Portofino and St. Tropez

Portofino and St. Tropez were the last two stops on our trip. Both are minor ports compared with Rome or Naples. But you know, there are 277 ports visited by cruise ships worldwide, or something like that (source: my memory of reading it somewhere) and they can’t all be London. Portofino is on the northwestern coast of Italy, and offers tours to Genoa, birthplace of Christopher Columbus. Truth is, we are getting fairly tired of paying quite a large chunk of change to ride long distances in a bus full of tourists. The quality time ratio (i.e. the amount of time you are actually looking at something interesting) is very low. So we decided against tours in most of the ports on this trip. Istanbul, Troy, Pompeii –those were more or less necessary. Valletta, in Malta, was a waste of time. We could have achieved on our own at our own pace much the same thing and not spent the money or time that went into the tour. Perhaps we are becoming seasoned cruise travelers now. Perhaps not. The cruise lines offer the port tours as optional add-ons to the trip. They cost from $60 –$150 per person per port, and usually 4 or 5 different tours are offered. I complained to Princess Cruises about the quality of their tours when answering their follow-up questionnaire about the trip, but, hey, is anyone really going to read the comments?

Now a personal guide with a car and driver – that’s the ticket. The high ticket, in Europe, I’m afraid. We got a great guide in Beijing with car and driver 8-10 hours a day for about $100 per day. In Rome the equivalent was at least $300 a day, and some quotes went as high as $1500. A very nice young woman offered to give us a 2-hour tour of the Naples museum for only E100, and came down to E80 (about $100 thanks to Bush). But that seemed a bit over the top, so as you can imagine we had no private guides in Europe.

So in Portofino we had a leisurely breakfast on our balcony overlooking the port, and then grabbed a tender ride to the dock. I had always dreamed of going to Genoa and pulling that trick that Mark Twain did back in the 19th century when the guide brought out the documents in Columbus’s own hand – but I wasn’t going to pay $300 to do it, so that’s still on my life list in the “yet to do” column. See Innocents Abroad for details.

The port is really small, and in the cool morning breeze, very interesting. The buildings lining the water are 3 stories high with a lot of false architecture painted onto them, making them look much fancier than they are. Back south we used to have tarpaper for exterior covering of inexpensive housing, with a print on it to make it look like brick. This was like that, only way more sophisticated.

There was to be a sailboat race that day in the 12-foot dingy class and the boats were at the put-in getting their sails up. The town was just waking up, restaurateurs setting up their outdoor tables, last minute delivery of cases of water and wine coming in – work fascinates me, as they say, I can sit and watch it for hours. That’s what we did. We sat at an outdoor table sipping decaf expressos and watched everyone busily doing whatever it was they had to do. The sails seemed to be made of tyvek, which is a great deal lighter than cloth, and if that’s true then the boat’s speed must be considerably improved. Never found out. Too much trouble to go out into the sun to ask one of the boaters.

An alley led us to a little triangular town square. We visited an art gallery and watched a young yuppie couple consider buying an E1000 painting. “Has the artist been painting for a long time?” asked Mr. Y. “Oh, yes” said the gallery owner. Mr. Y. should have come on our cruise ship. We have had 3 art auctions, and every painter has been painting for quite a while. Some have reached old age. Very valuable paintings, no doubt. And highly artistic. Paintings by the ship’s artists, of a size very similar to those offered on-board, have been priced at $12,000 in on-shore galleries. Now that’s art. Mr. & Ms Y did not buy the painting while we were there, but they did have a “lets check back later” look about them.

The embroidery shop next door had a quite wonderful hand embroidered tablecloth and 8 napkin set in linen for E1000 ($1366) or in cotton for E300 ($400). We wanted it, but what happens if someone spills wine on the $1300 hand embroidered tablecloth? You have to have come to Portofino in a yacht to assume that risk untroubled.

We had lunch in an outdoor café (what else?). Mine would have been ordinary in the US. Pizza and a coke. But in Italy, home of pizza, the pizza was named after a queen and came in the national colors (tomato red, cheese yellow, basil green). Mine came without any basil, and I was disappointed. But it tasted good.

We had seen the port, walked the town, and had the afternoon before us, so we went up a pathway that promised “Al Faro”. That seems to mean, “to the lighthouse. A short ways up it leveled out and some benches provided a great view of the bay and the boats. An older couple (and you can’t believe what it takes to qualify for that in my eyes now that I’m collecting full social security) walked up and shared the benches with us. They wee from Australia and echoed our conversation about how much things cost. Our dollar is only about 75 cents in Euro terms. Theirs is only about 75 cents in dollar terms. A Euro is really a lot of money to them. It developed that they had been to Rome some years back to take part in the beatification ceremonies of an obscure relative. Dom Maroni, or something similar. So if I die, and go to Catholic heaven, I can call on the good Dom and tell him I’ve met a distant relative of his who thought me worthy of 15 minutes conversation.

A bit further we saw the ocean. The port is sheltered by a very narrow, high hill, and we were standing on the ridgeline. The pathway to Al Faro went on. Signs suggested it was 1500 meters, and that at the end the faithful were greeted with an ice-cream stand offering all manner of treats and refreshments. We pressed on. The trail was about 4 feet wide, and at points went up flights of stairs. Along it from time to time we found locked gates with house numbers by them. People lived on that trail. But how did they get food and other things to the house? We saw, through fences darkly, vegetable gardens, picnic tables, and all manner of wonders indicating current inhabitation of these places. At long last we came to some huge boulders, a grove of curiously shaped pine trees, and the gleaming white walls of Al Faro, the lighthouse. And at the end of the patio there it was: the ice-cream stand. Boarded up tight, with only a sign that listed the items we could not order. Ice cream, soft drinks, tost (whatever that is) and more. We had to be content with the views, and the sight of a large school of fish swimming in the very blue Mediterranean.

St. Tropez was different. After our leisurely breakfast we had only 4 hours to enjoy the port as the ship left shortly after 2pm for Barcelona. The first thing we noticed, as we entered the open-air equivalent of the Grand Bazaar, was that everyone here spoke French. Even the babies. There were more of the beautiful people here than in Portofino, thin women in their 30s with wonderful clothing, lots of people dressed in white as befits a southern port, and after the Bazaar, dozens of shops selling clothing and jewelry for the beautiful people. The narrow streets hummed and sometimes roared with motor scooters, and motorbikes, along with cars and even SUVs. The sidewalks were jammed and we spilled over into the narrow streets until panicked by the sound of a motor scooter behind us we pushed our way back onto the sidewalk. It was hard to take photographs because stopping meant a huge backup behind us. At one point we turned into a very narrow alley (from the French “allee” meaning place to walk) and suddenly we were all alone. It let us out at a tiny square. Eventually we got post cards, found the post office (open Saturday) and got stamps, and landed in a tiny outdoor café for postcard writing and lunch. I had pizza. We were in France now, so not only no basil, but 3 olives and not green ones, either. Mary Alice had the pate, which turned out to be a deep-dish item with no pate.

Seeking pate we went into a butcher shop (vegetables are sold at a different store) where we meet Jean Pierre and Chantelle. At last my college French studies paid off, for as I was introduced to Chantelle I said “Chantelle, enchante!” Nothing in our lives is for no purpose, even college French. Jean Pierre had been to San Francisco, which he enjoyed immensely, and in the end we not only bought our pate, I got a photo of Mary Alice, Chantelle, and Jean Pierre.

We just made it onto the tender before the 2 pm deadline, and as I write we are at sea again.

We had heard of the famous Napoli pickpockets, of course, (And those of every major city we visited) and adopted a number of stratagems to defeat them. Looking like a hick is one, and I certainly did that with my broad brimmed hat, Levis and tennis shoes. My camera and Mary Alice’s purse have anti-theft straps, which have metal cores to prevent slash and dash operations. where the thief cuts the straps, seizes the item and runs off down the streets.
Of course I’m wearing a money belt, and have jammed a water bottle in my pocket where my wallet is. There are a few other secrets too, but this blog is a public document and who knows if worldwide pickpocket rings are reading it to gain those secrets. Private emails only please.

The worst thing we heard about pickpockets in Rome is that they dress like tourists. That idea turned my whole world upside down. So that pack of head-shaven, tattooed young men swaggering down the street towards me is not the enemy. Its that overweight guy in the dorky hat who looks lost – wait that’s a reflection in the window. We were standing by the Tiber considering a boat trip when a German sounding couple came up and asked about my camera. Was it expensive? No, I said, it’s a couple of years old. Out of date. Did I like Mary Alice’s better. Yes. Newer. That was that, but the lingering question is: was my camera too junky to steal? No one minded how old my camera was in Vienna in 2004. There they just did the old lady dropping a cane at the Museum store checkout stand routine, and snatched the camera. No checking for value first. I suppose it is possible that my encounter in Rome was with a genuine tourist couple, but in this wicked world, who can you trust?

The Commodore of our ship said, in his farewell address, “See Naples and die…if you try and cross the street.” That was our first hint that Naples traffic might present challenges to the walker. Faithful readers will recall that drivers in China were somewhat aggressive. The potential disaster this offered was offset by wide streets. In Naples the same school of driving teaches, but the streets are medieval. Narrow, winding, hilly, with tall stone buildings built right up to the narrow sidewalks, if there are any sidewalks at all, and populated with people, animals, scooters, trash…. If you’ve ever driven in lower Manhattan, Naples is similar but worse. There are undoubtedly unspoken rules, which allow people to navigate this maze, but we tourists don’t know them. As the bicycle is to China, the motor scooter is to Naples and Rome. It is unpredictable, unexpected, and unruly. Riders go between lanes of traffic, into opposing lanes at times, up on the sidewalks and into the cross walks. A motor scooter is partly vehicle, and partly pedestrian in its rules. Riders have (mandatory?) helmets but otherwise ride as they dress for the rest of the day. Business suits with wide ties, shorts and t-shirts. What a great place for medical interns to get experience with a great range of injuries.

The Naples museum of Archeology was free the day we went to see the mosaics. Pompeii likewise was free. It was national culture week. Much of the art from Pompeii ended up at the Naples museum, but first we had to find it. The museum is for the most part monolingual, and that mono is not English. So we wandered off down the hall of sculpture, into the amber display and the contemporary goldsmithing before getting upstairs into the Pompeii mosaics. They are quite good. Oddly one of the largest, at 2 million tiles, is a depiction of Alexander the Great defeating the Persian king in a decisive battle. It was a decisive battle with no Romans in it, which made it puzzling, but evidently the ancient Romans were so into Greek culture that they conquered it and then adopted it.

We walked back to the ship – perhaps 1/2-hour walk and mostly downhill which suited us fine. Reading maps of the Italian and French ports we visited is confusing because they show all these plazas and squares which, when you get to them, are very small. The scale is off because the buildings are built right up to the sidewalk and they shadow the streets. But we made it. We made it into a truck parking lot completely fenced at the rear. i lifted up a gate and we strolled into the pier building and back on board.

Blog Naples & Rome

We were not supposed to stop at Naples. Our port was Sorrento, which is not all that far away, but a combination of rough seas and a bicycle race caused us to divert to the larger port. Tours we had scheduled went on, so our trip to Pompeii was still to be. We emerged from the ship through the largely abandoned terminal – undergoing renovations and looking good except for the shuttered shops. Our bus was on the tarmac and the only effect of the different port was that our ride was a bit longer,

There is a global civilization now, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that by and large you can never tell where you are by looking out the window of the bus. We could easily have been in California. The houses and apartments looked like they all do, the freeway allowed us to rush on towards our goal, the fields and crops all looked Californish. It is only the very old and the very new human constructions that have real infidelity. Natural scenes, which are striking, are likewise rare. Yosemite, the Matterhorn, the Fjords – these are exceptions, that’s why we go to look at them.

So until we arrived at Pompeii there were some nice views of the ocean but it was only hints from the tour guide that Herculean, which was also buried by the volcano in 79 AD, was a point of interest on the way. I was concerned that Pompeii would be another Troy – essentially a hill with some exposed rocks that specialists could become excited about but which to the naïve eye looked remarkably like other rocks.

Pompeii was quite different. Like Macchu Picchu it is largely intact, and has the simplicity of being just one city. Troy is part of 9 different levels of city found in its mound, and you can only find the earlier cities by disassembling the later ones. Pompeii is also huge, they haven’t dug it all up yet but it is larger than one could see in a day. Of course it is also redundant, like the suburbs of a modern city, houses tend to be very similar after you’ve seen a few.

Pompeii, you will recall, was buried in ash from a huge volcanic eruption in 79 AD. Specialists tell us that it was also heavily damaged in an earthquake in 62 AD, but for the tourists those 17 years 2000 years ago have no significance, Most of the 1st stories of the buildings are standing, second floors didn’t fare so well, but very few roofs have survived due to the weight of the ash. The streets are long and straight (ask me about Naples) and flanked by sidewalks. Our tour enters one city gate, walks towards the forum stopping to look at a few points of interest, checks out the shops, and then visits the house of the faun – one of the most extraordinary houses in the city. Built on a scale not seen again until Bill Gates built his home, it like most of the houses, contained mosaics on the floor, and painting on the walls, statuary in the gardens. The statue of the faun near the entry gives the house its name. Virtually all of the art you see in the house is reproductions. The originals were removed upon discovery and taken to various collections, ending up largely in the Naples Museum of Archeology. Modern archeologists regard their predecessors as little more than grave robbers as the art was taken often without documenting its context.

Eventually we rounded the corner and joined the mob attempting to get into the brothel. The attraction is not the faint hint of past romance seen in the small cubicles with their beds. It is the paintings on the walls. These show various sexual practices and services available at the brothel. For some years women were not able to enter the brothel lest they become shocked or corrupted by the paintings. Things have changed, and the mob was bi-sexual. (Or something likes that). Every tour group no matter what route it takes through the city will eventually end up at the brothel and it created a massive traffic jam. That resulted in one of the guides or another telling everyone not to stop and look at the paintings because so many others wanted to see them. To tell the truth compared with today’s internet porn the paintings are fairly tame and conventional. Our guide thought that they might have served the same purpose as pictures on the restaurant menu when people speaking a variety of languages need to be served. In Pompeii the prostitutes would have been slaves who didn’t speak Latin well.

We saw the Temple of Isis art in the museum, more about which later. It is clear from the wall paintings in various homes as well as this temple that there was a significant Egyptian influence in Pompeii. One statue of an Indian goddess was found, too. I had thought of the cities in the 1st century as being fairly cut off from each other, but at least as far as the ports like Pompeii went, I was mistaken.

Blog At Sea

At sea days on a cruise ship are those during which the ship does not dock at any port. When in port of course everyone jumps off early in the morning and is gone until shortly before the ship leaves port – which is usually 4-6pm. What with breakfast before going ashore, and dinner after returning, there is little time to get practical things like laundry done. The ship has a one-room laudromat with free washing machine and dryer use. Not everyone aboard uses this facility. The ship will pick up, launder, and deliver your clothes for what they consider to be a small amount. It seems large to me, so I wait until an at sea day to do the laundry.

So does everyone else. Unlike other ships I’ve been laundering on, the Royal Princess’s machines have no timers on them. Consequently you cannot tell when the prior load will be done. The dryers are slower than the washers, but there are the same number of each, so things jam up pretty quickly. Lines form, and a little society gets going amongst those who also serve by standing and waiting for a machine.

Today an energetic woman with blond hair and a German accent had become the laudromat leader. Naïve users could easily be puzzled by features like a coin slot to start the machine which requires no coins, or soap dispensers which do not work and soap in a bucket with a scoop at the far end of the room. Frau X took care of that. She organized us all and issued instructions to newcomers. Since I am of the male persuasion she immediately assumed that I had no clue whatever. This worked out well. She found me an empty washing machine, got me the soap, told me when to come back, and generally ran a tight and pleasant ship. I got out quickly, came back to organize slides of Troy, and returned when the machine was due to complete the washing. A dryer showed up, I cleaned the lint panel to a chorus of exclamations from Frau X and her companions, and got the clothes dry in 45 minutes. No one had timed the dryer, so I came back early and got into a 3-way conversation that turned political. It developed that we had a woman from Aberdeen, Scotland with us in the Laundromat. I considered telling her about Bukka White (“Aberdeen is my home but the men don’t want me round”) but Frau X, who turned out to be British, went off on Labour Party politics and the conversation got lively. Then we hit President Bush, who in the opinion of Frau X and Ms. Aberdeen, is not in any way the master of public speaking that Tony Blair is. Blair used to be a barrister – a trial lawyer – and naturally he can speak well. It’s just too bad about Bush who doesn’t seem to be able to get a sentence together. It’s hard for someone to criticize the President around me without getting a strong reaction, especially when the critic is a foreigner. Naturally I leapt right in and agreed heartily.

Which reminds me of a conversation that I had in Istanbul. Mary Alice and I had sat down at an outdoor restaurant on the main shopping street, and were ordering what turned out to be a very expensive meal because of the exchange rate. Two businessmen in suit and tie outfits were next to us and once they heard our American accents they began a conversation with us. They have relatives in the US, of course. In Chicago, I believe. And they’d rather be there. I asked them if Turkey would become a member of the European Union. This is a hot topic right now because there is a perceived threat to secular rule in Turkey. The threat is that the candidate for President (who is elected by the Parliament, not by direct vote) has a wife who wears a headscarf. In public. This fact launched protests where up to 1 million people came out in to the streets to protest his election to the post and the secular parties refused to take part in Parliament which then did not have a quorum and could not conduct business therefore could not elect the man President.

Now fashion is important in Europe, of course. But public demonstrations bringing out
People in those numbers seems extreme, even for a headscarf. No one was criticizing the pattern of the scarf, either. Remember those schoolgirls in France who were denied entry into school to take their classes because they were wearing headscarves? What is it with these scarves? They are a symbol of conservative or fundamentalist Moslem believers. Turkey is 99% Moslem, but its government, like ours, is not aligned with any religion. The Turks who came out in protest are worried that the fundamentalists will seize control of the government and institute Sharia Moslem law. It is widely believed that the Turkish army would overthrow any such government in a coup. Indeed it has done so 4 times in the past 50 years.

What complicates everything is this issue of joining the EU. The EU has certain requirements for membership, and Sharia law is not going to cut it on the human rights issues. However the EU also stands for religious toleration – so why shouldn’t the President’s wife wear a scarf if she wants to?

Our new friend said he thought it would take 2 centuries for Turkey to get into the EU. Istanbul is not the whole country, he said. It is 12 million of the 70 million Turks, however. But he said out in the countryside people are backward, they haven’t caught up with the people in the city in social thinking.

Well that got me watching for outward manifestations of fundamentalism. First thing of note is that the streets do not empty when the call to prayer comes. Our tour guide in Canakkale was Moslem, and she did not wear a scarf. “Religion is what is in your heart, not what is on your head, “she told me. I thought of, but did not get into with her, Jesus saying of dietary restrictions, “It is not what goes into a person’s mouth which defiles them, it is what comes out.” So what did I see? A minority of women wear scarves. Most are older and wear a kind of shapeless overcoat. I saw one woman in total black covering with only her face visible; and I saw a couple of college women wearing scarves. They mixed with other young women not wearing scarves, so it appears that things are not polarized.

Turkey could go either way: modern, secular, and into the EU; or backwards, fundamentalist, and into chaos. There have already been one or two bombings. I vote for modern secular civilization myself, but I’m not a Turk.