Vacation!

That was fun, although three weeks is a long vacation. I’m starting with some helpful tips for next time:

• When going to a foreign country, bring a plug converter. They’re easy enough to buy at the destination, but it’s handier – and cheaper – if one does not need to.
• Bring a USB hub. You only have one plug converter for the foreign country and the USB charger plugs are weird shaped so often one can only use one per outlet even in US-standard outlets. Meanwhile, you have four USB devices that need charging.
• Do the eSIM thing to your phone before you leave. Phones are needed for everything these days and not having a working one is annoying – especially when trying to coordinate an AirBnB key handoff.
• Install the airline app on your phone and have your boarding pass on it before arriving at the airport. In Rome, you can’t get to the US flight check-in desks without a boarding pass. I’m so old that I remember when one received the boarding pass at airport check-in. You should have seen the look on the woman’s face when we handed her hand-written flight information. It was as if we handed her a stone tablet.

That’s it. Nothing went drastically wrong.

The flight to Fort Lauderdale was uneventful. We did land in Denver at Gate B 324, which is in a massive expansion of the B concourse, with the connecting flight leaving from Gate B 35, but we had plenty of time for the trek. The overnight stay was also uneventful.

Embarking was uneventful. It’s amazing how fast they can process 3000 people coming aboard. We got off the shuttle bus in front of the terminal, walked down the line to the end of the building, turned the corner and saw the line went down to the next end of the building. It was also cattle-guard zig-zagged inside the building. The entire process took less than an hour.

My luggage was not delivered to my cabin. Instead, I got a note that they had discovered a knife in it and I needed to go to security. I went. The nice guy (all the cruise staff are nice – where do the find so many nice people?) at security asked how big the knife was. I said “pocket knife”. He pulled up the tail of his shirt and pointed at his holster, “like this one?” he asked. I said, “yes.” We laughed, filled out a form so I could pick it up when disembarking, and I rolled my luggage back to the cabin. I wasn’t going to bother picking it up, but when getting off the ship, they had it waiting for me, so I still have that yucky pocket knife. Why are the ones you don’t like are the ones you cannot lose?

We had 10 sea days – five of them being only 23 hours to adjust the time-zone. They did that at noon, instead of the middle of the night. It was both neat and disconcerting. 1200 became 1300 so there was no “noon”. On our first cruise, we got a cabin with a balcony, but didn’t really use it. On our second, we got just a window (“porthole”, I suppose, but a big one). For this one, we got an “obstructed view” cabin. It looked out on a Marine Escape System (basically a metal box with a raft inside). There was some natural light and that was sufficient. It’s not as if there are chairs facing a picture window to look out of it, anyway.

We only went to one show. A 1950s/60s rock reprise/homage thing. It was fine, but nothing to write about. The Freddie Mercury tribute was sung by a woman, so we skipped it, which may be a bit unfair to her, but it seemed less than ideal. We missed the magic show for no good reason. I went to The Voice of the Ocean by myself. It was very good (a version of the The Voice show with passenger contestants, in case that’s not obvious).

They had a Latin/Ballroom dance hour every night. We danced at most of them. Bringing dance shoes was definitely the right call. I went to a lesson in tennis shoes and that was dreadful. One cannot pivot/spin on them, at all. Interestingly, while working as-designed on a wood floor, the suede bottoms stick to plastic floors and are “iffy” on stone. It was quite rough one night and suddenly our dance instructor’s (hi Kay) admonishment to always keep ones feet on the floor made sense. It’s very disconcerting to come out of a turn and put one’s foot down, only to find that the floor has dropped out from under you. If one does not lift one’s foot off the floor, this problem does not occur.

The Laird became famous because we wore mostly shirts he had made – and people loved them. We were “the shirt guys”. I was greeted once with “you’re the dance guy”, which made my day.

One day I needed a vacation from my vacation. I was peopled-out. I spent the day reading in the cabin. Kindle’s are a godsend to travelers – and something that needs USB charging.

Madeira was picturesque and touristy. From a sample size of two (Lisbon and Funchel), Portugal has horrible sidewalks. They’re very pretty mosaics, but uneven and slick when wet. Why yes, it did rain. All the street-side cafes had ashtrays on the tables. We had no cigarettes.

We did not go ashore in Gibraltar. It looked all high-rises and tourist traps and it was gloomy so we just stayed on the ship. There was an excursion that went to the rock, which I saw as we left, but we were told enough horror stories about the monkeys that we had no desire to go. It was by far the busiest port.

Malaga had a nice beach near the port so we just walked off and wandered down the boardwalk. I had the best ceviche of my life at a Peruvian restaurant. The Laird had cheesecake.

Ajaccio (Corsica) got the same treatment as Gibraltar: Aside from an enclave near the port, it looked modern high rise and touristy so we just skipped it.

We didn’t really see any of Civitavecchia because we hopped on a bus to Rome. It was a Vatican excursion that we took mainly because it ended near our apartment. It was an amazing tour – but there were so many people touring! Of course, it was Easter season in a Jubilee year. The tour guide on the bus was very friendly and interesting. She described Rome and Italy for, well, tourists. The Vatican guide was outstanding; friendly and knowledgeable (and cute). I would have been happy to have him lead a week long tour, not just a couple of hours with no stopping (due to the hordes of others ahead and behind). The Sistine chapel is amazing (as expected); somehow it managed to be both smaller and larger than expected.

After some tribulation due to being unable to send texts, we got into our AirBnB. It was nothing special, but the location rocked: About four “blocks” (Rome doesn’t have city blocks any more than London does) from the main train station.

Rome is hard to qualify. I mean, it’s Rome, the Eternal City, so it has that going for it. It reminded me of these two clips:

There is graffiti everywhere, except on the ancient ruins; apparently only buildings under 500 years old are graffiti targets. I even saw some in Russian.

Unless you know exactly what you want to see and have everything arranged in advance, I can’t recommend more than a couple of days. The city center is indeed amazing, but it’s also crowded with literally millions of tourists and the traffic verges on insane (to be fair, it’s easy enough to walk through). We saw lots of cool stuff (coliseum, etc…), but you couldn’t get close to anything without waiting in lines that make Disney World look deserted. We had pizza margherita at a cafe across the Tiber from Hadrian’s tomb (which is now a papal fort of some sort) at the foot of the Bridge of Angels. That’s cool and I definitely recommend it – the general experience, not necessarily that cafe and food choice – but the crowds!

The flight back was less dreadful than expected. The American Airlines people gate-checked the gadzillion carry-ons that everyone brings so there was room in the overhead compartment for my laptop bag and I didn’t need to have it squished under my feet for 12 hours, which I was half expecting. The food was edible if a bit on the light side. I’m glad a brought a sandwich from the airport, but I would have been fine without it. Note that if you bring food, you must eat it on the plane or throw it out when you land. Customs people are not amused by produce and meat in your carry-on. The leg room on the plane (an 11-across 777) was fine, much to my surprise.

Next time, we’ll fly out and ship back. That long flight at the end is not a great way to end a vacation.

There are no pictures here because we took very few pictures. We have no wall space to hang anything additional and no one ever looks at digital pictures, so why bother? We did do a photoshoot with all The Laird’s clothing as a marketing expense for Bespoke by Mike, but those are not tourist shots. It’s just us on a set.