Where are we going? We don't know!

"Tourists don't know where they've been; travelers don't know where they are going." 

The quote, attributed to travel writer Paul Theroux, describes the preparations for our fall trip, well. . .at least the last half does.

         Ferries in Piraeus Harbor, Greece

The itinerary for Holland America's Westerdam is so organized that we know not only where we will go, but the hour of each departure and arrival. But for the fews days before and two weeks after the cruise we will be 'travelers' by Theroux's definition: we don't know where we are going.

That's not to say, we don't have plenty of ideas, though. For us, the trip began the minute we had booked the cruise and started researching before and after destinations - most of which we will never get to but have had a great time exploring from a distance. We are reading our aging travel guides, a few novels, warming the computer keyboard with Google Searches, filling notepads with scribbles, and twirling the world globe.

The research has tempted us with many places, yet, we still don't know where we are going.

                       Leaving Piraeus, Greece

We will set our compass by 'where the winds blow us' within the confines of Greek ferry schedules. We just today discovered a great website for ferry schedules:  http://www.openseas.gr/

Axing a stay in Amsterdam we've gained a few extra days under the Grecian sun. The islands of Poros and Hydra, both relatively close to Piraeus, from where the Westerdam departs, would provide new scenery and adventures for the days prior to the cruise. . .It is hard to choose between the two. Joel suggests that after we arrive in Piraeus, we catch the first ferry heading to the Saronic Islands, the cluster of islands in which these two are found and stay at whichever place it reaches first.

That works for me!

Yakima: Fruitbowl of the Nation

                    Hop Vines Yakima Valley

The rich farmlands of the Yakima Valley are blanketed with truck gardens, fruit trees, vineyards and hop vines.  I grew up in this agricultural area in the center of Washington State. And, as a child, I loved those colorful painted signs along the roadway that proudly proclaimed the area to be the:  "Fruitbowl of the Nation". 

Now tourist signs with a single sophisticated looking wineglass herald the pleasures to be found at wineries and vineyards that proliferate the valley. Don't get me wrong; we love those wineries, but there's a lot more to the valley than wine grapes.

We traveled earlier this week through small towns named Toppenish and White Swan and through a portion of the Yakama Indian Reservation. Often we had the backroads to ourselves; only passing a tractor lumbering along with a spray rig in tow. Cultivated fields gave way to sage-brush covered open lands bordered with barbed wire fences. Then, unexpectedly, another irrigated stretch of land would appear.

Imperial's Garden, Wapato WA

We make this August trip annually from our western Washington home primarily to visit a favorite produce 'stand' called Imperial's Garden, (Lateral A, Wapato, WA.).   This year we found the 'stand' in much larger digs. Semi-trucks were being filled with just-out-of-the field produce boxes while people like us loaded our cars at the front of the building - also by the box loads.

Shopping options abound as painted wood signs direct those traveling along Lateral A, the best road to follow through this agricultural area, to other smaller, family-owned seasonal markets, some offering fruit, some produce and some a mixture of both. We visited many . . .tucking just a few more peaches and nectarines into the car.

          Just-picked canning tomatoes

We've traveled to some fabulous places in the world. But when driving through the Yakima Valley with the car windows open, savoring the intoxicating scents from the mint fields or fresh mown hay. . . or tasting that just-picked peach or tomato  -- I can't think of any other place I'd rather be during harvest season than back home in the "Fruitbowl of the Nation."

A Black Sea Medley

"Black Sea Medley" is the name given our 12-day cruise by Holland America . We'll be joining two thousand others on board its Westerdam setting out to explore ancient cities this fall.  The cities -- some we'd never thought of visiting before -- now tease our senses of adventure with images of exotic intrigue and tempt with explorations that will intoxicate our senses with new smells, sights, sounds and tastes.

We will set sail from Piraeus; the bustling port city near Athens.


We'll then travel to:
* Kusadasi, Turkey, gateway to the ancient city of Ephesus the once bustling seaport which might be called the religious center of early Christianity.
* Volos, Greece, at the foot of Mt. Pelion and featured in much Greek mythology.
* Thessaloniki, Greece, while the cruise line lists this as Greece's 2nd largest economic center (industry and commercial) I prefer to think of it as described in the Aug/Sept 2010 Saveur Magazine: "Greece's culinary capital,with an eclectic cuisine reflecting the proximity of Bulgaria and the other Balkan states (due North) and Turkey (to the East) as well as the city's key position on well-established trade routes between the Middle East and Europe."  Far more intriguing to me than 'industrial center'.
* Istanbul, Turkey, this magical city we visited for just a day on a 2008 cruise, was once called Byzantium then Constantinople. We arrive at noon one day and don't leave until nearly midnight the next. . .how many meals can we manage to eat during our time on shore?

          Morning coffee delivered to the room

* A day at Sea (to regroup the senses and diet after Istanbul) and not just any Sea Day as we will sail the Bosphorus and begin criss-crossing The Black Sea with stops at:
* Sochi, Russia with its Caucasus Mountains backdrop, is where the 2014 Winter Olympics will take place.
* Trabzon, Turkey - where the Byzantine and Ottoman eras are reflected in architecture throughout the town.
* Sinop, Turkey - offering one of Turkey's most beautiful natural harbors we are told, this was the birthplace of the cynic philosopher Diogenes.
*Sevastopol, Ukraine - we will be among the more than 500,000 visitors to this city each year and will see how many of its 1,800 historic monuments and memorials we can see during our stop.
* A Day at Sea en route to where we began:
* Piraeus, Greece

Next post we'll ponder what to do in the days before and after the cruise.

A Trip to Harrogate England

Thanks to England's crime fiction writer Bill Kitson for providing the following guest post:

Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, is an "event" town. There is always something happening, whatever the time of year. The International Conference Centre plays hosts to countless exhibitions, from toy fairs, to the spring flower show. In addition there are festivals, with themes ranging from music to crime writing. It was in connection with the latter that Val and I visited Harrogate recently.

The historical connection of Harrogate with crime stems from the fact that it was in Harrogate, at The Old Swan Hotel, that Agatha Christie was discovered following her mysterious disappearance from her home. The event was subject to the 1979 film, "Agatha," starring Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave.

Castles and Countryside
In addition to its own attractions, Harrogate is a great centre for those wishing to spend time in some of the most spectacular scenery with some of the most appealing visitor attractions in the UK. Whether your taste is for the hills and dales, wild moorland or beautiful pastures, raging torrents or gently trickling scenes, you won't be disappointed.

Visitors will find themselves within striking distance of a number of historic castles, some ruined, most still occupied by the families who have lived there for centuries. Or, around the next bend as it were, they can take in the splendid architecture of a string of abbeys and monasteries, whose beauty even the wrecking crews of Cromwell's army couldn't destroy. Other features of the area are some magnificently kept gardens within a number of stately homes (usually better during summer - obviously) or take a trip back in time with a railway journey on one of several lines that run through the most beautiful parts of the county, sitting in a carriage being pulled along by a venerable steam locomotive.

Ale and Cheese
There are other attractions too. You could tour a visitor centre watching traditional arts such as cheese-making or the centuries old brewing methods still used to produce real ale. Afterwards, those who wish to may care to linger and try the produce.

Where we stayed
For our visit to the Crime Writing Festival, we stayed at The Cairn Hotel (part of Strathmore Hotels Group). We've stayed there before and found it clean and comfortable, with the staff cheerful and providing good service. Okay, so it needs a lick of paint here, or a bit of carpet replacing there, but we were only staying there, not living in the place. The rooms are spacious, no wear and tear to be seen in them, and the facilities within all you could ask for.

The terms were the other attraction. Our online booking enabled us to obtain a double room with full English breakfast for two at a price of £55 ($84). This compares with a rack price of £190 ($293) and the price of a room in the hotel staging the festival (only a few hundred yards away) of £300 ($462).
*Rate of exchange as at 07/24/2010

And some places NOT to visit. . .

One of the books displayed on our Amazon carousel now is 101 Places Not To See.   It's a different sort of travel guide recently published by Harper Collins.  Its author, Catherine Price, has put together an eclectic collection of places that she, and several guest contributors, recommend that we don't bother visiting.

You might be saying, "But the world is out there to be explored:  good, bad, and ugly." And I admit we were somewhat skeptical at first.. .but then came the chuckles and that led to laughing right out loud.  After all, how can one read a book that includes "The Testicle Festival" (held each year at the Rock Creek Lodge outside Missoula, Montana) or "The Amsterdam Sex Museum" and not laugh?

I disagree with many of Price's slam-dunks on places; for instance, she seems to have written off the whole state of Nevada -- a place where we recently completed  one of the best road trips imaginable; or the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato, Mexico (so. . .it's not for the squeamish, but we thought it was interesting). Several items such as the smell of the (San Francisco Bay Area) BART rapid transit train carpet or 'an AAA meeting when you are drunk' seem almost to be 'fillers' and detracted from  excellent tales such as the night spent at a Korean temple (that one had me laughing out loud).

However, she's included a good number of places -- such as The Gum Wall tucked away in an alley near Pike Place Market right here in Seattle  --  that I'd never heard of before.

Each place gets no more  than 2- 3 pages in the book making it a great over-all quick read. It might be the perfect gift for some travel-fanatic friend of yours who always is looking for some new off-beat destination; she certainly has plenty of them!  

Note:  The publisher provided us a copy of the book to review; however, there were no commitments made to review the book on the blog.  We've read the book and enjoyed it, particularly the author's statement concerning why she wrote it: she was tired of those books telling her all the things she needed to do before she dies and felt it time to let people know those things they could remove from their to do lists.  

It got us thinking, "Where would we have included in the book?" What place would you have included? Add a comment below:

Summer Travel - Novel Destinations

The next best thing to actually traveling there, is being transported by some writer whose skills with the written word take us from Kirkland to far-away places.  We've had some great armchair trips this summer to:

          "Winds of Crete" Loutro, Crete

• Crete - Two outstanding books of vastly differing subject matter have led us back to our favorite spots on this southern Greek island.  

A very used, dog-earred paper-back copy of Winds of Crete, by David MacNeil Doren, that I found in Portland, Oregon's Powell's Bookstore kept us totally absorbed as the author recounted the six years that he and his wife lived in Crete.  The book was first published in England in 1974.
        
Who Pays the Ferryman? a novel by Michael J. Bird, based on his BBC television series of the same name, took us to some of our favorite cities as we followed the story of Alan Haldane's return to Crete after a 35-year absence and the love story that ensues. We ordered this book, first published in England in 1977, from The Book Depository (which offers free world-wide shipping; no minimum purchase required).

•  Europe  - by train, bike, horse, boat and on foot in two books by a London journalist, Andrew Eames.

In his, The 8:55 to Baghdad, we tagged along on his 2002 trip from London to Iraq on the trail of Agatha Christie, the legendary mystery writer, who as a 30-something recently divorced woman in 1928 made the trip alone.  He masterfully weaves a biographical account of Christie into his travel tale that had us wanting to hop the next train from London and learn more about Agatha's travels. I came across this book in the biography section at a  Barnes and Noble.

(This book re-ignited our desire to read more Agatha Christie books and have just completed a cruise in her Death on the Nile and took an English garden tour in Nemesis.)

Patrick Leigh Fermor, the British travel writer who at age 18 in 1933 set out to walk the Hook of Holland to Istanbul provided the inspiration for Eames' Blue River, Black Sea, the story of his own journey on foot, bike and horseback along the Danube into the heart of the New Europe.

           Sipping raki with Bill and Val Kitson 

• England has been the setting for a murder mysteries written by Bill Kitson, the author we met in the tiny village of Loutro, on Crete's southern coast.

The first book -- in what we hope will be a long series of mysteries -- introduces detective Mike Nash, in a riviting read titled Depth of Despair.  I ordered it on-line through Amazon.  While not a travel book, the plot has taken us from tarns in England's Lakes District to Russia and back. It is a book with such a gripping storyline that it we found it hard to put down.   I've just received the second book in the series, The Chosen, also set in England, which by coincidence opens with an article, fictitious of course, from The Seattle Times.

Note: I've been able to add all but one of the books referenced in this post to the Amazon carousel that appears on our blog - if you click on a book it will open an Amazon page that describes the book, author, and offers professional and reader's reviews.  And yes, if you click on one of the books and ultimately buy it from the carousel, we get a few cents from the sale.  (That's a disclaimer; not a sales pitch!)

Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea in a Day

We went from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea in a matter of hours; a move so swift for the glacially-researching Smith's that I still can't believe in two months we'll be cruising to destinations in Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Greece. . .but that's how travel research and planning go sometimes with us.

The Research
For more than a year we've been looking for cruises that would include Sydney, Australia and New Zealand.  Either the ship's routing didn't appeal or the price was prohibitive. Then, some months ago, we began following the price fluxuations of a 30-day cruise from the U.S. West Coast to Sydney, with some Hawaiian and South Sea ports of call thrown in.  It tempted. The cruise price went down; we calculated the cost of the various airfares to get us back to Seattle and to San Francisco . . .we debated. . .'should we or shouldn't we?'. . . and then. . .

The Trip
Two days ago Joel was reading the latest cruise deals from Vacations To Go and he mentioned a 12-night Holland America cruise sailing this fall from Athens, Greece to ports of call that ring the Black Sea.  Price was good and the eight ports of call sounded exotic. We sent the cruise off to Cruise Compete, a website we've used before (and highly recommend) to price-compare this cruise.  We've learned price quotes do vary for the same category cabin on the same cruise.

By 5 p.m. we had booked our trip with Cruise Vacation Outlet, a company in Orlando, Fl, that submitted one of the best quotes we received in response to our Cruise Compete request; one that included a $175 on-board credit.

We'll be getting to Athens using a combination of frequent flier miles (it took some time to find something that didn't involve two plane changes and long waits along the way) and Europe's low-cost airlines.  We will fly Delta from Seattle to Amsterdam for air miles and $97US per person in taxes and fees.  After a couple nights there we'll continue to Athens.

Maybe we'll get to Australia next year. . .

Starbucks and other travel tips

You might call us cheap, or frugal, or thrifty. . .or you might call us wise travelers who look for money-saving deals.  Whatever you call us, our approach to travel allows us to spend nearly four months a year living out of our suitcases. Here's some ways we've saved money:

                         Starbucks menu - Rhodes

Saving Money

Starbucks, our Seattle-based coffee company that has taken the world by the cup, has already saved us several hundred dollars this year. How? In a word, Via.  Via, is their instant coffee ( Italian/bold and Columbian/ milder), sold in a 12-packet box for $9.95, less than a dollar a cup. The Italian is strong enough for us to use a single packet for two cups of coffee.

In Greece, the price averaged 2.50E, or a bit over $3, a cup for coffee; no free refill and was often made with a packet of a mild instant Nescafe.  Being accustomed to at least two cups each in the morning and another in mid-afternoon of strong coffee, we calculated that over the course of the month we were gone, we would have paid more than $300US for coffee had we kept up our caffeine habit at restaurants and hotels. 

By using the hot water pots provided in our rooms -- a nice touch that we've found a part of our European stays -- and our Via, we saved big bucks.  We replenished our supply at the Rhodes Starbucks. 

We were not so frugal as to pass up cappucinos or lattes, but made our own black coffee. . .except on our Easy Jet flight from Rhodes to London where we paid 2.50E for a cup of Via. 

              

Back home, I've purchased hot water pot to use at home that is similar to those we used in Europe. I took it along on our recent road trip through the Western United States. It was incredibly convenient to have coffee in our hotel rooms and it again saved us money;  a cup of plain black coffee at Encore in Las Vegas was $3.50.

Room Rates

We learned a lesson about room rates on our road trip. Opting out of the afternoon pool time when Las Vegas temperatures hit 107-degrees, we did some Web-surfing in preparation for our departure the following day. We were seeking reasonably priced first-night-on-the-road destinations. The place that had the best prices it seemed  was Reno, where at its Silver Legacy Casino Resort, the internet price for a standard room was shown as $49.  We still were hesitant to book it, just because some other place might call out along the way. We planned to just call from the road the next day to make the reservation. 

Out of curiosity, I called the hotel while we had the price on the computer and was told the rate for the sametype room on the same night would be $89; at best it would be $59 if I held any of a number of memberships. . . that settled it; we decided to book then and there - using the internet.

       Greek trip began on Kirkland bus

Public transit
If you pack as we do - no more than a roller bag sized for an overhead bin and smaller carry-on bags then public transit systems can be navigated with luggage and save enormous amounts of money. Using our local Metro bus  and new LINK light rail system we traveled from our Kirkland home to SeaTac some 25 miles away for $10.50 for the two of us; taxi fare would have been $50. 

In London we caught the Piccadilly Line (The Tube) for a 45-minute trip to Heathrow after walking two blocks to the station from our hotel. The cost for both L9, or about $13 at the exchange rate at the time.  This compares favorably with the taxi fare to Paddington Station and then the Express Train to the airport. The train tickets alone would have been L33 or just under $50US.

FROM THE INBOX -Places to Stay

United Kingdom: Val and Bill Kitson, the murder-mystery writer and his editor wife, whom we met in Crete, reported staying at a great -- reasonably priced as well -- place on a recent stop in his book signing tour.  They recommend  The Best Western in Mexborough where they nabbed a Saturday night stay for L56 and that included free WiFi and a buffet breakfast.

Greece:  Michael has sent some great ideas for places to stay and eat in Karpathos, Greece.  Karpathos is an island between Crete and Rhodes where we'd contemplated a stop on our recent trip, but ferry schedules didn't cooperate. We would like to return to Greece in the spring and Michael has recommended Holy Week as the best time to visit Karpathos and Olympos for the island's best photo ops.  Do a little armchair travel and check out his son's website, http://www.karpathos.org/  for great photos and information.

We are always looking for travel tips; if you have some to share please comment below or send them to travelnwrite@msn.com so that they can be included in a future Tips Post.