europe

Two Backpacks, One Roller Bag, and a One-way Ticket

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 2 Comments

Labor Day has passed and some of the maples are starting to turn. Fall officially arrives in a couple of weeks. Soon, it’ll be winter. Rebecca and I are busy planning our cold weather escape.

I’ve always wanted to spend a month in Crete. Rebecca never got keen on the idea. So we moved a tad west and north and have settled on Malta, Sicily, and the boot of Italy. Not only have we never been there, we know precious few people who have. Here is what I know: the villages look magnificent. The off-season hotels are luxurious, readily available, and a fraction of their peak-season price. The two official languages of Malta are Maltese and English. We can fly directly to Luqa Malta, and from the airport, no place is more than about 30-minutes away by bus. 

Malta, Sicily, and the toe of the boot of Italy

My good friends Peter and his wife Jody are ridiculous world travelers; they know and love Malta and Sicily but have never been to far southern Italy. My cousin Cooper and his wife Lucy spent a month in Sicily and adored it. Other than my father serving in Foggia in WWII, I don’t know anyone who has visited the far southern boot of Italy. Naples will be way north of our travel range. We’ll go there to fly home and spend a day or two visiting Pompeii … and my father’s time there was not exactly a “visit.”

Malta is the world’s tenth smallest country. Its population of 575,000 is slightly larger than that of the Maldives and slightly smaller than Montenegro. Its land area is 122 square miles. (By contract, Grand Isle County, Vermont covers 195 square miles; from our house, no place in the county is more than about a half-hour away.) It was a British colony from 1813 until 1964, when it gained its independence. Its two official languages are Maltese and English. Language will not be a problem there; too bad they still drive on the damn wrong side of the road!

Early in this decade, conservation efforts successfully re-introduced peregrine falcons to the island. If we are lucky, we may catch a glimpse of a bona fide Maltese Falcon. But, I recently learned, if we want to go in search of falcons, we’d be much better off in New York City. It lays claim to having the largest urban peregrine falcon population in the world. (What better way to manage pigeons, I guess.)

Our first stop will be Marsaxlokk (pronounced marsa-schlock), a very old traditional fishing village with a vibrant year-round Sunday open air market. That will be the only reservation we’ll have when we leave the states. We plan to be “slow travelers,” moving to a new destination when we feel like it, sleeping in guest houses instead of hotels, staying for as long as we want, and meeting as many local folks as we can. The people we meet will be our tour guides, telling us what to visit and helping us plan the next leg of our journey, whatever that might be. We’ll come home at the exact moment we feel like it.

If you happen to be one of the few who knows a bit about Malta, Sicily, the Aeolian Islands, and Italy south of Naples, please be in touch. We really want to pick your brain!

Stock photo of Marsaxlokk harbor. Our room will have a view.

An Homage to Dirty Laundry

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 1 Comment

Northern Lights through an iPhone


Background
I am writing this post from cabin #321 aboard the MS Nordkapp, one of the Hurtigruten Line’s Coastal Express ships that sails from Bergen, Norway to Kirkenes, at the Russian border, and back to Bergen. A few important things happen on the journey: we cross the Arctic Circle and sail past “Nordkapp,” the North Cape, just north Honningsvag, the northernmost city in Europe. (Last year, FYI, we went to Sandy Hook, the northernmost point in New Jersey. We also went to Key West, the southernmost point in the continental US, and we’ve been to Anchor Point Alaska, the westernmost highway in the U.S. But now I am just bragging. Those places have nothing to do with Norway or dirty laundry.)

To escape the frigid cold of the northeast, we wanted to do something new. Rebecca had taken a cruise before and was lukewarm on the experience. I had never been on a cruise ship and had little desire. So, we did the only logical thing, we booked a cruise to sail to the Arctic in search of Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. (Stay tuned. I am rapidly falling in love with my iphone camera!)

Back to Dirty Laundry
We have so many reasons to be close to home, not the least of which is that grandson Elliott celebrated his 7th birthday in our absence. We missed celebrating with him. Plus, when we arrived at the ship, they gave everyone a wifi password and ID. Everything worked except my personal email. I hope to get this post announced as we travel. We’ll see.

We are cruising on a ship, but Hurtigruten ain’t Carnival! Instead of casinos and entertainment centers, our ship is more of a coastal Norwegian ferry, carrying cargo and cars and passengers making their way up the coast. We have lectures about the local culture and sights and tastings of local food. Nature provides most of our entertainment. Instead of a few thousand people on board, we have a few hundred. The crew lets us know of a Northern Lights sighting, but it’s up to us to get clad for winter weather and onto deck to see it.

Being a little homesick on a trip like this doesn’t feel too weird. We are a long way from anything familiar. It’s really cold out. When we make our turn to head back south, we will be three kilometers from the Russian border at the northernmost tip of Europe. We are north of any Norwegian train lines. We don’t know a soul. We don’t know the language. The mountains are stark. The sea is treacherous.

Thank goodness for dirty laundry.

We planned all of our packing around doing laundry. We’re gone for 20 days. We started the trip with a day of travel and three days in Bergen; we end the trip with three days in Oslo and another day of travel. If we did laundry on the first full day of cruising, we would need 5 sets of shirts and underwear. (Trousers can go a lot longer between washings.) If we wash on the first day of our cruise, sometime in the middle, and on the last day, we have clean clothes the entire time. I checked with Hurtigruten about on-board laundry. They have five or six washers and dryers for passengers. (That is about as up-scale as Hurtigruten gets. We stop in 33 different ports, once going north and once going south for a total of 65 stops, most of them lasting for 10 or 15 minutes; we get off and wander once a day … on most days. This is a work-horse of a ship. Thank goodness we can wash our own clothes for just $3 a load … and they provide the soap!)

Yesterday was laundry day #1. Rebecca did not feel 100%, so I did the washing, drying, and folding. It was unbelievably satisfying. Washing our clothes helped me realize that even though we are almost 4,000 miles from home in a strange land with a hostile climate, we have the anchor of OUR clothes still needing to be washed and folded. Doing the laundry gave me a sense of stability and predictability. It provided a moment of knowing that despite all that is different, things are really pretty much the same.