Return

Tuesday, June 23 and we are back in the port of Civitavecchia and on our way home. Baggage must be outside our cabins by 7:00 am, with color coded tags based on what airport terminal we are going to. In port the water is calm and I feel fine. I ate a light breakfast and at 9:00 am we boarded buses to go to the airport.

Continental Airlines flight 0043 from Rome to Newark aboard a Boeing 767-200 took the scheduled 9 hours and 55 minutes. This plane was a little smaller than the previous one; it seated 174 passengers, 25 business class and 149 economy. The overhead displays were similar to what we saw on the trip out. Except this time we had a vento contrario, a head wind, and we flew at altitudine 10973 m, altitude 36000 ft.

The only hitch in transportation for the entire trip was with New Jersey Transit from Newark Liberty International Airport Station to Princeton Junction. There was a disabled train between Newark Penn Station and Secaucus Junction where there are only two tracks. So I was delayed for about an hour. Not bad for a trip that involved over 8000 statute miles by air and over 1000 nautical miles by sea. By about 9:00 pm, still June 23, I was home.

Above, I've repeated the map from the trip brochure. Images of things we saw and stories the guides told us keep popping into my head. Following are some repeated blog pictures and some new stories.


Our guide in Florence told us an interesting story. In the 1960s three high school students each made a sculpture in the style of a famous Florentine sculptor. (I wish I could remember which one.) They took their sculptures and placed them in a canal in Florence. Some time later the sculptures were discovered. The experts were called in and the sculptures were declared authentic. At which point the three young men came forward; announced that they had made them; and that they would make more--for a fee. Our guide told us that we had seen the original Michelangelo statue David inside the Academy of Fine Arts and a copy outside the Old Palace. But there is another famous statue where the original is outside and there is a copy inside a museum. Then he just shook his head. (Image: Inside of the Brunelleschi designed dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral--the Duomo.)


In Nice the local guide told us a fantastic story about composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869). Verifying the story in Wikipedia indicates that the guide embellished it quite a bit. The story consistent with Wikipedia goes more along these lines. Berlioz, living in Paris, was engaged to be married. (This woman was not the beautiful French actress with whom he was obsessed most of his life.) He won a music prize which included two years of study in Rome. While there he received a letter from his fiancée's mother saying that her daughter was marrying someone else. Berlioz decided to kill his former fiancée, her husband, and her mother. Berlioz bought a dress with a hat and veil that he planned to use as a disguise to get into a house when the three of them were there. (In the local guide's version, this was a wedding dress.) But, on the way back to Paris by mistake he left the dress on a carriage. Berlioz had gotten as far as Nice. At this point he realized killing the three of them was probably not such a good idea. He stayed in Nice waiting for permission to return to Rome. (In the local guide's version, Berlioz fell in love with Nice.) While in Nice he wrote two overtures and the sequel to Symphonie Fantastique. And he returned to Rome. ('Self portrait' dog sculpture by Alberto Giacometti at the Maeght Foundation and Museum.)


In Bonifacio on the Rue des Deux Empereurs is the house where both Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and Napoleon Bonaparte stayed while visiting the area, over 200 years apart. There is a plaque on the outside wall. While there Napoleon rode his host's best horse. After he left, the owner shot this horse. Out of respect for Napoleon he didn't want anyone to be able to say: I rode the horse that Napoleon rode. After Bonifacio we had our second night of stargazing. It began later--a little after sunset. One person spotted a moving light. The cruise director identified it as a satellite. Then someone noticed one moving in a different direction. That was a satellite in polar orbit. (Bonifacio citadel.)


The meal of local cuisine on the island Sardinia ended with an delicious myrtle liqueur. (Roman amphitheater.)


When we were in the Old Medina shopping area in Tunis with its warren of corridors among the stalls our guide told us: Be careful that you don't get lost. Even GPS doesn't work here. (Now that's an example of hyperbole!) (Roman cisterns.)


As we approached a castle in Erice, one person asked: Can we go in? The answer: No, it is being made into a hotel. (Street scene.)


The people on this trip certainly were very interesting and pleasant. In addition to people who were members of the American Museum of Natural History, there were people from the Archaeological Institute of America, the University of North Carolina Alumni Association, Dartmouth Alumni Association, Georgetown University, and people who found out about the trip from travel agents. (Corinthian II.)

This trip certainly whet my appetite for more. So now I am thinking, what exotic place would I like to go to next?

Trapani and Erice, Sicily, Italy

The next morning, Monday, June 22, we were in Trapani. I was pleasantly surprised that with the ship in port and stable and with a breakfast of dry toast and hot tea I was ready to go.

The choices for the day were Segesta with its Greek Doric temple or the medieval hilltop town of Erice (pronounced eritche).


After a bus ride up a mountain on a road with hairpin turns we reached Erice. In my photo above you can see a church from Crusader times, and behind and above it a fort built on the site of a temple of Venus. We had a walking tour in another picturesque medieval town. We passed Maria Grammatico's world famous marzipan (ground almonds and sugar) shop. Many were colored and in the shapes of different fruits. She learned the art of preparing marzipan and other sweet treats in an orphanage run by a convent. The children sold the delicacies to raise money for both institutions. We saw a large tower, built as a watch tower and converted to a church bell tower. We had free time in the town square.


One of the unsolved puzzles of physics involves Sicilian born Ettore Majorana (1906-1938?). He had been working with Enrico Fermi and had knowledge of research to build an atomic weapon. He is known to have boarded a boat from Palermo to Naples. And that is the last time he was seen. Did he commit suicide by jumping off? Did he accidentally fall off? Was he kidnapped? Did he disguise himself to hide? It is a puzzle. We passed this research institute named in his honor.

We returned to the ship in time for lunch. The ship headed back toward Civitavecchia, where we originally boarded. The sirocco was still blowing and the seas were rough so it seemed wise to skip lunch. At 4:00 pm we had a briefing and were given disembarkation instructions. I also skipped the captain's farewell dinner. The next day I asked someone if many people didn't go to the dinner. The answer, about half the people.

Tunis and Carthage, Tunisia

On Sunday, June 21 we arrived in Tunis, Tunisia. This is my first time on the African continent.

We started the morning off with a Sid Horenstein lecture, Mediterranean Geology. The oldest land in the area is 4.2 billion years old. The oldest seabed is 170 million years old. Due to evaporation the Mediterranean Sea is 4 to 6 inches lower and has higher salinity than the Atlantic Ocean. At the Strait of Gibralter, for the most part water flows into the lower Mediterranean Sea. But below that flow there is a high density outflow. During World War II German submarines took advantage of these facts to pass into and out of the Mediterranean Sea silently.

Before disembarking our faces (remove your hat and glasses) were scanned by a woman using an infrared camera. She was looking for anyone with Swine (H1N1) Flu. We were told that local time is one hour behind ship time. (It must be a daylight savings time difference because Italy and Tunisia are in the same time zone.) Also, the winds had shifted. Instead of the mistral, the sirocco, a hot wind from North Africa was blowing across the Mediterranean.

The main attraction for the morning was a visit to the Bardo Museum, famous for its collection of Roman mosaics. When we arrived our local guide told us the following. The building in front of us was built as a palace for the King of Turkey. The building behind us was built for Turkish troops. The building in front of us is now part Parliment and part Bardo Museum. The building behind us is used by the Tunisian military. "Photographs are not permitted. If you want a picture, go to Google Earth."


The mosaics are made from small cubes of marble; the smaller the pieces the more valuable the mosaic. The mosaics were typically floor decoration. Since the pieces of marble were the same color throughout they could stand up to foot traffic. The central theme of this large mosaic (and formerly known as the Greek god Poseidon) is the Roman god of the sea Neptune. More about him below.


On our way to our next stop, Old Medina, we passed the minaret at the top of this blog entry. Old Medina is a shopping area; small stall next to small stall; lots of alleys with twists and turns. Everything was "Special for you; 50% off." The only shop where the group spent much time was one that sold knotted sheep wool, camel wool, and silk Berber carpets. Someone on the tour used Nina's camera and took a photo of our two tour managers, Inger (left) and Nina.


We walked to lunch at the Dar Harmmouda Pacha restaurant; originally built as an Ottoman nobleman's house. Here is a tour manager's picture. The meal started with assorted salads. The main course was lamb with vegetables on a bed of couscous. The meat was thoroughly cooked and at my table there was some discussion about whether it was lamb or beef. Dessert was date ice cream. There was a large skylight over the former patio, now main dining room. It appeared that Berber rugs were being used to control the amount of sunlight coming in through the skylight.

After lunch we went to the Phoenician city of Carthage. It was founded in the 9th century BC. The thing is, the Romans really hated the Phoenicians and after conquering Carthage the Romans destroyed everything they could. They even put salt in the fields so that they couldn't be used for crops.


We visited the Roman Antonine Baths. In this picture you can see some of the lower structure where the waters were heated. Men and women were in separate sections and bathed naked. Baths were called the people's palace. Romans went to the baths to exercise, to bathe, but also to socialize, to meet, and to see and be seen.


We did see these rare surviving Phoenician ruins. A nearby Phoenician temple and the top of Byrsa Hill on which it stood were destroyed by the Romans. Some of the rubble was dumped onto the remains of these Phoenician homes.


We visited these Roman Cisterns. Very interesting. Water came in on the aqueduct at the left. It went into the closest cistern. When that one filled water flowed out the holes at the top and flowed into the next cistern, and so on, and so on.

We returned to the ship and were on our way. Cecil Wooten gave a lecture on Roman Sculpture. The sirocco had really picked up and we were now in open water. We had a 30 to 35 knot wind. We were in 4 to 5 meter (13 to 16 foot) seas. Not good. Neptune was really, really upset about something! I ate a very light dinner with the hope that I would not get seasick. It didn't work. My cabin was in the bow and the ship was moving up and down so much that I went to sleep on the floor. I figured I couldn't roll off the floor. As I went to sleep I realized that I might be too sick for Trapani, Sicily the next day and I might just stay aboard the ship.