Oh and my photos are up on Facebook, and if you are not a member, they can hopefully be found on Kodak's website. If you want to see them I think I have to send you an email. Let me know and I can do that.
Athens to Venice by Boat and Bus
Lisa called about nine months ago and asked if I would like to join her on a trip that would financially benefit the non-profit she works for. I said sure. She suggested I look at the website and itinerary, and give it some thought. Since then a friend suggested an inscription on my headstone were I to have one: I wanna go. So I signed up for a trip I probably never would have otherwise gone on.
Three weeks before the trip, when Mercury was in retrograde, things started to shift. Lisa had to have surgery (she’s on the mend) and wasn’t going to be able to go. Would I be willing to room with someone else? Would it be ok if it was a man? Did I still want to go? I decided to continue as planned and as luck would have it, I got a room to myself. It was a good trip—not the one I had envisioned since Lisa, a major piece in this puzzle, was unable to go. I met lots of nice people, saw lots of cool stuff, but didn’t think I laughed enough which I would have if Lisa had been there.
We left from Athens in a handsome yachty-sailboaty-looking vessel which qualified due to its length to be called a ship, the Pan Orama. There were around 30 paying customers on board and a crew of many. I suspect we didn’t even see some of them. The adventure was pretty much seamless. (The Albanian government threw us a curve ball but otherwise, seamless.) From Athens we headed through the Corinth Canal and over to Itea where we got on a bus for Delphi. That evening we headed to Ithaka at the end of the Ionian Sea (or was it the beginning?), then north along the Dalmatian Coast to Albania and Montenegro and Croatia. It was stunningly gorgeous, every inch of it. Mountains rising out of the ocean. Who knew?
We saw all sorts of natural beauty and a lot of old man-made stuff: buildings, towns, churches, museums. When people ask me what my favorite part was I have to say it was that I had no idea the east side of the Adriatic Sea had such a gorgeous coastline. And each country was fairly distinct from each other.
Greece continues to impress me with the huge amount of what we, the Fitches and I on my first trip to Greece, called rubble. Not to mention they moved the rock that became rubble around on small boats a really long time ago. Like who thought moving honking big chunks of marble from the islands to Delphi before the Corinth Canal was built, that being a trip of something like 300 miles, was a good idea? Meanwhile, Albania has lousy roads but lovely views. The fjord-like part of Montenegro we saw consisted of towns clinging to the flat spots between the water and the mountains—and the road up and out, with its 25+ switchbacks was very entertaining. Croatia is lovely stem to stern—at least what I saw of it. They have many lovely old red roofed walled towns that are simply charming with the occasional visible reminder of its war torn history. And then the Adriatic: the water is so clear (and wildly aqua) that one time I put my feet down to walk out onto the rocky beach and it turned out the water was about four feet deeper than my legs are long. All good.
I left the Pan Orama in Hvar, a really lovely island about mid-coastline, and watched my new friends take off for Dubrovnik (we spent a day there earlier in the trip) and Disembarking Day. I spent a few more days there to decompress after so many days of being with other people. It was odd going from chatting and listening all the time to very little conversation. I wandered and swam and took a boat to a neighboring island and wandered some more. It was luscious.
I ferry-ed to the mainland with a young woman from New York City and hung out with her for the morning in Split which was fun—especially since guidebook reports weren’t all that glowing. I returned to Sibenik and Krka National Park for a longer visit and then to Zadar to wander and catch the ferry to Italy. In Italy, I spent a day with Carolyn and her family. I got to do the family scene with a group lunch, a performance of Carolyn’s choir, a bike ride through town and a tour of the first library in the world (!!), and a rhythmic gymnastics performance by Camilla and a cast of hundreds. More good.
My final stop was a few days in Venice, a fun chaotic wacky place to hang. Three words describe Venice in my mind: over the top. And that can be a good thing. The crowds were there but weren’t overwhelming, and it wasn’t beastly hot.
I am not going to bother mentioning the trip home. We all know that the best part of travel is not the airplane ride. My father used to describe his flights as “uneventful” (when they were) and that was about the best thing one can say any more. Mine were eventful but I got home on the day I was supposed to (Well, it was 1 a.m. of the next but let’s not pick nits.), my luggage was there and I was still alive. All, again, good--very good.
Things I am Learning & Miscellaneous Observations
- My computer screen saver is a slide show of pictures from my IPhotos. It pulls random pictures from the previous 12 months. It is very entertaining. I often import other people’s photos and sometimes it’s a surprise to see pictures I didn’t take pop up among Bowen waterskiing and snowy dog shots.
- Will it be a relief when I really can’t do some of the things I try to do and probably shouldn’t like cleaning gutters on my almost second story porch roof?
- On my recent trip, I thought a lot about the impact tourism has on a place. Some places, like Venice and San Francisco and Asheville, have adapted to the influx of visitors. Others, like Montenegro and Bhutan and Croatia are in the process of adapting. I am concerned about what a place has to do to adapt and accommodate us.
- Several weeks ago I was walking the large hound when I looked up to see a V of geese although they were flying south...in April. That made me wonder. Are they trying to tell me something?
- One of the most prevalent sounds in Venice is that of rolling luggage on stone.
- I dragged my neighbor to a talk at the local garden center about…something like landscape design. The only “take away” I got (probably because she said it several times) was the importance of looking at where you are in your life so that you don’t bite off more of a commitment to new plantings than you are willing to chew where you are in your life. I think she makes a good point. And I think it is transferable to other things.
- A few weeks back, my assignment at the library was to go through juvenile non-fiction: to make sure it was in order (it was not), to repair damaged books and to pull any that were beyond repair in anticipation of a busy summer season. As usual, I came home with a sack of books to read. And almost all of them were really interesting and helpful. I had started in the biographies. And I read them all in one night. It’s a great way, especially for someone like me with a short attention span, to get a lot of information in a limited amount of pages. Now, I want to learn more about Eleanor Roosevelt and Marco Polo. With the exception of the Governor Vance book, which I frankly found unreadable, I enjoyed reading all of these books and may read some of them again.
- Here’s the list of what I read
- "Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai" by Claire A Nivola
- "Marco Polo" by Gian Paolo Aserani
- "States Woman to the World: A Story about Eleanor Roosevelt" by Maryann N. Weidt
- "Sojourner Truth: Preacher for Freedom and Truth" by Suzanne Slade
- "Governor Vance" by Cordelia Camp (his birthplace is around the corner from my house)
- "The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew up to Become Dr Seuss" by Kathleen Krull
The Reluctant Gardener
I thought this might be the topic of the next issue but I think it will be an ongoing topic in my life and so, should you actually read this, it will be something you will read about.As I have mentioned, I live in a place of wonderful and inspiring neighbors who are really smart and talented in ways I am not. I keep reminding myself I have some skills but they don’t seem to surface here much. Anyway, I do want my various gardens to look better but I have neither the knowledge nor the patience so I am TRYING TO LEARN.
Upon my return (having been gone at the height of the world’s most prodigious growing season on record), I found the jungle on the magnitude of …oh dang…was it Gulliver’s Travels with the serious jungle? Suffice it to say, there were independent weeds standing taller than I do…everywhere. Oh my. And so I have spent some time weeding and contemplating--I'm trying to get a bit Zen about this--and here I am, in the middle of yet another Reluctant Gardener episode.
When I finally found a cool shady spot to weed at 2pm, I pondered the habit of the local snakes (some harmless, some not). Do they like cool dark spots like I do at the heat of the day? Jeff says it doesn’t much matter what the harmless ones like—they are harmless (see I told you my neighbors were smart)—and the harmful ones seem to like rocks and wood piles. It calms me.
Ray, my other neighbor and the truly wonderful person who mows my yard because he has the time, offered to come over and help weed—it’s that bad—but he only wants to do it when I am there because he’s not sure what’re flowers and what’re weeds. I told him it was a problem I had myself.
Meanwhile, I wondered if it’d be better to stay on top of weeds from the early days of the growing season or waiting like I did, until they got really really big and are very satisfying to pull out. Stay tuned.
