David & Carole's Big Adventure

David: Bits and Pieces

2009-10-21T00:05:00.001-07:00

As I get close to the end of the larger, synthesizing topics I can discuss about our vacation, there remain lots of bits and pieces from my trip notes – odd sights, snatches of memorable conversation. I’ve collected them here.

* * * * *

In my report on Giles Ramsay’s theater talks, I mentioned the flat, unremarkable dialogue of Harold Pinter’s earlier plays. We actually heard that sort of conversation occasionally, most memorably at another table in the King’s Court restaurant aboard the Queen Mary 2. I was having breakfast and overheard two elderly British ladies talking as they looked out at the ocean. At first I thought they might be trying to be witty, but they were so deadpan about it, I decided not:

-- The scenery’s not very good, is it?
-- No, it’s a bit flat.
-- If you’re walking around the deck three times.

It was all rather Monty Python-ish. Appropriately, the sound system was playing a languid, sleepy female vocalist’s cover of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

* * * * *

While we were tooling around London by bus, we passed through the Sloane Square/Sloan Street neighborhood, apparently very trendy and posh. Our trip manager told us the wealthy young girls who lived and shopped here were known as “Sloane Rangers … they get jobs in the city to feel useful but take four-day weekends in the country.”

* * * * *

As we took a turn around the private club known as Home House, I noticed a framed cartoon on the wall of a woman reading from a magazine, “Middle age is when a narrow waist and a broad mind change places,” and then shouting, “Who brought this utter drivel into the house?”

* * * * *

A pancake house called “My Old Dutch” took its name from the extensive catalog of cockney-stock exchange slang, in which a word or phrase that sounds like what you mean to say gets substituted, and then evolves or reduces to something else entirely. In this case, “My Old Dutch” refers to the wife at home; but it got there from “Duchess of Fife” substituted for “wife,” which then reduced to “Dutch.”

Similarly, you might hear a smart young man say “Let’s have a butcher’s” before stopping into a shop, or glancing at his watch. It means “let’s have a look,” but it evolved from “look” => “butcher’s hook” => “butcher’s.”

Make sense?

* * * * *

Someone on our tour asked tour guide Mel Montgomery to explain the hierarchy of British aristocratic titles. He said the Royal Family is at the top, of course. Below that come five levels of hereditary titles: Duke-Duchess (addressed as “His Grace” and “Her Grace”), Marquis/Marquess-Marchioness (originating from a military officer who led marches from one country into another), Earl/Count-Countess (“today, they’re all foreigners”), Viscount-Viscountess, and Baron-Baroness. Everyone below the Duke level may be addressed as “Lord” or “Lady.”

After that come other titles that are not hereditary, such as Baronet.

* * * * *

The television in our stateroom aboard the Queen Mary 2 was always on whenever we returned to it, even though we never turned it on or watched it. (Several channels featured recent movies on closed circuit -- no ads, I presume -- throughout the day and night.) Presumably it was turned on by our housekeeper and set to the ship’s informational channel; most of the time, it merely featured an onscreen reminder to set our clocks back another hour for the next day.

On our final night at sea, Carole noticed it was playing a short video about debarkation procedures. A serious, very dry officer of the bridge was explaining that we were to put all our packed luggage outside the door before midnight, whereupon the staff would “very carefully” carry it up to the seventh deck, and it would “very carefully” be lifted on pads by crane, and “very carefully” lowered to the docks, whereupon “longshoremen will proceed to throw it 300 yards down the pier.”

* * * * *

Having noticed that several of the British passengers sank American country music tunes during the pub karaoke sessions, I wondered why that would be so popular in the U.K. Somebody told me he had been in a record store in Norway that was almost exclusively filled with country western records; the owner was a rabid Hank Snow collector. But the female companion of one of the fabulous Cunard singers -- a young woman named Hannah who had moved with her lover to Nashville two years before and was currently recording her first album -- assured me that such was NOT the case. Country music has only a 2 percent market share in the U.K., she said, while its market share in the U.S. is 70 percent! I was left to ponder how ghettoized our own country is (“Friedrich Niche-ied,” as someone remarked once I was back home; maybe it was me), since I am so seldom exposed to it myself.

* * * * *

One of our charming Elderhostel tour mates was a woman who said her second marriage, from which she had been widowed, had worked very well because “I didn’t need a meal ticket and he didn’t need a housekeeper. I had been on my own for eight years; I didn’t need him.” At one point during a spirited disagreement early in their marriage, he said to her, “What we have here is two chiefs and no Indians.” From then on, when he had to take up a serious issue with her, he’d say, “C’mere, Chief; we need to have a pow-wow.”

* * * * *

One of the London chains for finer lines of men’s clothing is Pink’s, founded by Thomas Pink. When we were preparing to fly out of Heathrow, I noticed a display in a Pink’s of “commuter ties”: regular neckties that have a tiny pocket on the back side capable of holding an iPod so you can listen to it on the commuter train/Tube, etc.

* * * * *

A famous old name in British retailing is of course Harrod’s. What Carole noticed in the Harrod’s outlet at Heathrow, at least, was the humorous and sad fact that nearly every item in the place -- miniature British flags, teddy bears, teacups and other dinnerware with English motifs from royalty to the Beatles -- was made in China.

* * * * *

One snapshot of the times we live in . . . in Portland International Airport, regular announcements over the PA warn that unattended luggage is “subject to possession and search by airport police.” At Chicago’s O’Hare, it “will be picked up by the Chicago Police.” In Heathrow, however, it will simply “be destroyed” (!)

David: British newspapers

2009-10-12T22:50:00.001-07:00

At first glance, you might think newspapers in Britain are in much better shape than they are stateside.

News stands carry the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, and an array of other newsprint dailies. Strangers thrust free copies of other publications -- City A.M., The London Paper, and others -- in your hands as you walk down the busy London streets.

Wow, you think: there’s much more selection here; a greater array of news sources and reading selections than in the rapidly diminishing one-paper towns and media mega-conglomerates back home.

But first looks can be deceiving. I asked our trip director Mel Montgomery, a native Brit and former official with the national tourism office where he was an assistant to Princess Diana’s stepmother, how many daily newspapers London has, and he said only one. The others are national papers. (Keep in mind that England has more than 13 times as many people as Oregon -- an estimated 51.5 million to our 3.8 -- living in a space that’s only a little more than half the size.)

If I’d had the time, money, and wherewithal to make a concerted comparison, it might have been interesting to examine which stories got the biggest play in Britain versus back home. The biggest news story that featured in both the serious dailies and the cheeky free papers concerned a scandal in which the British Attorney General, Baroness Scotland (the first woman ever to become the country’s top law official) had been discovered to employ an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper. The girl in question, Loloahi Tapui, 27, had come to the UK on a student visa in 2003, married, and been working for Lady Scotland six months. Part of the reason it got big play is that the Baroness had pressed so hard to get the law against such practices passed in the first place.

The second, less sexy news story that predominated in the serious dailies -- sometimes on the front page, sometimes tucked in on page 2 -- concerned the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and whether and how readily he would use “the c word” (cuts in the national budget).

The alternative weeklies gave more play to a screaming fight between Rolling Stones bass player Ronnie Wood, 62, and his 20-year-old girlfriend Ekaterina Ivanova in the wee hours of Monday morning, Sept. 14. Neighbors heard screamed obscenities, and a threat by Ivanova to commit suicide. Later in the week, large “removal men” were photographed carrying Wood’s guitars out of their north London flat.

The papers speculated that not only was Wood tired of the year-long romance with a pouty teen, but missed his ex- (second) wife Jo and children. I may have seen a gossip column item in which her friends stated she was doing just fine without him. I would imagine far fewer column inches and photos (if any) were devoted to this one in stateside papers.

It turned out our five days in London were the final week for a lively free daily called The London Paper -- its masthead read “thelondonpaper” with “paper” in trademark purple ink. Since it was making a big deal about its impending departure (regular readers and British celebs from pop singer Pixie Lott to Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, offered quotes about how much they were going to miss it), I was able to learn a lot in just a couple of issues.

It was in tabloid format, like most of the older, more legitimate papers in England (and most of the alternative weeklies in the U.S.). What I liked was that the spine was stapled so it didn’t fall apart if I loosed my grip on it, the way the Willamette Week and the Portland Mercury back in Portland do. It had been launched by its young publisher and staff with backing money from … wait for it … Rupert Murdoch, and the tanking economy had killed its hopes, despite its apparently having made a big splash.

There was lots of color, both color photography and solid ink in the large ads. The content read more upbeat, less snarky in general, than the alternative weekly tabloids I’m used to seeing -- except in the fashion and pop star columns -- although the writers appeared to pitch their prose to twenty-somethings who were used to a lot of drinking and casual sex after their day at the stock exchange (or wish such were the case, I suppose). There were advice columns by gay and lesbian writers.

Among its most beloved items was a pet photo feature -- not just cute cats and dogs, sometimes doing a neat trick or dressed up in silly outfits, but snakes, pigs, hedgehogs, mice … everybody got into the act. Each photo included a brief list of the animal’s favorite TV shows, pet peeves, and worst bad habit.

David: A Few Words about Comfort Facilities and Hygiene

2009-10-08T08:50:00.001-07:00

I wash my hands a lot more than I used to.

I haven’t turned into Howard Hughes just yet, but it’s been impossible to ignore the occasional news stories about various unnerving studies.

For example, unless regularly cleaned and disinfected (and they rarely are), office desktops and computer keyboards are often filthier than nearby bathrooms.

Grocery shopping carts carry more germs -- from contaminated meats and infant riders as well as, one presumes, fellow shoppers who don’t wash their hands –--than the toilet seats in their stores … because the latter get cleaned and disinfected more often. Swabs taken from shopping cart handles turned up saliva, blood, fecal matter, mucus (and worse), plus Listeria, Salmonella, Staph, E. Coli, and general individual bacteria. The only public surfaces found to be more disease-ridden are playground equipment and bus rails.

And of course, going back to what Mom always told us: communicable diseases are most often contracted through one’s hands, so wash them often.

More and more, I not only wash my hands before meals and after using the toilet, but exit from public restrooms carrying paper towels to shield my fingers from the door handle; push open other doors with pressure on the door itself (as opposed to the marked handle; the best is a door that opens away with a kick-panel I can shove with my foot) or pull them open by whatever I guess is the least-handled portion of the door handle; and press elevator buttons with the back of my clothed wrist.

Better than all these options is when someone else is present to push the buttons, pull the handle, etc., and I can glide through behind them, with no more than a clothed shoulder or elbow to keep the door from closing on me. But I haven’t gotten to the point where I wait around for someone to show up, or turn on faucet taps with my foot, as an acquaintance told me a truly germ-phobic coworker does.

U.S. society in general has become more and more sensitive to the issue of germ transmission and its avoidance. Over the years we’ve seen the introduction of motion-activated flushing on urinals and sit-down toilets (but why do the latter make that weird squealing sound that, for an instant, make me think a live rodent has entered the stall?), motion-activated faucets, motion-activated hand blow-dryers and paper-towel dispensers.

The only other thing we have to touch with everybody else is the bathroom door, and the one solution I’ve seen to this is the space-devouring option that only airports can afford: an open passage of overlapping walls through which you wend your way.

All of this is prefatory to comments about preparing for my latest vacation last month, and what I observed on it.

Overseas travel offers an opportunity to see how well (or poorly) other countries handle comfort hygiene. Like languages, restrooms in other lands can vary astonishingly in how they address basic human functions.

But first, there’s the getting there and back. Every time we’ve flown anywhere in the past two decades, it seems that Carole has caught a cold. When hundreds of people file through an enclosed space in a day, the law of averages says a few of them are going to bring germs along.

Commercial airline toilets are incredibly germ-ridden. I was determined to have as little contact with them as possible. I packed breathing masks in my pockets but felt too inhibited to put one on until I noticed -- of course -- the older gentleman in the seat next to me coughing steadily. I actually timed him, surreptitiously, hacking once a minute or less, roughly.

This is one time I’m hoping that’s a smoker’s cough, I murmured to Carole, and quietly put on a mask. Oddly enough, the man stopped coughing as soon as the plane was airborne (an anxiety cough?), so after a while I took off the mask.

Through careful planning -- timing of a bathroom break before boarding and a sparing amount of drinking on the plane -- I managed to avoid the airline toilet altogether on the five-and-a-half-hour flight from Portland to New York. I knew that probably wasn’t going to be practical on the roughly nine-hour London-to-Chicago leg home. As it turned out, I visited that toilet for “number one” only once and didn’t have to touch anything: a couple of facial tissues in my hand protected me (I hope) from the door and toilet flusher.

Our trip to England took us to a land that was not considerably less “civilized” in this area than the U.S., via a route (the Cunard flagship Queen Mary 2) that was even more sensitive to these issues than most.

We encountered nothing like the pair of foot-shaped pads above a small hole inside a blank stone room that constitutes a toilet in Muslim lands like Morocco (summer 1969, with my family); nor the home toilet in Tallinn, Estonia (summer 1994) that has a dry catchment, so you get a good strong whiff of your deposit before it gets washed away; nor again the long open pit at the equivalent of a fairgrounds in Estonia (I thought “I hope I don’t drop my wallet!”). Nor were there any bathroom foyers where an old lady in black sold individual toilet paper squares to the patrons as they enter, as in St. Petersburg, Russia. (Forewarned, we carried our own.)

On the other hand, none of the places we went had quite caught up to Finland (where, my bother Toby has shown us, showers have complicated faucet designs that allow you to set your ideal temperature, and then turn the water on and off at that preset level, to conserve without getting hit with overly hot or cold laving again) or Japan (where some toilets have a warming element in the seat and buttons for various other "services" for your backside, from a jet of warm, washing water to a blast of warm, drying air).

As I said, the ocean liner was considerably more sensitive to these issues than most tourist facilities. The welcoming line at the Britannia Restaurant for every meal actually included a staffer who held a large squeeze bottle of hand disinfectant, so diners could avail themselves of hand-washing gel before sitting at table. Many of the bathrooms had small cloth towels -- about the size of a wash cloth -- rolled into tubes and lined up in straw baskets for drying one’s hands (and a separate disposal for the used ones) as an alternative to paper towels.

I saw a lot more hot-air hand dryers on this trip than I think one encounters in the U.S. Some were motion activated, some had a button (though you can usually activate those with a poke of the elbow). The most impressive one was, I think, in Shakespeare’s Globe theater, because you put your hands inside a horizontal chamber where they were blasted with stiff warm air on both sides. It was faster and more effective than any other I’d seen. As I recall, it was motion-activated so you didn’t have to touch anything.

In Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, I encountered the first significant improvement on the old James River semi-opaque paper toilet seat covers: a seat with its own built-in, revolving or replaceable plastic seat protector. A plastic wrap encloses the entire toilet seat like a sleeve around a donut, with fresh plastic coming out of a compartment on the right rear side (as you’re looking down at it), and circling around the seat into the “used” compartment on the left rear side. Here’s what the instructions said:

“SaniSeat [with a registered trademark “R” in the circle next to it]
To use
1. Place hand in front of sensor
2. Wait for fresh cover to encircle seat
3. Seat now ready for use
After use sensor off for 20 seconds
Old plastic is destroyed and NEVER used again!”

The “never” was spelled out in italics. Pretty impressive, if it had worked. But it didn’t. After waving my hand in front of the sensor several times and getting nothing, I ended up pulling fresh plastic out of the right side and bunching up the used portion near the rear left side before sitting down.

David: Notes on Giles Ramsay's lectures on theater

2009-09-30T22:28:00.001-07:00

Theater was the particular focus of our Elderhostel package. There was to be a theater expert on board the Queen Mary 2 to offer lectures on the history of theater in general and in Britain in particular, and tickets to a selection of shows once we arrived in London.

Our expert, Giles Ramsay, had done this package a number of times before and could hardly have been better qualified for the job. An independent director and producer, he has not only directed many shows from Palestine to Vermont, lectured at various universities and the Victoria & Albert Museum, and toured with the British National Debate team, but has also had several of his own plays (“Shall We Go to the Alhambra?”, “Territory,” “Only as Multiple,” and “Crocodile”) produced in Britain. His recent long-term projects involve theater in “post-conflict” zones such as Kosovo and Zimbabwe. A native version of “Oedipus Tyrannus” with a local cast had gone over big in Harare in May 2009.

The notes I made of his shipboard lectures, which included not only video clips off a laptop but drawings and copies of theater plans and photos that were illuminated by a good old-fashioned overhead projector (remember those from school?), are very sketchy because I was familiar with a lot of what he was saying and only took down things that caught my fancy.

A few items below were already noted in our travel blog, but I wanted to collect all my notes on his lectures in one place.

THEATER’S ORIGINS

After a full round of three tragedies, a day of theater competition in Athens ended with a satyr play, which satirized everything and everyone in thoroughly obscene style as a way of cleansing the audience’s palate. Euripides’ “The Cyclops” is the only extant full satyr play today.

Someone asked why there are only a handful of each great Greek playwrights’ supposed works extant (7 of more than a hundred by Sophocles, for example, and 18 of 90-plus from Euripides), and how they survived. Giles said evidence of them, and whatever copies existed, were lost with their respective civilizations and the destruction of the Alexandria Library. It was mostly Arab/Muslim scholars who preserved copies of a few of them, and Western scholars eventually recognized and translated them into Latin or their vernacular.

To give a context to the fiery nature of Medea, a foreigner in the Greek court, Giles reminded us that she came from a port on the Black Sea in what has recently been known as Georgia. As an illustration, when he was in Tbilisi, Giles was puzzled by the beefy guys in sidewalk cafes who all had makeup bags, until he realized they contained guns.

Euripides “is the Ibsen of his day: he writes great roles for women, and he undermines the society he lives in and writes about.”

Giles showed us a video clip of a production of a Japanese production of “Medea” by Yukio Ninagawa which was totally Japanese (very foreign-looking) and yet utterly emotionally true and devastating.

Charlemagne “reboots Western civilization,” although “the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.”

POST SHAKESPEARE

Commenting on the fact that he was hugely popular/reasonably wealthy while at the same time doing groundbreaking writing for the stage, Giles said Shakespeare was “Lloyd Weber and Chekhov in one – in his lifetime!”

On the other hand, despite Jonson’s eulogistic tribute that Shakespeare was not of his age but “for all time,” Giles said Shakespeare was largely neglected and rewritten in the 17th and 18th centuries. From 1631-1838, Nahum Tate’s version of “Lear,” in which the old man survives and Cordelia also lives to marry Edgar, was “Shakespeare’s King Lear” for audiences in those years! Macready did the first revival of Lear as Shakespeare had written it, in 1838.

Margaret Hughes was the first known woman to appear legally on stage, in the 1660s, near the end of the Restoration. “Breeches parts” were roles written with plots especially contrived to put female actors in breeches to show off their legs, which otherwise would have been hidden beneath the dresses of the era.

Garrick launched the Cult of Shakespeare in Stratford and London. Giles showed us several depictions of Shakespearean productions from various eras, and noted that most of them performed in “modern” dress for the time. Thus, there’s nothing radical about modern dress productions of Shakespeare, and “period” dress “appropriate” to the time period of the characters as we conceive of it is a more recent development – an innovation, if you will.

Edmund Kean pushed for “realism” in the form of costumes and elaborate sets. Things could get pretty hefty: Giles showed us a poster for a production of “Macbeth” dated Nov. 5, 1814, which advertised 15 “principle witches” and a witches chorus.

For a time in the mid 19th century there was a vogue for child stars. Kate and Ellen Bateman made their stage debut at the ages of 6 and 4, and toured in the 1850s marketed by their father Hezekiah Bateman and by P.T. Barnum. (They toured in “Richard III,” for example, with Ellen playing Richard and Kate as Richmond.) “Master Betty” (William Henry West Betty) was the most famous of child actors, assaying Hamlet and Romeo in runs at Covent Garden from the age of 13 to 15. The fad for him was so huge that top adult names like John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons went into temporary retirement so as to avoid competing with him. By the age of 17, he was a has-been.

TWENTIETH CENTURY

While discussing Oscar Wilde and the subversive undercurrents of his plays: “Never underestimate the seriousness of the light, frothy plays.” You’ve got to work harder with the comedies – presumably as an audience member as well as an actor or director. Noel Coward went completely out of vogue for a good 20 years after the Second World War, until Laurence Olivier staged “Hay Fever” at the National Theatre.

Pinter acknowledged a debt to Coward: “It’s all about the gaps in life … how we feel isolated.” In the banality of Pinter’s plays, “there’s always a lurking menace….” The characters could lose it, “and often they don’t, but they could break out at any instant.”

Giles showed us a clip from a black-and-white 1984 BBC production of “The Birthday Party” which showed Joan Plowright serving breakfast to her husband. She natters on at him about his corn flakes and various people while, head buried in his newspaper, he barely responds. The dialogue is flat, unremarkable, superficially unrevealing, but painfully hilarious and in Plowright’s execution, terribly revelatory about her character’s desperation and insecurity. Is anything funny about the dialogue, Giles asked us. No. “You have to have incredible dexterity to make Pinter work,” Giles commented, “because on the page he doesn’t.”

Note to read or see “Saved” by Edward Bond, which caused a minor scandal because it depicts a couple turning up the volume on the telly to drown out a baby’s crying, and later the infant is stoned in its pram by street toughs.

RANDOM REMARKS

“Never think of the past as a primitive place. The past was always the present, and it was always cutting-edge.”

“Art is intended to prepare us for the great experiences of our life”: oh, this is love, I’ve observed this before; ah, this is what death is like.

He recalled attending a production of Stoppard’s “The Real Thing,” during which a woman in the audience spontaneously called out, “I feel so witty!” Giles thought this was wonderful. My job as a playwright, he concluded, is to give you a new costume, so that you say, “God, I never knew I felt that before.”

“If you go to ‘Mamma Mia’ and it changes your life, I would change your life back.”

David: Kind of Like Being in a Movie

2009-09-26T13:27:00.001-07:00

Traveling to and in Britain felt like being in a movie.

The main reason was that everybody talked differently. You could understand them because they spoke English – mostly – but with a bewildering variety of accents and dialects. Usually you only hear such voices in the movies.

The most striking verbal thing for me was the way a simple “o” sound acquired a hint of an “i” at the end of words like “So” and “No,” so that they came out in a way I find very hard to spell out. Think of the “uh” sound with a touch of “y” following it: “So” became “suy” and “No” became “nuy.” I couldn’t figure out quite how they do it . . . or why it ever came about.

There were many other things that looked familiar . . . but were not quite right.

Street signs for familiar purposes use different language. Instead of Detour, you saw “Diversion” or “Diverted Traffic.” The familiar upside-down triangle that typically says Yield became “Give Way.” Instead of Exit, you were directed to “Way Out.” Orally, you quickly got used to hearing that you’d need to join or wait in the “queue” instead of a line.

“Mind the Gap” replaces “Watch Your Step.” In fact, “Mind the Gap” is a rather famous phrase, since commuters on the Tube hear it relentlessly: “Please mind the gap between the platform and train,” a pleasantly officious female voice announces over the sound system as the train pulls into every station.

Then of course, there are the peculiar place names. I never quite got used to hearing that proper female voice remind me that a subway line I rode a few times ultimately terminated at “Cockfosters” (which, of course, sounds more like “Cuckfustuz”).

We saw lots of familiar fast-food outlets – KFC, Subway, Burger King, and LOTS of Starbucks – but there were many other repeated names we had never seen before: Caffé Nero, Costa Coffee, Pret a Manger (without, I think, the French accent egu), and just plain “Eat.”

Pubs and taverns often had “arms” in their name because of they feature a crest that references a family, region of origin, or noble charter (“Northumberland Arms,” “The King’s Arms”). Some also assured us they were “Free,” which meant they served a variety of brews instead of the particular brand or two they were contracted to limit themselves to.

I was always a little startled by a sign for a high-end women’s fashion chain called French Connection (UK), which brazenly offered the acronym FCUK. (I took a photo of one at Heathrow just before we flew out.)

Of course the money looked different, but there were a couple details that I particularly liked. The two-pound coin has a gold coin inside a silver ring – a design I recall seeing in other European countries. Most charmingly, the back side of the 10-pound bill pictures Charles Darwin, and it’ll be a cold day in hell when we see something like that on an American currency.

(While we were in England, I saw a news story in the Daily Telegraph that a new British movie about the life of Darwin – “Creation” starring Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, and Jeremy Northam – had gotten raves at the Toronto Film Festival and was receiving worldwide distribution, but had not landed an American distributor because the content was feared to be “too controversial.” As the Brits used to say, tommyrot!)

I kept looking for street signs in the usual American location – on a pole at the corner above an intersection – and it wasn’t there. Instead, street signs in London are plaques: larger than the typical sign in the U.S., with more information, but not dependably placed or even necessarily there.

The information will consists of the township (“The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,” “City of Westminster”; usually in a red, gothic script), the street name (“Kensington Church Street,” in a larger black serif font), and the start of the postal code (“W.8.” – again in red).

Usually, it will be on a building near the corner, anywhere from ten to twenty feet up the façade, sometimes on a low wall. Sometimes, they’ll have extra helpful information: “Leading to: Hyde Park Place.” More helpfully, some buildings (residential buildings, not just commercial ones) will have the entire address (number and street name) painted on a column or the wall near the door.

The confusion isn’t helped by the fact that more and more service jobs are filled with immigrants. Most of the wait staff in our hotel appeared to be Russians, with a sprinkling of various Asians such as Malays and Nepalese.

Our final morning in London, I was tucking into breakfast when our waitress asked “Do yu vant sum tust?” Dust, I wondered. I had her repeat it. Still couldn’t grasp what she was asking.

Toast, Carole explained. Ah.

David: A Few General Remarks, Post-Voyage

2009-09-21T23:05:00.001-07:00

Our second full day home, and we are still not recovered from the shift on body clocks: Carole tends to droop a lot mid-afternoon, although she tends to get a second wind in the evening, so we don't go to bed any earlier, but we wake up several times in the wee hours of the morning and have to force ourselves to go back to sleep.

We had a joyous reunion with our pets this morning. Pixie, who was terrified about having anybody other than the two of us touch or hold her, apparently took to Mary the pet handler within a day and a half, and by the time we got back to the States was spinning in circles in her company and kissing her, and barking furiously if Mary left the room. But she was overjoyed to see us again and took quite a few minutes to stop hyperventilating during the car ride home.

It will take me some time to gather up and organize the many slips and sheets of paper on which I took notes during this trip, about everything from snatches of funny overheard conversations and Giles Ramsay's lectures on the history of theater, to specific paintings we photographed in the Victoria & Albert Museum. Not to mention the roughly 700 photographs we shot on the trip! (Carole formatted a couple from the New York City leg -- of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and us in Central Park -- which went up on her Facebook page, so if you're an FB friend of her or me [I've linked to it from mine] you can look at them there. If you're not an FB friend of ours, then why aren't you?

I can, and may well, write essays on our odd hotel in London, and the varieties of comfort facilities we encountered along the trip (with a memory or two of similarly posh or spartan arrangements on past travels overseas).

For the moment, just a few general comments, now that it's over.

The cruise on the Queen Mary 2 was everything we could have hoped for, and more. I'll admit that up front I was fairly blase about that part: it was Carole's lifelong dream, and she found a theater-history and current shows package that appealed to me. Going in, I just sort of assumed the QM2 was a cruise ship rather like several others, maybe dozens, on the ocean. It was probably several decades old, and a copy of the original Queen Mary.

I would have been wrong on all counts. The skilled crew, from the commodore to the engineers, carefully stressed that this ship was an "ocean liner," as distinguished from a "cruise ship." The former can and does make direct trips across the Atlantic at all times of the year, in fair weather and foul, while the latter tend to linger in the warmer climes, and make long stopovers in exotic ports. The former is also officially empowered to carry Her Majesty's mail across the ocean, and therefore entitled to the designation RMS (Royal Mail Ship).

The QM2 is only five years old; she is the longest, tallest, and broadest passenger vessel ever launched (from the legendary shipbuilding yard at Alstom Chantiers de l'Atlantique, near St.-Nazaire, France). She is too wide to fit through the Panama Canal, yet her draft is only 32 feet -- meaning she can travel in shallower water than the original Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, which drafted at 42 feet and therefore sometimes had to wait for flood tide to dock in New York or Southampton. At 203 above the waterline, the QM2 enables passengers to look the Statue of Liberty directly in the eye.

Just about the only thing we could not say was superlative and perfection about the RM2 was the coffee. I rather regret that I didn't take a chance to stop at one of the dozens upon dozens of Starbucks outlets I saw in London -- they really are nearly as common and densely situated there as in Portland! -- to see whether the coffee drinks seemed comparable . . . because coffee under any other circumstances was pretty mediocre. It ranged from the truly awful (out of the automatic dispenser machines aboard the ship) to the barely acceptable (in the Queen Mary 2 dining room and our hotel). The Brits really don't know from coffee!

We came away from our visit to Hampton Court -- and to a lesser extent, to the London museums and theaters -- with a pressing desire to improve our knowledge of English history. So many fascinating personalities I'd certainly heard of but really need to know more about: Oliver Cromwell, Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, William the Conqueror, David Garrick, Harold Pinter, and on and on.

Also, as Carole recalled this morning, not once throughout the whole trip did anyone offer us an "English muffin" or a crumpet.

Home Again!

2009-09-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

We arrived home at about 8:45 p.m. Since we have been traveling for 17 hours and up -- more or less -- for 23, we are going to bed. But there's much more to report on our trip, which we will do after we've gotten some rest.

David: Last Day in London

2009-09-18T13:45:00.001-07:00

I just posted a status update to my Facebook page to the effect that I'm sufficiently tired and sated to be ALMOST willing to board that plane tomorrow morning for the long flight home to Portland.

As Carole mentioned, we were whisked to the Victoria & Albert Museum to see their relatively new theater exhibition (which I only now remember reading about a while back, because it features tour costumes of Elton John's and a 1972 jumpsuit of Mick Jagger's as well as turn-of-the-last century prompt books, ticket stubs, and posters. As with many other things, I think I'll be more in a mood to discuss what we saw at length when I don't have a need for sleep before an early-morning departure from our hotel hanging over my head.

In the mid afternoon we were taken to Home House (the Scottish family pronounces it "Hume"), which is now a private club -- probably still renting from the family -- which in turn apparently leases out space for events like our tea this afternoon. Something my friend Jeremy Lillie pointed out before we left which was confirmed while I was here, is that what Americans have a tendency to call "high tea" (such as happens at the Heathman in Portland) is simply "tea" here in Britain. "High tea" is actually a three-course meal -- a working class thing, according to Jeremy -- rather than the dainty thing with crustless sandwiches, cakes, and scones with clotted cream and preserves that we think of as quintessentially British.

During our tea, the theater reviewer for the Sunday Independent, Kate Basset, talked to us about her work, with our theater expert Giles Ramsay prompting her with various questions, and then we all discussed the three plays we had seen while here in London. I asked several other questions, but the one I really wanted to ask was whether she knew of any formal or even semi-orthodox training program for critics. Her background seemed no less ad hoc than almost any other critic's I've heard about (including mine), and I would have liked to discuss whether that's the way it has to be, ought to be, or oughtn't to be. Would critics be any better for a formal education program similar to the one many artists and actors and directors receive? (Basset was an English major in college who was aiming for stage direction and worked as an assistant director at the National Theatre for a while, but then drifted into writing and analysis journalism until she realized she would have to make an irreversible choice, and she did.)

Elderhostel had arranged for our tour to go to a musical concert of Schubert lieder this evening, but again Carole and I ducked out. She had had nervous sneezing and coughing bouts on the QM2, but a real, unmistakable cold only really turned up yesterday, and it was slowing her down today, even with pharmaceuticals to suppress symptoms. She was worried about getting packed and getting plenty of rest, while I wanted to spend my last evening in town walking the city -- particularly along the Thames.

So I took the Tube to the "Tower Hill" station (on the District line, if I recollect correctly; the London subway system has 11 different lines compared with Boston's 4 which I know well). That put me in a position to shoot a couple photos of the Tower of London complex and beautiful Tower Bridge near sunset, and then photos of boats on the river, London Bridge, "Shakespeare's Globe," the Eye (nickname of the ferris wheel-like sightseeing structure that was constructed during the Millennium celebrations) after dark.

I also shot more quotidian sights, such as the interesting juxtaposition of a Dianetics office next to a Casino. (London, and indeed Tottenham Court Road, has many storefront, shotgun "casinos" which are like video arcades that just happen to have a lot of slot machines in them.)

Marks & Spenser, a sort of supermarket of food and goods like Fred Meyer back home, currently has an ad campaign that I've been trying to chronicle, because the same catchphrase -- something about the quality that money can buy -- is plastered across a closeup of a slab of roast beef in one huge billboard and a woman's body from upper thigh to neck in bikini lingerie in another. There are other articles depicted in other billboards (bathing goods, perhaps?) but those are the two I've seen most often, and the similitude is just kind of . . . unfortunate.

I have so many slips of paper, notepads, and sheets on which I've noted down various interesting signs, snatches of conversation, and observations of my own, but I'll have to get to those after we've arrived home and had time to recover.

Note: I'm supposed to be participating in a staged reading of a new play by Joann Farias at Miracle Theatre on Monday night at 7:00.

Carole: Last Day in London

2009-09-18T11:20:00.001-07:00

Well, I am three for three: three trips abroad and three head colds. I really, really tried to avoid getting sick, but getting soaked in the rain at Hampton Court and then spending hours the next day on the crowded Tube and walking to the point of exhaustion pretty much set me up. Hope that flying home tomorrow won't result in an ear infection... an experience I had on a previous trip.

We are supposed to go to a classical concert tonight, but I have decided not to go. We have a 6 AM wake-up tomorrow and then a long day on airplanes, so I am hoping to get to bed early. David's gone out to walk along the Thames and take more pictures. (We have a LOT of pictures on our camera's memory card.)

Today was really interesting. We went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is a sight to see itself... a real 19th century pile. It has a fascinating collection of theater memorabilia and costumes. We also had time to look at some of the other exhibits, and of course I sought out the 19th-century paintings. My only disappointment as far as paintings I had hoped to see on this trip is not finding any by Whistler, because I really wanted to get a look at how his painting technique manifests itself. Saw works by other artists of his circle... but evidently I would have had to go to the Tate to see Whistlers. Juat didn't have enough time this trip!

Thia afternoon, we went to Home House, which is a private club that used to be the town house of the Home family. It's a lovely, elegant place. There we had a really nice tea. (I could become addicted to scones with clotted cream and preserves.) Our tour lecturer, Giles Ramsay, and the theater critic Kate Basset (of the Sunday Independent) led us in a lively discussion of theater criticism and of the three plays we saw on this trip.

The order in which we saw the plays here in London was perfect. The first, "Calendar Girls," was pretty light and aimed at an audience that wants to be entertained and not have to analyze much. "Troilus and Cressida" was a chance to see a Shakepeare play that is not easily categorized and to experience the Globe Theatre, which is a show in itself. The final play, "War Horse," was masterfully staged innovative work that made excellent use of modern technology and hit us between the eyes with a powerful anti-war message. We all left the theater feeling stunned.

All in all, I have to say that this trip has been a delightful whirlwind. We were given an evaluation form to fill out for our tour and when asked about the hotel we stayed in New York, I honestly couldn't remember a thing about it! We've packed in so many sights and sounds and experiences on this trip that it's all sort of a marvelous blur. Will have to look at all our photos to see where we have been!

David: Fourth Day in London

2009-09-17T16:02:00.001-07:00

Well, that's the first time that's happened, I think: the play wasn't even 60 seconds under way, and already I was in tears. The play is "War Horse," it's an adaptation of a book for children by Michael Morpurgo, and the National Theatre production is staged with actors, projections of drawings and etchings on a screen for backgrounds, and for the full-size horses, some flying birds and a goose, and extra humans . . . puppets.

We just got back from our final play of the trip, and yes, we were short of time and tired last night, so we did not file a report after "Troilus and Cressida." I can see now that there is far too much to report about the basic touristy things Carole and I have done the past week -- never mind the more general observations I would like to record about London, British culture (well, signage and food, mainly), and our hotel -- so I will probably write more on the latter subjects here after we get home to Oregon and have had some time to recover.

Anyway. Wednesday (yesterday) the tour organizers had arranged to have a political columnist -- Polly Toynbee, of the Independent, I believe -- come in and chat with the American visitors at our hotel in the morning. But Carole and I decided to skip that, given the little free time we had to explore London. So we took the Tube to the edge of Hyde Park and walked through it as far as the Princess Diana memorial, which is actually quite nice (neither of us could give a fig for the woman, but I'm fascinated with what other people made of her); took the Tube again to stroll by Buckingham Palace; then subway'd under the Thames to the south side to meet some old friends for lunch.

Ken and Sherry moved here from Seattle 11 years ago when she landed a theater management training program, and he found work in software programming. Their kids have thus been growing up British, and they recently acquired local citizenship. We had a lovely meal with them, and then Sherry showed us around backstage at The Young Vic, where she works now. (The Old Vic, just up the street, is currently staging "Inherit the Wind" starring Kevin Spacey, who has been living and working in British theater for a number of recent years.)

Carole and I then took the Tube over to a station (wish I could recall the name) that turned out to exit right from under Big Ben, which in retrospect sort of makes all the barricades and bollards around it at street level seem a little pointless. We walked around the Parliament and Westminster Cathedral, past a copy of Saint-Gaudens statue of Lincoln, past Downing Street and the Horse Guards (taking lots of photos of all the above items along the way, of course). Then we split up and she looked at paintings in the National Gallery and I tried to get to the Dickens House and the British Museum, but it was too late in the day to make entry either allowed or useful. But I had a nice pleasant walk through Russell Square, and sat and read in Bedford Square before returning to the hotel and showering and dressing for the evening's show.

That was "Troilus and Cressida," staged at what is officially known as "Shakespeare's Globe" (although it isn't really on the site where Shakespeare's Globe stood in the early 17th century, and it was really the brainchild and dream of an American named Sam Wanamaker, etc.). But never mind, it really is beautiful and moving. T&C is not often performed, being a very cynical and puzzling "problem play" that has no heroes, in which nearly every character acts hypocritically and cravenly. The company gave it a stirring performance, with live music (much drums, an occasional wood flute or trumpets, and tuned bells), reasonably period (Trojan War) costumes, some terrific fight choreography, and plenty of cheap laughs for the audience. I thought it was solid but not that great, mostly because it is a strangely-written and plotted show.

This morning we were bused to the Geffrye Museum, which depicts a history of interior design from the 16th century or so to the present. There are both rooms fully decorated in the styles of various eras, mostly with period furniture, fixtures, carpeting, etc., and a series of gardens also designed in a chronological order. We lunched in Covent Garden market, where Carole and I stumbled on a cart superintended by a woman whose vibrantly colored silk vests and neckties Carole had actually happened across on the Web some months ago. "In the flesh," her work was irresistable, and I ended up purchasing two vests the likes of which I have never seen stateside. Not only did many of our elder companions on the tour comment warmly on the one I chose to wear to dinner and the theater, but during the intermission I saw a teenaged British girl mouth "wow" to herself as I passed. Gave me a great feeling.

In the mid afternoon our tour took us to the Royal Theatre Drury Lane, about whose history and various things I noted, I could write many paragraphs. So I'll just say here that it was originally built in the early 1660s, burned down once or twice, was rebuilt and managed by the politician and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the current structure dates from about 1812, with two separate royal boxes for a king and prince who had gotten into a fist fight in the lobby early on. A pair of actors -- a man and a woman -- took turns leading us 'round in the guise of characters from the theater (such as a master carpenter) or actual history (Nell Gwynne, an actress who grew up in a pub and brothel to become mistress of King Charles II). They were very entertaining.

I have lots of little things I noted down from tours or museums, or observed on our goings about London, but I'll save them for another time. For now, I just wanted to share that I glimpsed a shop called "Planet of the Grapes -- wines and spirits"; and our tour guide offered an excellent definition of snobbery: "bad manners masquerading as good taste." (He added that only the middle class tends toward snobbery, because the working classes have nothing to protect and the upper classes have nothing to fear.)

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS: Black and white bread is indeed sausage that has been mixed with grains or bread, although the "black" gets its coloration from pork blood. No wonder I didn't much care for it. One other odd item for breakfast is fried bread, which is nothing like French toast, but white bread heavily soaked in oil and/or deep fried until its a crusty golden brown. You can get it as is or under a fried egg. I saw a lot of the locals with various meats piled high on their breakfast plates, and so even though I meant to say the other day that an estimated 75 percent of the diet of the king and aristocracy may have been meat in Henry VIII's day, some folks aren't that far behind today.

On the way to the New London Theatre for "War Horse" this evening, our theater expert Giles remarked: "The puppetry is stunning. Normally I try to avoid value judgments like 'you should,' because you might not agree, but if you don't like these puppets, you're weird!"

I had to agree. Even before they changed a foal into a full-grown horse, long before a pair of cavalry horses were captured by the Boche and made to draw a wagon of wounded and then an artillery gun, and even before we got to see the foal -- which is to say, less than 60 seconds after the play began -- the simple beauty of a couple of bird puppets (swallows?) brought tears to my eyes. The story concerns a young boy and a horse, torn apart by the First World War when the latter is requisitioned (actually, sold by his greedy father to the officer corps) to serve at the Front. And the boy decides to lie about his age and enlist in order to find and reclaim his horse. In the course of the story, Joey the horse is captured by the Germans and cared for by a former cavalry officer who hates the war and wants to go home himself, and eventually finds himself in a no-man's-land of exploding shells and barbed wire. Three puppeteers handled the large and small movements of the two principal horses in the story, and lesser horse figures swept through on the shoulders of single operators.

I cried many more times, for many different reasons, through the rest of the evening. The audience, considerably made up of schoolchildren in uniforms and teenagers, loved it as much as we did. It was an intense and deeply moving story, and the program explained a lot about the war, animals in it, and the wonderful design of this production.

David: Second Day in London

2009-09-15T16:30:00.001-07:00

After nearly a week of pretty much dry, often lovely days, the heavy grey rain hit about the middle of this morning, when we were already inside Hampton Court. That only mattered when we had to depart at 1:45 p.m. -- dashing down the long drive to the bus -- although it prevented us from seeing the extensive gardens around the complex.

Although there were glorious tapestries, woodwork, stonework, and ceramics/silverwork at the castle, I found the tour of Henry VIII's kitchens the most fascinating. The audio tour featured several "experimental food historians" (who knew there was such a career?), who cook the original recipes with the original tools. Aside from the massive size of the facilities, there were so many fascinating aspects to the operation: royalty and aristocrats at the top of the (literal as well as figurative) food chain consume an estimated 75 percent of their diet in the form of meats.

Pies were common because they were more regarded as cooking and eating utensils -- you cooked things in them, and when served, cut the top off and just ate the innards -- than entire entrees themselves. Breads, though enjoyed for themselves, were also used, often, mainly as plates and bowls. Henry VIII, as shown by his armor measurements, started life as a dashing young monarch at age 18 and into his 20s with a 32" waist, grew to 35", and eventually ballooned to 54", partly due to much comfort eating after the death of his beloved third wife, Jane Seymour, in childbirth following but one year of marriage.

Making a mad dash into the rain to squeeze off a couple shots of the gardens, I passed a tiny enclosed area toward the rear of Hampton Court that was filled with plants and called "The Chocolate Court," so I took a photo of that too, and will look up why it was entitled thus later.

Before we bused out to Hampton, I got a look at my first proper English breakfast in the form of the hotel buffet. There were some STRANGE items there, to American eyes. Although we made do quite well with eggs, fresh fruit, hot and cold cereals and granola mixes, etc., there were also: sauteed mushrooms, baked beans, LOTS of meats in the form of cold sliced salamis and hot sausages, as well as something called "black and white pudding," which I dimly recall is also a form of processed and sliced meat that looks sort of like burnt pepperoni.

Our hotel, especially after the stellar experience of the premium facilities and service aboard the QM2, is distinct letdown. It's just northwest of the teeming theater district and true historic center of town, near Regents Park I believe, and could best be described as "serviceable though eccentric." (A more uncharitable term would be mediocre.) The facilities are highly un-disabled access-friendly: the hall between the elevators or stairs and our room features three steps up, a step down, and perhaps another set of a step or three; a short elevated bridge takes us either across a courtyard or to another building altogether, and the facades we see out the window are very old, worn, and stained bricks.

The elevators war with each other, and sometimes are out of order altogether -- so Carole and I take the stairs to our first floor [that would be second floor in the US] room. Security measures seem higher than normal (perhaps because the neighborhood is a little dodgy; the view out our window is of fenced ball courts, play equipment devoid of children, and occasionally menacing young men in dark dress yakking on cell phones): not only does the key card open your room, but you need it to pass from the stairway from the ground floor into the hallway, and into unlock the basement business centre from which I am typing this. A room key card is also required in a slot just inside the door to activate the room lights (which is a good way to avoid misplacing it, I suppose).

On the other hand, the interiors have obviously been upgraded, and there are a few cool things about our quarters. For one thing, the toilet has two flush options (as do many across Europe and aboard the QM2, apparently to distinguish between a "number one" and "number two" deposit) which in this case consists of two shiny metal ovals that partially interpenetrate and are set artistically into the wall above the seat. (The toilet roll dispenser, however, oddly comes out of the wall perpendicularly only a few inches from the floor below one's right haunch.) There is also a light in the closet that comes on automatically when one opens the door.

While we're on the subject of bathrooms, I saw something in the ancient men's room of the Noel Coward Theatre (formerly the New London Theatre, then the Aubrey, dating back to 1904) that I had never seen before. The standing men's urinals, basically a concave facade facing you from floor to mid-chest level, have a clear plastic sheet attached to the front and angled out from the pit at the bottom toward the top of your knee (mine, anyway), which I initially thought was a clever innovation to prevent urine from splashing on one's shoes and trouser cuffs. It does that, certainly, but more important, it protects same from the violent flush of water which happens regularly and automatically.

I'm not going to talk at length about tonight's show, "Calendar Girls," a delightfully fluffy adaptation of the hit movie based on a true story, or the Coward (other than to say it had a small bar with a bunch of Coward memorabilia on the wall under glass). I only want to note that this play, which would be fairly easy to stage elsewhere and offers a fine array of roles for older actresses, duplicated the astonishing success of its subject tale by achieving a pre-sale ticket gross of 1.7 million pounds during its premiere run at the Chichester Festival Theatre (i.e., out of town), which was twice what the recent Harry Potter-rigged revival of "Equus" did.

Carole and I had our first British pints after the show, at the Northumberland Arms a block from our hotel. It's a "free" pub, which means it can serve a variety of beers instead of the specific brands that other taverns are contracted to limit themselves to. I had a Sharps Doom Bar and Carole had Marston's Pedigree. They were served in glasses that identified them as such, though the Pedigree glass was more interesting: it had cricket players etched in action around the base, and when she finished her drink, one could see "Run Out" etched in the bottom.

I have to say that while the two local beers were fine, they didn't have anything on our favorite Portland microbrews. And I still prefer my beer cold.

Carole: Second Day in London

2009-09-15T08:40:00.001-07:00

We spent the day at Hampton Court Palace, which is about 30 miles from London. My knowledge of British history is pretty fuzzy, but I filled in some blanks today. Of course, this left me wanting to know more. The palace was built by Cardinal Wolsey, the "right-hand man" of King Henry VIII. However, it was more magnificent than Henry's place, so he just confiscated it. It's huge (and was made even bigger by later additions by William and Mary). The main banquest hall has the most incredible carved ceiling...all kinds of intricated designs and figures and animals. The chapel ceiling is also wonderful...a beautiful blue with graceful arches. We got to see the kitchens and other working areas, where an army of servants was kept busy all day with the cooking and laundry and other tasks required to keep this edifice going. The newer parts of the palace were added on about 150 years later and are in the baroque style. They were quite impressive, but the older parts of the palace were definitely more interesting. There are excellent exhibits and audio tours that really give one a sense of the place. The gardens are magnificent, but I contented myself with admiring them from the windows because the predicted "intermittent showers" had become a downpour. (David did brave the elements to get some photos.) I was told it takes 40 gardeners to maintain the grounds.

One last word on our trip on the Queen Mary 2...My only disappointment was not being able to sit out on deck to read a book. It was very windy out there, and rather cool. I did sit in a wooden deck chair for a few minutes on a sunny afternoon, but that's about all I was up for. That was a small disappointment, however, in what was a truly wonderful experience.

David: First Day in England

2009-09-14T15:33:00.001-07:00

I wish we could post a photo or two from our trip so far on this blog, but we're not sufficiently conversant with the Internet to do it with ease, and time online has been expensive so far. Now we're at a hotel that gives us free (if very slow and clunky) Web access, and Carole has been talking about trying to download a bunch of photos on Flickr, perhaps in a day or two.

I had the phone alarm wake me at 5:00 a.m. so I could watch our arrival. When we got up, there were already shore lights in the middle distance on both sides of the ship, so we were heading north around the far side of the Isle of Wight with the main island of Britain to the starboard side. Distant lights at night are almost invariably magical and romantic, even if one could see industrial complexes and smokestacks in among 'em. Our digital camera managed to grab a few lovely photos of the shoreline and docking near dawn.

There was a large industrial tub across the way called "Tokyo Cab," which seemed appropriately unassuming, but a similar ship further off was named "Glorious Leader" so I had to wonder whether it hailed from Korea, China, or some African fiefdom.

Cunard cleverly designed the schedule to have us dock about 6:30 a.m., whereupon breakfast was promptly served in our Britannia restaurant, and then we were to be ready to disembark by 8:30. The small oil pumper that pulled up next to the QM2 to refuel her had a deck covered with pipes that reminded me of a much larger vessel docked in North Portland and temporarily named "Il Falcone Maltese," on which I spent much of two days pretending to be an illegal arms buyer for the TNT series "Leverage" two weeks ago.

We didn't actually get called off the ship until close to 9, but that was a quick process, and I think we were on our bus and rolling by 9:30.

We reached Winchester -- maybe a third of the way from Southampton to London -- around 10:15 and started our tour of the cathedral at 10:45. It lasted almost until noon; Winchester Cathedral is a huge and complicated structure, with Norman columns and walls from the 12th century enveloped by later Gothic designs. Jane Austen and Izaak Walton (author of "The Compleat Angler") are buried here, and there is a lot of incredible stone and wood work. The Puritans took over during the English Civil War, and to show their contempt for ornate religious practices and buildings, they stabled horses in the nave and shot up the stained-glass windows. There's a huge, abstract-looking window at the west end that turns out to have been shot up by the Puritans, but faithful locals gathered up glass shards and buried them, and after Anglicanism was restored, they rebuilt the windows with the original medieval shards and clear glass where much of it was missing, so there's no discernible pictorial design, but the effect is very modern and moving.

We drove on to London and were moving through the city by 3:15. After dropping off Giles, our theater expert, near his home, we got to cruise along the Thames past many bridges, MI5, MI6, the giant derelict Battersea power station, the Houses of Parliament, Whitehall/Downing Street, and the tower of Big Ben, before turning north up Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road to our hotel. More on that later, perhaps. But to finish the day, we had dinner at the hotel, and then Carole and I strolled south along the aforementioned streets as far as the National Museum and Trafalgar Square, stopping in to several bookstores along the way. (We also passed at LEAST six Starbucks along those 20 or so blocks.)

There is so much more I could relate about the Queen Mary cruise. I'll cover a few things and see how long it takes me to tire out. (I've been up more than 18 hours, now.)

Couple more signs of elegant living. The wait staff in the Britannia always served all the women at a table first, without fail. Butter knifes, short and rounded, had a little notch in the top (opposite side from the "cutting" edge), of whose purpose we were never given official confirmation, but one of the American diners had a good guess: they're for catching the edge of the butter tray and pulling it toward you when it's out of the reach of your fingers.

I described the golden Cunard crown-lion-laurel crest on the plateware in an earlier report but neglected to get to the conclusion of that illustration. The wait staff always placed the plates so that the crest was furthest from the diner, "facing" you from the top of the plate, nearest the center of the table. I'm used to swiveling my plate around while I eat, to move the remaining food to the best angle for me to get at it with my utensils, but I felt a little inhibited by that neatly-placed crest. Not that probably anyone would have noticed, or cared, but it just didn't feel RIGHT to move my plate around so that the crest no longer stood where it had been placed, in the same relation to me, the other diners, and the center of the table that all the other plates did.

Having caught or witnessed Carole catch colds and other internal irritations on past flights, I was especially nervous about having to fly again on this vacation. I packed masks and surgical gloves, not really certain whether I would actually use them on the plane. The older man sitting next to me as we awaited takeoff in Portland was coughing quite regularly (roughly once a minute -- I timed him!), which gave me a good excuse to put on a mask. He stopped coughing once we were in the air, curiously enough. I managed to avoid going to the airplane restrooms at all during the transcontinental flight (careful planning!), so I didn't resort to the surgical gloves, but that will be a tougher trick to pull off on our longer flight home from London.

Anyway, I was already extra sensitized about germs before I arrived on a closed community of 2400 guests and 1500 crew on the QM2. I washed my hands a LOT on the transoceanic voyage, but we were also encouraged to by bathroom signs. Not only that, but a crew member stood at the door of the restaurant and sprayed disinfectant hand-wash on the hands of any guests who desired it.

A word about coffee. We drank a fair amount of it -- decaf and caffeinated -- on the QM2, and we've had our first cups in a London restaurant tonight. It's clear that in Portland, far more than with microbrews, we are very spoiled. Coffee was available from dispensing machines all over the ship, and it was terrible! The coffee served at meals was passable (I THINK, if I was not mostly beguiled by the unmistakably wonderful quality of the food it accompanied), but not in a class with Stumptown, Peet's, or Seattle's Best. I'm a little curious to see whether London Starbucks tastes the same as it does back home.

I may have mentioned that every evening, along with a brief news summary and the next day's "Programme," we found two Cunard chocolates on our bedspread. I could write many paragraphs about my questions, and a few answers I gleaned, concerning the onboard water for showers, toilets, sinks, and food stores (20,000 eggs for the voyage?), but just these chocolates were plenty of food for thought. One per passenger per day meant 2400 x 6 = 14,400 chocolates alone! Think about it.

I could write much, much more, but it's getting late. Questions are welcome, though.

David: Final Night at Sea

2009-09-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

We did not file a report yesterday -- partly because we were pretty busy, and partly because we were running out of Internet time and the service is fairly slow for the steep price we've had to pay for it, so we decided to save the final half-hour for tonight's wrap-up.

As we've gotten closer to the continent, I've found myself doing more "continental-style" things. At this afternoon's tea, I put milk in my tea, which did not knock me out, though I saw how it could work. At lunch today I put malt vinegar on my fish and chips -- works on the fish, not on the chips.

At yesterday's lunch, I cut and ate my veal schnitzel (another serious violation of my eco-ethical pescatarianism; hey, I'm on vacation) in the continental manner: keeping the fork in the left hand. I can recall a joke or riddle in which a Nazi spy disguised as an American Army man is "outed" because he doesn't switch his fork to his right hand like everyone else in the mess hall. I became aware that the three men around the table to my right -- a retired engineer from Long Island, an elder gentleman from rural Georgia, and the Canadian fellow on the other side of the Georgia man's wife -- were all putting the slices of veal into their mouths with their left hand as well. Only the woman was automatically switching the fork to her right hand after holding it down with her left while cutting with her right. This is kind of cool, I thought. Then, late in the meal, I noticed that Jimmy from Georgia was cutting with the fork in his RIGHT hand and switching to the left to put the pieces in his mouth -- a real Southpaw!

One of the video shows in the planetarium theater was a virtual tour of the bridge with notes about the vessel as a whole. I missed the beginning, but I noted that my earlier report on the cost to build the QM2 was two decimal places off: it was $800 million. The ship has four stabilizers -- 15 feet (or meters?) long when they swing out from the ship underwater rather like whale flippers; only one or two are typically in use when the seas are moderately rough. The ride has been pretty darn smooth after the relative noise and roughness I reported several nights ago. Weather's been great, too: even more sunshine and temperatures around 63 during the day. Lot of wind, though, so deck strolls have still been fairly few and brief. Carole and I did sit a couple minutes on deck chairs in the sun and took photos, just to have done it.

Another thing that amazed me about the ship's engineering was that, in addition to two fixed propellors, it has two "azi pods" (for azimuth), each weighing 260 tons, and each capable of swiveling its propellor mount a full 360 degrees. These make berthing at the docks much easier.

I think since my last report, I've participated in two more pub trivia contests -- teaming up with folks from Britain and Canada, and even a couple who retired from Memphis to settle on land on the south bank of the Umpqua between Scottsburg and Elkton! (Didn't win anything.) I caught the tail end of the Royal Cunard Singers & Dancers -- a troupe of four singers and 12 dancers; mostly Eastern Europeans/Russians and Brits -- rehearsing their show for the NEXT cruise; saw their proper show for this cruise the next night (last night); and a final Neil Diamond tribute tonight at the tail end of a solo concert by Delores Park. It's a bit like Vegas, I gather: the singers and dancers work HARD, move fast and beautifully, wear an endless array of incredible costumes that necessitate astoundingly fast changes, do athletic and sexy dances of complicated set, duo, and solo choreography. It's exhilarating to watch. I saw another (all-Brahms) concert by the Kennedy Center Chamber Players, watched the RADA kids do 55-minute condensations of "Romeo & Juliet" and Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood," did the third and final workshop run by the RADA team (and got my certificate of completion), and had another great night of karaoke at the Golden Lion Pub last night.

This time I got my ballads ("She's Leaving Home" and "Since I Don't Have You") in early, and also managed to get in "Mississippi Queen," "Superstition," "Undun," and "Sunshine of Your Love." As a result, I have a bit of a reputation among other passengers as a karaoke performer. I wasn't the best singer -- one of the Royal Cunard featured singers came to karaoke both nights and did the country tunes she loves and shines at (e.g., "Strawberry Wine," "Born to Fly") and never gets to do onstage. I found out that Hannah is from Britain, lived with her companion in Spain for six years, and has relocated to Nashville the past two, where she is composing and recording her first country record. It's not my cuppa, but I'll watch for her album, since I "know" her now. Her girlfriend told me she'll record under the name Lennia.

This morning I succumbed to one more luxury. The Canyon Ranch spa was offering cut-rate basic full-body massages if you got up early, so I set the phone alarm for 7:45 a.m. (as I note just below, we lost an hour every night, so I got even less sleep than you might think) and showed up first thing. A tiny Chinese-looking gal named Dina who had an Australian accent (she was a native of Melbourne) worked on me, and answered my questions about the facility and her work, and then I went to the hydrotherapy pool for 20 minutes. And THAT was an amazing facility. But details will have to wait, because my clock is ticking away.

We've been told to pack our bags and put them outside our cabin doors before midnight tonight. The ship has already entered the English Channel, it will go around the far side of the Isle of Wight before turning in and docking at Southampton around 6:15 a.m. I intend to go to bed "early" tonight (that is, before midnight when, the past four nights, we've had to move our watches ahead an hour and lose an hour of sleep) so we can rise early and watch our arrival. If the weather's clear, we might be able to see France as well. Once through customs, our particular Elderhostel group will be placed on a bus for Winchester Cathedral, where some early church-approved versions of what would become mystery plays were performed in the nave, and where we'll disembark for tour and a lunch, before pushing on to London and our hotel.

Some last random notes before I run out of our allotment of Internet access. The air on board, apparently because of its constant circulation, is very dry, so we've awakened with dry and cracked sinuses -- Carole's drawn a little blood when she blows her nose. So saline nose spray (or regular cracks of the balcony door and strolls on deck) are recommended for travelers who will follow us.

There are 165 chefs on board -- the senior ones appear to hail mostly from Italy, India, and Nepal; although the executive chef de cuisine is German -- and (the only other item about the service crew I managed to note down, partly for its wonder) 13 sommeliers.

I decided to buy a big coffee-table book about the ship which has great photos, information, and fold-out maps of the multiple decks that we ALMOST managed to master in our six days aboard. Carole picked up a jacket for Pixie with the Queen Mary 2 name on it, to go with my polo shirt. And we were also gifted with copies of each dinner menu, so anyone who is curious can see the choices we had; toward the end, I took photos of some of my dishes because they were lovely to look at and I'll probably never lay eyes on similar dishes again.

This, That, and Other Things

2009-09-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

First, a quick run through the activity news. During last night's karaoke session in the Golden Lion Pub, I sang "God Only Knows," "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," "I Saw Her Standing There," "Bad to the Bone," and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." I had a lot more ballads I wanted to sing, but almost everyone else -- including some very old men and some very young women -- were singing slow songs and ballads, so I had to change it up. (British folks really seem to love American country music, from Hank Williams to Shania Twain, for some reason.) There will be another karaoke session tomorrow night, and I intend to get my ballads in early.

Today, I had sushi for lunch: only maki sushi, since they couldn't really serve raw fish four days out of port, but there was a lovely salad made of edamame beans and shredded seaweed, as well. Carole and I explored the top decks (a protected look-out on the 14th deck above the bow; open deck, pool, and two open jacuzzis on the 13th deck; a covered pool area on the 12th deck, where 8 dogs and 1 cat are reportedly kept in a kennel but not to be seen without owners' permission; and other curiosities). We took nearly two circuits around the boat on the 7th deck; the day was partly sunny with rain squalls in the distance, but not too windy. Last night got windy and a little rough -- there was a lot of extra rumbling of the floors and rolling when we went to bed, which made trying to sleep interesting, but it's been a lot quieter and calmer out here in the middle of the Atlantic today.

We saw the Sunrise String Quartet play a bunch of pop classic faves (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, several portions of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," Khatchaturian's "Sabre Dance," Offenbach's "Can-Can," the famous movements of "Carmen," that sort of thing) at 2:30. The players are all based in Kiev or Lviv. I was amused to hear the first violinist announce "Joseph Handel" and "Joseph Strauss."

The ship had scheduled Shabbat services at 5:15 in the Atlantic Room -- a glassed-in observation room on the 11th deck above the bow -- complete with prayer books, printed service, kosher wine, and fresh challah. One rather indignant lady complained to the rest of the Jews about the thoroughly Christian memorial service for the 9/11 dead that was conducted by the commodore earlier in the day. (Carole and I skipped that.) We were a mix of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and other varieties of Jewish congregations, but it was a largely harmonious service mostly presided over by a fairly young professional man who had done this sort of thing on other cruises. Some of the chants and prayers had rather different East Coast "tunes" from the ones we know, others were very familiar. A spry 92-year-old Orthodox fellow with a cane got up to do the blessings of the wine and challah.

After dinner we saw the six recent grads of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts who are on board perform a stripped-down, 55-minute version of "Romeo & Juliet." Nice swordplay, some very swift costume changes, a duchess substituted for the Prince of Verona, many of his lines given to Friar Laurence at the conclusion, and of course lots of cuts that were hardly noticeable to anyone not intimately familiar with the text.

I may have neglected to mention that I've gone to little workshops in warm-up, projection, and improvisation being run in the mornings by the RADA grads (they look like such KIDS to me, but they're all highly experienced), partly because I've had to leave early to get to our theater guide's lectures. None of the content is particularly new to me, since it's intended for theater fan/beginners, but one or two things helped crystallize things I only understood intuitively. We're supposed to get a little certificate of some kind from them at the end.

I wanted to mention the smoothness with which modern electronics enables Cunard to handle the billing. After we got through the security check in their hangar on the Brooklyn docks, we went to windows where we were issued little plastic cards, just the size of credit cards, with our name, ship, and dates of voyage along with the Cunard name and logo on the front, and a metal swipe strip on the back. This took only minutes to issue, but it handles just about everything on shipboard: toting up charges for an extra bottle of wine at dinner, drinks in the pubs, gift shop purchases (a Cunard logo polo shirt for me, a Cunard logo jacket for Pixie, etc.), other services on board, such as care in the Canyon Ranch spa, logging on to the computers and keeping track of the time I've purchased on the Internet and am using right now . . . and it is also our stateroom key! Every swipe at a shop, pub, or cashier's computer in the restaurants totes up the grand total of our bill for the trip.

I was attempted to assume Cunard had printed these in advance and had them ready before we showed up on the docks Monday morning, but it was purely a matter of chance which of more than a dozen processing windows we were shuttled to out of the long waiting lines, so apparently the Cunard employees are able to print these out from their computers, right there. Now I wonder whether we'll be allowed to keep them as one-of-a-kind souvenirs, or have to turn them in at Southampton.

I've spoken a little about the chinks in the armor in past blog reports. Now I want to mention just a few of the tiny signs that you are in professional, practiced, quality hands. I suppose these would be nothing to wealthy people who live in New York or Miami and probably see similar practices in the finest hotels and restaurants, but most of this is new to me.

For instance, we are served all our dinners in the Britannia Room on Cunard china -- everything has a gold ring around the center of the rim, with the Cunard logo (a crown above a British lion, cradled in 12 fronds of what looks like wheat or ferns, but is probably laurels). I looked on the underside of one of the small plates for rolls and the label reads Wedgwood, 1759, made especially for Cunard with, again, that logo. I suppose breakfasts and lunches are served on the same china, but I don't know, since we haven't come in for those.

Plates in the King's Court buffets are plain china, but the silverware is also wrapped in cloth napkins. (Another professional touch: there are no stray water droplets on either the clean glasses and mugs or the trays they wait on, in the King's Court.)

Something I MIGHT have seen in old movies is the wait staff's practice, after the appetizer, salad, and entree courses but before the dessert, of lightly scraping or wiping all the crumbs from the table cloth before each sitter with a curved golden tool.

All very small things, but rather telling.

Third Day Afloat and some general comments

2009-09-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I cut way back on my eating and drinking on our second full day on the water. The combination of new contact lenses, a little more rolling of the ship, and a second day of three flutes of champagne (they're always offering you alcohol here for free, in a lot of locations -- although microbrews and mixed drinks in the actual pubs and lounges do cost money) left me a little queasy last night. So I ate lightly for breakfast and lunch, and have had no booze today. But I plan to do karaoke in another hour, so I'll probably have to buy a pint just to keep the host pub happy.

Today Carole and I watched a planetarium show about cosmic collisions narrated by Robert Redford, and at 2:30 we saw the Kennedy (not Lincoln -- sorry!) Center Chamber Players play a Beethoven trio in B flat major, op. 11, for piano, clarinet, and cello; and a Mozart clarinet quintet in A major, K.581. "Saw" is probably an inaccurate term in the latter case, because I listened with my eyes closed for the most part and possibly dozed a little too, but it was a lovely concert. Then I saw a lecture with digital video about the history of newsreels: the lecturer Robert Marshall is the grandson of a newsreel cameraman who shot Lindbergh's takeoff in 1927 and a lot of b&w (as well as personal color) footage of the D-Day landing and liberation of Paris. We also saw historic footage shot by Edison in his Black Maria, the crash and burn of the Hindenberg, etc. Very interesting. The RADA kids read poetry at 7:45 p.m.

Our tour expert, Giles Ramsey, lectured this morning on the Greek theater and Mystery (Miracle and Morality) plays. He's very good: highly knowledgeable and an entertaining speaker. Today's nuggets included: "Euripides was the Ibsen of his day -- he writes great roles for women, and he undermines the society he lives in and writes about." "Charlemagne reboots Western civilization," although "the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire...." "Never think of the past as a primitive place; the past was always the present, and it was always cutting edge." I want to hear all about his career, and I'm curious to see whether he asks me about mine, or whether he's afraid I'll ask him for work.

Every day in the late afternoon while we're at dinner, someone tidies up our room and sets two chocolates, a news summary, and the next day's "Programme" on our bed. The latter has everything that is scheduled for the following day, from the lectures and films and concerts down to the computer trainings, AA meeting, Catholic mass, darts competition, trivia contest in the pub, and specials at the Canyon Ranch spa. (I hadn't heard of Canyon Ranch before this voyage, either, but it's a very fancy spa resort in Tucson that later established a branch in Lennox, Mass., and a complete condo development in Miami. Their shipboard franchise offers everything from hairdo work to manicures to jacuzzis to a dozen or more different kinds of massage -- Thai, Shiatsu, Swedish, stone, etc.)

Our Elderhostel group has assigned tables at the Britannia restaurant on deck two, among which we have been moving around to try to get to meet all two dozen of the rest of us over dinners. But Carole and I have never gone there for breakfasts or lunches, which I understand are also three-course affairs with many options. Instead, like many others, we opt for the King's Court, which is sort of a fast-food buffet on deck seven, open 24 hours, that has fresh fruits, vegetables, desserts, breads, cheeses, etc., and time-appropriate hot foods set out throughout the day. It's faster so we can dash in and out between activities and much less formal.

The Britannia food is very very good, obviously. Fairly simple, not over-rich, but very well done. They have a lo-cal Canyon Ranch option of courses, but most of us choose from a variety of appetizers, two salads, an entree (I broke my eco-ethical vegetarianism tonight for the duck breast), and a dessert. It's also well-proportioned: you never feel stuffed afterward. (Some passengers stuff themselves mercilessly at the King's Court.)

We've wondered whether an increasing number of empty seats at the restaurant have indicated seasickness on the part of fellow travellers. Carole has been wearing Scopolamine patches to ward off queasiness, and I've been all right. The ship has been rolling and pitching a bit more since yesterday, but apparently that's a function of shallow water (we've been crossing the banks off Newfoundland this afternoon) and if the weather remains all right, we should be too. At a cocktail party on deck seven, a fellow passenger told us one of the maxims of sea travel is "The more you pay, the more you sway"; that is, folks in the more expensive cabins on the upper decks are going to get more motion. (I specifically advised Carole to choose a cabin midships, where we'd be closest to the fulcrum of ship motions and therefore have the smoothest ride.)

Weather was mostly grey yesterday, and partly cloudy and sunny today, but very few passengers have gone out on deck for very long, or even at all, because it's very very windy and there's lots of salt spray (or maybe just salty condensation dripping off the lifeboats and walls) which leaves white spots on your clothing. A few hardy souls jog or power-walk around the decks; three laps is 1.1 miles, I believe. Carole and I have been no exception from the majority; I've gone out briefly (no more than 5 minutes, tops) a couple times to get fresh air.

I did not bring a bathing suit on the trip, but have been tempted to try a massage at the spa. They were all out of bathing suits to purchase, and running shorts in my size, so I ended up buying a pair of woman's large running shorts -- more expensive even than a man's XXL by eight dollars, of course -- with which I may go the massage route (you're pretty much forced to soak and loosen your muscles, then shower first), or at the very least, take a dip in one of the open-air deck pools on the 12th or 13th deck, just to say I did it.

Since this voyage is so professional, so gracious, so perfect, I'm driven to watch for things that don't measure up. I mentioned the wait staff's songs yesterday; another mild annoyance is the hustling of extra goods and services. Cunard photographers took posed photos of all of us just before we boarded ship, and they continue to photograph us, with our permission and sometimes kind of without it, for the purpose of selling us prints later (which of course are tempting but not compulsory). Aside from the permanent brand-name shops on deck three, tables of jewelry, knick-knacks, and artwork get set out in the halls for people to snap up. Another passenger who had been a stock analyst told us Cunard loses money on each trip if more than 10 percent of the cabins are not filled, so these extras (and the drinks and casino -- we'll have to tell you more about that later) are part of the overall strategy for making a profit.

Are there "ugly" Americans or other tourists aboard? There are certainly some overweight ones -- not a lot. But most people who have the money for a trip like this, or those who ponied it up for just once, either know how to behave well or are working hard to be as polite as they can be. The only time other passengers have irritated me is in food lines when elderly folks take a lot of time to move, make decisions, and serve themselves. Otherwise, everyone's been very gracious.

Carole: Third day afloat

2009-09-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

I started the day at the onboard gym, which is nicely equipped. Didn't spend a lot of time there--just enough to make me feel virtuous. Then after a quick breakfast, attended a second lecture on the history of theater. Then a quick lunch and off to the planetarium (to see a different show fron yesterday's) After that, a chamber-music concert. Also managed to find the shopping area. And last night at the casino I actually came out a few dollars ahead on the slot nachines. There's a very nice library on board, so I picked up a couple of books. Don't know if I will actually have time to read them, though. One of the women in our tour group, Linda Barry, has published a whole series of mysteries, but alas they don't have her books in the ship's library. We got all gussied up last night for the captain's welcome party and then dinner. There was dancing later in the evening, but David was feeling a little "off," so we skipped that. We've changed time zones a couple of times and are now 5 hours ahead of Oregon.

David: Second Day Afloat

2009-09-09T16:50:00.000-07:00

Carole mentioned our tour specialist guide, Giles Ramsay, who specializes in staging theater productions in post-colonial, post-war environments such as Kosovo and Zimbabwe (although he got a job directing a show of "The Glass Menagerie" in Vermont last March). The planetarium show ranged from new findings about the surface of Mars to mind-boggling facts about the cosmos, with rilly kewl graphics. It was narrated by Laurence Fishburne. We're told there are two other planetarium shows (running time is 25 minutes) narrated by Harrison Ford and -- I heard -- Robert Redford.

We split up after lunch and I went to see a performance of the suite from Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat" and a Dvorak piano quintet by musicians from the National Symphony[?] based at Lincoln Center. After that, playwright and novelist John Guare lectured on "How to Read a Play." I was mildly astonished that it was really him and not a video, but it turns out he and his wife are making their first trip on the QM2 because the Old Vic has scheduled a revival of "Six Degrees of Separation" for next winter so he's going over to participate in casting it. The talk was wonderful, the Q&A even better.

I suppose these will make more sense if I give the background and his anecdotes to support them, but what struck me was his comment that "Art is intended to prepare us for the great experiences of our life," so that we'll say, oh, this is love, I've read about this, and aha, this is death, I know something about it. He also said a play should give its audience "new costumes," so that people say, "God, I never knew I felt that before."

Carole and I found a little time to work on a jigsaw puzzle of stylized jungle foliage and tigers that someone else had started, before dressing up for our first formal shipboard dinner. The ship's captain, who also happens to be the commodore of the Cunard fleet, Bernard Werner, spoke to us in the "Queen's Room," a ballroom for dancing, and said there were about 2500 passengers aboard; not sure if I got the 1,053 Brits and 951 Americans correct in my hurried notes, but from there he cited 759 Canadians, 104 Germans, 22 from Holland, 18 from Australia, 16 French passengers, 12 from the Republic of Ireland, and then a whole bunch of other nations of origin, including Mexico, Albania, Russia, Trinidad, South Africa, Venezuela, Portugal, etc., etc.

What interested me more was his mention that the staff that serves us amounts to 1,250. Which brings me to one of my better (or worse, depending on your perspective) spontaneous puns of this era. The wait staff in our dining room, the Britannia, though impeccable in their manners and service, evince complexions and speech accents that suggest they originally came from Russia, the Philippines, and elsewhere. (Dealers and croupiers in the casino seem to be especially weighted toward Russian descent.) Carole said if my acting career doesn't pan out, I could do their job. But I don't have an accent, I protested. You are an actor, she pointed out. Oh, I responded, you mean I should imitate a staff inflection? Whereupon, as usual, she slapped me.

I can attest that Classic Rock is alive and well on the East Coast. Somewhere during our wanderings through the streets of New York a few days ago, we overheard the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" playing somewhere, which struck me as especially appropriate for out-of-town visitors. Then, yesterday afternoon in the Cunard terminal at the Brooklyn docks while we wended our way through security and ticket checks, I heard over the sound system -- in succession -- "Spinning Wheel," "Fortunate Son," and "Pinball Wizard"; all great tunes, and all vaguely appropriate to our coming experience.

A few more random notes before I have to go upstairs and join Carole for the "Black and White Ball" (I'm typing this in my tuxedo). I can't recall whether I've ever had a waiter hold my chair for me and place my cloth napkin in my lap before; I'm sure it happens in the better restaurants on the East and West Coast, but I've never been in such a one. Also, the restrooms on this ship, in addition to paper towels, offer the option of individually rolled hand towels lined up in a flat straw basket for you to dry your hands after washing.

Things are not perfect, though. In the dining room, a raft of waiters will serenade a birthday person with the "Happy Birthday Song" or an anniversary couple with a chorus of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and they are mostly neither native English speakers nor good singers. I'm not convinced a majority of them even know the proper tune to the latter song. So the result is rather amusingly ragged -- almost tacky -- but that makes it rather more endearing, I think, than if it were as perfect as almost everything else seems to be on this voyage.

I also wish to note that we managed to raise the pet caretaker on Carole's cell phone yesterday morning before we left the East Side Marriott ("Mawrio Eas' " in the parlance of an Hispanic bus captain at the airport) and learned that Pixie has taken to her very well, running in circles, wagging her tail, and going for walks with Mary the pet whisperer. So that took a load off our minds. We only hope this convinces her (the dog, I mean) that not everyone else is out to get her, either. In that way.

Carole: Second day afloat

2009-09-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

This morning we attended the first of five lectures about the history and craft of theater. Our lecturer is Giles Ramsay,a British director. He talked about the origins of theater, connecting it back to mankind's earliest days. He made the connection between spirituality and performance, which has been mentioned in some of my academic readings. He also talked about the characteristics and structure of plays. He's a well-prepared and entertaining speaker. After lunch, David and I went to a show in the Planetarium. I'm about to go to an orientation at the gym...just in case I decide to be virtuous. There is a huge variety of food aboard, but so far I have been eating sensibly. (OK, I did have two desserts last night.)

David: First Day Afloat

2009-09-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

Last night we were able to get a good long night's sleep (yesterday we got up early to beat the crowds to the ferry terminal to the islands at Battery Park). We even skipped the hotel's breakfast to pack and do a little last-minute shopping for some quasi-essentials (a belt for me, extra memory card for the digital camera, that sort of thing), but managed to slip into an Au Bon Pain late in the morning for a bite and coffee.

We were loaded on the bus by 1:00 and left shortly thereafter to drive straight south to the tip of Manhattan and a tunnel to Brooklyn where the Queen Mary 2 was docked. Security clearance and other matters took a while; we didn't board until shortly before 3. I took photos all along the way.

Our room has a king-sized bed, plenty of built-in closet space and cupboards and drawers, its own bathroom, an enclosed balcony -- which is to say, a space measuring maybe 4 x 10 feet, with two chairs, and a large
"window" cut through the hull. We're pretty completely sheltered from the wind there. The room also had a complimentary bottle of champagne and a pair of glass flutes waiting for us on arrival.

The ship had a required emergency drill at 4, then many of us headed out on the decks to watch New York and New Jersey recede behind us, with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in the foreground. The ship cast off about 5, and we passed beneath the Verrazano Narrows bridge (between Staten Island and Brooklyn) about 5:45. Exquisite timing on the part of our hosts, since dinner was at 6.

So far, we've seen only a little bit of the ship's interior, but it really is astounding. Roughly 3,000 passengers are in a position to enjoy a movie-and-variety show theater, a 150-seat planetarium (different shows reportedly narrated by Harrison Ford and somebody else famous), 12 -- count 'em -- 12 bars, pubs, and lounges (several with their own pianists or jazz combo; and I understand there's even a rap DJ for the night club space), a library, an Internet Centre (from which I am typing this), a casino with blackjack, slot machines and other amusements, and who knows what else!

We've been on the water 3 hours and 20 minutes, and I've only just begun to feel a little sea-like motion; the premises seemed solid as a Manhattan hotel through dinner. The only thing that suggested that was NOT where we were was the gentle vibration of the engines through the floor, since we were dining on the second level . . . well, that and the water flying by the portholes while it was still light out. We'll be crossing one time zone and setting our watches forward each of the next six days.

David: A Quick Report

2009-09-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

On Labor Day (today) we took the boat to Liberty Island to visit the Statue of Liberty. Did not snag tickets to visit the crown (only 240 people a day can get up there, and tickets are reserved into December), but we got to see all the exhibits in the pedestal. Then it was on to Ellis Island, which we visited for only an hour and a half because our energy was flagging and we had to get back to the hotel for our introductory reception for the cruise. My college roommate Paul Rosta was able to join us for the duration. We got lots of photos.

Weather was again great: mostly cloudy but breezy and warm. We had a late dinner of grilled halibut at a place called Smith and Wollensky's (actually, their adjacent grill). I'd never heard of them, but apparently they're an exclusive chain with franchises in a number of big cities across the country. Basic great food -- steaks and seafood -- done simply but very well.

Our vacation is going great!

First Full Day in New York City

2009-09-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

In spite of all our anxieties, the flights came off without a hitch -- all connections made, baggage included. David, concerned because either one or both of us had caught viruses on almost every past flight, was taking no chances, and stayed away from the airplane bathrooms for the entire six hours of the flight. Unfortunately, the guy sitting next to him was coughing once a minute on the ground in Seattle, so David put on a face mask ... but the guy stopped as soon as the plane was in the air, so apparently he was just allergic to the Earth.

Carole whiled away the flight with a rental Digeplayer -- a sort of video version of a Kindle -- and watched "My Life in Ruins" and another "Dr Doolittle" knockoff that she called one of the stupidest movies she'd ever seen, and David zoned out on his iTouch music.

We didn't manage to finish the trip into the city and hotel check-in until nearly 9:00 Saturday, but fortunately, a lovely Italian restaurant called San Martin was just around the corner on 49th. Carole had ravioli al funghi, David ate cozze (mussels) marinara and penne artista (pasta with sliced porcini mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, and peas). For dessert, we split a chocolate-dipped cannoli that was to die for. (Well, David ate it and Carole had a "teeny-tiny taste of the cream," she protests.)

Sunday we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and looked mostly at 19th century European paintings (the American wing was closed until 2010), the roof cafe, an hour for lunch, and the gift shop (Carole) and Modern Art (a mad dash in the final half hour by David) for six hours. We were particularly moved by the physical reality, the spiritual force, of the brush strokes on the Van Goghs. There was a gigantic, site-specific shiny steel structure on the roof of the Met by Roxie Paine called "Maelstrom." The stained-glass windows of Tiffany and John La Farge were terrific, too.

After we got out of the Met at 5:30 closing, we strolled south through Central Park, took a horse-and-carriage ride through same, and walked to the Rink Bar (the one in front of the ridiculous golden Prometheus statue at Rockefeller Center) for a very relaxed two hours of appetizers, cocktails, and desserts from 7 to 9. As Carole remarked, "Why does Prometheus have a toupee?"

The weather has been lovely: sunny in the 80s on Saturday, initially sunny but overcast and cool on Sunday (just like Portland, really!) today.

Tomorrow we'll take the subway down to Battery Park in the hope of scoring tickets for the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island ferry, on which David's college roommate Paul Rosta will accompany us. In the evening, the Elderhostel people will have a welcome reception back at the East Side Marriott, and we board the Queen Mary 2 on Tuesday.

David: Ready to Take Off . . . I Think

2009-09-04T22:52:00.000-07:00

Local time is 10:42 p.m. as I start to type this. In the past few hours we've finished the bulk packing, washed the kitchen floor and cleaned the bathroom, and I've periodically spread out a new set of damp pages from my scrapbook/portfolios to air dry so they won't mildew and mold while we're gone. (They were soaked in our storage closet last weekend from a Safeway chiller leak.) Once they're wrinkly and crackling dry, I slide them back into their clear plastic slip-cover pages. The final seventeen sheets are spread up the hall, across the back and seats of the sofa, and down onto the living room floor behind me, and should be dry in another half hour, perhaps. Scott Joplin's Collected Piano Rags is taking a lot longer -- even though it spent many hours in direct sunlight yesterday afternoon -- and will just have to lie open while we're gone.

We left the dog and cat with a caretaker at our vet's office this morning at 10 a.m. Pixie is terrified of strangers, and even though the woman is fabled for her ability to calm and befriend shy animals, we worry about how our dog will make it over the various humps of the first night and following few days without us. Maybe she'll finally learn the rest of the world isn't out to get her. Not in that way, anyhow.

We'll set the alarm for 4 a.m. and hope to be on the MAX to the airport by 5 for a 7:30 flight. A little nervous about a 45-minute transfer in Seattle, but our luggage will have a couple days to catch up to us in NYC before we board the ship on Tuesday if it doesn't make the switch on time.

I had a fun two days pretending to be an illegal arms buyer on an oil pumping ship docked in North Portland last Sunday and Monday, as part of the season two finale of the TNT cable series "Leverage"; I have photos, but those will just have to wait until after we get back.

Carole: Why we chose this trip

2009-09-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

I have read a lot of English novels and have always wanted to visit England. A trans-Atlantic crossing to London on a luxury ocean liner seems like the best possible way to get there. It strikes me as a very civilized way to travel—especially when contrasted with hassling with airports, being trapped in a small airplane seat for endless hours, and being dumped unceremoniously into an entirely different time zone. All this was an impossible dream until about a year ago when David's mom gave us a generous gift of cash and suggested we do some traveling. I came across an intriguing tour: "An Insider's Perspective of London Theater." It's a trip that appeals to both of us. I get my dream ocean-liner trip and David gets to deepen his knowledge of theatrical history with a series on-board lectures. We also get to enjoy some plays and other theater-related activities in London. Unfortunately, we still have to endure a couple of long flights—one to New York and one back home from London. But the time in between should be quite wonderful!