postcards and papyrus paintings. With many hours still here in the port we decided about 4:30 pm to see if we could ride the complimentary shuttle into the center and town and then return to the ship. At first it appeared that we were too late, but we spoke to the person in charge of the shuttle and he said we could ride to the city center and back. We boarded a large tourist bus, the driver boarded, and a security guard with an enormous weapon in a holster on his hip joined us. We sat in the front seat with the best view and the four of us set out back into the city in our big bus. The streets were even busier because late in the afternoon the temperatures begin to drop and people are out and about at the markets, shopping and living their lives. (Last week the temperatures were well over 100 but today the high was about 70. Perfect weather for tourists.)

When the bus driver discovered that he could make Jerry laugh by using the bus’ horn, he made a point of doing it even more often, with all of us lacking a common language but having a great time. We reached a square where we stopped and a young man carrying small rugs ran over to the bus to try to sell his goods. Jerry decided he wanted one of them, so he negotiated a price and we ended up with two little rugs. Good thing we don’t have to fly home at the end of the cruise.

The people were so happy to have us here! A group of girls in uniforms of a private high school surrounded Jerry and me at the Alexandrian Library, bubbling with exuberance and ready to practice their English. Where are you from? What is your name? Have you been to Egypt before? Can you speak Arabic? What languages can you speak?

People on the streets stopped to wave and smile as we rode by in the bus. That did not happen on our bus when we were here in 2009.

I watched our tour guide put a few coins into a man’s hand and noticing that I observed her, she said, “They haven’t worked in three months so I do what I can.” With tourism their main industry and that eliminated, the people here have been struggling. I hope that our visit has also done a little bit to help them. The people we spoke with were guarded in what they said about the political situation, but the tour guide asked us all to keep the people of Egypt in our prayers.

Ravenna Italy

The ship docked about half an hour from the center of town but there was a complimentary shuttle provided from the ship into town. I took the shuttle after a leisurely morning letting everyone in a hurry get off the ship and into town.

The best thing to do in Ravenna was apparently being on the 7:30 am ship’s tour to San Marino to get passports stamped. That is what the passengers who are “collecting countries” opted to do. We are counting the countries we have been to but are not so into it that we would get up around 6 am to make the trip.

The shuttle dropped us off a couple of blocks from the train station in one direction and all of the main sites within walking distance in the other direction. I managed to find Dante’s tomb, the Duomo, Basilica, and most importantly a tourist information center. I looked everywhere as I walked for “WC” and found none. At the tourist info center there were much better maps and I was able to locate the nearest “WC.” In Venice all of the public toilets cost 1.5 Euros but in Ravenna, it cost only .25 Euro – a real bargain. Right now a US dollar is equal to .69 Euros at the bank exchange rate so we can ballpark the exchange by adding a third to the prices.

In each new port, it is always difficult to figure out the basics such as where there are public toilets and how much they cost, how the public transportation works, and how to mail postcards. I found the Poste Italia at Piazza Garibaldi without any trouble but then I couldn’t figure out how the lines worked. It seemed to never be my turn, so I asked and was told to go to the ticket machine, press “P” and get a number. Then it was quickly my turn and I was able to have postcards of Venice stamped to be mailed from Ravenna.

There were very nice clothing stores with very large Euro prices, many cafes, some produce markets where I almost bought a quart of strawberries for 6 Euros. It is a Saturday so many of the locals were walking around the town enjoying the nice weather just like the tourists.

I wandered back to the shuttle pick-up point and stumbled upon the 5^th century Battistero degli Ariani and its mosaic ceiling. From the shuttle I was able to get some photos of these unusual fishing shacks with nets that drop into the water and fill up with fish.