May 19
We just got back from our port at Greece. We docked at Piraeus and took the train into Athens, and to the Acropolis, Parthenon, etc.
Jordan was the best experience, but Greece was the happiest, for me. It was relaxing. No overnight stay, no traversing half the country by bus, no schedules or time constraints - just an easy metro trip into the city and plenty of time to chill. We were lucky to be in the city on 'International Museums Day', which meant entrance to the Acropolis was free. ^_^
I spent some of the day with other people but mostly by myself. Actually it's one nice thing about going around the world with a huge group of people. Any famous places you visit, you usually run into lots of people you know. So there's lots of 'hello!'s and 'konnichiwa!'s throughout the day. It's kind of strange to be walking, say, around the ruins of Petra, and suddenly there's a student from your pre-int class. Or you're at the pyramids and run into the guy you see in the bar every day.
The best part of the day was walking up the slopes of the Acropolis hill, and passing ruins of theatres and temples, with pine trees and olive trees and the old rocks, and hills, and an amazing view over the city. And I had bought a baguette in Piraeus, and it was so good to sit on a rocky wall overlooking Athens, eating my sandwich. It sounds funny, but after a month of ship food, you'd appreciate fresh bread too. ^_^
It was also lovely just sitting with a coffee on the way to Syntagma, watching people go by. The nice thing about Athens was that it has one big attraction - the Acropolis - and once you've seen that, you don't feel like you have to dash about looking at other sites. And it's very easy to walk from the Acropolis down into the city streets.
I am so happy about the Greek food too. Actually I didn't end up having yiros or souvlaki, but that's okay. I had the Middle Eastern equivalent six or seven times in Jordan and Egypt. But for dinner we went to a restaurant in the Plaka with a view of the Acropolis, and had moussakas, and soutzoukaki (cumin-flavoured meatballs), and kebabs, and Greek salad, and garlic bread, and Greek red wine. Ohhhh. I don't even usually like Greek salad, or feta, or tomato, but this was so fresh and good, I loved it.
I felt it was nice to be in Europe. No bargaining or trying to negotiate taxis or whatever.
May 19
Every day we have a newspaper with the day's events. The translators say it's sometimes difficult to translate events that don't make sense even in Japanese.
Let me give you some example events from today. Some are normal, some are less so.
I find this last one the most intriguing.
May 20
I wrote May 21, but my computer clock is still on Japan time. It's 2:02am tomorrow in Japan, but on the ship now it's 7:02pm. We're living in the past.
Today we went through the Messina Strait, which is between Sicily and the Italian mainland. We could see both Italy and Sicily clearly at the same time, on different sides of the boat. Just recently we've been going past Stromboli. Actually we've been going past it for a long time; I think we're doing circles to kill time. I think the scheduling on this boat was made allowing for a lot of delays, because actually we usually seem to arrive places early and then have to wait or do circles in order to move on.
I didn't talk much about the Suez Canal, but it was pretty cool. It was a day with no real scheduled events. The bridge kept sending out announcements like 'we are now entering the biggest lake of the Canal', 'we're reaching the middle point and passing the biggest city on the Canal', etc.
Today classes started again. It really felt like the first day of work after the holidays. But it was okay. I did another 'open' class, with about forty or fifty students.
On the pool deck the 'orizuru' (paper crane folding) project was making a giant paper crane - one that required about twenty people to hold it up. Then everyone wrote peace messages on it.
I did some more lesson prep, chatted to my students a bit, had a cappuccino in the bar, had a Japanese lesson.
For me, the best thing that happened today was that it rained. It smelled so good! I haven't seen rain since Singapore, and then only a few minutes.
Soon I am going to dinner. Someone I know incidentally has invited me to his table for dinner - it is his birthday - which is rather nice. ^_^
Tomorrow we'll arrive in Naples. Lots of stuff is happening in Europe. Various students are going on overland tours; new passengers are coming on board; new guest speakers are coming; exchange students are coming.
I'm feeling a bit tired at the moment.
May 23
Days after ports are usually free days, which means a bit of lesson planning, a bit of chilling out... I don't know where the day went, really. I got up late, sure... then what? I washed some clothes, went to lunch, sat around in the sun for a bit, went to a presentation one of the other teachers was doing, had afternoon tea, did lesson prep, went to the teacher's meeting, looked at my photos from Naples, did a bit more lesson-related stuff, and... I'm done.
Oh yeah, yesterday was Naples. I went to Sorrento and Ercolano (Herculaneum), and around Naples itself. Sorrento wasn't a bit like I remembered it. I went there in winter, and remembered it being a pretty, rather quiet seaside town, full of lemon trees and orange trees. This time there was hardly any fruit on the trees, and the place was packed with tourists, tourists everywhere.
When we got back to the ship we had a bit of a party on the back deck. Often departures happen really late at night, but this one was at 10, so the departure song played and we saw the port of Naples sliding away behind us. Some seagulls flew after our boat, and continued swooping and circling behind us in the darkness for at least 40 minutes after we left.
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