Leave It To Mel Travel

Our last three stops were Split and Rovinj in Croatia, and then we disembarked in Venice (sadly).

We had been to Split last year on our honeymoon so knew it quite well. We booked a tour which took us to the old city, Ivan Meštrović’s old home and museum (famous sculptor from the area), and then on a boat up a nearby river for lunch and return by bus.

Split’s claim to fame is Roman emperor Diocletian’s palace he had built here – prior to that people lived in a different city nearby. It was built in the 4th century, and some of it is still standing. The walls of the palace delineate the old, medieval, part of town and it is fun to walk through.

On this day Split was having its market day:

The next day we anchored at Rovinj, Croatia in the north near the border with Slovenia and Italy. This is a pretty, fortified town with (as usual around this part of the world) Venetian influence:

Then, sadly, the next day we disembarked in Venice. We had also been here last year on our honeymoon, but Venice is always worth a visit:

I just love the uniforms in Italy – for construction workers, airport baggage handlers and so on. But the Venetian garbagemen have the best uniforms of all!:

It was very hot in Venice – unusually so we were told. Nice to have a hotel right in town in circumstances like these. We stayed at the Hotel Danieli which is wonderful and wonderfully located near Piazza San Marco.

Venice provided a nice ending to a great cruise!

We awoke at 4:00 am in Venice, caught a water taxi to the airport at 4:45, a flight to Rome at 6:00 am, a flight to Chicago at 11:30 am, then connected to San Francisco around 7:00 pm Chicago time, arriving in SFO around 10:00 pm Pacific Time. The truck battery had drained and the truck would not start. By the time we got AAA to come and jump start us it was after 11:00 pm.

Traffic was backed up on the Bay Bridge (construction), so we bailed on interstate 80 and took Highway 101 over the Golden Gate Bridge and on to Napa to crash. Around a 27 hr day.

But we had enough of our wits about us to remark that we had left Venice (an icon) in the morning and were driving across the Golden Gate (another) that night, all made possible by the miracle of jet travel.

We had never traveled to an airport by boat before, either. A great trip. But it was nice to get home.

Some updates:

Corfu, Greece

I woke up in time to watch us arrive and berth next to the pier here – a beautiful setting and our last day in Greece, a nation we have come to love.

Corfu is the northern-most part of Greece, an island to boot, a mere three mile straight separating it from the mainland of Albania. I read that Corfu at one point was a “nervous Christian outpost on the edge of the Ottoman Empire.” Indeed!

The port, and the entire island, is heavily fortified, beginning millenia ago, but continuing into the Venetian times. The ‘old’ fort is at the end of the peninsula on which the capital city is located. The Venetians separated the old fort from the rest of the peninsula by digging a moat. On the city side is a very large, shady and beautiful esplanade. Then the city proper, with nice Venetian trade houses, now with cafes on the ground floors, aligning the park. Narrow alleys and buildings with wrought-iron-railed balconies – very nice, and very hot today!

We returned to our ship for lunch, then rented a car and headed for the other side of the island in search of a beach. The coast is nice, with islets offshore, clear water and pretty villages. After a try or two we settled on Glifada where the beach is sandy, broad and deep. Went for a swim and sunned awhile:

We returned to our yacht and its nice air conditioning to a shower, a rest and a tremendous meal of Beef Wellington (Mel) and souvlaki (Steve). Add a Laitetia Pinot Noir recommended by our sommelier Craig and the meal was a complete success.

Cruising on Seabourn is a pleasure. All worries are eliminated, the wallet is in the room safe, the cuisine excellent and the staff superb. No request is too much.

Monopoli, Italy

We were adopted by a local man, a professor of Greek language and history at the city’s University, as we walked through town:

He had a mission to show us the castle guarding the harbor, the cathedral with the amazing Baroque marble interior, the crypt, and a pre-Romanesque church. He spoke little English, we little Italian, but we made due with his French, my non-French and our Spanish thrown in for good measure. These are the kinds of experiences money cannot buy. When we offered a coffee at the end of his itinerary, he waved and walked on his way.

The heat today was intense, and we returned to the ship rather early. Our refuge. It is convenient to have one’s hotel travel along as one moves. The drawback is that your itinerary is fixed. All in all, a nice way to travel.

Kotor, Montenegro

I was up by 6:00 to witness our passage through the Bay of Kotor. This is a huge inlet, very mountainous – sometimes called the southernmost fjord in Europe. The morning was absolutely clear at sea, with clouds in the mountains above the bay. Striking views as the sun rose:

This is Seabourn’s maiden voyage here. At the very end of the bay lies the city of Kotor. The attraction here is the medieval walled city, with fortifications running along the sea front and way up into the mountain at the city’s rear – 1350 steps up the the castle on top. A rugged place to fortify, but effective I imagine:

The old town is typical with meandering narrow roads and alleys, some dead-ending. Many churches and a mixture of architecture, some Venetian, some Austrian, some Byzantine. Mel and I had a nice stroll through the old town:

Water polo seems to be very popular here – a seaside pool had kids training this morning, with more goal nets floating in the bay itself. We walked along the waterfront in the modern part of town admiring the homes and boats moored.

Kotor is just now being discovered by Seabourn, but the yachting crowd evidently was already here – many large and expensive looking sailing and motor yachts are moored here.

This evening is the chef’s dinner: Crab and Avocado with Caviar Tian, White Onion and Pepper Soup, Lobster & Scallop Potato Ravioli, Apricot Sorbet with Champagne, Seared Fillet of Halibu with Wine Beure Blanc, Chocolate and Coffee Tear Drop. We are having a Puligny Montrachet (French white Burgundy) with dinner tonight – yum!

This morning we transited the Corinth canal aboard the Seabourn Spirit.  What an incredible experience!  We had crossed this canal by road when we travelled the Peloponnesian Peninsula last year. Then, we had seen a small sailboat which seemed to fill the canal. Today, our ship totally filled it – we were quite the spectacle I am sure.

After the forest fire at home and all the nervous excitement there, it is a joy to be back aboard the Spirit.

Here are some shots of our transit:

Back to travel posts. This was written Monday June 25th:

As I compose this post Mel and I are flying back to South Lake Tahoe from Norfolk, VA where we participated in our friend Lisa’s wedding. We didn’t make our air reservations till late and ended up booking an award on American Airlines. We are both frequent flyers with American. Mel is the most elite class, an ‘Executive Platinum’ and I am a mid-level ‘Platinum’. We were able to book ‘anytime’ award tickets from Sacramento to Norfolk without any problem. We had limited choice of seats as the flights were very full. We did the best we could on full flights. We flew out (and back) on MD-80s. These aircraft have a 2-3 seat configuration in coach class, with 2 seats on the left hand side of the aisle and three on the right. We flew out in coach bulkhead on the two-seat side one leg and in the exit row, also on the two seat side, on the last leg. This was a red-eye and not too bad overall.

Monday we had the same, two-seat side exit row seats for our first leg from Norfolk to Dallas-Fort Worth. While we were waiting to board the gate agents announced the flight was overbooked and that they were offering $250 travel vouchers to those who would accept a later flight that day. (Our advice: too low! Hold out for at least $400!).

When we went to board the plane (in the first group after first class boarding, another perk of being an elite status frequent flyer with American), our boarding passes with the assigned exit row seats were rejected at the gate agent’s scanning machine. Mel turned to me and said, “you’re lucky you’re flying with an Exec. Platimum!” The agent went to the counter and returned with our boarding passes and said “much better!” – we were assigned to first class seating! This is called and ‘Op-up’ or ‘Operational Upgrade’ in American Airlines lingo. Because the flight was so overbooked they freed coach class seats by giving any first class seats that were available to their elite passengers. Of course first up were any Exec Platinums (and their companions) and that just happened to be us.

Some of the benefits we get as American frequent flyers include:

• Preferred check in (we can use the fist-class line to check in even when flying coach)
• Upgrades on an as-available basis in exchange for ‘coupons’, which are good for 500-mile segments. You earn coupons as you accumulate flown miles and/or you can purchase them for $35 each.
• A dedicated toll-free number to call for help with reservations, etc. These phone centers are staffed with the highest quality of customer service agents.
• Reduced cost for Admirals Club memberships (these memberships are a good thing! Look into them.)
• Ability to reserve certain coach class seats – the more forward and exit row seats are not available for advance seat selection to non-elite flyers. They also feature power ports for your laptops, DVD players, etc.
• Preffered list for stand-by seating. This means that elites are given any available stand-by seats before any other passengers. If your flight is cancelled, this can be extremely valuable.
• Exec Platiumum members are awarded 8 ‘E-VIP’ upgrades. These can be used to upgrade one class of service on any flight (including international). We have used these on our flights to Europe and, trust me, once you fly business class across the pond you just don’t want to fly coach again.

A good source of further information is a site named flyertalk which is a forum at which you can sit at the knees of the masters. These people know everything.

The moral of the story: choose an airline, join their frequent flyer program, and remain loyal to them, racking up as many miles per year as you can. Get a credit card that awards miles to the same frequent flyer program. Get with the program! In this day and age you just do not want to be one of the unwashed masses when the going gets tough.