Having just finished our Rhine River cruise with a wonderful outcome and lots to commend it, we are already looking forward to our next Viking cruise, which is the eleven-day Greek Odyssey cruise through the Aegean in late February and early March (decidedly off-season, but appealing to us for the obvious reasons of less crowds in the Mediterranean). The way that cruise has shaped up is that we are a group of eight. We are going with three other couples from the neighborhood, only one of which we have travelled with before. The old hands will be Faraj & Yasuko, who were with us for Southeast Asia (not a cruise) and our Cape Horn extravaganzas. F&Y are particularly easy to travel with since they are joiners and pretty much go along with whatever everyone else wants to do. They very explicitly say that they would not be traveling were it not for friends like us leading the way, so they are very happy to be followers. That has always struck me as strange given how daring they both were in their youth with Faraj leaving Iran to work in Japan (where he an Yasuko met), Yasuko, as a young Japanese woman, leaving her homeland to move to a not-so-inviting Iran, and then both of them pulling up stakes in the late 70s to move to Oregon, where they ultimately made a fine life for themselves through education and diligent hard work. Perhaps all that youthful adventure used up their quotient of bravado, but for whatever reason, they do not venture forth globally by themselves but are thrilled to do so with a gang of neighbors they have known for a few years. Faraj & Yasuko are among the most pleasant and gracious people we have ever met.
The second couple are Joe and Pat. Oddly enough, Pat, while very much Americanized from living her life in Chicago, is also Japanese by descent. Joe is a Brit and is actually a Green Card holder and permanent resident, but not a U.S. citizen. Joe is a nuclear physicist by training and a fusion entrepreneur by vocation…that alone makes for an interesting conversation-starter. So, they too are very worldly in their own ways and travel perhaps even more than we do. They just got back from a Croatian trip/cruise and they are always up for a new trip so long as it doesn’t conflict with any number of other trips they have planned. They are perhaps the most frequent Mexico travelers in our group and Joe, being a prototypical Brit, certainly enjoys his cocktails no matter what country he is traveling to. He may be the only cruise companion we have ever traveled with who has decidedly opted for the Viking Silver Spirits Beverage Package (which I think he got for free as a promotion). Joe is also a very engaged and detail-oriented traveler who likes to be on top of the game and always getting the best deal…though he doesn’t seem to scrimp of his pleasures either. Joe is always quick-witted and very funny in his own sharp-edged way. I very much enjoy sparring with him, but do so cautiously. Pat is co-President of the Hidden Meadows Garden Club with Kim and they are a great team that both work hard with equally good administrative skills. Pat & Joe are always fun to be with.
The late-comers to this traveling band of gypsies is Quynh & Gordon. They live on the ridge across and to the northwest of us on a 13-acre promontory that suits their paragliding spirits (yes, they actually paraglide). Quynh is an obstetric surgeon of Vietnamese extraction who grew up in the Bay Area, attended Stanford as an undergraduate and then Harvard Medical School. I think she may have even done her residency at Johns Hopkins, so to say that she is brilliantly accomplished might be an understatement. Gordon is an electrical contractor who spent 17 years in the military, first with the Navy and then with the Army (I had no idea that happened). He is a man’s man who has every mechanical toy known to man ranging from sailboats to racetrack motorcycles. He and I have become riding buddies over the last year (along with Len, our friend Melisa’s brother) and Gordon is still a bit of an enigma to me. He rides a racing motorcycle on the Laguna Seca track, but is a bit scared of riding fast up S6 to Mount Palomar. He doesn’t seem all these daring thrill sports and yet if you ask him some detail about it he is a bit sketchy on how everything works. He lacks a classical education yet seems genuinely interested in history and antiquities even though he doesn’t seem to have pieced the historical facts together quite yet. Quynh is an extremely exuberant person who goes over-the-top with whatever she does. They are both quirky, but we enjoy their company.
Last night, as Quynh’s urging, we gathered at their house for a surf & turf dinner designed to prepare us for our upcoming cruise through the Aegean together. F&Y are off on their annual Oregon salmon fishing trip, so it was just the six of us. To begin with, somewhere along the way, the turf part of the menu got dropped, so the meal was a huge lobster tail for us each. We walked into the house greeted by Quynh in a white toga and Gordon complaining that he would not don the Mark Antony outfit Quynh had laid out for him. The dining room wall was adorned like an Athenian temple and Quynh had researched all the Greek food and beverage options available on Google. She offered up pomegranate juice and some bitter beetroot drink as well as an array of starter snacks with grape leaves, feta cheese and both baba ghanoush (called Melitzanosalata in Greece) and tzatziki. For desert Quynh had arranged for a selection of honey Baklava and Turkish Delights (we are touching on Turkey during the cruise). This was all to get us in the mood for our Greek Odyssey. Before and after the main course, we reviewed the cruise with a particular emphasis on the shore excursion we would want to partake of. There’s a whole travel philosophy which needs to be explored with a group newly traveling together. Do you like morning or afternoon activities? Do you like easy, moderate or strenuous activities? Do you you want to economize on extras or do you want to throw fiscal caution to the wind?
The cruise starts and end in Athens, so Athens was the easiest venue to discuss since those who wanted more of Athens could come early or stay late and those of us who had done Athens already could take a less aggressive approach. There’s is only one sea day of the eleven (a benefit of traveling in a tight area like the Aegean), so there were lots of shore excursions to consider. We cut through them with a fairly universal agreement that the included tours would mostly suffice and that those who wanted some special antiquity tour or sightseeing venue would book those on their own with advisement to the rest of us should we want to join. I know my preferences ran towards seeing the Palace of Knossos on Crete and the Mycenaean ruins near Napflio. No one seemed interested in the various cooking classes that Viking offers, nor with the various bicycle and wine-tasting tours. This bodes well for a consistent traveling group. The shore excursion reservations open up in a week, which was why this early gathering was necessary. We have until December to decide on any specialty restaurant reservations, something Kim and I only have a half-hearted interest in since we find all Viking food exceptional, and opting for the World Cafe buffet is never a hardship. The evening ended with lots of Greek enthusiasm and a little bit of reminder of how little I like grape leaves…