Disneyland v Disney World

                Disneyland v Disney World

   I asked my youngest daughter, Virginia, where would she like to go for a Daddy-Daughter weekend and she replied, “Disneyland!”  We have already been to Disney World a couple of times so she wanted to be able to compare the two parks.  Personally, I didn’t care where we went because all that I wanted was to spend some quality time with my daughter.  It seems excessive to fly to L.A. to go to an amusement park but the trip was painless, as we had a direct flight from LAX to Louisville, and it wasn’t that expensive.  Virginia was happy because she got to pick the park, the rides, and even the restaurants for the whole weekend.  I was happy because I was able to make some new memories with my daughter as we spent a lot of quality time together.

   The biggest difference between the park in L.A. and the one in Florida is how compact and convenient everything is at Disneyland.  For example, we could easily walk from the front gate to our hotel and we had a plethora of restaurants to pick from outside of the park.  This is significant because it cost me ninety five dollars to eat at the Naples Ristorante in Downtown Disney and almost half of that to eat at The Cheesecake Factory, which was virtually right across the street.  A second major difference is that Disneyland consists of only two parks.  A section of the California Adventure Park is dedicated to the Marvel Studios and it was there that we witnessed Spider-Man jump from one building to the next, had our picture taken with Dr. Strange, and saw the Black Panther take on some bad guys in a street fight.  It was great to see all of the characters live.

   Unfortunately, the one thing that Disneyland and Disney World had in common was the long lines.  We spent over two hours waiting to ride “Web-Slingers” for example.  Although that was the longest that we had to wait, there were several other rides with wait times exceeding ninety minutes.  By the end of the second day my hips were really hurting me from standing for so long and now I know that I am only good for two days at Disney.  It would have been better to buy a Fast Pass for fifteen dollars for each ride, a price that I would have gladly paid if I had known that the wait time was going to be so long.  Still, I promised Virginia that we could make the trip again in 2023 if she wanted to give it a whirl.  The only caveat is that it has to be just Virginia and me because I want her full attention if I am going to spend the time and money for a major trip.

Epic Caribbean Cruise

 An “Epic” Caribbean Cruise

A good tour guide can make even a dull excursion interesting and that is why I was glad that we found Tony to show us the island of St. Maarten. He was a true character who didn’t mind doing a little personal business while he showed us the island where he had lived for his whole life. For example, Tony made a stop at the place where his very pregnant daughter works so that he could drop off some cash and a few slices of Conch Cake, a local delight that contained no conch but a whole lot of butter and sugar. Tony said that he had to sneak it out of the house because it was so good that his girlfriend didn’t want to share it with anyone. Also, we made a stop at the place where Tony lives so that we could meet his two grandsons. The younger boy was nicknamed “The Little Terrorist” because he was always picking on his six year old brother.

What I appreciated about Tony was that the 62 year old man was how open with these two tourists from Kentucky. For example, Tony said that his father was wealthy but, because he had “too much kids,” no one inherited much when he died. Tony worked at excavating for his father, and still has huge and powerful hands to prove it, before becoming a supervisor. Now that he is retired, he leads tours when the cruise ships are in port and in his spare time he volunteers to take the old folks to their medical appointments. He picks up work wherever he can and once did a couple of shifts for when the movie “Speed II” was filming in town. “Sandra Bullock was a very nice lady but Chuck Norris was nice as well.” Some of the other celebrities that he has seen on the island where Lionel Richie, Michael Jordon, and Lil Wayne. St. Maarten’s is known for having famous people fly in for the New Year’s Eve celebrations and Jeff Bezos, who has a $450 million dollar yacht, arrives annually so that he can park it in the bay and bring in the new year in luxury.

Tony grew up on the island and showed us where his house used to be. In 2017, Hurricane Irma, a category 5 hurricane with winds up to 300 mph, shook and removed the walls and ceiling from the foundation of his house. Tony said that he went outside to watch the hurricane but when he saw a huge cargo container flying by at about twenty feet off of the ground, he decided to go back inside to take shelter until the storm passed by. Irma devastated the island. A “Planet Hollywood” hotel was completely destroyed and its rusty skeleton frame was still standing by the beach. Another hotel was completely rebuilt when the wealthy owner shipped in 200 workers, and all of the building materials needed, to start the hotel all over from scratch.

On our tour of St. Maarten we passed many roundabouts and in the middle of them were statues of local interest. For example, there was one roundabout in a busy intersection that had an enslaved man who had been frees and the chains around his wrists had been broken. In another area the roundabout had salt pickers and a third had a variety of transportation workers.

Meanwhile, motorcycles passed us dangerously to the right and left; Tony said that they had a death wish. The two most popular places to go on the island are Airport beach and the nude beach. Since we had time, we drove to the airport and watched as the planes dropped within 100 feet of us as they flew down to the runway.

At the end of our tour Tony drove us by where his father had his funeral. Because his father had made a lot of money with his excavation company and through real estate, he was well known throughout the island. Tony’s father was so popular that the funeral director had to turn people away from the service. Only family members were allowed to attend the visitation and even then the funeral home was packed from wall to wall. I stole a line from “The Big Chill” when I said that “I could never get that many people to come to my funeral.” Tracey picked up on the reference and, right on cue, countered with another line from the movie; “I’ll come. And I’ll bring a date.” Tony laughed out loud at our repartee. And with that our two hour tour of St. Maarten’s ended.

The second great tour that we took was in Barbados with our nineteen year old guide, Evan. He gives tours on the side as is studying to be an art teacher. What I appreciated about Evan was the fact that even though he is a young black man, he didn’t sound bitter or angry as he told us the stories of Barbados’ history of slavery. He could have made us uncomfortable by becoming bitter as he told us of captured runaway slaves were put into cages in what is now called “Freedom Square.” To make matters worse, the local businesses at the time had the cages removed because the enslaved people made too much noise in their cries for pity, and they smelled bad. Evan remained professional as he pointed out to us where the slave market was located and the still present auction block where the enslaved Africans were bought and sold. To cover up the sins of the past, Bridgetown put a statue of Admiral Nelson on the auction block. It has since been removed because the locals thought that it was inappropriate to put a statue of a famous British lord in Freedom Square since Barbados had achieved independence from the UK in the 1960s. One final note on slavery was the fact that a parking lot had been built on top of a mass grave for enslaved people. The choice was to take that expensive downtown real estate and either turn it into a cemetery or make it a parking lot and, as Evan said demurely, “the parking lot won.”

As we continued with our downtown tour, it became clear that Bridgetown was not interested in preservation as most of the historic buildings were run down and in a state of disrepair. The two exceptions were the Mutual Life Assurance building, the most famous historic building on Barbados, which was built with the 20 million dollars that Britain had paid for reparations for their part in the slave trade. Mutual Life held a place for the local planters could meet and find a way to look after each other. The other building was a synagogue. Barbados has had a strong Jewish population since its colonial days and it was the Jews who figured out how to turn the local sweet grass into rum. Everyone grew rich as the Jews taught the process to the Portuguese and the Dutch.

One final excursion of note was when we went to ride “The Flying Dutchman” and the “Canopy Zip Line” on St. Maarten. Tracey and I have done zip lines before but “The Flying Dutchman” is the world’s steepest zip line at 1,050 feet in elevation across 2,800 feet of cable. We screamed all of the way down the mountain and hugged each other in exhilaration once we arrived at the bottom of the line. Before we dropped we watched as a grandmother tried to calm her granddaughter’s fears about zipping down the mountain. I always like to play the comedian and so, when I saw that the girl was nervous, I said that “if something bad happened and the line breaks, it will be the worst four or five seconds of your life.” The seventy year old lady was nonplussed and replied, “then it will be over.” She didn’t say it with remorse, more like it was a matter of fact and that maybe it would be a relief. But then she skipped to the starting line and screamed with joy as she took the leap off of the platform. I learned a lot from that old woman in the few minutes that I watched her.

People look at me askew when I tell them that Tracey and I went on a cruise because everyone is afraid of COVID, but we felt perfectly safe. Everyone on board had to test negative before they were allowed on the ship. Three ports (St. Lucia, St. Thomas, St. Kitts) refused to let us come on their island but to make up for it, Norwegian Cruise Line gave us 20% off of our next trip. We immediately went down to the front desk and ordered our next cruise. The “Epic” has a great gym and that is important to me since I worked out for 90 minutes every morning. And because we have been on this ship several times, Tracey knows it well and can find her way around without assistance. There is a bar on the top deck with huge umbrellas so Tracey can perch herself there and became best buddies with the bartender. Norwegian gave us other perks like a handicapped room on the 14th floor for no extra charge and free admission to the specialty Japanese and Brazilian restaurants. Finally, because the ship was at 50% capacity due to social distancing, the wait staff was literally standing behind us at dinner to serve us. It was nice to have so much attention.

Traveling is a pain in the neck and I understand why people say that they don’t want to do it. My father in law, for example, always wanted to take a cruise through the Panama Canal, but when Tracey got serious about taking him, my father in law would not hear of it and wouldn’t even consider going. Now that our trip is over I can understand the way that he felt. There were a lot of things that went wrong. For example, I forgot our passports and vaccination cards and had to turn the cab around when we were on our way to the airport to retrieve them from our condo. When we arrived in San Juan we had to take a COVID test and, if the outcome wasn’t negative, then we would have had to spend two weeks in isolation. On our flight out of San Juan, we spent 10 hours in the airport on Sunday when our plane developed mechanical problems but the airline would not cancel the flight. Eventually they gave us vouchers for a hotel room and dinner but the restaurant was so busy that we had to wait almost three hours at the bar for dinner and dessert. Finally, on Monday, I received four texts giving me four different times for our departure. We decided to err on the side of caution and get to the airport early and spent an additional five hours waiting for a flight out.

Non Sequitars

• Evan asks for $25.00 for the tour. I pulled out the money and said, “I’ve been meaning to clean out this wallet for awhile.” Without missing a beat, Evan said, “and I would like to help you do that.”

• A collective groan came from the group of four sitting next to us when I said that Tracey and I are retired and it didn’t matter when we returned. I think that they groaned because they alll had to be at work on Monday. A little later on, I said to the group, “You should retire early and travel!” Of course, everyone says that but few are able to achieve the dream

  

Cheryl’s Early Years

 Cherylanne’s Early Years

My sister, Cherylanne, always seemed much older than myself. That is probably because she acted as though she were my second mother, which only makes sense because Cheryl and Mom were so close. Those two spent countless hours in the kitchen together and it was clear that Cherylanne was Mom’s favorite. From my earliest days, I remember those two fussing over their Weight Watcher’s diet; measuring their fruit in a small scale and toasting cheese bread in the oven. As she became older, it was Cheryl who cooked most of the meals and she took over other parenting duties as well. She put up and decorated the family Christmas tree, for example, because the holidays weren’t my parent’s thing. When it came time to celebrate our birthdays, Cheryl was the one who asked us what we wanted for a gift to make our day special. Often, Cheryl went out and bought the gift herself, after my mother gave her the money, but would also buy us something that came from her and she used the proceeds from her job to buy it for us.

Cherylanne had many jobs outside of the home. She worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken when she was sixteen and she boxed up the leftovers to place in our refrigerator so that the kids always had our favorite food to eat. Other jobs included being a cashier at Target, a teller at a bank, and a hostess at Mama Grisanti’s, one of our regular restaurants that my father liked to take us to. An anecdote from her time at the restaurant was when she received a tip of just a few coins from a check of over a hundred dollars. Upset at being shortchanged, Cheryl ran out to the parking lot before the customer had a chance to leave, gave the tip back to him and said, “Here! You obviously need this more than I do!”

This demonstration of gravitas was unusual for my older sister as she was not an aggressive person. The Cherylanne whom I remember while growing up was shy and an introvert. The situation became so serious that my father got an exchange student from Ecuador for Cheryl to become friends with. The young woman’s name was Ruth Brenz and the two became inseparable. For some reason, Ruth came to love banana ice cream and she walked to Baskin Robbins with Cheryl at least once a week to get the frozen treat since it was unavailable in the grocery store. There were other exchange students but it was Ruth who really helped to get Cheryl out of her shell.

I think that Cherylanne would have liked to have a big house with an even bigger family. To pass the time while watching television in the family room, for example, she used to make architectural drawings of her dream house and she made drawings of her ideal wedding dress. Cheryl was so good at drawing that a pen and ink rendition that she did of a bridge in one of Louisville’s parks was selected to be printed in her official high school calendar. Also, in her spare time, Cheryl liked to sew and the patterns and clippings were strewn all over the dining room. In my opinion, she was born to be the perfect wife with a big family. She probably would have liked to have ten children instead of just the one.

One of Cheryl’s teachers in high school was Fr. Wagner. One day, after class, my sister went to the old priest for extra help and he became impatient with her. Fr. Wagner told my sister that she would never be anything more than a housewife. That slight stayed with her and gave her the fire that she needed to continue with her schooling. Cheryl took a course from a local school to learn how to take dictation. When that didn’t work out, she attended Eastern Kentucky University and earned a degree in law enforcement. After she married and started a family, Cheryl went back to school and earned her RN while living in Pennsylvania and made a thirty year career as a nurse.

Now that Cherylanne has passed, I am afraid that all of these memories would be forgotten if I didn’t spend a few minutes to type them out. As I watched my sister laying on her deathbed with literally hours left to live, I realized that our bond really came from our early years together. Now that she is in heaven with my parents, I regret that we had lost touch and wish that we could have become closer instead of distant. The image that will always haunt me is of Cheryl, lying in a dark hospital room with the machines whirring and pinging, and no one was allowed in to comfort her in her final hours on this earth because she was contagious. She was a giving person who dedicated her life to helping other people as a nurse and yet there was no one at her bedside to even hold her hand as she perished. It was a sad ending for someone who deserved much better.

Amtrak to Denver

 Amtrak to Denver

Surprise, when it come to travel, is seldom a welcome thing. I was surprised when I arrived at the Amtrak station in Salt Lake that they didn’t have an actual building for me to wait in. Instead, the porter met me on the tracks and scanned my QR code. Since this was the first time that I had paid for a compartment, I was a little nervous when I asked about the accommodations. The purser said that I was in cabin 5, and when I asked for a key to my berth, he said that there wasn’t a key, so I had to keep watch on my valuables whenever I left the cabin. The third surprise, after no train station and no locked cabin, was how small my berth was. When I opened the cabin door all I saw was wall to wall bed with no room for anything else. Literally, if I wanted to put on my shoes, I had to open the cabin door to give me enough room to put my shoes on.

Still, for me, trying to find a refuge on Thanksgiving, the accommodations were perfect. My day on the California Zephyr was filled with naps, reading, and looking out the window so that I could enjoy the gorgeous scenery all day. The train slowed as we climbed the mountains and, as I laid on my back to watch the landscape roll by, my mind’s eye drifted back to when I would ride in the back of the station wagon as we drove to Minneapolis and Vermont when I was a kid. The drone of the train riding on the rails made the memories from my childhood flood my brain. For awhile, I wasn’t a sixty year old man reclining on a bed; I was a five year old Jeff who was whiling away the hours by watching the glorious Rocky Mountains and the sparkling water of the Colorado River

Amtrak is perfect for introverts because there is very little interaction between you and the other passengers. The only time when I left my compartment was to go to the bathroom or get something to eat. My berth felt like a retreat, similar to my cabin on a cruise ship or the little bedroom that I had at the Gethsemani Abbey in Bardstown. The train accommodated me well because it forced me to slow down, and yet, I was in perpetual motion. It felt like I was accomplishing something even while I barely moved during large parts of the day. Frankly, I was in heaven, and since my parents have passed and I don’t have much in the way of family obligations for the holidays, I am already planning my Thanksgiving Amtrak vacation for next year.

Before I took the train I had to fly into Salt Lake City. I arrived at 10:30 in the morning and, since my train didn’t leave until 3:30 am the following day, I had some time to kill. I took the light rail from the airport to Temple Square to take a tour of the Mormon’s campus. The tour guides were all young, female, and pretty, and I had the idea that they were used for recruiting purposes. My beautiful two guides showed me the Assembly Hall, the Tabernacle with the silver roof where the choir played, and the temple, which was under reconstruction. The original sandstone base was crumbling and the Mormons were replacing it with granite. The whole campus was impressive but, after a quick tour of the convention center, I was ready to move on. After taking some pictures of the capitol, I walked to my hotel and went to bed early so that I could meet my train.

After I took the train to Denver, I spent all day on Friday taking a bus tour of the local attractions. We drove to the Garden of the Gods, which held some unusual rock formations, and I hiked around the area for awhile. Our lunch break was at Manitou Springs, an old hippy enclave which has morphed into a tourist trap, but since I don’t like shopping I just walked around the town for awhile. Finally, we drove up Pike’s Peak and enjoyed the views of the surrounding countryside.

This wasn’t a trip for everyone. I was constantly moving, ate on the fly, and barely talked to anyone. On Saturday, for example, I was out of the hotel at 6:00 am so that I could take a solo walking tour of Denver for four and a half hours. The sun was just coming up when I made my way down the 16th Street Mall and I took a lot of pictures of the Christmas decorations while the lights were still on. The final item on the agenda was to walk around the capital and take some pictures of the interesting buildings. This done, I took the light rail to the airport. It was a whirlwind of a vacation but I am glad that I did it because I have been wanting to go to Denver for a long time and I will use any excuse that I can get to ride Amtrak.

Religion at Holy Trinity

 Religion at Holy Trinity, Trinity High School, and Sacred Heart Academy

My absolute earliest memory occurred at Holy Trinity in their first church building, which had been erected in 1953. It was in that same year that Trinity High School came into existence by purchasing the old Holy Trinity property on Shelbyville Road. I remember being a toddler and, because I was teething, I gnawed a dent into the pew in front of me. Why my parents didn’t try to stop me, I will never know, but I chewed a chunk out of the pew. When Holy Trinity outgrew the old church building, it was converted into the school gym and a new, more modern church, was built in its place. It was in this church building where my father took us to mass every Sunday morning, where my brother and I became altar servers, where my sister was married, and where my children became altar servers. It is where I still attend mass today.

Call me old fashioned but I do not like to wear jeans to mass but prefer putting on a pair of slacks and a collared shirt. For this reason, I only attend mass when the Sundays when I know that I am going to the opera or ballet, since I will already be dressed. I always arrive early, about a half hour before the ceremony begins, so I have my choice of places to sit and I choose a pew close to where my family used to seat themselves when I was a child. Meditation might be too strong of a word, but since I’m in the exact same place where I was fifty years ago, I like to close my eyes and think back to a time, long ago, when I was young and impressionable. The memories swirl around inside of my head, decades of them, and I use the alone time to sort them out.

When I first attended Holy Trinity Parish School, it was so new that it didn’t have a kindergarten or a first grade, so I had to go elsewhere for my first two years of schooling. Finally, in 1969, I was admitted to the second grade, but only after I was tutored by Mrs. Kissel, an old teacher who specialized in helping remedial students. Sister Julianna was our principal and she was a mean old woman; I think that she enjoyed that fact that everyone at my school was afraid of her. My own experience with the nun was that she caught Doug Ware and I fighting in a classroom after lunch. He liked to hit me in the face and say “slap him until his face turns red.” Doug had been picking on me since I first attended Holy Trinity in 1969 and I finally had enough and I fought back. Sr. Julianna separated us, talked to Doug first, and then blamed me for the fight. Without even asking me any questions, Sr. Julianna slapped me hard on the back of my head. The blow hurt but not as much as the injustice of being blamed for a fight that I did not start. The only other nun that I knew at Holy Trinity was Sr. Alma Rita and she was so mean to my brother that he tried to correct the injustices done to him by setting the convent on fire. The flames died out quickly but Tommy was sent to the public schools as part of his contrition. Ultimately, he was sent to a military school where he graduated with honors. To this very day I think back on my time in my Catholic school, and the nuns who taught me, with a mixture of anger and regret.

I did enjoy attending mass, however. I found the routine of it relaxing and satisfying. My father thought so too and even went so far as to take us to the midnight mass at the cathedral for Christmas. His dedication to Catholicism went to such an extreme that he pulled into a local church on the Sundays when we were on vacation. He liked the ritual of it, but my mother, who was never religious, only attended to support my father and stopped going to mass when he became too sick to leave the house. Since I have always enjoyed contributing to something bigger than myself, I became an altar server while I was eleven years old. It was fun to put on the robes, light the candles before the ceremony, process in with the priest, and to help with communion. One of my jobs was to hold a platter under the chin of the parishioners so that if they dropped the communion then it would not fall to the floor. Also, I rang the chimes when the priest held up the body and blood of

Christ to receive God’s blessing. There was a certain magic to the mass and I wanted to be a part of it. I even enjoyed hanging out with the priest before the ritual began.

Today, I consider myself to be a low wattage Catholic, which means that I only attend mass at Holy Trinity a couple of times a year. At different points of my life I have tried to deepen my faith. For example, I tried to read the whole Bible on my own but gave up after Jeremiah because I found the book dark and repetitive. When I was a teacher at Sacred Heart, I led thirteen senior retreats over fifteen years, and the seminal part of my speech was that I had wanted to transfer to a seminary when I was in college to become a priest. After all, all of my heroes in my formative years were priests. And yet, when it came time to contact the recruiter for the Archdiocese of Louisville, I couldn’t pull the trigger. My faith simply wasn’t strong enough. The career of a priest was attractive to me because I would be able to lead a whole community of parishioners, serve as an example for others to follow, and I liked to idea of sacrificing myself for a greater good. But I was low wattage and not a very good Catholic because I don’t believe in hell, barely believe in heaven, and have no problems with Islam and Hinduism. Also, I believe that women are equal to men and should be allowed to become priests. Finally science tells us that people are born gay, so I am very accepting of the LGBQ community and think that they should be able to accept communion.

If these reasons weren’t enough to stop me from committing myself to the priesthood, then there is the problem of pedophile priests and the Pope’s inability to do anything about them. There is no connection between homosexuality and pedophilia so it is alright with me if gay men and women become priests. However, there are countless stories, reported in the media from all over the globe, of priests who have been accused of sexually abusing young boys. Unfortunately, and unfairly, because of the constant bad press, all priests are suspected of pedophilia. They have to find their own way to prove that they are worthy of the trust of their parishioners. I am still working it out, but to have that dark cloud of suspicion constantly over me as a priest is a good enough reason for not taking vows.

This is not a sad blog entry where I have a tell all story about being abused. None of the priests I have known over the years had done anything that I know of that would lead me to believe that they are pedophiles. Instead, this is a story about how I am trying to be a better Catholic and how I am deepening my faith by serving as a lector and a Eucharistic Minister for Sacred Heart. When I lector I read the chapter and verse over and over again because if the passage doesn’t make any sense to me then it won’t make any sense to the congregation. I like to be a Eucharistic Minister because sometimes, when I look deeply into the eyes of the people receiving communion, I can see the Holy Spirit working. There are a lot of true believers at mass and it is inspiring to see their faith reflected on their faces. In my own limited role, I feel like I am making a contribution and serving as a good example for others; it’s just that I will never be able to do those things as a priest.

Danube Cruise

 Monday, October 11, 2021: Tracey and I ordered an Uber to pick us up at 11:30 am to take us to the airport. The flight to Dulles was miserable because we were packed into our seats on a very small plane. United Airlines must have a committee whose whole purpose is to think up new ideas on how to make air travel as uncomfortable as possible. In our case, there was a speaker right over our heads, with the volume up as loud as it could go, and Tracey and I jumped in shock at every announcement. The trans-Atlantic flight was nice because we sprung for Economy Plus tickets so we had an additional six inches of sitting room. Lufthansa gave us earphones so I watched a couple of movies on our eight hour flight. Still, it was hard to sit that long and, by the time we arrived in Bucharest, Tracey and I had been up for twenty hours. I couldn’t concentrate on reading or watching the movies and drifted in and out of consciousness.

Tuesday, October 12, Romania: Our fight landed in Munich but, because there were so few people flying to Bucharest, we had to walk on the tarmac to our plane and then climb the stairs to gain entrance. Finally, we arrived at our hotel at 1:30 pm. The best way to acclimate yourself to European time is to get on their schedule immediately and do not fall asleep in the afternoon. Try as I may, I couldn’t follow that rule and fell asleep for an hour. A lot of the 90 people from U of L who went on this trip socialized in the hotel lounge so I did my best to introduce myself to as many people as possible before our buffet dinner.

Wednesday, October 13, Bucharest: We spent the morning at the Casa Ceausescu. The Romanian dictator was overthrown in 1989 but spent his 25 years in power living in the house which is now a museum. Our tour included a look at the Italian statues that had been gifted to Ceausescu; heads of state and powerful people gave him the statues to remind visitors of Romania’s link to Ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance. In an interesting side note, our guide said that when the Ceaucescus were assassinated, the wife had many more bullet holes in her body because she was even more hated than her husband.

In the afternoon we toured Dracula’s (Vlad the Impaler) tomb at the Snagov Monastery. The structure was built in 1407. The Byzantium art on the walls, and the Romanesque architecture, was beautiful and it looked just like a picture from a history book. If we had more time then I would have liked to have spent more time in this space because I wanted to take in all of the frescoes from our ancient past. It was a privilege to be at this monastery and our visit was one of the many unexpected pleasures from our Eastern European trip.

Thursday, October 14, Bucharest: We began our day at the Palace of the Parliament. Ceausescu built this massive structure as a monument to himself and completed ninety percent of it before he was assassinated. In order to make room for the Palace, Ceausescu wiped out whole neighborhoods and demolished three churches. This was one of the many reasons for why he was so unpopular. But the project also helped employ people because he hired five million laborers to build the Palace. Also, he insisted that all of the building materials, especially the marble, come from Romania in order to give a boost to their economy. Today, the Palace is a drain on Romania’s budget; the cost of heating, electricity, and lighting the building costs over six million dollars per year.

Lunch was on our own but, before we ate, Tracey and I took a side trip to see the statue of Romulus and Remus. It was a labor of love because the rain never stopped coming down for our first few days in Eastern Europe, but I had to get a selfie in front of this statue because I shared the story of the famous twins for decades when I taught world history. Once again, the statue is there to remind people of the Roman influence on Romania to this day. After lunch we took a bus tour of Bucharest and then embarked on “The River Duchess,” our Danube cruise ship.

Friday, October 15, Bulgaria: I started the day with a walk with Peter, the physical fitness expert

on our ship, through the streets of Nikopol, where we saw the famous fountain and gate. Then the whole U of L group took a bus tour to Arbanassi where we toured “The Church of the Nativity,” a 17th century stone church with beautiful frescoes. We were treated to an Orthodox choir at the end of our tour. They sang a cappella and it was magical because their voices were fantastic, they dressed up in period costumes, and we listened to them while viewing the Byzantine art.

To round out the morning, we toured the “Konstantsalisva House,” which served as a good example of how a rich person would have lived in the Middle Ages. Next, we were treated to a true Bulgarian lunch and folk dancers entertained us at the end of the meal. One of the women in the troupe grabbed my hand to get me out of my chair so that she could dance the last number with me. It was all in good fun and I made sure that I got a picture of me dancing so that I could share it with the kids.

Our final destination of the day was Veliko Tarnovo, which had been the capital of Bulgaria before and after the Turkish occupation, to do some shopping. Before we went back to the ship we stopped the bus on the side of the road so that our group could take some pictures of the ruins of the Tsarevets fortress, the former seat of the medieval tsars.

Saturday, October 16, Bulgaria: I mixed up the types of excursions that we experienced in the hope that each place we visited would have a unique memory. With that in my, our first activity in Vidin was a “Cooking with Mona” class. Tracey was happy because it was a hands on class and she made Banista, a traditional Bulgarian pastry dish. We went back to the ship after the class and our cruise director gave all of the extra Banista to the crew. It was too early to call it a day so after I dropped Tracey off I took a long walk in the rain. It took about twenty minutes to walk to the Banda Vida Fortress. It is a 17th century Turkish upgrade of a 10th century Bulgarian fortification, built upon the ruins of a 3rd century Roman fort. It was closed to the public so I took a quick loop around the fort, having the place to myself because of the rain, and then I returned to the ship.

Sunday, October 17, Serbia: Our morning started with a close up view of the Djerdap Dam as our ship went through the locks at dawn. The Djerdap Gorge is better known as the Iron Gates and it is where the Danube cuts through the Carpathian Mountains. Later in the morning we passed by the Decebalus Cliff where a Dacian king had his portrait carved into the side of a mountain in 100 AD. The carving was forty meters high and it was Decebalus’ way of thumbing his nose at Trajan, the Roman emperor who was his rival.

The rest of the morning was spent at the Lepenski Vir Archeological Park where the Serbs recreated a dig that included human remains from 9000 years ago. Our afternoon was spent at the Golubac Castle, a fortress that was built in the 14th century but had been overrun by Serbs, Magyars, and Turks. It is a major tourist attraction in Serbia

Monday, October 18, Belgrade: We started the day at the Palace of the Karadjordjevic Dynasty. Our guided tour of the grounds and the buildings were nice but the best part was meeting Crown Prince Alexander II, and his wife, Princess Katherine. Our U of L group had been told that there was a chance that we might meet the prince but we didn’t know if it would actually happen. Alexander gave a quick speech, had his picture taken with our group, and then he shook Tracey’s hand and patted her on the back as he left. As he passed by us I told the prince that Tracey is blind. He looked down and saw her cane and that is why he reached out to her. The princess, trailing right behind Alexander, said to me, “Thank you for bringing the good weather with you” because, after a solid six days of rain, the sun finally came out while we were at the palace.

The best excursion of our cruise was the Yugo Car Tour of Belgrade because of the

memories that it triggered. The Yugo was a piece of junk, having all the power of a lawnmower, a stick shift that took all of our driver’s strength to shift gears, no safety features at all and the whole vehicle felt like it would shake to pieces if we went over ten miles an hour. I loved the experience. It reminded me of driving around in Tod’s V.W. Bug while we were in college and Tracey said that it reminded her of packing six people into Ted Luna’s car to drive down to Fisherman’s Park.

Our driver was Rolph and he showed us the remains of some of the buildings that America destroyed in the 1990s. “Are the Serbians still angry at us?” I asked our guide. “Of course,” responded Rolph. “You bombed us.” Then, to lighten the mood, our driver told us the story of how the young people of Belgrade used to have roof-top parties as the bombs fell. It was safe to watch because the Americans would announce where and when we were going to bomb so the young Serbs could watch from a safe distance.

We arrived back at the River Duchess just in time to see a troupe of dancers perform for the passengers. It was almost too much good to happen for one day. If anyone had asked me, as our cruise ship pulled away from Belgrade, if our trip up the Danube was worth the trouble and the expense, I would have told them of the day that we met a prince and rode in a Yugo.

Tuesday, October 19, Croatia: In the morning we toured the city of Vukovar where the Croats held out against a vastly superior Serb army for 37 days in 1991. Then we took a bus trip to the Vucedol Archeological Museum before having lunch in Karanac. Our final stop of the day was at the Bjian Winery where we saw huge casks in the cellar and we drove past miles and miles of vineyards.

Wednesday, October 20, Budapest: We only had time for one tour today because our whole morning was spent being tested for COVID again. I wanted to do something different for our last day in Europe so we went to the House of Terror, the former headquarters of the secret police in the Soviet-era Hungary. The museum pulled no punches as it kept the prison cells and the execution rooms exactly as they had been before the breakup of the Soviet Union. The main attraction was a T-84 Soviet tank that was parked in the middle of the building and it was surrounded by hundreds of pictures of people who had been killed in the House of Terror. To lighten up a bit after we left the museum, our guide took us to Liberty Square where he could give us a running commentary on the art and architecture of Pest.

If we had been asked why we didn’t start our European adventures with a trip to London, Paris, or Rome, Tracey’s pat answer would have been, “anyone could do that!” Besides, it was fun to travel where comparatively few people have toured. The weather alone was enough to discourage most tourists as it rained on us for the for the first five days that we were in Eastern Europe. Cold, dark, and wet was exactly the weather that I was expecting, however, and I think that I would have been disappointed if it had been bright and sunny.

The whole trip to Europe could not have gone better and I cannot remember the last time that I was this happy for such a sustained period of time. I was so nervous before we left because this was my first time on a trans-Atlantic flight, my first time in Europe, and my first time on a river cruise. Once we finally arrived at our hotel, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. And when our trip was over, I continued to ask myself why we didn’t do this type of vacation before 2021. The hard fact is that Tracey and I were not in a position to do it until we retired in May.

As always, it was the other passengers that made our vacation interesting. We have found our tribe; these people were well-educated, well-mannered, and refined. Most of them were older than Tracey and me and that made them more interesting to talk to. They would describe

themselves as affluent and their occupations were as physicians, lawyers, and teachers. Tracey and I were the youngest passengers at 60 years of age and, like us, most of the passengers were retired. I was reminded that retirement is the great equalizer; these people obviously used to be important and powerful, but now no one really cared about their past work lives. It felt nice to be able to relax, full in the knowledge that the other passengers didn’t want anything from me, other than a new friend to talk to, and I didn’t want anything from them except fun people to share this experience with. We were literally all in the same boat together.

The other passengers taught me that life doesn’t end at 60; they had paid their dues and, to reward themselves, they take one vacation after another. “After all,” said one lady, “what am I going to do? Leave my money to my kids? They are doing well enough without inheriting anything.” This was a point of view that I hadn’t considered before and I found her opinion refreshing. So I have answered my own question on what do I want to do with my next thirty years that I have left on earth and the answer is to travel. This moment of clarity is just one of the reasons as to why our trip up the Danube was life-changing for Tracey and me.

And finally, an unintended consequence of this trip is that it really strengthened our marriage. Tracey and I have reached a new plateau, having the time, money, and energy to pull off a massive trip. It helped that we were in lockstep in terms of our goals and expectations. Tracey possesses the organizational skills to pull it off, liked the challenge of packing for an eleven day trip, and kept me from becoming overwhelmed. Our touring gave us some seasoning, made us more interesting people by having us transcend above our mundane lives, and separated us from the crowd a little bit. Our Eastern European cruise marks the beginning of a new phase in our lives, leaving behind our careers and the daily grind, and transitioning into what we will become, which is world travelers.

My Father Drives

                  Nobody liked to drive with my father.  Every time that he got behind the wheel he acted as though he were a gladiator in the Colosseum.  When he was in his teen years, he made his bones by driving trucks all over the Midwest, and that gave him the right to tell other people how to drive.  He would honk and yell at the other drivers and give them instructions on how to drive better.  On our road trips to Minneapolis or Vermont, Dad would prepare the car by strapping the luggage onto the roof to make room for the kids and dogs on the inside.  Then he would test his level of endurance by leaving our house in the middle of the night and drive until he exhausted himself.  Mom was his copilot, and her job was to read the map and to make sure that he had a supply of gum and a Coke at the ready.  When he was happy, Dad would whistle, and when “King of the Road” came on the radio, he would sing along to his favorite song.  I think that our road trips reminded him of his days of being a long-haul truck driver.

As time went by, his driving became worse because, while he was still as aggressive on the road as he had always been, his skills had diminished.  His eyesight became so bad that he would have to ask, after he had stopped for the traffic light, “Jeff, what color is the light?”  I would reply, “it’s red Dad.  I’ll tell you when it’s green!”  If he had to stop at more than two lights in a row, Dad would yell out, without any warning, “Every Goddam Light!”  It was hard to relax if you were a passenger in his car.  Eventually he couldn’t even drive anymore because of his eyesight.  One day, when he tried to take a sharp turn in his little Mazda sportscar, he hit the curb and the concrete scraped the side of the car.  Dad got out of the car, looked at the damage, and handed the keys to my mother.  He never drove again.

This came hard to a man who had few passions, and his love of driving was at the top of his list of things that made him happy.  My earliest memory was that of my father driving a little GM sports car at breakneck speeds through the backroads of Louisville.  It wasn’t a good memory because Dad drove so fast that I was terrified.  Cave Hill Cemetery is juxtaposed between the downtown area and our house in St. Matthews.  The road around the cemetery is full of twists and turns and Dad loved to take them as fast as possible.  I think that I left indentations on the dashboard because I had gripped it so hard in preparing for the crash that I was sure was coming.  Now that he had given up his driver’s license, Dad was deprived of the one thing that he unquestioningly loved.