Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy

Saturday, June 20, next stop, Cagliari. I can't believe we've passed the halfway point in our cruise. The mistral made the day particularly pleasant. The mistral is a strong cool wind blowing from the northwest from France onto the Mediterranean Sea.

From where our ship was docked we could see this interesting ship. It looks like a dry bulk freighter and it appears that the deck folds up out of the way (the green things) so that cargo can easily be loaded and unloaded by crane. We set off for a one hour bus ride along the coast toward what was originally the Phoenician seaport of Nora.

A few years ago some pink flamingos were blown off course in a storm. They ended up in the area. They are thriving. We passed several coves filled with pink flamingos. They've become a tourist attraction.

You may recall that the African tectonic plate is moving toward and under the Eurasia plate. This collision and upward thrust has produced the Alps. The region is geologically active with earthquakes and volcanoes. The southern part of Sardinia is sinking into the Mediterranean Sea and so some of the original Nora is now under water.

Nora was two harbors, separated by a peninsula. One harbor or the other was preferred based on the direction of the wind. Nora is the site of ruins of a Roman amphitheater, Roman baths, and other Roman structures. The stone posts in the front of this amphitheater originally supported a wood platform. For many events the main action took place on the platform. There could be a chorus in the semi-circular area.

A nearby area contained ruins of other structures. Here is a section of road made of pieces of lava. (Sid Horenstein asked "Do you know what the volcano said to the lava?"
Answer: Lava come back to me.) There is a sewer underneath the center of the road. You can see the rectangular covers over openings to the sewer. The rectangular covers don't look original. It is my guess that in Roman times there were some kind of wood covers.


Lunch was local cuisine at a restaurant and vineyard, La Laconda di Bacalamanza. The grape vines were covered with a white plastic material 'so that the grapes would ripen faster'. Here's a tour manager's picture of that.

There were two choices for the afternoon activities. One was to visit an archeological site including a tower built out of large stones by Nuraghi people during the Bronze Age.

My choice was to return to Cagliari for a walking tour of the city. We visited the Castello (a medieval fortified area), the Cagliari Archaeological Museum (interesting because the island has a Nuraghic, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Pisan, and Spanish history), and a Cathedral. Inside the Cathedral was an elaborate pulpit designed by the same architect who designed the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Interestingly, the pulpit was out toward the middle of the pews. Before electronic amplification, this was necessary so that the entire congregation could hear. Also, inside the Cathedral the guide pointed out a reused block, a large stone that had been part of a sarcophagus and was now used as a lintel. Back on the bus, we passed the Palazzo Boyl, used as an opera house, that had three different size cannon balls embedded in an outside wall from three different assaults on the city.

The evening's lecture was Roman Architecture by Cecil Wooten.



Among the passengers there were seventeen people of three generations of one family. This evening they put on laurel wreaths and made togas out of their bedsheets and arrived for dinner in costume. They got a nice round of applause. Here is a tour manager's photo.

Speaking of dinner. Dinner was always spectacular. First, there were two or three choices each for salad, soup, and appetizer. There was always a choice between bottled clear water or sparkling water. There was always a white wine and a red wine to choose from. For the main course there was always a choice of a meat, a fish, or a vegetarian dish. Plus, there were about five standard main course dishes that were always available. And of course there were several desserts to choose from. We all ate very well on this cruise. I worked at eating a fairly healthy diet, typically choosing the fish main course and limiting my total consumption. The maître d' made it a point to seat you with different people each evening.

Next stop, Tunis.

Bonifacio, Corsica, France

Friday, June 19 we reached Bonifacio. The island of Corsica has a long history of being controlled by Romans, Germans, French, the Papacy, Spanish, Italians, and now it is part of France.


From where the Corinthian II docked we could see a ferry. On this trip we saw lots of large ferries. You cannot tell from my photograph, but the bow of the ship in front of the whale's head opens upward to let the vehicles drive off.

The area is very scenic. One of our tour managers told us that sometimes celebrities or wealthy people build vacation homes in the area. The homes blow up. (I guess the locals don't like having too many foreigners around.)

We rode Le Petit Train (no tracks, just an engine pulling cars, that looks like a train) to the top of the limestone cliffs with its citadel founded in the year 828. We had a guided walking tour through the narrow, hilly, cobblestone streets. We saw the location of the underground grain storage silos. We saw the troughs that carried rooftop collected rainwater to cisterns under the front of a church. The hilltop fortress was the scene of a very early instance of biological warfare. One time when the citadel was under siege, the attackers threw clothing from people who had died of the Black Death over the fortified wall. About 5000 of the 5700 residents died.


We had some free time. I bought some postcards and walked to the citadel's drawbridge. The drawbridge went over an open area next to a fortress wall. From the inside I tried to figure out how the drawbridge could be raised. I cannot really tell. But it does appear that as part of the raising process small stone wheels rode down grooves on either side. There wasn't much light and my picture is underexposed and I've improved it slightly using iPhoto.



We had lunch aboard our ship.



In the afternoon we had a boat cruise of the harbor. Here is a picture of the side of the harbor opposite the citadel. You can see that the sea is slowly eroding the 200 foot high limestone cliffs.





Here is a tour manager's picture of a sea carved grotto that the boat entered. Inside there is an opening to the sky.









Every time we left our ship we took a small yellow landing card. There was a crew member present who made sure we did. When we returned to the ship we returned the card to its location (organized by cabin number) on this rack. This way the crew could tell when everyone was on board. One person nearly missed the boat in Nice. It was our scheduled departure time. The gangplank was partially disassembled. I could hear a family member on the ship talking to her by cell phone. "Where are you?" "She's on such and such street, running." She made it carrying something in a plastic bag. Shopping?


After we left Bonifacio and were on our way to Cagliari I went to the ship's bridge. We were passing between the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. It is a little dangerous and there is local concern about tankers passing through. The radar is not your grandfather's radar. Yes, the ship's position is in the center. Local terrain is shown. But, also the planned course is displayed as a straight line. Planned course changes are displayed as additional straight lines. Also, quite a lot of navigation data are displayed on the screen. I asked if they had GPS. The crewman said: Yes, we have it for backup. He then pointed to a slightly smaller nearby screen.

Sid Horenstein of the American Museum of Natural History gave a lecture with the title From Stones to Rocks. He talked about the 450 million year old granite (igneous rock from magma that was part of the Earth's crust that has been subducted, heated by friction, and slowly cooled) and the 40 million year old limestone (sedimentary rock from shallow warm water deposits) that make up the island of Corsica. Sid told us there are different sizes of rocks: pebbles, cobbles, and boulders. Sid told us that rocks are found in nature, stones are used. So, you might be walking in the woods and pick up a rock to throw to frighten a snake. When it lands it is a stone. Of course, the next person to see it might not know if it is a rock or a stone.

Then dinner and we were on our way to Cagliari.

Nice and Saint Paul de Vence, France

Thursday, June 18 we arrived in Nice. On the agenda for the morning was a bus trip to Saint Paul de Vence for a visit to both the picturesque hilltop town and the nearby Maeght Foundation and Museum.


The story of Saint Paul de Vence is that it was originally a medieval fortified town. It has narrow stone streets with shops and homes. This photo from the trip brochure captures it well. More recently several artists were attracted to the area because, since there were no job opportunities people left and the rents were cheap, and the artists liked the light. Sometimes they met at a local restaurant, Cafe de la Place. It's still there. Sometimes they were a little short of cash, and the owner accepted paintings as payment. At one point, she had accumulated quite a few paintings. She wondered if they were worth anything. So she invited some art critics to look at the paintings. They informed her that, yes the paintings by Miro, Chagall, Picasso, and others were indeed valuable.


At one stop our guide gave us a puzzle. This is a bougainvillea plant. What color are the flowers? (This is just the sort of thing that I appreciate.) ... White. This plant has very tiny white flowers. (Click to expand.) It also has green leaves and magenta colored leaves. We stopped in the town's cemetery, a Catholic cemetery. Marc Chagall is buried there. He was not Catholic, but lived in the community for 20 years, was very active in local affairs, was an honorary citizen of Saint Paul de Vence, and so was permitted to be buried there.

It was just a short bus trip to the Maeght Foundation and Museum, a modern art museum. Some of the artwork is inside a building. Most of it is in outdoor gardens. Our tour director took care of our tickets and we had a reserved time to enter. Then something new (to me) happened. The tour director asked
how many people wanted to take photographs. There was an additional fee (2 euros) for each person who was going to take pictures. This same thing happened at some of the other sites we visited. Artists represented included Calder, Chagall, Matisse, Miro, and Braque. One piece that grabbed my attention was this dog. The story is that one day artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was walking in the rain on the streets of Paris. When he got home he made this 'self portrait'. As we were leaving the Corinthian II for the last time, five days after our visit here, our passports were returned to us and we were handed a memory stick with photographs the tour directors had taken. For this picture, I've taken one of the tour director's photographs and used a graphics editor to remove the background.

On this day we returned to the ship for lunch. For the afternoon there were three choices: visit the Matisse Museum, tour the Chateau de Ballet followed by a wine tasting, or free time in Nice. For me it was back to Nice for a visit to the Matisse Museum. One curious thing. On the way I noticed that some of the posts with traffic lights had a small traffic light about half way up the post. I had to ask. What is going on here‽ (Notice the interrobang.) These small traffic lights were on the right side of the road and they were right turn on red signals.


The Matisse Museum is in a 17th century villa. The front of the building has real windows and shutters and elaborate tromp l'oeil stone moldings surrounding the windows. Here is a picture one of our tour directors took. Just like several of our visits, photographs were not permitted inside. At one point our guide said to us: "We are now going to walk down the stairs. If anyone wants to take the elevator, press the button for floor minus one."


Look. Here is a photo that the Cruise Director took just after we left the harbor. The pilot is climbing down a rope ladder preparing to jump to the pilot boat.

In the evening we had a Roman Town Planning lecture by Cecil Wooten, chair of the Classics Department at University of North Carolina. He stated that we should not be asking the question, Why did the Roman Empire collapse? But, Why did it last almost 500 years? Later we went to the bow on the top deck for our first stargazing. It turned out that we were too close to the summer solstice, when days are at their longest. It didn't get dark till the end of the lecture, mostly about the visible constellations. We were on our way to the island of Corsica.

Florence, Italy

Without a doubt, the highlight of the entire tour for me was Florence.

On Wednesday, June 17 we arrived in the port of Livorno around 7:00 am. We were met by a curious craft. It seemed to be a tugboat, a fire boat, and transport for the pilot. The ship's captain is always in charge. But at each port a local pilot, who is familiar with the currents and obstacles, is at the controls when the ship is entering or leaving the harbor. It is a tradition that the pilot jumps to or from the larger ship. (The small boat doesn't tie up to the large ship; it just pulls alongside.) Breakfast could be eaten in the Dining Room or on an aft deck (always my choice).

There were two options for the day. Visit the scenic and historic towns of Lucca and Villa Torrigiani or spend the day on a walking tour in Florence. It was an 80 minute bus ride to Florence. At each destination we had a tour director from the ship and a local guide. We also were given a device called a Personal PA. The local guide wore a microphone and a small transmitter. Our receiver and earpiece picked up what he or she said. It was excellent. The guide didn't have to shout; we didn't have to stay next to the guide; and we could hear clearly even in areas with other tour groups.

Florence may be best known for its art and architecture and for the Medici family during the Renaissance. Our first stop was the Accademia di Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts). Here the most interesting things for me were four unfinished Michelangelo statues. Pope Julius II had requested 40 marble statues for his tomb. Then the Pope changed his mind. Michelangelo had already picked out the marble and begun work. It was very interesting. You could already see the torso, the tops of the legs, portions of the arms, part of the head, the face, and yet large portions of the block of marble remained. On one, you could see an upper arm and a forearm. Where the elbow would be there was still a lot of stone. But I could 'see' the elbow in there; just obscured by unremoved stone. Quite remarkable! Then we saw Michelangelo's famous sculpture David.


The next stop was three structures right next to each other. Here's a picture from Wikipedia that is in the public domain. You can see the white top (just barely) of the octagonal Bapistry, Giotto's Bell Tower, and the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral (known as the Duomo, meaning cathedral, not dome).



Inside the Duomo is this very unusual, very old working clock. Of interest, the clock has one hand, uses Roman numerals, IIII for four, has hours one through 24, and starts at one at sundown (which means that the clock has to be adjusted every few days). (Click to enlarge it.)


But the really spectacular story concerns the dome. The church was built but construction of the dome had not been well thought out. The dome was to cover an almost 140 foot wide space. There was not enough wood near Florence to build a scaffolding to support such a structure. Filippo Brunelleschi designed and built an octagonal brick dome with an inner structural and an outer layer. He also had to invent a hoist to raise bricks from the ground to the dome and to provide lunch to the workers so that they didn't have to climb down. Work on the dome took from 1420 to 1436. Here is my picture of the inside the dome. Three people left our group to climb the stairway between the two layers and then to the cupola on top of the dome.


We went to the Piazza della Signoria, a central open area. Next to it is the Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace), a city hall with several statues outside. One is a copy of Michelangelo's David. The famous Uffizi Gallery is right next door.

Then we had some free time. I bought some postcards in the Piazza della Signoria. I walked to the nearby Ponte Vecchio. A bridge over the Fiume Arno (Arno River). There are shops, many with gold jewelry, along both sides of the bridge. It was the only bridge over the Arno not destroyed by the Germans during World War II. They thoroughly bombed the area on one side so the bridge would not be usable.

The group met and we walked to Restaurant Paoli for lunch. The meal was typically Italian. It began with a plate full of two types of pasta, bow tie with pesto and penne with tomato sauce. The next course was a salad with assorted greens. The next course was veal scaloppine. (It was kind of a small portion by American standards. Presumably we should have filled up on the less expensive pasta.) Finally assorted fruit things for desert. I chose strawberries.


Next stop, the Basilica di Santa Croce (Basilica of the Holy Cross). The largest Franciscan church. Inside are the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Rossini, Marconi, and other notables. The original church had a somewhat plain front. A decision was made add a new marble facade. The architect, who was Jewish, wanted to include a Star of David. He pointed out that Jesus was Jewish. I couldn't get a picture from directly in front of the church because of one of the Italian religions, soccer. Regional soccer finals were being held and temporary soccer stands filled the plaza in front of the church.


Here are pictures of the tombs of Michelangelo (1475-1564) (with the muses of painting, sculpture, and architecture) and of Galileo (1564-1642) in the public domain from Wikipedia. They are better than my pictures. For a period of time the Franciscan friars supported themselves by doing leather work. Connected to the church are shops where leather work is taught and can be purchased. Adjacent is a museum of artifacts the church possesses and also a statue of Florence Nightingale who was born in Florence. Here our guide Riccardo took us to a gift shop. He stated that there are many guide books about the city of Florence. But, if we wanted to buy the one he had written we could buy it there. At which point the salesperson called out and told him they were out of the English language version.

Then it was back to the bus for the return trip to the ship. One thing I noticed, all the cars were small. They were mostly Fiats. But there were plenty of cars made by other European and Japanese manufacturers. I did see one small Ford, but no GM cars. And another thing; the Italian drivers! In the morning I saw a woman exiting a parking area through an entrance, and forcing our bus almost to a stop. There may have been a reason for it. But a policeman yelled at her and made a hand gesture. She stopped. Later a woman rode a scooter across the Piazza di Santa Croce, a pedestrian area. A policeman yelled to her. She didn't stop, but he got her license plate number. There were a lot of scooters. On the highways they seemed to take their place in the traffic lanes. In the cities, anywhere they fit seemed to be okay.

We had one final photo opportunity where I took the picture at the top of this blog entry. You can see some of the highlights. From left to right: the Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace), the Santa Maria del Fiore with its Brunelleschi dome, and the Franciscan Basilica di Santa Croce.