We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
No, I'm not a member. Can't say I've ever come close. Not even first base. The closest I've ever come was, while sitting in a bulkhead seat with the flight attendant in a jump seat across from me, hearing her stories of people she'd caught while joining. She informed my seatmate and I that it was illegal (apparently it's not) and you can get in quite a bit of trouble if caught (you can).
This isn't the kind of thing I normally spend time thinking about, but this morning I saw this article. In addition, my best friend is, at the moment I'm writing, somewhere over the North Pole on his way back from Hong Kong. As a result, the concept piqued my interest.
Aside from my wife, I can't say I've ever been remotely interested in any of my seatmates.
I've had plenty of good (and bad) interactions with women on a plane. I had a woman yell at me for wearing a Fox News shirt (I used to work there). I calmly explained to her that it's based in New York, so it's chock full of Democrats, which got a smattering of applause. I helped a girl returning from college, who'd never flown before, find her luggage and reunite with her family. I also had a very cute woman grab my arm, to the point of pain, as she chanted something in Spanish and grasped her Bible during takeoff. I'm guessing she was saying the Hail Mary, but I'll never know. I didn't feel like I should pry her loose, her fear was palpable and the flight was a red-eye. I just wanted her to calm down so I could go to sleep.
Offshore, blustery, big swells, very bumpy ride to make it fun, headed towards the Canaries on a close reach - just as Columbus used to do on the trip west. Sea legs. I love the days at sea when you can feel the power of nature. All wonderful, exhilarating. Hold on to your hat - and your wine glass.
Mrs. BD and I traveled from the port of Agadir up into the Atlas Mountains, took a 6-hour mountain hike, had a very late lunch/early supper, then headed back to port to sail out into the Atlantic towards the Canary Islands at dusk. That's what I call a full day.
People say we're adventurous, but we just want to live life abundantly, with variety.
The kasbah that Mrs. BD discovered, in the mountains (those are all Argan trees):
More photo travelogue below the fold - lots of interesting photos for those who have never been in the Atlas Mountains -
Women know about Argan Oil. It is made from the nut (seed) of the Argan fruit. It is in many beauty and hair products nowadays, often termed "Moroccan Oil."
In pure form, it is quite expensive and desirable (we brought some of the pure stuff home for the family gals). In Morocco, it is used like olive oil too. Nice, nutty flavor. The tree seems to be the main tree in dry southern Morocco. From our November hike in the Atlas Mountain foothills, these are all Argan trees (except the donkeys).
On our sailing ship in November, there was an Open Bridge policy. You could go there any time -24 hrs/day - and hang out and ask questions about the sail-handling, ship-handling, collision-avoidance, and general navigation. Always one mate and one watchman on duty, along with the 15-minute buzzer-button to prevent on-watch sleep.
Nothing much to do or see in Casablanca so we took the long drive to Marrakesh. Hours of farm fields, scattered herds of goats or sheep with shepherds. Almost desert. An occasional mud hut or minor kasbah scattered around, and some large farm towns. Plenty of donkeys working, few tractors.
I posted about some of the people we met first, because most interesting. We flew to Madrid then Lisbon, spent a couple of days in Lisbon before catching our sailboat in Lisbon harbor.
We took the long tram (trolley) ride out to Belem to look at the monastery. Best pastry in the world, Pasteis de Belem. My pic before sprinkling the powered sugar on it. When the King abolished monasteries, the monks of Belem went into the pastry biz. Damn good coffee too. The place makes 8 million of these custard pastries each year with the monks' secret recipe.
More of my Lisbon and Portugal pics below the fold -
Heading out of the port of Lisbon into the Atlantic at night, at low tide, and with maximum heel to fit under the Lisbon bridge. I think we only had a couple of meters to spare. Mrs. BD thought the drivers on the bridge must have been scared to death. I was not too relaxed, myself.
On departing each port they would blast their "Sail Away" theme music. Leaving port at night under those majestic sails is thrilling:
Mrs. BD had planned for us to take a cab from the port of Agadir to a kasbah in the hinterlands, out in the Atlas mountains, for a day of hiking in those mountains. As I say, she is quite a trip-planner. She was determined to hike the Atlas. Why not?
We arrived at the mountain kasbah, and a Berber shepherd met us there. He wears a blue towel on his head, hanging down his back. Naturally, he speaks only Berber (and no Arabic or French either). A humble Berber, he stays outside the kasbah. We hike along a paved road until the paving ends down towards his home village. It's about twelve mud huts, some with cinder block additions, with dirt paths and plenty or trash strewn around. Donkeys strewn around too, and goats. These mountain Berbers are materially poor, but nobody told them that yet.
He took us to the schoolhouse (which looked like an abandoned cinder block shed) and we met the teacher, a brown Berber blue-eyed beauty who spoke good French. (No photo - Berber women are too shy to be photographed.) She asked us to say hello to the little Berber kids because they have never seen an American. So I did the "Bonjours, enfants" thing.
Then, as we begin hiking up a mountain and out of this village, our guide Hamid pulls out his cell phone and calls his buddy Assam to join us. Eventually, Assam catches up with us with the slow, steady lope that mountain people use in hot climates. This was good because Assam had been to high school somewhere and spoke good French. He also knew about 50 words of English.
So as we hike I try to chat with Assam in my rusty French while he translates to Berber if needed. He is around 45, educated, has never been outside Morocco. He explained that the Berbers love Americans because the embassy is sympathetic to them. Berbers, he says, hate the Muslim "invaders" and refuse to learn Arabic although it is by law that they are supposed to. He says he, like the Berber people in general, has no religion at all. He says the Arabs oppress the Berber.
They both had their dogs with them. Mrs. BD showed them pictures of our dog and of NYC on her iPhone. They were impressed by a pic of last winter's snow at our old house.
He says that Hamid has children in the village, but he has none. He told me that his wife died ten years ago and that he has not gotten over it. Then, "Changez le sujet, please."
We saw 2 wild camels on a distant mountaintop. That was a first for me. "Voila, deux chameaux." Actually, dromedaries.
We also saw goats in trees.
As we approach a mountaintop, Assam asks me to help them collect dead branches from the Argan trees. We built a stone fireplace and had a Berber mint-tea ceremony up there. It is quite elaborate. Assam pulled out his stub of a pipe for a smoke, so I asked him if he would like an American cigarette. Of course. Never tried one before. He took a deep inhale of a Marlboro menthol, and jumped in the air. "C'est froid, c'est froid, hahaha." So Hamid had to try one too, and they both laughed their butts off. I explained that this was mint tobacco, like mint tea.
At the end of our 6-hour (pathless) rocky and desert-like hike, I gave Assam the pack of Marlboros to share with his friends. A real treat. You can not tip a Berber - in their culture it is an insult - so we asked the lady at the kasbah to explain to Hamid that my $20 to him was "a gift to his family." That was ok.
When I told a lefty friend about this adventure, she said we were crazy to go alone into the wilderness with these people. I told her she was racist.
Much of central Lisbon is relatively new, rebuilt after the massive 1755 earthquake. The old Muslim center remained mostly intact but they chased the Muslims away a long time ago. In the Alfama, there is Fado all over at night when you wander down the old narrow alleys. You hear it issuing from the entrances of all of the cafes. "Fado" means fate, or destiny. It's a mix of ancient sad folk tunes with the exotic Muslim musical influence.
Mrs. BD was not going to leave Portugal before getting some good Fado. In Lisbon, it is like jazz in New York. Middle-aged afficionados love it, but the youth like American pop. We went to the best Fado club one night, Clube de Fado. In the basement club, it felt like Greenwich Village in the old days. They had an excellent band - bass, mandolino, guitar. We did hear this same lady singing:
We were hanging on to the same post on the #15 trolley which runs through Lisbon from the Comercio Plaza out along the river to the Jerónimos Monastery in Belem. Petite gal, Chilean as it turned out because we got chatting about the Lisbon trolley system and then about her.
She wore her yellow backpack backwards on her chest for safety on public transport, she explained. During the ride, she gave me her story. She graduated from college in Santiago a year ago, went to work for the family construction business. Decided she wanted to see the world before becoming too invested in work. I asked her where she had been thus far on her solitary travels. She told me, in perfect English: Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Texas, New York, Virginia, Miami, Dublin, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Madrid. "Maybe I forgot some places."
"Do you take pictures?"
"No pictures. I carry no camera. I just try to be where I am at the moment, to absorb it on my travel. I write notes at night to remember."
"Wow," I said. "I am impressed with your story. Where next after Portugal?"
"Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Greece, then Istanbul if I have time, then I must fly home to Santiago. I've been away for over six months already, and it's time I got back to work. My Dad needs me in the business.
"How do you like the Fado?"
"I love the Fado. The good Fado. The bad Fado is not so good. I would stay here in Lisbon, but I can not."
"How has it been?"
"Great fun. Everything is interesting to me, all you have to do is talk to people and study the travel books. I love Lisbon, so manageable and friendly."
She was right. It is. And she is one adventurous little sweetie.
There are many ways to live a life. During my (brief) life thus far, I have seen a lot of lives up close. There is no right way to do it, and the safe bourgeois way is not any ideal.
We hired Ricardo with his new Toyota minivan as a day guide out of Lisbon on the recommendation of our perfect boutique hotel, Palacete Chafariz d'el Rei in the Alfama. (Indeed, Portugal, like Spain, is full of Muslim cultural remnants.) He took us out around the countryside and the ocean shores because we handled the city on our own on foot and on the trolleys.
Ricardo seemed about 35 years old, married to a psychologist from the Azores but no kids yet - "Not until I fulfill my need for adventure." He is tall and devilishly dashing, macho. Makes spare cash on the side as a fashion model and thinks it is hilarious that he can do that. Speaks Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin and is teaching himself Arabic for fun. Grew up in rural northern Portugal, family had no money for his college so joined the army which trained him as a sniper and gave him language school, and eventually assigned him to UN duties in Somalia, Bosnia, and Africa. Then the army paid him to go to the University of Lisbon, from which he spent a year at the University of London. Then he taught high school history for a few years but quit in disgust because the kids did not seem to be excited to learn anything.
Thus he began his career as a personal guide/historian. When we hired him, he had just returned from running a 5-day camping trek in Iceland. Showed me his iPhone glacier pics and their tent camps by the hot springs. He loves New England in the autumn, especially Vermont, is planning a trip with his father in law to drive from NYC to LA in a camper. They want to hike the Grand Canyon and the Rockies, and to drive on Route 66. He says that the Portuguese do not aspire to money because life is beautiful, but aspire to live with spirit, joy, friendship, and love. That is our culture, he said. He is an exemplar.
He says the Portuguese must learn languages because nobody speaks theirs.
We quickly tired of the routine tourist places he took us to, so we asked him to take us to his favorite countryside place for a typical lunch. He got on his iPhone, called the simple place in the middle of nowhere to ask them to stay open late for his Americans, and the result with their own farm wines was dazzling. One of maybe two or three high points of the whole trip. We insisted that he dine with us on the octopus, lamb, fish, and that fluffy Portuguese cheesecake with the fruit preserves on top. A feast. We skipped dinner on the boat that night.
How he seems to be pals with every cheery cop in Lisbon is beyond me. They come up to his car and slap hands. The police in my town are grouchy to everybody even though we pay their salaries. Or maybe because we do.
(Portuguese cooking tip from that place: We all hate rubbery octopus and squid. For tender octopus and/or squid, freeze first for 12 hours, then boil - and then sautee or grill. Sweet, succulent, and tender.)
In Las Palmas on Gran Canaria (5th largest city of Spain despite being on Canary Islands) we hired a cab for the day to take us to all the places Mrs. BD had mapped out. We agreed to a price of $80 (I call Euros "dollars" for the fun of it) for as long as we wanted him - all day. After driving us around for about 6 hours or so, at 3 pm, we managed to indicate to him that we wanted to stroll around the old city and find some "authentico" late lunch (guy spoke Spanish only - not a single word of English). We agreed he would pick us up at 5, 2 hours later, in front of the old basilica. That was five fingers.
Then he drove off without asking for a penny. We explored the old city, checked out Columbus' house there, grabbed some delicious grilled fish and vegetables and a beer and waited for him to return to the large ancient square where they were blasting ridiculous Spanish versions of American Oldies - like They're Coming to Take You Away, HaHa and Camptown Races. Doo-dah, doo-dah.Hilarious.
At 5 on the dot, he pulled up to drive us back to the seaport. I gave him an excessive $20 tip to reward his trusting nature.
For charming relaxed long-weekend getaways, it's Bermuda for people on the east coast.
Bermuda is nearby and a cheap, quick flight, is warmed by the Gulf Stream, is surrounded by wonderful coral reefs, and remains entirely British in custom and manner. There is world-class golf year-round, but in spring and fall it's perfect for everything - snorkeling, rent a whaler, tennis, motorbiking and exploring. It's not just for honeymooners and sailors. Dark and Stormys, Bermuda Fish Chowder, baked Grouper. Good stuff. Not to mention the location of The Tempest.
A marriage needs a little Bermuda sometimes.
Maggie's Farmers like Cambridge Beaches. It is understated, modest, traditional, and where the Brit royals have always stayed. Yes, you dress for dinner. It's not your Caribbean or your Hawaii.
I have a few friends who have taken trips to France or Italy to attend 5-day to one week hands-on cooking schools. Generally, husband and wife participate although one is usually more interested than the other. Some also offer classes for youth.
Many of the schools run from around noon or 1 through suppertime, when the students eat their creations together. The meal planning and local shopping are part of most courses except for the ones sited on farms.
People have told me that these have been the most fun they have ever had while traveling because it gets you into the culture and away from the "sights."
Just for fun, you can google "tourist cooking schools near Paris," or "in Provence", or "in Italy," etc. As you know, each region of Italy has its own cuisine and its own different produce.
On your first visit, you have to stop by all of the main tourist destinations and see double late at night on the Spanish Steps. Vatican, all that. It's required. Generally-speaking, I do not think much of Rome itself as a city to visit, but I feel the same way about Venice so ignore me if you want to.
However, the best thing to do in Rome is to take a tour of Ostia - Ostia Antica. It far surpasses Herculaneum and Pompeii as a preserved Roman urban site. It's the old port of Rome, the ancient harbor which silted up but was never destroyed. A stroll around there will make you realize that the Romans lived quite similarly to the way Americans live today.
Central heat, fast food, running water, sanitary toilets, shopping areas, multi-story apartment buildings, whorehouses, gambling dens, paved streets, warehouses, factories, etc. They did not wear togas, either - except the senators and their ilk. They did not have tomatoes.
If you love the ocean, and if you like good deals, Holland-America offers deals on their repositioning voyages. I highly recommend the trans-Atlantic. Spend 2 days in London or Paris, and then fly home. It's all about being at sea, watching the ocean and the birds and the whales, and being served hot drinks on the deck chairs. Repositioning Cruises
Well, that's really what she asked me. I always try to be agreeable - except when I do not.
Yes, I am always ok with picking up a nice rental car at any airport in the world and heading out towards God knows where like some farmhouse miles up unmarked dirt roads in the Sicilian boondocks, but rockin and rollin at sea on an elegant craft with interesting people is fine with me too. It's the lazy way.
Windstar, best small ship sailing in the world. We'll be sailing in the eastern Atlantic and stopping by some cool ports, including Lisbon, Tenerife and North Africa.
New places for the curious to explore. Carpe diem. Home and constant work may suit me best, but I can't be a stick in the mud and Mrs. BD is a skilled, adventurous, and resourceful travelmeister who only wants to do things the average American tourist doesn't do. Lucky me. All of my kids are like her with adventurous travel.
I love being at sea. I love a smoke and coffee on deck watching dawn break over Mother Ocean when everybody is still asleep. I like stormy weather at sea. I am fascinated by the maneuvering into ports. I especially like to hang out with the helmsman and the navigator during transits. Shoulda been in the USN and I could have gotten it out of my system as my brother in law did.
He still regrets his 'Nam tattoos, and now hates boats of all sorts but especially Destroyers.
Holland-America Line is the official line of Maggie's, but we have several friends who love Windstar so we have to give it a try. A free ad for Windstar:
Re-posted from Oct, 2014. Was it really a year ago? Seems like yesterday.
We began our jolly urban hike on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, Battery Park, where the ferries depart to Staten Island, Ellis Island, and the Statue of Liberty.
What is fatiguing is not the hiking itself - it's the overstimulation. So much going on, so much to look at.
Below the fold, a photo summary of our hike, with relevant links -
Litchfield County is the quaintest, best-preserved antique corner of Connecticut. The area was well-settled in the early 1700s and, judging by the size and style of all of the old farmhouses, these were prosperous farmers.
In this area, most of the old farms have been converted to weekend estates for the 1%. The antique places are perfectly-maintained. Old barns everywhere, still looking good. Thanks for all that charm and beauty, 1%ers.
We went over there and took a drive through Southbury, Woodbury, Washington, and Washington Depot. Nice. We were en route to see the Hollister House Gardens in Washington (good pics on their site). Mrs. BD wanted to check it out and to maybe get some garden inspiration.
The garden "rooms" are strongly architectural with walls and hedges, lots of stone, while the plantings are a jumble - or maybe not - probably a well-planned jumble. Engish-style gardens, the sorts of gardens my Mom aspired to. It's the owner's life work.
We had an early supper at the GW Tavern. Good fish. Too much food. I'd put the place in the "Stuff-and-Waddle" category of restaurant, what my sister calls "Sticky Bun restaurants."
My pics of the garden below the fold might or might not inspire your gardening -
For charming relaxed long-weekend getaways, it's Bermuda for people on the east coast.
Well, that's really what she asked me. I always try to be agreeable - except when I do not. 
With Tunisia in the news this week (