The Old Man and the C (ruise) — Part II of II

Author’s note:  This blog describes, among other things, Bonnie’s and my visit to Jerusalem on Wednesday, September 20. About two weeks after we were there, Israel was attacked and rockets are now flying where Bonnie and I walked. While we are a safe 7,400 miles away from the fighting had the attacks begun just a few weeks earlier, we would have been in the middle of it — or depending on the exact timing of the attack, the cruise ship certainly wouldn’t have docked anywhere in Israel because of the danger.

On this cruise, 1,200 of the passengers on the first week of our cruise were booked by one travel agency in Guadalajara, Mexico. This was more than half of the 2,200 passengers actually on the ship. A few were fluent in English. Most knew at least some of the language. Some knew no English at all, but this was not a problem for them because there were so many others who could translate when necessary. With a couple of years of high school Spanish, and a lifetime living in either Los Angeles or Las Vegas, both with a significant number of Spanish-speaking residents, I was able to converse with them at least a little. 

Our first port was Kusadasi, Turkey. I took my scooter ashore and Bonnie followed along with her walker. When she tired, we switched for a while. We were looking for one type of specialty store and were directed to one maybe a half-mile away from the ship. We had to go through a type of outdoor mall called the Grand Bazaar. It was chock full of small stores, each specializing in one product — leather goods, jewelry, watches (marketed as “Genuine Fakes”), possibly fake brand name polo shirts, carpets, and a few other products.

We went through early in the day, and often the store owners would follow us as we went along urging us to come into their stores, each promising the highest quality goods at the lowest prices. Since we had a little difficulty finding the store we were looking for, we’d see the same store owners two or three times and with my scooter and Bonnie’s walker (sometimes the other way around), we were easy for them to remember. When they saw us again, they would up the sales pressure. It was more aggressive than we were used to, but not threatening.

A few days later, we landed in Ashdod, Israel, which is the port city closest to Jerusalem. Bonnie is a practicing Catholic. I was raised Protestant (my father’s half of the family is Jewish) and I’m currently not religious at all. Both of us wanted to see Jerusalem if we could. We likely won’t be back here at all, and Jerusalem is such a historic city, it would be a shame to get so close and not see it. 

We had to find a cab driver that could handle my scooter and Bonnie’s walker. We found one, haggled over a price for the 90-minute trip each way plus what we would see in Jerusalem, and reached agreement. We were told that to see the old city of Jerusalem, we have to get a small shuttle bus for which there would be an additional modest charge. There are several maze-like miles of narrow roads in the old city, divided into four quarters: Arab, Armenian, Christian, and Jewish. 

The shuttles are small four-person “golf carts.” We negotiated the price down 20%, and it was explained to us that we were starving the driver’s wife and children, but we reached agreement. Turns out our driver must have been a former kamikaze pilot. Or maybe a New York City cab driver. Whenever some other drivers blocked his way, he yelled at them, threatened them, and told us how bad those other drivers were. “Welcome to Israel,” he told us.

When we got to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, we had to get out and walk a bit over uneven ground to get to it. My scooter was still inside the taxi, and we were in a golf cart. Inside the church was the purported tomb of Jesus, and upstairs were some more things to see. I couldn’t make it upstairs, but I found a place to sit down while the taxi driver-guide took Bonnie upstairs. Later Bonnie was shown the room where the Last Supper was held, while I waited in the cart because there was too much walking to get there.

At the end of tour of the old city, we were dropped off (with our taxi driver) in front of a jewelry store where we were sort of strong-armed inside. I told them I needed to use a restroom. No problem they had one — down a steep stairway. I sat while Bonnie shopped a little. She wanted to get little gifts for her daughter and her sister. Bonnie had in mind spending $20 or so. The store owners had in mind her spending $2,000 or more. 

It started out with them offering us greatly appreciated cold bottles of water and being told, “This is just a token of our Israeli hospitality, whether you buy anything or not.” At the end, after Bonnie rebuffed buying earrings, necklaces, rings, and other items and settled on two $10-each sets of rosary beads, she was now told, “If all customers were like you, we’d have to close the store.” 

While we had just a few data points, it seemed clear that Israeli shop-owner aggressiveness was significantly different than the Turkish variety. 

When we got back into the cab, the driver offered to take us to the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, and a few more sights — each at an additional price, of course. We were both tired and in pain from all the walking so we asked just to be taken back to the ship. There were some famous sights (the Wailing Wall, The Golden Mosque, and a few others) that were pointed out. We saw them from a quarter mile away. Not the same as being right up close. There was much in the Jerusalem area we didn’t see, of course, but we got a taste which was the best we could do under our current physical circumstances. 

It turned out that these were the only cities we saw on our two-week cruise. We had planned on getting off at others, but between ship tenders (which would not take my scooter), and a few other problems, it didn’t happen. Not the way we planned it, of course, but that’s the way it happened.

One unusual thing for me on the ship, however, was the casino. As you probably know, cruise ship video poker is usually of the 95% variety — and I 100% avoid those games. But now I know a little about advantage slots and I found some plays. My biggest score happened in a way that has never happened to me before in the 30 years I’ve been gambling on machines. I’ll tell you about it next week.