ROME: THE ROME TEMPLE,

 March 23-24, 2024      

Our return flights to the US went through Rome, where the shortest layover was something like ten hours, so we decided just to take a full day and enjoy some of the Eternal City.

Feker picked us up at our hotel and dropped us off at the front entrance to the airport, then parked the car and joined us. 

We had an interesting experience at the Tunisia International Airport. Bob checked a bag because he had liquids he had purchased in Sicily that he didn't want to forfeit, but checking the back was almost (or over) $100 USD. Stan's bag was too heavy and they were going to make him check it as well, but Feker opened Stan's suitcase and started taking things out to go into his backpack and Chris's suitcase, which had already been weighed and tagged and so weight wasn't an issue. Feker got Stan's suitcase down to the given maximum, or close enough. It's a dumb system and easy to get around.

We finally got through, boarded, and had a flight to Rome that lasted an hour and about 20 minutes. 

Bob collected his checked bag and we went outside to grab a taxi. Because we were going to our hotel, which was not in the city center of Rome (which has a standard €50 taxi fee, we had to find another taxi. One driver was watching for those like us who were going to the airport area, which was obviously much closer than the downtown area. We ended up paying €50, the same amount as a ride four times as long to the city center. It was such a rip off.

We dropped our bags in our room and went outside to call a ride to take us to the Rome LDS Temple Visitor Center. We waited and waited, and it appeared the taxi may have gone to the temple rather than to where we were. I tried calling but got a lengthy voice message in Italian. We finally cancelled for a €3 charge and tried again. This one took longer than expected but did actually show up. Our ride to the temple, which is pretty far away from the tourist part of Rome, took about 45 minutes and cost over $100 US. 

This 41,010-square-foot temple was announced in 2008 and dedicated in 2019 by LDS Church President Russell Nelson. The dedication event was the first time ever that the entire First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gathered in one location outside the United States, so it was a big deal.

The temple was closed for two weeks for cleaning when we were there, When it is open, only members of the LDS Church who hold a temple recommend are allowed to enter.

ITALY 2024: LOS ANGELES TO ISTANBUL TO NAPLES

Wednesday, March 13-14, 2024

We planned a trip to Italy, Malta, and Tunisia during my spring break in March 2024 and invited my sister Chris and her husband Stan to join us. The trip started off a bit rocky. On Sunday morning, we were notified by Lufthansa that our Wednesday flight from LAX through Munich to Naples had been cancelled due to an airline cabin worker strike planned for that day. They offered us flights on Thursday, which would have ruined our plans for Naples. We booked a new flight for Wednesday with Turkish Air, and Travelocity promised to refund the cost of our initial round-trip tickets.

Chris and Stan, flying in from Montana, did not have the luxury of the flight options we had, and they ended up having to book their flight to Naples a day earlier, arriving on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. What a hassle.

We left for LAX at 8:30 AM, and our phone's navigation took us on the most bizarre route to avoid morning rush hour traffic, including segments through residential neighborhoods. After 2¼ hours of driving, we made it to our prepaid parking at the Hilton. Even after waiting what seemed like an usually long time for the hotel shuttle and then picking up our boarding passes at the Turkish Air desk (we had only carry on luggage), we had time to eat lunch.

Our first leg to Istanbul was over 12 hours long. (I watched 3½ movies--Priscilla, Barbie, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and half of an Inspector Poirot movie that I finished on the return flight.) It was our first time on Turkish Air, and we loved everything about it EXCEPT for very cramped seating. The food was great--stuffed pasta shells for dinner and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We especially liked the flight attendant outfits.  They did ditch the hats after take-off.

Leaving Los Angeles, and arriving (I think?) in Turkey:

INDONESIA - JAVA: SURABAYA, PART I (CITY TOUR)

 July 7, 2023

We made our way out of the jungle of Borneo and to the airport in Pangkalan Bun, a small facility with just one runway. I love the blue sign below. At first I thought it was a play room for kids--a nursery--but then I realized from the image that it is a room where mothers can nurse their babies.

We flew on Nam Air, an Indoneisan regional airline based in Jakarta.

Our flight from Sumatra to Surabaya on the island of Java took about an hour and a half. Surabaya's Juanda International Airport is the third busiest airport in Indonesia. In 2019, it had about 24 million passengers. Compare that to the 3rd busiest airport in the United States, Denver, which had 34 million passengers. The numbers are a lot closer than I would have guessed.

I was a little surprised to see Beard Papa's--a Japanese creme puff chain--in the Juanda Airport. Of course, we have them in the US too, usually attached to Asian grocery stores.

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA: JEWISH SYNAGOGUE AND MUSEUM

The oldest Jewish congregation in South Africa, founded in 1841, is Gardens Shul (formerly Cape Town Hebrew Congregation). It is considered the "Mother Synagogue" of South Africa. It includes two buildings, an 1863 synagogue and a 1905 synagogue. (The originally 1849 building is gone.)

A guide told us that this orthodox synagogue seats 1,100.  Since there are only 800 Orthodox Jews in Cape Town, it's probably never hard to find a seat.

I loved the stained glass windows, not something I usually associate with Judaism:

Close-up of two of the panes:

ASHGABAT, TURKMENISTAN: TWO MOSQUES

Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque (aka Gypjak Mosque) is the largest mosque in Central Asia and the main mosque of Turkmenistan. "Turkmenbashi" means "head of the Turkmen" and was the title the first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, gave to himself. In fact, it was he who ordered this mosque to be built and who chose the village of Gypjak for its location, about 5 miles outside of Ashgabat and "coincidentally" his birthplace.

The gold-covered dome is 164 feet wide. By way of comparison, the dome on the U.S. Capitol is 135 feet wide.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: BASILICA OF THE NATIONAL SHRINE OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Our son was graduating from Columbia University in May 2017, and we decided to expand our trip to his graduation in New York City to include Washington, D.C., which we had both visited (Bob in 1978 and I in 1973 and 1987), but never together. We figured a lot had probably changed since we were there last, and we knew that WE and what we liked to see had certainly changed.

We took a non-stop red-eye flight out of LAX that left at 10:30 PM and arrived at 6:30 AM, and in spite of our lack of sleep, we hit the ground running, which is our M.O. for travel. After picking up a rental car in a painfully slow process at Budget Car Rental (an hour to get a car with only two people in front of us in line), we were off to our first destination: The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

One of the reasons we wanted to see this church is because we recently added "Basilicas" to our list of things to see.  Before I started blogging, we visited these basilicas, and probably quite a few more that I can't remember or identify:
     Notre Dame Cathedral/Basilica in Paris, France
     Cathedral/Basilica of Our Lady of Chartres in Chartres, France
     Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on Montmarte in Paris, France
     Speyer Cathedral/Basilica in Speyer, Germany
     St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, Italy
     Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Italy
     Florence Cathedral in Florence, Italy
     Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy
     St. Mark's Cathedral/Basilica in Venice, Italy
     Santa Croce in Florence, Italy
     Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain

Since I've started keeping a blog of our travels, we have been to these basilicas:
     Hagia Sophia Basilica in Istanbul, Turkey
     Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal, Canada
     Basilica of St. James in Prague, Czech Republic 
     St. Stephen's Basilica, Budapest, Hungary
     St. Kastor Basilica in Koblenz, Germany
     Strasbourg Cathedral/Basilica in Strasbourg, France
     Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile, Alabama
     Memorial Church of Moses, Mount Nebo, Israel
     Church of All Nations/Basilica of the Agony in Jerusalem, Israel
     Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Israel
     Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis
     St. Josaphat's Basilica in Milkwaukee Wisconsin
     Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Castries, St. Lucia
     Cathedral/Basilica of St. John the Baptist in San Juan, Puerto Rico

There are 1,756 basilicas around the world, and I'm sure we won't make it to all of them, but there are only 83 basilicas in the United States, and on a recent trip to the East Coast we checked off four, bringing our US total to seven. We probably won't make it to all of the U.S. basilicas either, but I hope we'll knock off a good percentage of them, and meanwhile this list takes us to places we might not go otherwise.

The first basilica of our trip was this one in Washington, D.C.:

It looks dramatically different from different viewing angles. This is the front, and the main entries doors are those three brown ones in the center:

The tower, a gift from the Knights of Columbus, rises 329 feet and houses a 56-bell carillon:

Built between 1920 and 1959 and designated a basilica in 1990 by Pope John Paul II, this is the largest Catholic church in North America:

WISCONSIN: TWO FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT CHURCHES

We had the good fortune to visit two churches in Wisconsin that were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was born in 1867 (yeah, that surprised me too) in Richland, Wisconsin, a small town about 60 miles northwest of Madison. For a mid-westerner, he really got around. He designed over 1,000 structures, 532 of which were actually built. There are 25 structures designed by him in my home state of California, including the famous Hollyhock House.                                                                                                                           Wright lived a very colorful and often controversial life and died in 1959.  In 1991 he was deemed "the greatest American architect of all time" by the American Institute of Architects.  

We visited the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Milwaukee. Wright was 89 years old when he designed this church in 1956 (two years after the above photo of him was taken and three years before he died), and the church was completed in 1961, two years after his death. He drew from Byzantine architectural styles (particularly the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul) for his design. I love the reflecting pond out front that presents a shimmering, ephemeral version of the church:

We were so disappointed that it was locked up tight with no one around. Photos of the inside show it to be quite a spectacular church:

Picture from here.  Go to the site for other gorgeous photos.

I would have loved to see this window from the inside:

EGYPT: NILE CRUISE

When I've fantasized about someday cruising on the Nile River (because I never ever thought it would happen), I have conjured up visions of opulence, decadence, and relaxation. I pictured a dazzling view from our window, exotic locales, luxurious accommodations, luscious cuisine, glamorous shipmates, and fawning wait staff. Reality was not far off from my fantasy, except our shipmates were no more glamorous than I, which means they were very ordinary, run-of-the-mill (and very nice) American tourists.

We boarded our ship, the Nile Smart, in Aswan and sailed (floated? motored?) downriver to Luxor, a distance of about 112 miles as the bird flies, but a little longer on the slithering Nile.

We spent three nights and two days on the cruise, with stops in Philae (reached by bus from Aswan), Kom Ombo, Edfu, Luxor, and Karnak. Another day or two of being pampered on the world's longest waterbed (4,258 miles) wouldn't have hurt my feelings. There are cruises that go all the way to Cairo, but they take 10-12 days and the bulk of the tourist spots are in the Aswan to Luxor area, so ours was the more typical cruise.

Carriages lined up to meet us at the dock

If it were a little more crowded, this could almost be a view of Istanbul

Coca-Cola, the international beverage

Soon we slipped away from the cities and signs of modern civilization:

. . . while still enjoying the all comforts of the internet age in our cabin:

CROSSING THE BORDER FROM ISRAEL INTO SINAI: FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF EGYPT

In his book Walking the Bible, Bruce Feiler notes:

The distance between Jerusalem and Cairo is almost impossible to measure. By foot it should take about a month, by camel two weeks, by bus a day. But for most of history, such conventional means rarely worked. Abraham made it fairly easily, as did Mary and Joseph when they fled Bethlehem with the baby Jesus to escape the wrath of Herod. But Moses, going the other way, took forty years, and still fell short. Napoleon got bogged down in the dunes, as did the English army a century later. During the first thirty years of the Israeli state, the 250 miles from one city to the other was wider than any desert, and more impenetrable. Even the advent of air travel, which has reduced the trip to an hour, has done little to reduce the distance.

Sad but true. We were surprised to learn that we would not be flying from Israel to Egypt. We were told that there are not flights. Really? I did my own search on Travelocity and saw that there are indeed a few flights, but not any that are direct. A one-way ticket from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Aswan, Egypt, a distance by air of 570 miles, makes a huge detour to Istanbul, Turkey, and costs $1850; a round-trip ticket is $2,800. WOW. Granted, Aswan has a pretty small airport, so I checked to see if there are flights from Tel Aviv to the much larger Cairo airport. That flight costs much less--$480 round-trip--but that's a distance of only 250 air miles. Oh wait. It stops in Amman, Jordan. So I guess the truth is that there really are no flights from Israel to Egypt, at least none available through Travelocity. You have to fly somewhere else, then fly to Egypt. Crazy.

Instead, we had a great drive through the lonely and forbidding Negev Desert to a border crossing near Eilat, which gave us exposure to an area of Israel--and Egypt--that we would not have otherwise seen. We crossed the border into the resort town of Taba, then flew out the next afternoon from the tiny Taba airport to the tiny Aswan airport. It worked, and the itinerary meant we got to see the beautiful Gulf of Aqaba inlet of the Red Sea, thereby completing the Israeli Sea Triumvirate of Med, Dead, and Red. (Unfortunately "Galilee" doesn't rhyme to make it a foursome.)

We started off driving alongside the Dead Sea:

We passed several salt processing plants:

Too bad there isn't something like this on the shores of the Great Salt Lake:

BLACK SEA PART 11: LEAVING THE BLACK SEA

After eleven days of cruising around the Black Sea (and being totally confused by a different currency in every country), it was time to make a graceful exit. To give some perspective, here is the Black Sea:

and here is our exit route, through the Bosphorus Strait, which bisects the city of Istanbul (the old city--where we spent all our time--is on the Europe side, and the new city is on the Asia side), through the Sea of Marmara, and out the Dardenelles into the Aegean Sea (which then leads to the Mediterranean):
After leaving Yalta in the early evening, we cruised across the Black Sea at night. They had it perfectly timed so that we hit Istanbul in the morning after breakfast around 9:00. It was a spectacular view, and everyone came out to see it:

(Perhaps you can tell by clicking on the above picture what the average passenger age was.)


Looking back at the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, one of two bridges in Istanbul which link two continents and are the 15th and 16th longest suspension bridges in the world:

A view of the old city fortress and walls:

There is never any doubt you are in Turkey. Huge flags fly everywhere.

A busy harbor for a busy city:

Lots of cruise ships:

I love these fish that decorated the top of our boat. Take a good look at their eyes; they are called nazars, and are a charm used to ward off the "evil eye." We saw the same symbol all over Greece and Turkey and other Black Sea countries. Evil eye key chains, fabrics, tablecloths, jewelry, etc. were for sale in every shop. Many of our buses and taxis had evil eye stickers on the window or charms hanging from the mirror. Even some airplanes have them on their tailfins.

I couldn't resist buying an evil eye bracelet.

Our cruise through the Bosphorus Strait highlighted Istanbul's unique blend of the ancient past and the very modern present:

We also had stunning views of the Hagia Sophia . . .

. . . and the Blue Mosque:

We even got them in the same picture:

(Click on the picture above to see how enormous the two structures are in comparison to their surroundings)

We spent much of the day with our cruising friends Mark and Pat:

Once we pulled away from Istanbul, there wasn't much to see, just green rolling hills on both sides. At about 4:00 p.m., again perfectly timed, we entered the Dardenelles.

And this is where Mel Gibson comes in. Well, not literally.

For many years Bob and I have had a heated discussion over which movie is worse: Bob's cherished Every Which Way but Loose starring Clint Eastwood and a really stupid orangutan, which I hate: ...or my favorite but tragic movie Gallipoli starring Mel Gibson, which Bob hates:
Gallipoli is the story of a battle that took place in Turkey during World War I at the southwestern end of the Dardenelles. Hoping to capture strategically-located Constantinople (now Istanbul), Britain launched an attack on the area. Over an 8-month period, 65,000 men died, and nothing was gained. However, it did result in the promotion of a little-known, low-ranking Turkish army officer who helped stage the defense. His name was Mustafa Ataturk, the man who shaped Turkey's future. The leader of the British forces and their allies was the First Lord of the Admiralty, a 46-year-old man named Winston Churchill. Thank goodness the loss did not end his career.

Our ship passed by the Gallipoli Peninsula. We saw several monuments to the battle, including this simple structure:
Now that I've been to Gallipoli, I'm going to have to watch the movie again, Mel Gibson or not. (After his recent behavior, I sure don't love him like I used to.)

I'm pretty sure that nothing is ever going to make me want to watch Every Which Way but Loose again. Sorry, Bob.

NEXT: Our last day in Turkey--Incredible Ephesus