Day 2 Princess Cays

Princess has their very own private beach here on this island in the Bahamas. The water really is truly turquoise and crystal clear. Amazing. We anchored at 9 am and were on the beach before 10 for a perfect clear day, 80 degrees or so and gorgeous.

I can’t believe I actually bought this thing, but it really did the trick. A perfect, icy pina colada that stayed cold for at least a couple of hours on the hot beach. It was great down time, and I didn’t even get a sunburn.

Perfect water, perfect sand, perfect weather. My first Caribbean beach day was perfect.

Day 1 Cruising the Caribbean

Mo and I decided that waiting around at my house in Jamestown wasn’t much different than waiting around in San Francisco so we left home around noon for the bay area. The weather was nice in California, sunny and partly cloudy with no smog anywhere thanks to the lovely rain from the day before. We traveled west on 120, our usual route to SF and then crossed the San Mateo bridge. Mo thought it would be fun to have dinner at very well known Italian restaurant she and her friends would visit back in the days when she lived in Montara. Bertolucci’s has been around since 1928.

We managed to find the restaurant, found the hotel park and fly lot, checked in, and then decided to go to the City for some entertainment. Strybing Arboretum is one of my favorite places, so we headed for Golden Gate Park.

The sun was nice, and walking in the park was a fairly popular thing to do on this Saturday afternoon, even though the air was still a bit chilly. The tulip trees are in bloom right now, and some camellias, but most of the gardens were fairly subdued at this time of year. Sadly, I didn’t take the camera, so no photos of all the loveliness.

We headed back through town to our restaurant for an early dinner. The food was really wonderful, and the ambiance of the restaurant was old school in a way, but totally casual as well. You could tell that many of the diners were people who came often. Interesting that even in this very fine restaurant, people were still dressed casually in jeans and such. Mo had some sole with a great dill sauce and I had osso bucco, both with polenta,which neither of us had tried before and both of us really liked. I’ll have to find a recipe and make some.

We took our leftovers, which eventually died a sad death in our stateroom fridge, and parked the car, deciding again that waiting at the airport wasn’t much different than waiting in the parking lot, took the 7 pm shuttle and only had 4hours to wait for boarding. It all gets a bit convoluted for these red-eye flights. Where do you wait? When do you drive there? So we took little naps hidden in the corner on the floor of the gate area, I knitted a bit on my shawl rather than my sweater, and finally boarded at 11:30 or so. Amazingly I slept through the entire flight, only waking up just as the plane was beginning to descend into Miami. Ahh. Plane pillow, cozy socks, no bra, and Ambien. LOL

Miami was another long wait, arriving at 8am and having to wait for the shuttle to Fort Lauderdale at 11. The shuttle service was with Princess, and was definitely a bit convoluted. They didn’t have enough shuttles,there were too many Carnival shuttles getting in the way, and we ended up with people going to two different ships on the same bus, which was crazy. We finally were dropped off at pier 2, where the huge ship awaited. Huge it is, and even though we have been on huge ships before, this one looks pretty impressive sitting there at the pier.

Boarding was amazingly efficient and simple, again a good check mark for Princess, and our stateroom was ready when we got there. This is the largest stateroom so far, even though it was just a simple outside view room, no balcony or anything, but there was lots of room, a huge closet, a nice bathroom, and a ton of storage. We didn’t have to do that thing with shoving the suitcase under the bed which is often the case on these ships.
We toured the ship a bit, searched out the Lido deck and the lunch buffet in the Horizon café and waited for our sailing time at 5. The food was fine, not particularly fancy,but adequate, and everything on the ship was really nice. The ship itself isn’t quite as dramatic in the Atrium area as our Royal Caribbean ship was, but it was still lovely. Probably a bit more classy, with lots of dark wood, and lovely art everywhere. The service was excellent throughout the cruise; in spite of some of the reviews I read saying it wasn’t that great, I was impressed.
Fort Lauderdale is a huge cruise port, and there were 5 big ships leaving on this Sunday evening,heading for various parts of the Caribbean. The parade of ships was fun, and people in their condos along the water stand in their balconies and wave at the ships leaving port. Thinking about how many people were on the sea that evening was impressive, considering there are about3000 to 5000 people on each one of them. It’s really interesting to think of what a huge industry this cruising thing has become, with so many people and cities almost completely dependent on these ships and people coming into their ports.

We had a nice supper in the dining room, appreciating our Anytime Dining option since we didn’t have to make small talk with a bunch of strangers, went to the evening show in the Princess theater, before we settled in to our cabin and looked forward to the coming days with a lot of anticipation.

A January reprieve

Lake McSwain

Sometimes I am more aware of the delights of living in California than others. January is one of those times, when most of the country in mired in cold and snow, the northwest is inundated with rain, and camping isn’t the first thought on your mind. Instead of nestling in to a warm fire and gray skies for the 3 day weekend, as I might have done in Oregon, Mo and and I headed out for a little bit of peace and quiet in the California foothills.

My only requirement this time was that I really really didn’t want to cross the central valley once more. We searched around for local camping spots, and after narrowing down the possibilities, came up with Lake McSwain. It turned out to be a lucky guess. The adjacent reservoir and camping area at Lake McClure wasn’t nearly as inviting as our little family campground by the narrow lake between the Exchequer Reservoir and Merced Falls. Lake McSwain is just a reservoir as well, but being long and narrow, in spite of the drought, the water levels weren’t as low as the bigger reservoirs and we enjoyed the lake view from our camp site.

Lake McSwain is a little hidden secret and has the reputation of being known as the very best fishing lake in California. This may be due to the elaborate trout, king salmon and Florida largemouth bass stocking programs. Or perhaps it is because so many fish call the lake home, including rainbow trout, black bass, spotted bass, bluegill, crappie, catfish, salmon and shad.

The campground itself was delightful, with lots of choices and plenty of space between sites, and wonder of all wonders, not one single night light to be found. The skies were dark and full of stars until the quarter moon rose long after midnight. We chose not to bring wood, since it is buried in snow at Mo’s house in Rocky Point, and that was a good thing as well, since campfires weren’t permitted anyway. The park lent itself well to short but delightful walks around the lake, long sessions of reading novels and knitting, and our favorite big breakfasts, even without the fire.

There is a road that continues past the campground to the bigger reservoir, and we took a long walk east along the road on one morning, walking down the hills to the waterside for Abby to enjoy her swim. The landscape is rough and steep, but the campground itself is gentle and welcoming, and not too crowded. Most of the people there seemed to be families who were fishing, and we saw lots of stringers of big trout on lines. There were lots of dogs as well, and the extra 3 bucks that is charged for a dog must be bringing in a good amount of change for the park.

We watched the sun rise and set for a couple of days, and thoroughly appreciated the silence of the place. Quite a surprise. There was also an area with sewer hookups, but it looked much too much like a typical RV park with sites lined up in rows, close together. We were grateful for our open spaces, walked around and wrote down our favorites, and made lists and mental notes of future winter camping days that very likely may be in this happy little place.

This little campground was only 45 miles from home, and on the way back we took a few side routes and discovered another little gem along the Tuolumne River. The campground borders the Tuolumne River with great kayaking access, and huge Valley Oaks. Turlock SRA

Next time we will bring the kayaks, which we missed having along on this trip, but they were left behind in Oregon. I will be glad when everything is in one place, the bikes, the kayaks, the motorhome, the baby car, all together so that if we go somewhere spontaneously we can still have all our toys with us. For now, though, a simple little weekend trip was just the ticket.

Picasa photos for this post

Day 15 Returning Home

Time is really a weird concept when you are flying around the world. While in Turkey, I could keep track of what time it was at home so I didn’t call the kids at 2am, and what time it was where I was. But at the moment I am flying in an airplane that is traveling west at something like half the speed of the planet and time makes no sense whatsoever. I just know that it is passing. We are over Greenland, and the sky is dark except for a thin red line on the southern horizon outside my window. According to Mo’s watch, it is 10:00 AM in San Francisco, and we will land there at 5:00PM this afternoon. We left Frankfurt at 4 in the afternoon, same day, and yet time is passing. I am not sure why it is night here, because it isn’t even nighttime here according to the time zone we are supposedly in, but I guess we are so far north that at this time of year it is always night anyway. It’s all crazy.

At 4am this morning, Istanbul was vibrant with street life. We rode the bus through the city to the airport amazed at all the activities going on there. People coming out of bars, standing on corners, buying cigarettes and groceries, doing the Turkish man thing of standing around shooting the breeze. Except it was 4am. Amazing.

I fell in love with Germany today, somewhere between Switzerland and Munich. The Alps were covered with snow and the plains around Munich are like something in a fairy tale. The fields are still green, and a magical patchwork of angles of varying shades of green, with patches of dark forest, dotted with perfect little villages of white with red roofs. The roads looked nearly empty, with traffic moving along the major highways smoothly. The sunlight was coming over the magnificent snow covered mountains to the south and angled across the green fields and forests in a way that made me think of what life must be like in a small German village, and suddenly I wanted very badly to experience Germany.

The airport at Munich was clean and full of bustling activity, with great shops and clothes and wonderful smelling food. It made me laugh at how I felt about Germany at the beginning of this trip and it made Mo happy that I decided I really liked Germany after all. She has many happy memories of traveling in this country. I hope I get to do that someday. Guess it’s a good thing that I am learning to drink beer.

Now the red line changed to a deep deep blue, and in a matter of moments back to the faintest hint of orange again. Maybe we are going towards some kind of daylight?

The trip is very nearly over, the final travels are ending, and the integration of all I learned and experienced is waiting in the wings. I am sure that more will come to me, the deeper part of Turkey as a cradle of civilization in the world, and the blessing of traveling to a place never thought of much and learning about it in a way you can never do without being there. This fluorescent thin blue line on the dark horizon is a great symbol of the end of this trip. Too bad I can’t take a picture of it. I guess it’s another one of those experiences that can’t be caught and just has to be felt.

Later at home:
I am discovering some of the things that I appreciate much more after traveling in a foreign country! toilet paper, light bulbs that are actually bright enough to see, electricity that works steadily all the time, lots of clean clothes to choose from, good brewed coffee, not Turkish and not NesCafe! and the ability to buy aspirin or cough drops at the grocery store without having to find a pharmacy!