A Day in Venice

It was September first; our cruise was officially over, but we had one last day of vacation to spend in Venice. After breakfasting at our hotel, we went looking for the tobacconist where the hotel clerk had told us we could buy bus tickets into the city. A block from the hotel, we met a gentleman on a bicycle who spoke no English, but who nevertheless understood what we were looking for and tried to help. Unfortunately, this being Sunday, the tobacconist was closed. However, when our new friend realized that we wanted to ride the bus and not buy cigarettes, he guided us to a newsstand where we could buy tickets. The owner of the newsstand didn't speak English either, but one of his customers did, and helped us communicate that we wished to purchase four round-trip tickets to Venice.

We had been warned that the city would be crowded. This was the day of the annual Historical Regatta, and the Venice Film Festival was also going on. I could have sworn there wasn't room for us on the bus, but we managed to squeeze in—and at each stop between us and Venice, more passengers squeezed in. When we reached the end of the line at Piazzale Roma, we burst out into Venice like circus clowns exploding from a tiny car.

In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain describes his arrival in Venice by gondola:

We reached Venice at eight in the evening, and entered a hearse belonging to the Grand Hotel d'Europe. At any rate, it was more like a hearse than any thing else, though to speak by the card, it was a gondola. And this was the storied gondola of Venice!—the fairy boat in which the princely cavaliers of the olden time were wont to cleave the waters of the moonlit canals and look the eloquence of love into the soft eyes of patrician beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet touched his guitar and sang as only gondoliers can sing! This the famed gondola and this the gorgeous gondolier!—the one an inky, rusty old canoe with a sable hearse-body clapped on to the middle of it, and the other a mangy, barefooted guttersnipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which should have been sacred from public scrutiny.

Things have changed since Twain's visit. Although there are still enough gondolas to satisfy the tourists, the primary means of transportation for locals is the vaporetto, or waterbus. At the terminal, we purchased four 12-hour passes that would allow us to ride the bus and vaporetto for the rest of the day. Our first stop was Piazza San Marco. Between the vaporetto stop and the piazza, we passed the famous "Bridge of Sighs," where prisoners supposedly sighed at their last glimpse of Venice as they passed from the Doge's Palace to prison. Judging by the size of the windows, they couldn't have seen much to sigh at.

Gondolas Beneath the Bridge of Sighs

There were lots of people in the Piazza San Marco. There were also lots of pigeons and winged lions. The pigeons were real; the lions were not. Of the lions, Twain wrote:

They say St. Mark had a tame lion, and used to travel with him—and every where that St. Mark went, the lion was sure to go. It was his protector, his friend, his librarian. And so the Winged Lion of St. Mark, with the open Bible under his paw, is a favorite emblem in the grand old city. It casts its shadow from the most ancient pillar in Venice, in the Grand Square of St. Mark, upon the throngs of free citizens below, and has so done for many a long century. The winged lion is found every where—and doubtless here, where the winged lion is, no harm can come.

Winged Lion in Piazza San Marco

It was lunchtime, so we stopped near Piazza San Marco for our first taste of real Italian pizza. We ordered two: one with ham, artichokes, and mushrooms, and one "frutti de mare," with mussels, shrimp, and calamari. Knowing that we were Americans, the waiter did not think that would be enough food for the four of us. He recommended the Venetian Special, with shrimp and arugula.

Venetian Pizza and Boots of Beer

From Piazza San Marco, we headed to the Rialto Bridge. Venice is a maze of canals and narrow, winding alleyways. Fortunately, if you want to get from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge—or vice versa—there are prominent signs to direct you. (I'm not sure what you are supposed to do if you want to go anywhere else.) Along the way, we passed many shops selling the beautiful carnival masks that Venice is famous for. While we were in one of the shops, the power went out. I imagine that this is a frequent problem in a city whose infrastructure is under water. (You don't even want to think about the plumbing. Being a plumber in Venice must be a nightmare.)

Carnival Masks

Rialto Bridge was packed with spectators for the regatta, so we did not venture onto it, for fear our additional weight after consuming three pizzas would cause it to collapse. We took some pictures, then boarded another vaporetto. We wanted to ride down the Grand Canal before it closed for the regatta.

Ponte di Rialto

We got off near Ponte degli Scalzi and found a quiet cafe, where we stopped for espresso. We then walked back to Piazzale Roma and took the bus back to the hotel. We would miss the regatta, but we were all tired of crowds—and just plain tired.

After a few hours' riposo at the hotel, we were ready to return to the city. This time, we avoided the mob of tourists near Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal, instead losing ourselves in a maze of narrow alleys and canals that were less traveled. We weren't afraid of getting lost—we knew that sooner or later we would find a sign directing us to Piazza San Marco or the Rialto Bridge.

Venice in the Afternoon

At dinner time, we stopped at Birraria la Corte in Campo San Polo, where we were seated in a lovely courtyard lit by the setting sun. I decided to be adventurous and try Venice's specialty: spaghetti with cuttlefish, in a sauce made from cuttlefish ink. It had a subtle flavor that is difficult to describe, so I won't bother trying. I'll just say it's not bad, and was officially the strangest thing I ate on the entire trip.

Cuttlefish Pasta with Ink Sauce

When we arrived at the restaurant, we had noticed that temporary walls had been set up, fencing off about half of the piazza. When we left, we discovered the reason. This was the location of a temporary outdoor movie theater for the film festival. We didn't stay for the movie—a documentary about Bernardo Bertolucci—but headed back towards the Grand Canal. As we left the piazza, we met our first and only Venetian cats. Three of them greeted us from the open second floor window of a house on the piazza. They had barely a trace of Italian accent.

Back at the Rialto Bridge, we stopped to admire the work of a local artist. We bought a small painting from him to remind us of our visit. We climbed the steps of the bridge, and, at the top, found a crippled, hunchbacked beggar, to whom we bequeathed what was left of our change. On the other side of the bridge, we boarded a vaporetto back to the bus terminal at Piazzale Roma.

When Mark Twain visited Venice in 1867, he was appalled that what had once been "a haughty, invincible, magnificent Republic" had "fallen a prey to poverty, neglect and melancholy decay." And yet, he described a magical night on the Grand Canal, when "Every gondola that swam by us, with its crescents and pyramids and circles of colored lamps hung aloft, and lighting up the faces of the young and the sweet-scented and lovely below, was a picture; and the reflections of those lights, so long, so slender, so numberless, so many-colored and so distorted and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture likewise, and one that was enchantingly beautiful." Our trip down the canal was nothing like that—and yet it was. Modern Venice is still "enchantingly beautiful" in its way, and it's not difficult to picture its former glory.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier;
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore,
And music meets not always now the ear:
Those days are gone—but Beauty still is here;
States fall, arts fade—but Nature doth not die,
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear,
The pleasant place of all festivity,
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy!

—George Gordon Byron

Murano and Burano

We arrived in Venice, the final stop on our cruise, while we were having our final breakfast on board the MS Ryndam. We went out on deck to watch the sun come up over the city as we pulled into the harbor.

Sunrise in Venice

We left the ship for the final time and boarded a boat for our final excursion—a visit to two of the Venetian Lagoon's forty islands: Murano and Burano. On the way, our guides pointed out the sites: Piazza San Marco, the Arsenal (Venice's navy shipyard), San Michele (the island that serves as the city's cemetery), and—of greatest interest to the majority of us—Elton John's house on the Grand Canal.

Piazza San Marco

On the island of Murano, which is known for its glass factories, we visited... (wait for it) a glass factory. We saw a glassblowing demonstration that was fairly interesting (if you had never seen a glassblowing demonstration, which most of us had), but the real purpose of the visit was, of course, to get us to buy something from the gift shop. Most of the beautiful art glass was outside our budget, but Loretta found a few small trinkets that did not require taking out a second mortgage.

Beautiful Murano Art Glass We Did Not Buy

On the island of Burano, which is known for fishing and lacemaking, we were told by our guide that, if we wished to skip the lacemaking demonstration, we could have an hour to explore on our own. I felt sorry for the lacemakers, because I don't think anyone went to the demonstration. We were all far more interested in exploring the streets lined with brightly colored shops and houses. According to our guide, the reason the houses on Burano are painted so colorfully is to keep the fishermen from going home to the wrong house (and wife).

Colorful Burano Houses

Kevin and I enjoyed a beer at a quiet cafe while Susan and Loretta did the obligatory shopping. We may have escaped the lacemaking demonstration, but we weren't about to leave Burano without something made of lace.

Colorful Burano Lace Shop

Our tour boat returned us to the harbor, where we retrieved our luggage and boarded a bus to take us to our hotel just outside Venice. Remembering what a nightmare the check-in was in Barcelona, Susan and Loretta raced into the lobby to be first in line while Kevin and I stayed outside with the luggage. We were fortunate that our bus was the first to arrive. As bus after bus stopped to unload more guests, the line got longer and longer. It was nearly an hour before Loretta came out to tell us that we had rooms, but to keep quiet about it because no one else did. They were checking people in as rooms became available, and it was a slow process. People were losing patience. Tempers were running high. We quickly and quietly moved our luggage up to our rooms, so as not to be at the center of a riot.

Cruisers Waiting to Check in at NH Laguna Palace

By the time we were installed in our rooms, it was after 3:00 and we had not yet had lunch. We sneaked past the angry mob in the lobby and walked up the street in search of a restaurant. We found several, but most of them were closed for the afternoon "riposo." There was only one place that was open: a quiet little wine bar with a limited menu. The waiter didn't speak English, but he was friendly and eager to please. He recommended the chicken and the "boofalo mozzarella," and we ordered both. Showing him our map, Loretta asked him what we should see in Venice. He replied, pointing out the locations on our map: "Piazza San Marco... Ponte di Rialto... Grand Canal vaporetto." (A "vaporetto," we had learned on our morning boat tour, was a water bus—the primary means of transport in Venice.)

It wasn't long before we started to see people from our cruise wander by, looking for a place to eat. As they passed the open door, we waved them in and told them this was the only place that was open. Soon our quiet little wine bar was packed. We gave up our table to a group of our fellow cruisers and adjourned to the hotel for a riposo before dinner.

Dinner was at another nearby restaurant called "BEFeD," which advertised itself as a brew pub, although they only served two kinds of beer: lager and "red." The menu informed us, in fairly good English, that the name came from the initials of the four owners, and that their specialty was grilled chicken: "the ideal food to be eaten in a genuine way according to local tradition and to the Mediterranean diet"—"genuine way," we deduced, meaning with the fingers. The chicken was tasty, and the beer wasn't bad. There were also bowls of peanuts, the shells of which, the menu told us, "must be thrown rigorously against the floor."

It was pleasant sitting outdoors by the canal, drinking red beer, eating chicken in a genuine way, and watching the little girl at the table next to us rigorously throw peanut shells against the floor, then rigorously stomp on them.

Tomorrow: Venice!

Kotor and Ravenna

The next port of call on our APHC cruise was Kotor, Montenegro. Here is a picture Loretta took from the deck of the ship:

Kotor, Montenegro

It's a lovely scene, isn't it? That's all I ever saw of Kotor. It's what I could see from the window of our cabin, which is where I spent the entire time we were in port.

In my last post, I wrote that when we left Naples, I felt like I was coming down with a cold. The first symptoms weren't so bad: just a cough and sniffles. However, approximately twenty-four hours after we witnessed the eruption of Mount Stromboli, I was awakened in the middle of the night by rumblings in my bowels signaling an impending eruption of my own.

I will spare you the grisly details. Suffice it to say, I had a rough night. When morning came I felt much better, but I had taken the last of the Imodium. The ship's sundry shop would be closed until after we left port, so I made my way down to the ship's medical center to see if they could provide me with some, just in case.

The doctor on duty said she had "good news" and "bad news." The good news was that she had Imodium, which she gave me (or rather, sold me)—along with Tylenol and Dramamine (neither of which I needed) and several disposable thermometers (although I did not have a fever). The bad news was that I would have to be isolated for twenty-four hours from the time of my last "eruption." I was not allowed to leave our cabin, and no one was allowed to visit (not that anyone would want to)—except for Loretta, who was free to come and go unless she got sick. Not even our steward was allowed to enter the cabin. Instead, a "sanitation team" would do the cleaning.

As I returned to the cabin, I thought of Mark Twain and his friends who, in The Innocents Abroad, sneaked ashore when their ship was quarantined at Athens. These days, with magnetic ID cards that track everyone who boards or leaves the ship, such a thing would be impossible.

At least we didn't have an excursion planned. Susan and Kevin took a tender ashore to do some exploring. I told Loretta she should go with them, but she insisted on staying on board with me. We began filling out the six-page survey the doctor had given me, listing everything I had put in my mouth for the past three days. (You should try it sometime. It's a real test of your memory to recall everything you have had to eat and drink in the past 72 hours.)

When the sanitation team arrived, Loretta had to leave. There wasn't enough room. I felt like Groucho Marx in the stateroom scene in A Night at the Opera, as men in masks and plastic gloves piled in, stripped the bed, bagged all towels and linens, and sprayed and wiped down all surfaces with disinfectant. Oddly enough, they did not remove the towel origami pig our steward had made us the night before. They left it on Loretta's bedside table. They did, however, spray it with disinfectant.

I discovered that being sick on a ship isn't all that bad. The ship's crew pampered me almost as much as my mother did when I was sick as a kid. Room service brought me a tray with broth, crackers, and ginger ale. The front desk called and offered to send down books and DVDs. I told them "no thanks." I had Mark Twain on my Kindle, along with several dozen other books, but I spent most of my time watching the ship's satellite TV—mostly made-for-TV movies I would never have watched at home. I slept a lot, too—often dozing off during one movie and waking up during the next. I was confused when King Arthur and Sir Lancelot in The Mists of Avalon suddenly turned into Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in Pirates of Silicon Valley, and when Bill Pullman as The Virginian metamorphosed into Mandy Patinkin as The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Loretta came and went. She saw some of the shipboard entertainment and went on deck to take pictures so I could see more of Montenegro than could be seen from our window. The sanitation crew came and went, stripping the bed again (though I had not slept in it), wiping everything down again, and giving the pig another spritz of disinfectant.

I slept well that night and awoke feeling fine. It was our last day on board the MS Ryndam, and I intended to make the most of it. I paced the cabin, waiting for permission from the medical center to leave "the brig." Finally, the call came at 7:45: I was free!

Over breakfast (just oatmeal and bananas for me), Susan and Kevin told us about Kotor, and Susan showed us her pictures. It's a quaint, pretty city, known for its large population of cats. We were sorry to have missed the cats. We talked about how much we all missed our own: Molly and Murphy, Dickens and Zorra.

Kotor Cats Dining on Sardines (photo by Susan Logue Koster)

After breakfast, there was a meet and greet on the Lido Deck with Garrison Keillor. Susan and I stood in line: Susan with a copy of his latest book, I with the souvenir t-shirt Loretta had already gotten most of the other entertainers to sign. When my turn came, I told him what a wonderful time we were having (not mentioning the twenty-four hours I spent in quarantine), and how much we enjoyed the Alaska cruise seven years ago. I asked him how he thought this cruise compared with Alaska. "This one's good," he replied. "Anywhere you can be on a boat with people singing." I handed him my t-shirt and told him my name; he signed it and handed it back. I looked at what he had written:

Hi Don! It's you.
Garrison Keillor

While we were having lunch, the ship arrived in Ravenna. We took a bus into the center of the city and explored it on foot, without guide or guidebook, map or GPS. I don't know if it was because I felt so much better after being sick for twenty-four hours, or because it felt so good to be outside after being cooped up in the cabin, but I loved Ravenna. The city was charming, the weather was perfect, the crowds—well, that was the best part. There were no crowds. We strolled through peaceful, quiet streets, alleys, and piazzas—past Dante's Tomb, Teatro Alighieri, the house where Byron once lived, and another leaning tower (apparently there are leaning towers all over Italy). When we were tired of walking, we found a quiet cafe in the sun-drenched Piazza del Popolo, where we sat in the shade and drank prosecco.

Piazza del Popolo, Ravenna, Italy

Before we left town, we went into a grocery near the bus stop and bought several boxes of cookies to bring back to co-workers. We thought they were Italian cookies, but it turned out they were imported from Germany.

Someday, we hope to visit Germany and buy some Italian cookies there.

Courtyard in Ravenna

Adieu! Adieu! yon silver lamp, the moon,
Which turns our midnight into perfect noon,
Doth surely light thy towers, guarding well
Where Dante sleeps,
where Byron loved to dwell.

—Oscar Wilde, Ravenna

The Ruins of Pompeii

In Napoli, where love is king,
When boy meets girl here's what they say—
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
That's amore!

We had hoped to sample a big pizza pie in Naples, the fifth port of call on our Mediterranean cruise, but there just wasn't time. We had to see The Ruins of Pompeii. Here's the description from the brochure:

From the pier, it’s a 45-minute ride by motor coach to the remarkable ruins of Pompeii, perfectly preserved since the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79. On a guided walking tour you will learn about the excavation techniques that have uncovered this city remarkably intact and what the residents were doing at the time of the eruption. You'll gain an insight into the lives of the ancient Romans as you discover baths, theatres, temples, markets and the huge forum.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people on the ship wanted to see Pompeii, and multiple buses were required. Susan and Kevin were assigned to a different tour than ours. Our guide's name was Massimo. As we set out, he pointed out Mount Vesuvius and explained that it was dormant, but not extinct. He said that it probably would not erupt today, but if by chance it did, we were welcome to join him in running a brisk half-marathon back to the ship.

Mark Twain visited Pompeii in 1867. (You can read his account here.) Little has changed since he was there—including what he refers to as "the only building in Pompeii which no woman is now allowed to enter." Women are allowed to enter it today, of course, and it is one of the most popular attractions in Pompeii. Susan and Kevin's group saw it. Our group didn't, but Massimo told us about it: the sailors who frequented it, the "friendly girls" who worked there, and the naughty illustrations that still adorn its walls.

What we did see was what was left of the baths, a typical house, the temple of Apollo, and several bakeries and restaurants. Massimo kept us moving. Whenever another tour was about to overtake us, he would exclaim, "Andiamo! We are being invaded again!" and off we'd go.

Massimo

And then we came to the bodies.

At the show that evening, Garrison jokingly boasted that he did not go to Pompeii. He accused those of us who did (including his wife) of having a ghoulish interest in dead bodies. I suppose there may be something to that. When our group came to the glass cases holding the bodies (actually plaster casts of bodies, but here and there you could see a bone peeking through), we were all drawn to them like moths to a flame. What was fascinating, horrifying, and heartbreaking about them was that, from their poses, you could see the surprise and terror in which they died.

Victims of Vesuvius

But to me the most interesting thing about Pompeii is not seeing how the people died; it's seeing how they lived: their houses, temples, businesses, streets, and elaborate plumbing and drainage system. Their engineering was remarkably sophisticated. Unfortunately, Massimo told us, their lives were shortened by the toxic lead they used for just about everything; it can be found in the paint, the mortar between the stones, and, most unfortunately, the plumbing. This was probably their second biggest mistake. (Their biggest mistake, of course, was building their city beneath a volcano.)

Vesuvius and the Ruins of Pompeii

That night, the captain announced that we would be passing by an active volcano—Stromboli—and if we got up early, we might see an eruption. We set our alarms, and at five a.m. we stumbled out of bed, threw on some clothes, and made our way up to the bow of the ship. Ahead of us we could barely see the outline of a mountain against the dark sky, with a dim orange glow at its peak. We all stared at it for several minutes. I believe everyone was thinking of Mount Vesuvius and its victims. I know I was.

That morning we squeezed past Sicily through the Strait of Messina, rounded the toe of Italy's boot, and headed north toward the Adriatic Sea. This was our "at sea" day, and I planned to spend most of it sipping mimosas (for the vitamin C) and napping. I had returned from Pompeii with a hacking cough, and now I had developed a runny nose. Clearly, I had picked up a virus, but it was only a cough and sniffles. It could be a lot worse, right?

As it turned out, it was.

Rome Overnight Experience

The fourth port of call on our Mediterranean cruise was Civitavecchia—"Gateway to Rome." Once again, we had many excursions to choose from. The four of us who were traveling together—my sister Susan, brother-in-law Kevin, Loretta, and I—chose the "Rome Overnight Experience," which included a tour of the Colosseum, a walking tour of Rome, and a tour of the Vatican. Our guide's name was Alessia. On the bus, she handed out beautiful, detailed maps of the city, which we put away and never looked at again. She explained that ancient Rome was on the left bank of the Tiber River (which was on the right side of our map), while Vatican City was on the right bank (the left side of our map).

Once we were in the city, we stopped to pick up another guide: Alessandra. Apparently, Alessia was not licensed to guide us within Rome, and there are strict laws about such things. (I found this account of an unlicensed guide who was arrested in the middle of a tour, leaving her group stranded at the Forum.) Like our guide in Pisa, Alessandra warned us about pickpockets. However she told us not to worry too much, because "the worst pickpockets are in the government." We were equipped with state-of-the-art radio receivers which ensured that we could always hear Alessandra's voice. They did not, however, give us any indication which direction her voice was coming from; we soon learned that if we did not keep up, we could easily get lost from the group.

Our first stop was the Colosseum. By the way, did you know that "Colosseum" was not the actual name of the building? The actual name was "Flavian Amphiteatre." It became known as "The Colosseum" because of the large statue ("colossus") that once stood outside it. Of it, Mark Twain wrote:

More vividly than all the written histories, the Coliseum tells the story of Rome's grandeur and Rome's decay. It is the worthiest type of both that exists. Moving about the Rome of to-day, we might find it hard to believe in her old magnificence and her millions of population; but with this stubborn evidence before us that she was obliged to have a theatre with sitting room for eighty thousand persons and standing room for twenty thousand more, to accommodate such of her citizens as required amusement, we find belief less difficult.

What sort of amusement did those citizens require? According to Alessandra, the lunchtime executions were popular, as were the wild animal hunts. At times, if some accounts are to believed, the amphitheater was even flooded to portray naval battles. However, the most popular events were the gladiator matches. The best gladiators were like the rock stars of today, and if they were very good (and very very lucky), they might live long enough to win their freedom and retire to live lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Alessandra shows us where the Roman sports fans sat.

We boarded the bus again and drove by other landmarks: the Circus Maximus, the Forum, Caesar's Palace (the real one), and the Victor Emmanuel Monument. We then got off the bus for a walking tour that took us past the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon, and ended at the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona.

We were told we had an hour of free time, and to meet back at the fountain. We retraced our steps for a closer look at the Pantheon, then returned to a sidewalk cafe next to our rendezvous place. Our timing was perfect. We had felt a few sprinkles on our walk; as soon as we were served our drinks, it began to pour. I think my favorite memory of Rome is of the four of us sitting in that cafe, sipping espresso and watching people in the piazza run for cover.

After the brief downpour, the city felt cooler, fresher, and cleaner. We met up with our tour group and walked to a nearby restaurant for lunch, after which the bus took us to our hotel. Once we were checked in, we had a nice nap. We had been told that it was common in Italy to take a siesta—or "riposo"—in the afternoon, and as they say, "When in Rome..."

In the evening we gathered in the lobby and were herded, along with several other tour groups staying at the hotel, onto buses to take us to dinner at Tanagra Caffe Concerto—a sort of operatic dinner theater. Between courses, we were entertained by a pianist and singers performing a selection of popular arias, duets, and quartets. There was some audience participation, and I had the honor (no doubt due to my lack of hair) of being chosen as a customer by Figaro, the famous "Barber of Seville." Thanks to my stellar performance, I became a minor celebrity on board the ship and learned not to be insulted when strangers asked me if I needed a shave.

A Close Shave (photo courtesy of David Lawrence)

After dinner, we were to have a night-time bus tour of the city before being returned to our hotel. We four were among the last to board. We got on a bus that supposedly had four empty seats, only to find that a woman was saving an empty seat for her husband. Loretta and I got off and found seats in the last row of another bus. There was a delay getting started; the guides had to check each bus to see if the lady's missing husband was on one of the other buses. I'm not sure they ever found him. He may still be in Rome.

Rome is beautiful at night—I suppose. I can't say I enjoyed it much. The woman sitting across from me wasn't enjoying it, and she was determined to make sure nobody else on the bus—at least nobody within earshot—was going to enjoy it either. A few minutes into the tour, she began to fidget and sigh, then to yawn loudly. Finally, she began not-so-quietly whining, to herself or to anyone who would listen (and believe me, we all tried our best not to): "This is pointless! ... Didn't we see this this morning? ... Does anyone really want to be doing this?"

Clearly someone did not get her afternoon riposo.

(I was reminded of the stories my Aunt Vonna used to tell about her great-aunt—my Grandfather Shorter's Aunt Flo. By all accounts, Aunt Flo seldom had anything positive to say about anything. When she returned from a trip to Europe, my grandmother asked her how she enjoyed it. "Oh, June," she replied, "It was nothing but ruins. Nothing but ruins!")

After breakfast the next morning, we checked out of the hotel and boarded our bus for the Vatican tour. (By the way, if you plan to visit the Vatican, I recommend you only do so with a guided tour. People were lined up around the block to get in, but we zipped past them in our own special line and went straight to the front.) Our guide this time was Sylvia. Once we were inside the Vatican Museum, she told us that it would take decades to see everything, even if you only stopped for couple of minutes at each exhibit. I don't see how it would be possible to stop for a couple of minutes at each exhibit. The museum was so crowded, it was like being swept along by the current in a river of people. I vaguely recall seeing some statues and tapestries. It was impossible to get good pictures.

It's impossible to get any pictures in the Sistine Chapel, because it's not allowed. Basically, nothing is allowed in the Sistine Chapel—not even talking. Sylvia had to tell us what we were going to see before we went in. The ceiling was impressive, of course, but what I found most fascinating was Michelangelo's face on the flayed skin of a saint. Sylvia had told us that this self-portrait in The Last Judgment was a rarity. Unlike other Renaissance artists, Michelangelo almost never painted himself into his works. If he was truly that ugly, I can see why. If he hadn't been such a great artist, he could have gotten a job posing as a model for gargoyles.

Sylvia tells us what a brilliant, unattractive man Michelangelo was.

What can I say about St. Peter's Basilica? Well, for one thing, it's big. When it comes to architectural beauty, I'll take Notre Dame de Paris or Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, but you certainly can't beat St. Peter's for size. And it has something else those other churches don't: popes—loads of them, from St. Peter himself to John Paul II. They thought so much of this pope that they covered him in silver and put him on display like the crown jewels:

Silver-Plated Pope

I believe there were even a couple of live popes somewhere in the vicinity, but we didn't see them.

We had lunch at Papa Rex, a restaurant just outside the Vatican. Then it was "Arrivederci Roma," as we boarded the bus to return to the ship. We were all pretty much exhausted by our visit to Rome. You're probably exhausted reading about it. I know I'm tired of writing about it.

Time for a riposo.

Monte Carlo, Bird Watching, and Pisa

I made a grave tactical error when packing for our APHC Mediterranean cruise. I did not pack enough light clothing, and we encountered nothing but hot, humid weather everywhere we went. I packed a pair of jeans and a pair of black dress slacks (neither of which I ever wore), a pair of shorts, a pair of white pants, and a brand new pair of khakis which turned out to be mislabeled and were four sizes too small. The first day of the cruise I got a nosebleed, which of course dripped onto my white pants.

Not to worry. There was a laundromat on board the ship.

I wore my shorts in Monte Carlo, and I felt like a slob. In Monte Carlo, you expect everyone to go around looking like Cary Grant or Grace Kelly, and a lot of them do. If they wear shorts and tee shirts, they wear designer shorts and designer tee shirts—with thousand-dollar Italian sandals. In the fashionable, art-nouveau-style cafe where we had lunch, I felt especially self-conscious and out-of-place.

Then a man came in. Until the maitre d' seated him, I figured he worked there—probably as a dishwasher. Think of Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Got the picture? Okay, now forget Brando and picture Danny DeVito in the same role.

After that, I felt a little less self-conscious.

On the circle outside the Casino and the Hotel de Paris were parked only Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and pricey Italian sports cars. We tried to go into the Hotel de Paris lobby, but the doorman wouldn't let us. (How did he know we weren't guests?) We didn't try to go into the Casino.

Monte Carlo Casino

I think everyone from our ship felt a little uncomfortable in Monte Carlo. Most of us were Midwesterners and not used to such extravagance. (Although I suppose it could be argued that being on such a cruise was fairly extravagant itself.) As Garrison Keillor sang at the APHC performance that evening:

Here you are, an American, sweaty, in T-shirt and jeans,
Monolingual, innocent, whatever that means,
Pale, and you have no yacht with whistles and bells,
But as your mother said, You're as good as anyone else,
So don't stand there, averting your gaze, twisting your right shoe.
You have a right to be here too.
Your manners are nice and you speak English rather prettily.
So let's go to Italy.

And so we did.

Our first port in Italy was Livorno—which for some reason in English is called "Leghorn" (and yes, it's where the chickens come from). We had several options for excursions, including Florence, Pisa, and Tuscany. We chose the "Lake Massaciuccoli Bird Watching & Pisa" excursion (primarily because it included a visit to a winery). While it's not a bad idea to wear shorts when bird watching, you cannot wear them in a cathedral. Therefore I wore my clean white pants, in case we should decide to enter the cathedral in Pisa.

Our guide was an Australian transplant named Jon. He and our bus driver, Giovanni, took us to Lake Massaciuccoli, where we met up with our bird-watching guide, a local named Gabriele. Gabriele was very knowledgeable about birds, although he only knew them by their Italian names, which led to some confusion among the serious birders on our tour. We had some very serious birders on our tour. I am not a serious birder, but I enjoyed the boat ride on Lake Massaciuccoli, which, aside from being a wildlife preserve, is also famous for being the location of Puccini's summer home. We saw a lot of birds, but I only got a picture of one. I think it's a cormorant, although it may be a penguin. It's difficult to tell from this picture.

Lake Massaciuccoli Cormorant (or Penguin)

I enjoyed the boat ride far more than I enjoyed our hike through the wetlands afterwards. It was hot and humid, and there was no shade. At least for most of the hike we were on a board walk. However, at one point, Gabriele picked three "volunteers," including myself, to get off the board walk and jump up and down on the ground, in order to demonstrate that the "islands" we were walking on were actually floating masses of sphagnum moss. Three large people (Gabriele clearly chose his volunteers for their size) jumping up and down in unison had the desired effect of causing the island we were standing on to bob up and down like a raft. It also had the undesired effect of splashing mud onto my pants.

My clean white pants.

Before visiting Pisa, we stopped for lunch at Tenuta Gaetano Spadaro, an organic farm which produces wine and olive oil, nestled in the beautiful hills of Tuscany. It being a winery, there was, of course, wine: red to go with the pasta, white to go with the pork ("the other white meat"), and sweet "vin santo," or "holy wine," in which to dunk our biscotti.

Tenuta Gaetano Spadaro

It was Saturday afternoon, and Pisa's Piazza del Duomo was hot and crowded. According to Jon, the baptistry, cathedral, and bell tower all lean—each in a different direction. You may be able to see that in the following picture, or maybe not. I discovered that it is difficult to take a picture of any of these structures while keeping the camera level; one has a tendency to tilt to compensate.

Baptistry, Cathedral, and Bell Tower of Pisa

We did not enter the cathedral, so I needn't have worn my long pants after all. We also did not climb to the top of the tower. We did not have time. Even if we had had time, I don't believe I could have done it—especially after reading Twain's account in The Innocents Abroad: "Standing on the summit, one does not feel altogether comfortable when he looks down from the high side; but to crawl on your breast to the verge on the lower side and try to stretch your neck out far enough to see the base of the tower, makes your flesh creep, and convinces you for a single moment in spite of all your philosophy, that the building is falling. You handle yourself very carefully, all the time, under the silly impression that if it is not falling, your trifling weight will start it unless you are particular not to 'bear down' on it."

The best thing about Pisa is that none of us had our pockets picked there. From what Jon told us, we were lucky. Near the cathedral, we saw a handbag that had been picked clean and discarded, and, as we were leaving, Jon pointed out a gang of young women who were working the crowd near the bus stop.

Everywhere on our trip, we saw traces of the Roman Empire. On the drive back to the ship, our route took us on what was once an old Roman road. It was lined with beautiful umbrella pines—the same type of trees (though not the same trees) planted by the Romans to shade the road from the hot sun. We also saw sections of an aqueduct. I was reminded of a line from Monty Python's Life of Brian: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

Of course the best place to see evidence of the Romans is in Rome, which was to be our next stop.

But first I needed to wash my pants again.

Marseille(s)

Is there anything more relaxing than an ocean voyage? Practically the only source of anxiety on our APHC Mediterranean cruise was deciding which shipboard entertainers to see: Heather Masse by the pool on the Lido Deck, Butch Thompson at Mix piano bar, the DiGiallonardo Sisters in the Ocean Bar, or Robin and Linda Williams in the Crow's Nest.

Well, there was one other source of anxiety: the toilet in our cabin. Sometimes it flushed when it was supposed to flush; most of the time it flushed five or ten minutes after pressing the button. The evening of our second day at sea, it didn't flush at all. The engineer (which, we discovered, is what they call the plumber on a ship) finally got it to flush, but there was still no telling when it would happen.

Our first stop was Marseille—or "Marseilles," if you prefer the English spelling, as Mark Twain did. He wrote, "In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel." I suspect this is no longer true, but I can't say for sure, as we never saw Marseille(s). Instead we chose to take a bus excursion to Avignon and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, a region known for its wine.

We chose many of our excursions based on whether or not they included wine.

Our tour guide was Olivier; our bus driver was Martine. Olivier informed us that Avignon was not far—"only an hour ago from here." It is a city with an ancient history, dating back to before the Roman Empire. There is a famous song about its bridge:

Sur le Pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse tous en rond

Technically, it's no longer a bridge. You could say it's half a bridge, or maybe a pier. In any case, if you try to cross it, you will end up in the Rhône River. We took pictures of it, but we did not dance on it.

Pont Saint-Bénezet (Pont d'Avignon)

The pope had a palace in Avignon. He moved there in the 14th century, when things got too hot for him in Rome. Some members of our group toured the palace with Olivier. Others explored the town on their own. We did a little shopping—at least Loretta and Susan did. Kevin and I found a comfortable bench in the shade. We later met up with Olivier and the rest of the group and walked through Avignon to the restaurant where we were to have lunch.

Olivier's Little Joke

No, we did not eat at McDonald's. Olivier stopped there to allow stragglers to catch up and also, I suspect, as a little joke. After a delightful Provençal meal (including wine, of course), we boarded our bus, and Martine drove us to Domaine Mousset Winery in nearby Châteauneuf-du-Pape for wine tasting.

The wine was exceptionally good. As one member of our tour group remarked, the only thing wrong with it was that the portions were too small. (Alors—it was, after all, a tasting.)

I was curious about the appearance of cicadas in the winery's decor, including the cicada-patterned tablecloth. Olivier explained that the cicada is considered good luck by vintners—a harbinger of the grape harvest.

That evening in MS Ryndam's Showroom, Garrison Keillor led the audience in a sing-along to the tune of On the Road to Mandalay:

Come you back to old Marseilles
Where they serve us crème brulee
Can't you hear the glasses clinking
As they pour the Cabernet
Cote du Rhone and Chardonnay
With some Brie, what do you say
Won't you cut the cheese with me someday
Back in Old Marseilles

(If you're an APHC fan, or if you'd like to hear the sort of entertainment we enjoyed on MS Ryndam, don't miss tonight's first A Prairie Home Companion broadcast of the season—live from The Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, Minnesota.)