TP Thursday: Amsterdam Autumn

A seemingly 'bad' flight connection can often be turned into a 'good' travel experience, such as our overnight stay in Amsterdam last October.  Unable to get from Poros, Greece to Seattle, Washington in a single day, we found ourselves with less than 24 hours to see as much of Netherland's capital as we could such a snippet of a stop. 
We marveled at the multitudes of late-night diners, shoppers, strollers and bikers as we wandered the lively streets into the late night hours. We reluctantly returned to our hotel for a bit of sleep before getting up early the next morning to continue our explorations of the neighborhood. The streets that had been filled with people only hours before were nearly empty as we strolled along the canals before heading back to the airport. 

This photo was taken not far from Anne Frank's home, now a major tourist attraction that sadly we didn't have time to visit.  We will get there one day - when we have more time than a 'bad' connection provides.



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D2G loses to Spain’s Tapa Temptations

Yes, that healthy eating we’ve been touting for the last year – our Diet to Go, or D2G – met its challenge in Spain’s Tapa Temptations.

So we said “Adios” to that eating plan and each night saddled up to a tapas bar to eat our way through several of the small plates that offered a variety of meat, fish and vegetable tidbits; some of the best food we’ve had on our travels.

Potatoes and bread  – those things we’ve bragged about eliminating (or greatly reducing) in our lives this last year, were key ingredients in most of the tapas we ate. And Spain’s famous rice paella couldn’t be missed. . .

When in Spain eat as the Spanish do. . .and we did! In a manner of speaking anyway. Each night we’d wait as long as our American appetites allowed (somewhere around 7 or 7:30) and we’d go in search of a tapas bar. Tapas bars, like restaurants, don’t open their kitchens for hot dishes until 8:30 in most cases, so we’d work our way through cold dishes and wind up the feast with a couple hot dishes.

Tapas are generally inexpensive. So were the many varieties of Spanish wine we quaffed down with them.

Our best tapa dinner was eaten in Osuna, that charming small town outside Sevilla. The restaurant Meson del Duque, (Plaza de la Duquesa, 2, phone 95 481 28 45) had been recommended a couple of times so on our last evening we waited as long our our American appetites allowed and we headed out for what would be the culinary treat of the trip
.
As usual ‘los Americanos’ (us!) were unfashionably early so we had the place to ourselves. . .which gave us time to visit with Jose, the owner, left, and Paco, the bartender, to his right in this photo.

Since their tapas weren’t on display and we weren’t sure what was available, we asked Jose and Paco to select some plates for us.

They served us a mouthwatering short rib that you could cut with a fork, a fish dish, a pork dish and shrimp with a presentation resembling the horns of bulls in an unbelievably tasty sauce.

So good were the tapas that we fell further off the diet wagon and ordered dessert – again their choice. Need I say this chocolate morsel was good?

Our last night in Sevilla we dined at Casa Tomate ( on the 'tapa bar street' of Mateos Gagos 24, phone 954 220 421) and decided to try the combination plate of three hot and three cold tapas; to that we added a half racione (half order) of deep fried calimari. 

As we started to order a salad as well – thinking we’d need a bit more, our waiter politely told us we didn’t need it – we had ordered plenty.  He was right as the tapas plate alone had anchovies, meat balls, veggies, Russian salad and a potato torte (tortilla):



If you've been following the blog the last few weeks, I know you are probably thinking, "And then they got on a cruise ship for two weeks and ate some more?"  Yes we did, but I should tell you that we logged some 7 - 10 miles walking each day on land and on the ship either worked out at the gym and walked or did both.

While in Spain we marked the first anniversary of our D2G.  It has been a success despite the eating we did the last few weeks. We weighed in today and Joel weighs five pounds less than he did last year and I am down 13.5 pounds. . .and now that we are home we are back on the D2G way of eating.

Note:  The D2G is based on the Glycemic Load Diet as developed by Seattle doctor, Rob Thompson.  His book of the same title can be purchased from Amazon.com

Celebrity Life draws to a close. . . for now.

Another taste of Celebrity Life came to an end today.  And as it did, we wondered how a 13-night cruise could glide by as rapidly as has this one. 

We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida at 5 a.m. Saturday, were off the ship before 9 a.m.  – and will be home by noon Pacific time on Sunday, after spending a night at a Miami airport hotel to make the airline connection.

 (This beach in the photo above  is the first thing you see arriving in Port Everglades; the last land you see when setting out across the Atlantic from the port.)

After its rather unusual sanitized beginning, our cruise quickly got back to normal.  The only evidence of the previous outbreak of illness was the continued emphasis on hand washing and sanitation, elbow bumps replacing handshakes and extra sanitation in the public areas. (And by yesterday we were hugging new friends as we said goodbye – with a blatant disregard of ‘bugs’.)

The two-story library was the only part of the ship to remain closed for the cruise – sanitation of books is a difficult thing, we learned.

The ship’s doctor reported Thursday that only 21 on this cruise had been quarantined and those as precautionary measures. (There are nearly 2,000 passengers and a 1,000 crew members on board.)

Our cabin was spectacular, and Isabelo, our room attendant, took such good care of us that we were  spoiled by his attentiveness to detail.

We were so spoiled we actually looked into hopping aboard another Celebrity ship leaving Ft. Lauderdale and extending our adventure by another week.

We decided that might be considered excessive by some of you.  However, I must tell you that we were introduced to a couple who have been on the Constellation for two months! They were getting off today and hopping another Celebrity cruise. . . now that did sound a bit excessive.


The last few days were filled with farewells and celebrations were held, like the traditional crew goodbye (photo to the right).

But I couldn’t leave you wondering about that glass of champagne I had been dreaming about being handed when I stepped aboard.  As I said things don’t always work out as planned when you travel, but good things do happen along the way, such as my champagne.  What can I say, but. . .?

Cheers to Celebrity Life!

Sea Days ~ Sea Daze

We are now more than half way across the Atlantic Ocean as evidenced by the map on our television screen this morning.  (We are the little red dot under the “O” in Ocean.) This cruise is taking us across this massive body of water in seven days. . .seven long, glorious days at sea.

We once thought that sea days might drive us crazy.  Really, we thought, there’s nothing to see but sky and water and no choice about getting on or off the ship. . .how interesting could that be?

But, after trying our first transatlantic cruise a few years ago, we were hooked.  That sea and sky are  pretty interesting. . .in fact, we find ourselves often doing nothing but watching them for hours at a time.

Our days have begun on our deck waiting for the sun to rise while sipping coffee. I should note that we are re-entering the U.S. east coast time zone by turning our clocks back six hours, an hour at a time, which makes early rising much easier and our days a bit longer, which is great.

Changing cloud formations and sea foam patterns can be nearly hypnotic.


Our days have glided by smoothly and rapidly- as we’ve focused on what I call our Body, Mind and Soul Program.  For the body, we’ve gone to the gym and worked out for an hour each morning, then headed off to a lecture (we have three lecturers on board – all with fascinating topics) to improve the mind, and then it is time to replenish the soul from a lounge chair overlooking the sea. From there we head to afternoon coffee, which leads into cocktail hour, dinner and whew, we find anther day has simply disappeared.

For those of you thinking that wouldn’t be enough to keep you busy, let me assure you that our Cruise Director Sue (see earlier blog post) and her staff provide us a daily page-long list of activities for those who need to keep busy. 

For instance, a sample from the list includes: attending a movie, taking an on-line computer class, learning  how to scrapbook, learning a new language using Rosetta Stone, taking a dance class, attending a culinary demonstration, playing  bingo, joining in a trivia game competition, listening to any of a half dozen entertainers performing throughout the ship, bowling on XBox Kinect, or entering a Texas Hold’em Tournament. There’s also a lengthy schedule of parties and dances, if you can fit them all into your schedule.

Today is the first storming day we’ve had at sea (a rain squall moved our morning coffee, lunch and most activities indoors today) and if it doesn’t get worse it is almost an enjoyable experience providing a  rocking of the ship. . . the kind that encourages a nap right after the morning’s lecture.

Celebrity’s Sue Denning: She’s Got Talent(s)!

Our Cruise Director has toured the world in musical theatre and since 2004 she’s been a part of the cruising world as both an entertainer and a Cruise Director.

Cruise Directors  (for those not familiar with this form of travel) are the folks in charge of entertainment and activities; the things that keep passengers busy on long days at sea such as those we are now enjoying as we cross the Atlantic Ocean on our Celebrity Constellation (“Connie”).

Cruise Directors are the ones who appear in elegant dress to announce the evening’s theatre entertainment. (as is Sue in this photo). They appear on the ship’s television channel to tell you about special events and activities.

They are, you might say, the cheerleaders; the persons that  passengers are sure to  remember.

Although we’ve now sailed on a number of cruises, I’ve never met a cruise director until this sailing.  Sue is one of the folks on board that Celebrity had arranged for me to interview while on the cruise.

And I’ll tell you about that chat in the next post, but now  I want to tell you about my first meeting with Sue – last week, long before the ‘official’ interview took place.

We met in one of the women’s bathrooms on the day after we’d sailed from Barcelona.

I had been outside the bathroom as she whipped past me, high heels clicking, with heavy rubber gloves on her hands carrying a bottle of cleaner and sponges. There was no one else around – I’d been waiting for Joel to return from the men’s room.

Not quite believing what I’d seen, I followed her inside and there found her scrubbing a toilet.
“Aren’t you are Cruise Director?” I asked (as any good reporter would do).

“Yes, luv, I am,” she replied in her heavy English accent, without missing a swipe.

“And, uh, you are cleaning toilets,” I somewhat stupidly added.

“Yes, luv, I am,” she replied. And then she added that our staff had been working so hard to eradicate the gastrointestinal virus that had struck during the last cruise (see my earlier post) that I could rest assured I was on the cleanest ship on the ocean.

*****              ******
I reminded her of that meeting when we sat down for the formal interview yesterday. She was quick to clarify she hadn’t been doing it for notoriety. (I knew that as there had been no one else had been around other than another staff member who was also cleaning the restroom.)

“If I don’t do it, I can’t expect my team to do it,” she explained, noting that the Herculean task of sanitizing the ship on that Sunday had required that musicians, entertainers and revenue partners all join in on the cleaning that continued for the first couple of days of the cruise.

“This is a family and this is our house,” she said of the ship and its crew, “We want to keep it safe and clean for all of us.”

So I’ll tell you more about Sue in the next post, but I can tell you that I knew after our first chance meeting, she’s a cruise director I won’t soon forget.

The Rock of Gibraltar: A Gem of a Substitute!

My one regret of our Spanish travels was not having enough time during our Costa del Sol stay to visit Gibraltar. We’d decided it was just a bit too far down the road to tackle. . . not to mention the guidebook’s warning about length of time to cross the border from Spain into United Kingdom territory.

So when our captain announced  Tuesday evening that a Portuguese planned strike  would prevent us from going to Funchal, Madeira and we would be stopping in Gibraltar instead, I did a happy dance around the cabin.

American writer Paul Theroux, in his Pillars of Hercules says, “Gibraltar is just a conspicuous pile of limestone, to which distance adds enchantment.”

Maybe that has always been the case with me.  I’ve been enchanted by the place because it was so far from my world. . .I remember being introduced to ‘the rock’ in those Prudential Insurance advertisements during my childhood and it seemed light years from anything I’d ever visit. Of course, I’ve always wanted to see those famous apes who inhabit it. . .whatever the case, I’ve always loved the rock.

I was so excited about our visit that I was out on the deck by 6:30 a.m. – a time still so dark that the Big Dipper looked as if it were  sitting on our railing. The waterway was filled with brightly lit ferries and freighters. 


Our ship, already creeping in at a snail’s pace began a gradual turn to the right just as daylight was arriving and as we turned,  the The Rock of Gibraltar came into view.

It was magic, I tell you, pure, unadulterated travel magic!

We walked nearly 10 miles during our time in Gibraltar. We traveled the length of the town’s Main Street, with its colorful Christmas decorations and stores offering every product imaginable.  We were headed to the Botanical Garden and considering a ride up the cable car to see the apes when all of a sudden the little buggers appeared right on the street in front of us – saving us the time and effort to go up to visit them.

  The story  is that these apes,  Barbary macaques, were brought here by the Berbers from North Africa in the 1700’s. They were pets.

Spain ceded Gibraltar to Great Britain in the 1700’s and Sir Winston Churchill is quoted as saying of them, “As long as the apes remain, so will the British.”  It seems to be true as the apes continue to entertain tourists in this place that continues to be a British colony.

Leaving Gibraltar – sailing between The Pillars of Hercules at sunset– one on north Africa’s coast, the other being Gibraltar was as magical as our arrival.  I am already thinking I must return.

A Navigational Note:  It is Saturday morning and we’ve been on the ship for nearly a week.  We left Tenerife, in the Canary Islands last night and that was the last land we will see until next Saturday when we arrive in Fort Lauderdale, having crossed some 3,400+ nautical miles of ocean.  We’ve been advised we will have ‘slow or no’ internet access during the crossing at times, so I’ll write more when possible. 

The sea is smooth,  the temperatures a most welcome 73-degrees.  Today reminds us of why we love transatlantic cruises.  I took this photo this morning while having morning coffee on our deck – the sea and sunrise couldn’t have been better

Celebrity’s “Connie”: Solstice-ized and Sanitized

Happy Thanksgiving all from off the coast of Africa. . .

I’d been thinking about that chilled glass of champagne on the silver tray – the one the staff member would hand me as I stepped aboard the ship last Sunday afternoon.

That experience, last spring, was my first impression of Celebrity’s Solstice ship and it had set the standard for my expectations for the Constellation. We are heading back to the United States aboard “Connie, an older, smaller ship than the one we sailed in the spring, but one that has been refurbished, ‘solsticized’, to feature “Solstice class” amenities.

That glass of champagne  – as well as  the chilled bottle of champagne and roses that would be waiting in the room – is standard fare for Concierge Class on this cruise line.

But as I have written before about experiences on this trip, sometimes what you expect and what you get are two different things.

Boarding in Barcelona

We knew something was up when we were greeted at the port by women in health-care smocks squirting sanitizer on the hands of arriving passengers before we went through the security gate, the first step in check in.

Another pair squirted more sanitizer on our barely dry hands as we entered the check in line, where additional staff were wiping down the check-in counters as each  guest completed check-in.

Somewhere along the line we were handed the letter explaining that on the previous cruise, from Istanbul to Barcelona, a number of passengers had been stricken with a gastrointestinal illness. . .the ship was undergoing extensive sanitization as a result.  Tips for washing hands to for preventing illness were printed on the back.

And as a result of that process, we were told, boarding would be delayed and’ once on board, our rooms would not be available until 5:30.

We were offered unlimited amounts of canned pop and bottled water, potato chips and other packed treats. We waited with other guests in a makeshift waiting room-- better recognized as the baggage claim room of the terminal -- for three hours in our case.

When called to board ( 3 p.m. for us) we were again given another round of hand sanitizing as we left the room.

As I stepped aboard the ship that is our floating home until December 3rd, instead of that champagne I’d been thinking about,  I got another dollop of hand sanitizer.


We did get to our room at 5:30 and found it a no frills, pretty bare basics place: bed and paper cups.  Our weary – but cheery --room attendant explained that not everything had been sanitized and would arrive the next day.

It is now Wednesday (and with luck I’ll get this posted on Thursday) and our room is back to normal. We got the champagne bucket Sunday evening, the bedding on Monday and flowers Monday evening.  Paper cups were replaced with glasses. Our ice bucket is filled.

Enhanced sanitation continues though as everyone is well aware we will soon be at sea for seven days  -we are still receiving generous dollops of hand sanitizer at every turn.

We are secure in the knowledge that staff members worked their tails off  to make sure the ship is as clean as it can be.  Our cabin attendant, Isabelo, began his work day Sunday at 5 a.m. and ended it at 10:30 p.m. (Makes our wait time rather insignificant by comparison.)

We popped the  cork on that champagne Tuesday evening and I had that glass of champagne I’d been dreaming of. . .we lifted our glasses to “Salud!” (Health!) and Isabelo!

I should note our adventures didn’t stop with boarding; on Tuesday afternoon our captain informed us that the Portuguese had announced a strike for Thursday so our stop in Funchal is cancelled. Stay tuned for where we ended up going. . . we are entering an area of the world with sporadic internet connections. . .

Barcelona: Adios Espana

We begin the final phase of this Spanish Adventure tomorrow (Sunday) when we board our Celebrity Constellation cruise ship here in Barcelona bound for Ft. Lauderdale.

We’ve already vowed to return to Andalucia, the area where we spent most of this trip; there are far too many towns like tiny Osuna just waiting to be discovered by us.  We’ll likely not return to the Costa del Sol as it was a bit too touristy for our travel tastes. It was a nice contrast though to the interior towns of Seville and Osuna.

And speaking of contrasts, we are now in Barcelona, a metropolis of 1.6 million people. Our hotel is in the Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter.  We’ve strolled through the area on previous cruise ship stops, but as is our only complaint with such stops, they usually don’t allow us to see a city at night.
 
So we are soaking up the ambiance of the night as we stroll our ‘neighborhood’ streets  - a warren of medieval twists and turns past buildings that date back to the 15th Century.

It is interesting to be back in a big city especially one that is known for pickpockets and theft.  Our Hotel Colon, provided a security checklist for us upon arrival that included tips for street safety – jewelry, money and all non-essentials are left in the room safe each time we venture out – night or day.

And days have been spent strolling the famous pedestrian street, La Rambla, where the flower stalls were a bright contrast to a rather gray morning yesterday.
La Rambla gets its name from a seasonal stream that once ran here; rather hard to imagine this busy walkway was once  a stream.

The only thing that might have been brighter were the fruit displays inside the Mercat de la Boqueria, the sprawling municipal market just off La Rambla, that is a highlight of a trip to Barcelona.

We’ll ease into leaving Spain as we will visit Alicante and Malaga before we head  for the Atlantic Ocean.  That is a good thing. . .it will be hard to leave this fascinating country.