A latte is not always a latte

Things I find familiar are sometimes interpreted differently in other cultures.

I fancy myself a coffee expert. I have visited coffee plantations. I purchase my beans from roasters and have invested in several expensive coffee machines. I do understand that there are many ways to make coffee and some need no fancy gadgets.

I assumed Italy was a knowing coffee culture. I was a little taken aback when I encountered the press a button coffee machine used during breakfast at our hotel.

I like a latte with breakfast so I decided that the latte button would dispense my preferred drink. What the button generated was a glass full of warm milk. I am not a warm milk drinker. Then a solution occurred to me. I would dispense a second cup of coffee and mix the two producing a cafe au lait. I used to have this drink in a cafe near the University of Minnesota campus. You received coffee and milk in two glasses to be mixed to your preference so this was not my own idea.

The coffee button (actually caffe) produced what I think of as espresso. So mixing the two which is probably what is expected without the second cup is the anticipated behavior. This was not obvious to this tourist. I guess this is why the latte is technically a caffe latte.

Now that I have mastered Italian coffee I feel cultured.

Vatican City

I did miss posting yesterday. I was exhausted from the heat and the crowds and we have no wifi in our Rome hotel room. There is a sitting room near the front desk where they make wifi available, but I pretty much fell into bed and the post had to wait until today.

We are done with the ship and now spending a few days in Rome. In transition from the ship to our hotel, we took a tour that took us to Vatican City. I guess it is technically something other than a city, but it seems like a city to me. I found it difficult to take pictures because of the crowds. In many of the buildings, you are pretty much standing shoulder to shoulder with thousands of others and trying to move at a collective slow space. This is not a situation in which I am very good with my camera - big feet and clumsy as I am. There are several areas in which photography and talking are not allowed. I saw many violations, but good Minnesotan that I now am I resisted. Now, if I still lived in North Dakota, you might have a glimpse inside the Sistine Chapel.

Our guide was great and knew a great deal about Michael Angelo.

A couple of images from our visit. 

A shot from the exterior of the compound.

A shot from the interior where photography was allowed. I thought the light flair was inspired.

The Swiss Guard. Not to worry, there were military personnel with automatic weapons about as well. I assumed the heavily armed soldiers were Italian.

The famous balcony (in the middle) from which the Pope makes his first appearance and I also think appears on special occasions.  

One final photo - me in the elevator of our hotel. I call this one “Mr Tourist”. The elevator is small and I am not. 

Tender

Tomorrow we arrive in Rome and reach the end of our time at sea. It has been a great trip. We will spend a few extra days in Rome and I expect to have more to say about our experiences there.

Today, the port was Ajjacio, Corsica. We took a trip to the Pernelli Gorges and the views will beautiful. I will probably post a few images at a later time.

Today, I decided to write about our ride on a tender. In some of my earlier images, you may have seen these orange boats hanging from the side of the cruise ship. You probably thought these were life boats and you would be correct. A couple of the smaller boats serve another purpose. When you will into a port, the ship is not always allowed to stay at the dock. Other ships may need access while those on board our ship do their things on shore. When this happens, the passengers and crew are ferried to shore and back on smaller boats called tenders. 

I had heard the term tender before and I assumed the use of this vessel was to bring needed supplies to a ship. I guess people are included. This was our only need for a tender and it was not an easy process to get everyone back to the ship. People had to stand for a significant amount of time in the sun and were upset. I admit I was hot. As the lines grew, more boats appeared to join the process. After spending all the time in line that was necessary to get a seat on a boat, I wanted very badly to ride back in one of the orange life boat/tenders. This worked out. I have included a couple of images of the experience. 

Here's to the crazy ones

Today we visited Barcelona and toured the city with a focus on the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. This architect is responsible for several buildings throughout Barcelona.

Supposedly when he graduated with his architecture degree it was said "We have given this academic title either to a fool or a genius. Time will tell." He was a mediocre student as an academic, but, of course, Gaudi was a great success as a creative practitioner. Presently, it is fashionable to use similar examples (e.g., Einstein) as a complaint that our schools are inadequate. Some very creative individuals are not recognized for their talents while students. This is true. However, it is flawed to conclude from a short list of exceptional individuals that those students who do well under existing circumstances are somehow prepared in a manner that is deficient. Students recognized as outstanding by the present system do far better professionally than other students selected at random. This is what comes to my mind each time I hear the story of a genius unrecognized by his/her performance in public education.

Anyway, this statement about "fool or genius" reminded me of the Apple ad campaign - Here's to the crazy ones. Gaudi certainly did create buildings that are unique in their structure. Gaudi is best known for his Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. The facility is unique.

Gaudi designed this building in 1909 and the present plans are to complete the building by 2026 (Gaudi would have been 100). You can see the cranes now used in the construction.

Gaudi took his inspiration from nature and not what he learned (or tolerated) in the classroom. His designs avoid straight lines. His soaring towers are reminiscent of trees. Some areas have green metal decorations mimicking vegetation and containing an occasional bug. Pillars visible internally have rounded areas (I think a biologist would describe them as burls) when supporting other structures that branch rather than traditional structures I think are described as balustrades. 

Here are some additional images. I found myself taking a large portion of the images in portrait mode because this seemed best suited to the vertical nature of the structures.

Gaudi died when he absent-mindedly walked into traffic and was struck by a vehicle. His shabby clothing resulted in him being thought destitute and he died in a hospital for the poor.

Hillary?

I know this is off topic, but doesn’t this picture look a lot like Hillary Clinton? This is not a political question. This is not a question of good versus evil. I took this picture because it showed the local drink of Cartagena -  asiatico  -  but I thought the woman in the image looked very much like Hillary. OK - disregard if you can’t see it, too.

So, today we explored a few sites in Cartagena, Spain. Mostly we walked and with the steepness in several locations, it was quite strenuous. We hadn't been on foot for more than the first half hour when a gentleman was on the pavement. There was some kind of emergency personnel drill going on in the city which turned out to be a good thing. A fire truck rolling by stopped and he was administered aid by the firemen. No pictures. I thought that would be crass.

The history here offers so much. In general, very complicated with many battles and control by different groups. This is the case with Cartagena. I feel sorry for the middle school students who probably have to master this history. A small section of the original wall surrounding the original city as a defense invaders has been preserved. The date given for this structure was 3 BC. The construction is interesting as it consists of parallel walls with space inside for soldiers and storage.

Tomb area associated with this section of protective wall.

So, Hillary and I shared a couple of asiaticos and this dish of paella during our free time before heading back to the boat. 

The ship

Today we finally had the opportunity to take a photo of our boat. This sounds strange, but we have not had an unobstructed new at a distance far enough from the boat to get the entire boat in frame. The boat is the Celebrity Reflection. 

We lack the experience to compare this boat to others. This boat has 17 floors and carries in excess of 3000 passengers and 1200 crew. We booked the excursion on Monday and left Thursday. Evidently, this is quite unusual and the many individuals we have talked with have had their tickets for many months. We have yet to meet another individual taking a first cruise. 

Strait of Gibraltar

So, after an encouraging announcement from the captain, we did decide to set our alarm clocks (on our iPhones) and get up to see what we could see while passing through the Strait.  It helped that land would supposedly be visible on the port side (left) and our balcony is on this side. So, at 4:45 we jumped up to turn off the alarm chime. Cindy pretty much took one look and after spotting some lights in the distance went back to bed. I settled down with my more positive attitude in a deck chair and waited. 

I tried taking a couple of photos with my phone, but about all I could see were these lights in the distance. It seemed to be a boat or two and maybe a town. We were passing by land and that was about all I could tell. 

I gave up about 5:15, but then remembered something I thought might be interesting to try. When you take digital photos some data, the EXIF, is recorded with your images. This is how you can find the data and time, the camera used, the aperture and shutter speed, etc.  On your phone and a couple of cameras, you may be able to capture something else - the gps coordinates of your location.

Most folks do not turn on the GPS feature because of the potential of identifying the location of those shown in the picture - perhaps children or a way to determine that you are not home. I have my gps feature on when I travel. Since I write about my travels, it makes little sense to pretend I might be home. 

The gps feature can be used in interesting ways. I often include some phone photos in the collections of photos I generate with my camera so that I can track the location of the images. All images would have the dates taken and the gps data in a few could allow many of the rest to be position by location. While years later one mountain may look like another, the gps data should allow you to determine which was where.

There are some other things you can do. You can automatically position the images on a map and in a hybrid view on a map based on satellite images. I decided to try this on my phone with the pictures I had just taken. Here is the result screen captured from my phone. Remember the images mark my position and not the position of what is pictured. It is interesting to see the distance the boat moved between the time at which I took the different pictures.

You can play around to explore this feature on your phone. This is the type of thing Cindy and I talk and write about. GIS (which is basically mapping data to locations) has many practical applications in agriculture, city planning, etc. You can do the same things for various kinds of educational projects. 

So, yes, I did take a photo while moving through the Straight. 

Comments - wow

I apologize. I had no idea people were leaving comments. Thanks to Doug for letting me know. Usually, your blog tells you when you are expected to moderate comments. I am guessing the folks from two years ago gave up. Sorry.

Wow, fans even.

Leaving Tenerife

I like this image because of the colors (the wake in the beautiful colored water) and the symbolism of the wake representing leaving port. I hear snippets of the art dealers on board selling their wares and I believe I am starting to pick up on the terminology of their pitches.

I had hoped to write about going through the Straights of Gibraltar. However, that is going to happen between 5 and 6 am. I am so messed up because of the gradual time change that this will not happen. The gradual change that occurs so frequently seems just enough that my body somehow thinks it does not need to adjust. Sorry. These images are not unique to my experience, but my experience hopefully adds something as a personal perspective. 

We have a shore experience each day from now on so I should have plenty to photograph and write about.

Dogs, not canaries

Finally, we have reached land. We docked for a short while on the island of Tenerife (Canary Islands). This is the largest of the Canary Islands all of which were formed by volcanoes.  

Having never been on a cruise, but being in places where cruise ships docked, I was prone to making fun of the tourists who swarmed off the boats onto buses and were moved in mass to one tourist destination or another. However, given the time available to see things, not having transportation or knowledge of the local language or travel routes, and uncertain how to pay for things, the bus tour thing makes a lot of sense. Buy your ticket and cue up. 

We decided on the trip to Teide National Park the location of Mount Teide. I have no idea how high the mountain is, but we made it to 7000 feet. No hiking or steps for me at this altitude. We drove through the clouds and had a spectacular view. I generated several panoramic photos of the vistas, but these are not suited a blog post. 

The island itself is shaped much like a pyramid with Teide at the top. Moving from bottom to top, you drive through three vegetation/temperature zones. The base level is tropical, the middle level is a pine forest, and the top level is dry and cold. 

The island has no lakes or rivers. The agriculture depends on snowfall at the highest level that melts and flows through lava tubes toward the base. Water is collected for storage and eventual use. A long series of dry years has created problems resulting in the need for desalination - an expensive process resulting in a poor product (not sure what poor quality water means). This is one of the realities of global warming I guess. 

For you hunters, the big game animal is the rabbit and evidently when expertly prepared a great delicacy. 

There are no wild canaries on the Canary Islands. Evidently, the name for the place comes from the Latin word for dog (similar to the origin of canine) because there were once many dogs. No more - but, now many rabbits. 

On brisk days, tourists  are encouraged to try a local drink - lumumba. Hot chocolate and brandy. I am not a hot chocalate fan, but the brandy helped. 

Le Petit Chef

We are probably late to the cruising experience among those our age we know. Much of what I describe is likely a discovery for me, but old hat for many others. Here is one experience I can guarantee you past cruisers have not had. This is a combination virtual reality show / 5 course meal. This was explained as the third such facility in existence and the first on a ship. You sit at tables with a special top with dishes that must be in exactly the right position. The lights dim. Before each course a special projector system fires up and a miniature chef appears on your table and prepares a course from the meal. This is not a cooking show in the sense that you see the preparation of an actual meal. You see more of a comedy routine which the chef capturing a lobster from the sea, lighting a barbecue grill, making ice cream from snow, etc. Here are some images of the VR displays and actual pictures for several of the courses.

Boilie Base

Lobster

Filet mignon

Rice pudding

Ice cream sundae

We had this experience at half-price as Celebrity cruise line wants to make certain the experience will be well received and to work out the kinks. This had to be very expensive to create - a room with very carefully placed tables, special furniture and plates, and projection systems over each table. The cruise line gave each attendee a one-hour courtesy wifi access code ($9) to encourage images and promotion of the experience. This does not apply to us as we purchased a wifi plan, but it does allow for both of us to be online at the same time this evening. 

There must be plans for more than this one "performance". It was an interesting experience and for we techie types, it promises more to come.

Downtown Abbey

Yes, I know it was Downton Abbey, but for some strange reason, I continue to call it Downtown. So, this long-running series was the popular story of the overlapping worlds of the rich and entitled and the folks who waited on them. A cruise ship seems to have a social situation very much like Downton. There are the cruisers and there is the staff.

The staff on a boat clearly functions as a hierarchy. I guess this was also the case at Downton, but I did not pay enough attention to know the relative rank of the butler, footman, driver, stable boy, and various maids and cooks. The boat staff has an elite (the captain, chefs, directors of various types, and entertainers). Getting your photo taken with one of the elites is easy enough, but the popularity of doing so does indicate their star status. Then there are the cooks, room attendants, baristas, dishwashers, waiters, and waitresses. Everyone is very polite and friendly and makes a great effort to greet you and to engage in conversation.

I find the working class on the boat the most interesting and we have had several lengthy conversations with some who work in this capacity. We have yet to meet anyone of this group from the U.S., but beyond this exclusion they are from everywhere. Their lifestyle is what intrigues us. They are not youngsters doing this as a way to subsidize seeing the world. Most we have spoken with have more than a dozen years of service and are often married with kids. They spend many months “on duty” between a break and a chance to go home. You get to know certain of these folks because some interact with you each day. We sit within an assigned area of the dining room we use for dinner and see the same individuals each evening.

We have multiple conversations with Agus and Christopher who agreed to let us take their picture. Agus is from Indonesia and Christophe is from India 

Agus

Christopher

Aside from questions such as where they came from and how long they have been working on cruise ships, we probably had the most lengthy conversions with Christopher. He was a college graduate with a degree in civil engineering and a second type of engineering I didn’t quite catch. He worked at some lower level jobs and in a shipyard. He told me he knows that teachers work hard because he had tried to teach welding. He was unable to get a higher paying engineering job in India because he said there are some many good engineers and the competition is very difficult. To support his family and pay back his college debt (he said engineering books are very expensive), he decided he would have to do something else. Somehow, he made a connection with the cruise ship industry and has been working now for many years.

When I asked him about his training and being away from home for long periods of time, he seemed quite philosophical. Referencing his Catholic faith, he said things work out and you need to keep moving forward. 

By the way, the cruisers also are of different ranks. I like tp differentiate them as those with an all you can drink card and those without. We are part of the “without”. 

Well, the house is a rockin'

Well, the house is a rockin', don't bother knockin

I can't get that lyric out of my head. You can probably find Stevie Ray Vaughan playing and singing this rock standard on YouTube.

When we left port a week ago, the Captain said we would have smooth seas until today. Actually, what he said was we would have smooth seas and then today we would have some fun

Humor is an art form and some folks are just not good at it - even when they think we are.

Things did start getting interesting last evening and folks were staggering down the halls with or without being under the influence.

Neither of us is particularly sensitive to motion sickness so the experience has been somewhat interesting. The one time I became sick from motion sickness I was airborne in a Huey. This is the military helicopter with the two big rotors. We were flying on a day when warm air thermals were being generated by the fields below and the two rotors would hit these updrafts at slightly different times causing the helicopter to buck. Not good.

The experience here is different and a side to side motion. Cindy turns to me last night and wondered if anyone would roll out of bed. I have no idea if this ever happens but after thinking about the possibility for a bit I suggested passengers should lay on their backs or fronts and this would make less likely that they would generate the inertia to roll.

I wonder if the experience midship is different from staying in a room overlooking the water. If one is more sensitive to the side to side rocking motion, I also wondered if one should try sleeping sideways.

Anyway, we will see what the rest of the day brings. I tried taking a picture but the swells do not appear as giant waves you might see approaching a beach.

Nonalcoholic plan

Everyone seems to know that eating, drinking, and shows are a big deal on cruises. When you think about it, these activities take on heightened importance when you are in the middle of an ocean and the scenery does not change much.

Certain activities come without an additional fee. You can drink all of the water you want unless it comes in a bottle or fizzes. You can visit the buffet whenever and have dining room meals for the base price. However, if you want coffee or soda or alcohol, this will cost extra. The open bar plan sounds great, but I could not drink the amount of alcohol to have an advantage over paying for individual drinks. However, we did purchase the nonalcoholic beverage plan. While I only require an occasional beer or glass of wine, I do need my coffee.

This plan is great. You can take your coffee to any location if you want, but I prefer to sit in the coffee bar chatting with Cindy, reading a book, or writing this stuff and having a double expresso and lattes. This is just like home without the ocean view and the lack business people doing their thing. The clientele here are more likely to discuss their other cruises, grandkids or their health. I sometimes have a croissant or danish, but so far I have been able to avoid the cheese cakesr. 

Hangin' with my peeps

I am easily intimidated in this environment. So much sophistication:

• People who speak multiple languages and who have been to so many places.
• People who recount stories from the dozens of cruises they have taken.
• People who can keep which is a white and which is a red wine straight.
• Even people with those giant wrist watches.

What is the deal with those watches anyway? Perhaps they are suited to people with poor eye sight or people who do not like to carry a phone. I know they are expensive, but there must be easier ways to show off. Buy a current season Twins baseball cap and a jersey with a player from the present roster. This would be a better and more subtle way to show folks just how cool you are.

Whenever I am feeling particularly intimidated, I head to the iLounge - a place where I can be around people I understand and I can fit in. This ship has a combination computer lab and Apple store. If you purchase an iPad on the ship you get free access to wifi for a day or so. I must say that wifi access is better than I expected. Cindy and I take turns connecting to the account we purchased. Each time one of us logs in the other individual gets shut down. So far, this has not become an issue between us, but there is the possibility of an altercation always on the horizon.

You can tell how tech savvy these folks are. I heard one such gentleman complaining that a speedier wifi would be appreciated as he had purchased the 90-minute plan and he wasn't getting his money's worth.

All of that rhetoric about digital natives aside, I don’t see any of them in the iLounge. This native stuff is all hype as far as I can tell. So, me and several of my over-70 friends can check Facebook without competition from the younger crowd. They are probably still sleeping off last nights glow in the dark dance party.

Here is to hangin’ with my peeps.