Notes from A-Broad
First cruise, first group tour--I'm officially retired now. They even serve custard and stewed prunes on the cruise ship! The average age for our group is OLD. "A community of active seniors." The Grey Rangers..
If you're gloating because you're younger, remember, as Mark Twain said, it's not bad considering the alternative. I need to give you a primer for your first cruise, not that I'm an expert. Maybe you'll never go one one, or maybe, like some of the people I've met, you'll go on six or seven trips. China, Israel, Nauvoo, the Carribean, these are the places people go. Thousands of them are being herded across continents to The Great Wall, Christ's tomb, the Kirtland temple, and the Vatican. All of them getting their pictures taken countless times, their half-smiles growing dimmer and dimmer.
Obviously, you must first pack. Here are your choices: Choice #1) Exactly what you wear at home, including the Sherwin-Williams T-shirt you painted the dining room in (these are actual outfits I've seen); Choice #2) your exclusive cruise clothes including everything black or grey in the store and a really fancy dress-up dress that doesn't make you look like a trained chimp in baby clothes; Choice #3 somewhere in the middle which lands you square in the herd. This leaves you stuck hundreds of miles from home in clothing you thought people wore on cruises, a point located roughly at the corner where Las Vegas intersects J. C. Penny's. Sparkly. Tight. Given our area--sort of show-girl modest.
Suitably clothed, you hand yourself over to someone much younger than yourself who runs a travel/cruise booking agency. This person will be smiling broadly, brimming over with the glib assurance of a pediatric nurse with a cranky child. You'll want to know: Where is my luggage? What am I going to learn? When can I go to the potty? When am I going to eat? What happens if I run screaming from the bus? These are the central questions--see how they go from the mature in descending order to just wanting to be alone?
Your suitcase is like your mother's lap. Your pills, your hidden supply of chocolate, and the shoes you should have worn, are hopefully all in there, safely in your hotel room. Sometimes I find myself just rubbing my clothes and remembering home--feeling the familiar rhythms of living in my mountain valley where I know people and speak the language--and can @#$% figure out how to go to the bathroom on my own without having to ask. One lady on our bus was finally reduced to asking in the tour guide in front of everybody, if we could stop. There was talk of having her go in a cut-off pop bottle surrounded by other women but she was saved by years of self-control as a mommy. After that, we all for sure stopped drinking Diet Coke,
The information supply is another tricky variable. There is the pertinent stuff about where you should be and when you should be there. Dazed from staring out the bus window or sleeping and drooling, we each collect a nugget and try to assemble the bits together and find out where our group is. "There's Jane!" "I just saw Shirley!" We're like geese honking their way south in September.
But just when you're about to give up, there, suddenly, is the Parthenon! Or you're actually in Venice watching a gondola float by with men singing in Italian (for $65 an hour, you're just watching). Or you're on Corfu, you vaguely remember seeing the name Corfu on a test, and you're passing the most amazingly beautiful cypress tree forests and there's olive trees, and oranges and you're on a mountain top looking at an electric blue lagoon.
Slowly we're becoming a team, getting used to the ticks and tricks of the forty strangers on our bus. Kay likes to shop and her husband Dennis is always climbing up somewhere to get the great photo. Brenda and Tom are taking a turtle home from Turkey because they are tortise lovers who have a special room built under their garage for them to winter in. I'm always the last person on the bus so I'm constantly being reminded about how much time we have left before we need to go.
We've seen alleys in Venice that were so small you couldn't open the front doors at the same time, and learned that ambulances there are boats that drive as close as they can to the house and then they put the person in a special chair and carry them to the canal. I stole a stone from Corinth where Paul stood to be judged by the Roman magistrate. We also saw in Athens, the rock where Socrates was accused of perverting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death.
The yogurt is fabulous and the food on the cruise ship--what can I say? In one week I've eaten enough to feed a hungry family of teen-age boys for a year.
My favorite spot so far has been a tiny house above Ephesus in Turkey that's believed to be the last home of Mary, the mother of Christ. Whether or not it is, it was a lovely spot in the mountains, peaceful, fresh, quiet, with a wonderful smell of pine.
Sort of like Hobble Creek canyon in fall. Only farther away.
If you're gloating because you're younger, remember, as Mark Twain said, it's not bad considering the alternative. I need to give you a primer for your first cruise, not that I'm an expert. Maybe you'll never go one one, or maybe, like some of the people I've met, you'll go on six or seven trips. China, Israel, Nauvoo, the Carribean, these are the places people go. Thousands of them are being herded across continents to The Great Wall, Christ's tomb, the Kirtland temple, and the Vatican. All of them getting their pictures taken countless times, their half-smiles growing dimmer and dimmer.
Obviously, you must first pack. Here are your choices: Choice #1) Exactly what you wear at home, including the Sherwin-Williams T-shirt you painted the dining room in (these are actual outfits I've seen); Choice #2) your exclusive cruise clothes including everything black or grey in the store and a really fancy dress-up dress that doesn't make you look like a trained chimp in baby clothes; Choice #3 somewhere in the middle which lands you square in the herd. This leaves you stuck hundreds of miles from home in clothing you thought people wore on cruises, a point located roughly at the corner where Las Vegas intersects J. C. Penny's. Sparkly. Tight. Given our area--sort of show-girl modest.
Suitably clothed, you hand yourself over to someone much younger than yourself who runs a travel/cruise booking agency. This person will be smiling broadly, brimming over with the glib assurance of a pediatric nurse with a cranky child. You'll want to know: Where is my luggage? What am I going to learn? When can I go to the potty? When am I going to eat? What happens if I run screaming from the bus? These are the central questions--see how they go from the mature in descending order to just wanting to be alone?
Your suitcase is like your mother's lap. Your pills, your hidden supply of chocolate, and the shoes you should have worn, are hopefully all in there, safely in your hotel room. Sometimes I find myself just rubbing my clothes and remembering home--feeling the familiar rhythms of living in my mountain valley where I know people and speak the language--and can @#$% figure out how to go to the bathroom on my own without having to ask. One lady on our bus was finally reduced to asking in the tour guide in front of everybody, if we could stop. There was talk of having her go in a cut-off pop bottle surrounded by other women but she was saved by years of self-control as a mommy. After that, we all for sure stopped drinking Diet Coke,
The information supply is another tricky variable. There is the pertinent stuff about where you should be and when you should be there. Dazed from staring out the bus window or sleeping and drooling, we each collect a nugget and try to assemble the bits together and find out where our group is. "There's Jane!" "I just saw Shirley!" We're like geese honking their way south in September.
But just when you're about to give up, there, suddenly, is the Parthenon! Or you're actually in Venice watching a gondola float by with men singing in Italian (for $65 an hour, you're just watching). Or you're on Corfu, you vaguely remember seeing the name Corfu on a test, and you're passing the most amazingly beautiful cypress tree forests and there's olive trees, and oranges and you're on a mountain top looking at an electric blue lagoon.
Slowly we're becoming a team, getting used to the ticks and tricks of the forty strangers on our bus. Kay likes to shop and her husband Dennis is always climbing up somewhere to get the great photo. Brenda and Tom are taking a turtle home from Turkey because they are tortise lovers who have a special room built under their garage for them to winter in. I'm always the last person on the bus so I'm constantly being reminded about how much time we have left before we need to go.
We've seen alleys in Venice that were so small you couldn't open the front doors at the same time, and learned that ambulances there are boats that drive as close as they can to the house and then they put the person in a special chair and carry them to the canal. I stole a stone from Corinth where Paul stood to be judged by the Roman magistrate. We also saw in Athens, the rock where Socrates was accused of perverting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death.
The yogurt is fabulous and the food on the cruise ship--what can I say? In one week I've eaten enough to feed a hungry family of teen-age boys for a year.
My favorite spot so far has been a tiny house above Ephesus in Turkey that's believed to be the last home of Mary, the mother of Christ. Whether or not it is, it was a lovely spot in the mountains, peaceful, fresh, quiet, with a wonderful smell of pine.
Sort of like Hobble Creek canyon in fall. Only farther away.
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