Favorite Philosopher's Blog

January 7

It started out so well. Our wonderful, reasonably priced new airport driver picked us up at home on the dot and the traffic was light. Our four hour flight to Atlanta was on time and compared to the 8 hours ahead of us to Santiago, it was nothing. Even though the flight was half an hour late taking off (there was a miscommunication about cleaning the plane so we all happily waited while the bathrooms were taken care of), we were just glad to be on the road. Had a sweet conversation with a man waiting there who had to tell me, somewhat emotionally, that the kids he had just been FaceTiming with were his little daughters. His job takes him away for a month and he didn’t like it. He showed me photos and talked about them and it was one of those travel moments with a stranger you can’t anticipate. Al and I both slept a good amount on the flight. I was feeling the sniffles and not sure if it’s from the dryness of the airplane and by God it better not be Covid. Al had this last week and it wasn’t. We have to test negative to get on the ship on Wednesday.

We arrive in Santiago. Feeling sorta rested, got through customs and walked out. There was an endless line of drivers holding people’s names. In retrospect….

Mistakes were made.

1. 1) I had ignored the big TAXI desk inside the airport.

2) We gave the time of day to the two nicely dressed men who told us that Uber was dangerous in Chile and the state sanctioned taxi was the only way to go. $25 US dollars. As it happens Uber is the safest way to get around in Chile. We found that out later. Apparently the cabbies don’t like the Uber as they take the business. Maybe the taxi drivers shouldn’t be so eager to scam tourists?

3) I suppose we should have gotten the idea that this wasn’t the best option when we followed these guys like sheep to the slaughter to a parking garage just yards from where all the chaos was. No one else was headed in that direction. What were we thinking? Nothing obviously. Even Al at one point said “why are you doing this for us?” We knew, we just were half asleep I guess. They put us in a real cab. The cab was legal. What happened next was decidedly not.

4) As soon we exited the airport proper, the cab stopped and the “gentleman” knocked on our window to get payment. Also needed to see our passports “for the hotel”. We kind of had no choice or we probably would have been escorted out of the car in a rather industrial looking area.

OK, before I go any further, in our defense they kept smiling and saying “welcome to Chile”. Of course, we now understand that means “Welcome to the reality of Chile where it is possible you will get ripped off when you haven’t been here an hour because you are stupid old fart Americans even though you’ve traveled the world and should know better”. Also we weren’t as rested as we thought we were. Most places we have traveled, providing passports to hotels upon check in is standard procedure. Why we thought this guy had anything to do with our hotel is beyond me. See smiling welcome, above.

We show him our passports. When he tried to take it for a better look we aren’t THAT stupid and said, no we don’t hand over our passport to anyone. Poor guy, he was this close to really effing with us. We give him our Wells Fargo Visa credit card. It doesn’t work on his phone or whatever. “Bad service” (this part is true). Give him the Wells Fargo AmEx. Same story. Finally the oh-so-understanding scammer has us pay $25 USD directly to the cabbie.

We have barely pulled away from the guy on our way to hotel (at least that was eventually accomplished) and Wells Fargo pings us – did we really just charge $4375 to our account? These guys don’t mess around – this was no $100 here and there, no gas fill up or electronics store purchase.

When we got to the hotel I asked the cabbie to wait uno momento (I was hoping to get someone in the hotel who was bilingual) and he took off like a bat out of hell, Al knocking on his window as he left and everyone around having fun watching.

After a long conversation at the hotel desk with Wells Fargo we have blocked the cards and if we want to use them – which we won’t need to much, everything’s paid in advance – we just have to call WF and they will unblock it for the transaction.

The hotel concierge was so nice and understanding. No judgment. He said “happens all the time” which did little to assuage my head-banging-on-the-wall-too-stupid-to-live self loathing. Definitely put a damper on my day. The last thing I wanted to do was go out into the city, but Al had found a city walking tour so he went out for that. I slept and then slept some more.

I’m feeling better but there’s really not a lot to do here. We’ll head to a museum tomorrow and then Monday we take a tour up to the Andes. Wait, are these the same Andes from Peru where I needed oxygen? Oh yes they are, but we won’t be up there that long. Tuesday we head to the port city of Valparaiso and then on to San Antonio where we embark on the cruise, my favorite part. I find my nook or cranny to read or knit or find my mahjong pals and in this case, bundle up to head out to the rails to see what others have said is “indescribable”. That doesn’t mean I won’t try to post but we will be at sea a lot. Have no idea what my internet will be like but if it’s anything like the Mediterranean it will be a pain in the rear to post photos on this blog. We’ll see.

Sitting here in the lobby of the lovely Hotel de Plaza San Francisco, with a cozy ambience that includes a lot of wooded doors and warm library-ish chairs. Maroon Five style music is playing in Spanish. Waiting for Al to shower and nap and come down for some backgammon and cribbage.

All is well. Lessons learned. Self forgiven. Onward.

So here I am in Santiago, Chile and you are getting blog notices and they are about Europe’22? Well, remember how I was so burned out that I just couldn’t anymore? Now it is many months later and the last two blogs were already written, but there is one more. Meteora, Greece. When people ask me what my favorite part of that trip was (I need a thesaurus to stop using the word amazing. Until then I’m going to stop using adjectives at all!), it is hands down Meteora.

I did not write about Meteora and need to collect my thoughts on that, so will post it later. Essentially they are 15th century monasteries built in the sky. There was more than that, however. The village at the entrance to the area was as real as it gets, and I have sweet memories to share. So, that will have to wait for now.

In between that trip and this (all Covid raincheck trips, that’s why they were backed up) we went to Peru. I decided that Peru was just going to be wired-less and I didn’t write at all. That doesn’t mean I won’t but I have to look at the few photos I took to remember. It was a very difficult trip for me. The altitude was killer – hanging out at 12k after going over 16.5k and 20k passes. Oxygen was involved for me, but that’s part of a longer story. So after this trip I’ll “circle back”….

July 2

I’m going to start here and go backwards and see if my memory gets refreshed on the past days when I just had to stop writing for awhile.  This is a good one to start with.

We are on a four hour train ride to Kalambaka  as I write where we will spend the night and tour Meteora, which is a monastery on top of natural stone columns.  We disembarked yesterday in grueling Athens heat, grabbed a cab to our hotel which is right across from the train station (Really! One block on the other side of the street! Al is absolved of past sins!) We couldn’t check in right away as it was about 10 a.m. so we caught a #B52 bus to somewhere near the Archaeological Museum of Athens.  Oh my, it is quite the museum.  Housed in this museum is all of the stuff that has fallen off buildings or been dug up from tombs or excavated from the ground or found in shipwrecks (lots of bronze stuff) or, in the case of priceless artifacts , has been collected over decades and then donated to the state by a really rich lady.  My back does not like to stand around, I’ve discovered, I’d rather keep moving, so museums are starting to be a bit of a drag for me.  I kept at it though and as usual am glad I did.  It was well planned chronologically and it gave me some sense of how Greek turned to Byzantine anyway. 

I finally had to cry uncle though and it’s a blur how we got to the little restaurant in the area at the base of the Acropolis. Can’t remember the name as I’m finishing this 6 months later. I had beef/lamb gyros with tzatziki and pita.  I really need to find a good pita restaurant in the LA area to fulfill that need now and again.  I couldn’t eat it all and enjoyed it later for dinner. 

Still blazing hot and we decided for the sake of keeping me from ending up as a homicidal maniac that we should head back to the hotel for a break.  I was pretty desperate (those of you who know the Mary-in-Arches-Natl-Park -this- time -last -year know what I’m talking about) by the time we reached our room.  My clothes were soaked through, I hopped in the shower and wondered if it was a good idea to shock my body with the cold water that I dumped on it.  I survived that experience (someone told me you shouldn’t do that to dogs, not sure if it’s true for humans).  The little air conditioner was trying its best and Al was able to sleep but I just lay there thinking of the beaches I’d been to in the last week.  

(I’m going to stop here, because one of the reasons I decided to start writing on the train is that we are in hour four of this journey and about five rows up – we have assigned seats- two young women have been playing cards the entire time.  That’s great, I love playing cards, but whatever they are playing is a short game, so that every 5-10 mins the cards have been loudly shuffled.  Apparently, she thinks 5 shuffles is enough each time. So if I’m being generous and saying it’s been every 10 minutes since half an hour into the trip, – let’s see, 6 shuffle sessions per hour x 3 = 18 sessions.  5 shuffles per session x 18 sessions means we have listened to sharp shuffling (she’s good) of that damn deck 80 times.  I know that I have difficulty with annoying sounds but I think the Greek people must be the most patient people on the planet.  Were it not for the fact that I just don’t want to be that person, I would be up there gently suggesting that maybe they are ANNOYING THE ENTIRE TRAIN and maybe teach them what I call the “grandma shuffle” which is holding the deck in one hand and sloughing it off into the other, intermingling the cards.  Instead I put my earplugs in and took down the notch a bit.  I just don’t understand how this doesn’t drive other people nuts.  It’s like people whispering/talking at a performance.  Drives me insane.  One of my mahjong pals experiences this as well and there is a name for it “misophonia”.)

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.  About 7:30 p.m. Al went out and got some food for today’s trip and came back to the hotel completely and totally disgusted with himself.  “I’m in Athens for probably the only time in my life and I’m sitting here in this hotel room”.  Go! I told him, but he was beside himself and kept saying it was too late, the sun was going down, etc.   Only one thing for me to do – throw on some clothes and say let’s go.  This was an easy peasy prospect as we had bought Metro tickets for 24 hours and it was right down the street.  We didn’t need to take the bus. Got off at the Akropolis station and walked out into Saturday night in Athens, a breeze starting to cool things off, young people everywhere (I thought of my youngest, Jeff, who spent a few months during college taking a class in Italy and then backpacking a bit), music everywhere. We first went past the Odeon which is a functioning theater to this day.  There was some kind of music going on inside – noticed Diana Krall was there the day before, and although she’s not my favorite (can we have just a little vibrato?), it would be fun to see someone that famous there I’m sure.  Those ruins with lights shining on them are just so magically delicious to the eyes. 

The Athens Acropolis rose above us and we walked all around it, just outside the entrance (it was closed of course at this time of night) there is a rocky outcrop where people gather to watch the sunset and enjoy the beauty of the city of Athens the Acropolis just above.  

We walked around some more – easy to get lost but not hard to get found again – grabbed a bottle of water (we left in such a hurry we forgot our water) and what may or may not be my last two scoops of gelato before I leave this part of the world.   The square in the area was packed with people of all ages, families, everyone just having a great time.  As usual when it comes to seize the day stuff, Al was right. Had hot and lazy Mary not rallied we would have missed a quintessentially Athens Saturday evening under the Acropolis.

Got back to our hotel after riding like locals on the Metro, only to realize we had forgotten that the electricity – as in many hotels now – only works when the room card is placed in the slot just inside the door.  We had taken our key with us of course and walked into a room just as hot as when we first walked in.  Opening the window helped air it out again but it was probably not for a few hours that I could finally fall asleep.  

Up at 6 a.m. to catch a 7:57 train.  Our luggage remains locked up at the hotel – we will be in Meteora overnight, then back tomorrow evening by train and then….home.

.June 26

We are almost to Split, Croatia, it’s about 8 a.m. and we are sailing in through an archipelago area, the water like glass except for a few ripples.  We are two hours away from docking again, so this promises to be a lovely sail-in.

The last two days we were in Trieste again.  There were not as many jellies but a few.  The first day Al went into town to walk around.  I really hit the wall this time and literally slept most of the day and largely fasted as my belly was in revolt  – although the food is good it is because there is too much salt and everything is cooked in oil, including the veggies.  It was a much needed reset day for me.

We were in port overnight, most of the passengers would be disembarking the next day after being on the ship since Barcelona.  The night life on the dock was rockin’ and fun to listen to.  There must have been a karaoke bar right there because some of the “singers” were pretty good and some should stick to the audience, but then again that’s what karaoke is all about – finding your inner Aretha or Adele or McCartney or Timberlake, depending on your age. 

I want to know which Russian oligarch owns the sailing yacht that was docked next to us.  Speaking of sailing yachts, I’m kicking myself for not getting a photo of the Christina O which was docked in Athens when we were there.  I just didn’t think to do it but it was, indeed, the one and only Christina O that used to be owned by Aristotle Onassis and that Jackie herself lounged around on.  Maybe it will still be there but I doubt it. It was a little bitty thing compared to today’s mega-yachts.

Made an accidental Facetime with my brother, Don (77!) – accidental because I always forget his birthday and it was no exception this year and it wasn’t until he said his kids were taking him out on a pontoon boat for his birthday I remembered. It was good timing anyway.  As many of you know he is on hospice and his birthday was a good day, not all of them are. It was nice to see him smiling and talkative and joking.  The photos that came back the next day of them all on the lake on a beautiful Minnesota summer day were very special. (He passed in August. I did not get to see him in person again).

After that I made the mistake of checking the news.  Two horrific Supreme Court decisions in two days has me, for the first time in my life, seriously wondering just how much a little house in Italy would cost me.  I can’t and won’t because I have family in the states, but my heart is heavy and my mind even heavier.  That’s all I can say about that right now as I don’t want to ruin this gorgeous sail-in with a stomach ache. 

Yesterday we went over the border into Slovenia and what a pretty country that is!  Our destination was the second largest cave in Europe, Postojna.  Al and I love caves and have visited many in our time together.  Al figured this would be a nice diversion while the ship did its business of disembarking passengers and embarking new ones before a 7 p.m. set sail.  

It was not a nice diversion.  It was probably the most awe inspiring experience and I can only compare it to hanging and interacting with mama and calf whales in the lagoons of Mexico in terms of it being surreal.  I will try to describe it best as I can, and I will include photos – each one I took I was saying “this can’t possibly capture the scale of this”.   When you look at them I urge you to try to place yourself there and look at the people for some sense of scale.  I really don’t think I captured it whatsoever.

There is a little Disneyland-ish electric train that takes you fifteen minutes into the cave.   It starts with a tunnel but then opens up into a cathedral room – wow! We’ve seen these before.  Very impressive.  Then another tunnel – and another cathedral room.  And another, and another.  Then you get off the little train and walk for an hour – cathedral room after cathedral room after cathedral room.  Captivating stalactites and stalagmites and pillars, hundreds of thousands of year old, pure whites to Grand Canyon orange to black and even blue. Curtain stalactites, one room called the “spaghetti room” and hopefully that photo captures the reason it is named that.  

A small aquarium is set up that houses a couple of the white salamanders that live in the cave – no photos allowed.  Al and I just left shaking our heads at the enormity of it and how our expectations had been limited by our imaginations.  Never in a million years did we think this would be what it was – the cave formations were typical cave formations for the most part, but it was the size of the cave itself and the size of the rooms that was beyond anything we might have imagined and certainly struggled to comprehend.  The beauty of this planet knows no bounds. 

Before we went to the cave, we visited the castle in a cave, also in Slovenia, Prejama Castle.  The outside of the castle is attached to another seemingly endless cave – I have taken a photo of a sign that shows how much we didn’t see that was beyond the scope of what is open to regular folk.  These people had it goin’ on (and there were different people depending on who dropped a cannonball on whom – one when he was in the loo). It was quite the fortress and cleverly protected the inhabitants.  The height of the rooms in the cave allowed for several stories – lots of stairs – and included a water collection system from the top to the bottom as well as the loo which was basically a cave outhouse.  We only saw the doorway to the secret exit that would take the inhabitants deeper into the cave and let them exit elsewhere including the cave we would see next, if need be. It’s as if the mountain is hollow.  The cellar is the last room which houses a small trinket shop, but it wasn’t until 1991 that excavation revealed treasures under the wood flooring that had been wrapped in fabric and survived all these years and is now in a museum. 

When we returned to Trieste we spent a quintessential few hours hanging in the piazza, sharing a “toast” (which was the best grilled cheese and ham sandwich ever) and some tea.  Then walked some more to see some Roman ruins (No way! Really?) – a little arena that had been found under a bunch of houses.  Up some shaded stairs to church of Santa Maria Maggiore.  It was a run of the mill old church, we stepped inside and the Rosary was being said – in Italian – but I ran through a few rounds in my head in English for the justices of the Supreme Court who have to look in the mirror every night and face what they’ve done.  Anyway, a wedding had just taken place and I was charmed to see rice on the steps.  I was probably one of the last people in America who had rice at my wedding.  It worked!

The last week of our trip I really ran out of steam for blog writing. It was hot, it was wonderful, full of more history and amazement. I have added a few things this morning and will complete it all this weekend, if not for you but for me.

I’m going to play mahjong this afternoon as usual and they are going to wipe up the floor with me.

Jet lag. The struggle is real.

June 30

I am so frustrated right now that I’m going to have to stop posting until I get home and have some decent internet. I just can’t get photos uploaded and it’s just infuriating. (First world problems, I realize).

We’ve had a great time over the past few days and when I get home I will write about it, but right now I just want to enjoy my last few days and stop messing with this.

I may try again when we get internet in a hotel in Athens. Tomorrow is our last day on the ship, I’m going to find a beach in Kusadasi and have one more swim in these crystal clear waters.

June 23

So there I was, just finishing up some hand sewing of a quilt and Al walks in. “Well? Are you coming”?

I had to drag it out of him as usual – turns out he wanted ice cream over there but they only accepted the local currency so he had to come back to get his ATM. Did I want ice cream?

What a question. Of course I want ice cream. So I dumped my stuff in the cabin and got on the tender. By this time a lovely breeze had come up over Korcula. It is a picturesque little town and I look forward to returning next week. We did tromp around a bit and I did get warm so I’m glad I didn’t go in the morning for that reason as well as the new acquaintances I met.

So I did get off the boat. And the ice cream was the best we’ve tasted even better than Italy.

Thanks, Al.