Teasels and Bugs

This is a tiny wild teasel that grew on its own in our lawn near the birdbath. When I say tiny, I mean it's only about a foot high. But it still produced a flower, because it's a teasel, and they are nothing if not determined survivors.

We also have several blooming at the side of the garden, and they appear to be the white "giant" variety, even though the plants themselves aren't very big. I think it's just too dark over there, in the shade of the hazel trees, for them to flourish.

We had a nice big giant in the middle of the lawn, but it mysteriously and spontaneously died before flowering, as they sometimes do. I'm not sure why. (OK, so they're not always survivors!) At least with the ones above we'll have seeds for next year.

There's not much to say about yesterday that's exciting. I did a big load of laundry in the morning, hung it out to dry, and found that it dried incredibly slowly. The clothes hung like limp, damp paper towels for hours. The humidity was only 44 percent, but there was no breeze -- so they sat out pretty much all day before I could bring them in and even then two pairs of Dave's pants had to hang inside overnight. Now I've got our last post-cruise load churning in the washing machine.

I did have some interesting video experiences with bugs!

The first video clip shows a Jersey tiger moth on our bay tree. (Sorry it's so shaky -- I was standing in a precarious place. The weird color comes from my camera flash, which activated because it was late evening and quite dark.) The second clip shows a wasp gnawing its way through the wood of our garden bench. I was actually sitting on the bench at the time and I heard its little chewing sounds -- you can also hear them in the video if you turn up the volume (and ignore the noises of the city and our neighbors in the background). Apparently wasps chew wood not to eat it but to build their nests with it.

Finally, the third clip shows an interesting (but sadly dead) caterpillar that I found while walking home from the high street. Turns out it's a larva of the lime hawk moth, which feeds on lime trees and then drops to the ground to pupate in soil. Unfortunately, in the city, many of them encounter pavement when they fall, so they wander looking for loose dirt. I suspect this one got stepped on, poor thing. I like its little punk hairstyle, that blue horn on its forehead.

I did finally catch up (mostly) in blogland, answering comments from the last several days and at least touching base with most other blogs. It's going to take me some time to get back in the swing of things!

I also worked on the insurance claim form for the camera, which of course is not as simple as I'd hoped it would be. They want my original purchase receipt, which I really did save for many years, but I finally tossed it some time ago because it had faded so badly that it couldn't be read. What do you do when your receipt self-destructs, like something out of "Mission: Impossible"? Even my bank and credit card statements online don't go back as far as 2012. I'm going to send them a later receipt for having the camera repaired and hopefully that will be enough proof of ownership.

I haven't taken steps to replace the camera yet. I'm trying to make do with my phone for the time being until I have emotionally detached from the theft and can look at my options more objectively. Right now I have a (possibly insane) urge to repurchase exactly what I lost! I may in fact do that in the end, but I need to take at least a few days to simply breathe first. There's no rush, right?

Last night I couldn't help checking the location of my AirPods (and hence possibly the camera, since they were in the camera bag), and they're still sitting in that bastard's car on the Via di Porta Labicana in Rome. They haven't moved an inch.

The Crispy Garden

Thanks to all of you who made it through yesterdays TL;DR post! I won't do that to you again, I promise. I just had to write all of that down to help me process the day. I seriously think I have a little PTSD from the camera theft, but it is easing.

Here's what the garden looks like upon our return. Warren, our house-sitter, did a good job keeping most everything alive, but as you can see the grass is getting brown and many of the plants are sagging. It's not even hot at the moment, though it apparently was during our absence. Now it's just bone-dry. We have watering restrictions so all our maintenance for the foreseeable future will have to be done with watering cans.

It appears we did lose one of the ferns I planted earlier in the spring, and one of my sunflowers was somehow broken off at the base. Oh well.

The indoor plants are mostly OK, but I suspect Warren watered a bit too lightly because a few are in a sad state -- mainly the maidenhair ferns, which like dampness. Or maybe it got too hot in the house. In any case, they should bounce back.

On the plus side, our orange dahlia is blooming...

...and we have some new zinnias coming out...

...and this geranium, which I bought from Waitrose in the spring because it was wilted and looked so pathetic, is now doing great and has given us flowers. I didn't know what color they'd be but I like this light orangey-pink.

I spent yesterday doing laundry, and I'm only about halfway through the task. It's amazing how many clothes two people can go through during a two-week trip, and we had a bag of laundry washed on the ship! Ninety-plus degree weather didn't help. We had to change twice a day.

Speaking of laundry, here's a new t-shirt that Dave bought me, in honor of our recent unwanted garden guests:

I thought it was hilarious. We haven't seen Ratthew since our return. I hope we've successfully driven him (and all his family) away by getting rid of the bird feeders.

Dave asked yesterday if he should start looking at dogs to adopt. I said yes, though my head is still spinning from the trip. Getting a dog will help break me out of my PTSD, forcing me to look forward rather than back. Besides, it's going to take some time to find one we like, get approved by the animal rescue group, and start the fostering process. Dave has to do the initial screening because I'll want to adopt every single animal. As I told him, I'd have happily taken any (or all!) of those dogs we saw at the Villa Borghese on Tuesday (photo in yesterday's post).

Anyway, time to get that ball rolling. It's been just over a year since Olga died.

At the risk of making you all crazy, I will say one more thing about the camera. I think what hit me so hard about this experience wasn't just the loss of the object, but the scary feeling that my brain just isn't working as well as it used to. It freaks me out that I have no clear, specific memory of carrying that camera into the restaurant or where I put it when we sat down. Did I put it on my left or my right? Why didn't I keep the strap over my leg as I always do? Why didn't I set my hat on top of the bag, as I always do? Did I even really have it with me? Could it have been taken from our hotel room, or did I leave it in the lobby during our chaotic check-in? I cannot definitively answer any of these questions, which makes me feel diminished and maybe even a little loony.

I did file a claim with our travel insurance company, so we'll see where that goes.

Arrividerci, Roma

I’m writing this post Tuesday night, on the flight back from Rome. Among the things I lost in my camera bag were my two newest issues of The New Yorker, which I’d planned to read on the plane! So now I have nothing to do but write. I guess I could have bought another magazine, but never mind...

Today (Tuesday) was a busy day! After the nightmare of our Monday afternoon and evening, followed by a mostly sleepless night for me, I was determined to make it up to Dave by doing some sightseeing with him and enjoying Rome. We got up and out around 9 a.m. and went to the Trevi Fountain (above), which he had never seen. In fact, he’d never seen Rome at all, so anyplace we went was somewhere new.

We then walked from Trevi to the Pantheon, and then to the Piazza Navona, where we stopped for coffee. We sat and watched a couple of guys clean the famous Fountain of the Four Rivers in the middle of the plaza, sweeping up the loose coins and ridding it of algae and stains.

I thought we might also check out the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, but Dave decided he’d seen enough and was ready to return to the hotel. To be fair, it was rapidly becoming hot as blazes and sweat was running down our backs. Also a thunderstorm was brewing overhead, but it never quite materialized, at least not where we were.

I tried my best not to think or talk about the camera kerfuffle but I wasn’t very successful, and as we sat in the Piazza Navona I felt a strong compulsion to search for it again. I was still getting a signal saying my AirPods were on that street near the back of the Termini train station, and I was convinced they were in that trash bin — perhaps still inside my camera bag. If Dave was just going to rest in the hotel, what was stopping me?

So I told him that was my plan. He tried to talk me out of it — he was worried about my safety, both from any criminal element and from environmental dangers like broken glass. But I had to be able to tell myself I’d done all that I could, and so far, I still didn’t have that feeling.

Sticker art on a street near the Pantheon

We took a taxi back to the hotel, where Dave got out, and then I rode on to the street with the bins. I began digging through them again, and this time — without Dave telling me to stop every three seconds — I really focused on the task. I pulled bag after bag out of the bin and got down deep enough that I’m sure I would have found the camera bag, had it been there. I might not have found the AirPods alone, because they’re small and I couldn’t get them to make noise like they’re supposed to do when lost. (Every time I tried my phone just said that function was “off,” whatever that means.)

At one point three workers in neon orange pants and maroon shirts, perhaps garbage men, came up and one started yelling at me. I showed him my phone and explained what I was trying to do. He didn’t seem to speak English but he understood, and he and his pals walked away and came back a few minutes later with a rake. They pitched in and helped me! Together we excavated that bin thoroughly, to no avail. I looked in the adjacent recycling bins too, but they were much emptier — apparently Romans, at least in that neighborhood, aren’t big on recycling.

I also checked out the nearby parking lot again, and I did get a signal showing that I was practically on top of the AirPods while standing next to this white Land Rover, which was parked off by itself (and is apparently parked there all the time, given that it's on Google Street View). It seemed very possible they could be in that car but I couldn’t see them through the windows or underneath it, so what could I do? I felt out of options.

Perhaps I could have gone back to the Carabinieri with my scant evidence, but even if they took me seriously, what would they have done? Called the Land Rover owner, who would in all likelihood have told them to piss off and get a search warrant, and then moved the bag? All with me leaving the country in hours?

After more than an hour digging through rubbish and then loading it back into the bin, and surveying parked cars in the hot sun, I finally, finally felt I had done all I could do. I had to accept defeat. If the bag was there, it wasn't accessible to me. So close and yet so far.

I walked back to the hotel and took a long, welcome shower.

(Not your typical Roman vacation, I know!)

We had to be out of our hotel room by 1 p.m. but our transfer to the airport wasn’t due until 5:30 p.m. So we decided to spend the afternoon in the Galleria Borghese, which we knew would be air conditioned. We stored our bags at the hotel, took a taxi to the museum and settled into the cafe for a leisurely lunch. To give you an idea of the temperature, this is what the dogs looked like in the surrounding park, limp in the shade of trees full of chirring cicadas.

We began exploring the museum at 3 p.m. and it is a very grand place. Unlike the sights we saw in the morning, the galleria was new to me. Not really my kind of art, for the most part, but I did appreciate the Caravaggios and this stunning sculpture by Bernini of Apollo and Daphne, from 1622. Certainly better than rooting around in a garbage bin!

Finally, we headed to the airport and arrived in plenty of time for our 9:20 p.m. flight. (Why so late? What were our tour organizers thinking?) I was sad as we took off, knowing my camera bag wasn’t at my feet as always.

Oh — but there is one more happy side note. Remember my fear that the bag had my address on it? Well, I realized the luggage tag provided by the tour company did NOT use our address — just my phone number. So the fear that someone will arrange to burgle our house with my lost keys is now moot.

-----

And now, Wednesday morning, here I am at home. We’ve arrived back just in time to cope with a new hosepipe ban (aka a garden watering ban) imposed by Thames Water because of the UK's extended period of hot, dry weather. So we’ll be schlepping watering cans from the house. Welcome to England! At least the temperature is cooler than Rome, and the garden and plants seem to have survived our absence.

Chaos and Tragedy

Yesterday was completely chaotic. It started out well enough, with this peculiar boat pulling up alongside ours in La Spezia, which made a great photo with the sunrise. Is Warner Brothers getting royalties? I imagine so.

We disembarked the cruise ship at 8:45 a.m., and boarded our chartered buses for Rome at 9:30. It took more than an hour to drive the 39 miles from Civitavecchia to our hotel, the Marcella Royal near the Villa Borghese. We all piled out of two buses, dragged our suitcases two blocks to the hotel and stepped into the blissfully air conditioned lobby to find lots of other people already there -- some leaving, some arriving, some apparently just hanging out. It was madness for a while, with many people lined up in the sun outside (on a 97º F day -- that's 36º C) just waiting to even access the lobby. Dave and I were fortunately some of the first in the group so we at least waited inside. Eventually we were shown to our room.

We put our bags down and decided to go find lunch. Now, things get fuzzy for me here, and you'll see in a moment why this is important. I think I grabbed my camera bag, because we intended to go from lunch for a brief walk around a nearby piazza, and I wanted to be able to take pictures. I don't have a clear memory of carrying it to lunch but I believe that I did.

We ate at the little restaurant on the left, behind those triple-parked cars (which is why I took this picture, using my phone). The food was great -- bruschetta pomodoro and some sage ravioli for me, and a couple of beers. Then we wandered around the piazza, which turned out not to be a piazza at all but the Gardens of Sallust, a conference and arts center built into some Roman ruins. Interesting, but we didn't stay because it was deathly hot and we wanted to get back to the hotel. I took one more picture with my phone.

We got back to the hotel, and lay down for a nap. A couple of hours later, I woke up and wanted a drink of water. I looked for my camera bag, which contained my bottled water, and it was nowhere to be found in our hotel room. This is when I realized I must have left it behind in the restaurant.

I checked with the front desk just to make sure I didn't leave it in the hotel lobby, and they didn't have it. I went back to the restaurant, and they said they'd found nothing.

So I looked at the "Find My" function on my iPhone, because my AirPods were in my camera bag. They were shown as being in a neighborhood behind the Termini train station -- not an area I'd visited. Someone had clearly found/stolen and spirited away my camera bag.

I knew immediately that I was pretty much sunk. The odds of getting it back were minuscule. But Dave and I took a taxi to the address, determined to try. "Find My" showed (and still shows) the AirPods in the middle of a street, so we looked into parked cars and checked the area. Our taxi driver even helped. There were three large rubbish bins next to the street, and his theory was that someone discarded the empty bag (or maybe just the AirPods) in one of those bins, knowing they could be traced. I tried to get the AirPods to make noise but couldn't get that function to work, and I even unloaded the bins about halfway but found nothing. (And then I put the trash back, don't worry.)

So, yeah. My camera is gone. Not a loss I take lightly, and I hate the fact that I can't be exactly sure how it happened. My best guess is that I took the bag to the restaurant and left it on the floor beside my chair. Why I didn't realize it while we were walking around immediately afterwards -- and I was taking pictures with my phone -- I don't know. I blame the heat, the two beers and the chaotic day.

I filed a report with the Carabinieri so I can hopefully claim the camera on my travel or homeowner's insurance. It's an expensive camera (with three lenses) but it's also 15 years old, and it has done yeoman's work for all that time, so I'm not too broken up about it. There were no pictures on it -- I'd downloaded everything, fortunately -- and it has felt too heavy and antiquated for a while now. Maybe I'll buy a new one that better suits my needs at this point in my life. Or maybe I'll just use my phone and/or my stepmother's camera. I once had dreams of turning photography into some sort of profession, but let's face it -- all I'm ever going to do is blog.

Likewise, I don't mourn the AirPods -- a couple of years old and easily replaceable. I do mourn the loss of my house keys, which were in the bag, but we have spares. (I don't think it's likely that someone will fly to London to burglarize us, but I may look into changing the locks because our address is on the bag.) I carried an antique key on my key chain given to me 42 years ago by one of my best friends in high school, and I mostly hate to lose that key, even though it fits no lock.

I lost nothing else of value. My passport was in my pocket, thank goodness, along with my wallet and phone -- I never put any of it in a bag for just this reason.

I have a feeling I will be mulling this over for a while, trying to figure out exactly how and when I became separated from the bag and how I didn't notice for so long. Dave never noticed anything either, and his memory is as fuzzy as mine about when and where I had it last. As I said, it was a crazy day, and Rome is a crazy city, and it is what it is.

What's really bizarre is that this is the second camera I've lost in a traveling mishap in a Mediterranean country. I lost my old Canon AE-1 (a film camera) in 2000 when a taxi driver in Greece drove away with my backpack. And that time I lost my whole bag -- all my clothes, my undeveloped film, everything! Never got any of it back. So at least this situation isn't that dire.

We are going to try to make the best of our brief Rome visit today and see some sights before heading to the airport at 5:30 p.m. for our late evening flight.

The Leaning Tower

This is our last morning on the ship. As I write we're sitting in port in Civitavecchia, north of Rome. We have to be off the ship at 8:30 a.m. to catch our coach to Rome, where we have one more night before we fly home. This has been quite a trip and I've seen a lot and had a great time, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss our flat and garden and coffee pot and washing machine (in that order).

Yesterday we woke at the port of La Spezia, on the coast of Tuscany. Dave and I boarded a chartered coach to Pisa with a guide and a group of passengers, in order to take a quick look at the leaning tower. When we pulled up outside the square where the tower, cathedral and baptistry were built, I told Dave, "It looks just like it does in Bugs Bunny cartoons!"

And then I looked back at my post from almost 20 years ago, after my last trip to Italy, and realized I made exactly the same joke back then. At least my brain is consistent.

As on my previous visit, I didn't climb the tower. For one thing, it costs money. Also it seems inherently unwise to ascend a building that looks so fundamentally off-kilter. I mean, my rational mind knows it's not going to fall over at the moment that I'm inside it, but that doesn't mean an animal instinct doesn't tell me, "Don't go in there!"

So instead we settled into a cafe on the piazza, where we had a good view of the crowds and could watch the light change on the tower and cathedral.

We also admired the quartet of hunky Italian police officers keeping an eye on things.

Afterwards we took a brief tour of the older parts of town, rolling around in a "trolley" (which was really another mini-train, like the one we took in Messina). We crossed the river and saw some of the more noteworthy buildings, and a few sites that were heavily damaged in World War II.

And then we headed back to La Spezia, where we had lunch on the ship overlooking the colorful container port. I was so entranced with this view that I went up on the top deck and took pictures at a couple of different times, catching the light as it changed. That big MSC freighter eased up to the dock with the aid of a pair of tugboats as we watched.

And now I have to go pack. Coming to you tomorrow from Rome!

Genoa and the Italian Riviera

Yesterday we were up bright and early for a rather involved excursion to Genoa. We were anchored in Portofino, which is about 40 kilometers from Genoa in the northern Italian state of Liguria. The town of Portofino itself is quite small and its docks can't accommodate our ship, so we took tenders to reach dry land, followed by a ferry to Rapallo and then a bus to Genoa itself. Whew!

Above is Portofino, which is a posh little town. Apparently very few people live there, and the town reflects that -- we saw Louis Vuitton and Missoni shops, but I'm not sure where anyone would buy milk or eggs. Still, it is very scenic and beloved by millionaires and Hollywood types, and there were immense yachts puttering around.

And here's a glimpse of Rapallo, which is also a beautiful town but much larger and more populated than Portofino.

Before we even started this outing, I said to Dave, "I guarantee you we're going to see at least one statue of Christopher Columbus." He's perhaps Genoa's most famous native son, though he left Genoa as a young man and moved to Spain before setting out on his eventful voyages. Turns out the Columbus fanfare began even before we got to Genoa -- this enormous statue of him is in Rapallo, built by Italians who had moved to the Americas and made their fortunes, according to our guide.

Once in Genoa, we gathered in the Piazza Raffaele de Ferrari, named for a 19th Century Italian nobleman (and not the car manufacturer, as our guide, Daniela, pointed out). From there we took a walking tour of the old town.

We saw the stylish black-and-white striped marble Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, part of which is covered in scaffolding, which is why I focused on photographing just these two doorways. (My mom always joked that everywhere she went, she saw scaffolding, and I sometimes share that feeling.)

We walked through the narrow streets, past shops dedicated to local delicacies like focaccia and pesto, down to the waterfront, where we saw the brightly painted Palazzo di San Giorgio. (I gotta say, I was somewhat distracted by that dad's bright floral outfit!)

After the tour, we had more than an  hour of free time, so Dave and I settled in a cafe and watched the world go by. I had some pesto pasta and a coffee and Dave had focaccia, so we dutifully sampled the local specialties. (Which were fantastic, I can confirm.)

Then we headed to the Chiesa del Gesù e dei Santi Ambrogio e Andrea (and yes, I absolutely cut and pasted that name). Daniela had told us there were some Rubens paintings there, and I wanted to see those. It turned out to be an ornate, eye-popping baroque church, one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, with exquisite marble-inlaid walls and floors.

I couldn't begin to capture such a complex interior with pictures, so I took videos instead. You'll see the Rubens paintings, one of Jesus' circumcision above the altar (an interesting choice for an altarpiece) and one depicting the miracle of St. Ignatius. There are plenty of other fine paintings as well, mainly if not entirely by Italian artists.

And not only was Columbus mentioned again, we actually saw his house! Or what's left of it, anyway. Situated just outside the old city gates (which you can see in the background above), the once-tall house has been shortened and now exists as a two-story museum. We did not go in.

And with that, we boarded the bus and headed back to the ship. Once again I was thrilled to have a shower. Last night we had a very long dinner at a special chef's table aboard the ship, with dishes created (but not prepared) by Chef Daniel Boulud. Aside from the fact that it took several hours, we enjoyed it, and shared the table with a Dutch family -- mom (who was born in Morocco), dad (from Suriname) and their son and daughter. The kids, both older teenagers, obviously wanted to be somewhere else, but we all had a good conversation. It's pretty cool to have the opportunity to meet so many people of different backgrounds.

Today we're in the port of La Spezia and headed to Pisa.

The Ship

Because yesterday was another day at sea, I don't have any pictures of Italy to share -- except a hazy look at Elba Island off our distant starboard bow. (Trust me, the photo isn't great.) So I thought I'd show you some views of the ship itself, the Celebrity Constellation.

Above is the pool deck, which is undoubtedly one of the most popular places on the ship. I don't spend any time out there myself, because I'm not a lie-in-the-sun type and I'm not about to climb into that crowded pool, but as you can see there are actually a couple of pools here as well as whirlpools and a deck where there was an exercise class happening at the moment I visited. There are also an indoor pool and whirlpools behind this deck, toward the ship's bow. We are not lacking for swimming and sunning opportunities, that's for sure.

Overlooking it all is a mysterious sculpture of a gorilla clutching a gigantic fish. Don't ask me.

There are more outdoor decks along the side of the ship and at the rear. The red line is supposed to be a jogging track, but I've never seen anyone jog it -- when I'm out there it's usually way too crowded. Maybe the runners use it in the early morning.

Here's one of my favorite spots -- the martini bar. (I've had a martini every night of this trip, and it's probably a good thing we're wrapping it up in a couple of days before I kill my liver completely.) We also use a bar on the top level at the front of the ship called Reflections, which has an amazing view and tends to be pretty quiet, at least when we're there.

The martini bar overlooks the ship's central grand staircase, with a three-level atrium from decks 3 to 5. There's a coffee bar on the upstairs deck that we haven't used at all.

There's a casino -- typically windowless -- where I also have spent no time except to walk through. I'm not about to pour money into those machines.

This is one of the big restaurants, at the stern of the ship, called the San Marco. Dave and I usually frequent an adjacent restaurant called Blu, which is smaller and more intimate.

And here's the buffet room, known as the Ocean View Cafe, where I sit every day to blog. (I took this picture just before writing this post. You can see my computer sitting on the table at right, with the blue screen.) It's a huge space that extends over the entire deck midship, behind the pool deck, and it's definitely the most popular dining space. As you can see, there are big windows overlooking the water, and there are multiple food buffets for pretty much any food item you could ever want.

Here's another view, with the food areas to the right.

I know these pictures make us look like a ghost ship, with the exception of the top images, but I tried hard to take them at times when people wouldn't be using the spaces, so I could respect everyone's privacy. And I couldn't photograph certain areas -- the spa and fitness rooms, for example. I don't want to be creepy!

There's also a theater, an outdoor deck with a big movie screen, some specialty restaurants, art galleries and a bunch of fancy shops. It really is mind-blowing to think that not only all the passengers but all the people who work in these spaces are bobbing around on the sea in this single vessel. A floating city, indeed.

Today Dave and I will be taking a walking tour of Genoa. (Or "Genova," as it's described in our materials. I guess that's the Italian spelling.) It's looking cloudy out there as the sun comes up, so we'll see how it goes!