fauxklore

Why, yes, I am still having trouble with my attention span.

I must have done something in October, but most of it was not particularly memorable. There were the usual meetings involving storytelling and crafts and board games and such. And, of course, the Jewish holidays took up a lot of time. I think I saw the movie Small Things Like These, which Cindy was interested in because of her childhood Catholic school trauma. We might have seen it in November. Anyway, the movie is about the Magdalene Laundries and the control exerted by the nuns in a small town. It was well-acted, but depressing.

The biggest thing I did in October was take a quick trip to San Francisco to go to the Moby Dick Marathon at the Maritime Museum there. You may recall I had been to the New Bedford, Massachusetts Moby Dick Marathon previously. This is a much smaller event, but was still fun. It was reasonably well-organized, as they had people sign up for specific chapters in advance. (I chose Chapter 8, The Pulpit.) I would go to this again. (I’d also go to New Bedford again. And there is a Moby Dick Marathon in Mystic, Connecticut, too. And possibly one in Sag Harbor, New York. It’s a book well suited to marathon reading and not only because of its length.) If I do go again, I'll be able to plan better and spend more time actually exploring the museum.

The major problem I had was that my knee, which had been doing better, had started hurting badly again, probably because of the long walk through IAD. That also led to my sleeping badly, so I only lasted until about 6:30 at night, which was disappointing. But so it goes.

Big-D Con was this year’s National Puzzlers’ league Convention, held in Dallas. Since I generally try to leverage off things I’m already planning to do to add on other odds and ends I want to do, I decided to take an excursion to Oklahoma City before the con to check off anotherAAA ballpark. So I flew into Dallas late on Sunday (after The Flushies) and stayed overnight in Fort Worth. A flight delay led to me taking an expensive Lyft from the airport because I didn’t want to wait for the train from the airport which only runs once an hour. Then the hotel (a Hampton Inn in downtown Fort Worth) had some computer system slowdown and it took nearly half an hour to check in. If someone suggests I should have checked in on-line earlier, that wouldn’t have helped since there was someone waiting at the desk who’d done that, and he had a longer wait than I did.

On Monday, I had breakfast, read for a while, had a phone meeting, and then took a walk around the area. It was just a short walk since I’ve been to Fort Worth before. And, as is typical, not a lot of things were open on a Monday. I meandered over to JFK plaza, which has a lot of photos and a statue.



Eventually, I made my way over to the train station. This has some local train services (TEXRail and Trinity Railway Express), Greyhound buses, and a local bus system. More importantly for my purposes, it also has two Amtrak lines. I was there specifically to take the Hearland Flyer, which runs between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City.



This isn’t exactly one of the great train stations of the world. But it does have a Subway and some vending machines so you can get a snack if you need one. And you can sit and read while you wait for the train. So it served its purpose.

Most of the seating is on the upper level of a few metroliner cars, so pretty basic but adequate. The trip is about 4 hours and is reasonably scenic, so what more do I need? An actual dining car (like they have on real long-distance trains) might have been nice, but I can survive on Kind Bars for surprisingly long.

So what does Oklahoma look like? From a moving train, it's a bit blurry. Also, there were plants getting in my way a lot.









I will leave my mental soundtrack during the trip to your imagination. The Oklahoma City station is right at the entrance to Bricktown, which is the touristy entertainment part of the city. Lots of hotels, restaurants, bars - and the ballpark. There’s also a trolley that can take you around most of downtown Oklahoma City.



I should note that I’d been to Oklahoma City before and seen a fair amount then. So I chose a somewhat more eccentric site as my major daytime tourist activity. Namely, the American Banjo Museum.



Some of the more interesting displays included banjoes belonging to famous people.





Beyond that, there were displays on the history (and evolution) of the banjo, on various banjo manufacturers, on clothing worn by banjo players, etc. etc. Whenever I started wondering about something, there would be a display about it. For example, I noticed a dearth of female banjo players and - poof! - there was a whole section about women and banjoes. I had only recently learned of the existence of an instrument called the banjolele (a cross between a banjo and an ukulele and no, I don’t know why, but banjoes appear to breed rather prolifically with other stringed instruments) and there was a whole section about these banjo hybrids. However, while they had a gift shop with banjo recordings and banjo sheet music, and various other odds and ends, they did not appear to sell actual banjos.

As I said before, the main reason for the trip was to go to another AAA ballpark. There is some actual baseball history in Oklahoma City, which is reflected in statues (and placard displays inside the ballpark) of Jim Thorpe, Mickey Mantle, and Johmmy Bench. More recent players included in their hall of fame include Dave Roberts, Ryne Sandberg, Rusty Staub, and Jerry Grote.

The Oklahoma City Baseball Club is between cute names, so that’s the name you get. They were playing the El Paso Chihuahuas. For some ungodly reason they had their normal mascots dressed in chihuahua costumes. At least they kept the little games and such between innings short.

My summary of the ballpark is that it is nice enough but the attendance was poor, possibly because it was a weeknight. The concessions were uninteresting, with pizza the only vegetarian option and very little variety. And dammit, dipping dots are not ice cream. The lack of fan enthusiasm extended to the failure of almost all of the attendees to stand up for the 7th inning stretch. They played “Oklahoma” after “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” which should also have garnered some enthusiasm - but didn’t. When I rule the world, failure to sing along will be punishable by installation of brain implants that play “We Will Rock You” (my least favorite song of all time) 24/7. Maybe mixed in with the score of Spring Awakening.

By the way, the home team lost, which didn't exactly improve the spirit of the fans. (There was a group of about 8 Chihuahuas fans sitting near me. I'm not sure whether they were cheering their team or all the beer they consumed,)

Anyway, here are a couple of ballpark photos.





In the morning, I walked back to the train station and returned to Fort Worth. On arrival, I had a quick lunch, then took the Trinity Railway Express train to the Victory Station, where I transferred to the DART Orange Line tram to downtown Dallas. It was a short walk to the Adolphus Hotel, where the NPL Con was being held. Details in the next post.

In the morning, it was time to fly off to Ponta Delgada, on the island of San Miguel in the Azures. If you can remember back to the first post in this series, that was where the Travelers’ Century Club conference was being held. I survived the bleakness of Terminal 2 at Lisbon, which the low cost airlines fly out of, and the cramped quarters of RyanAir. When I exited the secure area on arrival, I immediately saw a TCC member I knew and we ended up sharing a taxi into town. (He was at an Air B&B, while I was at the conference hotel.) It was too early to check in, so I left my bags and took a walk around the area. I got some coffee and a pastry,then set off to try to find malassadas (fried dough with powdered sugar, popular at festivals in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and also widely available in some parts of Hawaii.) Alas, they are only available during Carnival. I mostly walked along the ocean, with a quick browse at a few stores. The hotel called me to let me know my room was available and it turned out to be quite nice, with an excellent view of the water.



I took advantage of an opportunity to catch up on sleep a bit. Several TCC attendees met downstairs at the bar and we had a pleasant evening of drinks and dinner. (Cindy arrived too late to join us. She texted me and we set up a time to meet for breakfast, which was included at the hotel.)

Since the conference didn’t start until early evening, Cindy and I had booked a Whaling Heritage tour for the afternoon. We were picked up at the hotel and driven to the offices of the company (which also does whale watching, though those tours are often canceled due to weather.) We were shown a few videos about whaling in the Azores, which was primarily done for processing of whale products, especially oil and spermaceti.

We got to handle harpoons, which makes for an amusing picture.




Then we went outside to see a whaleboat.



Finally, we were taken to a lookout hut where spotters scan the water for whales and radio the whale watching guides. I saw a sailboat and some birds, but no whales, alas.






Overall, I thought the tour was both entertaining and informative.

They dropped us back at the hotel and we checked in for the conference. There was a welcome reception, followed by a buffet dinner. Unfortunately the rooms where each of those were held had terrible acoustics. It should have been enjoyable to mingle and talk with people, but both rooms were painfully loud. In addition, while the food was okay, the buffet was set up in an awkward arrangement. For example, the plates were not at one end of the buffet, but sort of in the middle. And they were slow to replace things that ran out, like lettuce, which I tend to think of as a key element of salad.

We went into the conference room, which, fortunately, had decent acoustics - at least as long as people used the microphones. There was a short presentation about TCC history to celebrate the organization’s 70th anniversary. They also gave out forms for people to nominate locations for the 2026 conference.

Friday featured a full day tour. We started off going towards a scenic overlook.



Then we moved on towards an area along the coast which was pretty much where we’d gone for the whaling history tour the day before. That was followed by going to the Furnas Valley, to see some fumaroles (vents which release volcanic gases, which people use for cooking). Unfortunately, just as we got to the end of the path, it started raining, so we turned around right away and went back to the buses. By the way, the path was full of tree roots.



We went to the town of Furnas and looked at a bunch of fumaroles.







After that we went to a restaurant to eat Cozido das Calderas, a meat and vegetable stew cooked in the fumaroles. Not really my sort of thing, since sulfur is not really my favorite food flavoring. After lunch, we set out to tour the Terra Nostra Garden. This started with the summer home of Thomas Hickling, built in 1775. A few years later he became the U.S. Consul to the island of San Miguel. Later on the house was converted to a hotel. There’s a thermal pool in front of the house. Personally, I’m not a fan of orange-brown water and I was not inclined to get my bathing suit stained by the unattractive water.



I am, however, a fan of topiary. Here, have an orangutan.




Or, perhaps, you’d prefer a visit to Australia? (Not that I’m actually sure what animal this is supposed to be.)



I think these are water lilies, but as a person who can just barely tell a rosebush from a weeping willow, who knows?



It inevitably began raining again while we were waiting to get picked up by the buses. Our final stop was at the Gorreana Tea Plantation. By the time we got there, it was absolutely pouring. We pretty much ran to the store, which had nothing much of interest for me. I did taste a tea sample, but their tea was not really much to my taste.

We went back to the hotel, where we had a free evening. Various TCC chapters held dinners. I knew a little over half the people at the D.C. Chapter dinner, which was held at the restaurant in the adjacent hotel. The food was pretty good value, with three courses (soup or salad, pasta or fish, and dessert) plus a glass of wine for EUR 20. Overall, it was a good time.

Saturday started with a keynote presentation by Pauline Frommer, focused on ways to save money when traveling. I’d heard her speak before and I don’t think she said much that I didn’t already know. There was an interesting talk by Craig Forest, who had been involved with filming for The Amazing Race (and other programs). I stopped watching the show years ago, but I did find his presentation interesting. He also had several film clips from Marrakesh, which has been on my list of places to go to for a while.

That was followed by another buffet lunch, after which there was a walking tour of Ponta Delgado. To nobody’s surprise, there are lots of churches, many of which were not open.



There was also a stop for cheese tasting (which I ignored).



I can look at fancy silver, but I don’t really need any of that either. (And I think that store was closed anyway.)



Further along, we saw the city hall. And another church.



These magnificent gates lead to the Fort, which now has a maritime museum.



There’s also a monument to emigrants.



The biggest highlight in that area had to do with two convents. We were able to go into the elaborate interiors, which had red carpets, ornately decorated altars, and (yes!) azulejos.







We were supposed to go to a nearby botanical garden, but it started raining. We found somewhere to get coffee - and, more importantly, have a “comfort stop,” before returning to the hotel. We had dinner that evening at Solar de Graca, which featured a buffet with okay food, followed by a folk music and dance show.



Sunday involved several member presentations. Topics included tips for booking airline travel, a pretty thorough talk on Pacific Islands, a talk about Indonesia, and three people talking about difficult destinations. The latter proved just how crazy some TCC members can be. No, I am not planning to go to Mogadishu. Nor do I have any desire to go anywhere I can’t legally get a permit for.

There was the inevitable buffet lunch. There was an afternoon tour to the Sete Cidades (Seven Cities) but, since I had an early evening flight and all of the other tours had run late, I decided it was best to skip that. Based on Cindy’s report, that seemed to have been a good decision. The airport was chaotic and it took me about half an hour to get a tuna sandwich and a soda at the one restaurant that was open. Ryan Air was even less comfortable on the way back to Lisbon than it had been on the way to the Azores, but I survived. I pretty much collapsed in bed when I got to my hotel.

My trip home on United was much more comfortable. All in all, it was a pleasant enough couple of weeks away. Apparently, the top 4 locations in the running for the 2026 conference are Cape Town, Istanbul, Bali, and Brisbane. I’d definitely prefer Bali out of those, since I’ve never been there. And I do like Cape Town, which is a good gateway to other places I haven’t been. Since the full membership votes on this, we’ll have to see what happens.

I had arrived in Porto in late afternoon, so I spent a couple of hours unpacking and taking a nap before setting out for a walk around the area near my hotel. The first thing I saw was the exterior of the 18th century Igrejo de Santo Ildefenso. This was just a few steps from my hotel and is one of many churches whose exterior is covered with azulejos, which are stunning tiles, usually in blue and white. (You’ll hear more about them in the Lisbon write-up.) Decidedly gawk-worthy.



I was also right by Rua de Santa Cantarina, which is the major shopping street of the area. I strolled around, noting the Majestic Cafe which is, indeed majestic, at least for those of us who like art nouveau.



However, the prices are as jaw dropping as the decor, e.g. EUR 23 for a cheese and tomato omelet. I’d still love to have afternoon tea there someday. But I eventually ended up eating at Honest Greens, which is a chain which has more reasonably prices, as well as lots of vegetarian options. Their falafel was good and the setting was lovely. There appeared to be a mix of tourists and locals and I’d definitely recommend it.

In the morning, I set out to run an errand. I walked down a steep path to the Sao Bentao train station to buy my train ticket to Lisbon. (I later figured out that there was a much easier route to the station, by the way. Mapping apps are imperfect at best. And, as anyone who knows me can testify to, I have a terrible sense of direction.) But first, I stopped for breakfast. While you can get breakfast at the hotel, cafes are cheaper and more interesting. After eating, I bought my ticket and then checked out the famous grandeur of the station vestibule, which has 20,000 azulejos painted by the artist Jorge Colaço. They are beautiful, but this is such a famous place that it was also crowded.







By the way, trains to Lisbon don’t leave from this station. They go from the considerably less elaborate Campanhã station.

I had saved a walking tour of central Porto on my phone and set out to follow it. This was made somewhat challenging by a lot of construction work around Praça da Liberdade, mostly associated with the addition of a new metro line. I did manage to find what is said to be the most beautiful McDonald’s in the world, formerly the Imperial Cafe.



I did some more wandering around, notably including the Torre de Clergos and associated church.



I noted the cultural quarter, which has several museums, but did not have time to get to them on this trip. I did wander around the area, which includes lots of cafes and artesan shops (though there was a nice enough artisan market right by my hotel. And my backpack was heavy enough without buying anything). I was meeting up with my friend, Carol, at 2, so headed back up to the Bolhao Market. I got distracted by yet another beautiful church covered by azulejos (Capela das Almas).



And, um, I ended up walking about a mile and a half in the wrong direction. Uphill. ending up with my back killing me. I did manage to limp back downhill to meet up with Carol and a couple of members of her “creative circle.” There are a lot of expats in Porto and they have a lot of activities. Carol is a knitter. Knitting is too bulky to travel with, but I did bring a needlepoint canvas with me. They also have a movie club, a book club, game nights, etc. She seems quite happy living in Porto, as do the other women in the group. Afterwards, I went back to the hotel and stretched out on the bed in a partially successful attempt to heal my back. I got up and had a short stroll, including getting a cheap supper at a kabob place just up the street.

In the morning, I had breakfast at Esquires Coffee Porto, which I highly recommend. Their continental breakfast consisted of an English muffin with strawberry jam, a croissant, and a pastel de nata (egg custard tart) plus a choice of drink. (I got an Americano.)

After that, I found a better way down to the cathedral - both shorter and less steep. I took a picture of the city walls before going over to the terrace next to the cathedral.



I saw the entrance to the Museu do Vitral (Museum of Stained Glass) right next to the Cathedral. This is very much my sort of thing. EUR 8 gets you museum entrance, which includes a glass of Taylor’s port. Because you can’t even think of leaving Porto without having some port. Anyway, there were videos and displays about how stained glass is made along with fine examples of the work of local artists. Those included both traditional and modern themes.







It’s a fairly small collection, but I did find it enjoyable. And I liked the port, also.


Cathedrals are more or less the obligatory thing to see in that part of the world. Outside the Cathedral, there’s a pillory that was used to hang criminals.



To answer a question someone asked me on facebook, it was almost certainly not used to hang “New Christians” (i.e. Jews who had publicly converted to Catholicism but continued to practice Judaism secretly) because there was only one auto da fe in Porto (versus hundreds in Lisbon, Coimbra, and Evora) with 4 people killed, probably by being burned at the stake.

It costs EUR 3 to go inside the Cathedral. The actual chapel where masses are held is fairly small.



The area where you enter and exit, however, is larger, and is covered with azulejos.



There are a number of other things you can see on the Cathedral grounds, including the Episcopal Palace and a Museum of Sacred Art. I opted, instead, for some general browsing among the touristy areas, before heading back up to the Mercado de Bolhão and getting lunch. The offerings include all sorts of seafood, croquettes (I went with tuna), fruit (including smoothies) and so on. There are more formal restaurants upstairs. Carol had given me a list of yarn shops but I decided I could wait until I got to Lisbon for that.

I would definitely like to go back to Porto. For one thing, the construction and scaffolding was annoying, so it would be nice to see the city when all that is finished. And I never made it to the Livraria Lello, alleged to be the most beautiful bookstore in the world. (And semi-officially associated with J.K. Rowling, which is part of why I didn’t go. Along with crowds and a EUR 6 admission fee.) More significantly, I didn’t manage to make it to Museu de Arte Contemporãneo de Serralves, which is out in the suburbs (but reachable by transit). This has gardens and other exhibits, as well as modern art and sounds like it would be worth the better part of a day. There’s also a highly respected photography museum. And, of course, I could have done more port tasting or even a short cruise on the Douro River. Maybe I can do that when I go to Spain in 2026 for the eclipse.

I just got home from my trip to Portugal and the Azores. It will take me a few days to catch up, but I'm fine and I had a good time for the most part.

I’d made plans for this past weekend back in February. Luka Bloom, an Irish folk singer I’ve wanted to see perform for a long time, was going to be performing in London. You are probably unfamiliar with his name, but you may know of his brother, Christy Moore, who is a big name in Irish music. Anyway, I discussed this with the gentleman with whom I am conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling (who lives in London) and we made plans that included that concert and an excursion to Winchester. By the way, this is an example of his indulging me in my interests since he doesn’t like folk music.

Alas, the universe conspired against me and the concert got cancelled. On the plus side that meant that I could go to another event I wanted to. Namely, RhinoStock, a celebration of the life of the late Clint Weathers, aka ZenRhino (or just Rhino). I flew to Denver on Thursday afternoon and, after picking up my rental car (a Chevy Bolt - see rant below), spent the night at a hotel near the airport.

I had a few options for things I could do on Friday and decided that the best choice was to go to Louisville (a little south of Boulder) and do a Volksmarch for the first time in about 7 years. The weather was very nice for walking. Louisville has a cute enough downtown, but the route between the walk start / finish point (a recreation / senior center) and downtown was pretty much bland suburbia. Still, it was good to stretch my legs and there were some interesting bird sounds that I was unable to identify. After my walk, I had Thai food for lunch (reasonably good drunken noodles with tofu), then headed to my hotel where I took a long nap.

I’d had a vague intention of having supper at an interesting looking place across the parking lot from my hotel (the Courtyard Boulder Broomfield, which is in neither Boulder nor Broomfield). A combination of barbecue and Indian food - what could be wrong with that? Well, what was wrong was that they had a water problem and were closed! I ended up just grabbing a sandwich nearby. (For anyone who didn’t know, tunafish sandwiches are one of the key components of what I consider Purina Miriam Chow.)

RhinoStock didn’t start until early afternoon, so I drove over to downtown Boulder and had breakfast at The Walnut Cafe. It used to be one of my go-to breakfast places in Boulder. A lot of my friends favor Le Peep, but I’d eaten there somewhat more recently, so I figured I might as well go to a place I hadn’t been to in 20-odd years. I’m pleased to report that the food is as good as ever, with a particularly excellent Mexican omelet. And blueberry corn bread. (The latter is another essential component of Purina Miriam Chow.)

I was well behaved and did not go into McGuckin’s, the hardware store of the gods. (Seriously, this is the best hardware store I have ever been in anywhere in the world. I love it even more than I love McLean Hardware, which is my best local option.)

Eventually, I meandered over to RhinoStock central, namely the home of our hosts, Geo and Momerath. I suspect it is boring to read about a party if you weren’t there and don’t know the people who were, so I’m not going to give a lot of details. Let’s just say that there was lots of wide ranging conversation, lots of catching up with people I hadn’t seen in ages, and lots of reminiscing about events from decades ago.

At some point there was a zoom hook up so several people who weren’t able to be there in person could share their memories of Rhino. I should probably explain that most of us knew him (and each other) from a MUSH called Tiny TIM. If anyone cares, my name on there was cypria (Or is? I haven’t logged in for years and I don’t have a working MUD client). Some of the people there have been friends since the usenet days and some things that happened at soc.singles parties of the late 1980’s got mentioned. If you know, you know.

There was also a sing-along of “The Weight” by The Band. And toasts with various alcohol options available. I am smart enough not to become a party victim.

I didn’t stay super late since I had a crazy early flight on Sunday morning. I managed to get barely enough sleep to be able to drive back to the airport. After a decadent breakfast (pancake flight!) at Snooze on the mezzanine level of Terminal B, I collapsed onto the plane and mostly slept my way to IAD. As exhausted as I was, it was definitely worth the trip.

The Chevy Bolt - A Rant: I did not want to rent an electric car. However, Payless Car Rental insisted that the only other options were a minivan or an SUV, which were even worse.

There are two significant problems with electric vehicles as rentals. The first one is that I have yet to see one which is not an ergonomic nightmare. For example, I never succeeded in opening the trunk. I googled how to do this and, given the number of hits that turned up, this appears to be a common problem. As another example, given that everything else is done off of a large screen, why is the seat adjustment manual? What I find particularly egregious is how many steps it takes to adjust anything, e.g. the climate settings. In my opinion, sliders or dials are really a much more intuitive way to adjust the temperature and airflow. It also took way too many steps to pull up the radio and I never succeeded in finding the volume controls. (Which are another thing for which sliders or dials are more intuitive, by the way.) And then there is the nightmare of the voice announcing when you are exceeding the speed limit. Except it was usually wrong. If there is a speed limit sign reading 65 right next to me and I am driving 63, I am NOT exceeding the speed limit you bloody idiot.

Of course, there are also many gas-powered cars with sucky ergonomics, too. So what is specifically wrong with an electric car? As far as I can tell, there are roughly 347 different companies running public charging stations for electric cars. And every single one of them has its own app they want you to download. And, if you are driving far enough to need to recharge the car, you may not have a lot of choice in which charger company you are at the mercy of. I don’t know about you, but I need less than one gallon of gas to add 25 miles of range to Twain, my beloved little gas-powered econobox. That takes maybe 2 minutes? (And, of course, I fill the gas tank completely, so I spend maybe 15 minutes buying gas and have a range of over 300 miles.) It takes an hour to charge a typical electric car enough to add 25 miles of range. Yes, there are fast chargers, but only a limited number of them and most of those are for Teslas and only usable by other cars with an adapter that rental car companies don’t necessarily give you. Frankly, I don’t have four or more hours to waste when I am out of town for a couple of days.

In short, an electric car only makes sense if you have a dedicated place to charge it. (Which is also why they don’t work for me as a condo dweller.) But they damn well don’t make sense as rental cars.

From 29 February through 2 March, I was at RootsTech, which is a huge annual genealogy convention. It’s hard to tell how many people participate because they sell millions of tickets for the on-line event, which I’ve done the past couple of years. The problem with going on-line is that there is so much stuff that it’s hard to decide which presentations are worth watching, but there are also all the distractions of home, so I end up not watching a lot. Buying an in-person ticket includes access to all of the on-line presentations for an entire year. There’s also a huge exhibit hall, with all of the major genealogy companies (and many I’d never heard of) contributing. And there were a couple of hundred in-person presentations to attend.

Anyway, I flew in the day before (Wednesday) and my flight to Salt Lake City (via Los Angeles) went smoothly enough, though my arrival gate and departing gate were pretty much as far apart as any two United gates at LAX could be. United uses Terminal B at SLC and, to get out of the airport, you have to walk half the length of that terminal, walk through a half mile long tunnel, and then walk much of the length of terminal A. The signage to get to TRAX (the SLC light rail system) wasn’t great, but I found where I needed to go and was quite pleased to learn that the system was free for people attending RootsTech. It was also a bit of a hike to my hotel from the nearest station. In short, it was going to prove easy to get plenty of steps in during the convention. For what it’s worth, I stayed at the Residence Inn, which was okay, though the bed was too soft, so my back was aching after a couple of days. There are several hotels closer to the convention center, by the way. If I went again, I might consider one of the hotels right across the street.

There were three or four classes I was interested in during every time slot of the event. I marked all of them on my schedule and chose during the time between the sessions. I also spent time visiting the exhibit hall, but won’t really discuss that since I didn’t take notes there. But I will note that several (all?) of the major companies did have mini-seminars about using their products. And I did learn about a few products that could be useful, e.g. some of the archiving materials.

The first session I went to on Thursday was The Quest for Hidden Ancestors - Genealogy Tips from Nancy Drew by Ellen Kowitt. This wasn’t really focused on things I didn’t already know, but I like Nancy Drew and I’ve found Ellen to be an entertaining speaker before. Basically, she pulled out examples from the Nancy Drew novels that are relevant to genealogy research and listed plenty of resources. And that did include a few I had not been aware of previously, e.g. interment.net for burial records and Deep L for translation. She also had a particularly good list of resources for historical maps. Entertaining and informative was a good way to start the day.

The next session I went to was What’s the History in Your Family History? by Rachel and Matt Trotter. This was described as adding historical context to your family history and covered sources like oral histories, oral traditions, diaries, and timelines. While there were a couple of example, It wasn’t really what I was looking for, since it was largely U.S. focused and somewhat more recent history for the most part.

The hottest subject in genealogy these days seems to be artificial intelligence, so (after a mediocre and overpriced lunch in the exhibit hall), I went to a session on Using AI Tools to Expand Your Research Universe Part 1: Chat and Search Tools. by James Tanner. He described the goal as to help organize, analyze, and get insight from data to solve novel problems. He listed several subfields of AI, including cognitive computing, computer vision, machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, natural language processing, fuzzy logic, expert systems, and robotics. He also talked about practical uses of AI, including detecting illegal activity, business apps (e.g. digital personal assistants), generative AI, and data processing. He noted that large language models are what has changed recently and mentioned a few general purpose products, e.g. Microsoft Copilot. I found his talk way too general and would have liked some actual examples of using AI in genealogy. I had considered going to one or more of the talks in his series of presentations, but decided that they were unlikely to be worth my time based on this one.

The next top talk I went to was History, Family History, and Families From the Global to the Personal by Dr. Wanda Wyporska. Her main point was that genealogists are historians. She talked about geography as a genealogist’s worst friend, primarily in the context of forced and voluntary migrations. Her ethnicity is a mixture of Eastern European and Caribbean, which led to an interesting twist on this. The main point was that people connect with communities in various ways. Unfortunately, most of the discussion was centered on race, which is not of much interest to me. So, while her talk was reasonably interesting, I didn’t find much of it of any practical relevance.

The last talk I went to on Thursday was Squeezing all the Info Out of Your Matches by Kate Penny Howard. This was a fairly basic presentation on DNA and was focused on finding the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) with a match. She talked about things like searching across as many platforms as possible ad then building out descendants of the MRCA. She also recommended using DNA Painter. Since her major emphasis was on things like looking for who an unknown parent is (either because of adoption or unexpected DNA results), I didn’t find this particularly relevant.

Overall, I thought that only one of the five talks I went to on Thursday was notable. Fortunately, I had somewhat better success with finding useful sessions the next two days.

The first talk I went to on Friday was Researching the Canadian Census and Early Census Substitutes by David Allen Lambert. Most of this was a review of what information censuses (some federal, some by province) contained in each year. For example, the 1901 census included complete birth date (not just year), year of immigration, and year of naturalization. He also listed where each census can be found, including Family Search, Ancestry, and Library and Archives Canada. The most recent one on Ancestry is 1931. This is useful for me, because of a great-uncle who I know went to Canada (and, later, entered the U.S. via Buffalo. There is a note on another immigration record (for someone who is almost certainly another member of that part of my family) involving an inquiry in Toronto. So, it looks like it may be possible to get more insight into that situation.

The next talk I went to was The High Five - Key Documents for Successful Records Retrieval at NARA by Cecilia McFadden. She talked about record locations and finding record set numbers. But I wish she had traced through some actual examples in detail, as I got rather lost in some other dry information.

One of the highlights of the conference was What’s New and Exciting at My Heritage by Gilad Japhet. He started out with an example of artifact DNA. In particular, he was able to have DNA extracted from stamps, which led to finding half siblings of his great-grandfather. I thought this was completely mind-blowing. Of course, it’s not yet ready for commercialization and is probably too expensive for people who aren’t the CEO of a genealogy company, but the potential is amazing. I definitely have postcards with stamps I assume were licked by my grand-mother and I probably have envelopes sealed by various other deceased ancestors.

He also talked about recent (AI-based) features that have been added to My Heritage. Photo Dater, which estimates when historical photos were taken, looks likely to be useful. AI Biographer, which converts facts into a narrative holds no interest for me, since I know how to write, but at least it includes sources. There’s also an AI Record Finder, which uses an AI chat to search historical records. I think that is probably most useful for beginners. OldNews.com is focused on historical newspapers. Unfortunately, it only covers eight countries initially and, other than the U.S. (and possibly Canada) has limited utility for me. There were several other things he mentioned, which were of less interest to me, but it was a very good presentation.

My most disappointing talk of the day was Why Should I Map My Chromosomes by Tim Janzen. The goal is to determine which portion of your DNA comes from which ancestor. It really only works for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins. And, more importantly for Ashkenazi Jews like me, endogamy is a problem. Aside from that, his presentation was hard to follow because he did things like referring to the 4th column in a dense chart on a slide, but really meant what was actually, say, the 8th column. Overall, this was pretty much useless for me.

The last talk I went to on Friday was Are You an Ethical Genealogist? by Dr, Penny Walters. This was interesting, but I’d have preferred a panel discussion to a lecture. She mostly focused on situations with genuine reasons pointing to two different sets of actions. For example, approximately 12% of DNA tests result in someone finding an NPE (which stands for either “not parent expected” or “non-parental event” depending on which you prefer.) An adoptee can obviously have good reasons for trying to find a birth parent, e.g. understanding their medical history, but there is also potential to hurt a parent who raised them who may not have known of the situation. There are also cases involving an individual vs. their community, truth vs. loyalty, individuals vs. the community, and justice vs. virtue. Any decision you make about privacy and confidentiality vs. transparency has consequences. Each person has to decide for him or herself what information to disclose about their family tree. (Since there are a few people on my tree with readily findable criminal records, this is of direct interest to me. On the plus side, those people are easy to research.)


I started Saturday with a presentation by Jarrett Ross on Success With Jewish DNA: How to Overcome Issues with Endogamy. This was probably the single most immediately useful session I went to at the conference. He also talked about double cousins and 3/4 siblings, e.g. the result of marriage to a sibling of a deceased spouse. He noted that as you get further back, the differences between endogamy and non-endogamy are greater. More importantly, he had several practical suggestions re: dealing with DNA results in endogamous communities. I already knew some of what he suggested about what level of centimorgan matches to investigate. But he had other tips I hadn’t really thought of before. For example, you can try to build out the tree of a potential match to a specific level. He also suggested looking for connections to towns within 30 miles. Overall, I came away with actionable information, which is always a good thing.


The next presentation I went to was AI-Assisted Genealogy: The Family History of the Future by Daniel Horowitz (from My Heritage). Some of the uses of AI he discussed were language translation, market research, key word research, and customization. Applying those to genealogy tasks, he talked about tombstone translations, summarizing and extracting information from documents, transcribing handwritten records , extracting information from newspapers (including locating OCR text). Within MyHeritage, some tools include an AI Record Finder (which lets people find data without filling in a form), Photo Tagger (which looks useful, but he did warn of its addictive potential), He also talked about some other tools I can’t imagine any reason I’d want to use (e.g. one to turn yourself into a historical figure). Still, it’s good to know what’s out there, even if you want to use only some of it.

After that, I went to Research Planning for Efficiency and Accuracy by Mindy Taylor. Most of her focus was on setting up research logs, including citations. That’s the sort of thing I know in theory but don’t do well with in practice, as I have found myself repeating searches multiple times. Something as simple as noting the date a particular search was made could be very helpful, especially since new sources become available frequently. Er, yes, I do need to get organized.

The final presentation I went to was Working with WATO (What Are the Odds) by Leah Larkin. WATO is a tool from DNA Painter and is intended to help identify an unknown parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent. Anything further back is beyond the limits of autosomal DNA. That means it is fairly unlikely to be of any significant help for me, since I know who all my ancestors in that range are. In addition, it doesn’t work well with endogamy. There’s a newer tool called Banyan DNA which might be more useful, so that’s something to keep in the back of my mind.

It had started snowing in the late morning and I had a nasty slushy walk back to my hotel. In the morning, I got a Lyft to the airport. My flight was delayed first because it was overbooked and they needed to get some volunteers to switch flights. And then it was delayed further for de-icing. Fortunately, United held my connecting flight at DEN long enough for me to sprint to that gate and I made it home on time.

Overall, I thought the conference was reasonably valuable. I came home with a fair amount of stuff to follow up on. And, of course, there are lots of on-line sessions I should try to find some time to watch.

Continuing last week’s New York trip…

Aside from some random walking around, most of Wednesday was spent going to the theatre.

Harmony: I had been a little hesitant to see this musical, because I generally prefer musical comedy to musical tragedy. And, while I don’t hate Barry Manilow (who wrote the music, with book and lyrics by Bruce Sussman, who is his long-time writing partner), he wouldn’t make my top ten list of songwriters. The reviews had been mixed but a couple of friends who had seen it did recommend it. And it was closing just a few days after my trip, so I decided it was worth trying.

The show starred Chip Zien, who does look his age (he’s in his late 70’s) but can still sing. He is looking back on his youth as part of a group called The Comedian Harmonists, who achieved success in Germany in the early 1930’s and toured the world. But three of their members were Jewish and the group had to disband due to the rise of Hitler. This is based on a true story, but several critics complained that it wasn’t very accurate. I don’t actually care about factual accuracy when it comes to musical adaptations. I’m looking for emotional truths and I felt that it worked at that level, for the most part.

The title song was lovely and something of an ear worm, as is “Stars in the Night,” which closes the show. Some of the songs the group sings are very entertaining, e.g. “How Can I Serve You, , Madame.” There are two beautiful love songs - “Every Single Day” and (especially) “Where You Go.” There’s a shocking moment in the first act, following a double wedding. While I understand why it didn’t end the act, it made the emotional arc a bit strange to go on from that to Carnegie Hall.

Neither of the female characters is fully developed. Mary fares better than the rabble-rousing Ruth. The latter was played by the other big star of the show (Julie Benko) who did fine with what she was given, but her character was not fully developed.

Anyway, I thought it was worth seeing, but I wish they’d handed out packets of tissues with the Playbills.

Once Upon a Mattress: This production was part of the Encores series at City Center, which puts on concert versions “forgotten” musicals. I’m not sure Once Upon a Mattress really qualifies, since it’s popular for schools and summer camps and other amateur groups. But it’s a fun show, with a lively score and a humorous book, and they always get great performers. For anyone not familiar with the show, it is loosely based on the fairy tale of “The Princess and the Pea.” I should also note that this was more fully staged than some of the other shows I’ve seen in the series.

The key here is that the show is a real star turn for the actress playing Princess Winifred the Woebegone (“Fred”). That was the role that launched Carol Burnett to stardom, of course. I don’t normally think of Sutton Foster as being that sort of performer, though she’s a solid dancer. So I was impressed by her willingness to go all out on the physical comedy. That was especially true in the scene where she tries to get to sleep on the stack of mattresses.

As for the rest of the cast, Michael Urie had great chemistry with Sutton Foster in his role as Prince Dauntless the Drab. Both J. Harrison Ghee and Harriet Harris were spot on as the Jester and the Queen respectively. Overall, while the show is somewhat dated and very silly, it’s also very entertaining. I am still humming several of the songs a week and a half later.

Fabric Flowers: I mentioned that I’d found something to do via the newsletter of the New York Adventure Club. This is a wonderful organization that has both virtual tours and in-person tours and I have done several of their events in the past. They periodically do a tour of M&S Schmalberg, the last remaining custom fabric flower factory in New York. I love crafts and I love factory tours, so this was right up my alley. Adam, the owner of the company is the 4th generation of the family business. First, we had time to browse the showroom. There are flowers of every description and every color, with some elaborately beaded examples. And, also, lots of butterflies. Here are a couple of the displays:





Adam told us some of the history of the company before explaining the process of making the flowers. Basically, fabric is starched and folded to create layers, then cut. The cut fabric is pressed into molds (which are surprisingly heavy). The pieces are then put together with things like brooch pins, lapel pins, or hair clips.

We went into the factory and watched all the steps of the process. I was amused that a salad spinner is used to get the moisture out after fabric is starched. Here’s Adam cutting out flowers, which will then be put into molds to be shaped.



At the end of the tour, he put out an assortment of small flowers and we each got to choose one to take home. Here's my selection.



That was followed by time to shop. The prices start at about $20. In addition to their etsy shop, they make custom flowers. I didn’t buy anything, but I will almost certainly buy a few things from them in the future, most likely for decorating hats. Anyway, this was an excellent way to spend part of an afternoon.

The Connector: The final show of my theatre binge was this new musical with a music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and book by Jonathan Marc Sherman. It was conceived and directed by Daisy Prince, who is the daughter of the late Hal Prince. The story involves a news magazine, celebrating its 50th anniversary. The Connector has been taken over by a large corporation but it appears that, aside from data analysis, all they’ve done is paint the offices. The editor-in-chief, Conrad O’Brien (ably played by Scott Bakula - yes, the guy from Quantum Leap) hires a kid named Ethan Dobson (played by Ben Levi Ross), who is fresh out of Princeton and who he views as a younger version of himself. In the meantime, Conrad ignores a copy editor, named Robin Martinez (played by Hannah Cruz), who wants to become a feature writer. Ethan’s story about a Scrabble shark in Greenwich Village makes him an instant success, but what is he going to do to follow that? And will anybody ever read Robin’s work?

If you’ve ever seen the play The Lifespan of a Fact there are some natural comparisons, particularly with respect to the question of what is truth and what is sufficient proof. There are two other characters who play major roles in addressing this question - Muriel, a legendary fact checker, and Mona Bland, who writes letters to the magazine correcting minor details, leading her to be regarded as a crank. However, there are also other issues here, especially the sexism that Robin faces, even in 1996. I was surprised that potential racism (given her obviously Latina name) wasn’t suggested. After all, Linda Wolfe had been writing for New York magazine since the 1970’s. (I still remember her piece about the deaths of the twin gynecologists.)

As it stands now, the show is about an hour and 40 minutes long, with no intermission. I’d have liked to see it expanded a bit (with an intermission added) so some of the characters could be fleshed out more. In particular, I’d like to know more about Robin’s past beyond her singing “Everyone in Texas is an asshole” in a song titled “So I Came to New York.” There’s also a hint (in the form of a phone call to his brother) that there’s more to Ethan’s background than his time at Princeton. The bottom line is that this was funny and provocative, with an enjoyable jazzy score, though not entirely satisfying. Note that I saw it in previews, however, I hope that the creative team continues to develop it further. And I also definitely want there to be a recording of the music.

By the way, I read a couple of reviews which compare this to the real-life story of Stephen Glass. There is apparently a movie about him, titled “Shattered Glass,” which I should try to get around to seeing.

A Quick Note About Amtrak: The train I took home on Friday morning was the Carolinian, rather than a Northeast Regional. For future reference, this is a bad idea. For one thing, it was very crowded. But, more importantly, it doesn’t have a quiet car.

The weekend before the one that just passed, I was home and fairly sociable.

tick. tick . . . BOOM1 On Friday night, I went to see this musical, which was part of the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center. That means that the staging is fairly minimal, but they still had a video screen, providing parts of the setting. For those unfamiliar with this show, it was originally a semi-autobiographical monologue by Jonathan Larson and, after his death, was turned into a three person musical. This version (which was directed by Neil Patrick Harris) also had several other characters, with one of them who seemed to deserve as much credit as the three principals.

The plot involves the main character, Jon (ably played by Brandon Uranowitz) , turning 30 and debating whether he should abandon his goal of writing a musical in favor of making money in advertising. His girlfriend, Susan, thinks they should move to Cape Cod. As he says / sings “Johnny Can’t Decide.”

I mostly enjoyed the show, but some of the songs don’t do much to advance either the story or character development. For example, “Green Green Dress” is a fairly generic song Jon sings about Susan. On the other hand, “Sunday” is a brilliant pastiche of the Sondheim song of the same name (from Sunday in the Park With George) and was worth the price of admission alone. And “Why,” effectively summarizes the whole point of the show.

Loser Post-Holiday Party: Saturday afternoon was the annual Loser post-holiday party. My contribution to the pot luck was a mushroom quiche and, since I got requests for the recipe, I’ll include it below. Then there were some awards for people who’d reached certain invitational milestones. And, finally, the singing of various parody songs, mostly with political themes. Plus, of course, lots of interesting conversation, including some discoveries of mutual connections I hadn’t known of before.

Mushroom Quiche Recipe: Since I had requests for the recipe…

Ingredients:
1 deep dish pie crust (I admit I used a frozen one.) Bake in a pie pan according to package directions or recipe if you're less lazy than I was.

8 oz. white button mushrooms
half an onion, chopped
2 T. butter
8 oz. gruyere cheese, shredded (or you can buy cubed gruyere). Do not use smoked gouda.
1 c. heavy cream
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
a pinch of nutmeg
2 T. grated parmesan cheese, divided

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Salute the onions and mushrooms until browned.
3. Sprinkle the mushrooms and cheese into the bottom of the baked pie crust.
4. Whisk the eggs. Add the cream, seasonings and 1 T. of the parmesan cheese and beat together. Pour the mixture over the mushrooms and cheese.
5. Sprinkle the remaining parmesan cheese over the top.
6. Bake until the top is light brown and the center of the quiche is set, roughly 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool about 10 minutes before serving.


TCC Meeting: Finally, there was a lunch meeting of the Travelers’ Century Club DC chapter on Sunday. Lots of good conversation about travel, of course. It also looks like several of us will be in the Azores together.

The next island we called at was Ua Pou. There were a few options there. I chose to do a four-wheel drive tour. This cost extra, but was worth it in my opinion. The scenery was spectacular.






We stopped at a typical site with a marae (temple enclosure) complete with tiki.



Then we drove down to a beach to look for what are called “flower stones.” These are garnet phonolites and are apparently found only on Ua Pou and in Brazil. You can look for yourself in this photo. (Hint: I didn’t find any, but our driver gave me one. If you like this sort of thing, you can buy jewelry made out of polished ones. I’m a sapphire gal myself.)



Then we went to the cultural center where we saw a show of ukulele music and drumming, with school children dancing.







We had lunch at a local restaurant, followed by free time to explore the village. (Or take another optional tour, which I skipped.)



I thought the beach there was one of the more attractive ones during the trip.



There was also a good opportunity to watch some of the freight operations, which are always interesting.



Our next stop was Hiva Oa, where we went to the village of Atuona. This was of particular interest to many of the passengers because of two European men who spent their final years there and are buried in the cemetery, which we took a bus to. Jacques Brel was a Belgian cabaret singer and actor, whose songs were translated into several languages. The one that is probably most familiar to Americans is, alas, “Seasons in the Sun” (based on “Le Moribund”) which infested the pop music charts in 1974. Anyway, his grave proves that Jacques Brel is NOT alive and Well and Living in Paris.



The more famous person, buried right by Brel, is Paul Gauguin.



I heard someone comment that the two men never knew each other. Since Gauguin died in 1903 and Brel was born in 1929, that’s hardly profound.

Anyway, it was an easy walk from the cemetery down to the village, passing by a house that Gauguin rented.




In the village, there are a few shops, as well as museums to both men. The main attraction of the Jacques Brel museum was his airplane, which he used to fly back and forth to Tahiti and to transport food and supplies from Hiva Oa to neighboring islands.



The Gauguin Museum doesn’t have any original works, just reproductions. They are honest about that, identifying where each of the actual paintings hangs. If you want to see the real thing, I suggest the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, though there are also several of his paintings at the Glypoteket in Copenhagen, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Art in D.C., the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.





You can also walk through pleasant gardens. And a reproduction of Gauguin’s “pleasure house.”



Overall, Atuona (including the museum) made for a pleasant couple of hours.

The next day, the Aranui called on two islands - Puamau and Vaitahu. However, there was a cold spreading throughout the passengers and, feeling a bit sniffly, I opted to take it easy, so I have nothing to say about those stops. I did go to Keao Nesmith’s second lecture, which was focused mostly on Polynesian gods and was, again, interesting.

Having a rest day proved to have been a good decision and I was feeling fine for our call on Fatu Hiva, which was probably my favorite stop of the cruise. Aside from being particularly scenic, we were at higher elevations much of the day, making for cooler temperatures. But first we went from the pier to a gathering place in Omoa.



We had time to shop for handicrafts before watching a demonstration of pounding trees into tapa (bark cloth) and another having to do with umuhei (aromatic flowers wreaths). Then those of us who were doing an optional 4WD tour got sorted out rather chaotically into vehicles. (There were other, crazier people, who had set off earlier on a hike across part of the island.)

The actual tour was spectacular, Here are some pictures:





I always love the contrast of clouds and mountains.






We finished up at Hanavae, where we boarded the barges back to the Aranui.



I should also note that: 1) we’d had a stop for a lovely picnic lunch (a baguette with tuna salad, which is one of the key elements of what I like to refer to as Purina Miriam Chow) and 2) the vehicle I was in had an especially good driver / guide, who spoke excellent English and told us about the issues of younger people leaving the island to get more education or to marry. He also mentioned that one of his sisters has a female partner and that that same sex relationships were gaining increasing acceptance. Overall, this was a wonderful day.

Our final stop in the Marquesas was on Ua Huka, where we anchored in Vaupaee Bay. There were several stops on the island, all reached via 4WD vehicles. We started out at the arboretum, which has an interesting tiki. (The other sides show the rest of the family, by the way. So it's not as sexist as you might think at first glance.)



One of the more unusual things at the arboretum is a wood museum. As the song goes, “they took all the trees and put them in a tree museum.” (Actually, there are plenty of trees outside the museum, though not, in general, ones native to the region.)



We had a few other stops, including a viewpoint from Hokatu village, followed by a couple of handicrafts places, a small petroglyphs museum, and a sea museum.



Our lunch stop was at a complex which included the Te Tumu handicraft center and museum. This was one of the better museums we stopped at, with informative labels on many of the exhibits.





After lunch we returned to the ship and, in the late afternoon, departed the Marquesas.
We’d have a day at sea (on Christmas Eve - apparently the bigger deal than Christmas Day in these parts) on our way to Rangiroa (in the Tuamotu Archipelago). I don’t know about you, but I found some cognitive dissonance at the sight of Polynesians wearing Santa hats, We also had a recap lecture about the trip (mostly photos from a few passengers and one guide) by Keao Nesmith and a talk about our final stop.

Rangiroa had what I would describe as another disappointing beach - rocky, rather than sandy. I never thought I’d say this when I was growing up, but I dream of being able to get on my bike and ride to Point Lookout.

Fortunately, I had thought ahead and had booked the (optional) glass bottom boat ride. This was delayed a little bit, due to a strong downpour, but it was well worth waiting for. I’ve done glass bottom boats before and they are a great thing for those of us who wear glasses. We mostly saw red snapper and surgeon fish, some parrot fish. At least one reef shark. They do chum, with the boat captain (a woman, by the way), snorkeling around throwing bread. I don’t really approve of that, but it does mean that one sees a lot of fish. Have a look.





Back on board, we headed back to Tahiti. I had done fairly minimal shopping, so there was no problem fitting everything back in my luggage. I managed to finish the long mystery I’d been reading, which I left behind. (You can drop things off at the reception desk, to donate to the library.)

There were no real issues getting back to the Intercontinental Hotel (and, from there, to the airport for my Air Tahiti Nui flight back to Los Angeles). I’d swung for premium economy, which was definitely worth the extra money, though the pizza they served for a snack / dinner was the blandest food I’ve been served on a plane in many years and their entertainment system is unimpressive. I had a long layover in Los Angeles, which provided some drama as three policemen escorted a guy out of the United terminal for reasons that were not entirely clear to me. Still, I got home fine and it only took me three days to gather up enough energy to fully unpack and do laundry.

Overall, I’d say the Marquesas were an interesting destination, with a good mix of things to see. The major downsides were heat, humidity, and voracious biting insects. The Austral Islands (or, at least, Tubuai) were less so, largely because of Fort George and the museum being closed. Many of the other passengers were well-traveled and had wide-ranging interests. And the islands, themselves, had a wide range of things to see. The Aranui, while not luxurious, was comfortable enough and a good way to see the Marquesas and learn about the region. However, things were not always as well organized as they might be, e.g. daily programs didn’t always have the correct locations for some events and other things (e.g. a ukulele class) never actually happened. If you go in with an open mind, it’s a great way to spend a couple of weeks.