Barcelona, Spain

Disembarkation in Barcelona is amazingly easy. We simply strolled down the gangway, pointed out our bags to a porter, and were ushered to a taxis. No immigration, no customs. By 10 am we were at the Hotel Condes de Barcelona.

The hotel is actually two building across the street from each other, both on the Gracia, the high end shopping boulevard. Happily, our room was ready. It’s spacious and ultra-modern, with remote controlled drapes and even a Nespresso machine. It’s on the second floor, facing into the courtyard that forms the center of most city blocks in Barcelona. That makes it nice and quiet, because there is almost no street noise. I booked it directly on line, prepaying 219 Euros a night, which is a third of what the cruise line wanted for the same hotel, and a third of the price of the other hotels on the street, such as the Mandarin. Best of all, there’s a two-star Michelin restaurant, La Sarte, downstairs.

For lunch we walked up the Gracia, admiring the Gaudi architecture. Our destination was Botafumeira, a seafood restaurant recommended by Ron. Everything is on a later schedule in Barcelona, with restaurants not opening until 1pm for lunch, and 8:30 for dinner. We waited a bit in the front, admiring the huge tanks and refrigerators filled with every kind of shellfish, from tiny barnacles to huge lobsters. Then we were ushered deep into the building, to a lovely dining room, one of many, done in light woods and nautical decor.

The meal began with Champagne cocktails. I was a bit alarmed when they were poured from a bottle of Pommery, but when the bill came they were just 10 Euros. We also had a delightful Catalonian chardonnay by Jean Leon. The highlight of the meal was an enormous platter of grilled seafood, with multiple kinds of lobster, shrimp, crayfish, clams and other shellfish, accompanied by many mysterious implements.

By the time we left, well after 3pm, the place was packed, and the area in front around the seafood bar was deafening, so it was definitely a good thing we had a reservation.

After lunch we strolled back down the Gracia, stopping to buy some gifts and stocking stuffers, and then settled into a long siesta in preparation for dinner.

Dinner was at La Sarte, the two star Michelin restaurant in the other half of the hotel. There were many beautiful dishes, but none was really a home run, taste-wise, except for the first dessert, which was a frozen sorbet of gin, lemon juice and a basil drizzle that I’d like to try to reproduce. Pricing was very reasonable, though, even on the wines, and it was nice to simply cross the street to be back in our room by midnight. (The restaurant was still more than half full at that hour, as some arrived for dinner at almost 11pm).

Sunday we slept in, enjoying the hour time change (which is a week earlier than in the US), and then walked down La Rambla, the wide tourist boulevard that connects to the southern end of the Gracia. We arrived early for our 3pm lunch reservation at L’Olive, a place near our hotel suggested by American Express, and enjoyed a leisurely three-hour lunch and a nice bottle of Priorat, Veuve Cliquot Champagne, and a very generous pour of 1982 Armagnac. Wine prices were very reasonable.

Then it was siesta time, in preparation for our final day of travel.

 

Aix-en-Provence, France

Our final shore excursion of the cruise took us from the dock in Marseilles into Provence. Our first stop was in the Luberon region, at the Val Joanis winery. We toured their award winning gardens and the cellar (a 200,000 bottle operation annually) and then had a tasting and lunch. They use mostly syrah, but must blend it according to AOC rules. Their best wine actually doesn’t carry an AOC designation, because it is 100% viognier. I also liked their 2003 mostly grenache blend. Lunch was excellent, simple provence style food, not too heavy, with a vegetable flan, lamb stew, and a fruit dessert.

Then we spent two hours in Aix-en-Provence (pronounced “X in Provence”), a beautiful town of 135,000 that is about 1/3 college students. We strolled through the medieval section, which is all trendy (and expensive) shops, and then sat at a sidewalk cafe, where we discovered that a Champagne cocktail can be something completely different.

The seas were high after we left port, with a 40 mile per hour gale, and there were quite a few green guests, but not us, as we headed for a farewell steak dinner in Polo. We’ll miss the ship, its great crew, and our nice cabin, which came to feel like home.

 

Monte Carlo, Monaco

I’m never sure whether to call this place the city of Monte Carlo or the country of Monaco, because they’re almost the same thing. The city nearly completely fills the valley that is this country. In fact, from our cabin I’m pretty sure we can see houses in France and Italy on either side.

At 12:30pm we took a tender to the luxury yacht-packed harbor and climbed the hill to the casino and hotel for our lunch at Alain Ducasse’s Louis XV restaurant. The ornate dining room, originally the tea room, is little changed from its appearance upon opening in 1864. Lunch was a prix fixe multi-course affair that came with our choice of wine, and the red provincial blend of cabernet and syrah was delicious.

The main course of chicken was a bit disappointing for a three-star Michelin restaurant, not nearly as good as the one we had two weeks ago at his bistro in New York. The stand out courses were the bread (so many to choose from!) cheeses (a real stinky cheese cart, with the best Epoisses I’ve tasted) and the foie gras terrine.

After lunch we strolled around up on the hill for a while and then returned to the ship. On the way we passed through a carnival set up for Halloween weekend, I suppose. It was busy with children and teenagers. We were struck by how the attractions on the midway were so similar to the Florida State Fair, except the barkers were all speaking French. Linda couldn’t resist the tug of the claw machines, and after a few tries won an adorable pink hedgehog. It was much more fun and more rewarding than a visit to the casino, I’m sure!

Livorno, Italy

Two quiet days recuperating on the ship, with not too much to look at, since Livorno was heavily damaged during WWII and hasn’t been rebuilt with anything but functionality in mind.

The first day was raining all day, so our cancelled wine trip might have been pretty soggy. Linda mailed the payment off to the guide in cash anyway, so he should be surprised and happy.

We’ve never spent days onboard when in port, and it was interesting to see how much crew activity there is, with a blackout test one day that herded remaining guests into the Horizons lounge while the power was off for an hour, and emergency lifeboat drills for the crew on the other day.

 

Civitavecchia, Italy

Well, Rome’s port isn’t the most attractive place in the world. It’s also not particularly close to Rome, almost 2 hours away in traffic.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter, because I got sick and had to get some strong antibiotics from the ship’s doctor, and Linda was unwilling to leave me alone to go on the private tour of the coliseum that she had spent months planning. I feel really bad about that. We also canceled tomorrow’s private tour to Tuscan wine country, so I basically cost us the two highlights of the trip. Sigh.

 

Amalfi, Italy

Today we arrived in Amalfi, a picturesque city on the Italian coast that shares its name. Contrary to reports, the shops were almost all open, even though it was Sunday, a last chance for the shopkeepers before the season ends. The narrow main street seems like it is for pedestrians, but cars and motorcycles also squeeze up and down.

Particularly impressive are the lemons from the region, used to make Limoncello, a desert liqueur. My photo compares them to normal lemons.

We had lunch in the hard to find Trattoria Teatro off an obscure alleyway. It is so named because it was once a children’s theater. Lunch probably wasn’t as good as claimed by Fodors, but it was fresh. Perhaps not as fresh as the drinking fountain in front of the cathedral, though.

 

Taormina, Sicily

We spent a pleasant couple of hours in Taormina, a medieval city converted to a pedestrian tourist shopping street, on top of a hill in Sicily. The weather has warmed up to 71, and we had an alfresco lunch at a trattoria on a secluded street. The town is very busy, with cars an motor scooters dodging tourists, so it’s easy to see why they made part of it a pedestrian street.

Unfortunately clouds obscured Mount Etna, which we’re told towers over the coast here.

 

 

 

At Sea

Friday was a relaxing day at sea, our only one on this itinerary. Our butler, Miroslav, brought us breakfast in our cabin along with some complementary Perrier Jouet Champagne.

Linda did needlepoint in the Horizons Lounge for a while and then we went to a very entertaining cooking demonstration put on by the executive chef and the head chef from Toscano. We learned three things: Moules Mariniere tastes much better without garlic; adding some of the water you boiled the pasta in to your sauce will thicken it, because of the starch; Italians don’t put cream in their pasta sauces, using only some of the water and grated cheese, but on the ship they do use cream, because Americans are used to creamier sauces. . We also learned how to make gnocchi, although I can’t imagine why we’d want to.

In the evening we had caviar in the room.

Then we went to the other specialty restaurant, Polo, which is a steakhouse.

Santorini, Greece

Today we visited one of the most scenic places I’ve ever encountered, the Greek Island of Santorini. We arose at sunrise to discover the ship sailing into the caldera of a giant volcano.

We were tendered to a remote spot near the southern end, the only place tour buses can get down from the top of the cliffs to sea level.

Our guide, Vangelis, was the best tour guide ever. He kept us laughing the whole day, while dispensing an incredible amount of information about just about every facet of Santorini.

We spent the morning shopping and sightseeing in Oia-Ia at the Northern tip of the island, and then drove back to the Southern part of the island for a tour, tasting and lunch at the Boutari Winery. The grapes on Santorini are primarily a white variety called Assyrtiko, which is not vinifera, but tastes a bit like Chardonnay. Because the island only gets 7 inches of rain a year, the grapes absorb much of their moisture from the air. And because some of the root stock is 700 years old(!) the roots can go down 25-40 feet. Strong winds mean that the grapes grow low to the ground, and are trained into a sort of basket shape.

We were quite impressed with the winery’s barrel fermented reserve bottling (14 Euros) and especially a dessert wine called Vinsanto made by air drying the grapes before pressing (16 Euros a half bottle).

After lunch we drove to the largest town, Fira, where we descended to the old dock via the cable car, a fairly exhilarating trip.

Vangelis’ parting advice: “If you are afraid of heights, when going down in the cable car, face away from the ocean. It will all be over in three minutes. Five seconds if something breaks.”

 

Patmos, Greece

Patmos is a small Greek island in the Southeastern Aegean. It wasn’t on our itinerary, but because of a strike in Rhodes to protest the Greek financial situation, that port was inaccessible, and Patmos was substituted. I don’t know what Rhodes has to offer, but Patmos was great. And the weather warmed up to the high 60s, making the day delightful.

With a population of only 6000, Patmos is pretty tiny, and since the season was over, we got the impression they reopened the shops and restaurants just for us. The town is spotlessly clean, with fresh paint on everything. The stores are definitely mostly tourist shops, but nicely kept, and they even have price stickers (although everything remains negotiable, of course).

We had lunch in an outdoor cafe called Mermaids, and enjoyed the house red and white wines, a delicious assortment of vegetarian appetizers that was assembled for us, and some delicious pork and fish. Several cats gathered around our table for handouts. I patiently picked all the bones out of my snapper before surreptitiously slipping them some, and then was surprised when the waiter put the leftovers–bones and all–across the street for them to finish.

Patmos was an unexpected delight, and a great way to spend a relaxing day.

 

Kusadasi and Ephesus, Turkey

The port in Kusadasi was certainly busier than the last time we were here, when we were the only ship. Either things are quieter in the Middle East or people have just gotten used to it. No circling gunboats this time, and a relaxed atmosphere throughout the busy town.

In any event, the contrast between Greece and Turkey is striking. Where Greece seemed completely shut down, Turkey is booming. Kusadasi is vibrant, with shops, restaurants, construction and lots and lots of tourists. The Turkish people are very friendly (albeit insistent shopkeepers, which takes some getting used to), and well aware that tourism is Kusadasi’s number one industry (followed by textiles and agriculture).

The main reason is Ephesus, about a 20 minute drive from the port. 2000 years ago it was the most sophisticated city in the world, other than Rome. It’s population was a quarter of a million. Its homes featured running water, toilets, heated floors and beds, and many other innovations that wouldn’t be rediscovered for more than a millennium.

Ephesus was physically destroyed by earthquakes and a landslide, and economically destroyed when its canal to the sea disappeared. Almost completely buried, it wasn’t rediscovered until the 20th century. The site has now been 14% excavated, and attempts have been made to reconstruct some of the structures, much like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Our day couldn’t have been more different than yesterday. Not only was the archaeology 100 times superior, the weather was, too, with clear skies and a temperature of 60.

Since we’d been to Ephesus before, we opted for a more detailed tour this time, with a working archaeologist, Erjon, as our guide. (Our tour director also was an archaeologist, although she has been directing tours for 11 years, since it pays better.)

We began by taking a coach to an off-site museum where Erjon guided us through all the best finds from Ephesus. (Some of the pieces have been copied so that a duplicate remains at the site, subject to the elements.) Then we traveled to what is essentially Ephesus’ back door, so that we could work our way down the rather steep main street.


The best part of our tour was a visit to the villas. This new excavation, beneath a protective cover, exposes seven adjoining homes, each up to 7000 square feet. The first one had an 1800 square foot dining room. The high rent district, indeed! The way they’ve done this excavation is spectacular, with glass walkways that allow visitors to walk through the entire space and see everything below them.

After the villas, we posed in front of the facade of the library, which looks like a two-story building, but wasn’t. One of its more interesting features was a tunnel to the bordello, making a visit to the librarian pretty exciting indeed.

In the afternoon we traveled to Restaurant Sizguzar for a delicious Turkish meal of grilled vegetables and minced lamb kebabs, then returned to the port to walk through the bazaar and tell very polite but insistent shopkeepers that we didn’t want a rug. Or a jacket. Or jewelry. Or a statue of Priapus that was six inches tall and six inches long, if you know what I mean.

 

Filippi and Kavala, Greece

The ship was rockin’ and rollin’ last night, I guess still feeling the effects of a cyclone over the Black Sea. It was still raining when we docked a bit late in Kavala, a hillside community in Macedonia (Northern Greece). But shortly after we joined our 9:30 tour, the rain stopped, although temperatures remained in the 40s and it was windy.

Our tour was to Filippi, a ruin located about ten miles from Kavala. I should capitalize RUIN. What was a major city in 200 AD is, after a few earthquakes and a millennium of maintenance by The Three Stooges, now a field full of rocks. It’s certainly nothing like Ephesus or even Carthage in terms of its intactness.

Filippi is where Casius and Brutus, murderers of Julius Caesar, were defeated, and it’s where the apostle Paul first converted a European to Christianity. Fortunately there were no shops selling pieces of Paul.

We returned to the ship by 2pm, and had lunch in the dining room, where it felt good to warm up.

Tonight was the Captain’s Gala dinner, although we already had reservations at Toscana, one of two specialty restaurants on board. That might have been a strategic mistake, as they had caviar as an appetizer and lobster as an entree in the main dining room. But our dinner at Toscano was lovely. We had a wonderful table under the sloped glass at the stern, a great bottle of 2008 Gaja Magari, and watched the sun set under the cloud layer as we sailed into the Aegean.

Linda has a new black cocktail dress with a halter top, and she was rather self-conscious about wearing it. I think she felt better about it after four random people around the ship told her how fantastic she looked.

Before dinner we enjoyed a very sincere welcome by the Captain and the very funny crew’s introductions in the Insignia lounge, and after dinner we returned there for a Broadway revue, with four singers and a 8-member orchestra. They did quite a good job, even pulling off “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. A very nice end to the day.

 

Istanbul

This is our first time on Oceania, although they are owned by Regent, a high end line Dani and I once took for an enjoyable Mediterranean cruise. The Insignia is a beautiful ship, with by far the nicest finish work of any I’ve sailed on. Unlike the Princess, Royal Caribbean and NCL ships, there is no tacky chrome and glass, or garish colors. It’s all detailed woodwork, leather, and brass. Every public space, even just little out of the way corners, is furnished with ritzy, comfortable living room furniture like you’d find in someone’s home. Oddly, they are retiring this ship; it’s not in next year’s catalog, as the plan to lease it to a German company. That’s surprising, considering it seems in perfect repair, but I guess they need larger ships. This one is small compared to almost all that I’ve been on, accommodating only 684 passengers, rather than the thousands we’re used to. Still, it has several lounges, and four different dining experiences.

For our first night aboard we ate in the main dining room, and certainly enjoyed the best meal I’ve had on a cruise ship. This is not Royal Caribbean food, where a cheese plate comes with saltines and Kraft slices!

The wine list isn’t high-end, and the prices might be low for a fine restaurant, but they’re a bit high for a cruise ship. However they offer a package that provides a 30% discount if you preorder bottles, so that’s quite a good deal.

Water, coffee (even cappuccino and so on) and soft drinks are free on this ship, a benefit worth many hundreds of dollars over two weeks. Liquor is also a pretty good deal.

Sunday we were up early (very early, given the 7-hour time change) but we had a good night’s sleep, and were ready for our 7:45am departure for The Best of Istanbul tour. We opted for a small tour group, with only eight people, which made it very easy to stay with the group and to hear our guide.

Unfortunately, it was rainy, although that didn’t affect our plans. What did affect our plans was that today was the annual Euro-Asia marathon, with 250,000 entrants, so the streets were closed and the city was impassible for most of the day. It’s the only marathon that covers two continents, and–not coincidentally–Istanbul is the only city that spans two continents.

Our van dropped us off in the old city, not far from the ship, and our day was spent on foot.

Our first brief stop was at the first needle stolen from Egypt by the Romans. They could only manage to move the top two thirds of it, and once they got it to Byzantium (aka Constantinople, aka Istanbul) it took more than half a century for them to figure out how to stand it back up.

Nearby we visited the Blue Mosque, the largest mosque in a city filled with them. It is unusual in that non-muslims are allowed to visit in between the five daily prayer sessions. We learned that Turkey is a unique muslim country, because even though it is 99.9% muslim, it is secular. In fact, the government dictates what is allowed in the sermons, to prevent religious uprisings such as those that have toppled other governments. It is also technically illegal to cover your face, although we saw one Iraqi woman at the airport wearing a burka.

A short distance from the Blue Mosque is the Topkapi Palace, where the Sultans ruled for 700 years. The palace is actually a sprawling complex of courtyards and single story buildings that have been converted to museums. There was a textile museum that displayed various sultans’ garments of considerable age, and a holy artifact museum that displayed possessions and bits and pieces claimed to come from various prophets. Most impressive was the treasury, which displayed jewelry, swords and boxes studded or filled with many, many enormous diamonds, emeralds and other precious gems.

Outside Linda posed in the rain for a picture on the balcony overlooking the strait. Behind her, on the left, is Europe, and on the right is Asia. Only 3% of Turkey is in Europe, though, making it a long shot for membership in the EU.

Another short walk brought us to Saint Sophia, the most impressive stop of the day. Built in the early 6th century as the first domed basilica, it remained the largest building on Earth for over 1000 years! It is still the fourth largest basilica in the world. The size of the unsupported dome is rather amazing, especially for its age, and particularly because it was constructed in five years. (There’s a cathedral in Koln that took the better part of a millennium to build!)

Another short stroll brought us to the lovely Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul, where we had a marvelous buffet brunch of sushi, sashimi, salads, and omelets, all included in our tour. Best tour lunch ever.

Unfortunately, the marathon road closures made it impossible to get to our final destination, the spice market, so we spent a couple hours relaxing in the hotel, and then headed back to the ship for the ever-popular lifeboat drill.

Then we bid rainy Istanbul goodbye, and headed out into rough seas for Greece.

New York to Istanbul

With a lull in Linda’s projects for Disney, she was able to get away, so for her birthday we booked a cruise in the Mediterranean. When Delta changed their flight schedule, our connection through JFK became dangerously short, so we decided to fly into New York a day a day before our international flight and celebrate her birthday a couple of days early, with dinner at Daniel and a night at the Hotel Athenee. Booking through Amex got us some nice benefits, including an upgrade to one of only two balcony rooms. Although it was rainy (with an impressive thunderstorm in the middle of the night) we were lucky during our walks around the city, and never needed an umbrella.

Dinner was nice, if not quite at the level of Eleven Madison Park or Jean Georges. The dining room is beautiful, and there were an astonishing number of wait staff. The service was extremely professional, but neither stiff nor friendly, just sort of a frenetic attempt to make everything perfect. It was, at times, a bit exhausting to watch. That’s very different from Eleven Madison Park, where the perfection feels effortless.

We had the six course tasting menu with matching wine pairing. There were two choices for each course, and I let Linda pick first, then took all the alternatives. As it turned out, I think I got the better choices. Of the wines, a 2009 Copain Pinot Noir from Alexander Valley really impressed us with its earthy/fruity complexity.

The next day we ate at Linda’s favorite lunch restaurant, Alain Ducasse’s Benoit, where we had her two favorite courses, the Charcuterie and the Roasted Chicken. Both are really, really French, and the pommes frites that accompany the chicken are the best anywhere.

On our walk back to the hotel we passed the Apple Store, where a tribute to Steve Jobs had been set up by fans. It happened to be iPhone 4s launch day, and there were hundreds of people in line outside.

Our 5:15pm flight to Istanbul was delayed when a bird was sucked into one of the engines on arrival at JFK, and eventually Delta ended up replacing the plane, recatering it, and we finally took off close to three hours late. Fortunately we had nothing to do on arrival. We were both able to get four or five hours of sleep on the way, and felt fairly refreshed as we watched the comedy team of baggage handlers try to round up 69 passengers and their bags at the Istanbul airport. Then it was off to meet our ship.

Our luggage is on the bottom.

 

Thai Beef Salad

This is my favorite salad recipe. We originally got it from Standolyn Robertson, Jamie Robertson’s wife. She served it at a dinner that was memorable because it was the night, twenty years ago, that a micro burst blew down our screen room. It was originally a recipe for Thai Papaya Shrimp Salad, so as you can see, it’s gone through a few revisions since we got it!

Meat

  • 6-8 ounces rare filet mignon, chilled, cut into thin strips

Salad

  • 5-8 ounces of spinach
  • 8 ounces diced cantaloupe
  • ½ hothouse cucumber, diced
  • 1 red bell pepper, julienned
  • 1 handful of cilantro, minced

Dressing

  • 3 tablespoons lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons finely minced ginger
  • 2 tablespoons thai fish sauce
  • 1 teaspoon vietnamese hot sauce
  • 1 green onion, finely minced

Mix dressing ingredients in a cruet, shake. Toss salad ingredients with most of dressing, layer beef on top, and drizzle remaining dressing over the top. Add some cracked pepper and serve.

Serves 2 as an entree, 4 as a side

Rocco’s Italian Grille

Bev, Bandit, Rocco and Ron (sounds like a polka band)

It had been a while since we’d been to Rocco’s. The food is always great, but we’d had some disastrous wine service during a Wine Syndicate event, and hadn’t been back. Saturday Ron and Bev invited us to join them, and Rocco pulled out all the stops, serving an eleven-course dinner. I brought a couple of 1961 Bordeaux reds, still my favorite vintage. The stars of the night were the 61 Grauad Larose, 93 Haut Brion Blanc, and, funnily enough, a Cardamaro bitter digestif that I poured at the end.

George Gardet Rose Champagne (Ron)
Dry, dried floral arrangement  90

2010 Mudbrick Reserve Chardonnay NZ (Steve)
Ash, tropical fruit 90

1993 Haut Brion Blanc (Ron)
wax, cumin, green veggies, limestone, lime, caramel 98

1961 Talbot (Steve)
Medium brown, low fill, curry, Georges de La Tour style maderized nose 91

1959 Talbot (Ron)
Murky, pronounced iron nose, sweet, plums, blueberry pie ala mode 89

1961 Gruaud Larose (Steve)
Garnet, youthful despite low fill, sawdust, meat, smoked sausage 95

1959 Corton Charles Vienot (Ron)
Young, rich, velvety, almost gritty, bacon, smoke, chocolate coated raisins, 93

1957 Louis M. Martini Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve (Steve)
Redwood nose, black berry finish,  91

1979 Castello di Neive Barbaresco Santo Stefano (Steve)
Bright garnet, peppers, spices 90

1990 Gaja Barolo Sperss (Ron)
Chocolate coated mushrooms, vanilla, wood, 93

1982 Bodegas Toro Albala Montilla-Moriles Don PX Gran Reserva (Steve)
Super ripe raisins, citrus, 90

Cardamaro Amaro (Steve)
cinnamon, bitters  92

Some of the most interesting wines

Not wanting to drive home in the weekend-long deluge, Linda and I had booked a room at the Best Western Mount Vernon Inn–not exactly the Ritz, but it was only a couple hundred feet from the restaurant. As we curled up in bed five minutes after leaving the tasting, this seemed like a really good move.