Faces to remember

I did this after one of our other cruises, possibly the Russia cruise 4 years ago.  I tried to take pictures of the people who made the most impression on us, and the people we will remember from this cruise (with the help of this photo guide!).   Note to Char:  I did candid pix when people didn't know I was photographing them.  If you have some more flattering pictures of some of these folks (I know you do), e-mail them to me and I will substitute.  Also, if you have any corrections or additions to the descriptions, that would be good too!

	Linda and Bob became our best friends on the trip.  They are from Dallas and "newlyweds," marrying 3 years ago after the death of both of their spouses.  We had a lot of fun with them.  Bob took more photos than I did.
John and Mary were such delightful people.  Some of our favorite on this cruise. Thanks to Char for the good picture!
	Loved this couple, from Britain, though I never got their name.  He was the guy who said "We have parks in England too, but they usually have grass in them."  She looks solemn, but actually had a dry wit.
This lady was the eldest of four sisters from Canada taking this trip.   We had dinner with them one night.  They said they were from a family of 7 children and realized that they aren't getting any younger, and wanted to spend more time together.  They were delightful.
	Another one of the 4 sisters.
Orren and Margo were the first people we met, at the hotel in Kiev.   I didn't get to know her well (or him either, actually), but he was amazing, hunched over his cane and hobbling ahead, not willing to miss a single thing. And I don't think he did.
	Lorraine was a neat lady who has wanted to go to Russia all of her life.   She was traveling with her friend, Barbara, and the two of them had visited some places in Russia before taking this trip.
We spent more time with Jean and David in Istanbul than on the cruise.   Nice people.  David is very soft spoken, but very interesting.  Jean seems to be an aging hippie.
	Alex was the youngest on the trip, traveing with his parents and sister (we figured out).  Mostly he slouched around, wearing a baseball cap and looking decidedly out of place, but we were surprised at how well he cleaned up for the Captain's dinner...and he was invaluable finding people who missed the bus in Istanbul.
This is Alex's sister (I think).  I almost never saw her on the cruise; this photo was taken the night we went to the "meat restaurant" in Istanbul.
	This is the father of Alex and his sister.  Char says his name is Boris.  He seems to have a Russian background, though obviously has lived in the US for years and has zero residual Russian accent.
This woman is from Australia and had that very practical, skeptical Aussie attitude I recognize so well.  The only time I saw her laughing was when she and another woman managed to get a discounted scarf for someone at the Blue Mosque, convincing the seller that they had paid only 20 Lire for their scarves, and getting him to knock 5 Lire off the price of the scarf he was trying to sell to someone else.
	We had dinner with this couple one night.  They were very friendly and apparently very religious, as I saw them hold hands and pray at every meal.  This picture was taken at the rug demonstration in Istanbul and you can see how excited we all were to sit there and listen to a rug spiel for an hour!
Jean is from Philadelphia and was traveling with her friend Anita, from Florida.  I saw them all throughout the cruise, but they seemed stand-offish until we got to Istanbul, when they were very friendly.
	I really wish I had a better picture of these women.  They were making their twenty-third cruise, their first with Viking.  Both are retired teachers. The woman on the right is Mary.  I don't know the name of the one on the left, but she reminded me of Patricia Neal.
This was the guy I called "day glow guy" for most of the trip until I discovered I knew him from Facebook, and that his name is Albert.  He was a newlywed but I'm not sure what his wife's name is.
	This sweet woman is from Scotland and I so desperately wanted her to be Davina Porter (narrator of the Diana Gabaldon books) that I actually looked up photos of Porter to make sure she was not...but she kinda sorta reminded me of my memories of an interview I had seen with Porter.
Ann was quite a character.  She is French, though has lived in the US for over 40 years (without losing her accent).  She was going to leave the cruise in Odessa and fly to Paris to meet her husband, where they were going to celebrate their anniversary.
	This is Elmer and his wife Jolita.  I can't remember anything specific about them, except they were a delightful couple (I think they are from California)

Oh Darn

I'm sitting here on the 7th floor of the Conrad Istanbul, with an amazing view at my elbow and I really want to talk about Istanbul, which is (so far) incredible.  But this is the make-up entry from yesterday, so let me finish my report on Odessa.

Our first order of business was taking the Jewish Odessa tour.  Odessa has the unique reputation of being one of the most welcoming cities in the world.  At one time the Jews made up about 40% of the population, the second largest population in Ukraine after Kiev, and they were never put into ghettos, but lived like...you know...normal people.  The streets here are named for the ethnic groups that lived together in the city.  Our first stop was the main synagogue in Odessa, at the corner of French Street and Jewish Street (really!)

 

We learned about the history of this synagogues and more about the history of Jews in Odessa, which led naturally to the next stop, the Holocaust memorial.  This is a small park in the center of the city.  At one end is a black marble.

 

The block is mounted on some cobblestones, which you don't think much about at first.

 

...until the guide explained that when the memorial was being planned, the planners insisted that this one particular street be torn up and the stones used, because these were the stones that the 25,000-34,000 Jews massacred in Odessa from October 22 to 24 in 1941 walked upon to their death.  A google search of "Holocaust Odessa" will show you a host of articles about this slaughter.

At the other end of the memorial is another statue dedicated to those murdered, and between the two is a little garden of trees, planted in memory of the "righteous gentiles" who helped to save some of the Jews, at the threat to their own lives. 

 

 
In this spot, thousands of mostly women and children
were locked in warehouses, which were then set on fire.

 

The rest of the tour was kind of a who's who in Jewish history, who lived where and that sort of thing.  Since we knew so few of the names she rattled off, it didn't mean much to us, but the holocaust stuff was very moving.

(they were singing the call to prayers now and I've opened my hotel window to listen.  The sound is floating all over the city, and is competing with the sound of motorcycles and fire engines, but I definitely know I'm not in Kansas any more!)

Back to Odessa.  Mike and Walt went on another excursion in the afternoon, while Char and I stayed on the ship and started getting our luggage organized.  

In the evening, we went to the Odessa Opera House to see Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, not, as I said, to be confused with Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe!

When we arrived at the opera house, there was a stage set up in front, with folks waiting for what looked like it was probably going to be some sort of folk music festival.

 

That big black rectangle is the stage and looking at the people in costume behind it, as we marched around to the side of the Opera House to enter, I could tell that it was probably folk "stuff" and part of me wanted to stay and listen!

But entry into the opera house itself literally took my breath away.

 

Apparently the ship had given out opera synopses to some of the people going to this event, but we didn't get one, so we were kind of lost in the first act.  Apparently Iolanta is a blind princess who doesn't know she's blind, or that she is a princess.  Kind of a secret her Dad is keeping from her.  Then there is a guy who looks like Rasputin who says he can cure her.  Not sure why Dad says no, but that's where Act 1 ends.

In Act 2, like the princes of Princess Ida, a prince and his buddies sneak into the castle and it's love at first sight for him, but obviously not for her because she can't see, but she has always dreamed of love and apparently he has a good enough voice that he Makes An Impression.  He eventually figures out that she is blind, 'cause he's a bright sort of lad and he wants to marry her.  Dad threatens to have him killed for trespassing but he really doesn't want to kill him, he wants Iolanta be in love so much that she will want to see so that she will work with Rasputin and be able to see.  Iolanta goes off with Rasputin while Dad hugs the prince and tells him that little death threat was all a joke.  In minutes, Iolanta is back, suddenly able to see and everybody lives happily after after.

I think.

 

I took this picture at the curtain call.  This gal was a bit long in the tooth to play the youthful Iolanta and she was weak in her lower register, but nailed those high notes.  The woman in front of me had a camera with a close up lens a mile long and she took pictures throughout the opera.  I was very angry with her because that's a real no-no...and we had all been told that many times.

When we walked back to the bus, we could hear the music from the festival and, I was right...I really wanted to stay!  But alas, that was not a possibility.

We came back to the ship for a late dinner, then finished (almost) packing and went to sleep for the last time on the Viking Lomonosov.  We slept poorly.  I think each of us was awake part of every hour.  But then came the morning and on to Istanbul...but that is a story I will write after we have come back from dinner tonight.

192 and Counting

I remember seeing Sergei Eisenstein's classic 1925 silent movie, Battleship Potemkin, which told of the great Russian Naval mutiny and resulting street demonstration which brought about a police massacre in Odessa.  It was what we all watched when I was in college. To this day there are only two scenes that I remember vividly.  One is a scene on the ship Potemkin, where the sailors are being served meat riddled with maggots.  Who could forget a scene like that?  The other scene is the 4+ minute scene of the soldiers marching forward, herding the demonstrators down the Potemkin Steps, many to their death.  You can't forget the sight of a little baby buggy starting down the steps and then slowly rolling down the steps, picking up speed as it went along.  If you haven't seen it, check that one scene on YouTube.  I watched it before we came here, knowing that we would be at those same steps today.

When the revolution took place, there were 200 steps, but in doing reconstruction, they somehow lost eight and now there are only 192 steps.

We pulled into port in Odessa this morning (another "Oh my God, I'm actually in Odessa!" moments!) the very first thing we saw was the steps.  They are right. there.

Well, not right. there. exactly.  It's a schlep to get from the boat, across the railroad tracks and the busy traffic, but other than that it's right. there.

The first order of business was a city tour, which took us through all the highlights.  This is a beautiful city, with wide pedestrian walkways, beautiful tree lined streets, and lovely European style buildings thanks to Catherine the Great, who imported architects from Italy and France to design the buildings.

This shot suffers from bus window reflection, but this is one of the grand boulevards, where pedestrians can stroll and shop.  Alla says this is a good street for jewelry.

Our first official stop was at Odessa's Tomb of the Unknowns, victims of World War II.

Fifteen to sixteen year old school volunteers, dressed in naval-themed uniforms come here to be on duty. These kids march from the guard post at the main road down the Alley of Glory to the Obelisk and then stand on duty for 15 minutes before being replaced by the next watch, when they march in formation back to the guard post.  They remain on guard every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

From there we drove to the top of the Potemkin Steps, where we could take a picture looking down at where our ship is parked.

We walked through a lovely boulevard down to city hall.  In front of City Hall is the oldest tree in Odessa, said to predate the city itself.  I was taking pictures of the tree, but then saw our new friend Bob making a new friend of his own and liked this shot better.

We walked up to the opera house and I got a nice shot of the side of it and the frou frou on the top, but I couldn't get a picture of the front of it because they are erecting scaffolding for some sort of concert that will be going on simultaneously with the opera we are seeing tomorrow night.

We returned to the ship for lunch and then Walt and Mike took off on an excursion to the Odessa Catacombs, a network of tunnels that consist of three levels, stretching out under the city and surrounding region of Odessa. During World War II, the catacombs served as hiding places for Soviet partisans.  Char and I decided that steps...tight places...sometimes dark.  We didn't need it!  

 

Instead, we decided to walk into town, which involved figuring out how to cross from the water to town, riding the funicular railroad to the top of the famous steps, and then deciding what to do next. First we took a picture of the Golden Baby, a statue which symbolizes the rebirth of Odessa (not, as someone has suggested, a tribute to Arnold Schwartzenegger's love child)

The funicular was fun, if cramped and hot...it only takes a minute or so to rise from the street level to the top of the steps.

We got up to the boulevard where we had been with the group earlier in the day and started trying to figure out what we wanted to do and, ultimately, what we wanted to do was sit there, in the cool breeze, watching the world go by and talking about the trip again.  If we had done something "normal," like gone shopping, we would have missed a lovely exchange between us and two Ukrainian women.  We don't speak Ukrainian, they don't speak English and I don't have a clue what they were talking about, but they were delightful, I took their picture, and they blew us kisses when we got up to leave.  Love these cultural exchanges!

I couldn't believe I suggested we walk down the steps, but I did.  And it wasn't difficult.  My cane helped tremendously. 

Of course it's not ONLY 192 steps, it's more steps down to the road that crosses under the street and then up some more steps to the building and then up 40 steps to the bridge level.

But I did it and it really wasn't all that bad, once the panting stopped.  We got back to the ship about 20 minutes before a demonstration of towel folding started.  I really wanted to go, but when I sat on the bed, what I really wanted to do was sleep, but instead I dragged myself up and went to the demonstration.  I'm glad I did.  I won't be making any of these creatures, but it was fun finding out how it is done.  I also discovered that "Harvey," whom I killed a few days ago was not a rabbit after all, but a dog. Now I feel even worse.

 
Now it's time for our second-to-last night here on the Viking Lomonosov.  In two days I'll be writing this from a hotel in Istanbul.  Oh my God....!

DINNER OF THE DAY

 

Shrimp cocktail with fruit
Pumpkin soup
Some sort of veal with shredded fried potatoes (love 'em)
Dark chocolate mousse with cherry ragout (definitely did not taste chocolatey!)

Hangin' in Yalta

Today's excursion was to the Aloupka Palace, where Churchill stayed during the Yalta Conference.  I had read the description of the palace and "its beautiful gardens" and saw only "steps."  It looked like another ABC excursion (another boring castle), so I decided not to go.  So did Char.  Mike and Walt took off and we stayed behind to just "hang" here on the promenade in Yalta.

I'm so glad we did!  I think that of all the places we've seen to date, Yalta may be my favorite, and perhaps that's because of "hanging."

The day began rather oddly, though.  I was able to post yesterday's journal last night, but Yahoo wouldn't take any of the photos so I went to sleep fairly early, around 10:30.  At 2 a.m., I was wide awake, the photos uploaded without a problem, and I was back asleep within half an hour.  But then I slept "late" for me (6:30).  I went out to the lounge, settled down to drink some coffee, glanced out the window, and raced back to the cabin to grab the camera.  It was another marvelous sunrise.

 

After the excursion bus left, Char and I sat with our iPads for awhile and then decided to go for a walk along the Promenade.  What great fun!  This is kind of an Atlantic City Boardwalk kind of atmosphere (especially on the weekend) and a big activity seems to be to dress up in all sorts of finery, pick your backdrop, from fancy throne to coaches to beautiful living room even down to muscle cars (one motorcycle with the Stars and Bars flag) and you take your own picture after renting the costume.  

 

Lots and lots of royal finery-type stuff, but my favorite had to be these two middle aged women taking leather-clad motorcycle photos.

 

We walked along to the background of about three different vendors with microphones hawking rides on their own boats.  I have a better feel for what our foreign students must have felt like when we took them anywhere, especially the ones who had very limited English.  We heard the announcements loud and clear, but other than the word "Yalta" we didn't understand a thing.

We eventually came to the very small rocky beach, which was literally covered with sun bathers.  And I'll tell ya, I might be embarrassed to appear in a bathing suit in the US or in Rio de Janeiro, but here on the beach at Yalta, I could have put on a bikini and wouldn't even have been the largest one. 

 

People come here to enjoy the beach and the water, not to be seen.  Char walked down to stick her toes in the Black Sea. It was easier for her since she was wearing Crocs.  I took her picture, got my shoes wet, and picked up a couple of rocks to bring home.

 

We sat for awhile watching the scene and discussing our feelings about Ukraine and how different it seems to be from maybe what we expected. From our perspective of nearly two weeks, this appears to be a culture resigned to a "whatever" attitude, freely acknowledging all of the faults of its government and society in general, but after so many years under communist rule, not seeing any worth in doing anything to change the status quo.  Whatever they have now is so much better than what they have had in the past, who cares if things don't work right, or happen quickly enough, or anything else. The mere fact that they feel free to complain must be a huge step forward.

We continued along the promenade, watching the various interactions.  I took this picture for my friend Mary, who keeps a collection of "pull up your damn pants" photos.

 

The guy was getting a foot massage, so I'm not quite sure what was with the lowered drawers!

A bit farther down the promenade, we encountered this fellow, who was diligently searching the sea floor with some sort of metal detector.

 

He must have been having luck because he was at it for a long time, still at it after we left.

We came to a sad little amusement park area.  I don't know what this sign says, but whatever it is, it must be exciting!

 

I took this picture because I don't have a clue what it means and I want to know if this is warning you about the monkeys along the promenade which have been trained to pick your pockets, if it is some sort of anti animal cruelty thing, or a message about good dental hygiene.

 

If I find out, I'll let you know!

I took this picture so I could learn to recognize "souvenir" in Cyrillic script!

 

The excursion folks returned from their trip and there was a "cast off!" celebration with champagne (not complimentary) on the sundeck and everyone singing and dancing to the music of the accordionist and keyboardist. 

 

I loved this picture of Alyona that someone was taking.

 

She even got Mike up dancing the polka with her (there is a video which will be posted when we return home).

 

As Yalta faded into the background, we had a lovely lunch with John and Mary

 

who are such lovely people.  John is actually of Ukranian descent and can still read Ukrainian, so I'm hoping to get him to translate my monkey poster.

Also at our table were fellow Californians, Jolita and her husband Elmer.

 

We were all having such a good time chatting, we were almost the last group to leave the dining room.

In the afternoon there was a lecture on Literature and Art in Ukraine.  My instincts told me not to go, but I ignored them.  Silly me.

 

Tonight was the "Captain's dinner," which was at different times for each of the 2 restaurants on board, so that the Captain and all the staff could stand and offer a toast to each person individually as they entered the restaurant.  

 

The menu tonight was what I remember all meals being on previous cruises and was so delicious, I even forgot to photograph the soup course.

At the conclusion of the evening was a staff show, where the staff all put on skits or sing or dance.  In past cruises this has been great fun, seeing the people we know so well in another role, but, in truth, I don't feel I know this staff, and as Walt and I are both zonked and stuffed with good food, we are just going to sleep instead.

DINNER OF THE DAY

 

 I don't know exactly what the amuse bouche was, but it amused my bouche
The mushroom soup was as good as anything we got in Russia.  Delicious!
The filet mignon came with a "truffle crust" that was to die for!
Dessert was a white chocolate bread pudding with a bowl of vanilla ice cream
topped with some sort of apple flavored sauce.