November 7 - Lecce, Italy

Today would have been my husband’s 78th birthday.  Happy birthday, Darling wherever you are.

Today we docked in Brindisi, Italy on another sunny and warm day.  Brindisi is on the Adriatic coast down near the heel of the Italian peninsula.  This part of Italy isn’t too far from where my father’s family came.  My paternal grandfather emigrated to the US in the late 19th century from a small village not far from Bari, just up the coast from here.  As a child I remember making a road trip down one side of the Italian boot and up the other so we could visit what my father called “God’s country.”  The southern part of the boot has quite a different look and feel to it than the regions up north and closer to the Alps and the Apennines.  It’s drier for one thing and parts almost look arid.  It’s the land of many olive and citrus groves.

I decided to take a tour to the city of Lecce, known as the Florence of the south because of the Baroque architecture found there.  If you think of the heel of the Italian boot as a spiked heel, Brindisi is close to where the heel and the rest of the sole meet and Lecce is closer to the tip of the heel.  Anyway, we had about a 35 minute bus ride to get to Lecce through fields with olive trees.  There was some kind of blight here in recent years and so many of the trees were dying. But fields of little trees which must be resistant to the blight have been planted nearby.  

I write about what interests me and/or tickles my fancy so bear with me.  Before we entered the walled city we stopped at a public restroom .  Here we are in the year 2025 when Japanese have toilets with so many buttons it’s hard to know which one to push to get the desired result.  Yet here in Italy with its thousands of years of history and civilization, this public WC toilet had no seats, no toilet paper rolls and barely flushing buttons.  We each had to pay €1 to get one sheet of paper towel to use.  As a half Italian I find it sad, but at least we’re better than some of the countries I’ve visited.  Caesar must be shaking his head though.

Onward.  We were dropped off at one of the main city gates and began our very long walk through the city.  The prevalent stone around here is called “Lecce stone,” a very soft limestone which is easy to work with and thus there are many sculptures on the buildings.  The city was founded by a people I’d never heard of called the Mesapii around the 12th century BC. Around the third century BC the Romans came along and conquered it.  Among the sights we saw were the ruins of an ancient amphitheater built by the latter.  They did like their theaters because it seems most anywhere one goes in this part of the world there are ruins of one. After the fall of the western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD the goths sacked the city.   In the next century the Eastern Roman Empire took the city back.  They kept Lecce and the surrounding area for 500 years with brief incursions by Saracens and Lombards.  In the 11th century an entirely new group showed up, the Normans.  Yes those guys who conquered Britain came south too.  (Just a little side note.  My Italian grandfather who came from around here and who should have had typical Italian coloring with dark hair and olive skin, instead had red hair and greenish eyes and used to be called “Irish Mike” by some of his work colleagues in the US.  Could there be some Norman blood running through my veins?)

I wanted to put this photo here to remind myself in the future to never go to one of these cities when it's wet.  The pavement would be a virtual skating rink.

We here in the US have a hard time learning our own history, let alone that of other countries.  Places like Italy are especially difficult because for so long it was conquered by so many civilizations and was a conglomerate of city-states.  It wasn’t even unified until 1861.  So it was that Lecce and its surrounding land was part of a Norman kingdom until it became part of the Holy Roman Empire ruled first by Austrians , then by Bourbons who were related to both Spanish and French kings.  When Napoleon became Emperor he gave this part of Italy and Sicily to his sister who became Queen of Sicily and Naples.  Are you confused?  I am.  I’ve read sometimes that Italian politics are chaotic and confused.  The country comes by it honestly based on a long history of chaos and confusion.

We walked through the city and saw the winding streets lined with buildings with big wooden doorways with decorative door-knockers.  The doorways led to hidden courtyards which we couldn’t see but where in days gone by, people conducted their business and took their leisure.  Multi-generational families occupied the larger buildings and kept their carriages and horses within the lower parts of the palazzos.  Nowadays many have been divided into apartments.  

Besides the ruins of the amphitheater we visited two churches, the Lecce Cathedral and the Church of Santa Croce (Holy Cross).  If you guessed that the latter is so named because it has on one of its altars a crucifix which contains at its center a sliver of the cross from Gethsemane you are correct.  The churches are both constructed of the white lecce stone and to seal the stone milk was used (limestone is quite soft and the process helped to preserve it).  Interestingly some of the statuary and even some of the smaller columns are made of papier-mâché.  That’s right, the technique that some of us used as children in school to make volcanoes or other things is an art form here in Lecce used to create intricate statues and figurines.  In case you don’t remember, paper is shredded and mixed with water and a binder (even flour) to make a sturdy pulp which can then be formed into various forms.

Just a couple pictures of churches

This one is interesting because those columns are actually not stone or marble.  They are papier-mâché!

Outside the church was a workshop where they still make papier-mâché figures.  This one on display there.

Following our visits to the churches we had a light lunch in one of those palazzos we walked past.  Stepping through the doors was like stepping into another bygone era.  The first floor rooms were open to us and they were furnished in chintzes and designs which looked like they came from a Victorian garden.  The rooms were over-furnished with hardly an empty space and not a single flat surface that didn’t have something placed on it. There was a little garden courtyard with lots of flowers.  We ate a lunch of pasta, a couple of types of pizza, and dessert which was kind of a brownie and some pudding, accompanied of course by wine.  It was good, not great.

The anteroom of the palazzo where we had lunch

The palazzo's courtyard

Our dining room

Then it was time to walk back through the winding streets to the city gate and our waiting bus.  I must say I was tired.  We walked more than five miles and my knees let me know they don’t really like that much anymore.  I was glad it was a sunny day, because the pavement in all these places is stone and marble and when wet it can be like a skating rink.  All in all it was a nice day.  I confess though that I’m getting tired of seeing churches and ruined amphitheaters.  I don’t think it’s that I’ve become jaded; I think it’s more that I find meeting people far more interesting.  We have a sea day tomorrow so I can rest my knees and feet and perhaps catch up on writing.  Ciao for now!

November 6 - Kotor, Montenegro

Early this morning I did something I rarely do – I got up before dawn to watch us sail into Kotor, Montenegro. Despite having cruised in this part of the world a number of times I’d never been here before.  To get to the little town of Kotor we had to sail through a pretty spectacular series of fjords. It was  dark but as we moved silently along the eastern sky turned pink and then golden and created beautiful reflections in the calm water ahead of us.  

I should write a little about Montenegro which is where Kotor is located.  The Balkan Peninsula has had nearly as  chaotic a history in modern times as the Middle East, also in part to the way that countries were created by other parties at the end of wars.  Prior to WW I the area was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a portion also belonging to the Ottoman Empire.  When the Austrians and Ottomans lost WWI the victors created the Kingdom of  Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.  In 1929 the name was changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.  During WWII significant fighting occurred in the peninsula because there was heavy resistance from the population.  One of the leaders of the resistance was a man named Josef Broz Tito, a Communist.  Following the Allied victory in 1945, Yugoslavia was reconstituted and added some territory in the northeastern Adriatic area from Italy.  It became under the control of Tito from then until his death in 1980.  He ruled first as prime minister and then as president.

Why am I writing all this?  Well, when I was a child my family lived in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, for nearly 5 years when my father was assigned there.  During our time in the country I had been to Montenegro but not to Kotor which sits on a fjord on the southernmost coast of the Adriatic.  My father was in the US Army and at the time we were giving Mr. Tito aid in an effort to keep him from aligning Yugoslavia with the Warsaw Pact nations in eastern Europe. When the breakup of the country came in 1991, Montenegro initially formed a union with Serbia, but in 2006 the two former Yugoslav states separated and became the independent nations of Serbia and Montenegro.  Everyone I’m sure remembers the wars and terrible things which happened in the 1990’s in Bosnia , Croatia and Kosovo.  Those conflicts were driven by many things but one of the principal causes was religious differences between Muslims and Orthodox Christians.  How many times has religion been the cause of war?

I’m writing too much but I want to chronicle my memories of this area.  When my family lived in Yugoslavia we had both a Muslim and a Christian maid.  During our years in the country everyone seemed to get along and tolerate one another.  My memory has been reinforced in the times I’ve visited Slovenia, Croatia and now Montenegro. I’ve spoken with locals who have told me that their parents and grandparents told them how everyone got along in Tito’s time.  He was a dictator but at least people weren’t killing each other.  Oh well.

Anyway, after we docked and I slept for another hour or two, I went ashore and hired a taxi to take me on a little tour of the area. There is a small walled city, but I chose to drive out along the fjord and go to a couple of lookout points.  My driver was a young woman named Angela who is married with two little boys and a third on the way. She and her husband both have degrees in hotel management and tourism.  As it happens tourism is about the principal business of Montenegro.  Because of that the Covid era was particularly tough for the country.  Now it is experiencing some inflation because a number of refugees from Ukraine have come into the country which has raised the cost of housing in particular because the supply of housing hasn’t kept up with the influx of people.  

Angela drove me to the top of one of the very steep mountains around the fjord where I got a lovely view of the Encore down below.  It really reminded me of the view one gets in some of the fjords in Norway except there everything is very green and here there’s a lot of rock with spots of vegetation intermingled.  We drove back down to sea level and drove around the fjord to a little village where we stopped and sat at a café and had something to drink.  I tried a glass of a nice dry Montenegrin white wine and we talked about what life is like for a Montenegrin family.  There is public education through 12th grade.  After that young people can choose university or trade school.  There is a public health system but Angela said that for any kind of significant treatments there can be significant wait times.  Hence people who can afford it pay a private provider to get a procedure done.  The population is primarily Eastern Orthodox Christian and the total population of the country is approximately 650,000. Montenegro is a member of NATO but it isn’t a member of the European Union despite using the Euro as the currency.  The country is trying to gain membership and may acquire that in 2028.

Well, now I’ve written more than anyone really wants to know about this country, but I like to get things arranged in my head so I understand where people are coming from and why things may happen. The area around Kotor is quite beautiful but for me the interesting part of our stop here was having the opportunity to spend a few hours with Angela and gaining some insights into her life and her thoughts.

After a couple of hours she brought me back to the ship, we said our goodbyes and I marked the day down as a success even though it probably doesn’t sound all that exciting. Onboard the daily routine continued.  We had another session of trivia.  We finished pretty well but tomorrow will be the last day of the cumulative session so we’ll see then how we fared.  I had dinner at a hosted table with the Argentine manager of the shops on board and some new acquaintances.  The night ended as usual with a show and then a little dancing. Laku noć (I think that’s good night.)

November 5 - Corfu Greece

I’m way behind in writing but there has just been too much going on here.  I’m skipping one port, Katakalon, because I didn’t go ashore there. Instead I had a sea day.  Katakalon is the gateway to Olympia, birthplace of the Olympics, and I didn’t think the ruins there had changed since the last time I saw them.

We docked the next day, Wednesday the 5th, in Kerkira, Corfu.  I’ve been here on previous cruises too so rather than taking a tour I decided to get a taxi into the old town and wander around a little. I suppose I should tell a little about Corfu’s history.

As with every place here in Greece its history stretches back thousands of years.  It’s an island not far off the Grecian mainland and it and the nearby smaller Diapontian islands mark the border between the Ionian and the Aegean Seas.  In ancient times Corfu, or Kerkyra as it was known in Greek, was one of the three major naval powers along with Athens and Corinth. Also as with most of the places in this part of the world, Corfu was conquered by a variety of civilizations that came along including Ottoman and Venetian.  At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 Corfu came under the control of the British Empire for a period of time. Finally in 1864 it was ceded to the modern Republic of Greece.

People familiar with German and Austrian history know that in the late 1800’s an Empress of the Austro- Hungarian Empire, popularly known as Empress Sissi, built a summer palace here on Corfu.  She was a rather tragic figure.  She had several daughters and her mother essentially took them away from her.  She had one son Rudolf who was involved in an episode called the Mayerling Incident which was a murder-suicide ending with Rudolf and his lover dead.  Sissi never really recovered from the loss of her son and heir to the throne.  In 1898 she was assassinated while visiting in Switzerland.  Her palace in Corfu is one of the main tourist attractions  which I visited on a previous stop here.

Old town Corfu is very typical of places  in this part of the world.  There are narrow streets lined with shops and cafés.  Many buildings have balconies from which flowers cascade down and every now and then there’s a little square, usually with a church.  I was looking for a particular small jewelry shop that I’d seen online.  There were four ships in port today so it was pretty busy.  Thankfully none of the ships was one of the megaships so there weren’t hordes of tourists.  I found the place I was searching for and found what I wanted.  The salesman was a delightful Greek gentleman who had actually gotten a bachelor’s degree in piano at a college in the US.  He was helping out his newly widowed sister at the family shop until the end of the tourist season in Corfu (it ends in a week or so).  Then he’ll go back to playing with various orchestral groups when the winter music season begins.  

After a lovely chat I asked him to recommend a nice place for lunch. Nikos recommended a place nearly around the corner next to  a park so I went and sat outside enjoying a wonderful Greek salad (what else?) and some of the best homemade crusty bread I’ve had in a long time and just watching the world go by.  I also had a very nice glass of a dry Greek white wine.  After a while I took a cab back to the ship and chalked it up as another lovely day.

I should mention that we’ve been having trivia every afternoon.  Some of my teammates I’ve played with before and we’re doing okay.  It’s cumulative so we have a few days before we’ll see how we come out.

As usual I’ve been going to the shows and afterwards to the Club.  I’ve reconnected with some old friends and made some new ones, so the world is good.  More later.

November 3  -  Nafplio, Greece

This morning we anchored off the city of Nafplio, capital of the region Argolis on the Peloponnesian peninsula. I stopped here not quite two years ago on this same ship and wrote about some of the history of the place, so I’ll only repeat a couple of things.  I always thought the Acropolis was the Acropolis, the one in Athens.  Acropolis is a generic word in Greek meaning high point which can be fortified, so there are many of them in Greece.  On my tour today we passed at least two although they were not nearly as spectacular as the one in Athens.  

This time around I decided to take a tour to a vineyard here in the Argolis region. We took about a 35-minute bus ride through the plain of Argolis.   Along the way we passed through fields of orange and olive groves. We had an excellent guide named Helen who explained to us that the climate is such here that they actually get two crops of oranges every year and so one can see trees that have both ripe fruit and blossoms on them.  The plain is ringed by low mountains on whose sides vineyards are planted.

We arrived at the Skouras Vineyard and Winery for our tour, tasting and lunch.  During our visit we met Mr. Skouras who began the vineyard in 1986 after studying oenology in France and Italy. His vineyard now produces around 880,000 bottles of wine each year of which 50% is exported and 50% stays in Greece.  We walked through the cellars where we saw the rows of oak casks (French oak which is it what most vineyards seem to use) and then saw the bottling operation.  After we went up to a tasting and dining hall where we tasted two white wines and two reds, followed by a nice lunch.  I’m not one of these people with a discerning palate; I just know if something tastes good, bad or so-so to me. The wines I tasted were somewhere between so-so and good I thought.  I’ve never heard that Greece is renowned for its wine and that’s about how I thought of what I tasted.  It was an enjoyable experience though.

Entrance to the Skouras Winery

Greeks love myths and legends so of course Helen told us about the legend of Amymone and Poseidon and the plain of Argolis.  (There are apparently different versions of this story but this is the one we heard.)  Amymone was one of 50 daughters of King Danaus, an Egyptian king who fled to what is now Argolis with his daughters.  The area was arid and nothing would grow so Danaus sent Amymone out to find water.  She searched for it but each time she would find a spring it would dry up before she could fill her water jug or go back to tell her father she’d found one.  On her third try she encountered a very handsome young man who struck a stone with the trident he was carrying and water came gushing out ending the drought.  The young man was actually the god Poseidon and he fell in love with the maiden, married her and they had eight sons.  That was Helen’s version of the myth.  I’ve read others and I don’t know which is correct, but then it is just a myth.  I don’t think there is a place you can go to in this country that doesn’t have some kind of legend associated with it and I find them all fascinating.

On our way back to Nafplio Helen told us a little about the city and the area around it.  The last time I came here I went to the ruins of Mycenae. From about 1600 BC to 1100 BC Mycenae was the dominant city in Greece and in fact the time period is known as the Mycenean Age.  It fell into decline  around 1100 BC for a number of reasons including earthquakes, internal strife and wars.  The city of Nafplio did become a major port in the Peloponnese and it was captured by every civilization that came along.  The city has the remains of three fortresses built to protect it (not too successfully).  The most intact one was built by the Venetians in the 15th century.  Under the Venetians it became an important trading port.  In the 1820’s Greece fought for its independence from the Ottoman Empire.  (They celebrate their Independence Day on March 25th which was the beginning of their war for independence in 1821 much like our 4th of July).  After that was achieved with the help of the British, Nafplion became the capital of the First Hellenic Republic and the Kingdom of Greece from 1827 until 1834.  Now it’s a little more sleepy but still quite charming.

That's one of the fortresses up on top of the hill

and here's another

A street in Nafplio

I’m always amazed when I come to this country at the history here.  Wherever you look there are ruins and reminders of civilizations past.  We in the USA are not even toddlers as compared to the civilizations that have risen and fallen here.  It can also be a cautionary tale about how once great societies went into decline and ruin, often from internal strife.  We should bear that in mind as we go along.

November 2 - Kalimera from Athens!

I made it to Athens last night (November 1) after what seemed to be an interminable day.  My flights were good with no delays or turbulence, but as per usual I didn't sleep crossing the Atlantic so I was bushed by the time I got here.  I'm not ashamed to say that I always ask for wheelchair assistance and believe me, in most of the international airports it's a must if you're tired and laden with carryons.  I'd been through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport  years ago and it was even bigger than I remembered it.  If I had tried to walk from my landing gate to the Lounge and then to my departing gate I would have been exhausted.  As it was the walking I did brought me up to three miles.

Anyway, I met a very nice man from Manchester, England who was on my flight and going on my ship.  We were seat mates and had a nice conversation on the flight from Amsterdam to Athens.  I had a driver from Blacklane (if you ever need a car service I highly recommend them) whose name was Demitrious and he was a delightful young man.  On our drive into the city we had an interesting talk about Greek education and economy.  From that conversation I gathered that Greece shares many of the same problems we do.  Once again I have to say that talking to people from other places is my favorite part of traveling.

Once at my hotel, the Grande Bretagne, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they upgraded me to a suite.  It's much more room than I need for one night, but I'll take it!  Here are a couple of photos.  I'm already feeling pampered and spoiled - I have a butler!

I had reservations for dinner at 8PM at the rooftop restaurant where Al and I had eaten years ago and even though I was very tired, I had to go because the view is spectacular.  For the first time in years the scaffolding which has been around the buildings on the Acropolis is gone so you can see them as they really are without scaffolds and tarps.  It is breathtakingly beautiful!  Dinner was a lovely Greek salad (what else?) and some grilled fish.  There was a couple from Vero Beach, Florida at the table next to me and we had a nice conversation.  They're going on a Celebrity cruise from Athens on the day after mine.

I had a good night's sleep and woke up early - unusual for me - and went up to the same restaurant for the breakfast buffet.  It was all delicious!  Why is it that over here in Europe they have much better bread and crusty rolls than we have in my area?  Once again I had to step outside and take daylight photos of the Acropolis and the Parliament building on the other side of the square the hotel is on.  In a little while the car will come to take me to the ship so I'll close for now.  Next time I write I'll be on the Encore.

The Parliament Building next to my hotel

October 31 - Halloween in Atlanta

 I've made it to Atlanta!   I haven't  seen any ghosts or witches but I have seen a couple of kids dressed as skeletons and a wheelchair attendant who had a great big bushy tail sticking out from under his uniform vest. I'm not  closer to Athens, but at least it's movement.  Fingers crossed, my flight is still scheduled to go to Amsterdam and then onward to Athens.  I've said a few travel prayers and hopefully they're being answered.

On my flight from Richmond to Atlanta I sat next to a very nice gentleman who works for Lego.  If you didn't already know Lego is building a huge plant outside of Richmond.  My grandson is a HUGE Lego fan and I asked if when the factory is open there would be tours.  Eoin (pronounced Owen) told me there wouldn't be because Lego has many proprietary things which are kept secret. Who knew?  He was a very interesting seat companion.  He's Irish originally but lives in Copenhagen, Denmark and has worked and lived around the world for a number of different corporations - everything from Coca Cola and Pepsi to pharmaceuticals and now Lego. As I've often said, my favorite part of traveling now is meeting people from different countries and cultures and with different life experiences from my own.  It's from that I feel my life is enriched.

Wish me luck.  Hopefully the next thing I write will be from Athens.

October 30 - The best laid plans!

Below is what I wrote early this morning before the car came to take me to the airport in Richmond.  Thanks to either the weather in the New York area or the government shutdown (I have my idea which it is) I'm back home in Williamsburg.  Here's how today went.  The car picked me up as scheduled, I checked in at the Delta counter and I went to the gate.  So far so good.  Then everything went downhill. First we were informed that our flight was delayed due to a ground stop at JFK.  Eventually we got on the plane and taxied off to someplace on the tarmac where we were told of other ground stops.  At 2:00 PM (I was supposed to leave at just after noon) the pilot advised us we were going back to the terminal because our new takeoff time was 5:45 PM.  Unfortunately for me and many of the other passengers that meant we wouldn't make our connections.  The most thankless job in Richmond today was the poor gate agent who had to rebook us.  I was lucky; I was first off the plane so first in line for that.  I am rebooked for tomorrow on a more circuitous route via Atlanta and Amsterdam.  I don't care as long as I get to Athens by the day I board the ship.  I had to call the car service to come back and pick me up (same driver - he was shocked to see me).  I had to cancel my much anticipated tour to Delphi; I'll just have to go back to Athens again!  And that was my day.  I keep hoping that some genius will invent a transporter like they had in Star Trek.  I'd much rather be beamed than fly these days.  I've left my original entry here so you can see my itinerary and when I look back at my blog I can see what nice days I had planned.

 I'm starting my next journey today.  Hopefully flights will go as planned with no glitches.  I'm flying to Athens via JFK for a two night stay before I board the Seabourn Encore.  The last time I was in Athens two years ago, it was just a port call but I had the most marvelous day with the taxi driver who was a former professional soccer player.  I decided to spend a couple of nights in Athens this time because I want to see Delphi, home of the Oracle. To that end I've arranged for a private tour with a guide who is a historian.  I like tours with just a guide and me because I can sit in the front seat and tailor the tour to my interests and abilities. An added plus is getting to know someone from another country.

I'm staying at the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens right on Syntagma Square which is where the Greek Parliament building is located.  Al and I stayed there years ago when we visited Athens before boarding a cruise which ended in Mumbai.  It will be bittersweet staying there on the one hand, but on the other it will bring back many wonderful memories of that trip.

On this voyage I'll sail through the Mediterranean, cross the Atlantic, go through the Panama Canal again and cross the Pacific.  I'll spend three nights in Tokyo and then fly home via Qatar.  Like Phineas Fogg I'll go around the world in almost the same time he did - 80 days.