Venice, Italy

I woke up too early this morning, as I’m getting so close to going home and I’m excited to think about that. This trip has been a load of fun and hard work and I don’t expect this opportunity again, but I’m so glad for it to be wrapping up so I can head home to Melanie and the girls. If they were with me it would be much harder for me to leave, but now I’m anxious to and I think I was a little restless this morning. As a result, I was visiting the bridge a little after 5:00. It was really a beautiful morning and the heat hadn’t risen yet. We were the third in a row of cruise ships being piloted into Venice. I don’t remember ever looking at a map of Venice, but there’s a line of barrier islands that separate the island the city sits on from the Adriatic. Once through that we navigated through a channel, past the Grand Canal and to our berth.

We followed up on a few issues with the computers, and then took off into town. After being in Kotor and Dubrovnik, Venice is very similar but many times larger. Again, the number of beautiful old churches is amazing, the architecture of them and their decoration are mind blowing. What makes Venice stand out from the other ports we have visited is the height of the buildings…they seem a couple stories taller for the most part, and of course, the canals. One other thing that sets it apart is that the sea here is no longer a beautiful blue but green, very much like in Seattle. It has a similar smell here, too, that I think is due to algae/sea weed. This didn’t bother me a bit, but I heard another passenger comment, “So much for our blue water.” It’s funny to me that there’s no wall around Venice, or maybe there was in the past, but since the other cities we visited and been ruled over by the Venetians, it seems they’d have similar defences.

I had been advised to just wander around in Venice and not worry about getting lost, so JR and I just looked around. It was really funny to see the shops for all the big-name designers in this old fangled city. I was successful in finding a new suitcase, since one of mine had some structural integrity issues thanks to the gear I carried out with me. We also had a nice lunch on the water of real pizza with real espresso followed by real gelato. I’m hoping for more espresso and gelato before leaving town tomorrow, but we’ll see if the opportunity presents itself. Having returned to the ship to make sure the check in process for the next cruise was going smoothly, we may return to the town again before I have to catch my cab to the hotel for the night.

It makes me sad to be leaving the Wind Spirit and the crew…they’ve been fantastic, every one of them, especially Iain, the Communications Officer, who has hosted JR and I in his space. Everyone has been great, though, from the bridge crew to the stewards. I’m looking forward to seeing some of them again when we come out to work on the Wind Star in November. That will be a very different trip, though, as it will be in dry dock and not on a cruise. This trip was invaluable, to meet everyone and to see the crew in action, doing their jobs so I can see what their needs are and how we can help them be more productive.

So, it’s a little sad, but when I think about my beautiful wife and girls at home, I’m glad it’s coming to an end. It will be very hard to sleep tonight, as tired as I am, because I am so anxious to get home.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Today we visited the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia. I’m seeing a pattern to the historical cities in this region…they all have walls around them, narrow crooked streets that don’t line up and lots of churches. Dubrovnik is fairly large as I saw its lights reflecting off the haze last night while we were on our way here. The old walled city sits to the left and in front of the rows and rows of newer buildings. On the hill above the city is a very large cross, which was cool. Detracting from the cross was a large, modern looking building next door to it.

After doing some work this morning, JR and I took some time to go water skiing. It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve given that a try, but I got up after just a couple of attempts. Being that I have significantly more mass than I did when I was 18 it took a little longer to get on top of the water. I made it though, but it was exhausting. At 18 I didn’t realize how athletic water skiing really is. After drying off in the sun we took the boat to town.

Old Dubrovnik is very similar to Kotor in look and feel, but probably two or three times as large. We entered and wondered for a while trying to figure out how to access the top of the city wall. A common tourist activity is to circle the city on the top of the wall (about 2km, I think I read). However every place we found with stairs running up to the parapet was gated shut. This got me to thinking, correctly that when we found the entrance we would have to pay. It was 70 kn. to get in, which conveniently converted to 10 Euros. (When we first got into town we were a little freaked out that one of the outdoor restaurants was charging 70 for a pasta dish! Fortunately, we were able to pay in Euros for everything we needed.)

It was really hot on top of the wall, as it is everywhere here, but it was fun to walk around. There were towers at intervals and different features common to castles, like gate houses and holes to shoot through. This one had been clearly built for canons to be the main defensive weapon. There were small domed rooms with small windows periodically, and eventually I figured that these must have been where they did the sighting for the guns. One thing that surprised me was that the wall was really thick on the land side, in places probably 20 feet or more, but on the seaward side it was usually not much wider than about 5 feet. They were doing repair work on the highest tower on the wall, so I picked up a couple of chips of stone that had fallen on the stairs for souvenirs. We actually saw repair work going on all over this city, although there were several buildings still in ruins, but I don’t know if this is from recent damage or if they’ve been like that for centuries. That’s the thing about being some place with as much history as this…it’s hard to tell what’s old, what’s restored and what’s newer. Weathered stone that’s 20 years old doesn’t look that different than when it’s 400 years old.

As we worked our way around the city the view was constantly changing. One thing I noticed is that the churches all had fine wire mesh over the stained glass windows, and I’m betting that was installed either before or after the fighting here in 1991-1992, to protect them from exploding artillery shells. Many of the buildings were destroyed or damaged during that time. The churches here are much larger than in the other cities we’ve been to and really inspirational in their construction and decoration. Later we checked out the interiors of a few, and I couldn’t believe how ornate the sculptures and paintings were. I realized at some point that the reason these little towns have so many churches is that attendance was probably near 100% in the past, so you needed plenty of churches to make room for all those worshipers.

When we finished our tour JR wanted to get lunch in town, so we found a place by the water. Afterwards we headed back into the city for a few minutes before we went back to the pier to wait for the tender to bring us back to the ship. I was seriously saturated from the heat and humidity, so I went straight to the back of the ship where the “sports platform” was lowered. This is like a little dock at the back of the ship that they use for water skiing, tubing and swimming. The water was deep blue and much cooler than in Monemvassía, but it was very refreshing. Once again, we got back to work before dinner. I think I must have washed off my sun screen while water skiing this morning, as I’ve got a little burn today, especially on the parts that weren’t covered by the life vest while I was skiing. I don’t expect to be outside much more on this trip, except for meals, unless we get done on board early enough to get out and see Venice on Saturday. We’re at sea tomorrow, so we will do our very best to wrap everything up and make sure things are in as good of shape as possible.

Kotor, Monentenegro

Kotor is located really far off of the Adriatic sea, through three straights at the southern end of the Gulf of Kotor. Montenegro is one of those countries that didn’t exist independently the last time I had a geography class, so I can only say it’s one of the countries across the water to the right of Italy. This is the largest city we’ve been to since we left Athens, but it’s still just a very small coastal town.

As we sailed into the Gulf, we passed fortified gun emplacements on the shore and islands. These were very hard to make out, though, as it was really hazy this morning and visibility was poor at a distance. It kept making the auto focus on the camera do weird things. I got out on deck just as the pilots arrived to help guide us in. As we went through the straights we passed two concrete tunnels that opened onto the water, which we were told were the entrances to a cold war era underground submarine base. I had read that Kotor is sometimes called the most southern fjord in Europe, but I was a little disappointed as we entered wider portion of the gulf. It really didn’t strike me as very fjordish at all. But then as we sailed towards the other side I could see that there was another passage on the other side we were heading for. This one was much narrower but the hills were rising around us as we went through. As we got to the other side there were two islands right in front of us. We took a traditional good luck lap around the islands…one had another beautiful church on it and the other a monastery. We blew our horn as we went by and the church responded by ringing its bell. That was pretty cute but I felt bad for the guy who has to go ring the bell every time a boat blows its horn.

A few minutes later we arrived at Kotor. I was eating breakfast when we docked, but headed up to take pictures. The town is set around the base of a high, rocky ridge that ends near the water. It was really hazy, but it looked like there were some kind of walls up on the ridge, that curved up and down the hillside and reminded me of the Great Wall of China. It was really hard to get a good grasp of the scale, though, but I didn’t think this was much higher than Monemvassía. This city was similar to Monemvassía in that there was an older part, surrounded by a wall, and then the newer part surrounding it.

Getting on shore, we went into the very cool looking gate and into a square full of tables under umbrellas. The town is very old and was most recently built up by the Venetians, and shares a lot of architectural influences (I’m told). The streets were very narrow and the buildings very high. I wanted to get pictures of several things but I couldn’t get far enough back to frame them up well. JR (my fellow system administrator) and I kind of poked our way through the city until we wound up at what I think was the back door, where a draw bridge had once protected the city. We also discovered skinny little cats everywhere. We came back through and paid two Euros to start up the hill towards the Fortress. We had already been going uphill, as the streets going that direction had turned to stairs as soon as we left the main road we had followed to the back gate. From here it varied between dirt and rocks but at some point steps had been built against the stone walls. The walls seemed in pretty good shape down below as they had kept the trails in place for a long time but depending on where you were they also would have provided for defense, being lined with holes to shoot out of. The trail kept switching back and forth and came out on small level areas occasionally. These were always good spots to take pictures of the city below and our ship at the pier.

About halfway up we came to a really neat little church, but we continued on, and on and on. I think this hill turned out to be at least twice as high as the one at Monemvassía. We continued to stop here and there for pictures both of the stuff below us and the fortress and walls above us. I guess I didn’t mention that it was at least ninety and the humidity was out of hand. Our eyes were burning from the sweat and sun screen. At the very top is one last fortress and a pole with a Montenegrin flag. I should have taken more pictures from there, but it seemed like I had taken so many already, plus I was too hot and tired to really care.

One interesting thing is that about three quarters of the way to the top we began following the top of the ridge higher, rather than climbing up the side. I was surprised to realize that there was a deep valley on the other side of this thing as well and the top was really very narrow. This valley doesn’t show up in any of my pictures of the ridge from below, as it just blends in together with the next hill, but I did take many pictures of it as well from above.

On the way down we found a couple of turn offs to other parts of the fort we had missed on the way up. One was what I’m sure was the fort’s powder magazine. There was a high wall at least twice as thick as most of them blocking the opening except from the sides and the room itself was dug deeply into the hillside unlike any of the others. It was so much easier going down that it seemed like it hardly took any time at all and we reached the bottom at a different part of the town than where we started, so that made it a pretty complete tour.

We stopped for something to drink in the town after getting some pictures of the inside of another famous church here, before we headed back to get showers, lunch and back to work on the ship. As we got ready to sale from here in the early evening, I had to take more pictures of the hill, as you could see much more clearly how insane this fortress was. I was also overwhelmed with how high the mountains around us were. They had been hidden in the morning haze. The ridge we climbed was just a small spur but the ones a little beyond the shore were two or three times as high and they surrounded the gulf. JR noticed that the road between the villages around the gulf ran just above the water all the way around. There were only two or three places where there was a gentle enough path for roads to be built down to connect to it.

Pylos

Just a short message about today. Pylos was today’s visit. There’s two ancient sites about 30 minutes away by car, so we skipped those to check out a huge Byzantine castle just on the edge of town…too bad it was closed on Mondays! It was a wonderful little town to visit, though. There is an incredible cemetery here and I felt bad for being there because it was incredibly peaceful, and I felt like an insensitive American. The crypts were all very well maintained; no one is forgetting their loved ones after they’ve passed on, here. Prior to that we visited a supermarket. I couldn’t believe how much fun I had looking at things and finding things to buy.  That was a blast. I’ve got some pictures up on my Facebook site, so if you’re a friend of mine I encourage you to check them out. I don’t have any captions yet, but hopefully they follow the things I’ve written about here enough to make sense. Tomorrow is a sea-day, so no stops s0 we’re planning to work all day. Maybe I’ll get a chance to add some captions to the pics.

Shore Excursion to Monemvassía, Greece

It was a little painful getting up before 7:00 this morning, but I was able to snap lots of pictures of the ship cruising into the little bay at Monemvassía. There’s an old city, here, with a defensive wall. As we got closer the details of the wall, ruined fortifications above the city and a beautiful church became clearer. After breakfast, JR and I took the short boat ride from the ship to the shore, where we hopped on a bus and got a quick ride to just outside the wall of the old town. Picture taking started in earnest as we walked through the dark tunnel of the old city gateway and continued non-stop for a couple of hours.

The main street was only about 6 or 8 feet wide. These were full of shops, cafes and little bars. It looked like a neat place to look around, but we kept heading on trying to find where to go up the hill. This little town seemed to have more churches in it than houses. They were just little but beautiful in their simplicity. It just dawned on me that even though we were getting there about 9:00 or 9:30, I didn’t see mass going on at any of them. We wound up the stepped streets, even narrower than the main one, until we found a trail that led to the stairs at the bottom of the cliff. These had defensive walls on them so defenders could fight off bad guys as they came up the switchbacks. The stone steps were polished and slippery from centuries of people walking up and down them…kind of like the marble steps we saw yesterday at the Acropolis.

Once at the top we found another church…but this one was really old and there wasn’t much left but the arched roof and a wall at one end. Looking up the hillside there were old stone walls and buildings everywhere. We headed to the right and came out at the wonderful church I had seen from the boat as it sailed in. This building was wonderful and I really don’t know how old…I’ll have to get on Wikipedia and look up the details…but just amazing both for its obvious age and this odd sense of history there; it felt old. But at the same time, there were chairs and other church things inside (it wasn’t Baptist or even non-denominational-evangelical-Christian so I’m not sure exactly what was there), so I expect that it still sees some use. From here we could look out over the Mediterranean from about 500 feet up…it seemed just a little lower than the Space Needle which is a little more than 600 feet, I think.

We continued up from here and came to the old citadel, of which there is very little left but a gunpowder storage room that was very complete and a wall with an arch that was just perfect for getting a picture of our ship framed beneath the arch. We wound our way back down, back through town with just one little detour to see yet another little church, this one about 8×12 feet in a cave in the cliff above the town. It was a little treacherous to get to, but just amazing.

We walked back through town and down the road to the new city, where the boat had dropped us off and waded in the Mediterranean for a few minutes before we headed back to the ship. Once on board we got back to work after lunch.

Greetings from Athens

I am truly blessed to be able to write this from a beautiful cruise ship in the Mediterranean. I am working on the systems here, but I’m also doing my best to take advantage of the opportunity being here.

Last night I went for a walk around the hotel in the narrow little streets in Piraeus, a coastal port in Athens. The keepers of tiny shops were packing up for the night, bringing in their stuff from the sidewalks and feeding their dogs. I tried to take a picture of one dog that seriously barked at me, but as soon as I pointed the camera at him he shied away and hid. I tried again when he came out, but he did it again. Leaving the dog behind I eventually ended up down at the port a short way from where the ship docked the next morning. We had dinner at the hotel and ran into a couple of the ship’s Hosts who were coming on board today as well. They gave us some tips on seeing the Acropolis.

This morning, I got up pretty early for a Skype call home and then JR (the other Windstar IT guy with me) and I took off for the Acropolis. We took the train, and it’s incredible how easy it was for us to figure out the system of colors and stations to get where we were going. I’m very impressed with it, but I suppose nearly any place in Europe will have better public transportation than Seattle.

The Acropolis was fantastic. There was a great moment as we walked up the street and then through the olive trees I could see an old stone wall and some pillars and other stone work on top. We only had about an hour, which was enough to take pictures of everything at the top and the view over the city before we had to get back to the train. Athens is full of 4-8 story apartment buildings, all the same white color. I didn’t see any other kind of housing and only a few office buildings. Of course it would have been so great to have time just to hang out and soak in everything, but being there at all was unbelievable, so I have no regrets.

On our return, we promptly checked out and got to the ship. It’s taken most of the afternoon and evening, but I think I know my way around pretty well now and shouldn’t get lost any more. I got some great pictures of the sunset and different parts of the ship, though, between doing work in the communications room.

I’m trying really hard to take some time to connect with the Lord while I’m here, too. We’ll see how that goes, but I’m trying to take this opportunity to really make sure our relationship is sound. I’m ‘seeking his countenance.’ I’m also looking forward to getting to bed, although I think I’m handling the jet lag well, I’m still beat.

Why Random Jon?

Why “Random Jon”? While many blogs have a specific theme to the posts, I’m afraid that my short attention span and eclectic interests don’t lend themselves well to that. Perhaps I should have started a blog on each of the major categories I expect to be posting about, so that those who are interested in my experiences at the synagogue don’t have to wade through reviews of children’s books. Well, maybe later. For now, I expect most of my posts will fit one of the topics below:

Book reviews and commentaries

Lesson notes from my teaching opportunities

Comments on my experiences working at a synagogue

General thoughts on Christianity and Christian living

Whining

Disclaimer

As a Dad I think it’s important to make informed decisions about what I allow my kid’s to be exposed to. As a result I sometimes read what my daughters are reading and sometimes read what they’d like to read to decide if it’s appropriate. Sometimes it’s not just for them but other books that are culturally relevant. My concern is that a fellow Believer take offense at my choice of what to read.

Howerver, Paul writes that “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.” (1 Corinthians 6:12). It is in light of this verse that I make my decisions about what to read. I trust the Holy Spirit to guide me in an understanding of what material is unsuitable for me as a Christian and what is in fact beneficial. Paul’s choice of words is interesting here…”I will not be mastered by anything.” To me, this is reflected in the heart and attitude that one enters into something like a book. Do you approach with caution and an eye on what intellectual dangers exist, or does it master you, pulling you into the plot where your guard is lowered?

Additionally, I am bound by the warning not to let my freedom cause a brother to stumble (1 Corinthians 10:23-31). With this in mind I must ask all of my Christians brothers and sisters to listen the urging and conviction of the Holy Spirit in their own heart regarding what they choose to read; please don’t take my reading list as an endorsement of what is appropriate for all.

His Dark Materials

I wrote this a while back, just before the movies came out, although I can’t remember when that was…

After reading the His Dark Materials trilogy, (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) and some of the reviews and comments made prior to the release of the movie version of The Golden Compass, I think there are four main things that we ought to keep in mind. First, these are not children’s books, second, while clearly anti-Christian, these books are open and obvious about it rather than shrouded with implication, third, these books should remind us where and when we are living and to be aware of the dangers around us and fourth, there are some positive elements in these books.