Monday, September 1, 2008

BLOG #14

5 September 2008
Hello to all…………Three more ports o’ call to go!
After 35 days afloat and/or roaming around the United Kingdom, our adventuring is almost over for a couple of months and then we’ll be off again.
Following our surprise visit to Gibraltar, we continued on to a planned stop on the Costa Del Sol at Malaga, Spain. The Andalusian coast of Spain and its phenomenal weather (at least 300 days of sunshine each year) has long been a mecca for European vacationers who choose to escape the bleakness of European winters for a tine in the sun. We were not disappointed. We had a number of shore excursions to choose from that would have taken us on tour of places the rich and famous maintain for their vacations. We chose to explore Malaga on our own focusing on a trek across town that would take us to the Picasso Museum - Malaga. We found Picasso and enjoyed over an hour soaking up this remarkable artist’s work. Work from his early years of remarkable skill, as he studied at his art teacher father’s school, and his later years was displayed. He obviously tired of doing portraits and found his unusual talent in an area yet explored by the art world. We decided it would take more than our brief visit to understand what he was trying to portray and a lot, lot longer to imagine one of his best hanging in our living room.
After a leisurely wandering around Malaga, we decided we would see the rest of “old town” the easy way. We hired a horse drawn carriage to fight the traffic and take us by the marvelous old buildings that give Malaga its character. We were amazed to note that the Malaga coach men have apparently trained their horses not to do their thing while on the job. None of the carriages we saw in Malaga used the “poop catcher” that we’ve seen used in almost all of the cities where we thought to look. We were treated to a not too rare heated verbal confrontation between our driver and a motorcyclist who apparently did something displeasing. Our diminutive octogenarian driver sounded seven feet tall as he shouted and shook his whip. We were impressed.
Reading about the history of the area we were impressed at the role the Moors played in developing the culture and infrastructure of Andalusia. In this day and age of concern about Muslims we were impressed that it was the Muslims that established schools and universities in this area, cultivating scholarship and scientific exploration. Muslim and Jewish scholars are credited with reviving and contributing to Western astronomy, medicine, philosophy and mathematics. Muslims and Jews working together? Maybe there’s some hope.
We imagined our stop on the island of Sardinia would be a fishy affair. It wasn’t. Sardinia is second only to Sicily in size as an island and boasts a special regional autonomy with Italy. The island’s history includes evidence that humans lived there as far back as 250,000 B.C. The earliest documented inhabitants are considered to be the Nuraghic people who lived there around 1800 B.C. The island is dotted with over 7000 nuraghi or stone fortresses used for protection by the early residents. Over the centuries, Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Pisans, Genoese, Spanish, Austrians and eventually Italians ruled the island.
Our tour of Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, focused on a visit to the 13th Century Cathedral and the nearby 14th Century Elephant Tower named for the sculpture of an elephant on its ramparts. We found that past residents of Cagliari liked to put their important stuff on top of the highest hill in the city. Our climb to the top gave us wonderful views of the bay and the city, sore feet and sweaty undies. We found, however, that the old saw about “when at the top, there’s no place to go but down” is absolutely true. We followed a suggestion from a couple of young German tourists and followed our noses down hil toward the bay. Since the map we were using didn’t seem to feature the names of streets we found, we asked directions from several locals. The rapid fire Italian “help” we were given actually worked. Much to our surprise, after walking about five miles in all, we found our way back to the shuttle bus that returned us to our ship and a well earned nap.
Our stop at Naples, Napoli to our Italian readers, was on the low key side. Our ship became the eighth in port on a Monday and like half of the fleet, we unloaded before nine in the morning and left for anchorage a few miles off shore. We had signed-up for an afternoon “city tour” so we stayed with the ship as it repositioned. Our planned morning sun bathing session became the delight of the cruise. It seemed as though ninety percent of our fellow travelers left the ship when it was at dock. This left only the two of us interested in basking in the morning sunshine. Imagine if you will two napping souls in the middle of a sea of several hundred lounges, smiling and contentended in the morning quiet………with not a single kid splashing or carrying on in the pool set aside for other than adults. We decided that, at least when it came to cruise sun bathing, it doesn’t get much better.
After lunch we took a tender to shore and joined our afternoon tour. We discovered a bunch of stuff and saw some wonderfully old and historic buildings and such. What we learned was 1) Neopolitan Ice Cream, which must come from Naples or Napoli or maybe Neopoli, doesn’t come in three colors when they serve it in Naples, and 2) you mustn’t buy stuff from shop keepers in Naples because they like to switch your merchandise for an old newspaper when they take it to the back room to wrap and bag. Both of these treasured insights may be totally unfair but at least the latter came straight from our guide’s mouth. At least that is what we thought she said in her marvelous but Italian tainted English.
Our trip took us to the Piazza Plebescito, Naple’s largest piazza where our guide treated us to ice cream and we took a whole bunch of pictures. We witnessed first hand the daring driving that the locals exhibited, especially when we tried to cross a street when they were a hundred meters down the road. You could hear them change gears with a squeal of their tires as the bore down on poor us suggesting that we scamper rather than saunter when crossing their street. The Napoli sky was clear as a bell as we viewed Mt. Vesuvius towering above the city with its wide swath of lava flow from its last activity in the early forties. Our guide explained that what we saw today was not two volcanoes but the remains of Vesuvius after its big blow that blew away several hundred feet of its old crest. Even with its top gone, Vesuvius still stands 1,282 meters above sea level and the town.
Our tour, like any self respecting tour, took us to the nicest part of town where huge houses hang on steep hillsides over looking Naples Bay with marvelous views of the Isle of Capri. We quickly concluded that a lot of well heeled folks have found a nice place to live. We did see where some of the other folks lived and, because it was washday Monday, a whole bunch of laundry hanging from balconies to dry. At first glance we were sure that there must be a law about hanging family undies from the balcony but on closer inspection we found some undies to make things seem normal.
A whole bunch of hugs and kisses to all,
Gram and Grampa Bill, Mom and Dad, Dottie and Bill

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