Izmir, Turkey, and the ancient city of Ehpesus

Friday December 17, 2010 Day 170

We docked at Izmir, Turkey, this morning. Looking across the pier, we saw sections of large electricity-generation windmills. We were not sure whether these were for import or export. I think I forgot to mention that our cruise ship is the Norwegian Jade, a part of the Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) fleet.

Our home away from home for 12 days

We boarded a bus for our excursion to the ruins at Ephesus, an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Turkey and of Asia Minor. It contains the largest collection of Roman ruins in the Eastern Mediterranean. The city has a long, history, having already been inhabited during the Neolithic age. The city was famed for the Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The temple was destroyed in 401 CE by a mob - not sure what they were protesting but they must have been pretty mad! Our tour guide passed out radio headphones again, which I have come to appreciate greatly. Someone ought to tell those Cretans about these things!

The site was crowded - I think about 20 buses came from our ship alone, and then there were other non-NCL visitors as well. It was impossible to get pictures which were not populated with strangers! The site, which covers more than ten acres, was littered (pardon the pun) with cats, many of them very tame and quite willing to be petted or even picked up. I had the misfortune to be petting one when it suddenly turned on me with both claws and teeth. Ouch! I immediately rinsed the puncture holes with water and spread Neosporin on them (thanks, Neo-to-go!) and hoped they would not get infected.

One of the many cats that roamed the site



Roger and me at the top of the ruins
This one is for you, Alicia

The tour starts at the top of a long, wide street which slopes down past ruins and more ruins and still more ruins. This street alone is more than a mile long. At the bottom of the street is the Library of Celsus, the façade of which has been carefully reconstructed from all original pieces. It was build around 145 CE and once held 12,000 scrolls. From the library, we turned right and went into an amphitheatre, which has been updated and is still used today for concerts. It is believed to be the largest outdoor theater in the ancient world.

Looking down from near the top of the street

 

Our tour guide, standing beneath winged Nike

 

Carved ornamental stone littered the site

 

Beautiful mosaic tile work along former shop floors



The reconstructed facade of the library

The whole site is a mish-mash of different styles, sometimes one on top of another - apparently the Turks built on top of what the Byzantines had erected, who built atop what the Romans erected, who built atop the Greek installations. It is all there - just waiting for interpretation. Actually, it is estimated that only 15% of the site has been excavated, so the full excavation site will be vast. On the whole, it was a pretty amazing place, another huge stone graveyard just waiting to be unearthed and resurrected.

 

One style of column, built right on top of another



Amphitheatre, used for concerts today

Roger and me in front of the library

Stone graveyard with amphitheatre in the background

This sign sort of says it all!

 On the way back from Ephesus, our bus stopped at a rug-making school where young people are trained in the art of making rugs of silk, wool, cotton, or a combination of the three. We watched silk being unwound from cocoons, learned a bit about the dying process, then watched a woman demonstrating one of the weaving techniques. Because the process is hard on the eyes, the weavers can only work two hours a day. Then we were ushered into a showroom where several men laid out carpet after carpet after carpet, in splendid colors and patterns. The carpets were absolutely gorgeous, and often I saw one which I thought was my favorite, but it was soon surpassed by one that I liked even more! Supposedly they were authorized to make us a good price on the carpets, and I assume that some of the passengers did buy rugs, but we were not in the market. The visit did give me a new respect for those beautiful, intricately-woven rugs.

Silk cocoons with silk strands being unwound from them.

Roger remarked that he has now been on both sides of Asia, as he visited Shanghai, China several years ago on business.

As we left the harbor this morning, and again on our return, we saw some colored grain silos standing near the port. We were unable to determine what they held, but they were quite lovely - very different from the huge cream-colored sentinels of my experience.

Grain silos near the harbor

The evening’s entertainment was sort of the Jade’s version of American Idol, really designed to showcase the talents of four of their professional staff performers, because the “contestants” were not amateurs nor were they passengers on the ship. They performed a couple of times each, and one by one they got “voted off” (but not off the ship!) by the audience. Cute, but I guess that is damning them with faint praise.

Iraklion and the Palace at Knossos

Thursday December 16, 2010 Day 169

From our breakfast table, we watched the start of the docking process, as we did not dock in Iraklion until after 9:00. When we left the dining room, we went outside to stroll on the deck and watch more of the docking. Roger suggested that the tie-down ropes are Kevlar, because of their golden yellow color.

Crete

Iraklion, on the island of Crete

We boarded a tour bus again, this time for a trip to the ruins of the palace at Knossos. Our guide was a woman who spoke reasonably good English, but unfortunately the idea of the radio headphones has not made it to Crete, and at Knossos, we had to stand around in the rain and try to hear what she had to say. At the entrance to the palace, Roger bought an umbrella for five euros since we did not bring one on the cruise; in fact, we seem to have mislaid ours completely.

Palace at Knossos in the rain

 The palace covers some six acres, and included a theatre, a main entrance on each of its four cardinal faces, and extensive storerooms called magazines. Some of the storerooms contained pithoi,or large clay vases which held oil, grains, dried fish, beans, and olives. The palace had grain mills, oil presses, and wine presses. Beneath the pithoi were stone holes used to store more valuable objects, such as gold. Other parts of the palace include a throne room and a numerous bedroom, miscellaneous rooms, a toilet and bathtub. The palace had a complex system of fresh water, runoff water management and sewers.

Storage jars

The ruins were discovered in 1878 by a Cretan merchant, and were fully excavated by Sir Arthur Evans starting in 1900. There is much controversy regarding his excavation, particularly his theories about the purpose of many things, and regarding his restoration. For instance, he turned the painting of the throne room over to a father-and-son team of artists, and their “restorations” are said to be almost complete inventions of theirs.

The tour lasted too long, particularly because we were not always able to hear our guide. On the way back, we got the tour director to let us off the bus in front of an electronics store, and we went in and found a universal charger for Roger’s netbook.On our walk back to the ship, we passed a store with a solar water heater on display out front. As we looked around, we saw several of them on rooftops.

Our tour did not leave the ship until 11:00, which was poor timing, as no lunch stop was included and we did not return to the ship until after 3:00. We were rather hungry by the time we got back on board the ship.

The evening entertainment was a comedian named Paul Adams. Our itinerary called for the ship to collect him in Athens and discharge him the next day in Izmir. Because of the port change he had to get from Athens to Crete. Somewhere between Gatwick Airport and Crete his luggage disappeared. He appeared on stage in blue jeans, tennis shoes and a blue and white plaid shirt, all quite new-looking. A good deal of this comic routine centered around his lost luggage and his clothing. He was quite funny, and gets extra points for a clean, family-oriented performance.

Another sea day

Wednesday December 15, 2010 Day 168

We lost an hour last night due to our eastward travel, so we slept late this morning and didn’t get to breakfast until almost 9:30. We were not alone, however - the self-serve dining room was as crowded as usual. After breakfast, we went to the bridge viewing room and watch the ship pass through the Messina Strait between Italy and Sicily.

In Rome, while awaiting our bus, we happened to see a bride
crossing the street in all her wedding finery - she is
in the crosswalk in the very center of the photo

Clouds moved in and the sea picked up this afternoon, going from moderate this morning to rough after lunch. There was a lot more sway all over the ship and we didn’t always walk directly where we were headed. Roger went to a lecture on ancient Greece and Ephesus while I blogged and spent time on the computer. Later we felt the need for some exercise, so went up to the top of the ship for country line dance lessons. They were energetic and they really warmed us up, but the dance floor is small and quite crowded.

We closed out the evening with a performer named Gary Lovin. He was an excellent violinist and quite a showman as well. The advance notices simply referred to him by name, billing the performance as "a spectacular, energetic and entertaining musical show with a difference" and did not mention his talent. During the day, I heard someone speculating that he was a comedian. After the show, he admitted that he specifically requested of the cruise director not to announce the nature of his show, but just to post his name and photo. At the end of the show, which the audience clearly enjoyed, he asked how many would have come if he had been billed as a violinist or fiddler, and much of the audience admitted that they would have stayed away. Interesting that a violinist has to disguise the nature of his art in order to get people to come see him.

Rome

Tuesday December 14, 2010 Day 167

I slept really well last night; Roger, not so much. I think he was worried about waking up on time for our excursion, even though we had left a wake-up call. He said that once, when he reached over to check the time on the phone, I asked him what time it was, but I was already snoring again before he could tell me!

Our excursion today was to Rome, and we reached our assembly point on the ship with plenty of time to spare. We exited the ship and boarded a bus which took us into Rome, an hour or so away from the port of Civitavecchia. On the way in, we saw the Italian countryside, including a solar farm of several acres. We also saw the first of many umbrella pines, which are quiet lovely.

Note the umbrella pines in front of the colosseum

Our tour called for us to go to the Colosseum in the morning and St. Peter’s Basilica in the afternoon, but our tour guide reversed the visiting points because of some protests which were scheduled. Indeed, as we moved through Rome, we saw a group of demonstrators holding up traffic bound in the other direction. Before we exited the bus, our guide distributed small radio receivers with headphones and she conducted the tour into her microphone, which was broadcast into our receivers. It took us a good 20 minutes of standing in line for security to enter Vatican City. From there we went into St. Peter’s Basilica, which was truly huge. It was so big, however, that it was hard to get a perspective on its true size. Our tour guide pointed out that some lettering around the lower portion of the dome was five feet high and this helped a bit.

St. Peter's Square in Vatican City
with St. Peter's Basilica in the background

Inside the basilica, looking up at the dome

Nativity figures await the completion of the St. Peter's creche

Swiss guards provide security for the Vatican

After the obligatory visit to the gift shop, we reboarded our bus and headed to a restaurant for lunch, where we had some lasagna, red or white wine, a salad, some pork and potatoes, and finished with tiramisu and coffee. The food was nothing to blog about - mediocre at beset. We sat with a French couple - the first we have seen or heard on the cruise. Our cruise mates seem to be mostly U.S. and Canadian citizens, although there are a fair number of Orientals. The French couple, Madeline and Jean-Claude, actually reside in Tahiti, where they retired from teaching. We conversed in a mixture of French and English throughout the meal and afterward as well.

The bus took us to the Colosseum next, where we disembarked and spent about twenty minutes viewing the outside of the Colosseum and other Roman ruins surrounding it. Some of our group was disappointed that we could not enter the Colosseum, but there was no time on our tour. If we had wanted to tour the interior of the Colosseum, there was a tour for that, but it was not available on our particular tour. The ride back to the ship was quiet. We had a lovely view of the sunset and many of our fellow passengers slept. We did not get to throw our coins in the Trevi fountain to secure our return to Rome. I am not too worried, however, because a return to Rome is on our agenda (if it can be said that we have such a thing as an agenda) some time before we leave France in June.

The departure of our ship was slightly delayed because of the late return of one of the excursion buses. Apparently it got caught up in some of the demonstrations. As we discussed our day with other passengers, one couple talked about how they took the train in and found themselves trapped inside the station for a time, unable to go where they wanted to go because of the demonstrations. Fortunately the found another way out of the station.

I feel that we only lightly brushed the top of Rome, but then I suppose one always does with only a few hours to see an entire historic city. Roger said he expected much worse traffic than we encountered. The city was clean, and we had lovely (cool) weather. He was surprised that everything was bunched up around the Colosseum. He also remarked that it must be hard to excavate in Rome for a foundation for a new building or a subway because one is apt to strike ancient ruins and be delayed indefinitely!

Among the passengers on our excursion was a woman who accompanied her blind mother and a Down Syndrome man. What a challenge! She had another companion as well, however - a woman apparently hired for the trip to assist in caring for the other two. We learned later that the blind woman did not receive her luggage before she boarded the ship in Barcelona. What a pain!

When we returned to our room, we found a note regarding an itinerary change. Because the Greek unions continue to take part in general strikes, the political unrest makes Athens less than stable, so our next port of call would be Crete in place of Athens. Along with the note was an explanation of five different excursions offered on Crete and instructions on how to order up the excursion of our choice.

We postponed dinner for the early show in the theater, which was a Beatles Celebration - four guys dressed as the Beatles singing all their old songs - well, 15 or so of them. Not bad for four guys who have never seen the guys they are imitating - much of the audience was singing along; after all, most of them experienced the Beatles in their youth. Afterward, while waiting for dinner, we watched the sea go by the side of the ship. I noted that we seemed to be moving faster than we did the first day at sea, and Roger remarked that the ship had farther to go to her next stop and that she had picked up her skirts and was running along.

Panic time for Roger! When I got my new netbook computer in November, Roger remarked that the charger for his computer fit mine. So when we packed for the cruise, we just threw in my charger. Unfortunately, the computer for my charger does not fit his computer. Roger had preloaded his computer with plenty of reading material. He is now exploring his options, including using my computer to read and checking out books from the ship’s library.

First sea day

Monday December 13, 2010 Day 166

This is our second cruise. It is very different from our first one in one major way: in the Caribbean there was so little ship motion that we barely knew we were at sea. This one, in the late autumn Mediterranean waters, is quite different - we can feel the sway of the ship almost all the time. Waves frequently splash against our porthole with a thud. We often had to alter the direction in which we are headed because it suddenly became slightly uphill! Everyone walks as if he or she is a little drunk. Last night I dreamed that our cabin (along with the entire ship) turned upside down! I awoke and began mentally detailing where my clothing is in the event we have to evacuate the ship at night! It is truly not bad. The seas are considered “moderate,” and the motion of the ship is not tremendous, just unexpected because of the calmer seas of the Caribbean in early October.

Sardenia, or maybe Corsica - we passed between them.

Our first day was entirely at sea. We didn’t get up until almost 8:30 and ate a late breakfast. I attended an Art 101 lecture on art collecting - 30,000 year of art in 30 minutes - while Roger explored the ship some more. I stayed awake through all my lecture. Roger then wanted to attend a lecture on Rome. He suggested that we go to the lecture and then to lunch; otherwise, he said he would just fall asleep during the lecture. It didn’t help that he was hungry - he fell asleep several times during the lecture. For a while, I nudged him to keep him awake; after all, if I was going to sit through the lecture, he ought to have to do the same, since it was his pick. I finally gave up and he dozed off and on throughout the 45-minute lecture.
There were two main full-service dining rooms. We dined at the Alizar last night, and planned to dine at the Grand Pacific tonight. It was quite crowded when we arrived, and there was supposed to be a 30-minute wait. We took a beeper and left, and lucked out when it rang after about 20 minutes. We dined, then went to the theater for the evening show called Shout! in which five young women - part of the Jade professional crew - sang and danced to a whole series of ’60s tunes, including “To Sir with Love,” “These Boots Are Made for Walking,” “Those Were the Days,” and probably twenty other songs. It was bedtime when we returned to our room, as we have to be up early for tomorrow’s excursion into Rome.

Cruising the Mediterranean

Sunday December 12, 2010 Day 165

We arose early, walked in the dark to the train station and boarded the train headed west and south. We watched the sun lighten the horizon and kiss the snow-capped Pyrenees on its way up, saw pink flamingos and white windmills stark against the morning sky. This is an international train - the announcements are in French and Spanish.

We saw rows and rows of poplar trees serving as windbreaks along the edges of vineyards. We also groves of the same or similar trees planted in neat ranks and files, fully grown - hundreds of them. We saw these in France and Italy as well - we are not sure what they are. I don’t think they are fruit trees - they are too tall. But surely they are not grown for lumber in those neat rows. I think of timber farms as haphazard plantings. Maybe I just need to expand my horizons (stretch my imagination) a bit! But if they are for timber, they have a long way to go, as they are tall slender trees. Roger suggests soil conservation, soil stabilization, carbon offsets, truffle grounds . . .

There were glimpses of the Mediterranean, turreted castles on hills, tunnels, an old-fashioned Dutch-type windmill, terraced hills, mountains down to the sea, cities perched on mountains overlooking the sea, more tunnels, another town, tile roofs everywhere - no shingles. Each inlet into the Mediterranean is surrounded by a town which is cut off from neighboring towns by mountains - this made sea travel the most reasonable in times past. Today we travel into tunnels and over the mountains to get places. There was a ten-minute stop for unexpected passport check at Cerbere, just inside Spanish border.

A woman boarded in Spain with her little girl. The woman saw I had my computer open, asked me if I would charge her little round MP3 player. I obliged by plugging it in. The little girl entertained herself and me by going through a whole series of facial expressions, including several eyebrow-raises, cheek stretches and nostril-flarings. She was quite funny! After we entered Spain, a gentleman sat behind us with his cell phone or other device playing music. This is the first time we have encountered this in our travels - on trains in France, usually passengers use headphones or keep their musical devices silent.

We arrived on time in Barcelona and took the subway to the port stop. From there we walked to our ship’s berth - a mistake. It was farther than we expected and we were pooped when we got there. Also, in our focus toward finding our ship, I forgot about lunch and Roger didn’t speak up, so we were well beyond any restaurants before we realized it. When we got to the terminal around 1:00, I scouted around a bit and found a small restaurant where I bought some ham croquettes and French fries. Mediocre at best, but at least they were nourishment in our stomachs, and they were hot.

There was some sort of computer snafu and there was no boarding going on for the first hour and a half or so after we arrived, even though boarding was supposed to have begun at 11:00. We sat around and made friends with some of our fellow passengers. Finally the computer glitch was resolved and boarding began. The process has been streamlined considerably since we cruised about five years ago on Carnival. It took us less than five minutes to check in once we reached the front of the line.

Barcelona harbor

Once onboard, we dropped our backpack and jackets in our room and went to find some food. We had hamburgers and barbequed chicken on the 12th floor, then located desserts and ate one each along with some coffee. We were finishing dessert when Bobby and Beth, whom we met in the terminal, came along and we sat a bit and talked with them, or rather, Bobby talked and we listened and laughed. His tale is that he used to be a joyless, serious and shy guy until he had serious health problems, mostly arterial blockages, which apparently brought him to the brink of death and made him decide that he had better get out and enjoy life while he can. He said that he was in the hospital awaiting surgery for his arterial blockages, and after having a scan done three times, the doctor came into his room and asked him if he had ever had a stroke. Bobby said “no,” and the doctor promptly asked him why! One artery was 90% blocked, another 80% blocked. Bobby said he and Beth are on their 49th cruise!

After we left Bobby and Beth, we explored the ship then returned to our rooms to rest. Our luggage was delivered and we unpacked, then rested for an hour or so. We were too tired to go up and watch the ship depart, but our TV has a channel on which we could view a bow camera, so we turned it on and watched the ship execute a 180-degree turn in the harbor channel and start out to sea. Then we left for dinner. We had planned to see an acrobatic act in the theater after dinner, but there was a 20-minute wait for dinner in the dining room we picked, and when we entered the theater, the show was already underway and it was standing room only. So we returned to our room for the evening.

Getting ready to cruise

Saturday December 11, 2010 Day 164

We skipped the market at Les Arceaux this morning. We are trying to reduce the food in our house for when we are gone. We did some laundry in preparation for our upcoming trip. Roger took clothes to dryer - a rarity for us, but they wouldn’t have time to dry otherwise.

Roger went out to get some anti-calcaire tablets and to try to buy a camera battery - ours can only take five flash photos before the indicator blinks to tell us that the battery is running low. I ran an eBay check the other day and found that we can get one in the U.S. for as cheaply as a dollar or two. He priced the same thing here and found that the local camera store wants 53 Euros for the same battery. C’est trop cher! We will wait until we return to the States to get a new battery!

I walked to esplanade around 4:00 to pick up Roger from chess. He introduced me to a couple of the players, and we had to wait several minutes while two guys finished with Roger‘s chess set. From there we walked to the International Chapel for an evening of Christmas carols. Pages of song lyrics were lying on our chairs, and additionally, the lyrics were projected onto a screen. I noticed an interesting anomaly - the lyrics to the third verse of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing were printed (and projected on the screen) as “Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness!” I was sitting next to a guy who happened to be holding a music score to the song, and the lyrics were the same. Funny, I learned the lyrics years ago as “Hail the Son of Righteousness.” I sang “Son” instead of “Sun.” There were eats afterwards, and we stood around talking to several AWG members we knew. Maggie was quite complimentary of my voice, telling me it was too bad that I would not be around for the rest of the holiday season to join in more carols.

Afterward, we went to the Christmas market and I bought a netbook computer case at one of the booths. I had been eying it for a while now, and finally decided to take the plunge. The guy wanted to know if it was a gift. I said “Yes, for moi!” and kissed Roger, who pulled out cash to pay for it! On our way across the Esplanade, we came upon a truck with a monster-looking thing standing in the back of it. Weird!

We finished a couple of other errands, including printing our Barcelona hotel info and buying a hot baguette to go with soup for supper, then went home to pack and finish getting ready for our next big adventure.

AWG Book Club

Friday December 10, 2010 Day 163

I forgot to get powered sugar, so I sent Roger out to Carrefour to get some to finish off the Chewy Noels. He brought back exactly what I had seen in the store prior to this - a box marked “Sucre Poudre.” I opened it up and prepared to sift the powdered sugar over the bars, and discovered to my surprise that the box did not contain powdered sugar at all, but a medium-grained sugar, not much finer than the sugar I already have for baking! (Indeed, I have seen finer sugar in the U.S. called superfine sugar, which is very fine-grained but still not powdered.) Disaster! Well, not really, but I feel that it is the powdered sugar which completes the bars, soaking up some of the caramel-y butter and giving them that final delicious touch. Sigh.

After a morning of cleaning the apartment, this afternoon I took the bus to Anne’s house for the Christmas meeting of the AWG book club. Instead of discussing a book, it had been decided that each member would share brief Christmas readings of her choice.

Anne’s apartment was cozy and welcoming. We set our eats on the table and indulged in coffee or tea while waiting for various members to arrive. We finally started, still three members short. Katharine opened, reading a poem by John Betjeman entitled, simply, “Christmas,“ describing a picture of Christmas in London in verse.

Katharine reads her poem

Rosie read a piece by Clare Bevan called “The Christmas Play,” narrated by the quintessential little boy who wasn’t chosen for the Christmas play, where he wanted to be a soldier, but would have settled for being a tree, or even in the chorus. But alas, he only gets to help with the curtain and the setting up of the chairs. Such a woeful glimpse into a little boy’s heart.

Rosie reading from School Year

Pat read a little piece called The Twelve Days After Christmas by Frederick Silver. It opened “The first day after Christmas, my true love and I had a fight. And so I chopped the pear tree down and burned it just for spite.” That set the tone for the rest of her reading!

Pat, making us all laugh!

Anne shared a beautiful piece from The Frozen Thames, by Helen Humphries. The book opens with the introduction In its long history, the river Thames has frozen solid forty times. These are the stories of that frozen river. The book contains vignettes spread between 1142 and 1895, each of which brings us into the lives of those who experienced the phenomenon of the frozen Thames. Anne chose to read one narrated by the personal attendant to Queen Elizabeth I who, at the Queen’s bidding, put on trousers and assisted the Queen in target shooting with a bow and arrow on the ice. It was delightful, almost exotic in its descriptions of how different the world - and even the Queen - is when everything is frozen solid.

Anne took us to Merry Olde England

Laurence read a Russian tale from a dual-language book - French and Russian. Laurence read her own translation of the piece, in which an old person describes Christmas in Moscow to a younger person, perhaps a grandchild, and contrasts it with Christmas in Paris. Laurence also shared a Russian Christmas music CD with us.

And with Laurence, we traveled to Russia

I read Francis Pharcellus Church’s “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus” from the 1897 New York Sun. I opened with a brief history of the piece, gleaned from Wikipedia, then shared the piece, which the most reprinted editorial ever to run in any newspaper in the English language.

Peggy graced us with her presence, but did not read.

Peggy

Maggie put on her Christmas hat, complete with braids, and read Longfellow’s “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Before reading it, she shared some of its history, including the fact that it was written in the shadow of the Civil War, and that two of the verses, which are usually omitted when it is sung today, specifically reference the sound of cannon thunder in the South which drowned the sound of carols, “as if an earthquake rent the hearthstones of a continent.” Such a different take on the song! The British members among us were unfamiliar with the carol, so Maggie and I sang the first verse.

Maggie, complete with costume

Chris shared with us Talking Turkey, by Benjamin Zephaniah. “Be nice to your turkeys this Christmas, because turkeys just want to have fun.” A wickedly funny commentary on politics and veganism turkeys!

Chris, making us sympathetic to turkeys

Mariannick closed with a Christmas quiz, testing our knowledge of Christmas lore and fact. We were quick to shout out some of the answers, but occasional questions stumped us. For instance, across the entire twelve days, how many gifts did the recipient receive during the Twelve Days of Christmas? 364! In what piece of English literature did St. Nicholas first appear? Who wrote the poem? “Twas the Night Before Christmas” by Clement Moore. It was a lovely ending to an afternoon of Christmas memories and Christmas sharing.

Mariannick, challenging our Christmas knowledge

Once the readings were complete, we delved into the goodies everyone brought, including red velvet cake, a buche de Noel, traditional Christmas tree cookies, pecan bars, finger sandwiches and too many other goodies! We left completely stuffed! And since Anne’s birthday was the day before, we sang Happy Birthday to her.

My Chewy Noels were a big hit. I discussed with the group that they had not come out as well as they should have, due in part to the faulty oven, in part to the lack of powdered sugar, and because ingredients are just different here in France from those in the U.S. Here, eggs are not refrigerated before marketing because they cannot be sold as “fresh eggs” if they have been refrigerated. Flour comes as Type 45 or Type 55, and I am not certain what the difference is. (I think Type 45 is akin to cake flour, Type 55 akin to regular but unbleached flour, and higher numbers to coarser grinds.) Anyway, Rosie remarked that if these were the “failures,” she couldn’t wait to taste the successful bars! I promised to send everyone the recipe.

I took the bus home with Peggy, and dragged her in to give her a Christmas gift and carrots which will not be good after two weeks in our refrigerator while we are gone. I also gave her a squeegee. When she dined with us at our apartment a couple of months ago, she commented on the squeegee in our bathroom and asked where we got it. Ours came with the apartment, but I was pretty sure I had seen one in the Euro Store or the 2 Euro Store, but when I looked, I was unsuccessful in locating one until last week, so I bought one for her. Unfortunately I left camera at Anne’s, so I arranged to get it tomorrow at the carol service at the International Chapel.

Olive picking

Thursday December 9, 2010 Day 162

We packed a picnic lunch (soup, Petits Ecoliers, chocolate, clementines) and walked to Peggy’s house, where Egan greeted us by throwing herself on us. She is a modest-sized but incredibly strong and wiry dog whose effusive greetings leave one seeking protection from her by presenting one‘s back to her. The three of us, minus Egan (big mistake!) piled into Peggy’s car and headed to the meeting point where we met four other ladies and headed northwest of Montpellier for a morning of olive picking. Our host, Serge, and his wife, Monique, took us first to some olive trees near his own where we stopped and Serge began to discuss olive-growing and picking - unfortunately in French, so I only got about half of what he was saying. He discussed the different varieties of olives and we talked about damage to the trees and the olives by bugs, frost and other forces of nature. He had a great deal of freeze damage - he said he probably lost 60% or more of his crop to the freeze. Most of the trees in the grove had already been picked. After a discussion, we moved on up the hill and entered Serge’s olive grove. Serge is a hobby farmer - he is a retired chemistry teacher and makes money giving olive pickings and selling his oil and olives. Roger called it “Olive Tourism” - this is the way in which he markets much of his oil.

Our host, Serge

Our lovely hostess, Monique

We got to see an electric olive picker. It is a long tool somewhat reminiscent of a weed-eater, but the head is probably not as heavy. The battery pack for the picker is worn on the operator’s back in a vest so as to keep down the weight of the picker. The head of the picker is a flexible plastic comb-like instrument. The operator places the comb along the limb and rakes it toward the end of the limb. The picker uses a combination of vibration and raking along the branch to strip the branch of olives. The flexible plastic teeth did little damage to tree. The trees were hand-stripped of damaged olives before the olive picker was used. The machine-plucked olives fell into nets spread under the trees, and the nets were then gathered and their contents poured into crates.

Electric olive picker

Egan could have come here! This is open countryside with very few people around. She would have had a ball chasing birds and romping among the fields. In retrospect, Peggy was sorry that she didn’t bring the dog, but she was unsure of the lay of things, so left her at home in the back yard.

We learned more history and background, and Serge gave more discussion of olive picking. One does not pick one olive at a time - one reaches to the first olive on the branch, then grabs the whole branch and pulls all the way to the end, bringing off all the olives into the hand. Examine the handful, bad ones onto the ground, good ones into the bucket. 60-70% onto ground. This was different from other fruit-picking we have done in that we were not tempted to eat these raw. There were bottles hanging from the trees, and Serge explained that these contain bait to attract a parasite which will otherwise attack the trees.

The ground was stony beneath the trees and what soil there is was chalky - not good for growing most crops! We did not understand why, but after the trees were planted, a rock crusher was used to crush a lot of rocks, but not the ones close to the trees. We did not understand why.

Roger the olive picker

After much discussion, olive buckets were distributed and we began to pick olives in earnest. The group picked a crate to crate-and-a-half. Then it was picnic time. We all brought food to share, including butternut squash soup, vegetable soup, two pasta salads, grain baguette, other bread, starters of olives (naturally!), both black and green, Maggie’s mulled wine punch w/fruit and spices. Today was Anne’s birthday, so Maggie brought a cake with some of those trick candles which were supposed to stay lit in the wind, but not many of them did. And of course, there was wine.



Anne, blowing out the candles on the cake



After lunch, Serge offered us the olives we had picked, and the group took almost all of them. He provided verbal instructions regarding preparation in salt or brine. Roger and I did not take olives - we will not have time to stir them from time to time over the coming weeks, as we will be doing too much traveling. Serge also offered bottles of olive oil for sale, and we bought one. He told us to let is sit for a while to allow the olive pulp to settle to the bottom. On the way home, Peggy remarked that she likes hers with the olive pulp still in it.

Olives, ripe for the picking

It was a long day, but we enjoyed the education about olives, olive picking, olive preservation and olive oil. Now, if only they didn’t have all those calories!