The desert begins

I saw many many pyramids -- Great, not quite as great, step, bent and red -- and I took pictures of them all, but everyone knows what the pyramids look like.

This is something you don't usually see, the way the fertile land around the Nile gives way abruptly to the Sahara, though you no doubt learned something about the flooding making agriculture possible back in fourth grade geography class.

But it is as dramatic as it looks in this picture (taken at Saqqara): on one side, lush date palms and mango trees, thick as a jungle, and on the other side, sandy brown moonscape without so much as a blade of grass. Click to see better.

I came, I saw, I rode a camel

This picture was taken shortly before the camel, who looks so deceptively sweet in this picture, took off running down a hill, and I was convinced that Egypt was going to be the end of Travels with Kathleen. In every sense.

But I survived -- obviously -- though ten hours and many pyramids later when we finally got back to the ship in Alexandria, I still reeked of camel. Not an entirely unpleasant odor, like dusty, musky hay. But strong.

And persistent.

Rock my soul

Rock-a my soul in the bosom of Abraham....I keep humming that song as the unnerving motion of the ship keeps shifting my center of balance when I lie on my side and I...rock.

Which may be why I sleep so well. Rocking like a baby in a cradle, while the strangely phosphorescent Mediterranean churns below, and far in the distance, the faint lights of some city in Africa slide slowly slowly by.
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Valletta

Sailing out of Valletta, and from this side of the walls, it looks every bit the fortress that it was for so many centuries. Not especially hospitable, unless maybe you were a crusader with some Saracens on your tail.

The architecture within the city is much friendlier, Baroque mostly, not at all medieval.

And then there is the waterfront, below. I thought these were expensive seaside villas, but apparently they are actually warehouses. I am pretty confident that they are the most charming warehouses anywhere.

Marsaxlokk

The unpronounceable names of Malta are part of its Arab heritage. The "marsa" in Marsaxlokk (which is easy enough to say -- marsa-schlock -- as long as you're not trying to look at it and say it at the same time) is from the Arabic word for port that also gave us Marseilles and Marsala. And that's what I learned on tour today, Mommy.

Our tour guide had such a charming accent, randomly adding an "uh" to the ends of English words, so that "local fish" became "low-kill fish-uh", that I spent less time listening to what she was saying than how she was saying it. I did manage to retain that the fishing boats that Marsaxlokk is famous for are painted blue for the sea, yellow for the sun, and brown for the earth, and the eyes on every prow are those of Osiris.

No Blue Grotto for you

My first shore excursion started badly, with the announcement that our boat trip to the (allegedly) famous Blue Grotto would not be taking place because the waves were too rough. Instead we were escorted to a cliff above and a beach below for photo opportunities, and once we saw how the surf was smashing into the rocks, there was a definite consensus that the Blue Grotto was perhaps best appreciated from a distance.

Click and you'll get as close as you ever need to.

I get it, part 2

Most of my previous European travel has involved a lot of hoisting luggage on and off trains. I still love traveling by train, but hoisting has lost whatever dubious charm it may once have had, and I am no longer as good at it as I once was. Or rather, I'm just fine -- it's my knees, and my back, and my elbows that have the problem.

Most of my previous European travel has involved a lot of hoisting luggage on and off trains. I still love traveling by train, but hoisting has lost whatever dubious charm it may once have had, and I am no longer as good at it as I once was. Or rather, I'm just fine -- it's my knees, and my back, and my elbows that have the problem.

On a cruise ship, there is no hoisting involved. Your hotel room travels with you, so you go to bed one night at sea....

And open your eyes to this.

Welcome to Malta.

I get it

When this is the view from your bed, there is no need to do anything except sit (or lie down, if you're so inclined) and gaze. The ship sails on whether you go to lunch or play bingo or walk the decks or not; you are accomplishing destinations without the slightest bit of effort on your part.

Although sipping a latte while sitting on the balcony is also highly recommended.

At sea

Literally. The big vacation has finally happened; not quite as over the top as the aborted Egypt trip last year, but a somewhat scaled down version more appropriate to these frugal times: a twelve day cruise from Barcelona to Cyprus and back again. Not that a Mediterranean cruise is anyone's idea of hardship. I've just always traveled unsupervised, and usually alone, and the world of tour guides and lollipop signs with the bus number, not to mention a cruise ship the size of a large town, complete with glass elevators over the water and an atrium that would do any pretentious middle-class hotel proud, is a whole new world to me.

This is not how I thought I would be seeing Egypt.

On the other hand, I will be seeing Egypt.

Country Roads

What is more perfect, and full of possibility, than a country road viewed from the front seat on a sunny July day?

(Assuming you can ignore the shrieking, screaming and occasional sobbing from the four teenage girls in the backseat, that is. Geraldine is a saint.)

Violation House

Mohican Lake. I love the way the reflections of the trees across the road becomes part of the chaos inside.

Jeff Bank

I spent the Fourth of July weekend with my friend Geraldine and her four daughters at Mohican Lake in Sullivan County. It's rural, but not exactly cut off from civilization. Still I found this bank charming. And hilarious.