Tuesday's apes

Tuesday May 14th

Today's port was Gibraltar. I did not have particularly high expectations and was therefore extremely pleasantly surprised. We didn't dock until midday and were prepared to be in the first wave of disembarkation. I had even packed my anorak as the captain had warned us that there might be a shower later in the afternoon – this might be my opportunity.

Matt had visited Gibraltar several times before but had never been “up the rock”. This was surely a prime example of Something High To Go Up, and he was determined not to miss out this time. Unimpeded by age, girth or impractical footwear (or a combination of these impediments) Matt frog marched us through the town centre towards the cable car station – he was committed to beating the queue that he predicted would form.

There was no queue at all and we even secured prime position at the front of the cable car. Most cable cars appear to be built in Switzerland (at least European ones – I can't speak for other continents). The origin of this one wasn't obvious which made me slightly nervous.

I was amazed to spot apes (the fabled Barbary Macaques) on the way up. I thought that this would be a disappointing fauna based touristical trap; often when you are told that a certain species lives somewhere and you go to spot it there is no trace (e.g. marmosets on an Island just off of Dubrovnik).

Once at the top we had a good look around at the view. I could see that this was going to be one of those days that if I didn't take control of the camera we would not be going to get much exploration done. Matt agreed so once I was tooled up with the photographic equipment we set off to walk around the nature reserve. Unlike Gibraltar town (which was full of British style signposts), the nature reserve was not well way-marked. Coupled with a particularly useless touristical map we would mainly have to rely on an innate sense of direction, an asking other people (and hoping they told us the right way).

Nature report 4

• 
  The Barbary Macaques were truly amazing – the only “wild apes” in Europe. They are clearly not totally wild as they seemed to be quite used to the tourists and someone seemed to provide food for them. Raw potato appeared to be a particular favourite and I can't imagine that tourists take this up the cable car to feed them. I assume that the £500 fine for feeding the apes does not apply to whoever dishes out the raw potato and vegetable peelings.
  
  
  
• I have been fascinated by monkeys (although these are referred to as “apes” they are in fact taxonomically monkeys) since I was little. I love to watch their behaviour and expressions. Today we saw some who were quite vain and seemed to enjoy posing for photos. One little one was a right bully and was terrorising a slightly older one for food. I would have liked to have thought that they were just playing but the bigger one really did look annoyed and looking at others who clearly were playing this little one really was a menace. (Sorry about the anthropomorphism but I think it can be excused with primates.) I saw one who was scratching his head in just the same way that Matt does in the morning. The old men of the tribe just laze around watching what's going on.

• The Rock of Gibraltar is effectively a double-sided cliff. Having not been troubled by seagulls at any of our previous stops it was inevitable that as soon as we were back on British Territory they would become an issue. I used to tolerate seagulls but ever since a particularly unpleasant experience in St. Ives on our first wedding anniversary when one stole my yeast extract sandwich I have positively disliked them. I am now wiser than to eat in their presence (which can limit the locations for ice-cream enjoyment). But today's challenge would mainly involve avoiding being dive-bombed. I suppose this was understandable really because our walk around the double-sided cliff took use very close to their nests, but their swooping was quite scary and I was convinced that the best I could come away with would be seagull poo on my lovely new hat. Fortunately we both avoided the dive bombing, or a more vicious seagull attack, and the closest I came to seagull related injury was when I took a little stumble whilst trying to avoid one that was coming right for me.
• We took an exceptionally scenic route around the “Mediterranean Steps”. The wild flowers were stunning. Apparently there are over 600 species of plant in the nature
  
  reserve. Some were familiar – thistles, cow parsley, those things with dandelion-like flowers but that aren't dandelions (smaller flowers and longer stems) – but lots were unfamiliar. The smell was gorgeous and the whole scene spectacular. Sorry about the density of use of complimentary adjectives but it really was beautiful.
• The flowers were obviously a great attraction for insects. Having been troubled the whole of the previous day by a midgie bite on the back of my leg (which I managed to just about keep under control with more frequent than recommended applications of steroid cream) I was a bit worried that I would acquire another insect bite / sting today. I needn't have been concerned as the insects were much more interested in the real flowers than the ones on my dress, and I think that the yellow and black buzzers were bees rather than the more malicious wasp. There were loads of pretty butterflies – mostly ones that I had not seen before but there was occasionally one of the ubiquitous cabbage whites (I think they might be the grey squirrel of the butterfly world).
• We might even have seen a humming bird. Even if it was just a big insect that looked like a humming bird it was very impressive. Unfortunately it was very camera shy but I'm planning on going to the library to try to identify it.
• There were lots more lizard sightings too.

Saturday's bus problem

Saturday 11th May, continued

After a thorough investigation of the necropolis we strolled back into Tarquinia town. There had not been many people at the burial site but it was even quieter here. It seems that between 1pm and 4pm everyone stops for a (delicious smelling) long lunch and / or a nap (this is one of the things that most appeals to me about living in a Mediterranean country. Everything was shut now - happily apart from the ice-cream shop - it must have been low season as even the bars and restaurants appeared to be on a break. So we refreshed ourselves with a gelato: coffee + pistachio for Matt and cinnamon + orange for me. 

Nature report 3

• Tarquinia has embraced the concept of a park for dogs on one side of the road and a park without them on the other side. I greatly approve of this type of canine apartheid. 
• We saw someone training a duckling (or maybe a gosling) in their front garden. At least this was the most plausible explanation of what they were doing. 
• Amazing lizard spotting today.
  
  Including some big green ones and one with a green body and brown tail. They are very camera shy.
• Like Cannes, Tarquinia is pleasingly free from seagulls (it's not very far from the sea) but it does have a pigeon issue. They seem to enjoy living in nooks in old walls. Fortunately we both avoided getting pooed on (although apparently this is lucky so maybe we weren't so fortunate after all.
• In the three hour shut down the only notable homo-sapien nature we observed was the occasional passage of a Boy Scout or Girl Guide (or whatever the local equivalent is) and an elderly man singing loudly outside a church. I don't think he was drunk, just happy. I think I would sing loudly too if I lived somewhere as lovely as Tarquinia.

We wandered in the town a bit more. It was one of those lovely places with an old building or beautiful view around each corner. I think I got an impression of what Italy would have been like in the 1950s, only now there were more parked cars and fewer mopeds. 

As the afternoon wore on we decided that we should make our way back to the ship. There would have been much worse places to be stuck than Tarquinia but we didn't fancy our chances of catching up with the ship in Corsica. The lady in the tourist information explained that we could get the small bus at 1700 or the big bus at 1620. It was 1615 and for this earlier bus we would have to buy tickets in advance at the tobacconist (they may be advanced with dog division, but not with bus ticket provision), so Matt waited at the bus stop to hold up the bus should it arrive and I dashed off to buy the tickets. By 1650 the bus had not turned up. We mused over the possibilities:

• this was one of the rarest of occasions in Italian public transport and the bus was running ahead of schedule
• the bus driver had overslept during his (or her) nap and/or overeaten (or possibly over drunk) during his (or her) lunch break
• the bus didn't actually exist at all and was merely a racket to make unsuspecting travellers buy tickets for journeys that will never happen.

At 1700 the big bus still hadn't turned up and we decided to cut our touristical Euro losses and get the small bus (that turned up on time) back to the port.

Friday's toilet scenario

Friday, May 10^th 2013

It was a good job we gave our feet a rest last night as we spent most of our day in Cannes walking. I loved Cannes and I even got to wear my anorak. We had to take a tender from the ship to the port and I thought that it would be cold / windy. It was actually warm and draught free but I was still pleased to be able to wear my anorak.

In terms of High Things to Go Up, Cannes tempted us with the Super Cannes observatory. However, it was not obvious how far away this was, or how we would reach this and we weren’t really tempted by a possibly time consuming detour to the tourist information to find out; plus it was looking like a bit of a hazy so may not even have been worth the trek even if we had tried. We could see it up a hill; today’s touristical map did at least have a scale but no isobars. It looked like the walk might be about 5 km but there was no obvious pedestrian route marked and with no road names marked either it would be a bit risky.

Instead, we started the morning with a promenade around La Croisette – taking numerous detours to gawp at the super yachts. It really was something to see them in situ, rather than at a boat show. I don’t’ think that I believed that anyone actually bought them before. But here they were. And people were polishing them; they were polishing the insides of cupboards. When I say people I think it must have been “staff” – apparently it costs at least €1 million to run one of these things each year. We enjoyed posing with our favourite Bond Villain-esque vessels.

 

We also amused ourselves by looking in the yacht agents’ windows – a variation on the more common touristical activity of looking in estate agents’ windows (we did that too). We will not be buying a super yacht any time soon (nor a villa on the Côte d’Azur for that matter). Maybe we exuded an air of the luxury yacht type though as a man on the quayside seemed to think that we could do with some luxury transfers – private jet anyone?

Now Matt was getting rather keen to use the toilet. He followed the sign to the sanitaires in the marina, while I perched under a palm tree and wrote a postcard. Next thing I knew my phone was ringing – Matt sounded panicked: the sanitaires had been locked, he’d found another set of loos but these were shut for another half an hour and I was nowhere in sight. Things were clearly getting desperate. I was time I took charge of the situation. I found Matt and offered words of encouragement about the quality of his bladder while we took the scenic route through the rose garden to another WC that I had located on the touristical map.

Nature report 2

• Cannes is pleasingly free of seagulls. There are quite a few pigeons but they are fairly inoffensive pigeons – one was taking a bath.
• I spotted 2 lizards today. I always find this quite exciting, something I think that I have inherited from my dad.
• With less than a week to go until the Cannes Film Festival preparations were in full swing. Notably this involves bolstering the already plentiful palm trees, with the installation of many more on the beach. We saw a demonstration of how this involves cranes and badly driven diggers. I wonder what they do with all the extra palm trees when the festivities are over.
• There were lots of bottle brush plants. Apparently they’re poisonous (I seem to remember my mum warning me of this when I was little, even though I don’t think I had a propensity to eat random plants).
• Based on a highly unscientific study, the Yorkshire terrier appears to be the most popular breed of dog in Cannes

We found the WC to be a hi-tech toilet booth. There were four people in front of us in the queue: 2 friends (they looked local) and a couple (they looked Northern Europeans). It was a slow throughput at the hi-tech toilet booth as between each use it was disinfected, washed and dried. You did however get up to 20 minutes in the hi-tech toilet booth when it was your turn – which would potentially mean a very long wait for Matt.

The hi-tech toilet booth finished its cleansing cycle from the previous visitor and one of the friends went in. For some reason (optimism probably) I thought that the other friend didn’t need to visit the hi-tech toilet booth; but I was wrong. Friend 2 went in after another cleansing cycle. I spent a while pondering who of my friends I would be prepared to share a hi-tech toilet booth with. Quite a few probably – it was a spacious hi-tech toilet booth.

After another cleansing cycle the girl of the Northern European couple went in – we would be next. But no; the boy of the Northern European couple was also going to use the hi-tech toilet booth.

After witnessing a total of 5 cleansing cycles, it was finally our turn to use the hi-tech toilet booth. And a great 50 cents’ worth of hi-tech toilet booth it was too. I must say that there are worse places to queue for a toilet: there were shade and sun options and we saw at least 3 trains go over a bridge just over the road.

Monday's gardens

My third day in south London, and as all my friends (or the ones in the vicinity) were working I had to entertain myself. But first I had to transport myself. It was a fairly short trip involving 2 trains and a bus. But I had brushed up my London transport skills over the previous few days and was feeling confident. I think that looking confident (whether or not you feel it) is an important factor in avoiding pick-pockets. One unfortunate lady immediately made herself vulnerable as she failed to "mind the gap" and lost a shoe down said gap whilst boarding the train. Her husband seemed to want to try to reclaim the shoe but she wanted to buy some new ones. I'm sure they ultimately went for the wise option in not delving around under the train (although it does seem a rather extreme way of getting a new pair of shoes), but they made themselves very conspicuous.

Anyway, I duly arrived at Kew Gardens. My first impression was that there were a lot of coach parties of:

1.    School children

2.    Foreign tourists

I was a bit concerned that I would get caught up with these. In actual fact I managed to mostly avoid them, with the exception of some probably year 7s drawing pineapples in the lily house.

A pineapple

A lily

After my quick trip to the lily house I think I mostly avoided the parties by avoiding the most popular attractions in the first part of the day. With the assistance of the excellent touristical map (including both a north marker and a scale) I headed off in the direction of the Mediterranean garden. It smelt wonderful and I spotted a few things that I thought might be possibles for our front garden: Genistra tinctoria, Santolina chamaecyparissus and Cistus laurifolius.

Santolina chamaecyparissus

Cistus laurifolius

It was one of those days that whatever you’re wearing it’s not quite right for the weather. I had opted for trousers and a thin jumper but when the sun came out this was too hot. But if I’d gone for something lighter I would have been too cold. Even now it was slightly cool when the sun wasn’t blaring down. So in what looked like it might be a prolonged period of cloudiness (it wasn’t the sun came back really quickly) I went into the temperate greenhouse. In the sun I would say that it was actually rather hotter than temperate. The greenhouse is due to close next month for significant preservation work and I found my walk around interesting from the point of view of preparations for this – various demarcations in bright paint and the removal of various plants to a secure part of the greenhouse. You can see why this building is grade 1 listed; architecturally I found it quite beautiful. The best plant was a caper.

Caper plant

Temperate greenhouse

Tree-top walkway
(from the ground)

Since I last visited Kew (which must have been at least 10 years ago on a really hot day) they have installed a treetop walkway. Here I did run into a small group of school children who were mainly interested in walking the “wrong” way around the walkway and seeing how much they could make it wobble. It being the summer the view from the walkway was not really that interesting – consisting mostly of green leaves. I imagine it would be beautiful in the autumn. I does realise just how high these trees are – 108 steps.

I stopped for lunch by a pond. This seemed to be a nice spot where I could watch some moorhens (or maybe coots – I can never remember which ones have the white beaks) make their nests and there were plenty of benches. I could hear a peacock so my picnic was slightly impeded by my concerns that it would want to coming after my food (this happened at the zoo once). I needn’t have worried. I should have put my energy into worrying about the ducks who were much more interested and actually required me to vacate my bench for fear of picnic nick-age.

My highlights of the afternoon were:

1. The stag beetle loggery – stag beetles are one of my favourite childhood insects. Sadly I didn’t see any today.

2. Ice-cream – I had a little mid-afternoon break to make up for my duck-shortened lunch. I love ice-cream and this did not disappoint: coffee + honey and walnut.

3. The gravel garden – this gave me yet more inspiration for our front garden. I am definitely going to try some Salvia X Silvestris ‘Mainacht’ – it was really popular with the bees.

4. Roses – I love smelling them. Today I particularly loved smelling the orangey-yellow ones which have got a lovely sort of sherbet-citrus aroma like ‘Lady of Shallot’ and ‘Lady Emma Hamilton’. It made me wonder about what the different chemical composition of the various rose smells is, and whether a friendly analytical chemist could help me out with this conundrum.

Lady of Shallot

Ice-cream break

Salvia X Silvestris ‘Mainacht’

By 5.30pm I had seen most of what I had wanted to see. There was still an hour before closing time and when I was due to meet my friends for tea so I redeployed my touristical map and headed off for the one major attraction that I had missed: the compost heap. Unfortunately what the touristical map doesn’t tell you is that the compost heap is out-of bounds to the general public so I had to make do with a distant view and a poor quality photo. Oh well.

The compost heap from a distance

Tuesday's photo opportunities

There was no alarm failure this morning – Matt had taken charge of the phone. But it was set on full volume and woke us up with a shock. Matt is always the first to leap out of bed in such circumstances but was unable to turn the alarm off in his semi-conscious state so threw the phone at me and told me to deal with it.

We ate breakfast with a couple who referred to each other as “The Husband” and “The Wife”. This was somewhat distracting and added a level of complexity to what would otherwise have been a simple conversation. “The Husband” and “The Wife” had been married 26 years and it was their first holiday together. “The Husband” told us that “The Wife” usually goes on holiday with her sister while he stays at home, looks after the 4 dogs and watches what he wants on the television. “The Wife” and my husband had an impassioned conversation about Yorkshire Terriers. “The Husband” and I joined in, enthusiastically but not quite so passionately. We looked at photographs of the Yorkies in each others’ lives and discussed their ailments past and present. “The Husband” took great delight in describing the Yorkie graveyard in their garden, complete with granite headstones.

They said that they had seen dolphins this morning which prompted a discussion about the benefits of having opposable thumbs and being able to walk on two legs versus the “price” we pay for this in terms of the rearing of young. I resisted the urge to test out walking on my arms and legs, deciding that this was something that should be investigated in the privacy of my own cabin.

We had the laziest morning so far, I didn’t even manage a cursory swim. After liberally application of sunscreen we chose some sun loungers on the “sport’s deck”. Since when lazing and reading has been a sport I’m not sure.

For the second day in a row I showed great virtue and chose the lighter options for starter and main at lunchtime. Followed by hot pudding and ice-cream. We sat with some very nice people (despite their mildly xenophobic attitudes) and discussed whether the 1969 moon landing was a conspiracy. This was clearly something that would not be settled over lunch – Matt and I were the only ones who weren’t born at the time so it was probably a bit difficult to contribute convincingly to the conversation but that didn’t stop us trying. We talked about social care and how it may well be cheaper to the tax-payer for people who require long term care to go on a permanent cruise (we didn’t talk about whether this would be the most appropriate way to deliver long term care).

Nature report 1

• Yesterday’s non-human life-forms observed were a fly and wasp. Fortunately they were more interested in Matt than me. I hate wasps.
• Today we saw a whale blowing from its spout and also some birds. I said I thought these were skuas but this was based on nothing more than a vague recollection that the skua is a sea bird and we are at sea. A more accurate description would be “sea pigeon” – they were sort of pigeon sized and coloured but with more crescent shaped wings and were more elegant in flight.
• Despite asking all the people we’ve sat with what the flowers on the table are I am yet to find someone who knows (although one lady told me she has some in her garden).

These natural conundrums would have been quickly answered with instant access to the internet or a photo sent to my parents but in these circumstances may never be resolved. Maybe a trip to the library is in order.

As we approached the Straits of Gibraltar Matt got nearly as excited as he had done when he had seen the boats towing oil rigs on our previous cruise. My knowledge of North African geography leaves quite a lot to be desired (actually my geographical knowledge of the whole of Africa leaves quite a lot to be desired, although I can tell you that Timbuktu is Mali) and we spent a while debating what the large settlement was. I decided that it was probably Tangiers. This is because I think that Marrakech and Casablanca are further east and Tangiers is the only settlement I know of until you get to Egypt. A trip to the library before dinner is definitely in order.

One of the benefits of being at sea is that I don’t lose Matt to the taking of innumerable photographs. With the sighting of land both port and starboard this could not continue. Not to be outdone I took a break from my sun lounger and ventured up to the imaginatively named “Sky Deck”. Here I had to contend with very gusty winds and use my core to steady myself whilst I tried to get a panoramic shot of North Africa and another of Southern Spain. 

I also got a paparazzi style photograph of Matt reading – sun protection now provided with by his yellow sarong (plus factor 50 underneath).

I think that I impressed Matt with my knowledge of African geography, identifying that the Atlas Mountains can be located on this continent. Whether these were the mountains that we could see was another matter.

We packed away our books and headed to the front (I suppose I should really call is the bow) of the “Lido Deck” to get a good view as the ship made its way through the Straits.

The Straits of Gibraltar

Given that there are 3000 passengers it was a pretty poor show that only 7 or 8 of us experienced this. It was blowing an absolute hoolie (I had to keep myself warm with my swimming towel) so I suppose that should excuse the very elderly. But really? On a beautiful afternoon, to miss this? There were more people plodding away in the gym behind us.

Matt and I spent a few minutes posing for photos with the rock of Gibraltar positioned as a hat.