Oceania insignia – Uncharted Waters

Farewell, Insignia

The real world is approaching on the horizon. We won’t be in NYC until Saturday, but proximity to home is evident: we have started packing, settling accounts, filling out surveys and departure forms. Meanwhile, our email is reminding us of home tasks we’ve put off. It will be good to be home with reliable internet on which we don’t need to take turns, a shower that is maybe three times the size as the one here, and the mobility without “motion of the ocean” to toss us into walls and one another. We are relishing these last few days on the balcony looking out to sea; I’ve read three pretty awful mysteries in these last days and Bob is deep into another of his beloved Saxon tales. Even the time issue is settling down; as of tomorrow, we will be just one hour different (I think).

My blog will return soon to ponderings on aging; I’m already thinking about the decline of cognitive processing skills in seniors. Before we left, a man I have greatly admired commented with great sorrow that it wasn’t his hearing loss that kept him socially isolated, but his brain which couldn’t process the auditory input even with his cochlear implant. Another of our residents known for his stubborn and feisty nature called me to ask a simple computer question, explaining that those guys at Geek Squad just talked too fast. Here, passengers complain about the accents of staff and guides: “we just don’t understand them, your guides need to speak better English.” That may be partially auditory but I’d bet money that much of their problem is the inability to process the information quickly enough. I’m gathering some data to augment my insights, and pondering the question: Shouldn’t we be talking more about this as seniors?

Before I close this “Transatlantic Treasurers” portion of the blog, it seems fitting to comment on Oceania’s food service, especially as Oceania markets themselves as the culinary experts. For those who might wish details, here’s a photo of one of today’s menus.

From today’s Terrace Cafe, dinner buffet.

Bottom line: Oceania’s food ranges from good to fantastic. At lunch today, Bob had a sumptuous Moroccan meal, with chicken pastilla, beef kefta in yogurt, aubergine chickpea salad, Moroccan bread, cheese briouates and tabouleh. He polished it off. The best samosa I’ve ever had was served as an appetizer on the buffet the other day; flaky tender pastry around a perfectly seasoned, moist chicken/potato/pea filling. The Italian specialty restaurant, according to its Italian maitre’d, has an Italian chef who does nothing all day except make pasta, experimenting with items for the newest of the Oceania ships. I found their Gorgonzola ravioli perfect, and thus was willing to try the egg yolk ravioli in parmesan sauce which was new to me and worth it. Lobster risotto has been another of my favorites, and my go-to lunch has been grilled teriyaki salmon, crunchy on the outside and moist inside.

Worth commenting upon is the ambience and service in the Main Dining Room and the specialty restaurants. Infinite amounts of silverware and plates left me confused about which was a salad fork, a seafood fork, or a butter fork. We learned to wait for staff to push the chair in, and artfully place the napkins on our laps. The wait crew was attentive, fun and interactive. Upon hearing a passenger express gratitude for small servings, one waiter exclaimed laughingly: “In my Serbia, such small servings would be an insult!” Another time, a waiter teased me that she had placed an entree “refill” order for me which was on its way. Almost always, we were called by name. Meanwhile, the buffet restaurant included grill stations and ice cream stations and salad stations and a ton of sushi, along with appetizers and entrees, leaving passengers to roam along the long serving areas to scope things out—not so easy in rolling seas. Ten feet or so of the serving area was dedicated to unbelievably caloric desserts. I requested a fruit plate once, and got mango, pineapple, grapes, honeydew, cantaloupe and kiwi. In the buffet, the waiters bring only drinks and napkin-wrapped cutlery.

Hopefully, I’ve left you hungry and with a visualization of why we may roll home…. Again, thank you all for your support and your comments. See you soon!

Lisbon: We hardly knew you

Sadly, our visit with Lisbon didn’t give us opportunity to fall in love with it. Our ship was in Lisbon only from 7 until 2:30; traffic, crowds were terrible; and our tour guide was adamant that we visit the iconic sights. I did enjoy the Lisbon sights which reminded me of our trip to Brazil more than ten years ago; I will share the iconic sights with you (briefly) and the reminders of Brazil.

Belem Harbor, where Vasco da Gama left for India in 1487.

Brazil taught us to say “Obrigada” for “Thank you”, to really see the incredible tiled walkways, and to laugh at the many jokes about the huge Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janerio. (In Argentina, the snarky joke is that Christ will raise his arms when the Brazilians go to work. Click on the link for more of the Brazilian jokes.) The tile work is laid down by workers, piece by piece, and repaired regularly. Here are some examples:

Tilework near the expensive shopping area.

We saw very little of the tilework on buildings, in contrast to the amount in Porto City. Lisbon experienced earthquake, tsunami and fire in the mid-18th Century, and much of their early architecture (including 150 churches) was lost. Our lecturer also noted that Porto City was more mercantile and less royal than Lisbon, and that merchants were more likely to flaunt their wealth with tilework on their homes.

It seems that a Portuguese priest visited Brazil and decided Portugal should have its own Christ the Redeemer, for which he then raised the money. Sitting across the Tagus River, and beside a bridge strangely similar (and locally called) the Golden Gate bridge, here are some photos of Lisbon’s Christ the Redeemer:

‘Two views of Lisbon’s Christ the Redeemer

Cranes and construction, as in Port City, were everywhere. Again, hotels are replacing banks and transportation is being adjusted to better route tourists to the iconic sites. Unfortunately, another reminder of Brazil were the high-pressure sales tactics of numerous street vendors and the warnings of pickpockets. There was a visible police presence in those crowded areas.

Upon our return to the ship, the Captain announced that Lisbon had been our last port. The planned trip to the Azores would have brought us directly into the path of Hurricane Danielle. Onward to NYC! The sea is beautiful, the sun is bright, and my deck awaits….

Porto City, Portugal – One of tomorrow’s top ten cities?

It would be sooo easy to write the marketing copy for Porto City (as the locals call Oporto). First, I must acknowledge that I know nothing about Portuguese economy or politics…but all of the ingredients for a favored tourist spot are already in place:

Great historical attractions: Forts in beachfront settings, the well-known tiled homes and churches (and lesser known tiled interiors in public buildings).

Modern architecture and street art.

Construction.

Quirkiness. What other European town has both a bookstore where one must stand in a very long line to get entry tickets and also a 16^th century jail graced with a huge statue of a favored author holding his nude mistress? (It seems that JK Rowling did some writing in the bookshop and it’s been mentioned in guidebooks as a “must see.” The statues portray a couple who served time in the jail for adultery: he on the nicer third floor; she relegated to the less nice 2^nd floor.

In front of museum of Photographic Art, once a jail, the adulterous couple.

Stunning beaches.

I love this photo, so you are seeing it twice. This time, notice the beautiful wide public beach.

Of course, there are a lot of tourists taking pictures already….

Porto City is famous as the home of Port Wine, almost an afterthought for this marketing list. Given that red wines give me instant migraines, we didn’t even pursue a sip. The story we were told about the development of Port by a British fellow (who fell off his boat after a Port Party on his estate and drowned because he had a money belt filled with gold. Seriously….) is just one example of a longstanding bond between the UK and Portugal. Clearly, the UK is heavily invested in Portugal still.

Tomorrow, Lisbon and Sunday (Sept 4) the Azores. Then it’s due West for five 25=hour days to NYC. We should be totally disoriented to time and place as we leave the ship on Saturday the 10^th and grab the train home.

Ferrol, Spain – A break before the final push

I chose not to visit this medium-size Spanish town, whose primary tourist attraction is its naval base, huge shipyard and proximity to the Camino de Santiago walk. Instead, I enjoyed total solitude on our sunlit deck, listening to gulls and watching small single-person rowboats quietly fishing for squid. Bob checked out the shipyard, and was suitably impressed with the 600-foot drydock and the sad story that joining the EU resulted in the closure of that shipbuilding business and the subsequent layoff of 40,000 workers. The town is struggling to become a tourist destination, but it’s not there yet.

Ferrol, Spain: calm, peaceful despite being a naval base and armory

We are indeed in the final week of our cruise, more or less. I am starting to think about whether we need to do laundry again, and about ground transportation in NYC from the pier to the train station. I worry a bit about the insurance forms and the medical follow-ups but mostly I am still here and enjoying. I do check email, so we do know that the willow oak for the area behind our cottage has been purchased (thanks Janet, Beth and Kathleen!), that COVID is back in the Health Center, that the laundry fire caused consternation and inconvenience but no major problems. None of that seems urgent or even nearby. We might tire of this floating full-service window to the world after a while, but we aren’t homesick yet.

Le Havre: a UNESCO Heritage Site?

Le Havre is the port via which most cruise ships access Normandy, France. As we arrived, it looked functional and unappealing. I didn’t even take a picture, which would have shown cranes for lifting cargo, huge gas storage tanks, and a refinery. The city was faintly visible from the upper decks, but the buildings appeared to be concrete, commercial, and without color or charm.

Boy, was I surprised to hear our guide, a resident of Le Havre, describe her home as a UNESCO heritage site! She gave a bit of history: Allied bombers during WWII had virtually destroyed the town–a German base, leaving 5000 dead and 87,000 homeless. (One of the disturbing aspects of visiting WWII sites in Germany and France are the reminders of the devastation wrought by our skilled military. It brings home the human cost of war…) After the war, those 87,000 folk wanted desperately to come home, and start their lives in the ruined town. An architect, Auguste Perret, was hired to design and build an entirely new city upon the ruins of the old. In 2005, the city was designated as a UNESCO Heritage site.

Perret used reinforced concrete for speed and efficiency. His plan focused the city on the sea, with a Catholic church greeting a center piece of welcome to sailors and a memorial to those who died. Here are some photos from our ship, which I shot as we departed:

There are lessons here: colorless may not be drab; sometimes a closer look is needed to appreciate the details; not all UNESCO Heritage Sites are medieval.

I asked two of our shipmates, who had gone to the city market in Le Havre, if they found the city attractive. Both had seen it as functional, but unattractive. What do you think?

Oops! Almost forgot the one element of the city I found totally charming: Street art. For one of its anniversaries, the city invited sculptures. The sculpture so charmed the City Council that they have kept it. Can you guess what it is made of? I love it simply for its color in this otherwise very pale city…

Le Havre waterfront; take a close look at the colorful arch on the right (made of cargo containers, of course!)

We did Paris!

Sunday, virtually no traffic, a warm sunny day….almost 3 hours of driving to get there, and another three back…but we had a good four hours of seeing the sights. Again, click for a larger picture. I don’t think most need captions…

I liked this simple statue of Churchill, with the text “We will never surrender.” at the Grand Palace.

We people watched while eating in an outdoor cafe on Champs Elysees. Bob took about 200 pictures, and thought he was in paradise. As we arrived in the city (10:00am or so), folk were lining up to get into the stores (why?); as we left around 2:00, the crowds and clouds were rolling in. Those clouds brought waves and swells for the evening. More are promised for tonight, and our captain is leaving France early for a sea day tomorrow. Bob is currently at Mont St. Michel; I am resting my feet and enjoying the solitude (though I would enjoy it more if our balcony furniture weren’t tied down). I’ll never be a Francophile, but the Paris trip was definitely a success.

Another post about Le Havre will follow….

With apologies to Ghent, Belgium

Today’s trip to Ghent, Belgium totally changed my disinterest in “yet another Hanseatic League city.” These buildings, though clearly similar to ones we saw in Riga, Latvia and Lubeck, Germany in our previous trip and Nyhavn in Copenhagen, were built in dverse styles in different centuries—and had an unmistakable charm all their own. Sorry, Ghent, for dismissing you so casually.

From the bridge over one of the canals we traversed in Ghent.

The trip began and ended with some hiccups: to start with, the tour guide repeatedly insisted that Brugges (just down the road from Ghent) had lost its eminence with the discovery of America by Columbus, and by the anti-industrial posture of the Catholic Church. The larger ships of Columbus-era replaced the smaller canal boats used to transport goods. Just too glib and over-simplified for me to swallow.

It turns out that the guide lives in central Brugges, overrun (she said) with tourists who consider it Disneyland. Her only nearby restaurants serve pizza and fries; grocery stores have been replaced with souvenir shops. Brugge’s economy (and hers) is totally dependent upon those dreaded tourists, the good and the bad of the tourist economy. But let me show you pictures of Ghent; just don’t expect any historical detail: (By the way, I haven’t mentioned this before, but you can click on the picture to enlarge it…)

One of the more elaborate guildhalls, with a simpler one beside it.,

We ate a quick lunch at a streetside cafe with this view.

The canal here is loaded with sidewalk cafes. This was the view from the one we choose.

We arrived at Zeebrugges port, which our guide said is now secondary to Antwerp and mostly handles cars. This very busy cargo ship port is surrounded by tight security and razor wire to ensure that “no transnationals” attempt to stow away to the UK where “IDs are not required for jobs.” Our crew members were not allowed to leave the ship, for fear that they too would depart for the UK, or become involved in helping some one else. We were told to carry our passport throughout the day. Sadly, a passenger had her passport and credit card stolen, which meant she was not allowed to continue the cruise. With her luggage, she was disembarked to Brussels, entrusted to a dock agent and left desperately hoping that the US Embassy can provide a replacement passport in time for her flight home from Le Havre tomorrow. Continuing the plight of large urban areas, two couples missed the departure of the ship this evening… and then there was the second hiccup of the day:

As we left Ghent to return to the ship, I lost Bob. We had boarded the bus; he was right behind me, but I couldn’t see him on the bus. Fearing that he had paused to take one last picture or had climbed onto the wrong bus, I asked the tour guide to help locate him. She ran helter-skelter from bus to bus looking for him–and ten minutes later, we found him on our bus, in a seat I could not see. Bob had heard his name, my voice and the commotion but didn’t think it had anything to do with him; the guide could simply have called his name over the bus PA; and I could have double-checked the bus myself. He is now known as “infamous Bob.”

For a couple of final treats….

This lovely art work was peeking at us from an art museum on our canal cruise.

Kiel Canal

This morning we ejected ourselves from the Baltic Sea, via the Kiel Canal into the North Sea. The Kiel Canal is a 61-mile shortcut (like the C&O Canal in Maryland and many more in the US) which opened in 1895. Of course, back then who knew that the Canal would open the Baltic Sea to invasive life from the Atlantic…but not to worry; the Baltic Sea has too little oxygen and salt for most healthy Atlantic life forms. There is very little life in the Baltic Sea to be invaded.

The North Sea is a very busy place. Joining the plethora of cargo ships on the North Sea are the trawling fishing boats, ships carrying propane and natural gas and huge windmill farms—all testament to the power of economic products (as is our cruise ship, for that matter).

Look closely, and you will see a train of 3 cargo ships.

Most of our fellow passengers disembark on Friday, the 27^th in Le Havre. Some will be whisked home via air; others will stay and play a while in Europe. Guesses are that half of us will remain on board for the final ports and sea days, and a few will board. As an end-of-cruise ritual, all passengers were asked to complete a marketing survey. Separately, both Bob and I wrote “probably not” when asked if we would cruise again. While we are glad to have taken this cruise, and survived it, our age has been undeniable. (Bob just burst into the room announcing: “We are old.” It seems he couldn’t push the shuffleboard disc to the end of the court. That may be more muscle tone, and less age, but still…)

Our next port is Zeebrugge, gateway to Brussels and Brugge and Ghent in Belgium. Really ashamed and sorry to say this, but I don’t care a lot. Medieval towns built by and for craftsmen in the Hanseatic trading league look a whole lot like Copenhagen’s Nyhavn. Even thinking of Belgian chocolate doesn’t loosen my lassitude. We will take a simple canal trip in Ghent, and move on to Le Havre, where Bob’s lifelong dream of a trip to Paris will run smack into the practicality of 6 hours of bus travel for a few hours of bus touring and “free” time for lunch. He will be able to say he has been there.

Clearly, my mood needs a few hours of sunshine on the deck.

Helsinki, Finland…Wow!

From our balcony, the town of Helsinki, Finland. The tents are market stalls; the orange ones are food. You can see the ferry on the left, the swim club in the foreground, the Cathedral Dome in the background. From our BALCONY!

I quickly forgot my angst at missing the architectural tour at Copenhagen. Finland is the home of Eliel Saarinen, Alvar Aalto, and more. The city was laid out on pretty much bare ground by a German architect (Charles Engel) hired by Russian Czar Alexander II. Charles Engel designed most of the buildings surrounding the Senate Square to look like St. Petersburg, Russia, as the Czar requested. You can see the connection.

By the early 1900s, Finland began its “Finnish Nationalistic Style”–almost an exaggeration of Art Deco.

But my favorite of all is this masterpiece..

The Helsinki Library. Look closely and you can see the people reading and working inside. Stunning!

Still more in that modern vein:

Helsinki Music Theater (most is underground). Please note the upright pike on the right.

And so much more! Marimekko is a chain store (does anybody else but me remember Marimekko fabrics?) Neither my camera nor our internet connection can show any more, and I don’t have time to share the other wonderful things about Finland (such as their police fired a total of 7 bullets last year, and their Prime Minister is a young female who travels the city without guards or fears of terroism).

Isafjordur, Iceland

I am so incredibly bummed that I can’t figure out the electronics of the ship’s crazy internet in order to share my pictures with you….one of these days.

Isafjordur is unlike anyplace we have been. A town of nearly 3000, it has almost no trees or bushes. The rough and jagged peaks (looks like Switzerland, with less height) are covered in moss and lichen and brilliant green. When snow falls, there really is nothing to stop it and half a village was totally destroyed by avalanche 20 years ago. Obviously too steep for downhill skiing! The mountains surround several picturesque fjords (as in those Greenland photos) filled with fish.

We are just barely south of the Arctic circle, so after our tour this morning in rainy 42 degrees, I’m still cold. We are still in white night; the sun officially sets around 10pm and rises at 4am, but it never really gets dark. Apparently, December and January are completely sunless, as the mountains block what little bit of winter sun might struggle to get in.

The Arctic Fox, poor thing, is besieged as eider down is a big industry. The fox, the only indigenous mammal in all of Iceland, likes to eat eider duck and duck eggs–I am reminded of Idaho in which the ranchers hatted the sheepherders for ruining the pasture but both really, really hated the wolf. Bye-bye, wolf. There appears to be very little interest in saving the fox. Eider down is collected from the eider duck nests after the ticks in it have been frozen to death, combed and sold at big prices.

Stories of trolls, the “hidden folk” were legion. The winter wind tends to drive cars off the road, so mountain tunnels were built to connect several villages about ten years ago. The tunnels ran into constant problems until the wise villagers decided to humor the trolls with a festival in their honor; the problems subsequently stopped. There is no wood here; Iceland has established a goal of 2% tree coverage. Currently, the only wood comes from Siberian logs washed to shore or via boat from Norway. Houses are made of corrugated steel, and nestled tightly amidst the stores and businesses. No zoning. And no solar energy; energy is all hydroelectric as water melts and flows off the mountains.

The long, dark, cold winters encourage a ton of winter sports. 5-year olds celebrate Kindergarten graduation with a climb up a mountain. This little town has hockey, football, soccer, biking, hiking, cross-country skiing and — music. We were audience for a young musician who explained that music training starts typically at 5 years old, and extends through high school. There are two music schools in town; everyone (we’re told) plays an instrument.

Our next stop will be equally cold and unpronounceable: Akureyri, Iceland where the tectonic plates meet and volcanoes, lava fields, geysers and waterfalls are the attraction. A part of me mourns the inevitable impact of tourism on these little communities. My folks lived in the Virgin Islands, and we witnessed firsthand what ravaging tourists looking for something new can do. That will happen here, too, and yet Iceland is actively pursuing the tourist economy; it’s a big business.

Bob is now recovered from COVID, but will remain isolated until two negative antigen tests ensure that he is no longer contagious. It’s been a long stretch, not the start of the trip we planned. Oddly we are grateful that the trip is 46 days; we are assured that we still have positive experiences ahead of us.