Enroute to Santa Cruz, Tenerife, Canary Islands

29 September 2012

We’re rollin’ again as we make our way from Cadiz, Spain, to Santa Cruz, Canary Islands, also Spain. I don’t use the term “rollin’” without purpose. The ocean is very choppy here as we get closer and closer to the Tropic of Cancer, and last night was one that brought back memories of the crossing from Halifax to Galway: large swells that rolled me back and forth under the covers as I heard my Spanish wine bottles clank against each other in the cabinet. Nothing broke—not the wine or me.

Continuing my visit to Spain, I left Gibralter around 2:30pm Monday and drove the next 90 minutes to Malaga along a beautiful stretch of 6-lane autovia (expressway) winding along the hills and cliffs above the Costa del Sol. My rented VW Golf was smooth and very quiet sailing along that stretch of highway at 120+ kilometers per hour (KPH), or about 72-75 mph. I didn’t realize at the time, though, that another stretch of autovia was paralleling my course but 1,000 feet below and curving along the beaches of the towns that line the coast. I had chosen the toll road—AP-4—rather than the free (though more crowded) highway—A-4—that Spanish tax dollars had built. That was one of the codes the Frommer’s guide book hadn’t mentioned: that many free highways in Europe have tolled cousins running alongside. In Spain, they’re noted by the additional letter “P” (for payaje) in the numbering scheme. By the time I reached Malaga, that letter had cost me a little over 15 Euro, or about $20.

But the view was wonderful. According to the guidebooks, the Spanish coast between Gibralter and the point where it turns north toward Barcelona was dotted with small, quiet fishing villages until about a quarter century ago when Northern Europeans—especially the Brits—discovered this place that gets over 320 days of sunshine a year (something the Brits have in scarce supply). In the past 25 years, the coast has exploded with resort and condo development until today it looks like all the beach communities of Florida crammed together along one 250-mile-long stretch. The resort developments start at the Mediterranean’s edge and stairstep their way up the foothills to and beyond the AP-4 tollway I drove along—at least 8 miles inland and 1,500 sloping feet above sea level. All of the building is in various shades of white and pastels, so the color and texture of the coast is very pleasing—not natural, but pleasing.

Malaga, a city of about 500,000, sits in the middle of the two south-facing coasts: Costa del Sol and Costa Tropical. So I figured it would be a logical place to hang my hat and from which to explore. It was an excellent choice. I had found, thanks to Trip Advisor, a bed and breakfast in Malaga Este—La Francesca.

La Francesca, a 5-bedroom B&B, was difficult to find because I had relied on Google Maps to get me there. Google was fine with the macro course but, like “Big Vi,” Google struggles in the details. In my case, the maps program mislabeled the autovia exit, leading me to an unplanned tour of the coast east of Malaga until I found a petrol station with a wonderful attendant able to guide me to the La Francesca neighborhood.

The B&B is owned by a couple of teachers. Alfonso, who greeted me, is a secondary-school teacher. Ana, whom I didn’t meet until after I returned from dinner Monday evening, is chair of the international law department at Malaga University and an expert in international terrorism. She has advised NATO on terrorism strategy. And she runs a terrific B&B.

My room, small but more than adequate and with an internet router mounted on the wall, opened onto a patio from where, while I was drinking a glass of wine or eating breakfast, I could catch glimpses of the Mediterranean between the buildings that lined the 300 meters between the B&B and the beach. Those buildings also housed many al fresco restaurants that served excellent tapas, chilled wine, and fine cerveza. As I said, it all turned out to have been an excellent choice.

I had made the plans to visit Malaga only a few days before we arrived in Cadiz. It was my answer to the question, “Now that I have 2 extra days in Spain, what am I going to do with them?” So I knew only that the coast was famous for beaches and sunshine. But it’s also famous for the mountains and mountain villages that dot the rolling landscape of the province of Andalucía. Many of those villages line the 1,000-year-old border that used to separate Christian Spain from the Moors of Muslim Spain. The villages were built on the edges of cliffs and the crests of mountain ridges, where they used to provide look-out against invaders. Many carry the de la Frontera name (for example, Cortes de la Frontera), meaning “along the frontier.”

But what’s most notable about the villages is their color. All buildings of the villages are painted white with pastel trim, making them stand out along those ridges like white caps on a sea of green and brown. So they’re collectively known as Las Pueblos Blancos—the white villages—and, I discovered, run a very close second to the beaches as a draw for tourists. Frankly, they should rank first.

On Tuesday, I drove to see the white villages. I began with the city of Ronda, a medium-size city in the mountains know principally as the birthplace of bullfighting. The drive to Ronda reminded me very much of the drive from Denver west to the Continental Divide. But unlike I-70 that thrusts like an arrow into the Rockies, the highway to Ronda is a 2-lane, winding road that snakes back and forth as it ascends into the mountains, providing ever wider views of the beach communities along the very, very blue Mediterranean. That drive also brought back memories of the drive up the winding highway to Dalat, Vietnam. There, it was the rice paddies several thousand feet below that provided the distraction; on the road to Ronda, it was the sea.

In the center of Ronda sits the oldest bullring in the world, built in the middle of the 16^th Century. September is the end of bullfighting season, after which the matadors and their small armies of attendants travel to Mexico and other countries where the pageant is still practiced. So I might have picked the perfect time to visit. But Tuesday was a non-fighting day, which was unfortunate because I had been to only one bullfight in my life, and that was almost 40 years ago during a layover in Madrid while ferrying an F-100 aircraft from England to the Tucson bone yard. But the ring is also a museum of bullfighting. And the fact no bulls or matadors were present meant tourists could explore the building, including walking into the middle of the ring and imagining what it would be like to stand there waiting for the door to open and the massive animal to charge. I did that. Another iconic moment of this year’s voyage.

I spent a little over an hour exploring the ring and museum, then, after about 30 minutes of trying to find the correct route out of the town, I stopped again to ask directions and was pointed toward the section of Las Pueblos Blancos –the eastern section—I had planned to visit.

Spanish roads are very well built, very well maintained, and very well marked. The challenge is that not all routes are on the maps, that some routes on the maps don’t seem to exist in reality, and that numbers of routes on the maps don’t always match the numbers of routes that lead to where you want to go. The net result is that I took many wrong turns during my driving tour of the white villages, and only my sense of direction, validated by the position of the sun on a bright day, ensured that I made it back to my B&B before the witching hour. There’s an art to driving in Spain—to driving in Europe, in fact. I certainly haven’t mastered it, but getting to where one wants to go triggers a genuine, well-earned sense of accomplishment.

The 3-hour drive back down the mountains to the coast was what I expected: a memorable drive through olive groves, forests, and fields of grazing bulls. And every 30 minutes or so, I’d round a curve and enter another white-washed village. I have no idea what the people of these villages do for a living—beyond painting and repainting their homes and businesses—but I’m grateful for whatever it is.

Around 3pm, I stopped in one of the villages—Cortes de la Frontera—for a small cerveza and to rest from the constant up- and down-shifting needed to maneuver the mountain roads in a standard-shift auto. The beer was cold and delicious, the people were warm and friendly. The stop made the rest of the drive back to La Francesca very easy.

On Wednesday morning, Malaga experienced the first rain they had seen in over 4 months. My hosts were happy to see the moisture, but, of course, I missed the sun. Jim and Shamim were scheduled to arrive by train from Madrid a little after 1pm, so I took advantage of the weather and the internet to get some work done, including writing the first part of the Cadiz blog. Then, a little after noon, I drove to the estacion to meet my friends.

After their arrival, the three of us spent the afternoon exploring the old quarter of Malaga, a genuinely ancient city that, like Lisbon, was founded by Phoenicians and has been occupied for thousands of years. In the center of the city sits the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre, where the city continues to host outdoor musical and theatrical performances. And under a glass pyramid adjacent to the amphitheatre, visitors can stare down into the remnants of 3,000-year-old Phoenician cisterns. In our own “ancient” cities of Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and St Augustine, the paint is barely dry.

We also visited the Picasso museum, which displays some of his work contributed by members of his family. Picasso was born in Malaga, so it’s appropriate that the city should have a museum celebrating his work. The collection is small, but, for someone who is far from an art expert, it was impressive and genuinely moving.

On Thursday, Jim and I drove into the mountains hoping that a particular golf course would be open and dry. But the weather was reminiscent of Enniscrone, Ireland: cool, very wet, and very windy. So we drove back to Malaga without having taken a club out of a bag. The weather in Malaga was looking better, so we made a tee time at a small course 20 minutes east of La Francesca. Fortune, if not the sun, occasionally shines on golfers, and the weather stayed dry long enough for us to get in 18 holes before 6pm. Where there’s a will . . .

Yesterday we woke to pouring rain, very unwelcome as we had to drive the 3 hours back to Cadiz. But, again, fortune shone on us, and the drive back was relatively dry. By the time we unloaded suitcases and golf clubs, turned in the VW Golf, reboarded and unpacked, the sun was out, and the MV Explorer was ready to sail.

A minor hiccup before we departed. Two female students called from Madrid to say they had missed the last train to Cadiz and wouldn’t make it back in time for the scheduled 8pm departure from Cadiz. They asked if the ship could wait. Youth: such a wonderful time of innocence!

The two are flying to the Canary Islands. And, no doubt, they’ll be spending some extra time onboard the ship in a few future ports.

Malaga, Spain

26 September 2012

Our Morocco stop won’t happen. ISE—the Institute for Shipboard Education, owners of the SAS program—has decided that giving potential terrorists a target of opportunity like 500 mostly US college students and a highly visible ship like the MV Explorer isn’t sound policy. The recent demonstrations outside US embassies around the Arab world made ISE (and many parents) nervous, but demonstrations a few days ago outside the embassy in Casablanca were the telling blow. So we’re spending two extra days in Spain—not the worst place in the world to find oneself with time to kill—then sailing to Santa Cruz, Tenerife, Canary Islands for an overnight before continuing on to Ghana.

The loss of Morocco is a huge blow to the itinerary. It would have been our first true “foreign port.” Now we have only one: Ghana.

This past month, with stop after stop in various European ports interrupted only briefly by the distraction of a day of classes at sea, has seemed far more like a “cruise” than a “voyage”—anathema to Semester at Sea and U of VA. And since arriving in sunny Lisbon, where we had 3 days of uninterrupted sun and warm weather, it’s been a beach cruise for the students. Of course, the on-shore field-lab trips to museums, archeological sites, and geographic wonders (e.g., Gibraltar), have lent an air of academic respectability. But, like the class days, these have been momentary distractions to many: delays from joining friends on the sand and surf. As one faculty colleague said a few days ago, “Many of our students are seeing Europe through the bottom of a beer glass.”

With an itinerary like this fall’s—a circumnavigation of the Atlantic with several stops in Europe—I don’t know how to avoid the cruise feel. But this one feels very different from the voyage (a true “voyage”) three years ago, where each multi-day port call was framed by 4 to 6 days at sea, with accompanying classes. That one felt like an academic voyage interspersed with labs in port. This one feels like . . . well, like a cruise. I know this fall is saving ISE fuel costs. Sailing around the world is expensive. But the cost in academic credibility may prove to be much higher.

Having said all that, the past week has certainly been enjoyable for me. We arrived in Lisbon a week ago today, sailing under a bridge that made the arrival feel like entering Oakland Bay. The bridge was designed by the same architect who designed the Golden Gate, its twin. We tied up midway between the center of Lisbon—about a kilometer east—and the port of Belem, about a kilometer west.

On Wednesday, Jim Cooper and I had a 13:30 (1:30pm) tee time at Oitavos Dunes Golf Club, on the Atlantic coast about a 30-minute drive west from the ship. This time, we were joined by Jay Orris, one of our lifelong learners. Jay and his wife, Christy, are traveling with their two young sons and Jay’s dad, Milton. They were all onboard three years ago for the round-the-world trip, when Jim Cooper was surrogate teacher for the Orris sons. Christy and Jay are Dartmouth Biz MBAs. Christy buys, builds, and sells manufacturing companies, the first of which she purchased from her father. Jay accompanies Christy and watches the boys, aided my Milton. They’re a wonderful, still-young family. And Jay is a close-to-scratch golfer. What a life!

The day at Oitavos Dunes was perfect: sunny, light breeze, beautiful course. And my golf was typical: erratic. At Oitavos, my fairway play (when I was on the fairway) and short game were ok; my drives were all over the place. Other days, my drives are absolutely consistent, but my short game falls apart. The result continues to be scores in the mid 90s, especially when we play longer courses, as we’re doing so far.

Golf, for me, is a personal sport. I play against myself. Jim is highly competitive, delighting publically and often in his successes, which are frequent. He has shot and beaten his age several times, the equivalent of a no-hitter in baseball. For me, I’ll need to be an active, athletic, skilled octogenarian to have even a faint chance of achieving the same milestone. I’m a battered spouse to golf. I keep coming back because the occasional good days give me hope that one day my 13 clubs—my abusers—will reform.

On the second day in Lisbon, I had one of those moments that will be an icon of this trip. I took the tram from our dock to Lisbon central with the intention of scouting the city. Lisbon, like Rome, is built on 7 hills—the city was founded by the Phoenicians and the area has been continuously inhabited for 9,000 years—and atop one of the hills is St George’s Castle (Castilo de Sao Jorge). The castle was once a military base and now provides a stunning view of Lisbon and its magnificent, huge harbor.

As I was exploring the castle, I passed a small group of tourists going from one of the keeps to another. As I passed, I heard a familiar voice behind me: “Just walk on past without saying hello, Bangs.” I turned around, and in front of me was Tom Murawski, colleague from my days on the Air Force Academy faculty, life-long friend, and, most recently, owner of the business (The Murawski Group) that hired me for my Washington DC training stints earlier this year. I had absolutely no idea he and his wife Emily were going to be in Portugal at the same time. They were traveling with a group of friends from Tom’s days as a student (cadet) at the Academy, a group that has taken several trips together over the years as a way of staying in touch.

Tom, Emily, their friends, and I spent an hour or so together talking about the wonders of Lisbon and “this small world” in a garden café outside the castle. They had arrived in Lisbon just that morning so were suffering from jet lag a little. And I needed to get back to the ship to meet Jim and Shamim for a planned dinner date. But seeing the Murawskis was a welcome link back to home and reality.

That night, Jim, Shamim, and I returned to the castle to watch the sunset over Lisbon then enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the restaurant in the castle—Café de Leao. Nice view, good food, fun friends.

I spent the final day in Portugal exploring Belem: the monastery where Vasco da Gama is entombed, the maritime museum (amazingly detailed ship models going back to the days of the Portuguese explorers), the enormous monument to the long-ago glory days of the Portuguese explorations—and the horrors of their role in the slave trade—and the embassies surrounding the presidential palace. But mostly, I was searching for a McDonalds and its good internet connection. I found both. The internet was very strong—like taking a hot shower after the grueling hike of limited on-board access—and the quarter-pounder with cheese was magnificent!

With two extra days in Spain, I scrambled after classes on Saturday to figure what to do.  I faced two big challenges: the limited bandwidth on the ship, making browsing Trip Advisor or other web sites next-to-impossible; and the fact that we arrived in Cadiz on a Sunday. Spain is still a Catholic country, and it shuts down on Sundays. So I postponed my heavy-duty planning for Sunday, when I stayed on board the Explorer, got a few papers graded, did a little lesson planning, and focused on figuring what I would do with the remaining 5 days in Espana. I decided to head to the Costa del Sol.

Sunday night, I went to dinner in Cadiz with Colin and Sandra White, Aussies from Melbourne. They were on the ship in ’09. Colin teaches international business at university in Melbourne, though he’s now retired, and the two of them take frequent teaching gigs at universities around the world and onboard educational cruises. This is their 3^rd SAS voyage. They’re fun, enthusiastic, energetic. We laugh together . . . a lot. And Sunday evening we shared a terrific paella meal at an outdoor café in Cadiz.

On Monday, I picked up my rental car at the Cadiz train station and headed east toward the Costa del Sol. Jim and Shamim had decided that they would spend 3 days with friends in Madrid then would join me this afternoon here in Malaga for sightseeing, art museums, and golf. So, in addition to my luggage and clubs, I’m also schlepping Jim’s clubs. I pick them up at the train station at 13:07 (1:07pm).

I drove along the coast east to Gibraltar, where I intended to stop for lunch. But when I arrived in the Spanish town at the entrance to the Gibraltar peninsula, I was greeted by a line of cars snaking at least 2 kilometers north from the border crossing.

Spain isn’t happy that the British continue to control this tiny but strategic corner of the Iberian Peninsula. So they make traveling back and forth between La Linea de la Conception and Gibraltar not easy. Everywhere else in Europe, the border crossings have fallen away, but not here. Gibraltar isn’t formally a part of the EU, and Spain makes sure we know we’re entering a foreign country. Moreover—I understand from my Malaga hostess, Ana, a professor of international law at Malaga University—the British keep flouting their ownership. They just completed a beautiful new airport terminal on the Spanish-owned easement connecting the Gibraltar peninsula with Spain. How did they get away with that. I don’t have the answer.

I managed to skirt most of the long wait by going first to the small town on the Spanish side of the border, where I stopped for a desperately needed relief. Then I entered the border queue from the south, cutting the hour-long wait to about 15 minutes.  Cheating? I suppose.

Gibraltar is a little Hong Kong Island. On the western shore of the peninsula is the city of Gibraltar, slammed against the rocky outcroppings just as the city of Victoria is slammed against Victoria Peak across from Kowloon. And the Gibraltar harbor and bay, like Hong Kong Harbor, is full of international ships waiting for fuel or awaiting the order for their next port call. The east side of Gibraltar—the Mediterranean side—is like the southern shore of Hong Kong Island: the Repulse Bay side. It’s pristine, beach-lined, and very lovely. All this is like Hong Kong in miniature.

I drove around the peninsula, an easy navigation given the small size of the area and the one-way streets. I stopped first at the southern-most end of Gibraltar and looked across at Morocco, our lost port. Then I continued around the peninsula to Catalan Bay—Gibraltar’s answer to Repulse Bay—where I stopped for lunch: seafood soup (delicious and zippy) and a very welcome cerveza.

I left Gibraltar after stopping at a petrol station to spend my remaining 8 British pounds on a few liters of diesel-gas. And I continued the drive east to Costa del Sol and Malaga.

More later. For now, I need to head off to provide taxi service to the arriving Cooper couple.

Abeam Normandy, France, Enroute to Lisbon

16 September 2012

We are now about halfway between the south coast of England and the beaches of Normandy, France, with two days in front of us before we arrive in Lisbon. These are the same waters the Allied forces crossed 68 years ago the night of June 5-6, 1944, on their way to liberate Europe from the Nazis. And they’re the same waters William the Conqueror crossed 946 years ago on his way to “liberate” England from the treacherous hands of the pretender, King Harold. I experienced a little of both those historic crossings during the past 5 days in France.

We arrived in Antwerp, Belgium, early Monday morning (9/10), pulling alongside a dock that is at the foot of one of Antwerp’s main streets. Sometimes we dock quite a ways from the key sights of the ports we visit—in Galway, we didn’t dock at all—and other times, we tie up in the heart of things. In Antwerp, we were in the heart.

On Monday, I escorted my intercultural communication class on a field lab to Brussels. Field labs are a new requirement for SAS. In the past, we faculty were expected to contribute at least one recommended field trip in one of our ports where a sight, historic or otherwise, is somehow linked to the curriculum of a course we’re teaching. But while we could highly recommend these trips to our students, we couldn’t require attendance. I even had to cancel a visit to the South African Parliament three years ago when only 3 people signed up for the visit. This year, it’s different. These field labs now are required for course completion, constituting 20% of the course content. So they’re all a “go.”

The field lab was a visit to the European Commission, which is the executive branch of the European Union government. In a sense, it was like visiting the White House, except, in the case of Europe, 27 “presidents” preside over the commission—one commissioner from each member country—with a rotating chair among the members.

The day was enjoyable and educational, though more talk and less walk than I had envisioned. I thought we’d take a walking tour of the Commission building, rub elbows with some high-level European officials, dine among the commissioners as they discussed how to handle the ongoing economic crisis, and spend a little time listening to and asking questions of Commission staffers involved in the day-to-day business of communicating among the 27 EU cultures.

We did take a brief walking tour of magnificent old Brussels and its 16^th-Century market square, enough time to try a delicious Belgian waffle smothered in very rich milk chocolate. And we had lunch in a Commission cafeteria, though one sequestered in a corner of the visitor’s center, not in the middle of the action. Then we sat through 2 hour-long briefings by representatives from the Directorate General for Communication and the Directorate General of Education and Culture. The content was very interesting, particularly the discussion of the economic matrix that’s trying to contend with the extraordinarily complex crisis the EU finds itself in; and the discussion of an educational program called “Erasmus,” which sends as many as 80,000 EU undergraduate and graduate students each year on exchange programs to universities in EU countries other than their own. It was a fascinating look into this grand European experiment, which, if it holds together, will almost certainly change Europe into a much more culturally homogeneous continent. And, if it succeeds, it will likely achieve the EU’s primary purpose: preventing another catastrophic war among the member countries.

So the lab was fascinating, but I—and my students—would have preferred a little more action and interaction. Still, a worthwhile day.

On Tuesday, I picked up a rental car from the Antwerp Budget office—a manual transmission Opal with a diesel engine (the Europeans are much more into diesel fuel than we are, largely because it costs much less than gasoline: about $7/gallon for diesel, at least a dollar more for gas.) The drive from Antwerp to Bayeux, France, took about 6 hours, most of which was spent in a light drizzle and thick overcast, so I wasn’t distracted from deciphering road signs by the passing Belgian and French countrysides and cities.

I arrived in Bayeux, Normandy, France, without having missed a turn, thanks to my Garmin navigational device, which I had preloaded with maps of Central Europe and addresses of my destinations. I call the device “Big Vi” (the model is a “nuvi”), and she did a magnificent job of navigating me to the town. Getting me to the Hotel Churchill, however, was a challenge. Big Vi hadn’t been told about some of the one-way streets in Bayeaux, and she kept trying to turn me down streets that would surely have led into the arms of the gendarmes. Finally, I had to shut her off and follow my instincts to the hotel entry.

The Hotel Churchill is a charming place, filled with artifacts and photos from the days immediately following the Allied landings on the beaches just a few miles north and west of town. The staff is very friendly, reflecting the attitude of most locals in the region. They grew up raised by parents and grandparents who had spent 4 years under Nazi occupation and who still welcome US, Canadian, and British visitors as if it were 1944. Bayeux is a very French village, but English is spoken everywhere and is the common language heard most often on the streets.

My room was typical for a 3-star French hotel: about the size of a large walk-in closet, just large enough to accommodate the queen bed and a tiny desk. The bath was smaller even than the bathroom of my cabin—that’s tiny! But the room did have a window that opened above the courtyard entrance. So, sleeping with the window open, I was greeted each morning at 5am by the smell of the fresh-baked baguettes, croissants, and other warm treats coming from a local boulangerie. Then, at 8 each morning, the bells of the Bayeux Cathedral woke the town with the hours’ chimes and a short serenade.

I had come to Normandy to visit the beaches and the battlegrounds. And I spent Wednesday and Thursday driving from the far eastern seaside village of Arramanches, where the British built the first deepwater port to resupply the Allies following the invasion, to the village of Saint Mere Eglise, a few miles inland from the westernmost invasion site, Utah Beach.

Arramanches, which sits in the middle of what were Juno, Gold, and Sword beaches on June 6^th, still contains remnants of the mooring docks a mile or so out from the beach. And the wreckage of one unloading dock sits partially crumpled on the beach just offshore from the village’s main street, looking like a massive swim raft that had broken loose from its tether and washed ashore. I spent Wednesday morning, about an hour, walking around Arramanches, then drove west toward Omaha beach.

I had thought I’d visit the American cemetery last, after visiting the beaches and the battlegrounds. That seemed to be chronologically appropriate. But the Cemetery sits above and at the eastern end of Omaha Beach, so I arrived there first and was drawn in. I’m glad I was because visiting the cemetery made the later visits to the beaches much more powerful.

The American cemetery is a perfectly manicured tract of land—many acres in size—that sits directly above Omaha beach. Anywhere else, a site like this would carry enormous pricetags and be where the wealthy would come for relaxation and play, sitting on their verandahs, sipping gin and tonics, enjoying the endless, wide beach below and the water of the English Channel to the north. Here, it’s a holy site—holy and haunted.

The cemetery is owned and maintained by a US government commission, a division, I’m guessing, of the US Park Service. The Park Service also maintains the monuments on the National Mall in Washington, which now—finally—includes a World War II monument. That monument is, of course, dedicated to the triumph of WWII. Standing among the 9,000 crosses and stars of the cemetery reminds one of its tragedy. How many potential Presidents, CEOs, Jonas Salks, Michael Jordans, and Steve Jobs are buried above Omaha Beach? How different would the world be if those 9,000 had returned?

So visiting the cemetery before visiting the beaches and other sites was the right thing to do. It provided the appropriate filter for seeing where these men—mostly men—died.

I spent about 90 minutes walking through the cemetery, then drove to Saint-Laurent-sur Mer, the village that sits in the middle of the 10 miles, or so, of beach stretching from just west of Arramanches to Point du Hoc, the outcropping between Omaha and Utah beaches. At Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, I was able easily to walk out onto Omaha.

The morning of June 6^th, the invasion hit the beaches at 6:30, an hour after low tide. The Allied commanders felt having the tide out would allow the Higgins boats to get closer to the sand before they dropped the front traps to disgorge the troops. But the low tide also meant that the soldiers would have to cross as much as 700 meters of flat beach before reaching the protection of the dunes at the edge of the beach. At Omaha, those 700 meters became a killing field. The Germans, including a reinforced division that Allied intelligence hadn’t learned of, was waiting with mortars and machine guns. The casualty rate at Omaha was over 50%. One solider later said that anyone who stayed on the beach was in one of two categories: already dead or soon to be.

The tide was low on Wednesday, just as it had been on June 6^th ’44. I walked to the water’s edge on the sand—very fine, golden sand, much like we see on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. Looking out, I tried to imagine what the Germans saw as they looked out at the largest armada ever assembled bearing down on them. Then I turned and looked back at the dunes, rising 50 feet or more above the beach, providing perfect cover and a perfect view of the entire expanse of beach. Again, I tried to imagine what that sight must have looked like to 18-year-old soldiers as their comrades were being mowed down on either side. The only refuge were the dunes, over 7 football fields away. The fact so many of them made it, overwhelmed the defensive sites, and eventually established a beachhead is miraculous.

I hated to leave Omaha—I had had the same feeling when I visited the Gettysburg battlefield a couple of years ago—but I wanted to see Pointe du Hoc before heading back to Bayeaux. That was my last stop Wednesday.

Pointe du Hoc juts into the English Channel between Omaha and Utah beaches. It’s a cliff probably a couple of hundred feet high that provides a panoramic view up and down the coast, so it was a perfect place for a German gun position—in fact, several gun positions. The positions are still there, and I was able to explore down into the old reinforced bunkers, where the German defenders lived and worked leading up to the Allied invasion. The bunkers are cold and stark, but they have a somewhat burned smell, and the timbers reinforcing the concrete roofs are charred, probably from the flame throwers of the Army rangers who scaled the cliffs on June 6^th and overwhelmed the German positions. I spent the last hour of my touring day wandering among the bunkers and bomb craters above the beach and Channel.

On Thursday, I drove first to Sainte Mere Eglise, 15 to 20 miles west of Bayeau. Sainte Mere Eglise is best know as the town where many of the airborne troops who were supposed to drop in behind the German lines were mowed down as winds scattered them far from their intended drop zones. One airborne soldier, John Steele (played by Red Buttons in the movie The Longest Day), landed on the church tower in the middle of town, his parachute having entagled on a spire. He hung there for several hours, playing dead, until finally he was cut down by the Germans and taken prisoner. To commemorate Private Steele, the town has hung a parachute replica from the tower, complete with an effigy of the unfortunate soldier. Steele became a hero to the town and returned several times before he died in ’67.

After visiting a very fine museum at Sainte Mere Eglise, I drove to Utah Beach, the western most invasion site. Here, the German defenses had been bombed and shelled thoroughly before the US troops landed, so, unlike Omaha, the casualty rate was much lower, and the Americans secured a beachhead within a few minutes of landing, taking many of the shell-shocked German defenders prisoner.

Today, Utah looks very similar to Omaha—a very wide expanse leading up to 50- to 100-foot dunes. But it’s more active; Omaha is a decidedly more somber place. While I was on Utah, one end of the beach was the site of a sailing school, with small boats going into and out of the very chilly waters. Bathers were setting up chairs at the other end of the beach. And even a pair of trotting horses raced up and down the beach in the 30 minutes I stood in the sand.

Above the beach is an excellent museum of D-Day history, a museum that would do the Smithsonian proud. It even contains a rebuilt B-26 bomber, the aircraft that was instrumental in wiping out the German defenders before the invasion.

I left Utah Beach—my final D-Day commemoration stop—around 3:30 Thursday and drove the 30 minutes back to Bayeux.

A few words about my experiences when I wasn’t touring beaches and battlefields. Bayeux’s cathedral was built in the 11^th century, before the Norman invasion, and is a magnificent building that towers over the town. I walked through and down into the catacombs, where you can smell the centuries. The bishop who presided over that diocese was William the Conqueror’s religious sponsor and invaded England with the Norman troops.

Not far from the cathedral is an old church that now houses the Bayeux tapestry. Much more than a decorative wall hanging, the tapestry is 70 meters long and about 15 inches high, a continuous, embroidered cartoon telling the tale of William from his first being asked by Edward to assume the throne of England to his coronation in Westminster Abbey in 1066. It’s a wondrous and entertaining piece of art and history—and I say that as someone who doesn’t usually spend time looking at wall hangings.

On Friday, I took a drive to Deauville, a seaside resort that my neighbor, Monique Mace, had recommended I see. The drive through the villages of eastern Normandy was fun and interesting, the city itself was a very attractive tourist destination, complete with a casino that looks like it belongs on a cliff in Monaco, overlooking the Mediterranean. It was a pleasant day, though far less memorable than the two days I spent on the beaches.

Friday afternoon, I returned to the Hotel Churchill to spend a couple hours grading student papers—the work continues—then went to a tiny restaurant called La Rapiere, down a narrow side street of Bayeux, where I enjoyed a meal almost as memorable as the previous two days had been. In France, It’s hard to go wrong with food, but this meal—salmon, sauces, tomato soup, puff-pastry hors d’oevres, apple ice cream, calvados, wine—was a memory keeper. And, of course, the ambiance was perfect. I’ll include photos the next time I get a strong internet connection.

I drove back to Antwerp Saturday—a warm, sunny day, which allowed me to enjoy the countryside I’d missed on the drive to Normandy. I spent an hour walking around downtown Antwerp before reboarding the ship and getting back to the work of lesson planning and paper grading. Yet more to do.

I’m going to have to shorten these!

Anchored off The Isle of Wight, UK

9 September 2012

Because the travel time from Southampton to Antwerp is only slightly longer than it takes to get from Libertyville to Lake Forest, we’re anchored off the south coast of England to give us one class day before we arrive in Antwerp for our 6-day visit to the European continent. We’ll sail around 13:00 (1pm) this afternoon and maintain what I’m sure will be a very leisurely pace until arriving in Belgium tomorrow morning at 8.

This schedule—3 days in a port then a class day; 5 days in another port then a class day; 6 days in a third port followed by only 3 class days . . .—wreaks havoc with any semblance of academic continuity. I feel like I have to reintroduce myself to my students each time I walk into class. And as for my memorizing their names: fogedaboudit! We’ll pay the price when we face a week at sea between Ghana and Cape Town, and 11 days between Cape Town and Buenos Aires. But, for now, the pace is exhausting. And I’m already 2 papers behind in my grading. I may be spending time sitting in my room in Bayeaux, France, reading papers on intercultural communication. Not a prospect I’m looking forward to.

The 4 days in England were wonderful, as much for the spectacularly beautiful weather as for the many new sights and experiences I enjoyed. The daytime temperatures were in the low to mid 70s each day (21-22 degrees Celsius), and the few clouds I saw were of the high, wispy variety . . . “high, thin cirrus” in flying lingo. Very atypical English weather.

I had originally planned simply to hang out in London, other than the day of golf on Thursday. I’ve never been disappointed in time spent in London, so arriving there with no concrete plans felt fine.  My favorite visit to London, in fact, was Christmas, 1999, when, on a whim, I decided to burn up some frequent-flyer and hotel-stay miles on a 4-day from December 23^rd to the 27^th. I discovered that London shuts down completely on Christmas Day and the day after—“Boxing Day.” I mean completely: no tube, no cabs, no busses, no people. And the only place open that Christmas Day was, of all (perfect) places, Charles Dickens’s house: the place where he wrote most of his novels, including A Christmas Carol. I walked the several miles from my hotel to his house on Christmas Day and spent a couple of hours wandering around with the docents, after which I enjoyed a couple of cups of warm Christmas cheer in Dickens’s kitchen. That was perhaps my favorite Christmas since I received my Red Rider b-b gun when I was 12. (That’s true, not borrowed from a Christmas movie.)

But as we were crossing the North Atlantic, I changed my mind and decided to stay in a town close to the golf course and see some sights I hadn’t seen on previous trips to the UK. I booked a room at a hotel in a London suburb: Kingston-Upon-Thames, which is only a few miles from the golf course and an easy train ride into the city . . . in case I decided to go to a show or visit a museum.

As it turned out, I did neither. Instead, on Wednesday, after docking at Southampton on the dot at 08:00, I went with Jim and Shamim to the U-Drive car rental office a few blocks away from the docks. There, I picked up my right-hand-drive (to drive on the left) Ford and headed off to find Salisbury and Stonehenge. They left to visit friends in Windsor and Oxford.

Road signage in England is very good . . . as long as you’re someone who has lived his entire life in England. In the US, I pay attention to highway numbers: IL176, IL21, I-94, etc. In England, it’s much more important to know where the road is going. In fact, I found that the people I stopped to ask for directions had, in most cases, not the foggiest idea what the road numbers are. But they know exactly where they’re going.

So, for example, to return from the golf course on Thursday back to my hotel in Kingston, the woman told me to “go to Hersham, Esher, pass Littleworth Common, and on to Kingston.” But she couldn’t tell me what road numbers to follow. That might be fine except that there are several different ways to get to Hersham, Esher, Littleworth Common, and Kingston.

I picture an English farmer in the 12^th Century taking his products to the faire in Kingston. He’s following the well-worn cart path one day when he spots an opening in the trees that looks like a shortcut. So he turns the cart and bushwhacks through the clearing, creating a route he decides he prefers. Now there are two routes to Kingston. And, over the centuries, other cart paths to Kingston are created the same way by other farmers, and those are followed by still other farmers. Then the 19^th Century comes along, and all the cart paths are paved. And where they intersect, the pavers create roundabouts.

So today, I enter the roundabout—watching intently to the right for vehicles already in the roundabout—and when I look up, I see at least two different exits to take me to Kingston. Trying to keep cool and watch for other cars in a roundabout is not the time to also be deciding which of several exits I should take.

All this is my way of saying that the drive to Salisbury and Stonehenge on Wednesday took longer than it should have. But I made it.

Salisbury is a beautiful English city: mid-sized centered around a large market place and a magnificent cathedral completed in the mid 13^th Century, around the time the Magna Carta was signed. In fact, the cathedral houses one of the four remaining copies. King John signed 13 originals in Runnymede, but only the 4 survive.

I visited the cathedral after lunching on a Cornwall pasty—an English meat pie, probably one of the unhealthiest meals I’ve had in a long time. But it was delicious and fulfilled my pasty requirement ‘til the next time I come back to England. On a full stomach, then, I visited the Cathedral, spending a few minutes staring at the indecipherable text on the 800-year-old Magna Carta.

After the historical and gastronomic treats of Salisbury, I drove another 10 miles or so further north to Stonehenge. The ancient ritual site—archaeologists still are unsure exactly what purpose it served—sits in an open field just a hundred yards or so off the highway to Ainsley(?). Visitors can only walk around the site, getting no closer than about 30 yards. They can’t go into the circle because, over its almost 5,000-year history, the place has been scavenged by many thousands of souvenir hunters and home builders. Scientists believe that residents of the Salisbury Plain over the centuries chipped away at the rocks for building materials. Besides, seeing the spot filled with visitors climbing on the rocks or just wandering among them would destroy the magic the place holds. It is an amazing spot: mysterious, wonderful in its precise placement of stones to mark the annual travel of the sun, and miraculous in its construction. How did those ancient people build the thing? Lots of theories exist, but no one knows for sure. Archaeologists haven’t yet found the blueprints.

I left Stonehenge about 3pm and took the easy way into London: the M4 motorway, part of the UK’s Interstate-like highway system.

Kingston is a pleasant town, founded over 1,000 years ago, on the Thames River, about 10 miles—maybe less—south of central London. I chose it because not only is it close to St. George’s Hill, the golf course Jim Cooper and I played on Thursday, but it’s also just downriver from Hampton Court, the home of the Tudor kings and queens, most famous as the principal residence for Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Kingston also has a very nice assortment of restaurants and pubs arranged along a river walk on the north bank of the Thames. I sampled several during the three days I stayed there.

My hotel was The White Hart (meaning white deer), with a 500-year-old pub facing a roundabout immediately on the south bank of the Thames, and an expansion of modern hotel rooms extending to the back around a parking lot. So it was a very convenient location, complete with parking and pub. Best of all, however, was very strong internet in the rooms. I spent several hours of my stay uploading, downloading, and Skyping, things that are impossible onboard.

On Thursday, Jim and I met at St. George’s Hill Golf Club for our 1:45pm tee time. Getting to the club was as much adventure as playing the course, because the roads in and around London are the result of thousands of those farmers carting their wares to the faire. A roadmap of London and its environs resembles a plate of partially eaten spaghetti, with strands of roads and highways winding around, intersecting, bending, and twisting. I took several wrong turns before finally finding the club.

But what a club! St George’s Hill is my new “favorite course.” True, the weather was perfect: sunny and about 73 degrees. But the course is magnificent: Hills, wide fairways, magnificent ancient trees, and blue-flowered heather everywhere. Even the bunkers—the deep sand traps with steep walls between the entry point and the next fair shot—are lined with the blue heather, making them look like tan eyes with blue lids staring back at you as you stand on the tees or approach the greens. Fortunately, I spent more time admiring the heather than I did trying to hit shots out of it. But I did have several opportunities to try to dig out of those bunkers—some successful, a couple not.

The course is lined with massive homes—estates, really. A few of them have obviously been in place for many decades. But many are brand new, garish reproductions of Italian mansions. My caddie (Terry) simply mumbled, with great distain, “Russians.” Apparently, London is where a lot of that new Russian wealth is ending up. Interesting that the Russians are letting so much of their money pour out of the country while the Chinese are being very restrictive about their non-Chinese investments, especially in things like huge homes in world capitals. Caddie Terry told me that China is now the largest market for Rolls Royce and Bentley. But the Chinese are driving them around the streets of Shanghai and Beijing, not London and New York.

On Friday, I spent the day at Hampton Court. The court itself is about a 2-mile walk from the roundabout in front of the White Hart. The walk follows the 500-year-old highway—actually a tree-lined, grassy thoroughfare—that served as the principal approach to the palace from King’s Town. I was alone on the highway except for the herds of deer that wander through the fields surrounding the court. These were the royal hunting grounds, and I could imagine, as I looked ahead to the large iron gates guarding the east entrance, seeing fat Henry riding out the gates followed by his entourage, all decked out in their red and gold hunting garb.

Hampton Court is a very interesting place. It was the home of English monarchs from the early 16^th Century, starting with Henry, through the 1730s, when George II lived there. George III—the Founding Fathers’ “fat George”—abandoned the place and moved his principle residence to Buckingham Palace, where Elizabeth and Philip still live today. Windsor Castle was also home to all of them, as it is today. In medieval and renaissance times, the kings and their courtiers would consume so much meat and vegetables that they’d have to abandon one palace and move to another occasionally to give the farms and forests a chance to replenish their stocks. It’s no wonder most of the kings were portly.

I spent 5 hours at Hampton Court and could have spent even more time, but instead I took a boat along the Thames back to Kingston. It was my royal barge.

Friday evening, I visited another pub along the river, where I was surrounded by young British professionals celebrating the end of the work week. They were all talking loudly and quickly, and I was thinking what a lousy imitation of British accents these folks are demonstrating. The fish and chips were delicious. So were the gin and tonics.

On Saturday, I spent a leisurely morning in my hotel room catching up on some final internet work, then left Kingston for the drive back to Southampton and the ship. After leaving the greater London area, I exited the motorway and took back roads—a few of those paved-over cart paths—through Farnborough, Avon, and other small towns all the way to the south coast of England. Again, it was a spectacularly beautiful day, and when I wasn’t driving through green tunnels carved from the massive trees and shrubs that lined the roads, I was looking up at the rolling hills of southeast England, covered with farm fields and grazing lands. I wanted to stop many times to have a pint at a pub that seemed taken directly from a travel brochure, or to check into one of the inns and B&Bs along the way. But I did neither. I just enjoyed the passage of the countryside.

I was back onboard by 16:00 (4pm). Jim and Shamim joined me on the balcony of my room as we sailed out of Southampton at 8pm. And now, after just one day, we arrive in Antwerp tomorrow morning. There’s no time to decompress!