by Lynne Martin
Naturally, Argentina “spoke” the last word. As we left the country, Tim deposited me in the executive lounge (we have found that belonging to these is worth the dough when you’re on the road all the time) and walked into the airport’s main lobby to exchange our remaining Argentine pesos for American dollars. He came back much later and plunked down next to me, where I sat in a circle of chairs, listening to other travelers’ harrowing experiences in Buenos Aires, some much more disturbing than ours.
Tim gritted his teeth. “They would NOT give me dollars.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. How can that be?”
“They claim I must have a receipt for the pesos from a bank,” he said. “That’s crazy…nobody keeps those things. Besides, it’s only a hundred bucks! It must be because the peso is falling so fast again that nobody wants them now.”
A beautifully dressed and coifed Argentinean woman sitting across from us heard our conversation. “I’ll be coming home to BA in a couple of weeks,” she said. “I’ll buy the pesos from you if that will help.”
Tim thanked her and agreed on an exchange rate. They exchanged currencies.
Hours later on the plane, I said, just to make conversation, “Wasn’t it nice of that woman to take the pesos?”
Without looking at me, he said out of the corner of his mouth, “Sure it was. She charged me about twice what the guy at the cambio was offering! It was Argentina’s last little joke on us!”
I sighed. “Let’s go back to Cambria and have some turkey.”
It was time for a fresh start.
Chapter 5
Transatlantic Crossing
We retreated from Buenos Aires to California, where we rented a house, regrouped, and prepared for seven months in Europe, putting the final touches on the plan and fussing over wardrobe choices. Neither of us slept much as departure time grew near. My interior conversation, usually held at two or three in the morning, was repetitive: What if we hate being on a ship for fourteen days? What if our stateroom is claustrophobic? Do I have enough blouses and sweaters? Did I pack that little clothesline? Is he going to HATE me after seven months on the road? Am I going to hate HIM? Will the children and grandchildren forgive us for taking off this way?
Finally, we flew to Florida to board the ship that would take us to Rome. We stayed with Amandah and Jason, our Florida family, who patiently endured our jumpy nerves and constant chatter, our need for printers, phones, FedExes, and excursions for last-minute necessities. I am certain that they were glad to help unload our luggage at the pier as we took our slightly frenetic show on the road.
The instant they drove away, we were swept up in a congenial atmosphere. Everyone was happy. Everything was easy! The porter smiled, joked with us, and made our luggage disappear.
We strolled into the port terminal trying to look sophisticated, amused, and slightly bored. In truth, we were wobbly with anticipation, dread, and relief. Tim whispered, “I have never been so excited in my entire life.”
“Me neither,” I muttered through my small, tight smile. Then I dropped my attempt at nonchalance. “Oh my God; it’s enormous!” I gasped. There was the Mariner of the Seas, the 1,000-foot behemoth that would take us from Miami to Rome. We were like kids arriving at Disneyland. We peered around. Guests in the short checkin line were excited, relaxed, and happy. The desk clerk beamed, handily finishing the paperwork and handing us our precious plastic identification cards, the only currency we’d need for two weeks. The background music was benign. No babies screamed, people didn’t smack us with their carry-ons, no beeping carts toting wheelchairs and walkers ran us down. All of the airport madness was missing, and we felt no need to make decisions: there was only one gate available. The passengers and crew were pleasant and polite. As everyone glowed with happiness, our reflexes from Argentina kicked in and our excitement turned to suspicion. Why was everyone so happy? Were these people on drugs? What was going on here?
But more jovial people welcomed us aboard, and our cool facades crumbled quickly into naked glee as we inspected our new home. The common areas glittered in the gorgeous, faux Las Vegas style, their brightness and spaciousness conveying a sense of glamour and fun. On our initial exploration, we found pools, bars, restaurants, library, a computer room, a spa with a beauty salon, and a fabulous sea-view gym complete with yoga, spinning, sauna, and Jacuzzi, just as advertised. We walked along an appealing, cheerful “main street” with shops, cafes, and bars. A jazz group provided live music. Everyone smiled, with good reason.
“So, what do you think so far?” Tim asked as we walked along a freshly vacuumed wide corridor in search of our stateroom, his desire for my approval evident. I glanced at him and suddenly realized that he was anxious to reach the stateroom. When we had talked about his being in charge of the arrangements, I had told him, “She who does not make the plans is not allowed to complain,” but my glib remark didn’t absolve his concern. So now I was determined to put him at ease and reward him for the enormous effort he’d made, although I felt a little apprehensive myself.
“It’s fantastic, honey, and I know that our cabin is going to be just fine. It was lovely in the photos and you were so smart to book us in the bow so we’ll have a fabulous view,” I said encouragingly.
Just then, we reached a short hallway, with three doors at the end. Two were marked “crew.” The third was 2308: our new lodging. Our room was the first on the curve before the ship angles to its point in the bow, so we were tucked into a private little nook.
As I opened the door and looked in, the love seat in front of a big porthole delighted me, as did an inviting king-size bed. “Oh, Tim, this is extraordinary,” I shouted as I ran around the small stateroom like a child, inspecting the innovative tricks that make living aboard ship feel like playing house. Things slide away, fold up, and scoot under other things. Everything is multi-functional. It’s difficult to be uncomfortable, especially since a steward shows up numerous times a day to tidy, sparkle up, replenish, bring ice, and make hilarious towel art while we and other occupants fritter away our time elsewhere in the bar, at the pool, gambling, playing bridge in the card room, or knocking the ball around on a miniature golf course. A miniature golf course on a ship, for crying out loud. What’s not to like?
The loudspeaker in our petite hallway crackled. The captain informed us, in an uber-happy Norwegian accent, that everyone on the ship was required to attend an evacuation drill. During the drill, I noticed that passengers had already begun the social do-si-do; by dinner, jockeying for position in a group would be in full swing everywhere on the ship. It was like a high school popularity contest, and there were a lot of people vying for the king and queen spots.
Afterward, we stopped on the way “home” for a pre-voyage cocktail. “It’s a strange thing, but I noticed just now that people were already huddling up to form packs,” I said.
“I saw that, too. This is like a little village of three thousand people. Humans can’t help themselves, though. They hook up naturally and then want their little crowd to be exclusive. Chickens do it, too. Did you know that? If you bring new chickens into the flock, the others will attack them. I guess chickens aren’t the only bird-brained creatures.”
“Well, I say you and I try to maintain a little distance and don’t date anybody until we’re sure we want to be pals, okay? Two weeks is a long time to avoid eye contact if you make a mistake.”
He smiled. “Good plan.”
All kinds of cliques emerge on a big cruise. The gay guys sport better haircuts, hipper clothes, and seem to have more fun than everyone else, and professional cruisers enjoy one-upping each other about the number of times they’ve sailed. These people congregate before dinner in the special room reserved for the cruise line’s pets, and come down for dinner more dressed up than everyone else. They are usually a little tight from indulging in the free booze upstairs. There is the exercise bunch who obviously hang out in the gym, while those of us who are occasional visitors to the sweatoriu
m wait our turn to use the treadmills. The exhibitionist crowd wears Speedos and micro-kinis, bouncing around the jogging path with their body parts keeping time to their stride. The gambling geezers spend their time in the casino with machines that don’t talk back, while the fancy crowd, who brought (or rented onboard) tuxes and gowns, participated in every formal evening. Perhaps one day we’ll go on vacation and dress up, too, but for us the cruise was transportation. We positioned ourselves on fancy nights in the main street bar where we could observe the show of all the cliques marching in their little clusters on the way to outshine each other in the dining room.
The first evening, we dined with a group of eight. One couple, Pat and George Mauch, Canadians who eventually became our good friends, had cruised often, so they gave us excellent tips about the subtleties of life aboard. As our salads arrived, the powerful engines changed pitch, and I glanced out as the docks slid past the white lights of the warehouses blinking as we made our stately procession.
Then I felt the engines intensify. We were at sea! I realized we wouldn’t see land for nine days…a thrilling thought.
After dinner, Tim and I stood at the railing in silence, watching the moon play over the water, listening to the slap of waves against the majestic hull of the ship. I’d brought the last of my wine with me, and I felt terribly soigné sipping it on deck. The ghosts of Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant, William Powell, Myrna Loy, and their glamorous contemporaries joined us. All of those romantic, dramatic cinema moments we’d seen over the years resurfaced from where they lay embedded in our minds, right next to one of my favorites, Fred Astaire and Ginger kicking it up in Paris. This was bliss.
We learned another valuable lesson on the cruise, one that we take with us to this day. One night, we had dinner with Gerry and Lorraine Singer, people we had met that afternoon. Gerry has Parkinson’s disease and uses a walker, but it didn’t appear to slow them down at all. Those two bright, well-read, entertaining people had traveled everywhere for over fifty years. No matter where we went on shore excursions—crawling around ruins, dining in a port, or wandering through narrow streets—we’d find Gerry and Lorraine laughing, seeing everything, as he progressed on his walker over cobblestones and gravel paths, slowly but steadily. One day, as Lorraine and I were emailing back and forth after the cruise had ended, she wrote, “Oh, Gerry says to send his love and remind you, ‘Postpone nothing.’” It was profound advice from a courageous person.
POSTPONE NOTHING now sits in large type on my computer desktop and serves as our motto. We try to remember it when we are tempted to put off doing something because it’s a little out of our budget or we think it too difficult, or we fall into that abyss of saying, “Maybe we’re too old.” If Gerry can do it, so can we!
After nine days of being enraptured by the romance of endless sea, I saw a smudge on the horizon. The whole ship was buzzing with excitement, but I was filled with ambivalence. I was so ready to get on with the rest of our life, but the cruise had been so delightful that I hated to leave our blue cocoon. The smudge grew bigger and became Tenerife, the largest of the Spanish Canary Islands, which sits off the coast of Morocco. From there we sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar, hopscotched along the coast of Spain, and made for Rome.
As we began to gather our belongings from their hiding places in our stateroom, it occurred to me that the end of a transatlantic cruise is oddly melancholy. During those long days at sea, it’s easy to be so lulled by the ocean, routine, and the sheer pleasure of complete leisure that it seems it will never end. I felt sorry that it would soon be over, but quickly became intoxicated with anticipation of what was to come.
We slept badly the last night because we were so excited. When we debarked, we would begin our next seven-month adventure living home free. This would serve as the true test of Tim’s hundreds of hours of meticulous planning.
A bus from the ship took us to the airport. The bustle was startling after being sequestered for so long on what had become such a familiar haven. The airport was crowded, and our flight was delayed forever. When we finally boarded, Tim, my dear claustrophobe, was jammed in a tiny seat against the side of the plane…without a window. He was so miserable that I could barely look at him. Our night grew more complicated thanks to excruciatingly slow immigration and customs lines. It was almost 1:30 a.m. when we emerged from the customs area in Istanbul, bedraggled, exhausted, and just a little scared in this utterly foreign country. As in any international airport, the travelers are separated from the greeters by a hall or corridor that ends in a sliding door. When the door opens, I always feel as if I’m on the stage when the curtain lifts: a sudden burst of light, noise, people waving and calling to their friends and family, and a bunch of fellows holding papers with the names of the customers they will chauffeur to their lodgings.
That’s when the lump formed in my throat. Would we see “Martin” on one of those placards? It was so late that we were afraid the driver we had arranged would have given up waiting. We had no idea whom to contact if he wasn’t there or how to get to our lodgings. Plus, our speed dial in Istanbul was empty.
Our eyes darted everywhere. Suddenly, there he was, our handsome young driver, Kubilay, who looked as happy to see us as we were to see him! He shook Tim’s hand, grabbed the bags I was pulling, and led us into the fresh night air. We gasped and flexed our knees while he hoisted our luggage into the minivan. After closing the trunk, he approached us with a small golden box. Opening it, he said, “Please, have my mother’s Turkish Delight. Welcome to my country.”
We were touched. The chewy candy sweetened our mouths and attitudes, the first of a thousand kindnesses we would receive in the following weeks.
We raced through the night along a modern multilane highway. The lights of Istanbul twinkled on both sides of the Bosporus. Asia sat on the right and Europe on the left, with lighted bridges linking them. Finally, we roared off the highway onto a cobblestone street. The Blue Mosque loomed on a hill right above our heads, its six minarets ablaze with lights and a flock of seagulls circling it like an animated crown.
What a spectacular introduction to the city and the start of our European adventure!
Chapter 6
Turkey
The van’s tires rumbled over Istanbul’s cobblestones, but Kubilay parked on a silent street. The Blue Mosque squatted like a sultan above the rooftops behind us, a hatband of seagulls circling it. Two men chatted quietly in front of the convenience store across the way. We never did figure out who the customers were at 2:00 a.m. or what they wanted to buy, but the store was always open.
Kubilay excused himself and disappeared around the corner as Tim and I kneaded the travel kinks out of our bodies and inspected our street. It was lined with low stucco buildings and absolutely silent at that hour. In a moment, a young man in a waiter’s outfit came bounding around the corner. He smiled in greeting and unlocked the narrow door of the small apartment building for us. Four pairs of shoes—two large, two small—were neatly arranged on a Turkish carpet outside the downstairs apartment door. A baby carriage was tucked underneath the stairs. The boy lugged our big rolling duffel bags up two stories of the narrow, circular concrete stairs without making a sound. Kubilay followed with the rest of our gear, and Tim and I stifled our panting as we trudged up the steep steps.
The boy ran back to his job down the street. Kubilay gave us a quick appliance tour and explained the three locks: one from the apartment to the tiny entry hall, one leading to the concrete stairway, and another to our private terrace. He left his card, looked over his shoulder, and called out, “If you need anything, calling me please, at that number.”
Then he vanished.
We were alone in our first apartment in Europe—all three hundred square feet of it. It consisted of a tiny bedroom, Barbie-size kitchen, bathroom, and a minuscule living room now overcrowded with luggage. All the appliances, furniture, and windows were brand new; there was even a dishwasher! The place was a marvel of efficiency. With ou
r new lifestyle, our general approach to accommodations is that the less time we plan to spend in an apartment, the less important the layout and comfort of it becomes. For a stay of a month or more, we are willing to cough up a bit more dough for a larger place, but for a stay like this, for just a week, anything quiet and clean with a reasonably comfortable bed will do.
We used an iPhone flashlight app to negotiate the tricky lock on the door leading outside. The huge terrace featured ugly plastic chairs, a clothesline, and ample evidence of seagull occupation, but it was decorated with views of the Blue Mosque on one side and the Sea of Marmara on the other. Who cared about furniture?
As we stepped out, we gasped in unison at the vista before us, turned to look in all directions, and then indulged in our personal version of that silent dance football players perform when they’ve reached the end zone. Tim had outdone himself. I loved seeing his triumphant smile.
“Oh God,” I moaned. “Look at that, honey.” A full moon lit up the sky behind the mosque, outlining the six magnificent minarets.
“Look at the ships,” Tim whispered. The running lights of mega tankers, their towering loads pushing them low in the water, blazed as they made their stately progress to the sea. Lacy electric necklaces lit up the graceful bridges, which spanned the Bosporus. “And there is Asia,” he continued, pointing at the twinkling lights on the other side.
We shared a long embrace and a kiss. “Tim,” I said, “this is worth all of the hassle, the stress, the anxiety. It’s just exactly what we hoped for. Thank you!”
Exhaustion pulled us back into the apartment. We flung ourselves into bed without unpacking. Three hours later, we jerked to attention, alarmed as the muezzins’ voices collided from speakers in the street near us, calling everyone to morning prayers. One voice came from a distance, then another closer, followed by many more, until we were surrounded by the sound. The Muslim Salāt, calls to prayer, were electrifying, irresistible, and beautiful. We lay back and listened. The voices had a nasal quality, and although each was singing a different tune, they created a harmonious sound in a minor key so foreign to our ears. It was thrilling, exotic, and oddly comforting. Soon their five-times-a-day performance would seem normal as their voices blared from the minarets on the mosques. Eventually, we hardly noticed them.