Silversea Water Cooler: Welcome! Part Four

Jillyf,

Glad you agree. In Vienna in the Heuirge which are basically places selling their own home grown young wine they serve their fresh years Gruner in quarter litre mugs. It stays cold to the last sip. (Or glug)

When I was extremely young and played records in Paris, it seemed that whenever I visited someone in their flat one of the glasses was always fetched from the bathroom and given a cursory riinse. It is hard to believe but in the sixties in Paris, they didn't have daily milk deliveries, but they did have Nicolas delivered every morning. True!

Not a chardonnay person myself.

Lois, I could recommend a few and many others will. But most of us have only ever been to one or two or a few. I've been many times but not in the last year. So feedback will be a lottery and survey of a single person making a single visit more often than not a long time ago.

 

Your best bet is to look at another site that I will not mention and look at hotels withon your range and read all the comments ignoring all extreme ones with a low post count. Then perhaps ask questions once you've done that?

Hi Jeff, are you referring to Trip Adviser? You are allowed to say that one;)........I will, I just thought many of you

have traveled to Venice and I would value those first hand recommendations.........

Hi Jeff, are you referring to Trip Adviser? You are allowed to say that one;)........I will, I just thought many of you

have traveled to Venice and I would value those first hand recommendations.........

No problem. I was simply suggesting that a quick bit of initial research to arrive at a more targetted shortlist by giving a glance where there will be several dozen recent summaries for each of the most highly rated hotels might be a better starting point for your research. It just sort of feels like you are starting at the other end of the telescope.

Good luck with whichever you choose.

I have never been to Venice and so I use this site for research too. I will go over to the Italy forum and see what they have posted for Venice hotel recommendations.

The good thing about taking that approach is that by reading the forums, and they have as you know local experts posting, so you will quickly arrive at a conclusion about what part of Venice would be the best location for your short visit. Being in a great hotel in the wrong location might not be wise. Then you can start to home in on a suitable shortlist of possibles all that have been recently highly regarded, and you'll get an idea of why people liked and disliked places. I just thought it might be a better less of a lottery starting point. Good luck.

Jeff, I would take your recommendation very highly.:).....I am just asking your opinion...........

Lois, my suggestions would be of no real value. We never stay for a single night, and how long you stay and what you wish to do might define what part of Venice is most suitable. Venice is a maze, and it's extrmely easy to get lost. Also, choosing where to eat and drink is important as it has a long-term but still growing reputation of being the tourist scam center of Europe.

I've spent some time there long ago for several weeks at a time but more recently we always stay for several nights so we stay on the Lido. This is because we eat better there and it is a little less touristy and time used commuting isn't as precious as it might be for a single night. A good starting point is deciding where you want to be based on your personal sight-seeing priorities.

Thanks for the reply......I am staying 2 nights pre-cruise.......I will research more later this week:)

First Evening In China -

After unpacking, I showered. It felt wonderful to get warmed up and 'degreased' - by that time it had been about 36 hrs. since I left home (including 30 hrs. of trans-Pacific airline/airport hell: Victoria -Vancouver-Taipei-Zhengzhou).

I settled down in the living room to eat my (now cold) 'take out' chicken dinner from our lunch restaurant. It was good. However, I was in for a little culture shock. Having spent the previous six years in Korea, I knew Asians don't usually dis-articulate fowl at the joints, but rather cleaver it up 'willy-nilly' producing many shards of bone. What I wasn't expecting were the two, bright yellow chicken feet... and the head... sliced in perfectly in half longitudinally - from the tip of the beak to the back of the skull. It looked as though it should be preserved and mounted on a biology classroom display board. :rolleyes:

After discarding the feet and head (the Chinese think I'm crazy because those are the best parts) I was trying not to swallow any bone shards when suddenly there were explosions outside... many explosions... very loud explosions! :eek: I thought WW3 had started. Instinct and self-preservation take over. My brain said 'Incoming... hit the deck!' and I found myself flat on the floor of my hotel room. After a few seconds pumped on adrenaline, I realized it was fireworks. It seems in Henan, the Chinese celebrate their invention of gunpowder every night after dusk (literally 365 days a year), or any time of the day/night: when someone is born, when someone gets married, when someone dies, when they open a new store, when someone has a bad dream... or just to celebrate the first Monday etc. of the week.

After dinner I plugged my laptop into the ADSL outlet by the desk in the bedroom. To my surprise, it connected to the internet with no problems... but of course, I was behind The Great Firewall - no Google etc. I was exhausted and couldn't set up my VPN until I got a phone (Astrill would text me a code)... so I went to bed and slept like a log.

To be continued...

Bill, loving your installments of going to China.

I've been spending the weekend getting ready to head back to those 11 hour work days. I got lots of things done that I'd left undone while I convalesced last week. Now I'm going to miss you all again.

Oh, and I got my very first ever Silver Box a couple of weeks ago! Only 52 days till we leave :)

Hope your return to work goes smoothly Napria! Baby steps! :) Enjoy the anticipation for your upcoming cruise!

Thanks for the next chapter of your move to China Bill! I'm sure there were numerous challenges and adjustments. Our son and daughter-in-law were married in Nanjing in 2009. We toured a bit after the wedding. A fascinating country!

Jillyf,

 

It is hard to believe but in the sixties in Paris, they didn't have daily milk deliveries, but they did have Nicolas delivered every morning. True!

.

I remember it well. We could refill just about any jug at the local wine shop in the 16th and in Nice, I remember bringing in jugs to get olive oil.

Ah, the good old days.

I remember it well. We could refill just about any jug at the local wine shop in the 16th and in Nice, I remember bringing in jugs to get olive oil.

 

Ah, the good old days.

I'm sure most people wouldn't believe us.:)

When I was 16 I was the first person in a couple of generations to track down my French bit of family. I was looking through the Paris telephone directory (remember those .....) and there was just one matching name so I took myself off and banged on the door of an old block in the 10the. A man looking not too dissimilar to my father stood at the door and I tried to explain to him who I was and why I was there in a combination of schoolboy French and German and gibberish. Needless to say I wasn't allowed to leave and they asked me to stay for a night which morphed into a week or so whilst every member of my newly found and very large family was visited and drunk with and ate with.

One night whilst at the flat I was woken up by the clanking of what I thought was milk bottles being kicked over, and when I looked out the window it was a green Nicolas van with a man with what looked like a milk bottle basket, but he was delivering to each doorway bottles of Nicolas and taking the empties back. I tried googling but haven't found a picture of those vans which were aging barrel shaped Citreon vans from memory.

We use to have a place in Nice and in fact up in Nice old town there remains an old cave or two which still sells wine from the barrel but they recently replaced them with steel.

And up in the old town they still sell olive oil on tap and have replaced a lot of the old stuff with shiney steel ...

WOW! You guys are old! Ha Ha! Joking of course! What an interesting period to be in Paris! Sounds so very romantic!

Hi M,

One of the loveliest quirky things about Paris that many tourists miss because it happens so early every morning is that because Paris is on a hill, they clean the streets by turning the water mains on and the water flows down most streets from outlets along the kerb and others and helps the cleaners keep the roads clean.

It is all down to Baron Haussmann who was Napoleon's city planner. Men in green go around early in the morning opening the flood gates.

I remember the milk man delivering the glass bottles with a pull-off cardboard cap every morning. He drove one of these -

Greetings Coolers! Back to the BRRRRR here at 8 F.

J.....Very interesting street cleaning process in Paris! Baron Haussmann was inspired! That would make a great trivia question!

Bill....I remember the milk trucks! We had a "milk chute" at the side of our family home. A little door about 4 feet off the ground on the outside and a corresponding door on the inside to retrieve the milk without having to go outside. Very convenient for people especially in the winter.

Today's funny....

Have a great day all!

Sent from my iPad using Forums

I am ignoring the sprouts on page 82 but may I ask a cruise question, even though this is a non-cruise thread? I know Camillus and Terry stopped in Bilbao last year, did the ships provided a shuttle from the port to Bilbao?

And to bring this back to a non-cruise note, why do so many Americans seem to dislike the Patriots? Is it just that the Eagles were in a final at last?

To the sunset, I agree re Sir Johnny - I was watching the last moments from the hallway, through a crack in the door. Not sure why I thought that would help in any way at all, but it seemed to do the trick.

Rp

˙Hello Rosepark, Yes, the Spirit provided a shuttle to town. The commute is quite long (close to 30 minutes with some traffic). Of course, there was a shuttle back.

Lovely chip sandwich J! :)

Crispy Bacon and chip sandwich M!

The tappah wallah seems to be making piccies smaller! :(

˙Hello Rosepark, Yes, the Spirit provided a shuttle to town. The commute is quite long (close to 30 minutes with some traffic). Of course, there was a shuttle back.

Thanks so much, shore excursions have opened up today so I am finding that planning what to do in May is much, much more appealing than concentrating on what I should be doing!

Rp

Excellent J! I knew there was something besides chips in the sandwich but I couldn't tell what it was. Myster is a huge fan of bacon! He loves chips too. This would be a treat for him to be sure! :)

Rosepark, my husband said that the Patriots are a team that’s always winning. He said a lot of people just want someone else to win. I asked the same question.

Oh, and growing up outside of Boston, we had a hole in the ground with a metal lid on hinges that the milkman would put the glass bottles of milk into and mom would wash out the empty bottles and leave them in that same place to be collected.