Steven Harper's Blog, page 15

The Cruise: At Sea

 The ship spent the next day and night at sea. Darwin and I were glad about this. Crete was a great experience, but it was also stressful and exhausting, so we were glad to have a day of doing nothing but sitting, reading, and gazing out at the ocean. The evening was a Fancy Dress Night, though, and we had dinner reservations at the ship's upscale restaurant. Last time we did this, we dressed up and found we had spiffied up more than most of the other passengers, but we dressed fully again anyway, just because we could.  Good thing, too. When we arrived on Deck 2, we emerged from the elevator and found ourselves in a crowd of glitterati. Men in high-style suits. Women in gowns. Even the children were gussied up. Roaming photographers took pictures, waiters wandered about with trays of chocolates, and bartenders slung drinks. It was a giant cocktail party where Darwin and I didn't know anyone. But we looked good! At the restaurant, the hostess said our table wasn't ready just yet, so we waited in the bar. I tried a negroni and discovered it was awful. Bitter and nasty. Who would want this thing? Yuck. I abandoned it. Darwin and I engaged in sparkling conversation with each other until the hostess came to get us. She led us to our table and then had a moment of flummox. She pulled out a chair to seat the woman of the couple, then realized there was no woman. Oops. I simply guided Darwin to the chair and took the other one. The food was amazing, and there was a lot of it. I had cream of mushroom and truffle soup, grilled lamb chops, and sauced asparagus. Darwin opted for a strip loin and potatoes and sauteed vegetables. Dessert was key lime pie and baked Alaska. It was marvelous, but way more than we could eat! Our waiter, who had a French accent, asked if everything was all right, and we told him the food was fantastic, but the portions were more for teenagers than 50-something men! We were still tired from the Crete excursion, so when we were finished, we went up to our cabin and to bed. I have realized that cruises are a very easy vacation. The quarters are better than a hotel or rented flat. You don't have to do housework, or even laundry. (Darwin and I opted for the ship's all-you-can-eat laundry plan.) You don't have to do the "Where are we going to eat?" thing. The view is always changing and always interesting. If you want to have an adventure, you can. If you want to relax, you can. People hand you whatever drinks you want, and you can eat anytime you like. It's easier and less stressful than planning a week in a foreign city yourself. We want to do more of them! :)  

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The Cruise: Knossos

 THE CRUISE: KNOSSOS In many European towns, it's difficult to find major attractions. This is because Europeans take gleeful joy in refusing to post signs or clear directions anywhere. This wasn't the case in Heraklion, however. Heraklion is a modern town with busy traffic and lots of signs. KNOSSOS THIS WAY! and THE RUINS OF KNOSSOS! and TURN HERE FOR KNOSSOS! and HEY, DUMMY! DON'T MISS KNOSSOS! I wound through Heraklion, following the signs and the GPS, until we reached the place. Hoo! It was CROWDED. Like visiting Ikea on a Saturday. There was a single hilly parking lot and it was packed with cars and tour buses. I drove through it twice without finding a spot. Darwin finally said we should check the streets, which allowed parallel parking, and we actually found a vacant spot. In the shade. Only a block away from the ruins. With many thanks to the parking gods, I took it (with a little wrangling, as those who have parallel parked a stick shift on a hill will confirm) and we tromped down to Knossos. I thought Knossos was on the top of the mountain like the Akropolis, and that we'd have to climb a lot of stairs to get there. The day was already hot and muggy, and we weren't looking forward to this. But it turned out Knosses is in the valley. Hooray!  An entrance a lot like an amusement park's gate was there. It was shaded by pergolas, thank goodness. There were posters everywhere with QR codes on them. BUY TICKETS ONLINE! I scanned one and bought tickets (cheap at 15 Euros). I had a bad moment when the web site refused to show me the actual tickets, but then I checked my email and found them there. Whew! Our tickets gave us entry from noon to two o'clock, and it was about thirty minutes until then. While we were standing around in the crowd, a little man in a big safari helmet approached us. "Guide?" he said. "You need guide?" He was wearing a state ID tag, and the gate had a sign advertising guides, so I said, "How much?" "Fifty Euros for the two of you." "Can you get us in early?" I asked, my eye on the clock. Cruise ships wait for no one. "Yes, yes." I paid him and we waited while he rounded up a few more people—from Germany, it turned out—and he led us past the line and into Knossos. Knossos is in a grove of olive trees. You traverse a wooden walkway through dense foliage and then find the ruined city spreading out in front of you. It's broken into many levels, following the contours of the hillside. Knossos was the seat of Minoan culture and it ruled the Mediterranean for centuries. It had a grand palace, wealth (a great deal of which came from extremely rare purple dye), amazing art, and technology that included heated floors and flush toilets. But when the volcano Thira a couple hundred miles to the south when KABOOM, tidal waves and earthquakes utterly wrecked Knossos. Thousands died. By the time the place recovered, the center of civilization had moved to the Greek mainland, and Crete was relegated to second-class citizenship. The original city of Knossos was, well, a labyrinth of streets, alleys, buildings, and the central palace. Bulls were a sacred animal to the Minoans, and they amused themselves by tossing teenagers into an arena with an enraged bull. The teens did acrobatic tricks to avoid getting gored or trampled, with mixed success. Deaths were (probably) considered a sacrifice to Mithras, the bull god. Out of all this, we eventually got bullfighting, the running of the bulls, and the legend of the Minotaur. The guide herded us into the shade of an olive tree and gave us an introduction to the history of Crete and of Minoan culture. There were two problems with this. First, he didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, and second, his lecture was long and meandering and dull. We were all losing interest and patience in equal measures. Finally, I broke in. "This is really interesting," I said, "but our time here is short. Could we see the city?" The guide agreed he could do this, and he led us forward, to the evident relief of the German family.  There were lots and lots and lots of people there. Whoever is in charge of these things had actually set things up so a series of walkways and draped ropes and other things would lead you through the ruins. Thoughtfully-placed signs in many languages explained what you were looking at. Meanwhile, our guide kept pausing for long, dull lectures (many of which lamented the fact that people didn't know their history very well), and I realized that hiring him had been a mistake. I would have been a better guide, to tell the truth. So I ditched him. I took Darwin's arm, led him away, and we didn't look back. Knossos was smaller than I expected, but still a grand ruin. I explored almost everything I wanted to, and saw a lot of the surviving artwork, including the famous prince fresco. The great spiral staircase that leads from the surviving pillars of the palace down into what was probably the throne room wasn't open to visitors, though. I was disappointed, but not surprised. Visitors are hard on archaeological sites, and the dolphin murals and other important artifacts down there are too easily damaged. I took lots of photos and recorded video lectures for my students. It was awesome!  I had allotted two and a half hours of time at Knossos, but after about an hour and a half, we'd seen just about everything (including the ruined theater where the king and queen had probably greeted important visitors), and I noticed the GPS was reporting it would take longer to get back to Chania that it did to get there. I had everything I needed, so we left. After extricating the car (more stick-shift wrangling), I decided that no matter what the GPS said, we would stay on the A90 all the way back to Chania. Darwin agreed this was a good idea. The drive back was just as laborious. The car had trouble with the long uphill slopes, until I figured out the AC was draining engine power. So on the climbs, I shut it off, and the car did better. I was worried the poor thing would go BANG and die on us or something, but it proved to be the Little Crete Car That Could and puttered along steadily, if slowly. We had a minor kerfluffle when we got back. The directions took us to Chania port, but the ship was at a different port. Oops. Fortunately, we figured out what had gone wrong, but by now it was 3:45, and the last all-aboard was at 4:30. This made ME nervous. But the other port turned out to be only 15 minutes away, and we found it without more difficulty. I left the car in the port authority lot with the key under the mat, as the car guy had instructed, and we trudged back to the ship, hot and sweaty and ready for supper. So I drove a car all the way across Crete and visited the ruins of Knossos and learned a lot of new stuff. Go me!

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The Cruise: Driving On Crete

 THE CRUISE: DRIVING ON CRETE This was the nerve-wracking one. I wanted to see the ruins of Knossos on Crete. They're (likely) the source of the legend of the Minotaur. I've been teaching about this myth and about Knossos for years and years, but I've never been there. This was my chance. But the cruise ship wasn't docking anywhere near Heraklion, where the ruins are. It was docking at Chalia, 50 or 60 miles away. So I did the adventurous thing—I reserved a rental car online and announced to Darwin that we'd pop over to Knossos and back during our eight-hour stay on Crete. Darwin was less than thrilled at this. Any kind of driving in a foreign country makes him uneasy. (He flatly refused to drive in Ireland.) And we'd be in an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar street signs. Finally, we had a deadline. The ship was docking at 8:00 AM and leaving at 4:30 PM. If something went disastrously wrong, we could be stranded on Crete. I take another view. This was probably my only shot at seeing Knossos. I've driven in Europe before and never had a problem, even in Ireland. GPS would prevent us from getting lost. And I'm generally fearless about exploring new places. I lived in Europe for a year and have visited several times, and have learned that sometimes you just have to go for it. So off we went! When we disembarked and crossed the huge concrete lot to the Chania port authority, we found a man holding a sign with my name on it. The car was being delivered as promised. But ... it was a stick shift. Hmmmm. I didn't remember asking for one, but that's what they said I ordered. The car guy asked if I knew how to drive one, and I said that I did, though it's been a few years. The car was a little thing, but it had AC, and since the weather was forecasted to be in the 90s, this was a big plus. I signed the papers, paid the fee (about 100 Euros), played with the car in the parking lot and discovered I'd lost none of my stick shift skills. I called up the destination on my phone's GPS, which said Knossos was two hours and fifteen minutes away. Plenty of time to drive out, explore the ruins, and drive back. We headed out. Darwin sat in the passenger seat, trying not to panic. I assured him I would drive like a little old lady and concentrated on the driving. The car guy said that today was an Orthodox holiday (a feast day for a saint), so traffic was light. Good. We made it out to the highway without incident. Crete is a long, thin island, and the A90 highway runs along its backbone. It dips in and out of the mountains, heads uphill and down, runs alongside the sea and away from it. (Spectacular views of mountain and ocean, but only if you aren't acrophobic.) The driving was an education. Greek drivers aren't scary or aggressive, but they do have slightly different rules. The highway is one and a half lines wide on each side, kind of like a road with a generous bike lane. If someone wants to pass you, you're expected to move over as close the shoulder as you can and let them zip around you. This is a feature, not a bug. Also, motorcyclists don't pay any attention to anything and will pass you on either side, or will scoot between cars to get to the head of a red traffic light. I don't know if that's legal in Greece or not, but it made the American a little nervous. We stopped for gas and discovered Greeks don't go in for self-service pumps, though you have to pay inside with a card. I noticed an oddity. Scattered up and down the roadway are tiny churches the size of birdhouses. Some are battered and broken, others are perfectly maintained. Some are simple, some are elaborate, with icons painted inside and little lights burning. You never know when one will show up. I took to pointing them out and saying, "Church!" to Darwin's utter lack of amusement. We later learned that the tiny churches serve one of two functions: either to commemorate the site of a deadly accident, or to bless travelers and wish them good journey. You get to guess which. One spot had three churches within a few yards of each other. Darwin wanted me to drive extra careful there. The only adventurous part of the drive came when the GPS abruptly ordered us to exit the highway. A little mystified, I obeyed. This took us down a side road, along an olive grove, through a tiny village where people sat in the shade and watched us go by, down into a valley, and back out of it again. The latter involved uphill hairpin turns on switchbacks. The little car labored, and I was changing gears like a chimpanzee on cocaine. Often we came across breathtaking (or heart-stopping) drop-offs without guard rails. I was actually calm about it all—I was too busy to get nervous—but I think Darwin would have happily bailed out and walked back to Chania. And then, just as abruptly, we were back on the A90. We were both mystified. Why had the GPS told us to leave it? The A90 is a mostly straight shot from Chania to Heraklion. I finally realized that the GPS had figured that leaving the highway and going through a torturous cross-country jaunt would save us three minutes or something. Oi! But after the appointed two hours and change, we arrived safely at Heraklios. 

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The Cruise: Istanbul

 THE CRUISE: ISTANBUL The ship cruised toward Istanbul, a city it never occurred to me that I might visit. It straddles the border of Asia and Europe across the Bosphorus Strait, and it's =busy.= Boats and ships chugged in all directions and the city rose on hills behind it all. At night, it's all lights and color. The place rivals New York for busy-ness and cosmopolitan-ness. Darwin was nervous. I'd looked at the different options for shore excursions, and one that caught my eye was the chance to hire a private car and guide. The excursion was in the evening, from seven to eleven. Darwin wasn't sure about the whole thing. He had a negative mental image of Istanbul as a dangerous place, especially for gay men, and we were walking straight into it—and with a total stranger, to boot. I think he had visions of being snatched away by kidnappers, or picked clean by pickpockets, or (more realistically) getting into trouble because we're two married men. I did my best to reassure him. The guide worked with the cruise company and would therefore be trustworthy. But he was still uneasy. The tour was supposed to start at 7 PM, but we got a call in our cabin at 5 PM. The guide was available now. Would we like to start our tour earlier, when more stuff was likely to be open? Yes. Yes, we would. We left the ship, walked a considerable distance inside Istanbul's very modern, very clean port authority building, and found ourselves in an underground parking lot where we met Sennur ("sheh-nur), our guide. She was a thirty-something lady dressed in a smart skirt suit with her hair pinned back. The car was a limo-style SUV that would seat eight people comfortably, and it had a separate driver, which surprised me—the description of the outing made it sound like the tour guide would also drive.  Darwin was immediately relieved. I later learned he'd been thinking we'd be in a rattle-trap hatchback or something. Sennur was very friendly and knowledgeable of Instanbul. The car made its way through horrendous traffic across the Bosphorus bridge (it has two levels—one for traffic and one for shops), where dozens of men were casting fishing lines into the water. "For many of these men, this is retirement," Sennur explained. "They retire and then they don't know what to do with themselves, so they catch fish and sell it at the fish market." I wanted to see the Grand Bazaar, and since it closed at 7, we went there first.  The Bazaar has existed in some form or other since the 16th century. It started as an outdoor thing, but was eventually enclosed and roofed, and now it's the world's biggest indoor shopping place. The impressive stone gates and heavy wooden doors (hundreds of years old) welcome you into a maze of corridors, vaulted and mosaiced ceilings, and shops, shops, shops. Most of them are very small by American standards, about the size of market tent from the old days. This allows the Bazaar to cram thousands of shops into one area, though. As Sennur put it, the Bazaar sells stuff that ranges in prince from one Euro to one billion Euros. You can buy anything you care to name there. We wove our way through the loud crowd of people. The shopkeepers stand outside their shops and try to lure shoppers in like barkers at a carnival. "Come in! I have the best purses and bags in all the world! Good prices!" "Glittering diamonds! Finest quality! Your wife will adore you when you bring them home!" "Try my chocolates! Turkish delight! Tea! Free sample! Come inside—you are my guest." I've been to similar situations in the past and knew that it's not rude to ignore or brush away the shopkeepers. I did stop outside one confectioner's shop, to the delight of the owner. He welcomed me into the shop like I was a long-lost relative. The shop was floor-to-ceiling bins of brightly-colored candies, chocolates, teas, baklava, and other delights. No prices on anything, I noticed. The shopkeeper kept trying to steer me toward some of the more exotic teas, but I ignored this and pointed to piles of varicolored candy—orange and yellow and purple and pink. "These are chocolates?" I asked. "Yes, yes. These are orange chocolate, rose-hip chocolate, hazelnut, and many more!" This was interesting to me. In the USA, of course, chocolate is brown or dark brown. It's not colored to look like hard candy or a gemstone. I warily tried a few, and they were delicious. Well, then! I pointed out some of the ones I wanted, and the shopkeeper started shoveling them into a box with a big scoop. "No, no!" I admonished. "Too much. Put some of that back." (Sennur later said, "You're good at handling shopkeepers.") The shopkeeper also thrust sample cups of tea at us. "This one is good for the digestion. This one good for helping you to breathe. This one will help you with the ladies." This with a sly wink. Hoo boy. A side note. Istanbul is more accepting of LGBTQ people than the rest of Turkey, but it's still not a great place for us. Darwin and I tend to touch each in public quite a lot—hand holding, ruffling hair, rubbing backs. It's a habit, really. However, we had decided it wouldn't be prudent to be husbands in public here. Hands off. And correcting a shopkeeper as to my relationships with women was a definite no. One shopkeeper did surprise us earlier. He approached Darwin, trying to lure him into a shopful of purses. "Your wife will love one!" Darwin laughed a little. "I don't have a wife." "Girlfriend, then!" "Nope. No girlfriend." "Ah. Boyfriend?" Darwin blinked in surprise. "Actually, that's my husband over there." The shopkeeper didn't miss a beat. "Maybe he would like a handbag!" Anyway, I did ignore the chocolatier's winking and innunendo and I tried the teas. Wonderful! I bought some rose tea and some saffron tea. The camphor tea wiped out my sinuses with one whiff, and while I figured it would definitely be good for a cold, I decided against. Darwin, meanwhile, picked out some baklava and coffee and Turkish delight. Another side note. Turkish delight, you may recall, plays a significant part in the book (and movie) THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE. When the White Witch offers Edmund whatever treat he wants, he asks for Turkish delight, and it's so good, he becomes willing to betray his family for more. As a kid, I'd always wondered what Turkish delight was like. I imagined something cookie-like, maybe a bit frothy and chocolatey. In my thirties, I finally came across some and eagerly tried it. Yuck! It was a rubbery thing coated in powdered sugar that tasted like weak Jello. Edmund was willing to give up his siblings for this? The shop at the Bazaar also had Turkish Delight for sampling, but it looked different. More like a candy log. I tried some. Ahhh! More of a marshmallow texture than gelatin, and stuffed with hazelnuts and chocolate and pistachios. If this was what the White Witch gave Edmund, he made the right choice. The shopkeeper bundled everything up and, to my surprise, used a vacuum thingie to seal everything. I paid for it—no bargaining in this particular shop—and was shocked at how low the price was. Sennur hefted our bag with an expert feel and announced we had about a kilogram of stuff. It cost less than twenty dollars. The shopkeeper continued plying us with samples and offers until we finally left. We explored more of the Bazaar and it was fascinating. It was indeed a place where you could by anything. And get lost! We kept a close eye on each other. If we lost Sennur, we were done for! After the Bazaar, we walked toward Istanbul's historic zone, but we paused several times along the way to sample sweets at different places. More flaky baklava. Chocolate so dark it was black. Rich ice cream. Sweet Turkish coffee. The tour acquired an impromptu filter: desserts! It was a lot of fun. We strolled across the historic zone of Istanbul, pausing so Sennur could explain the significance of this monument or that. We saw a lot of stray dogs, and learned that Istanbul doesn't have animal shelters. Instead, they capture strays, neuter or spay them, give them their shots, and turn them loose again. The government and private citizens put out food and water for them. Interesting! The entire city basically becomes an animal shelter. No visit to Istanbul is complete without visiting the Hagia Sophia, and that's where we went next. The HS was the biggest cathedral in the world for a long time. Over time it became a multi-use church. Christians and Muslims both use it for prayers and services. The bathrooms are separate, outside the main building. Darwin and I needed to use them, so we headed over. The squat toilets are inside private closets, and there are rows of sinks where many men were scrubbing up like surgeons before an operation. There was also a footwashing area. Certain Muslim rituals require extensive cleansing. I found the Hagia Sophia's outside more impressive than the inside. The outside is majestic architecture, soaring spires, and rounded domes. The inside is kind of dark and even dingy. Sure, it's HUGE, but it's still gloomy in there. Part of the problem is the utter lack of windows. They have chandeliers at head level, but no lights up in the high ceiling, which is more of the problem.  In the Hagia Sophia, you have to take your shoes off. They provide cubbies to put them in. The stone floors are covered in green carpet, and people are EVERYWHERE in there. They meditate, pray, sleep, converse, laugh, and so on. It's very noisy. During Muslim prayer time, women aren't allowed into the main part of the building, which put me off, though I didn't say anything. As it happened, a muezzin called for prayer just as we were arriving. The males in the big room stampeded over to the eastern wall to join him. Darwin and I didn't spend long there. There wasn't really much to see, to be honest. Besides, the Hagia Sophia is a working church/mosque, not a museum, and I felt like an interloper instead of a visitor. Then it was time for some supper. Sennur took us to a different bazaar and got us outdoor seats at a restaurant where she knew the proprietor. They brought us sample platters so we could try a bunch of different foods: chicken and lamb kebab, minced lamb, baked eggplant, roasted peppers, and of course the big, round pillowy bread Turkey is known for. It was all fantastic! By then it was time to return to the ship. We tipped Sennur and the driver heavily and headed back to our cabin. It was a fine, fine day. 

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The Cruise: Maggie

 I have to back up a little. On the first day of the cruise, Darwin and I were wandering around one of the swimming pools on the top deck when a plump, blonde woman in her 70s engaged us in conversation. Her name was Maggie. She was friendly, overly so, and talked and talked and talked. She said she was born in Ireland but traveled all over the world and was a US citizen and her husband in Ohio was this and that and the other. I was trying to figure out how to extricate ourselves when she abruptly asked if were a couple. Darwin said we were married. "Oh, that's so nice!" she gushed. "I have a nephew who's that way, and I love him just as much as I love anyone in my family." This put both of us off. The subtext to statements like this is that the default setting for LGBTQ people is that we're wrong or bad, "But I love you anyway." (Don't ever say something like this when you meet a member of the LGBTQ community.)  Before either of us could respond, though, she whipped out a business card. "I want to share this web site with you," she said. "You'll get all the answers you need there." The web site in question was for a conservative Christian group. At this point, I just said, "Well, we have to go now. It was interesting meeting you." And I walked away with Darwin in tow. Fast forward to the Temple of Apollo tour. Maggie was on the bus, sitting just ahead of us. She had trapped her seat mate into one of her interminable conversations that were mostly about herself. I felt sorry for the woman, but not sorry enough to pull Maggie off her! When we got off the bus, Maggie stopped at the driver out in front of the bus. She handed him one of the cards and talked at him, too. "Go to this web site. Once you read it, you'll become so knowledgeable and wise."  I couldn't let this pass. I caught Maggie up and said quietly to her, "You know, this is Turkey. It's a Muslim nation. You were proselytizing to a Muslim. I don't think this country takes that kind of thing well." At this, Maggie exploded. She started yelling, actual yelling. "I don't know who you think you are! I can say what I want. I have free speech and—" "No, you don't," I interrupted. "This is Turkey. There's no First Amendment here." "I =know= this country," she screeched. "I was =born= in this country. I—" "You said you were born in Ireland," I shot back. "Well! You don't have the right to tell me anything. You don't—" "I thought you said we had free speech here." At this point, I turned my back and walked away, leaving her yelling at the empty air. I turned my attention to the tour at this point and ignored Maggie. She trapped yet more people in conversation and raised her voice whenever I wandered within earshot. "I'm a nice person, unlike SOME PEOPLE who think they know everything!"  Darwin and I rolled our eyes and continued examining the temple. (The irony of a supposedly Christian woman visiting a major Pagan shrine apparently eluded this woman.) I did take a photo of Maggie when she wasn't looking, in case I needed it. This turned out to be a good idea. Meanwhile, Maggie wasn't done. When we all got back on the bus, she plunked down in her seat across the aisle and ahead of Darwin and me and set about passive-aggressively snarking at me with more, "Unlike SOME PEOPLE" comments. One of these comments she delivered over her shoulder to me, which was what I was waiting for. "Don't talk to me ever again," I snapped. "No one wants to hear from you. Keep your religion to yourself." "Well, you—" "DON'T TALK TO ME!" I boomed in my most powerful teacher voice. The entire bus vibrated from it. One of the other tourists leaned toward Maggie. "Now, children, do I have to send both of you to separate corners?" Her words fit either of us, but she directed them straight at Maggie.  "Thank you," I said. And at that moment, a hand slid into view from behind my and Darwin's seat. The woman behind us was giving me a thumbs-up gesture. I turned and thanked her, too. Maggie was revving up for more, but just then the tour guide came on the sound system and she closed her mouth. She was actually quiet for the trip back, though she went right back to her passive-aggressive commentary when we got off the bus and boarded the ship. I let her get far enough ahead of me that I didn't have to hear her anymore, then ambled down to the ship's customer service desk. "I'm afraid I have a complaint," I said to the rep at the counter. "How can I help?" she said. I told her what had happened, adding, "I felt wildly uncomfortable when she started proselytizing at me and my husband. I'm also worried that she might get into trouble if she does this on shore again." I gave her Maggie's first name, though I didn't have her last name. "She said she's from Ohio. I'm afraid that's all I know. Here's her picture." I spun my phone around so she could see it. The rep's face clouded. "I know who she is," she said, and typed rapidly at her computer. "I definitely know her." At this moment, a man I'd met at the pride meeting, who was also at the counter, turned and said, "Are you talking about Maggie? She gave me a card, too! I didn't know what to say." I jumped on this. "If she's done it to me and to you and to the bus driver, she's definitely doing it to other people." The rep said she would file a report, check with the bus driver to see how he was feeling, and would "handle it from here." In my mind, one of the ship's officers would stop by Maggie's cabin and tell her if she handed out one more card, she be keelhauled. In actuality, I have no idea what, if anything, the cruise personnel did to her.  I'm glad I confronted her. Apparently so were a bunch of other people. I don't countenance bullies. So many times people let bullies get away with their crap because they're afraid of making a scene. But the bully makes use of that fear to get away with their crap. We can't let them. Make a scene.

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The Cruise: Miletus and the Temple of Apollo

 So many temples, so little time.  For today's outing at Melitus, we had to get up extra early. Darwin was losing his enthusiasm for ruins, especially after the hot, crowded tour from yesterday. But we persevered and boarded yet another bus for Melitus and the Temple of Apollo, which are in modern-day Turkey. We had an excellent, outgoing Turkish guide who narrated the history of the area while we were riding the bus (other guides hadn't done this). At Miletus, we explored the little archaeological museum there and then hit the town of Miletus. Miletus was a fairly big deal back in the Bronze Age, with a population of 80,000 or so, but it fell into ruin over the centuries. The big thing for me was the amphitheater. Miletus has the remains of a huge Greek theater! I've been teaching Greek theater for a long, long time, but all my information came from reading and from photos. Now I was actually at one! The theater was impressively huge, and could seat several thousand people. The stage was gone—it had been made of wood—but the stone supports were still there. I immediately identified the parts of the theater—the parados (where the chorus entered and exited), the altar, the skene (or where it used to be), and the orkestra (which evolved into today's orchestra pit). I only half-listened to guide, who was saying stuff I already knew. It was much more interesting to explore the place and see all this for real. I tested the acoustics by clapping my hands several times and yep—they were as good as everyone said Greek theaters are. I didn't know about the tunnels and archways for the audience, though, and I didn't know that the Greeks chipped out the bottom of the stone seating so you could tuck your feet under the benches when someone wanted to get by.  I could have spent the whole day there, but we had to move on to the next stop: the Temple of  Apollo. The bus took us down the road to the ToA, which is in a tiny, tiny town that only exists because of the Temple tourists. We disembarked and I saw that =this= was a temple! The Temple of Apollo (and Artemis) was huge and impressive in its day. The front steps led up to a forest of 25 huge, HUGE columns. Each was at least 10 feet in diameter—and all of them were broken. The temple had been destroyed twice, once by Muslims and once by Christians. The Eastern Orthodox Christians, as they often did, also erected a church on the temple grounds to "reclaim" the land. Alexander the Great had the temple rebuilt after its first destruction, but after the second, it stayed a ruin, though the church was removed after a couple hundred years. Once you're past the columns, you find yourself at another staircase that leads up to a big slab of marble with columns flanking it. It was here that the Oracle made pronouncements. Apollo's Oracles (soothsayers) were usually women, but in this temple, they were often men, too. The Oracle got high and went into a trance behind one of the columns, and another priest would put a petitioner's question to her. She would mutter incoherently, and the priest would emerge from behind the column and translate what the oracle had apparently said. If it made no sense ("Should I marry this woman?" "When the bats fly at sunrise, the crows will build their nests on the far mountain." "Wait—what?" "Okay, next!"), that was your problem. The rest of the temple was a huge open area, unroofed these days. Darwin and I listened to our guide, then poked around for a while, trying to imagine the place filled with pilgrims and priests and workers and slaves and others. Now the only inhabitants are a few stray cats who accept petting from visitors with varying degrees of amusement or hostility. When our time was up, we headed back to the bus, and out front of a souvenir shop, I found some statuettes for sale: Ares, Atlas, and Tyr and Fenris. Which one doesn't belong? :)  

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The Cruise: The Akropolis

  The next morning, we boarded a bus and drove to Athens. Athens didn't look like I'd imagined it. I knew it's a modern city, but I was expecting more of an older look to the place, like Venice. But the Athens I saw was very, very modern.  The bus dropped us off at the bottom of the hill, and, urged on by the guide, we climbed through groves of laurel and olive trees, sacred to Apollo and Athena, respectively. We climbed and climbed. There were lots of other tourists, too. Lots and lots and lots.  When we got to the top, we found the place was packed. So many, many people. It was like visiting Disney World on a weekend. A massive queue maze was set up to handle the line. We worked our way through it. Darwin was nonplused and put off, but the Akropolis is Greek's most famous attraction, and I was expecting this. It was a bit odd, though—the stones we stood on were thousands of years old, but the queue maze was totally modern. However, it occurred to me that this was probably how it was back then, too. The Akropolis was basically a small town with several temples and other buildings. People from all over Greece visited, and they would have been standing in line with their sacrifices of cows, goats, chickens, incense, flowers, and more. It probably wasn't ever quiet or contemplative. A set of college boys jumped the queue maze line by climbing over some rocks. The line guy caught them and made them go all the way back to the end of the line. Everyone applauded. Finally we got into the Akropolis proper. I got to see it at last! Ruined columns and broken altars and empty stone buildings. I'm good at using my imagination to "see" what it looked like in its heyday, and I loved it. The crowds were relentless, but I managed to get some photos that made it look emptier. And it was HOT. I had brought a safari-level sun hat with me. It's ridiculously large and, frankly, ugly. I was hesitant about using it at first, but once I stepped into full sunlight, I clapped that sucker on and I felt the difference immediately. It was like having my own portable shade tree.  When it was time to go, we threaded our way down, down, down the mountain stairs to the touristy shops at the base. We passed several street performers, and I tipped them all, including the guy holding the big sign that said I HAVE A BRAIN TUMOR. Darwin and I browsed the shops but didn't buy—we aren't big souvenir shoppers. We did stop for some gelato, and in doing so, we broke a gelato rule: never buy brightly-colored gelato stored in big heaps in a display freezer. Such gelato is factory-made for tourists and is nowhere near the quality of the real stuff. The gelato we got was, frankly, awful. Bad texture, poor taste. I didn't know it was possible to get bad gelato, but turns out, it is. We'll never break that rule again! At last, we were herded aboard the bus and we trundled back to the ship for showers and a delightfully AC'ed cabin. The ship traveled all night and in the morning when we got up, we were already in port at Melitus. 

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The Cruise: Olympia

  We spent one day at sea, coasting along from Trieste to Olympia. Darwin and I rested and got rid of the final bits of jet lag. The next morning, we had a half-day tour of Olympia (the Temple of Zeus) and another one at the Akropolis. Both places have been written up extensively elsewhere, so I'll just give my own thoughts here. I've taught Greek mythology for decades, but I've never visited any of the places I teach about, which is one of the reasons I've wanted to go on a trip like this. Darwin knew this, and it's why he arranged it. Isn't he wonderful? When the ship arrived on the coast of Greece, I could just make out the Akropolis at the top of the hill. Just. Below it, brown mountains. Below that, white, square buildings. We met our tour group in the ship's auditorium, disembarked with them, and boarded a well-appointed bus. I looked out the windows at the Greek landscape. It hasn't rained in months, and just last week it was in the 100s every day. Today, the heat was only projected to be in the high 80s, for which I was grateful, but I wondered how difficult it's been for the natives. The landscape was brown and pale green, very, very dry. The bus arrived at the Temple of Zeus. I shouldered my backpack (water bottle, sun hat, sun-blocking umbrella, snacks). We had to hike quite a ways along an occasionally-shaded road to the temple, and I was sweating heavily by the time we arrived.  The Temple of Zeus is really a complex of temples that includes the grounds where the first Olympics were held and multiple ruined, columned buildings. It was very interesting to poke around the ruins and listen to the guide's commentary. It was my first Greek ruin!  Tomorrow was the big one: the Akropolis.

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The Cruise: The Osterdam

 Our cabin on the Oosterdam ("oh-ster-dahm") was bigger than we expected—the size of a decent hotel room. Queen bed, lots of closet space, two-sink bathroom with a jetted bathtub AND a phone booth shower.  Everyone told us that when people get on board, they head for the buffet and it's a madhouse, so you're better off going to one of the ship's sit-down restaurants. But we checked the buffet (conveniently located one deck above us), and it wasn't busy at all. Good—we were starving! And the food was very good. I'd visualized being seated in groups with strangers at meals—a large table with people we'd introduce ourselves to and hope we got along. But the dining area was filled with tables of all sizes, from two-person to eight-person, and everyone sat where they wanted. I was glad of this. I've never been comfortable with forced socialization, though I've learned to be good at it. On vacation, I'd rather eat with my husband, thank you. We LOVE having a balcony. Love, love, love it! I'm perfectly happy looking out at the Aegean/Ionian/Mediterranean while the fresh, soft sea breeze wafts over me. The balcony has room to sit two people comfortably with room left for a pair of small tables and more standing space. The view from the eighth deck makes Darwin a little dizzy, but mostly he's been fine with the height. The ocean is a dark, azure blue, a color I've never seen in a large body of water before. The Great Lakes are a murkier blue, and the Gulf of Mexico has a green cast to it. The Pacific at Hawaii is a paler blue. I've never seen such a rich ocean blue before, and it's stunning. The ocean has behaved itself so far. At night a couple of times it's been a tiny bit choppy and we've had some stiff wind, but nothing worrying.  The O-dam is a largeish ship with about 1600 passengers (coincidentally, about the same number of students attend Nameless High School). It has two swimming pools (one indoors and one out), several bars, a casino, a stage, an art gallery, several restaurants, and ridiculous little shops filled with high-priced jewelry and other oddments that apparently interest enough passengers to justify their continued existence. The diamond seller went into hard sell mode when we wandered by, trying to entice us. "Something beautiful for your wife or girlfriend!" he crooned. Boy was he selling up the wrong tree. The activities began right away, including a Pride Meetup. I decided to attend and met some very nice people. I also learned that several other people had the same problem we did—they arrived in Venice, expecting to board there, only to discover on short notice they had to be in Trieste. It wasn't just us! Not only that, the cruise line had a shuttle service from Venice to Trieste, but they didn't tell us—or anyone else, apparently—about it. There was a fee for it, but it wasn't anywhere near 450 Euros! I complained to the cruise line about the issue at the customer service desk. The short version is, they can't do anything about it until the cruise is over, but they gave me a case number and official complaint status. We'll have to follow up back home. If they refund us the difference between the cost of the shuttle and the cost of the taxi, I'll be satisfied. We'll see what happens. From some of my fellow gay cruise liners, I learned that our ship has an unusually high number of days in port. We only have two days at sea for our two-week cruise, and usually it's more like six or seven days at sea. Interesting. More excursions for us! We unpacked and took a refreshing shower. Meanwhile, the ship backed slowly and steadily out of port, and we were off! The first morning at sea, we ordered room service breakfast just because we could. We had eggs and bacon and toast and coffee out on the balcony above the blue, blue ocean with the refreshing breeze. It was lovely.

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The Cruise: Wait--What?

 THE CRUISE: WAIT—WHAT? When our boat taxi arrived to take us to the harbor, the driver helped with our luggage and we sped off toward the port. The driver asked where in the port we were going and we showed him our electronic boarding passes.  "No, no," he said. "This is for Trieste." Yes. Our boarding passes said "Venice (Trieste)" as the start of the cruise. "Trieste is two hours away," the driver said. Um ... what? We thought Trieste was a part of Venice, like Zaterre. Turns out it was an entirely different city much farther up the coast. So why the hell did the cruise say the trip started in Venice? Ohhhhh, we were upset. And angry. And upset. And angry. The taxi driver called dispatch and said they could take us to Trieste right now. It would cost 450 Euros. Fuck. We decided to do it. What other choice did we have? I didn't know if a train would get us to Trieste in time, and the thought of navigating the Italian train system for the first time alone with a pile of luggage made me shake. So we paid it. The driver, it must be said, was great. He wound along highways and roads. We did get to see a lot of interesting Italian countryside, mountains, and villages, but it wasn't worth 450 Euros. We got to Trieste just in time to make boarding. I gritted my teeth and tipped the driver heavily. It's not customary in Italy to tip taxis, but he certainly hadn't been planning to drive four hours to Trieste and back that day, and he got us right up to the port. "I know this isn't usual," I told him, "but please take this." He didn't refuse. :)  Once we were there, the boarding process went smoothly. We did discover that our cabin had been moved from the stern to amidships, which surprised me. I had called and asked a week ago if it were possible (I'd heard that the passengers in the stern were more likely to get motion sickness, since there's more motion), but the rep said all the cabins were wait-listed, and I shrugged it off with an "Oh well—we tried." But now our cabin had indeed been moved. No idea why.  I was glad for it. The cabins amidships (and their balconies) are slightly larger than the stern ones because the ship's hull bows outward, creating more space. And the ride is smoother. Later, we also discovered it was quieter. The stern is, of course, right above the screws, and at sea, they churn the water VERY LOUDLY. So this was a definite plus! And we set out to explore the ship. 

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