November 23, 2017
What a great day! It started out a bit nippy, but warmed up in the afternoon. We went off ship and booked a ride around the city in a windowless tour bus. They don’t have hop on hop off here. 12 euros each for an hour or so ride. Beautiful island. Beautiful city.
There was only one stop where we could get out and take pictures and it was on top of an acropolis where there are beautiful gardens, and on one side you can see the sea and on the other side the town. The only part of the tour I thought could have been better (other than the temperature – even Mom was a little cold) was the narration. Great voice, but I know there was more going on throughout the history of Sardinia than the little bit he told us. Long stretches of nothing but music when he could have been regailing us. It was funny, at one point in the narration, the narrator cleared his throat. I would have thought they would have cleared up the tape and edited that out. Many people caught it and laughed.
We got off the bus in town and wandered around. We were going to climb 100 steps up to an old fortress with a museum, but got waylaid along the way, and are we glad we did.
Mom saw a sign with the picture of Sherlock Holmes and his address 221B Baker Street and dates from now until January. We thought it was a play. But the door was open below the sign and there were stairs that led down and there were more signs. We went down to a desk where there were two ladies who spoke as little English as we speak Sardinian, but we communicated.
There is a free exhibition of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia and an art showing by as local artist Nel Segno di Calep. And what a fantastic exhibit and show! We spent at least an hour, maybe longer looking at everything. Calep has done a Western comic book, in Italian. His main character is Tex. There were original drawings he had done, plus the colorized versions, vintage covers of some of the magazines, plus he did some work with some old comic favorites of ours: Prince Valiant, Mandrake the Magician, and the Phantom.
The Sherlock material was incredible. Old movie posters. Old books. Old playbills. There was one playbill featuring William Gillette as Holmes (1883, I think). The JAMM kids may have been too young to remember, but Gillette had a castle in Connecticut that we visited once – built by his Holmes stage career. One of the pictures I sent you was a mosaic of Holmes actors over the years. Leonard Nimoy is obvious in one. Brent Spiner as Holmes in an episode of Next Generation was in another part I did not send you. But I must have taken 100 pictures. There was a Holmes game. A Mickey Mouse version – in Italian, I think. And on and on.
Back out on the street we stopped at a news stand and lo and behold there was a current Tex comic in full color with 5 complete stories. Can’t understand a word, but the art work is great.
We walked to the end of the square and I photographed some great old buildings. In one of them was a barber shop, and not wanting to pay $35 on ship, I considered going in, but kept the fluffy look for now. We shopped in and out of stores and found a fantastic sweet shop. Mom got two doughnut-like confections that were yeast donuts and lightly sugared. I got two helpings of a candy that was very finely sliced orange peels, sugared and served with nuts. Delicious!
And Mom bought a softie! A donkey. And a new blouse. No souvenirs!
Okay, it’s her turn.
TTFN
Up at 7. Breakfast wasn’t much. Still don’t feel much like eating. Tough to be cruising and not able to eat. After breakfast we got our stuff and headed off. We were going to ride the shuttle into town but found the little open air tour that took you around the town and opted for that. We saw a large water sanctuary where the flamingos come to nest. There are some that stay all year long and they were there. Mostly standing on one leg and sleeping. There were also old salt flats where they used to produce salt.
After the tour dropped us down town and we visited the fantastic Sherlock Holmes exhibit. Couldn’t read most of the stuff about the cowboy writer and artist but most of the stuff about Sherlock was in English. Great stuff.
As we walked up towards where the steps were for the old town we passed lots of shops. The first shop we went in had the cutest stuffed donkey, he has a scarf and is so soft. He is coming home with me. He will join turtle in the bed tonight. Then we stopped in a shop where I know everything in it was made in China but it had a soccer ball from Cagliari and I bought it for Tate. It is not blown up so it will be easy to bring home. Then, we visited the magazine kiosks and continued up to find the steps. But we decided we had gone far enough so took some pictures and headed back down to where the shuttle was to be. We walked down the other side of the street so we could see the shops on the other side. Passed a small shop that had sweets in the window and couldn’t resist. It was lunchtime and the Lido would be closed we got back so we splurged. Stopped into to look at some pretty sweaters and they had a nice short sleeve top on sale and I bought to wear under the new blue sweater I had bought. Then, it was on down the hill.
This city is like Rome in that there are street venders all up and down the street. They spread a sheet on the ground or set up a table and show their wares. Mostly pocketbooks, small electronic stuff, lots of spinners, magnets, etc. They display this stuff right on the side walk in front of the really classy store. I bet those stores hate it.
I had seen a church on this side of the street as we had walked down the other side and when we came to the large glass doors into a courtyard outside the church we went inside. This is an extremely old church. It is very much in disrepair and in the midst of being redone. But it still had some of the most beautiful statues and pictures inside. They had a huge pipe organ. It was the church of St Agostino. Your Dad bought a miniature nativity scene to set out in our room. We were going to put up our little Christmas tree but I hated to unwrap all the little pieces because of having to repack it.
Well, we found the shuttle and rode back to the ship. We stopped at the booth where we had bought the tour ride to tell the lady we had really enjoyed the tour. Then, onto the ship and up to the lido for lunch. He got a hamburger and I had a hotdog. It was okay. Then, back to the room where I napped. Our second batch of laundry had been returned and we had it to put away. They keep bleaching my underwear and now it is all gray. Oh my!
Supper tonight featured Thanksgiving turkey or ham. I had the turkey and Dad had the ham. It included cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. I ate a little of it. We had to wait till almost 7 before we could get a table tonight. Everybody was going to the dining room because of the Thanksgiving meal. We had a table for 2 tonight. That was okay. We enjoyed it.
The show tonight was a comedian/magician that we have seen before and your Dad didn’t really care about seeing him so we came back to the room. He has a talk tomorrow on Gibraltar at 2. I will finally get some crocheting done and get to walk around the deck after breakfast while he studies. We only walked 1.4 miles today.
Well, it is late and time for bed.
Love you all miss you all. Happy Thanksgiving.
Mom, Granny, Bonnie
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