As little as possible, it turns out.  And it was utterly glorious.

On book tours, it’s almost like a vacation if you get to stay in the same hotel room two nights in a row.  On our Silverseas Cruise, we boarded the ship and went to our cabin where the butler unpacked all of our clothing, putting some in drawers and hanging the rest.  And, except for what we were wearing each day, that’s where the clothing stayed for two whole weeks!

Breakfast was delivered to our suite—again by the same butler.  On our previous cruise, the butler showed up the first day and then pretty much did a disappearing act.  Had we known then what we know now, we would have made better use of her.

Book tours entail days with doing multiple events along with meeting and greeting sometimes several hundred people in a single day.  The cruise was a time for just the two of us.  On the ship we dined at lunch and dinner at tables for two, usually next to the window with first the English Channel, then the North Sea, and finally the Baltic rolling by outside.  I wore my seasick bracelets—successfully—one day only.  The rest of the time it was smooth sailing.

Other than one lunch when we arrived too late to use the dining room, we avoided the buffet.  For good reason.  I’m back to within two pounds of what I weighed before we left.  The dining room served tiny, tasting menu portions of all kinds of delicious things, and we enjoyed them all.  Well, the octopus ceviche maybe not so much.

We did some shore excursions, but not all of them.  Some days we stayed in our cabin reading OTHER PEOPLE’S BOOKS.  I totaled seven by the time all was said and done.  The most suspenseful was I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes, and the most restful were the latest Maa Ramotswe and Miss Julia books.  

Did we take a lot of photos?  No.  Let’s face it.  Bill is 76; I am going on 72.  We know what we look like and cameras aren’t necessarily kind to people of a certain age.  So, very few photos.  On shore excursions we followed people who took pictures of everything.  Walking through the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, I followed a woman who took countless photos of almost every painting with her iPad mini.  The ceilings are tall.  The paintings are hung high on very tall walls.  I should imagine that the resulting photos show very elongated subject matter.  I kept wondering why she didn’t just buy a book in the museum shop where the pictures would have been properly lighted for the photographer.  But you know what?  That was her vacation not mine, and I said not a word.  But I learned that I needed to be careful when I was behind her because her sudden photo-op stops came with no brake light warnings.

Some things can’t be photographed at all.  The evening concert of classical music in an echoing hall in the Hermitage was delightful.  Walking through that massive museum, with its huge pieces of art that I remember seeing in my History of Western Civ text books at the University of Arizona, I couldn’t help but remember a book I read several years ago—The Madonnas of Leningrad.  It was about what went on in the Hermitage during the 900 day siege of Leningrad during World War II.  The artwork was removed from frames, taken away, and hidden to keep it from being stolen.  But the docents, the guides, still continued to walk through the museum discussing the paintings that were no longer there.  The book was a tribute to the enduring importance of art, even vanished art, to get through tough times.  But until I was there, walking the halls and seeing those truly massive pieces, that I realized what an astounding effort saving them entailed.

We loved our shore excursion to Bremen—home of the Bremen Town Musicians—who, it turns out, never actually made it as far as Bremen.  We went to the Rathskeller there for a wine tasting.  On the way, our very young German guide on the bus, a guy who is studying economics, told us straight out, “I don’t know why you’re doing a wine tasting.  This is Germany—you should be tasting BEER!”  We chalked it up to youthful ignorance, and happily tasted our German wine.  The Rathskeller in Bremen ships only German wines—600 varieties—to wholesalers all around the world. 

But the high point of that tasting (and the low point as well) was going down into the wine cellar—one that was dug in 1105 AD!  It’s still filled with immense old wine barrels, some containing drinkable wine from 1727!!   (Like the art work in Leningrad, the ancient casks were hidden during World War II.  In this case, the casks were sunk in the river.)  The main room was dark and the aisles between the barrels was lit with candles.  But no photograph could capture the aroma in that room—the thick scent of aged wines was like a velvet curtain falling on our faces.  The guide pointed out the faded image of a rose painted on the ceiling of the cellar.  If the city fathers had some intractable problem to discuss, they came down to the basement and discussed it under the rose because whatever was said there was entirely confidential.  Ever heard the term sub rosa?  Well, there you go.

One thing that was everywhere on the shore excursions was chocolate.  Chocolates were served at wine tastings.  Chocolates were served at demonstrations of hand-dipping chocolates.  When someone who has just hand dipped a set of chocolates offers you one on a tray, it’s not the time to say, “I don’t like chocolate.” In other words, in the past two weeks I’ve eaten a lifetime’s worth of chocolate.  

And then there’s licorice.  I don’t like that, either.  Carmel?  Yes.  Pralines?  Yes.  Chocolate and licorice, NO!  But in Sweden, not only was there chocolate to be tasted, but licorice as well.  I admit it.  I sat outside on a nearby bench while the group went into a shop to do a licorice tasting in Helsingborg.  And while I was sitting there, I was thinking about my mother.  Her father, my Grandpa Anderson, left Sweden when he was nineteen years old.  Family legend has it that he left Sweden with a price on his head for having killed a deer who made it back to a game preserve before croaking out.  So Swedish blood runs in my veins. A more undiluted version of same, ran in my mother’s, and she loved licorice.  Loved it to her dying day!  And I’m willing to bet that for an immigrant family living a hand-to-mouth existence on a farm in northeastern South Dakota, that licorice was a special holiday treat when she was growing up.  And that realization was enough to take me back to my Swedish roots.  

The funniest thing that happened on the cruise?  That would be what we shall call The Case of the Amsterdam Tie.  Once we were on board the Silver Whisper and our clothing was unpacked, Bill realized he hadn’t brought along a tie.  The first night was a casual night so a tie wasn’t necessary in the dining room.  The second night was a formal night, so Bill wore his tux—he had the tie along for that.  When we went on the canal tour in Amsterdam, we went looking for a tie.  We walked and walked and finally found a shop with a single tie for sale—a very narrow tie with purple and lavender checks on it.  “No way,” Bill said.  “With my build, I need a wide tie—a wide red tie.”  We left tie shop and set off to return to the ship.  Our gyros got tumbled, however, and we walked eight kilometers total IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!  When a guy in an Irish pub (Every city has its own special version of Irish pub!) set us straight, we hailed a cab to take us back to the ship because we weren’t up to walking another eight kilometers.

That evening the ship set sail.  After dinner, when we stopped by the bar for a beverage, I noticed that the ship’s store was open.  Leaving Bill at the bar, I went into the shop and asked the clerk, “Do you have any ties?”  “Yes,” she answered.  “Do you have a red tie, a wide red tie?” The answer was yes once more.  “Okay,” I said.  “I want one.”

So she brought it out in a lovely red box.  I signed for it, charging it to our room, and went back to the bar in triumph.  Bill opened the box and loved the tie.  Then he looked at the receipt.  It turns out his wide red tie was a limited edition Faberge tie.  Five hundred bucks worth of Faberge tie.  We did not return it.  It’s by far the best Father’s Day tie he’s ever been given, and he will NOT be wearing it on Sunday when he’s in charge of the Father’s Day barbecue.

If you book your next cruise before you leave the ship, you get an added discount.  For this cruise, we were delayed in customs in the UK.  We made it, but we were the LAST passengers to board the ship in Southampton before it sailed.  And coming back, our flight from Stockholm was delayed, and we made it through the Terminal 5 security check point at Heathrow with enough time to race to our gate and make a single pit stop before it was time to board our Seattle bound flight.  

So, yes, we’ve already booked next year’s cruise along with an extra day coming and going, just to be on the safe side.

But don’t expect a pile of photographs from that trip, either. 

Just consider our cruises to be sub rosa.

PS.  Now that I’m back on this time zone, I’m back to getting my daily ten.  Didn’t make my goal every day, but after all, we were on vacation.