Arrival in Havana

August 3, 2015
We are here!

Nothing about getting to Cuba was tricky or particularly intimidating; but it still took most of the day. We left for the airport at 8:15, arrived, checked in, cleared security, and then walked around for more than an hour. We toured all 60 D gates in Miami's airport. The charter flight was not full, and took just a bit more than an hour.

We landed and walked to the airport to clear immigration. That was easy too. They check passports and took a photo of each of us, asking me to move my bangs off my face and "please not smile." Through the opaque little cubicle door and into the next waiting area where all hand luggage is x-rayed. All checked luggage comes onto two carousels in no particular order. Finally, the blue customs form is given to the agent and we went out into the heat to find the tour bus. Apparently our group made it into the country about an hour after landing, which was a record.

In the parking lot we were all fascinated by the very apparent vintage cars. It wasn't hard to spot them; they were in abundance in the airport parking lot. Russian Lada's are common as are VW's, but it is the old American cars that catch the eye. As one group member said, "I've never been so interested in a parking lot before." There are an estimated 35,000 on the roads here, so even after a few minutes driving, the cars are not a rare site at all.

We have a wonderful Cuban guide named Grancy. She oriented us as we drove into Havana. It is easy to see people everywhere and Havana is a very safe city-- really, all of Cuba is.

Our first stop-- and bear in mind it was now after 2pm, was lunch at a paladr named La Casa. This one was started by the matriarch of the family and is now run by her son, still in the family home. A couple of the rooms are used for very nice dining rooms, and we walked through the family sitting room to get to them. They have a very small courtyard with a fountain wall and a collection of money from all over the world hanging in nice floating frames. To use the bathroom, the ladies exit to the home's bedroom hallway and use the family bathroom.

The food was good and very much more than what we would eat for an American lunch: beer or a cocktail, hot soup (chicken or pumpkin), rolls, fried yucca, a main course of snapper, in my case, but other offerings were rabbit, pork, or lamb, serve with sides of black beans, rice and some salad vegetables. We finished with flan and a scoop of pistachio ice cream and Cuban coffee.

When we reboarded the bus, we were bound for the Christopher Columbus Cemetery. This is an old (1871) cemetery that was founded to contain the remains of the man, himself. He was interred there only two years before his remains were brought back to Spain. Columbus did not rest long there, though before being moved again to the Dominican Republic which was as he had directed in his last testament. Many other important people are buried in this cemetery. In the old part, it looks like a little village with family plots. Being exhumed is part of the tradition. Remains are buried for two years, then exhumed, cremated and reinterred. This saves space, but it is an uncomfortable concept.

We had a special guide for the cemetery. The two highlights, as she explained: The tallest monument is to a group of firefighters who died at a call to a "hardware" store. As I understand it, which may not be accurate, the wealthy owner of the store did not tell the responders that his place was full of munitions, so they died in an unexpected explosion. The monument in their honor is full of symbolism for the sacrifice of the firefighters. The eagle at the top is blind, representing that human justice was not present in their deaths. There is a nun with pelicans around her, because the mother pelican will peck at herself to feed her nestlings if there is not other food; the bird is a symbol of extreme selflessness. There are bats that adorn the monument symbolizing death by betrayal. And, there are upside down flames in the ironwork, to symbolize death.

The second highlight is a grave of a mother and child. Marrying on the same date as a sibling is considered bad luck in Cuba. This young woman, Amelia Guardi, and her husband did it anyway, on June 25, 1900, the same day as her sister married. Nine months later she and her babe died in childbirth and the baby was buried at her feet. Her husband visited the grave every day, tapping on the top with his wedding ring to wake her up, and then backing away to show respect. He kept this up for forty years. The legend is that at some point she was exhumed and the baby and mother found without decay, baby in its mother's arms. So, people began to arrive and touch the baby in the statue and tap atop the stone grave with a wish.If the wish is granted, they leave a stone plaque. (And, all the bad luck should not be visited upon just Amelia, apparently her sister also died in childbirth.)

With that post prandial adventure, we boarded the bus again and drove to the Hotel Nacional, which is historic and the flagship hotel of Cuba. It was completed in 1930 and has 400 rooms. The sixth floor is called the presidential floor or the mafia floor. Both these famous and infamous have made use of it. The presidential visits are ongoing. The most famous mafia visit was a meeting of all the families, from the US and Sicily, in 1946, just after Christmas, and Frank Sinatra was invited to perform for them.

We went to the bar and were served a mojito while the check in was done for us. The cocktails were served in a little history museum showing collages of famous people who have been here. We are high up, on the eighth floor with a view of the ocean. We were told to have modest expectations, but it is really nice-- the old furnishings are fitting. We were told to not expect even shampoo in the room, but we have all the usual little bottles.

Dinner was at a vast buffet and after dinner, daiquiris on the patio.

If there are no photos with this post, check back in a week-- they just weren't able to be uploaded from the internet in the hotel.

Off to Cuba

Why Cuba?
It started when I was three. My family eye doctor did a very delicate surgery on my eyes. I had a good outcome, and forever after, he treated me like a princess whenever I had an appointment. He had courtly manners and never talked to me like a was a child. He was Cuban. We would have met for the first time in the decade after the embargo began. I am sorry to say, that I do not know his story or how he came to be living in my New England hometown.
Shortly before my marriage, I saw him. I was on my way to a three week trip to Argentina which was going to include almost a week in Paraguay.

"Oh..." he said, with a long sighing gush. "Paraguay! When I was a child, that was like going to the ends of the earth."
"Paraguay, the ends of the earth," I thought. "And I can't even go to your native country."
Gradually, I began to know people who had been to Cuba. It still didn't seem possible that I would be able to visit myself, and then, suddenly, it was.

Olive Oil and Troya

7 August 2014

Our last full day in Turkey was very full indeed. The planned itinerary had this as mostly a long bus ride back to Istanbul, with a visit to Troy to break things up a bit. But, an unfortunate circumstance led to the happy consequence that we got to visit an olive oil museum in addition.

In the area of Troya we stayed at a new and fancy spa hotel called Rezone. It billed itself as an oxygen hotel...the amount of oxygen in the town is supposed to be higher? It had an interesting spa treatment menu that included leech treatment (along with a very long list of all the conditions that leech treatments help to alleviate.) Because of the hiking I did not try a spa treatment of any sort, so I did not have to make the decision to be daring about the leeches. It did occur to me that I have traveled to places where the leeches were free-- and sometimes even obligingly fell of out tropical rainforest trees to "treat" me.

The rooms were lovely:

Unfortunately, one member of our party slipped on the slippery stone floor of the shower and needed medical treatment. This meant we got a bonus visit to an olive oil museum in the morning.

Olives on trees.

The proud owners had artifacts from old methods of oil pressing. My mind's eye had always wondered about the olive pits: How were they dealt with during pressing? They are not removed, it turns out. The olives are mashed up, and the mash is spread on mats which give a enough space to allow the oil to leak out while not crushing the pits. You can see the mats on the right side of the photo:

In the afternoon we made our brief trip to Troy. The thought of going to Troy has romanced me for months. When I learned about Troy in school, I didn't picture is as a location that one visited. It seemed ancient to the ancients. I'd always pictured Troy as being a beachside city; it may have been, but we were not right on the water. There are many layers of Troy and it can be hard to orient to which part of time one is looking at.

walls

the ramp to the city

The botanist fell in line in the amphitheater for a group photo:

And then we really were back on the road, across the Dardanelles again and arriving in Istanbul long after dark. 

Crossing the Dardenelles

4 August 2014

We met at the conference center early this morning to load the nice coach bus for our trip to Mt. Ida. To get there we crossed the Dardenelles, and the point of departure was Çanakkale, or Gallipoli. The city has one side in Europe and one shore in Asia. We were crossing from Europe to Asia this morning.

There was no time to visit any of the memorial sites for this battle of WWI. Çanakkale is a busy point of departure. We had a lunch in a restaurant with a lovely view, and then the big bus drove onto the ferry for the 30 minute crossing. Ferries with cars, buses, and trucks of all sizes make the crossing every thirty minutes, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.

I have never been on a ferry that could handle so many large vehicles. I am not sure where there is a single one in the states.

Çanakkale has some monuments to the battle, and of course one to Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic who is pictured on all the money and has statues everywhere. There is no cynicism about Ataturk in Turkey, that I could detect, and I am not sure why there would be. Taking a country from a monarchy into a republic takes a strong leader.

The prodominant views out the window of the bus were of sunflower fields. There were many small towns with mediterranean style homes-- tall with terra cotta roofs. The majority of the homes had at least one solar system on the roof, and many had two-- one for water and one for electricity. The ridges had wind farms.


Yay, Turkey.

Han

1 August 2014

One dimension of my Istanbul Eats tour was food, of course. But the equally interesting and important piece of the tour was the culture of the hans of the bazaar.

When caravans arrived to trade in the bazaar, they needed a safe and convenient place to stay. The han is like a inn, clubhouse and work center all in one. Each specialized trade area has it's own han: one for silver, year, for drapers, and so on. For the first three nights, traders could stay in the han for free. They would have a fountain for water, a place to pray, and security since the large doors were shut at night and patrolled. The architecture is formed around a courtyard with at least three levels plus the roof for use.

han courtyards

We went upstairs in several to drink tea. The second floor of one han had draper goods-- the windows were filled with wedding gowns. Another han had lots and lots of yarn-- mostly to be sold wholesale.

cotton and wool battening

Because tea is drunk so constantly, each han has at least one tea purveyor. They might use a pulley through the roof to move tea from an upstairs tea maker to those downstairs, and the tea shop would have a runner downstairs to deliver the tea and collect the glasses and send them back up.

This tea maker, who is located in the main bazaar, had direct phone lines installed from workshops to his shop so customers could call for tea. You can see them on the wall behind the server's head.

Tea is delivered on the silver trays with high handles and in tulip shaped glasses. Near the end of the day, these glasses are can be seen sitting around, if they somehow escaped being collected.

We were a lucky and curious group so we were able to wander into a couple of metal workshops. It was a quiet day, since the tour fell on one of the vacations days after Eid.

This workshop had a craftsman who was making a hammered copper frame for a mirror:

The section being worked on is over a tray of warm, firm resin to absorb the blows from the hammer.

We also visited a silver workshop:

Some of what we saw were custom orders, and some are sold in the Grand Bazaar, on the ground floor:

It has been an efficient and socially connected system for a long time, and it doesn't seem to have changed very much. To do much change to these old buildings would be impossible. The workshops did have security systems, and when we exited the goldsmiths han, there was an armed guard with a metal detector wand, so that was contemporary.

The concept of OSHA must not exist in Turkey, or if it does. it must not apply to the hans.

Mt Ida-- Kazdagi: Gods Watched the Trojan War and the Botanists Watched the Plants

6 August 2014
Once the Apailes Congress ended in Istanbul, we left town with a portion of the botanists on an"excursion." These are great opportunities for the botanists to see plants in an new area, and to visit with each other informally. I like them because you cannot separate plants and culture, so we also see the countryside in less touristy areas.

Today we visited a national park in Kazdagi in the Ida Mountain area. This is the area of Troy, so several plants have the specific epithet (sometimes younger students call this the "last name") of trojani, or something like it. A fun example is the Trojan fir (Abies normandiana ssp. trojani) that is reputed to be the wood that the famous horse was made from. Some myths talk about the gods watching the Trojan War from this mountain, while other myths refer to it as the location of the first beauty pageant between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.

Today's walk was on the south side-- and it is dry and late in the season. We spent the day on a mountain road hopping in and out of vans, letting them do most of the altitude climbing. To visit an area with thirty or so botanists, the first thing you have to remember is to watch where you step. You may easily trip over one of them photographing  or observing closely.

The lower altitudes of this park were filled with old olive trees in an area terraced for probably hundreds of years. Mark and I have been amazed to see fig trees growing in the wild-- escaped from cultivation, the figs are beginning to ripen. When I quoted a New York price of about a dollar a fruit to Mark's Turkish botanical colleague, Emine, she was amazed.

The best part of the terrain, with a 3K walk, was at the top of a mountain. Many people have left fabric tied as a way to ask for a wish to come true.The plants at this high of an altitude are always exquisite and interesting, anywhere in the world. You have to be willing to get down on the ground to see them, and they are not always aparent at first-- but once you sight one, more pop into view. The winner of today's beauty pageant was not Aphrodite, but this magenta Dianthus (in the pink or carnation family.)

The trip down was longer than the trip up, Our driver had a rhythmic, doze inducing way of pressing the brake, but the dozing was ended at the smell of burning rubber. The brakes had had enough. (I think the driver needs to discover downshifting if he keeps this job....)

A very wonderful part of Turkish culture is that there are shared wells or fountains everywhere. This carries over to the trail, most definitely. When I was young, and hiking with my family, if my younger sister complained about being thirsty, my father would tell her that there was a drinking fountain just around the next bend. Were we Turkish, this actually would have been true!

The traditions of cleanliness and hospitality, plus just the necessity of water in a warm climate makes these fountains a very common site. They are quite old, but many have recent inscriptions that I understand to be dedications or memorials. This one, at our lunch spot, had a watermelon places in it by a visitor, to cool for his picnic.

 We walked and were shuttled and visited  small town to have tea. Turks drink tea. Every town and corner has tea shops. Tea is served in tulip shaped, small glasses with two cubes on the side, and it is always brewed quite strong. This afternoon, though, I had Turkish coffee which might be called cowboy coffee in the US: it is boiled in a small pot, and the grind sludge settles to the bottom. The preparer adds sugar for the customer, and even those who drink Americano black, may prefer a bit of sugar in this version. When we finished, Mark's colleague Emine read my fortune in the coffee grinds. I had ten evil eyes followed by a clear future.

Dolmabahace Palace and Minaturk

2 August 2014

What brought us to Istanbul and not some other destination this summer was Mark's meetings with the Apiales Society at Istanbul University. So, on my own, I joined a tour to on the Golden Horn, to the European side of the city, to see the newer palace-- Dolmabahce Palace. It was built between 1843 and 1856 and meant to awe. No photos are permitted inside, and there is not self touring. In fact, we really only saw a handful of rooms and those at a quick pace. The modus operandi is gawk and walk.

This palace was built to be more modern that Topkapi-- and also more luxurious. There is little that looks Turkish-- some arabic here and there-- but it mostly looks like it was designed for shock and awe. Our guide pointed out over and over that the furnishings were from what was considered the best in the world-- English crystal, French trompe l'oeil paintings, but carpets from Turkey! The cost in US dollars-- 1.5 billion. It's difficult to stomach, actually, as that amount was a quarter of the yearly tax revenue at the time.

On the other hand, the palace had a more recent, reverential history. When the republic was founded, ownership was transferred to the Turkish Republic. The capitol of the new Turkey became Ankara, but when the founder and first president of Turkey (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) was in Istanbul, he used a few rooms of this palace. He died in the palace on 10 November 1938 at 9:05am,and all the clocks in the palace have been stopped at that hour. So, what could have stood as an Ozymandius lesson of hubris and decadence leading to decay, has a bookend of respect.

I had a funny conversation with the guide about the name of the palace, since I saw the word dolma in it. Stuffed grape leaves couldn't have much to do with a palace. Actually, it does since the translation of dolma is filled, and the second half of the palace name means garden, so this palace's name is garden-filled.  ((It only is a little bit-- the palace took up so much of the building site that there wasn't too much space left for garden.) They funny part was that the guide was shocked that as an American I knew anything about dolmas! He should have seen me the day before on the walking tour. I smiled and told him I had actually made dolmas.

 

The next tour stop was to Miniaturk-- an attraction that has miniature replicas of the wonders of Turkey. You could call it "Laura sets her sights on a return trip to this county..."

  It's cute and the replicas are pretty detailed. I was given a ticket with a bar code, and at each replica that I wanted to know more about, I'd wave the ticket in front of the scanner and probably, a British man would start to talk and explain. So, the background noise was a mixture of English and Turkish explanations of the sites. The other backgroud was the ominous sky-- from the low lying coastal area where Miniaturk was, I could see thunderheads and lightening on two hills.

The end of this tour was in a torrential downpour. The streets filled in five minutes. Either Istanbul is not used to monsoons or the storm sewers are showing their age.