Mykonos Town

So there we were for the fourth day in a row - asking the waiter to pour another coffee and another orange juice and wondering when we would have enough energy to actually stand up and walk to the breakfast buffet. This island life - no, this island lethargy - is getting so pervasive that the night before we had been too lazy to go to dinner.

Ah, the tranquility!

And then LK leaned forward as she does when she has bad news to tell me. "I think we need to do something today. We need to leave the hotel and go to town."

I quickly agreed, figuring I could moan and groan a bit after breakfast, complain that my ankle was sore and my allergies made me wheezy. She would defer her action plan to another day, as she has done every other day this week.

I still don't know how we ended up standing in the full sun waiting for our taxi an hour later, but I think we both felt a vague sense that it would be embarrassing to spend 10 days on an island and not know anything about it other than that the hotel pool has a nice bar.

It was sunny and warm. Which means it was exactly the same as it has been every other day of our time on the island. This day, however, had the additional benefit of enabling my shorts to dry more quickly after the wild ride to town.

All the buildings on Greek islands are white, of course, but architecturally they break into three distinct categories: shops, bars with no food and bars that serve food.

There are apparently only a few tourist must-do's in Mykonos Town - see the famous windmills on the hill above the harbor, check out the famous pelican that wanders around town, eat at the famous Nico's Taverna. Oh yes, and shop.

The island is just now bracing for the beginning of the true tourist season in a few weeks, but when Athens went on strike this week a couple of cruise ships came here as alternatives. There was a sense that people were feeling a tad overworked for this time of the year. Some of the shops celebrated the current economic turmoil that is threatening their nation by having sales - but then again, why am I surprised.

LK continues to be on her very best behavior, making me very concerned that she's holding back for something major once we hit the States around the time of her very significant birthday. She went into a jewelry store but bought only a souvenir of our visit. Scary.

We were walking near the ferry dock checking out the town's pet pelican when we heard our names being shouted. Sure enough, there was someone from our cruise sitting at a sidewalk table having a beer. Which was a pretty good idea in the hot sun.

After that, we wandered the square for a few moments until LK found a souvenir bracelet (I cannot get her it start wearing fridge magnets, which would really help the budget) and then we realized it had been a full three hours since breakfast so hotfooted it to Nico's Taverna.

This is more or less like going to the restaurant that every tourist goes to when they come to a tourist town. But at least the food was good and not very expensive. And the beer was icy.

LK started out with lentil soup laced with lots of vinegar and I had fish soup with half a lemon squeezed into it. Yum.

For the main course, I opted for the a cold lobster salad - really tasty. LK ignored the fact that the sun was beating down and went for classic Greek - a lamb shank in what was called a lemon-egg sauce. As the Beatles once sang, "It's so heavy." But very good, she insisted.

After that bit of excess we decided we needed a bit of a wander before heading back to the hotel.

Fortunately, the town is so small that the bit was even shorter than I had imagined, and I was back the room under a cool shower by 4pm.

The day in town did tire us out, though. We didn't even go down for drinks at the pool bar but opted for in-room drinking. No thought of dining after all that food earlier in the day.

And today we have pledged to resist any urges to leave the hotel. It's OK to get active once in a while, but we wouldn't want to miss afternoon drinks at the pool two days in a row.

Mykonos

Back to blogging, but you can understand why my work habits have gone down. We're in the Greek island of Mykonos, and this is the view from our balcony. (There are a couple of other shots here, but we haven't done the tourist thing yet so much more later in the week.)

We got off the ship on Monday morning after sailing from Alexandria Saturday night. You would think having all of Sunday free would have given me time to post about our Egypt tour, but you'd be surprised how much you have to fit in on your last day aboard --- extra games of poker, an incredibly early start to the cocktail hour, a farewell dinner with The Ladies and their hubbies, one last round at the blackjack table - well, you get the idea. I played instead of working.

So to give you a quick recap of our day in the port of Alexandria, we chose to take a tour to the city of Rashid which was a little more than an hour away. Some pix here.

When Rashid was captured by the French, they called it Rosetta. So now you can guess what famous Stone was found there. It's not really set up as a tourist town, although it does have a few things going for it. They are in the process of creating an open-air museum, which will involve walking around the town and going into restored houses of architectural interest.

Since the city still relies heavily on donkey carts for transportation, you will have to be quite adept at enjoying the architecture while looking down before taking a step.

The Rosetta Stone is now in the possession of the British, who made the French give it to them when they took over here. Somehow in the equation everyone has forgotten that it was an Egyptian artefact. Egypt has been asking to have their Stone back, but they have to get in line behind the folks who rightfully should have the Elgin Marbles.

We drove out to the mouth of the Nile, and for such a significant place it is singularly not pretty. Just a bunch of water on the sea side and a smaller bunch on the river side.

The real treat to the tour was being in an Egyptian city that obviously has not moved to being a tourist trap yet. It was authentic to the point where the laundry was hanging from the windows, the donkeys crapped in the street, and the trash was in the street.

And when I say trash, I mean capital T trash. We are so used to having no litter around that the sheer volume of it was overwhelming. About the only places that didn't have much litter were those that had lots of rubble. You can tell it's rubble because the cats aren't trying to eat from it.

Anyhow, finished the tour back in Alexandria with a great lunch - more Lebanese than Egyptian, I think. Lots of dips and fresh-baked bread and a local fish beautifully grilled. We even had a decent Egyptian beer called Stella. Brewed in Egypt for more than a century, but owned by Heineken. Of course.

And best of all, the restaurant overlooked the harbor, with the modern library and the fort in view, and a bunch of fishermen sitting on the dock. You wouldn't know you were in a large city.

The day we got off the ship went very smoothly. We took a bus to the airport, had a fairly quick connection for the short flight to the island and have gone into a vegetal state since then. When I say the flight was short, I mean super short - about 20 minutes. I think it's the only flight I have ever taken where the attendants start preparing for landing prior to takeoff.

We love it here, enjoying wandering the streets of this beautiful island. We're here for quite a few days so more of that in later posts.

All's Well

Hi All - Just a quick note to say we are nowhere near the trouble spots in Greece. Very calm and relaxed here today. All of the troubles seem to have been in Athens.

May Day! May Day!

This is a great date on the calendar, but unfortunately we are too far away to celebrate the birthdays of two very special people today.

Happy Birthday anyway to Ben. We love you and can't wait to catch up.

And happy birthday as well to our dearest friend Shirley. Champers when we get home!

Spin Cycle

As we moved up the Suez Canal on our way to Alexandria yesterday, we passed dozens of places that had been the scenes of so many battles. From historic battles of Biblical days up to the Six Day War in the 1970s. On the Suez, we passed a war memorial in French to the defenders of the Canal in World War I. And today we are only a short distance from the pivotal battle of El Alamein.

But this post is about another battleground - the laundry room on the ship. There are more than 600 people on this ship for the 24-day cruise. The machines in the laundry room are free but there are only four washers and dryers. You can do the maths.

About 10 days into the cruise, most people ran out of t-shirts and underpants. Despite having paid thousands to have a great holiday on this ship, the thought of shelling out a couple of bucks more to have their laundry done was obviously repugnant. Throughout the course of the day, they wandered by the dozens to the laundry room, dirty clothes in hand and a desperate hope in their eyes that they would find a machine available.

Inside the very small room, there were baskets of clothes waiting for a washer, or post-wash waiting for a dryer and some even post-dry but waiting for ironing. Or worse, there were some that were dried but not yet picked up by someone who, no matter how many charitable acts they may have performed in their life, was now officially an inconsiderate moron who did not understand the needs of the other passengers.

But there are other, even worse, sins than leaving your dry clothes in the machine too long. A friend of ours found an empty washer, threw in some clothes and realized they could fit even more in. So - and this is key - without stopping the washer, they ran to their room, grabbed some more clothes and went back to the laundry and threw them in.

Instant criticism from the group in the laundry.

"You're not allowed to reserve washing machines," our friends were lectured when they brought the additional clothes. What is interesting about this is that our friends were not reserving a machine, but merely topping it up. Even more interesting, there are no rules governing the laundry room, but these twits had decided to start making them up on the spot and then, in an air of superiority, informing people they were violating the rules. I wasn't there, but you know they had to be British.

Then yesterday the Laundry Room Star Chamber struck at someone else. Only this time they made a serious mistake. They picked on LK.

Only regular readers of this blog know that her secret identity is The Launderer. But many more know that she occasionally lets twits know when they have exceeded their daily allotment of stupidity. I believe it all goes back to her childhood when she misheard her mother and thought she had said to never take criticism from strangers.

LK had found the laundry amazingly empty yesterday around noon, so she put a load in. Another washer became available about 15 minutes later and no one was there to use it, so she came back to the room and put a second load in. Those of you who know The Launderer Saga will not be surprised that she became a bit frenzied and kept upping the ante whenever another machine became available and no one had shown up to use it.

Toward the end of her run, she had two dryers going - one near the end and one early on. It was at this point that a man who had come into the laundry told her it was against the rules to have two dryers. You know, the rules that he heard from that voice that speaks to him when he is home alone.

LK ignored him on the first go-round. But about 15 minutes later she was checking to see if one of the loads was dry, and he began again. At this point, she looked at him, put her finger to her lips and said "Shhhh!" He started speaking; she shooshed him again. He got one more word out; she got one more Shhh! out.

He ignored her and kept on lecturing. Linda stopped saying Shh! and said instead, "Shut your big fat gob!"

He was apparently taken aback for a few seconds, but then started replying to her. But one words got out, and she was back with a much more emphatic, "I said to shut your big, fat gob!"

At which point he did.

Some of this amazes and surprises me. Some is totally predictable.

The amazing? LK did not use one cuss word.

The surprising? I didn't even know "gob" was part of LK's vocabulary. But well used in this instance!

The predictable? Of course the guy was British.

In the Suez Canal

Today we are in the Suez Canal, moving so slowly it seems more like a controlled drift than anything else. I had assumed it was going to be romantic in a historical sort of way. Or at least interesting. But frankly it's just a man-made river that flows alongside some of the least interesting land I've seen. Perhaps its most unique feature is our ability to get really close to cargo ships loaded with containers heading in the other direction. So, let's give the Suez an A+ for its role in connecting the Mediterranean with Southern Asia, but a C- as a tourist thing.

We have been at sea for so many days since leaving Dubai that most of us were probably investing the Canal passage with a little more hype than it deserved. Many of our fellow passengers are starting to show the signs of people who have been confined with one another for waaaay too long. Some of us are getting snarly; many of us are getting a little goofy and I know of at least two guys who ran away when they saw the room attendant in the hallway with a broom.

Me - I'm fine. Like the trusty old retired fart that I am, I fall into a routine and I am quite happy so long as I can stick to it. So it's breakfast in the morning followed by reading or writing, followed by trivial pursuit, followed by a shower. I then fight against falling asleep because I don't want to become one of those people who naps at 10:30. And when I awaken around 11, I read or write or whatever until lunch at 1. After that it's poker for a couple of hours, and by the time that ends we're close enough to cocktail hour not to quibble about 20-or-so minutes.

Later in the evening, LK and I will go to dinner and usually go to the casino for a little blackjack or roulette.There's a team of seven people running the casino and I know them far too well at this stage. They're nice people and lots more relaxed than the staff you encounter at the big casinos. I am pretty sure it is made quite clear to them that on a cruise ship the casino is for the entertainment of the guests so they have to develop the fine art of making you enjoy losing your money.

Actually, thinking about last evening, maybe I am getting a bit stir-crazy, too. LK and I were playing blackjack with a nice young Romanian dealer named Elena. I suggested to her that part of the problem with casinos is that the dealers are far too serious and removed from the game. In fact they draw the most incredibly lucky hands to beat the players and they show no emotion - or often they even commiserate with the poor losers.

"It would be much more entertaining if we all got excited about the cards - including the dealers," I suggested to her. And then I discussed some ways to do it.

So I was not surprised a few hands later when LK and I both stood on 19 with Elena drawing to a 6. A face card and a 4 later, though, and her 20 was good enough to snatch our chips. In the past, Elena would have shaken her head slightly in sympathy for us unlucky losers. But after my training session, she reached across and took our chips and started chanting in a singsong voice, "I got 20 and you didn't. I got 20 and you didn't."

That's when I discovered that A) her manager can be stunned by some of the stuff that happens in the casino; and B) it wasn't any more fun to lose that way.

Time for trivia. Gotta go.

At Sea: Captain Carl

Captain Carl, our ship's captain - excuse me, the master of our vessel - is a rockstar.

He is, I suspect, pretty good at his job. But, honestly, when we hop aboard a ship or an airplane, how are we able to judge whether the guy with the fancy white shirt is any good at what he does. Oh sure, there are extremes that give it away - driving a ship on a reef means you're not so good, landing a plane on the Hudson means you get to be the Rose Bowl Parade Marshal - but 99.9 percent of the time we have to trust that the head honcho got there because he was pretty competent and not because he's some flawed weasel who sucked up to the president of the company and married his ugly, autistic daughter.

But have no doubts about Captain Carl. This guy is good. Despite any reasonable way of judging whether Captain Carl is in the top ten percentile or seriously lagging, he has managed to make just about everyone aboard the ship feel they are fortunate to be sailing with him.

The captain is a young man. I can tell by looking at him, but just in case anyone missed it, he has told us all at least five times. For, you see, Captain Carl likes to talk about sailing and Captain Carl, and not necessarily in that order.

He is a fantastic communicator, sharing insights about the day's journey in great detail. If I could remember whether it's latitude or longitude that goes east-west, I would even be able to understand him. He has enthralled world-weary travellers by telling them how he's releasing the ropes when the ship leaves a dock. He went platinum when discussing the extra security measures in place to deal with the pirates (who forgot to show up).

But, of course, what he's communicating isn't our navigational trivia but the fact that we can all rest assured, have a pina colada for lunch and sleep in the sun because, by God, this young man knows what he's doing.

He's a bright man. That much seems obvious to me. And he is personable in the way that people who are the center of attention can be personable. That is, if you're paying attention to them.

But that's no worry for Captain Carl. The ship loves him. Every day we get a four-page newsletter with the day's activities, and there's always a paragraph and a picture on Page 2 with a little bio about the various crew members. (OK, about the various SENIOR crew members, not the people we actually deal with daily.) But the other day, the bio moved to page 1, the picture ran the length of the page, and the subject was - all together now - Captain Carl. I believe newsletter stands couldn't keep up with demand and the publishers are considering a second printing.

But that was just a foretaste of what was to come.

Several days ago the cruise director organized a morning session in the cabaret lounge. No singers, comedians, jugglers, dancers or magicians this time. Nope, this was the Captain Carl Show. For the first time on this cruise, the lounge was jammed, SRO, latecomers wait for the DVD.

The show's premise was pretty simple. The cruise director and Captain Carl sat on stools and the cruise director interviewed Captain Carl about - well, about Captain Carl. How did he get into the business? Does he love it? Is there anything he would like to tell us about himself? Does he mind it when the women over 60 start throwing their panties and room keys at him when he's on the bridge? The audience loved it.

Last night LK and I went up to the top deck. Captain Carl had turned off the deck lights so we could see the night sky, and he proceeded to use a laser beam to point out stars that are used in navigation. He then showed us a sextant, explained how to use it, explained that it wasn't necessary to use it because of an invention called GPS, explained that his apprentices were being forced to practice with it because otherwise they wouldn't remember how to use since it was no longer necessary, and explained that he was young and few his age knew how to plot a course with a sextant. Did he mention that he was young?

Anyhow, LK and I stayed until the inevitable questions. You know the kind, they happen everywhere. Not content to listen to the person everyone came to hear, at least five people need to say something so that we will notice them as well. As we were walking down the stairs, I am pretty sure the last question I heard was whether being young in any way interfered with his appreciation of older women.