Gimsbacher Jacksons

The Jackson Family Takes to the Sea

We have no handy internet connection—actually, we do, but it costs 30 Euro/ hr, neigh unto $50/hr, so that is steep. Therefore, the thought is that we will write a document with several days happenings on it and connect and send from somewhere, or even when we get home. It will have to suffice.

We are currently at port in Bari, Italy. We got here at 1230 after a fabulous first night at sea. We left Germany on Thursday at 0450 for Italy and had a very nice trip—it went much faster than usual with Kathy’s entertaining stories. We have many stories, it seems, which we have not been privy to from routine family happenings which we are sheltered from being 6000 miles away. So, the miles flew by. We stayed two nights in Donna Cole’s cat infested house. The cats have waged war on Donna for leaving them alone while she went to Germany for a month in the hospital getting herself humpty dumbtied back together again—it was bad before, but now it is untolerable. We vowed never to stay there again as long as they are living….anyway, we had a nice two days there shopping for purses and eating pizza at the pink restaurant and other places. We left for Venice on Saturday PM and stayed at a lovely place close to the main train station. Really nice rooms x 2 for us. Kathy and Ken’s were in an older part of the hotel—the whole thing is ancient, but less recently re-done. Anyway, we got up on Sunday early, all excited to get on the boat, MSC Musica. We got to the port at ca 1030, which was when check-in was to start, only to be told that we could not check-in until 1200. So, the crowd thickened and thickened. It was a two part process: checking in and then getting scanned and x-rayed like at an airport. The check-in finally occurred, but the scanning did not start for 1.5 hrs with the crowd getting thicker and more unruly as time went on. Several times, the crowd broke out in spontaneous booing, clapping, etc to let the people at the port know that we were getting upset with the Italian way of doing things. Turns out, it was one of the first times they had used a new building for boarding. People did not finish getting off the boat until about 1430, starting at 0800 because there was only one way off for 2,400 people is not very speedy—or it was just Italian; we do not know which. Anyway, at one point the crowd stormed the x-ray machine, which did not help. Once we were finally on board, we settled in and were quite happy. Turns out the children are in a balcony cabin 3 floors down and at the front end of the boat, when Mom and I are at the back end of the boat. Before we left port, we got to have a sinking drill where we heard the siren blast seven times and got to muster to our assigned area. The kids, unfortunately, and uncomfortably are assigned another area. We have visions of the Titanic and Mom says she will go to the kids if we sink. I told her the life boats are counted out for the letters of the alphabet, which are written on our life vests. There are 20 boats, which hold 120 people each—so that is enough for 2,400. Problem is there is the staff. I do not know how many there are, but about 500-800 for sure. There are numerous other small blow up life boats too. Let us hope we do not get to find out about that. Good thing is that there are no icebergs in the Mediterranean Sea, so we should be safe. Erik said there are great white sharks in the Med, so we may have issues if we did not get into one of the boats.

The food is nice by my thinking. Kathy and Ken say not up to snuff to American cruise lines, but this is Italian. The food is Italian and wonderful by me—lots of fish to be had. We have had octopus for every non-breakfast meal so far. What could be better?

Our cabin has a private balcony which is made for nudity. I had a lovely sit this morning after we did our run (Erik and I). We vow to run every day. Tomorrow, the plan is to run first thing after we get to Corfu, Greece. We are to arrive at 0700, so we think we will go in and figure out the lay of the island to fill the rest in. We did Bari by ourselves today—no cruise tours, which are pricey and so far, not too cool by my thought. We are doing Athens tour, but likely will do the rest on our own via taxi or just walking.

More later…….

Later……8 April 2009, Wednesday enroute to Mykonos after Santorini.

After Bari, we got back on the ship and chilled for a bit, went to the second dinner and had a much better waiter this time. Food was much the same as before. We went to the La Scala theater that night also and watched a Kahn Kahn show called Bizaare. It was pretty good, especially a couple of girls doing acrobatics on a ring and a rope, very amazing and made me fear for the cervical spines.

Next morning we got to Corfu early in the AM. We did a self tour through the town. We took off on our own walking through some definitely non-tourist areas but did finally find our way into the old Center of the town, which was very interesting, narrow streets with marble surface. A high light was finding a grocery store and buying between us 6 six-packs of diet coke. Erik had a 6-pack of regular coke the day before. So, we all got one. It was a joyous occasion for sure! We high tailed it back to the ship in time to secure a deck spot and sat for a while there on the deck as we took off towards Santorini, which took until the next morning. One could tell we were on a ship for sure. During that afternoon, we had a nap, played a game of Risk—winner was indeterminate, but was for sure not myself or Kathy. I knitted some. We went to a good show that night, which was a Italian tenor, Enrico Scotto. He was OK, but we really liked it—at least people whose synapses are all developed. We had skipped the Gala meal as we did not bring dress clothes, but decided we could improvise for the second one later with some ties which Erik bought, or maybe buy another one or two! The young one and I stayed up for the midnight meal—we needed more calories for the day for sure…..it was deserts and was it every fancy and good. Then, we went to bed and woke up in Santorini.

Santorini is our clear favorite so far by far. We were dealt numbers to get off the boat by—it was via some little boats called “tenders” that took us over to the port—maybe a half of a mile. There we had a choice of a huge line to the cable car or walk or take the donkeys. We decided to walk and crowded past the large crowd waiting to mount the beasts wading through tons of donkey doo-doo and made it about half way up the first switchback and quickly changed our minds. It cost us 5 Euro each to take a donkey which was an absolute blast. Anneliese’s donkey did not know which was to go, mine was also similar. They kept on turning around and going back down, so a young kid had to accompany us up for a ways. There was a mass of donkeys coming and going up and down the rock switch back trail up to the town on the top. It was really a blast. One lady was thrown off her donkey into a large pile of poop. She was thrilled to be sure! We all stayed on the donkeys and made it to the top. There we had shop and shop to go through including a bakery with some wonderful delights—like baklava from Turkey but different some, made with walnuts and other nuts with honey. They were very good. I went a bit crazy and bought a boxfull for 11 Euros. We had very sticky hands and it was great. We ate with hands communially contaminated from holding onto the donkey harnesses during the assent. Hopefully, no virus will have endured it? We walked around, took many pictures and had a wonderful time. The way down was via the cable car. All in all a wonderful day so far and we still have a whole other island to see today—Mykonos. So, we are really living the life. I just ran on a tread mill. One can only run for 25 minutes to be fair to others. There were large lines trying to keep up with all the food. Soon, we will meet again to eat again so we can be ready to get off tonight. We are to be in Mykonos from 1900 to 0100. Athens tomorrow!

13 April:

I am now retrospectively catching up….Athens we did with an excursion. We had a great tour guides called Poopy. She opened with telling us her name and said, yes, she knows what it means, but you would be surprised what some of your names mean in Greek. She was very interesting and we had a great time. Our first stop was at a Olympic stadium—from the past which is where the Olympic flame is passed from Greece to whatever country is doing it that year. It is actually started from the sun each time in another Olympic stadium in Olympia, which was the next day, but where we did not go. More on that later. Next was the Acropolis, which is absolutely cool. The Parthenon is but one temple up on the top. They are restoring to a certain extend all of the temples on the top. It will be a 20 year project. They will not be made to look new. The replaced marble is lighter and easy to see where it has been redone. After that, we came down and did some shopping and went back to the bus via a city tour. Athens is big and aside from the Acropolis, not that interesting really to my thinking.

Next day was to a port around a large peninsula at a port called Katakalon—or something close. It is 38 km from Olympia. We did not do a tour of that, but did rent some mottos (mopeds) and tripped around the port somewhat. The initial plan was to drive to Olympia, but we got about 10 km into the trip and decided I was terrified of driving on the back of Erik in a city, so we turned around. I had left my wallet on the boat and you had to have a driver’s license to rent the mopeds. We got two of them. Erik and Ken drove. Anne and I road shotgun for the initial, then we switched for Mom and Kathy. The shops there were interesting, the leather very cheap. I was tempted to buy a man-purse, but did not—reason prevailed. We had some mosaka and some more baklava at the port there. All in all, it was a very interesting stop and rates second on the list behind the donkeys of Santorini in the kid’s minds.

Next stop was Dubrovnik on the second to last day. It is a lovely walled city, which has seen lots of wars, as recently as 1991, which is amazing. An earthquake destroyed most of the city several hundred years ago too. It is a warren of narrow streets, all very interesting. We had a lovely time there.

Then we got to Venice the last day, sad to see it end. We had a lovely time, played Risk twice, which is 200% more than ever before in my life. Ken is quite competitive with Risk and loves the game. I played the first time, getting out quickly and knitted. Second time, I went running. Running was sparse really. We did run about 5 times, mostly on a treadmill which is never very nice, but it was fairly cool to run at the very front of the boat looking ahead to where the ship was going. We also played multiple times a card game called “Golf”, which is very different from what we had also previously called “Golf”.

The food was good, I thought—lots of fish. The midnight buffets we went to twice were pretty fancy, with lots of vegetable carvings and ice sculptures. I am thinking my poundage will have increased somewhat and give me a project over the next weeks!

On the way home, Kathy and Ken were interested in going to Lauterbrunnen, so we swung over there and stayed overnight in a hotel, Hotel Jungfrau. We tried the Camping Jungfrau and Schuetzenbach first for cheaper sake, then started on the Hotels—we spent 240 Franken on a quad room for one night. Now, we have a 5 hr trip home in front of us. Then back to work tomorrow—very depressing I am sure. We got colds during the trip, which put a slight damper on the spirits, but it could have been worse. There was Purell equivalent all over the ship to put on your hands at every turn trying to prevent GI bugs from spreading around among the ca 2,400 people on board. It was amazing to think how many people were on the ship. The disembarkation went very smoothly compared to getting on. We were off and underway by 1030 in the morning, so that was great.

Sorry for being wordy