From the New Orleans Menu Daily By Tom Fitzmorris June 2007 Back to May 2007     Forward to July 2007 Cruise Journal Italy, Turkey, and Greece, Aboard The Carnival Freedom Sunday, June 17. Off To The Med. One of the advantages of European cruises is that you don't have to be at the airport before dawn. It was early enough, though. Most of us were mostly ready to go; as usual, I had a couple of miscellaneous duties that seemed to make no sense on the day one is leaving for two weeks, but I save these till last. In this case, it was autographing and mailing half-dozen cookbook orders that came in during the past few days, to avoid being yelled at by rightly indignant customers when I get back in two weeks. At the airport with time to spare, at around eleven. We flew to Atlanta, where we had a four-hour stopover awaiting. It would grow to five hours, but in a way that was better than what happened to some of our group who had an earlier flight: they were stuck in the airplane for two hours, while the mechanics fixed the oxygen system. (We only had a problem with the video.) I hear this problem made the news that night. While waiting for our plane, we looked about for lunch. "What I really want is a wedge salad with blue cheese and bacon," said Mary Leigh. That specific desire gave her first priority in choosing the venue--a small advantage, given that even the best choice of a place to eat in an airport is a poor one. It was communally decided that Concourse E, where we were to board, was culinarily inferior to inferior to Concourses A, B, and T. So we took the terminal train to those, only to find almost nothing of interest except to me. That was a Nathan's hot dog franchise. I got one with sauerkraut, and I was fully satisfied. But nobody else was. After we wandered with no results through the three terminals, Mary Ann asked at the information desk for an opinion on the best concourse for food. "Oh, absolutely Concourse E," said the lady behind the counter. So back there we trekked. The girls put our names on the half-hour waiting list at TGI Friday's, but then decided that the Mexican place would be better. Then changed their minds yet again and went to the Chinese kiosk. I had a smoothie, and picked at the unwated parts of the others' repasts. The most interesting item was an order of queso dip, in which cheese could not have ranked higher than third in relative occurrence in the concoction, behind some kind of stock and peppers. The flight to Rome departed an hour late. I had a cocktail called the Summer Sizzler--Amaretto and green apple martini mix. Interesting, but too sweet, I thought. I have not surveyed two-third of Delta's drink menu; I'll fill in the final blank on the way home. (So far, the Mile-High Mohito is winning.) Dinner was chicken with chipotle sauce, corn, sweet potatoes, a dried-our radish salad, and a brownie, with a little bottle of red Bordeaux. Not terrible, but it goes without saying that it's a long way from the transatlantic meals of twenty years ago. Not long after dinner, we hit a three-hundred-mile area of turbulence, with one especially bad jiggle. The pilot took the plane up to thirty-eight thousand feet--high enough that my ears had problems equalizing, and the temperature inside the plane went up. (You reach an altitude where, after many layers of sub-zero temperatures, it starts getting hot enough to potentially affect the jet engines. I did not tell Mary Ann about this.) The movie--Breach, about an FBI agent who compromised secutiry for a long time--was too boring to watch. So I tried to sleep, and more or less succeeded. I think I got at least three hours in before we landed in Rome, at around noon on. . . Monday, June 18. Rome. The Striped Smokestack. As the airplane circled Rome's Fiumicini airport (interesting: what is now the airport was in ancient times the seaport for the city), we saw the highly recognizable, red-and-white striped smokestack at Civitavecchia, where the ship docks. That's a good fifty miles from the airport, and a familiar sight from past sailings. The airport-to-ship routine went smoothly, and we were aboard the Carnival Freedom by around three. Our first activity after checking in was predictable. Mary Ann and the kids wanted to hit the poolside grill; I have a tradition of stopping the first waiter I see walking around with the hurricane-style glass full of the day's drink special, some sort of fruit-juicy rum drink that was established in my mind on a 1974 trip to Jamaica as the essential Welcome To Anywhere cocktail. "May I get you a drink, sir?" Yes, I want that one you're carrying. "It's a--" Right. Just give it over, right here, right now. Then a long nap, from which I arose at about five-thirty, groggy as all get out, but energized and refreshed enough to make it through the evening without falling asleep at the table. We made it through the lifeboat drill (without question the most boring part of any cruise; at least this one wasn't bilingual, as it was on our last cruise), then headed down to dinner. At our document party at Drago's a week ago, I took the impression that we have an unusually convivial bunch of people traveling with us. That was borne out at tonight's premier dinner in the Chic Dining Room (the other one on this ship is called the Posh; it sounds like a girl hip-hop team). Everybody seemed to hit it off right away, and that doesn't usually happen until at least three days into the cruise. This was particularly true at our table, which had the added lubrication of a bottle of wine bought for us by the ship. It was the usual opening night menu, whose highlights were a great asparagus soup (minus the little floater of bearnaise sauce that had been here in previous years; I guess the kitchen got tired of the extra effort); a wedge salad with blue cheese (so Mary Leigh finally had that urge satisfied); a rack of lamb; a sirloin steak with three-peppercorn sauce; and a four-way Indian-style vegetarian platter. I had the lamb and the Indian platter; I always get the latter as a vegetable side, sharing it with the others at the table. The chef is Indian, so this is better than one might imagine. Mary Leigh must have been very tired indeed. She left before dessert, knowing that the molten chocolate cake would be there. She will eat one of these every night for the duration of the cruise to make up for lost time. I had my usual cheese plate, which I see has shrunk in size dramatically. I could have had another if I liked, but I think I'll take the hint and make an elegant sufficiency do. After dinner, I dropped down to the karaoke bar to see what was shaking there. The room was almost empty, and so few would-be singers were there that the host and I alternated songs to keep things going. I did six numbers from a catalog that was very short of my kind of music. Fortunately, it has several of the ones I'll need if they're still doing that Carnival Idol contest they had back in January. I would have had a shot of Dalwhinnie Scotch, but I was so busy singing that the one waitress never came around to ask me whether I wanted a drink. So I went back to the room at midnight without a nightcap--a very unusual turn of events for me on a cruise. Maybe this will set a pattern of forbearance for this trip. But I wouldn't bet on it. Tuesday, June 19. Naples. I was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by what I dreamed was someone bouncing a basketball on a balcony outside our room. When what little part of my working brain realized that the sound was actually caused by the door separating our balcony from that of the kids, I got up and moved the furniture out there to eliminate that. Unfortunately, we have a pair of rooms that will not allow the door between the balconies to be opened without blocking one of the doors to the rooms; someone must have attempted to block it with chairs, which had no chance of holding against the wind at sea. I had no luck getting back to sleep in the next hour, so I awoke, dressed, and went down to breakfast. I discovered, to my disappointment, that the egg specials the ship has offered on the lst few cruises have been eliminated. "They were not very popular," said the waiter. But I loved them, I said. They were so unusual and good that I began ordering them without even asking what they were. (Which saved a lot of time, because usually the waiter didn't know anyway.) "You must have been the only one who did that," said the waiter. "Very few people were interested." I think this was because the waiters did a poor job of relating what the special were. There goes my main reason for breakfasting in the formal dining room. This will return me to the fruit-and-pastry breakfasts I had before the advent of the egg specials. Again, as with the smaller cheese plate at last night's dinner, this may be a good thing. I had a latte, exchanged some currency (the exchange rate for the euro is unspeakably low), and returned to the room, surprised by the fact that Mary Ann--usually the first one up, especially on a day with a lot of shore activity like today--was still sound asleep. My entering the room got her up, and telling her what time it was--eight o'clock, for goodness sake, an hour after the ship had docked--made her swing into action, mobilizing the kids for a full day. We met a few of our group at nine and set out into Naples. Since our first visit here four years ago, Mary Ann has wanted to tour the city on foot. We never did because of the other options in this port: Capri, Ischia, the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento, Pompeii and Herculaneum. We have been warned that Naples is the New Orleans of Italy: a poor, unkempt, under-educated, high-unemployment port city with distinctive food, insane drivers (they have New Orleans and, in fact, every other city I've been to beat badly in that department), and a high crime rate. We suspected that we'd be able to handle all that, and indeed we did. The city is in poor repair and quite as dirty as advertised, but the architecture is marvelous and the sights quite as nice as all but the ancient features of Rome. We wandered about for three hours with two other couples (we had three at first, but one found Mary Ann's serendipitous touring style too aimless for their taste), getting to the top of Naples's central, lofty hilltop by way of a funicular--a sort of train that goes up its rails at an extremely rakish angle. After wandering around a bit, we found the monastery from which one gets the best view of the entire city. From there, Naples's surprising size became clear. Some three million people live in the area. We took a different funicular down, and began looking for the pizzeria we'd told the other Eat Clubbers we'd try for lunch: Pizzeria di Matteo, allegedly Bill Clinton's favorite place fo some pie. We alked past it three times before seeing it, because it looks like one of the dozens of windows selling slices of pizza to pedestrians. Its dining rooms were hidden, but there they were. The waiter brought us up a steep flight of stairs to empty rooms upstairs; we had the impression they were hiding us. An hour later, however, the place was full. Everybody else was Napolitano. Not only that, but each one ordered his own pizza. We did that too, thinking that the small pies we saw on display downstairs would be what would come for the four-to-five-euro price. In fact, these were a good ten inches in diamter; onle Jude and I managed to pack ours away. A long time ago, someone told me that real Italian pizza is more like a soup. I didn't understand that until today. Di Matteo's pizzas are certified Pizza Vera alla Napolitana a distinction, given only to pizzerias whose product meets all the standards of the traditional Naples pizza. This is meaningful, since Naples claims to have invented the pizza, and is very proud of it. The pizzas on our table had great thin crusts, blackened and blistered here and there by the intense heat of the dome-shaped, wood-burning oven. But the toppings were, indeed, almost soupy. You could not slice it; the traditional way to eat it is to use a knife and fork to tear off irregular sections, which you then fold over to keep the highly liquid toppings form flowing out. I thought Di Matteo's pizza was terrific, and I should: my own pizzas are very similar to these. I had no idea I was making Pizza Vera. My opinion was not shared by all at the table, but nobody denied the place was fun. Best of all: the checks were insanely low. One couple had two pizzas, a beer, and a whole bottle of wine for eighteen euros. Our three pizzas, two beers, and three bottles of water was a ridiculous twenty-five euros. This was more than enough to take all the pain out of the awful exchange rate. Mary Ann wanted to go to the Archeaological Museum, which collects many artifacts from Pompeii. We arrived to discover the place was closed on Tuesdays. We walked to the one and only church we wanted to see; improbably, it too was closed on Tuesday. As we strolled along toward these destinations, we saw every shop close for lunch as we passed, as if our advent had caused a wave. The afternoon break is sacred in this land, as it should be. I felt especially gritty when I returned to the ship, and the source was easy to figure: a pall of smog lay over this land. I wonder if that comes from Mount Vesuvius, or the few other active vents of natural pollution in this volcanic land, or from man-made stuff. The hundreds of thousands (this is not an exaggeration) of motorbikes of various kinds probably don't help. We had a few near-collisions with these things, which don't stay in lanes, signal turns or otherwise do anything predictable. After a great hour-long nap, I went down to the Habana Bar, the expansive cigar bar where some other good things happen. Przemik, the one-name Polish pianist who was on last years Med cruise, is here again. He's a young man we got to know then because Jude was just getting fired up about playing the keyboards He remains Przemik's biggest fan, I think. Last year, Przemik began what we thought was a Polish joke: "Do you know why there are very few pianists from Poland?" The answer it turned out, was entirely serious: "Because there are not enough pianos to go around in Poland, so young people play the guitar instead." He was one of the lucky ones. I noted in the almanac that today is National Dry Martini Day. I observed this with a couple of our fellow travelers while waiting for dinner. It was pleasant enough, with the music of Przemik in the background, that we decided to get to the dining room late and have another round. It was beef Wellington night in the Chic; this was heavy on the mushroom duxelles, but reasonably good. I took the opportunity to order a wine we've had on every cruise since the first one: Vinum Cabernet Sauvignon, from South Africa. It's not as big and black as the first time we encountered it, but it's still very good for the money--$30 on the ship's wine list. That's up three dollars from 2002. After dinner, I retired to the Habana Bar again to listen to the Gavin Ahearn trio. That jazz combo was also on our last cruise, and they're absolutely terrific. I could listen to them all night. Mary Ann decided she would be a good wife and join me for the listening--a sacrifice on her part. She isn't moved by music, but she knows I love this stuff, and just sat there watching me have a shot of Dalwhinnie in a snifter. She would tell me the next morning that the idea of sitting in a cigar bar listening to jazz while I drink Scotch is her equivalent of having burning bamboo splinters shoved under her fingernails. I appreciate the sacrifice, but let her off this particular hook for the rest of our lives. Wednesday, June 20. At Sea; Dinner Wih Louis XIV; Gentle On My Mind. It's a day at sea aboard the Carnival Freedom, and very welcome. I am attempting for the first time (because this is the first time I've had easy internet access on a ship) to keep up daily publication of the New Orleans Menu newsletter, even if it has to be in attenuated form. There is officially nothing on the schedule today, but I managed to stay very busy. I knocked out a bunch of writing, inclusing a CityBusiness column, before lunch. Mary Ann joined me at about one for lunch. It was my first pass this trip through one of my favorite of the ship's cafes: "Fish And Chips," which not only offers the eponymous dish, but also a very good bouillabaisse and seared rare tuna, served atop a cube of watermelon. That not only looked good but was a nice flavor combination, too. An oddly comforting ritual for me on cruises is my daily walk all over the ship to deliver the daily bulletin I write for all the people traveling with me. (Actually, this trip Mary Ann saved me a lot of time by researching and writing most of that.) On Deck Six I encountered a half-dozen people of Far Eastern origin, standing in the hallway, wearing the bathrobes the ship provides in the cabins. As I approached this group, more of these folks, all dressed the same, converged on the spot. By the time I worked my way through them, there were at least fifteen members of the Society of the Bathrobe milling about, laughing. A few of them opened their bathrobes to reveal that they were fully clothed underneath--which was a relief. I asked what this was about, but nobody in the group spoke English. Or, perhaps, they were not willing to impart the secrets of the Society. Coincidentally, it was not tea time. This sedate event has ben moved from the cigar bar, where it's been on every previous cruise, to the upper deck of the main dining room. The classical quartet was there as always, and it was as pleasant as always to partake of the tea, smoked salmon, scones, and pastries. (As if another meal were needed on the gist.) Connie Atkinson showed up for tea and we caught up with one another. She and I had worked together in the 1970s at Figaro, the weekly newspaper where I cut my journalistic teeth. She is now a professor at UNO, specializing in literature and popular music or something like that. She told me she got her PhD. in this in Liverpool, where she lived for a number of years (the British tea service recalling this for her). She would show up later with the most elegant evening gown I've seen on any of the women in our group--tonight being formal night. After all this rigorous activity, I went up for a nap. I didn't realize it until after I awoke, but the door to the balcony was open a crack. This allowed air to hiss out, but I mistook the sound for that of waves or something equally comforting. The nap was especially relaxing as a result. Maybe this is why they make those gadgets that create white noise. It does seem to work. One of the great challenges for me as group leader is to orchestrate the taking of our group photo. We must do it early in the cruise, on the first formal night, to get everybody dressed up. To have everyone show up is an accomplishment. To get them to move to the picture-taking spot is like herding cats. We do it in the central bar, at the time of day when the drinks are cheap, so at least we had that attraction. That done, I herded the cats over to the captain's cocktail party, egging them on with the promise of free cocktails and appetizers. I met a woman dressed in the full white uniform that the captain also wore. Knowing full well the answer, I asked whether she were the captain. She said no, laughing. I asked her where she was from: England. "You'll never be the captain, then," I said. "Not because you're a woman, but because you're not Italian." It seems that Italian origin is a requirement for the captain's job with Carnival; every single captain in their fleet is from the boot. I continue to fail in getting a straight answer as to why this is so. During the party, we encountered a woman with whom I did a duet on the first night in the karaoke bar. When she heard my name then, she said her husband's name was also Tom. Her name was Marianne--the way many people misspell my Mary Ann's name. What are the chances? Tom and Mary Ann spoke with Tom and Marianne for awhile, trying to make something further of this coincidence. Tonight was our dinner for four in the supper club. The one on this ship is called The Sun King, and the design is such that Louis XIV may well have been pleased. The menu is the same as it has been on previous voyages; so, too was the musical offering, a boy-girl duet from the Phillippines. (For some reason, Filipino duets seem to have as tight a hold on this particular gig as the Italians have on the captain's chair.) Appetizers: crab cakes, onion soup (Mary Ann says this is the best she's ever had), Caesar salad (they toss it at the table, but the dressing is already made, making the ritual a mere illusion), and a small crepe atop smoked salmon and salmon caviar, with a lemon cream sauce. Steaks all around for the entrees. I noticed that, after a couple of years of not making a statement about the grade of the beef, they're back to claiming that it's prime. I had the strip with peppercorn sauce, which was thick and charred as I requested. The others had filets, and were entirely pleased. The cuts were very generous; I'd say they were underseasoned. (Few steak cooks put enough salt on the beef before it hits the grill.) We opened a bottle of Alexis 2000, the Syrah-Cabernet b lend from Swanson in Napa; that's a good, fruity wine. Mary Leigh had her intense chocolate café for dessert. An all-French cheese plate big enough for four (but I was the only one interested) was full of nicely ripe flavors, all making big statements I enjoyed. After everyone else left, I stayed to talk with the folks at the next table, who were part of our group. We told Cajun jokes and other stories while finishing the wines. It resulted in our closing the Sun King down for the night. Closing restaurants is an area of particular deftness for Orleanians. I retired to the karaoke theatre for a glass of port and a few songs: "Gentle On My Mind," "Blue Moon" in the style of the Marcels, and "Only You." For the latter, I have a piece of business in which I rip off my jacket and throw it to the floor, but in so doing I knocked the microphone off the stage. I got a standing ovation anyway, which must have meant that everybody else was right up with me on alcohol consumption. Thursday, June 21. Seven Springs, A Dark Tunnel, A Perfect Greek Lunch. It's the solstice, and it feels like it. The prediction that the high temperature in Rhodes would be seventy-six degrees must have been a typo; it was actually twenty degrees higher than that. Rhodes is a large island off the coast of Turkey, but it's part of Greece and very Greek. I got the chance to use the two years of Greek I took at Jesuit--not to understand the language, of course, but to transliterate the road signs, only some of which are written in Latin letters. We'd rented a car (a Fiat Panda, which was cute but fantastically underpowered) with the idea of driving to a couple of spots that intrigued Mary Ann. The first of these was Epta Pygos--seven springs. Getting there required a climb up a necessarily rough-surfaced, one-lane road that curved through hills that reminded me a lot of the Big Bend country of West Texas, or perhaps New Mexico. Dry and rocky, the countryside throughout the island was like this, with a big sky and goats wandering loose along shoulders. The seven springs fed cold water into a small stream which disappeared into a tunnel that ran about the length of a football field through one of the hills. The appeal was that one could walk though this tunnel, if one were willing to put up with a) very cold water, even on this hot day and b) pitch-black darkness for most of the way. Mary Ann considered the idea but rejected it as too claustrophobic. She egged on Jude and Mary Leigh to do it, however. (I had the wrong clothes and shoes on, and took the position that somebody had to wait at the end to take the victory photographs.) Amazingly, there was no charge for doing this. A little café under the trees gave the opportunity to remunerate the owners, but all we bought from them were some bottles of water before we moved on. Our ultimate goal was the town of Lyndos, which proved to be a gem. It's below an ancient citadel on a hill, with a lovely blue-water bay and beach. The lanes between the uniformly white houses (the classic Greek look) are so narrow that automobile traffic stops at the outskirts of the town. People get around on donkeys. I didn't learn this until we were deep inside, and then--while a mammoth bus waited impatiently behind me--I kept killing the engine of the Panda as I tried to get the damn thing to climb the steep incline away from the place. We parked (at a meter!) and descended, looking for lunch, among other things. We found it at a place called the Mideast, whose deck overlooked everything. The very casually dressed owner was most hospitable, and cooked up a repast of cheese saganaki bubbling with sausage in a baking dish (it was sort of a pizza with no crust or sauce), spaghetti with red sauce, spaghetti carbonara, and a salad Caprese, with ripe tomato slices and fresh mozzarella. I was surprised by all the Italian food on the menu, but we would see a great deal more of that in the coming days, everywhere we went in not only Greece but Turkey, too. I think Italian food is taking over the casual restaurants of the world. My dish, however, was pure Greek and delicious: roast lamb leg with roasted potatoes and a sauce of lemon, olive oil, oregano, and parsley. It was everything I wanted from a Greek lunch. Mary Ann and the kids went down the slope to the beach to score a swim in the blue waters. When they returned, Jude reported the inevitable: there were topless women down there. Everywhere such situations turn up, I am absent. The drive back was very pleasant--this is a very pretty place, in its arid way--and I practiced Greek passing. Here's how it works. When you want to go around a car moving too slowly for your taste, you don't wait until oncoming traffic passes. You just go. The car you're passing moves a little to the right. The oncoming cars move to their right. And you just go right up the middle. There's no lane there--you're straddling the center line. It works better than you might imagine. We were back at five-thirty, but by the time I showered and napped it got to be eight. We went down severally to dinner, which was plagued with mistaken orders, but blessed with a lot of fish: swordfish with a red wine sauce and potatoes, a very dry version of cioppino with one of everything, an appetizer bouillabaisse much thicker (and not as good) as the one in Fish and Chips, and some delightful variations on smoked salmon rolls. I begged everyone in the group to come to karaoke this evening. It was the auditions for the Carnival Legends show, in which guests are asked to portray various famous singers. The only one of interest to me is Frank Sinatra, and I wanted to make sure I had enough claque present to give me the gig. They whooped up loudly, and I was named the Sinatra of the cruise for the third time. I will sing My Way (I wish it were something else, but the show is tightly formatted) on the night we leave Livorno. So far, this cruise is everything I was hoping for, and the group may be the best bunch of people we've ever had. The only problem has been one I expect: people find the tours sold on the ship unimpressive. One lady told me that the tour to Lyndos she'd bought for two hundred bucks consisted of a two-hour bus ride there and another one back, with only enough time in the town to get a lemon ice. We subtly suggest to all our people that they might be better off getting cabs or just walking around on their own. Maybe we ought to state our aversion to organized tours a little more strongly. I have found the perfect spot to write all this stuff. I pick an out-of-the way table in the buffet dining room on the Lido deck, which has big windows on both sides. And I just start writing, refilling my coffee or lemonade every now and then. Friday, June 22. Asia Minor. All our research on the city of Izmir--the Turkish name for Smyrna--seemed to point to the need to go to Ephesus, one of the cradles of Christianity. To that end Mary Ann reserved a car. But we ran into a problem: we couldn't find the car rental office. We got what sounded like good advice from a group of cab drivers, who had a confab on our problem. They, like everybody else we met here, were so eager to help us that it shattered any illusions we may have had that this exotic Islamic city of three million was in anything less than hospitable. We went in the direction they pointed, but after walking well more than the kilometer range within which we'd find the car rental, all we had to show for it was an entirely enjoyable stroll along the waterfront. Lining the broad sidewalk were dozens of cafes, each one sleeker and more inviting than the last. We finally settled into a place whose name we could never figure out, and I had my first taste of Turkish coffee. It is reputed to be as much a solid as it is a liquid. It packs a big flavor, that's for certain. It's made sweet to begin with, and has so much coffee slurry floating around that it's more bitter than espresso. Then you get to the point where there is no more liquid--just a quarter-inch or so of pure sludge. You have to stop before you hit that. We also had what the waiter called a Turkish breakfast: a fried egg, wedges of two different cheeses, a sausage that looked like a very large hot dog sliced thin (we would see this stuff again and again on grills elsewhere in town), sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and little ramekins of honey, blueberries, and some sort of red fruit, with slices of French bread. We moved on, the prospect of a drive to Ephesus fading as other attractions turned up. We kept seeing vendors selling what looked like a cross between a pretzel and a bagel, encrusted with sesame seeds. So we bought a couple of them. Good! Then we encountered a number of people working around a vat of hot oil into which an improbably complex gizmo released toruses of dough. These beignet-like doughnuts then got a splash of some kind of light syrup. Suddenly, I found handed to me a little container bearing four of them, still too hot to eat. I reached into my pocket for some coins, but the lady who gave them to me held up her hand and refused it. Ah! She's trying to sample me so I'll buy a box of a dozen. But no. I could not get any of these folks to take my money. One of the men turned to me, pointed up, said, "We do for Gott!", and folded his hands. "For God! For Allah!" I said. "Allah," he smiled. These people just keep getting better. We were soon in a rambling street market, which went on for many blocks. Men kept coming up to us to ask that we take a look at their leather, jewelry, carpets, or kebabs. They would stay with us for a long way, never impolite, and never approaching more than one at a time. They were so polite that it was hard to refuse them at least a look into their shops. Even then, as they continued their relentless salesmanship, they never became even slightly irritating. We found them actually fun to talk with. We wound up with two rings for the girls. I liked the lamps, and was looking at an unusual violin (they even let me play it), but I got a look from Mary Ann that my buying such things would not meet with her approval. So I settled for a Turkish lunch. We'd seen an appealing place under a canopy of vines around the corner from the ring shop, and the owner captivated me by handing me his business card--printed on the package of a moist towelette. (What a great idea! I think I'll have some of these made for myself.) On our way back there, the call to prayer was issued from speakers throughout the market, and men filled all the passageways with their prayer carpets (or, in some cases, flattened cardboard boxes). I've seen Muslims at prayer before, but never this many in one place--let alone so public a place. They moved in unison, but between the movements each had his personal style of prayer. It went on for about fifteen minutes, and necessitated the closing of many (but not most) of the shops. The men running the restaurant acted as if the praying men weren't even there, and explained to us all the different ways in which we could sample the kebaps (the Turkish spelling). The first time I passed through, they had me sample the donar--slices of lamb piled up on a vertical spit and rotaging before a fire, like a gyros. This was incomparably better than gyros, though. A few slices of fat surmounted the lean lamb, keeping it moist. The chef took a very sharp knife to the pile, slicing off very thin slices of the lamb, each with a slightly crusty edge formed by the heat of the rotisserie. It was so delicious that even Mary Leigh--not one to try anything new, she'd never eaten lamb before--had to admit that she liked it. The donar was the best thing on the plate, but the kofte kebap was a close second. Like an elongated hamburger, it was spicy and crusty. Chunks of chicken, lamb, beef, tomato, and peppers had also been pulled off shishes for our pleasure. I aksed the waiter what he would drink with this; he recommended a yogurt drink, a little salty in the way Indian lassi is. It doesn't fit the profile of a drink for the American palate, but I have to admit that it made all the grilled meats taste even better. Then came the inevitable argument about which was the best route to take to the ship, with tension by the fact that we had barely enough time to get there. We went by a different route that took us down narrow, cobblestoned streets that reminded me a bit of the French Quarter. Mary Ann said that this was still not the really old part of town, and I suspect she's right. We were on board at 5:20--ten minutes early. Mary An is thinking that she could have climbed aother mountain or shopped another shop in that time instead of wasting it by cooling off, cleaning up, and resting, but I try to ignore this. I know I will never persuade her otherwise, not she me. Przemik was playing in the cigar bar before dinner. He's much more playful in performance than he was last year. He was in the middle of a soft classical melody when he noticed the bartender was shaking a martini. He shifted into a rhumba while the shaking went on, then went right back to the soft melody. He played a very high note, and pretended that reaching that far caused him to tilt the bench that way; a few people thought he was falling off for real. As of today I am completely convinced that it's best to arrive ten to fifteen minutes late for dinner. Not only does this avoid the line to get into the dining room (why do people waste ten or more minutes in that unpleasantness?), but for the first few minutes the waiters do very little. I'd prefer lingering in the bar with a few of our people. I started with escargots served atop what appeared to be grits (but was probably polenta). Good taste, but not served hot--a persistent problem when hundreds of people are served simultaneously, but the first time I've encountered it on this trip. The waiter talked he into getting the filet mignon, telling me the sauce was good. Maybe--but steak in this dining room is rarely a good choice. It's almost always tough and overcooked, and was tonight. I was still full from that Turkish lunch we had at three, so I stopped it right there. I ran off my cruiseletter and distributed it to the staterooms. By the time I finished that walk (it's the length of the ship, three times), I was really and truly out of gas. Mary Ann estimated that we'd walked six miles today, which should explain that. Saturday, June 23. Istanbul. The trip from Izmir to Istanbul is not far, but the passage through the Dardenelles and the Sea of Marmara goes very slowly, owing the the traffic, I guess. I expected to see a lot of ships in this ancient crossroads of the world, but it's even busier than I supposed. The Freedom kept its pace down to about six knots all the way through (and all the way back out again). This made for fascinating traveling. When I awakened at about six, Mary Ann was out on the balcony (this highly-desirable feature of the stateroom is her favorite spot on the ship), trying to figure out why we appeared to be far out at sea. A check of the ships course on the television showed that we were in the middle of the Sea of Marmara, whose size is small only relative to those of the Black and Aegean Seas. We were easily far enough from shore that all we saw was water. Marmara quickly narrows down as it approaches Istanbul. I've been fascinated by Stanboul/Byzantium/Constantinople/Istanbul since I was in grammar school. Gibbons's account of the fall of Constantinople in 1453--the final end of the Roman Empire--is so vivid in my mind that the city was immediately recognizable. There on the highest hill was Hagia Sophia, the leading church of Orthodox Christianity, nearly as big as St. Peter's in Rome but eight centuries older, defining the dramatically distinctive Byzantine style. Along the shore were the high stone walls that made Constantinople the best-defended city on earth until the advent of cannons made them obsolete. Since that moment, Istanbul is an overwhelmingly Muslim city. The loss of the Hagia Sophia to the Turks--who quickly turned it into a mosque--must have been exquisitely painful to fifteenth-century Christians. I immersed myself in that kind of history throughout the day and savored every second of it. Istanbul delivers everything you expect of it, most particularly that quality of being the place where East meets West. It is that, in spades. Mary Ann commandeered two taxis for us. Our group included Becke Collins, who is with us for the fifth or sixth cruise (the early ones were with her husband, who passed away a couple of years ago) and Evan, one of many friends Jude has made on this cruise. We bought the cabs for the ten-hour day for $300--a good deal, we thought. It was inevitable that a catch would turn up. After showing us around Ortakoy, north of the Golden Horn (the inlet that separates the part of Istanbul whose age is measured in millennia from those merely centuries old), Omar and Zea--our cabbies--took us to an overlook with a coffeehouse. I suggested we have some Turkish coffee and the more popular Turkish tea, but the drivers said that they would bring us to a place where the beverages would be free. This proved to be an ugly district filled with factory outlet stores, most operated by Russians. The cabbiess explained that when we went to the Grand Bazaar we'd find the same stuff but at higher prices, because they catered to tourists, and the merchants bought all their stuff here. We tried to explain that we Orleanians have only limited use for heavy leather jackets with fur collars. We wasted fifteen minutes here. The coffee and tea were indeed free, but its service had all the charm of an employee lounge in a clothing factory. We got out of there and made a stop to inspect the Byzantine walls closely. Then into the oldest part of the city, Sultanahmet. Omar introduced us to a man who, he said, would lead us to and through the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. Omar leaned over and said, sotto voce, "He will charge you nothing. But he works for a carpet shop. Please look at the carpets when you are done." Here we go again, I thought--but there didn't seem to be a way out, since Mehmet, the guide, was looking at us with blue eyes that seemed to say, "Please don't disappoint me." It's part of the culture, I thought. I didn't mention the details of the arrangement to Mary Ann, who was still fuming about the factory outlet stores. Mehmet led us to the Blue Mosque, built by his namesake Mehmet the Conqueror in an effort to out-do the Hagia Sophia, in the same general style. Tens of thousands of hand-made tiles -- most of them in blues and greens--cover the walls and dome of the Blue Mosque's interior. A carpet with a repeating design covers the floor, each iteration of the pattern serving as a single prayer rug for the thousands of supplicants that can pray in here at one time. Mehmet explained the method: where one places one's knees, hands, and forehead (the carpet's pattern, of course, is already oriented toward Mecca). "We are nothing compared to God," he said. "We don't ask for anything, we just pray to God." Indeed, the faithful were coming into the mosque, indicating that visiting time was over until prayers ended. The muezzin's call on a very loudspeaker echoed across the park as we walked from the Blue Mosque to the Hagia Sophia. Is the Blue Mosque or the Hagia Sophia more impressive? Apparently, it's a dichotomous argument that has gone on for centuries, with strong opinions one way or the other. My own is that it's the Hagia Sophia, hands down. A museum now, its sheer size astounds. The variety of stone and gilt is also impressive. That its architecture is innovative (so much so that the dome fell at least once--in an earthquake) makes it even more impressive. It set a standard for architecture everywhere east of Rome; indeed, St. Mark's in Venice, no minor church, shows many similarities. Our tours complete, it was time to visit the carpet shop. We were surprised that its owner, Guven, was no mere shill; indeed, he'd been recommended in a travel article in the New York Times, among other places, and he was very informative and entertaining. What grabbed me was the way the colors of the carpets change radically when viewed from opposite directions. I wanted to buy one. Mary Ann said they didn't go with the contemporary look of our house. Guven whipped out a more geometric design. No good, Mary Ann said. Then another. Nope, too curly. "Aha!" Guven said, and rolled out a mostly-red carpet with a design in squares that suggested an Ida Kohlmeyer painting. "Oh, please, put that away! I don't want to look at that! I love it!" Mary Ann said. It was $1700. I was ready to buy it. Mary Ann said that if I did she'd kill me. I asked her to deal with Guven. (Mary Ann is an incomparably better bargainer than I am.) "No!" she said. "We are not going to buy a carpet!" I wasn't sure whether this were her haggling style. We've been told by every source that you never buy anything in Turkey without intense haggling. Guven came back with a $1500 price, but we'd have to take it with us, instead of his shipping it. I urged her on. "Thomas!" she said, telling me that she meant what she was about to say. "We are not buying a carpet. I really mean it!" I turned to Guven, waiting for his next price. Nothing came. We headed for the door. When's the next price coming, I wondered. Never, as it turned out. He wasn't going to come down another nickel. I told him we'd be back next year, I'd be more prosperous, and we'd buy the rug. "That rug will not be here two weeks from now," he said. "Who knows how long hand-made rugs will be here at all? What young girls will want to spend their lives hooking rugs? He shrugged his shoulders. I felt an opportunity had been lost. Omar and Zea now took us to the Grand Bazaar. It was about two-thirty. Lunchtime, right? Wrong. We walked into the world's largest covered market and--in spirit, at least--the forerunner of places like Lakeside Mall. Jude and Evan bought Burberry golf shirts, two for thirty dollars. That's the story here. Every fake brand you wanted, with no laws enforced in either sale or purchase. (It Italy, the merchants can sell counterfeits legally but the buyers are criminals.) At three, I put my foot down and said I wanted lunch. We wound up in a claustrophobic second-floor dining room with a low curved ceiling, eating an utterly ordinary lunch in less than a half-hour. Mary Ann had warned me that only a minimum of Istanbul time would be wasted on something as mundane as eating, and it was. Oh, well. Next time, I buy a carpet and I have a grand lunch. Our last stop was Topkapi, the palace built by Suleyman the Magnificent, who ruled Istanbul when the Ottoman Empire was at its peak. The palatial complex, which looked more like a prison than a palace from the outside, was as stunning as advertised. Gold and onyx and ivory everywhere. Incomparable marbles, hand-made tiles of infinite variety and color, fantastic gardens, and the opulence you'd expect of a sultan. The most impressive part of it--requiring a second ticket--was the Harem. How many hundreds of wives did these guys have? He could spread them out well here. Easily the most beautiful part of the palace, it looked as if it might almost have pleased all those women. Mary Ann wanted to continue the tour. But Omar and Zea demurred, saying the traffic was terrible and that we might miss the ship, even with two hours to spare. I considered that important, but secondary to the tiredness and crankiness we all (except Mary Ann) felt. You reach a point at which no matter how fantastic the sights, their appeal is lost when filtered by fatigue. What we'd needed was a lunch of about ninety minutes at two or so, but I left that alone. Omar and Zea dropped us off at what they said was the ship terminal. Once inside, however, we found that we were at the wrong dock. We ran out to catch the cabbies and barely did. They re-deposited us at the right place, about two miles away. This is why I like to have buffers in the schedule. Mary Ann could not bring herself to board the ship with over an hour before departure. She went out on her own, found a pastry shop, encountered a few of our traveling partners, and took her full measure of Istanbul time. I went up and zonked myself out into a total sleep. I woke up in time to get some sushi. The sushi bar is open only a few hours during the entire cruise, but it's just as well: cruise after cruise, Carnival proves consistently unable to put out even decent sushi. Even though they make it to order, it's not as good as supermarket sushi. A rag around an Asian chef's head does not make him a sushi chef. I grabbed a Negroni from the bar and went upstairs to photograph Istanbul as the ship departed. The sun set behind the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, and I snapped away until the camera battery was dead. Then an excellent dinner. A duck consomme with smoked duck slices; a carpaccio of beets with Parmigiano cheese and fennel, all shaved; and a pork chop with mole sauce. The sauce did not have the Mexican mole poblano flavor, but it was very good anyway, and the chop was thick and juicy. It was the best entree I've had so far on the cruise, even better than the sirloin strip in the supper club. The wine department markets new bottles by placing them on the tables in the dining room, the way they used to at the Crescent City Steak House. Last night it was an Italian Primitivo; that's the probable ancestor of Zinfandel. Tonight it was a very good Valpolicella, a dead-on match for the pork chop. Yum. Italian wines never miss with food. After dinner, I wet down to the cigar bar and discovered that one of the fellows I beat out for the Frank Sinatra gig was jamming vocally with the jazz band--and very well, at that. I would have been jealous were he not so good. I had a couple of Dalwhinnies (the waiter there already knows what I want, and how--in a snifter, with a water chaser). I stayed till the jazz ended at half past midnight. This is really my kind of music. Sunday, June 24. Back Into The Aegean. We awakened to find that the ship was still in  the Sea of Marmara, which to our westernized minds was still in the neighborhood of Istanbul. But there's so much shipping moving through that famous channel, from the Black Sea into the Bosporus past Istanbul, into Marmara, and then down the Dardenelles that the ship must move slowly. I don't think we moved at more than about six knots until, well after lunchtime, we finally passed Gallipoli, the site of bloody and futile battles during World Wars I and II. Large memorials mark the sites of these disasters, one of which almost scuttled Winston Churchill's career in the 1910s. It's a very welcome day at sea, with such a slack schedule that I didn't bother to distribute a newsletter to our fellow travelers. (As always happens when I slack off, I forgot something important: our group's cocktail party this afternoon. So I had to get on the phone and call everyone. I spent most of the morning writing, until I was joined in the Lido restaurant by Mary Ann and a few others in our group. I didn't have to go far when lunchtime rolled around; we were adjacent to Fish and Chips, where I had some squid ceviche, seared rare tuna, and another bowlful of bouillabaisse, this batch made while I was standing there waiting. Good stuff. I learned this afternoon that the temperature rose to ninety-seven degrees yesterday in Istanbul. I thought it seemed a bit hot, although I didn't find it particularly uncomfortable. The humidity is below fifty percent, and even in the bazaar enough of a breeze blew to make it bearable. The prediction for tomorrow is that Athens will be even hotter, with a cooling spell after that. This is not working out as I'd hoped. Our first two Mediterranean cruises were both in July, and we found the heat oppressive. I figured that by going in June it would be more comfortable, but this is the hottest cruise ever, anywhere. At our cocktail party, I cooled off with a Negroni. It's a great cocktail for perking the palate: gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari, with a splash of club soda on the rocks. The bartender introduced me to a new concept for me: the "perfect Negroni," which leaves out the soda. That got me ready for my daddy-daughter dinner date with Mary Leigh in the supper club, a tradition for us since our very first cruise. Her menu was predictable: a Caesar salad, filet mignon, mashed potatoes, and a molten chocolate cake from the main dining room. I started with the very good lobster bisque and made a pair of double-cut lamb chops my entree. This came with a lamb tenderloin, served with a five-bean cassoulet. Hearty eating for a hot day, but very good, with a lamb demi-cglace and bearnaise sauce playing off one another. The cheese plate for dessert again, with its five very powerful, unpasteurized-milk cheeses. She went her way and I went mine. Mary Ann was already asleep at ten. I paid another visit to the smoke-filled cigar bar where the jazz trio plays, and enjoyed them greatly until the fatigue from yesterday's marathon forced me to call it a day. Monday, June 25. Athens. The ship was in Athens at seven in the morning, and I expected this to mean that Mary Ann would be driving us hard to get off the ship. But she was still as tired as we were, even after the day off, and we didn't hit the dock until well after nine. Getting into the Greek capital was complicated. The ship docked in Piraeus, the port for Athens. With some difficulty we found the bus that would take us to the Metro, which in turn would bring us to Plaka, the neighborhood at the foot of the mountain that gives the Acropolis (which means "high city") its name. Then the real work began. The Acropolis is reached only by a hike over a rocky trail whose aridity and nearly shadeless warmth reminded me of trails in the Big Bend country of West Texas, in summertime. But the rocks in Big Bend are craggy, and these were worn smooth and shiny by two and a half millennia of feet walking this same path. Even with rubber-soled shoes, they were very slippery. I can't imagine what walking them must be like when they're wet. It took an hour to get up among the famous marble structures, the magnificent Parthenon outstanding among them all. It gave me long pause to see the structure whose style is imitated by so many banks, government buildings, and pretentious homes. It's worth the difficult hike. And the difficult temperatures. With the sun's rays reflected back up by all that shiny hot white marble, it was a real roaster up there. I would later learn that the temperature in Athens went past 100 degrees--record-setting heat at a time when it's usually in the eighties. Mary Ann picked out a winding, dusty path down that took us through the Roman Agora, in preference to the shady, smooth main trail down. This, however, emptied out into a lively restaurant district. After a few false starts, we found the restaurant we'd been touted on. Mary Ann, however, liked the looks of another nearby restaurant whose outdoor tables were in a garden. So there we went. Saganaki, pasta with red sauce, and a pizza came for the kids. Mary Ann and I split what the menu called a barbecue platter. Wondering what this really was, I transliterated the Greek name. Sometimes the English translations on menus hide the true identity of a dish. In this case, however, the Greek letters spelled "mparmpekou," thier way of spelling "barbecue." Lamb souvlaki, a sausage of uncertain origin, a hamburger that was more like a meatball, grilled chicken and pork, and a few vegetables--none of it even slightly good. I must start putting my foot down and choosing these restaurants by food rather than atmosphere. After all, isn't that what I do? It was pushing three o'clock, and Mary Ann surprised me by saying she was ready to go back to the ship. We didn't, though. At least not right away. While we looked for our lunch spot, she'd seen a young man Jude's age who was selling pocket packs of tissue. He apparently was so distressed in appearance that it affected Mary Ann deeply. She wanted to find a way to help him, even after one of the restaurateurs said that the boy was a drug addict. It frustrated her that she couldn't figure out what to do, other than to tell some unresponsive policemen about the kid. After further stops for fabric shopping and ice cream, we found the Metro, took the long ride to Piraeus, which gave a good look at Athens at street level. From the Acropolis, it looks truly enormous, and it is. I found it a substantially grittier city than Istanbul, and not pretty in the parts of it we saw. The rumors I've heard for years about Athens to the effect that once you've seen the ancient sites, you will find little more to please you rang true. Dinner tonight was another good one. It started with a chilled asparagus soup, followed by a sort of ravioli in which zucchini was used in place of pasta, with a stuffing of roasted broccoli (hard to explain, but good), and a vegetarian lasagna that came to the table still bubbling in its baking dish. That was better and bigger than I expected. However, it caused me to realize that I am eating far too much cheese. We had this dinner with the Cohns, whose two daughters are approximately the same age as Mary Leigh. The three girls hit it off tonight, and when I saw them on my way back to the stateroom after the jazz club closed, they were laughing while playing some sort of game that involved the glass elevators. Tuesday, June 26. Greek Beaches. I Sing After Supper. Mary Ann awakened me at five-thirty. "Jude is not in his bed," she said, highly agitated. "I'm going out looking for him." She returned about ten minutes later, having turned up nothing. The security guys said they had seen "the boy who plays the piano with all the girls hanging around," but not lately. I started getting dressed and she headed out for another look. By the time I had clothes on, the man-boy himself showed up. "We decided to pull an all-nighter," he said, and described many hours of moving from point to point around the ship with his friends, winding up in the Lido. That would have been the first place I would have looked, actually, since only pizza and ice cream are available there around the clock. I also understood why he hadn't bothered to let us know of this plan, having done that sort of thing (without the girls) when I was his age. But I had to chew him out anyway, of course, because that's the law. Katakolon is a town of three hundred on a small cape on the Peloponnese west coast. Two large cruise ships were in the port, making for a ratio of twenty cruisers per native. The guidebooks offered very little; one of them didn't even list the place. The population, however, has clearly grasped the possibilities of the influx of cruise tourists, and the one street along the waterfront is lined with restaurants under canvas awnings extending down to the water on one side and shops on the other. Mary Ann scored a rental car during her early-morning walkabout. We would go looking for a beach, she said. The guy who put gas in the tank had strong feelings about which beaches we should attend or avoid. We found his top tout easily enough, but the girls were not satisfied with it, so we moved on. We drove for long miles through pretty, wide-open, rolling countryside in which the main crops were corn and olives. We wound up in a much larger town than Katakolon itself, and took a wrong turn onto a road that would have gone a long way without any real rewards. We doubled back to the point where we turned off to the first beach, and found another that looked to me like recently-excavated river sand with blue Mediterranean water. The girls somehow found this good, and they swam around for awhile while I sat on a bent tree, weeding out mediocre photos from the digital camera. We've taken four hundred pictures so far. When they came back, they were ready to go to the place the gas station surfer advised. That was not only a much more appealing place, but unlike the sand pit it had a classy-looking hotel where I could have something while waiting for the swimmers. I wandered into the dining room and asked if they were serving lunch. Affirmative, with language barrier. I sat down. A waiter came over, and I asked about a lunch menu. With difficulty I understood him to say that no, there was no lunch, but I could have a drink. Greek coffee and a bottle of water, I said. Then I saw plates of food being delivered to the people at the table behind me. I called the waiter over, and what I think he told me was that I could eat if it were sitting in that row of tables, but not at the one where I presently was ensconced. I decided I'd better not risk it; my gang probably would show up as soon as the wrong order arrived, and they'd want to leave immediately. I picked up a newspaper abandoned on an adjacent table, in the hopes of finding a crossword puzzle. I did--but it was in Greek, and I couldn't begin. We returned to Katakolon, turned in the car, and walked down the row of restaurants. They all had more or less the same menu, with more seafood than is typically found in Greek places. On the table were salads of cucumbers, tomatoes, and olives; beets with skordalia, with a great sauce of garlic, ground almonds, and mashed potatoes; chicken souvlaki; and fried sardines. These were much smaller than the kind we get in Italy, and not as strongly flavored. We has some fun putting them on garlic bread, for a real-life version of a long-running shtick of mine about the garlic-sardine flavor. The lunch was mediocre, and ruined further when one of the people traveling with us took a fall near our table, and hurt herself badly enough to require stitches when she got on the ship. Then Jude disappeared again. ("Where's Jude?" has been by far the most-used sentence in our family's history, starting when he was a baby.) Mary Ann went out on her second hunting expedition of the day. When he could not be found, I assumed he did the smart thing: return to the ship. (He had.) Finally, on the way in, I encountered another member of our group who'd had a dental crown come loose, and who wanted to know if I had any ideas. I told her I'd asked the retired dentist traveling with us. All this was done in what seemed like temperatures that were at least as high as what we'd experienced on the Acropolis the day before. (They were: 104 degrees.) Good thing this was a short day. I don't think I could have handled another crisis. And I had something else to focus on. This morning's ship newsletter announced that there would be a talent contest tonight, with tryouts at five and the show at ten. Knowing how these things attracts other overzealous hams like me, I was at the bar waiting fifteen minutes early, ready to be the first in line for the four spots on the bill. None of the songs I was thinking about were on the list, except for Rodgers and Hart's "Where Or When," which I have sung in many venues over the years. On the stage behind me was a ten-piece orchestra, but the band leader thought this would sound best with little more than the pianist playing behind me. (No string section, unfortunately; someday, I will have that opportunity, I hope.) Five acts showed up. A lady sang "O Sole Mio" operatically. A couple did "One In A Million" very well. Another lady sang a long version of "Closer Walk With Thee," and another couple sang the song they sang to each other at their wedding. Tonight was the night Mary Ann and I had planned on having a romantic dinner in the supper club. There was plenty of time, but I didn't want to eat heavily or drink deeply before my performance. So I eschewed the veal chop on my mind and instead ordered Dover sole, a fish I don't often order. The restaurant didn't present it whole at the table, but otherwise it was better than I expected: two large, fresh fillets on an uncommonly beautiful square plate with a ribbed surface, the better to collect the herb butter sauce. With the very good lobster bisque as a starter, this made an elegant meal. I took a nap after dinner, and when I showed up for the talent show I learned that I was to open it. That's good: no time to worry myself into a nervous performance with a ruined vibrato. (After all the times I've done this, I still get nerves.) I went up there and crooned my best, and it was fine--at least as far as I was concerned. After the talent show, the cruise director went into a routine that sounded familiar. He presented a bedtime story with the help of alleged cruisers that went completely and hilariously off the rails, insisting all along that you never knew what was going to happen on a live stage. In fact, every word of this was identical to the show this guy did a year ago on the Liberty. And I will check my hunch that the lady around whom the biggest laughs were built was the same one who was in this farce last time. Wednesday, June 27. Just In Time. I think this may be the best of our dozen cruises. The ports have been utterly fascinating. The people in our group could not possibly be more agreeable, happy, or interesting. No significant problems have surfaced. We haven't even spent all that much money. And, just when we're worn out from gadding about the ports of call, we get a day at sea. Have I mentioned I love days at sea, and could conceivably take a cruise dominated by them? Like a transatlantic cruise? That would be anathema to Mary Ann, who is at best on the edge about the Panama Canal cruise we're taking this fall. That one is at sea six of its thirteen days. I will love it. It's the goofing off that I love. And the working. When I write on days on which the order of the day is clearly goofing off, I feel as if I'm getting away with something. Today was busier than it should have been. I had a lot of these words to get down. And a few pieces of business. We are trying to arrange a dinner in Rome on the day the ship will be in port, and even have a reservation at a restaurant called Myosotis. But all my efforts to arrange transportation back to the ship after the dinner--around ten at night--have come to nothing. The best I can come up with is to take the train (an hour and a quarter), then scramble for taxis. This does not seem to interest our people. We may have to scrap the dinner. Nobody, however, seems to be upset by this. One would think that a cruise with me would require some kind of meal in some restaurant in one of the port cities. But the dinners on the ship have been so much fun that I think everybody's had their share of face time with me. (Quite possibly too much.) I'm having my usual fight with the photography department about our group photo. We always arrange things so everybody in the group gets an eight-by-ten of the thing. But when I ask for the prints, nobody knows anything. We're on day three of this quest. The group had its cocktail party this afternoon. I screwed up: I forgot to put it in my newsletter, even though it was on the schedule I gave everybody at the beginning. I tried calling everybody, but some didn't get the word. I guess I'll be buying a few cocktails for the rest of the cruise. I had my share at the party, and eased off the rest of the evening. I learned at dinner that while Mary Ann and I were eating in the supper club the night before, it was hot Grand Marnier soufflee night in the dining room. Drat! I love those. But dinner tonight was good enough. It began with oysters Rockefeller--in, of course, a most unusual version. They were baked on the shells with two sauces: spinach and mornay. (Everywhere except New Orleans, mornay sauce is the finishing touch on this dish.) What this Rockefeller had that was truly innovative was a bottom layer of lentils in the shell. That sounds far out, but I think it actually was an interesting touch. I don't think I've had a baked oyster dish with beans before, but knowing how well beans and seafood go together I will try it. The entree was a simple roasted chicken with a minimal herbal sauce. That's one of my favorite things, and this was good enough. In lieu of my usual cheese plate was a sugarless pumpkin pie--just okay. Jude, the boulevardier, informed me that he intended to stay out all night again. I told him to try to get to bed before Mary Ann woke up, to prevent another crack-of-dawn search of the ship, and wished him good luck in impressing his cadre. I returned to the jazz lounge again and enjoyed Gavin Ahearn's Trio as much as ever. But I found myself falling asleep during the numbers, somehow waking up when it was time to applaud. When they took a break, I disappeared and went to bed at the absurdly early hour of eleven-thirty. This restful day had worn me out. Cruise Journal Italy, Turkey, and Greece, Aboard The Carnival Freedom Thursday, June 28. Miracles. It's a good thing I went to bed early last night, because the ship was in port at seven in the morning, and Mary Ann was up at five-thirty (when Jude finally turned in). As soon as the gangplank went down, she was on the dock, making sure the car we'd reserved was there. It was, and that meant we'd better gulp down that breakfast and attend to our toilette tout de suite. The port was Livorno, known to food-and-beverage types as the place where Tuaca and Galliano liqueurs are made, and the main port for Tuscany. Whatever else may be there, however, is eclipsed by the dazzle of three nearby cities: Florence, Pisa, and Siena. Not to mention the beauty of the Tuscan countryside, and the allure of its wineries. The marching orders from the bosslady were as follows. We'd been to Florence twice already, and even though Mary Ann still had not seen Michelangelo's David (which remains firmly on her list), we would not go there this time. Instead, we'd remedy our failure to visit Pisa on our two previous trips. Then we'd head under the Tuscan sun (by the way, they showed that movie on the giant poolside screen on the ship last night) into the hinterlands, with a side trip to Lucca. And to Siena, if we had time. What prevented us from going to Pisa last year made it difficult this time. For some reason, the traffic into that city is out of all proportion to its size. And, like all Italian towns, navigating to its center is at best confusing. How Europeans get along without any street signs at all is a mystery. Haven't some of them been to America and seen the advantage of knowing where the hell you are? Anyway, we got lost twice before making it to the Campo dei Miracoli--the field of miracles. The first miracle happened to us about two blocks from the place. A parking space--perfectly legal--opened up just as we arrived. Given the hundreds of people we saw in the Campo, that was certainly preternatural. The Campo is an unusually large, grassy, wide-open space with three major buildings. As we turned the corner into it, I stopped dead in my tracks, even though I fully expected what I was seeing. "For God's sake, that's the Leaning Tower of Pisa!" I thought. I don't think I've ever had so surprised a reaction to such a familiar sight in my life. It brought a grin to my face, perhaps because of the shock of recognition, more likely because the thing is so close to being a cartoon. It's bigger than I thought. But man, it really does lean, doesn't it? As striking as the Campanile (that's the tower's real name) was, what really made my jaw drop what something I heard in the Baptistry. That's a breast-shaped building in front of the Cathedral, whose interior is an open rotunda. Mary Ann saw a stone staircase go up to a gallery, and we climbed it. As we looked down on milling tours below, we heard them go silent. In the void came singing voices, intoning do-mi-sol-do bell notes that harmonized in an enchanting way. On the way out, I asked a guide whether the voices were male or female. She said, "Voices? But there is only one voice, of a woman." One voice? That meant that the singer was harmonizing not with other singers, but with her own voice as it reverberated in the remarkable acoustics of this miraculous structure. That's when my jaw dropped. I've never heard the like of that in my life. You have to get tickets an hour or so in advance to climb to the top of the leaning tower, and our time came up. Mary Ann and the kids went in to mount the 294 steps to the top. I stayed at ground level, because of a problem I'd developed in the past few days that I don't need to share. I saw them emerge on the balcony about halfway up, then again at the very top. When they returned, they said it was a tough climb, but very interesting and--once they were near the top--more than a little disturbing. We left Pisa's miracles and drove into the Tuscan vineyards. We began to see restaurants--quite a few of them, including a few that looked inviting. It was after noon. I begged the indulgence of a serious, slow, relaxed meal for once. Mary Ann, who loves Tuscany, was happy to vouchsafe me this boon. I saw a sign, then a name on an arrow, and something about it. . . well, I like to think I have a sixth sense when it comes to picking out restaurants in places unknown. Getting to the place required a dodging drive for a mile or so down a one-lane road, but when we pulled up to it even Mary Ann was excited. La Cecca (website: http://www.lacecca.it) was exactly the kind of restaurant that in my past travels have proven to be the most interesting. Comfortable but rustic (most of the tables were in a covered courtyard), its menu offered the food of the immediate region. On the table was a bottle of olive oil made close by (Lucca is one of the great centers of first-class oil production). The wine list had a large section of wines from the immediate neighborhood; I ordered one of those for the astonishing price of 14 euros. (It was a Sangiovese, of course; this is near the land of Chianti.) The only troubling issue was whether the kitchen would make pasta pomodoro, the only dish Mary Leigh eats in Italy. It wasn't on the menu, but it wasn't a problem. That settled, we got down to an enormous assortment of antipasto, with prosciutto, coppa, a pate something like hogshead cheese, olives, polenta with porcini mushrooms, and a few other things. Insalata Caprese, with tomatoes that tasted great even though they were mostly green (they grow that way around there, said the waitress), farro (bean and barley soup--a little too hearty for this weather, but the local answer to red beans and rice, in more ways than one). Now some tortellini with a sauce of shredded beef. Mary Leigh's pasta. And some very soft but insanely delicious spinach gnocchi. But the great dish was yet to come. I thought a fiorentina steak would be too much (it's a porterhouse of two and a half pounds, cut from the local strain of cattle), so we had the smaller but similar bistecca taglia--sliced the way they do at the Crescent City. No sauce, just the steak, with more fat around the edges than we see in America. As soon as we tasted this, we knew we should have had the big one. The flavor was beyond belief--even Mary Leigh wanted more. I let her have a lot of my share. It was a ten out of ten, we all agreed. Lunch for four with a bottle of wine was right at a hundred euros--a steal. We drove away from those vineyards very happy indeed. Our last stop was no less pleasant. The old part of Lucca is an ancient Roman citadel whose walls are still kept in good repair. The town is not as large or famous as its neighbors, but we found it as pleasant a place as we've ever found in Italy. We drove in, found another miraculous parking space, and fortified ourselves with gelato before starting our walk through Lucca's narrow, winding streets. It was totally charming, with enough shops to keep the girls happily engaged while I snapped photographs of interesting buildings. I was particularly intrigued by the storefronts, which had a unique aspect. We owed some friends something delicious, so we paused in a macelleria--an Italian deli. Its cases were replete with a dizzying assortment of cured meats and cheeses, and its shelves were bulging with olive oils. We bought a few bottles and took in the aromas. Five o'clock. Time to leave by my clock, but not usually by Mary Ann's. We must have had a fine day indeed, because she let me have my schedule. We left Lucca with a promise to check into one of those little hotels someday for a longer sojourn. En route back, we encountered the single most circuitous freeway (autostrade, as they call it) entrance in my experience. Start to finish, it felt like we did at least two and a half 360s. But we were pointed in the right direction after all that. As we zipped down the road, we saw the Campo dei Miracoli and its distinctive buildings emerge from the horizon--miraculously, I thought. One more challenge: finding the dock where the ship was. This is not easy, I knew from past visits, so I gave ourselves lots of time to wind among the container terminals and smokestacks. The enormous size and distinctive winged funnel of the carnival Freedom helped a little, but the route was puzzling enough that a dozen people were left behind when the ship sailed at seven. As it turned out, they were in a rental car, too, and could see the ship but not figure out how to drive to it. Thursday Evening, June 28. I Am Sinatra. After a great day in Tuscany, I had a full agenda for the evening on the ship. Almost as soon as I was aboard and showered, it was time for a full rehearsal of the Carnival Legends show, into which I have managed to insinuate myself for the third time. I'm Sinatra again, singing My Way (not my pick). For once, they managed to get pretty good people from among the passengers for all the roles, including Ricky Martin and Madonna. Aretha Franklin, Brittany Spears, and Elvis were especially good. I got through it with no serious nerves, but I will take my beta blocker for the real performance. A light dinner: petite marmite (sort of a beef consomme with vegetables), a small portion of a very good beef lasagna, and veal parmigiana. It must be Italian night. Easy on the wine, no cocktail. Sinatra, of course, would have had a few martinis, but he really was Sinatra and I'm a faker who needs to keep his wits about him. And I did. Even though my getup was a little ridiculous (not even Sinatra would wear a fedora with a tuxedo). The rest of the cast rose to the occasion, too. This was without question the best of these shows I've seen. I got a nice round of applause, then met lots of people from the audience in the atrium bar right after. I did have a martini then. Ham that I am, my favorite part of being on the show is that from now till the end of the cruise, every one of the thousand strangers in the enormous theatre says hello to me when they pass me in the halls or shares an elevator with me. What can I say? I love the adulation. Tonight was the last night for Gavin Ahearn and his jazz trio. I got there just in time to hear them play a few numbers, and then they wrapped it up. Occasions like that will come on fast now, as the cruise winds down. I hate to get that feeling. Friday, June 29. Rome Takes A Day Off. The dinner we planned for tonight in Rome, after all that work and worry, is off. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't arrange transportation from the restaurant back to the ship for less than about 100 euros per person. The closest I got was a train that would bring us back at around ten from Rome to Civitavecchia, its port about seventy-five miles away. But then we'd be more than walking distance from the train station to the ship, with an industrial area between us. That, however, left us free for the day in Rome. We did take the train (a ship-to-depot shuttle runs all day, if not at eleven at night), which was almost stupidly cheap: four euros each. We had the bad luck to be in a non-air-conditioned car, but it wasn't too bad. (Indeed, we woke up this morning, and yesterday, too, with temperatures in the fifties.) So I opened the window. It bore a notice in four languages telling passengers to refrain from throwing things out the windows. The German rendition included the words "aus dem fenster werfen." For some reason, the phrase wormed into the absurdist part of my brain, sounding like somebody's name. I drove Mary Ann and the kids a little batty with my giggling as I wove an elaborate story about Fenster Werfen. His company, I hear, has bought the Stymie Potted Frog Meat concern. My readers and radio listeners will be hearing about Fenster Werfen. Stazione Centrale in Rome is handsome and enormous. All railroads lead to Rome, apparently, and if you want to go somewhere by train from there, you probably can, and won't have to wait long for the next train. We transferred from there to the much less appealing Metro, whose routes create an X beneath the ancient city, but which save a fantastic amount of time getting from certain Points A to certain Points B. Our Point B in this case (on the A line) was the Spanish Steps, a great place to start walking around the Eternal City. At least if you've already done a thorough tour of the Vatican, the Coliseum, and the Forum (as we have). It was a bit after noon at that point, and everybody was ready for lunch. Mary Ann said that on our previous visits she noted a pizzeria just outside the Piazza di Spagna Metro station, and that she would have a slice or two there. The pizzas looked good but a little odd: they were elongated ovals instead of round. When they served them, they folded them over and wrapped them with paper, so juicy and molten were the contents. In other words, it was something like we'd encountered in Naples a few days ago (but not quite as liquid). I had something else on my mind for lunch. On our first trip here, we encountered a restaurant called Andrea's. (Fully, Trattoria St. Andrea, named for a church on the same square.) Not only does it share the name of a noteworthy New Orleans restaurant, but the place and the menu looked very good to me. On the first trip, Mary Ann insisted that we didn't have time to eat a serious lunch when we still had the Coliseum to see. On the second trip, we got there in mid-afternoon, and found it closed between lunch and dinner. (And dinner in serious restaurants in Italy doesn't start until eight.) This time, we were there at the right time, with time to spare. But Andrea's was closed. Today, we learned, was the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul--a holiday in Rome. Enough of one that the Pope came from his summer residence to say Mass at St. Peter's Square. And for lots of shops to close for the day. This punched a particular hole in Mary Leigh's plans for the day, which were to shop full-time. But what shops stayed open through the holiday closed for the afternoon break. She found hardly a store to browse. We took lunch across the street from Andrea's, at Hostaria Scalinata. It looked good enough for lunch, and not too touristy--although I'm sure that visitors provide a big chunk of their business. The guy running the front door was certainly hospitable, cracking jokes with us from start to finish. The actual waiter was more taciturn. We ordered far too much food. Insalata caprese, for the tomatoes for Mary Leigh. Fried, meat-stuffed olives (the waiter warned us against getting them, and he was right.) Prosciutto-wrapped melon: very good. Tagliolini pasta with artichokes, mushrooms, and tomato sauce, better than expected. Spaghetti carbonara for Jude; he loved it. Veal saltimbocca for me: inelegant, a little tough, but perfectly cooked. And, of course, spaghetti pomodoro for Mary Leigh. Strength restored, we split up to investigate different points of interest. The girls said they'd meet us at the Trevi Fountain. Note well: the Trevi Fountain is a very bad place to meet people, because a few thousand others are always there, brought by the fountain's unusual beauty, featured in more than a few movies. We did reconnect with the girls, and threw the coins over our shoulders. If it lands in the fountain, the first coin says you will return to Rome. The second promises you will fall in love. The third guarantees you will marry the lover. I've also heard a fourth: that you will be cut loose from that person once he or she starts getting on your nerves. From there, we walked to Piazza di Popolo, a gigantic round plaza where Nero is supposed to be buried, with a genuine Egyptian obelisk--carved from a single shaft of stone--at its center. Twin impressive churches were on the south limb of the circle. It was here that we realized the day had become very hot. And that we had a long walk back to where we started. Up one street and down another, not a single shop of note was open. Mary Ann impressed me as we made our way back. "Behind that building is Alfredo's, and behind that is the tomb of Augustus," she said, not referring to a map, but using some other reckoning. I would not have guessed we were within a mile of those, but when I checked the map, I saw she was exactly correct. She remembered a store she saw on the last trip. (It was closed.) We paused at a grubby little café to take a load off our fenster werfens and have some refreshment. Jude and I hung there while the girls reconnoitered the shops in the neighborhood, with no better luck. By then, we were all too tired to start out on any new expedition. And it was getting late. Back down to the Metro. Despite the holiday, it was jammed with a rush-hour crowd--the kind of cheek-to-cheek (and you know which cheeks of which I speak) mob that one is warned to avoid. I had my hand on my cash all the way. The next train to Civitavecchia turned out to be a first-class express, costing nine euros instead of the four on the inbound fenster werfen. Much more comfortable, it also went much faster, getting us to the coast in less than an hour. We've always been told that there's nothing in Civitavecchia. There isn't much, but there is something. The name means "old town," and indeed some very old structures remain. The downtown was actually charming, and we stopped in a café for one last gelato. Some shops were open, but Mary Leigh was too defeated to work up avarice. There wasn't much to do on the ship tonight. We would have to disembark at six in the morning to make our flight, so we were mostly engaged with packing. But we did have dinner, and almost everybody in the group was there. By this time, I was already convinced that we'd never before had such a convivial bunch of folks. Several of our tables of eight had become great friends, although they started out as strangers. Certainly nobody needed me to grab a seat and perform any further mixing. On this last night, the camaraderie was exactly what I hope for on all our cruises. Saturday, June 30. Twenty-Four Hours. Only two things do I hate about cruises. The first is the flight to the ship's port of embarkation. The other is the flight back. Each one has its unique sharp pains. When Europe is involved, these are dominated by Tom's Law Of Transatlantic Travel. Which states that, no matter how long the schedule says the flights and transfers take, the time it will take to get from your hotel (or ship, in this case) to your door at home will be twenty-four hours. That's a full day of constant travel, independent of time zone changes. I'm ready for this going in. And, as a cross-country train traveler of long experience, I am accustomed to being in motion for very long periods of time with no place to go in the meantime. Still, a return home from Europe tests my patience. This flight was unusual in that it left Rome at ten in the morning. This required us to leave the ship shortly after six--not too bad, since we went to bed around eleven. Check-in was also easy (Delta has a great system that keeps lines short). It was all exactly as it had been on last year's cruise. Even the gate was the same, with its espresso bar right next door. It was our last taste of Italy. And a good one for me, because I had an espresso. But a bad one for Mary Ann, because of the ridiculous ordering system used by Italian coffeehouses. There's a single cashier, to whom you go to place your order and pay--after waiting in a long line. There's not really anything like a menu at the checkout. Instead of just pointing at a croissant and saying, "Give me one of those," you have to explain to the cashier, who never is fully conversant in English (so why don't we speak Italian? good question) what the hell you want. You then present your receipt to one of the six or seven people working behind the counter, and they give you what you want. Unless you want something they're not used to selling. Last year, Mary Ann wanted the glass of cold milk she has every morning with her chocolate fix for breakfast. She got a glass of hot milk instead. This year, exactly the same scenario played out. The flight itself was pleasant enough. We watched Astronaut Farmer. We had Mile-High Mojitos. (I recommend those on Delta flights, by the way. They actually mix them right there.) We skirted Greenland. We ate chicken. We watched Wild Hogs. We tried to sleep but didn't. (Except for lucky Jude, who was out cold for ninety percent of the flying time.) We had pizza. We landed in Atlanta on time, with three hours to kill. Mary Leigh wanted to get a burger from Chili's. I can't deny her everything, but this was an ordeal. I had something they presented as cheese dip with beef: truly nasty stuff. Mary Leigh said the burger wasn't as good as the standard, non-airport version. The gate was changed. And the flight was delayed. For the least appealing of reasons: we watched as two technicians rooted around in one of the jet engines for almost an hour, looking befuddled, while the captain stood around looking concerned. Somehow, either fatigue or sang-froid kept this from bothering me, although Mary Ann was quite troubled. The flight to New Orleans seemed as brief as it always does following one across the ocean, and there we were: a shade after seven, two a.m. Rome time. I thought that Tom's Law was about to be broken. With the hour's drive across the Causeway, today's total travel time would be less than twenty-two hours. Impossible! Yes, it was. The five or six bags that always appear on the carousel while you wait for the main download went around and around, ten, twenty, thirty times. Then we were informed that these were all the bags on the plane. What? Every single person on this full flight had missing luggage? Yes, they did. Where was it all? Nobody knew. Didn't somebody notice this lack and think it odd in Atlanta? Apparently not. Two clerks filled out lengthy forms, with each bag identified by size, color, and shape, for every passenger. I was near the end of the line. It took an hour and forty-five minutes. We pulled up at the Cool Water Ranch at 10:40 p.m. Twenty minutes short of the twenty-four hours dictated by Tom's Law. Well, that's an improvement, anyway! And, with no bags to drag inside or unpack, we could go almost straight to bed. The bags would turn up tomorrow, as a new chapter in our lives began. Forward to July 2007 © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com