Bucket List: A group of things to do or places to see before one kicks the bucket.
We have never had an official list ourselves, most likely it would simply read “everything,” but when we laid eyes on The Great Wall of China we instantly knew it was near the top of that nonexistent list.
Bucket List: A group of things to do or places to see before one kicks the bucket.
We have never had an official list ourselves, most likely it would simply read “everything,” but when we laid eyes on The Great Wall of China we instantly knew it was near the top of that nonexistent list.
Our first glimpse was from a bus while approaching Juyongguan Pass north of Beijing.
As we climbed into the mountains, the ancient fortification began to materialize out of the city’s famous “haze.”
It was even more breathtaking than the smog we had left below.
The section we were seeing is only a tiny portion of the over five thousand miles still visible today.
In fact, historians believe at least that much has been lost to the ravages of time, so there would be somewhere around thirteen thousand miles total.
The earliest construction probably began nearly 700 years BC as wood and earth barriers to hold off enemies. About five hundred years later the Qin Dynasty unified China and began building more imposing fortifications along the northern border.
Construction continued for about a century, through the Han Dynasty, and then stopped for about a thousand years until resumed by the Jin Dynasty around 1200 AD. Most of what remains now was built or reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty six to eight hundred years ago.
We pulled off the highway at the part of the wall known as the Badaling. Built as part of the Ming construction, it was finished around the time that Columbus was cruising around the new world.
Due to the proximity to Beijing, this is the most visited spot on The Great Wall, and it showed as we began to climb the stairs up to the walkway along the top. It was wall-to-wall people (ba-da ching!)
Reaching the walkway turned out to be next to nothing compared to the climb we faced ahead of us.
From the bottom of the valley, where we were parked, the wall rises in both directions straight up the sides of some mighty steep mountains. But our competitive nature kicked in and we took off through the crowd.
We were under a time constraint, we had a bus to catch if we wanted to make it back to the city, but we were bound and determined to see how far we could go. At the first watchtower we stopped for a breather and an amazing view, then raced up to the next turret.
From our new vantage point we could see the entire valley spread out below, and the people back by the bus were beginning to look like ants.
Looking out over miles of wall snaking over the mountains and valleys it was easy to see why the Chinese have often compared it to a dragon.
But there was still more up to go, so we bolted up even higher.
At this altitude the crowds were thinning, seems we had weeded out anyone who wasn’t at least slightly crazy.
Puffing and panting, and running out of time, we pushed each other ever higher.
“OK, we should turn around now,” drifted down only to be answered by “Oh no you don’t, not until I get above you!”
Under the growing threat of missing the bus, and burning muscles about to stage a mutiny, we finally settled on a draw.
But our thinking that the trip down would be much easier than the climb up turned out to be somewhat flawed.
Coming down may have been faster, but it was definitely more dangerous, and much harder on the old knees than going up.
There was no time for gawking at the scenery on the descent either, every second of attention had to be focused on placing each foot on the proper spot lest we take the trip down literally.
Certainly would have been faster, but tumbling down several thousand feet of ancient stone work didn’t strike us as a good way to end our day.
No need to make The Great Wall the last thing we ever check off our Bucket List.
It’s an American coming-of-a-certain-age rite of passage. You turn fifty and you join AARP, right?
For me, it was easy – I’m married to a man five years older than me. The blow of my aging milestones are always softened because David paves the way for me – he shoots through them kicking and screaming so I can glide into them gracefully knowing that it’s not the end of the world (until I look in the mirror and realize that I don’t quite match up to the image I have of myself in my mind!).
It’s an American coming-of-a-certain-age rite of passage. You turn fifty and you join AARP, right?
For me, it was easy – I’m married to a man five years older than me.
The blow of my aging milestones are always softened because David clears the way for me – he crashes through them kicking and screaming so I can glide into them gracefully knowing that it’s not the end of the world (until I look in the mirror and realize that I don’t quite match up to the image I have of myself in my mind!).
Riding on David’s coattails, I’ve been carrying an AARP card in my wallet for over five years now.
Yet I have never whipped it out for a discount. Periodically I’ll remember to ask at a movie theater and ALWAYS make sure it’s David who proves he’s a member by showing his card. Usually I simultaneously mock him for being an old guy – if you can’t laugh at your husband, who can you laugh at?
Humor begins at home and, with the kids grown, David gets to be the butt of all of my jokes – and vice-versa.
Me being all techie – live-blogging in The Galapagos Islands.
When I recently became a member on my own merits, I started paying a bit more attention.
Because I’m a tech-savvy, heavy-travelin’, newly-certified old gal, I quickly discovered that Expedia has amazing discounts for AARP members. We now book our plane tickets almost exclusively using their site. I always cross-check with other discount providers and, because Expedia waives booking fees for members, the prices rock.
But that was the extent of my participation with AARP.
Watch out Atlanta! The Rooming Boomers and The GypsyNesters!
Until last weekend when we were invited to check out the Life@50+ Expo in Atlanta with a great group of Boomer Bloggers.
Honestly, when the initial e-mail came in, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Whipping out my card for discounts is one thing (not that I’ve done it yet), but now I was being asked to jump in with both feet. But when I found out that our buddies The Roaming Boomers and Donna Hull were going to be there – we had to accept the invite.
A Volunteer Explosion
James “JB” Brown, Pepper Schwartz and Dan Marino kick it off!
I loved this – members gathered together for a pep rally of sorts with AARP Ambassadors Dan Marino, James “JB” Brown – and others – before storming Atlanta by volunteering at senior homes, Boys and Girls’ Clubs, learning centers, urban forests and food banks.
David, the Atlanta Falcon’s Jessie Tuggle, and 100’s of volunteers
create hygiene bags for Clean the World
We chose to help put together hygiene kits for Clean The World, who collect and recycle soap and shampoo products discarded by hotels and distribute them to impoverished people worldwide to help prevent millions of hygiene-related illnesses. To date, Clean the World has put over 11 million soap bars and 325,000 pounds of shampoo and conditioner back in use, simultaneously eliminating over 750 tons of waste.
A great way to start the day!
Amazing work they do.
We also found out about Create The Good, a non-profit that pairs members up with volunteer opportunities based on their life experiences, skills and passions.
Hitting the Expo Floor
Having never been to an expo like this, I had no idea what to expect. The brightly-lit, highly-charged event was a blast – and the information and freebies flowed like water!
I was especially impressed by the TEK Pavilion, where jam-packed seminars saw highly engaged folks learning about the latest in technology.
There was no stopping me in the AARPDiscounts.com area of the expo – I knew this was my chance to find out how whipping out my card could enhance my miserly ways. When I found out that most of the discount providers have an online presence, and that public card whipping need not be done, my excitement grew exponentially.
I’ve always used 1-800-Flowers because they have a wide variety and, to mix things up, some years I like to send her of their more fanciful offerings.
I could have been getting a 20% discount?! How did I not know this?
And that was just the tip of the bargains iceberg – Geek Squad offers a 30% discount for help with computer meltdowns, UPS Store has 15% discounts, I can get free donuts to dunk in my coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, Live Nation hands out ridiculously cheap concert tickets, Angie’s List offers 45% off membership… Follow AARP Member Advantages on Facebook to keep up with the latest and see our full list of AARP travel discounts we found.
Hangin’ with Celebrities
Schmoozing football guys was not our only opportunity to reach for the stars.
Appearances by Whoopi Goldberg, Tyler Perry, Jane Pauley, Andy Garcia, Martina Navratilova — as well as speaking events with authors, doctors, scholars, faith leaders and filmmakers — were going on all over the place. You couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a celeb!
Speaking of celebs, there were three concerts to attend – a Gospel extravaganza, The Happy Together Dance Party and my fellow new AARP card carrier, Gloria Estefan.
We opted for the Happy Together Tour, featuring The Turtles, Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night and three Garys – Puckett (of Union Gap fame), U.S. Bonds, and Lewis (as in “and the Playboys”).
The sun-drenched charm and dazzling blue seas of the Greek Islands of Delos and Mykonos captivated us beyond our wildest dreams.
Get lost with us in the whitewashed alleys of Mykonos and among the ruins of the birthplace of the sun god Apollo… CONTINUE READING >>
Sun drenched would be an understated description of Delos, which is pretty fitting for the birthplace of Apollo, god of the sun. And even though we aren’t sun worshippers, at least in the bake-our-bodies-on-the-beach sense, this did seem like a place we had to see.
The only way to get to Delos is by taking a small ferry from the nearby island of Mykonos, which worked out great for us since that was one of the ports of call on our Mediterranean cruise aboard the Royal Princess.
The little port town of Mykonos gleamed in whitewashed splendor under the morning sun as we took our tender in from the ship. But, as inviting as it was, it would have to wait until after we paid our homage to more sacred ground.
According to mythology, when the minor goddess Leto became pregnant by Zeus it sat less-than-well with the big guy’s wife, Hera. Mrs. Z decried that Leto would not be allowed to give birth on “terra firma” and figured that solved that.
But the clever Leto swooped in to take advantage of a loophole. At that time the island of Delos was floating freely across the sea, making it terra not-so-firma and eligible for some creative deception.
After Apollo was born, Daddy Zeus proclaimed that the island was important enough to stay in one place so he secured it to the ocean floor.
Because of this status, the island became a place for pilgrimages to pay tribute to its native son, his sister Artemis, and their mother.
Temples were erected in their honor and a town sprung up, becoming quite the hotspot for the Greek elite. Elaborate houses, agoras, and a theater soon followed.
As the ferry from Mykonos pulled up to the dock all we could see on the barren landscape were a few lonely walls, columns, and a bunch of stones strewn about.
Unfortunately looting took a heavy toll on the temples and palaces. Most of the marble used in their construction was hauled off before modern archaeologists discovered the ruins.
But once we made our way up the sunbaked path it became clear that there was still plenty to see here. We could visualize some of the homes, named for the artwork that survived the centuries.
The opulence wasn’t too hard to imagine at The House of Cleopatra (no, not that Cleopatra) where statues of Cleo and her husband flank the door, or The House of the Dolphins and The House of Dionysus with their mosaic tile floors.
All of these dwellings had fresh water access supplied by cisterns underneath, along with sewer systems to carry off the waste.
These types of innovations weren’t found in most of the world for over a thousand years.
From the residential area we headed back down the hill to what was once the main drag of Delos, the Sacred Way.
The road runs along the shore, from the bay to the far end of the town, passing many of the main temples along the way.
There is very little left to see of these once great monuments, but several inscriptions have survived, giving researchers a pretty good idea of which gods each was dedicated to.
In the center of it all a huge open space marks where the agora, or market place, once thrived.
Delos didn’t have natural resources to provide for itself, so almost everything had to be imported and then sold at the early version of a shopping center.
At the far end of the Sacred Way we came upon Delos’ most famous denizens, a pride of marble lions dedicated to Apollo by people from the nearby island of Naxos around 600 BC.
The Terrace of the Lions originally had at least a dozen of the big cats, but several have been carted off over the years so only five remain.
Just as there is only one way on to Delos, there is also only one way off… and the last boat back to Mykonos was leaving in a few minutes.
So unless we wanted to spend the night among the ancient Greek gods we had to make like Hermes and put some wings on our shoes.
Back on Mykonos we still had a couple hours until Royal Princess sailed, giving us the opportunity to do a quick exploration of the town.
Just a few steps from the ferry dock, Panagia Paraportianí is the oldest church on the island. Construction started in 1425, but work continued for two hundred years as four chapels were combined into the one church.
We passed another church as we entered the main part of town, one of the many tiny chapels that commonly dot the coasts of the Greek Isles dedicated to fishermen and all those who go out to sea.
Another thing we noticed was that there is probably a huge demand for villas to rent in Mykonos, because there were so many of them on the island which was kind of interesting.
From our vantage point on the water the little city is almost blindingly white, with just a few blue and maroon rooftops to break the continuity.
We wandered into the maze of narrow winding streets leading up from the harbor and seemed to be on an endless trail, since almost all of the houses are connected to each other.
It struck us as a topless tunnel with long whitewashed walls, until we began noticing that miniature gardens and colorful details distinguish the homes from one another.
The tiny alleys turn every which way, and it would have been incredibly easy to get hopelessly lost if not for the basic plan that downhill meant toward the water.
Feeling reasonably secure that we would be able to find our way back to the ship, we decided to go a little farther, then take a break at a neighborhood watering hole for some Hellenistic snacks, a goblet of the nectar of the gods, and a bit of mythology from A to Z.
We figured the scarlet letter on our mugs stood for Alpha, first among beers.
Then we thought maybe the A is for Athens, home of Zeus, Mount Olympus, and the Athenian Brewery. Better yet, today it should be for Apollo, but no matter which, the golden potion had restored our strength and vigor.
Perhaps not to the level of Zeus, who defeated the Titans for supernatural superiority right here on Mykonos before settling in Athens, but it did a fine job of taming Apollo’s parching rays.
Turned out we got a bit of a show with our two drink minimum too, as a bit of a brew-ha-ha broke out between waitress and boyfriend… or maybe we just didn’t understand how Greeks express their affection.
Either way it was done at a volume that the gods up on Mount Olympus could have heard.
With the dust settled, both in our throats and between the staff, we didn’t need any voices from on-high to tell us it was time to make tracks down the sloping streets.
A blast of the ship’s horn was more than enough of a sign.
While our explorations may not require nearly the mettle of a bunch of bearded, red-headed, horned-helmet-wearing brutes setting out across The North Sea in an open boat; navigating a house on wheels over barren, weather beaten roads up to the very top of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula did require a certain measure of… CONTINUE READING >>
While our explorations may not require nearly the mettle of a bunch of bearded, red-headed, horned-helmet-wearing brutes setting out across The North Sea in an open boat; navigating a house on wheels over barren, weather beaten roads up to the very top of Newfoundland‘s Great Northern Peninsula did require a certain measure of moxie.
View of the Viking landing site from the Visitor Center.
The wild ride left us arriving a little late at the landing site of those ancient intrepid Norse explorers, but ultimately that worked in our favor. The L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site was about to close, which virtually gave us the place all to ourselves.
But we had to hurry so as not to miss the costumed reenactors, so we gave the Visitor Center a quick run through, snapping away with our trusty camera for later perusal, and headed down to the reconstructed Viking Village.
We made it just in time to catch them before they called it a day. They showed us the highlights of the long house, where the band of Vikings lived, pointing out the kitchen, chieftain’s quarters, and sleeping area.
The entire building and contents have been painstakingly reproduced, using archeological sites in Iceland and Greenland as guides.
Watch:Meet the real live Vikings of L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site
This ties into the belief that the sailors who landed here came from those islands.
According to the Norse Sagas, passed down from centuries ago, Eric The Red, and later his son Lief, told tales of lands to the west that they had discovered in their journeys, including one they called Vinland.
For years modern archaeologist speculated on the location of this fabled land, most hypothesized that the Vikings had been to Baffin Island and in northern Labrador, but believed those to be the other lands mentioned in the stories, Helluland and Markland.
Because of the name Vinland, they speculated that it must be somewhat to the south, where vines could grow. More recently some theorize that the “vin” in Vinland might be better translated as meadow or pasture.
When, in 1960, Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad found the remains of a Norse settlement on the shore of Epaves Bay on the northern tip of Newfoundland, it fit the meadow theory precisely.
If this wasn’t Vinland, at least it proved that the Vikings had been to North America.
One of the keys to unlocking the mystery of the Vikings landing here some five hundred years before Columbus was the discovery of iron nails and buckles.
The native Eskimo people did not use iron at that time, so clearly someone else had been here. This was proved beyond a doubt when the remains of a forge and furnace used to smelt and work the iron were uncovered.
Our Viking guide demonstrated the technique, and showed us how the metal was extracted from the peat along the banks of the creeks. The iron content was obvious, the water runs a rusty red color.
Thanking our Norse guides so they could clock out for the day, we walked over to the unrestored foundations of several other buildings.
This was thought to be more of a supply and trading outpost than a permanent settlement, but remnants of
at least nine large dwellings and many other smaller ones have been found, proving the site was active for some time.
But our time had run out, plus we were about as hungry as a Viking, so we stopped at the nearby The Norseman Restaurant.
However, we seriously doubt Lief and his crew ever ate anything remotely as nice as our dinner, and they certainly never had an iceberg vodka martini or beer.
Yes, up here they make vodka and beer out of melted icebergs.
Speaking of icebergs, as we left the Viking village we got our first ever real life look at an iceberg, in fact there were several of them floating around in Hay Cove.
We got a great view even though it was nearly bed time, good thing the summer sun stays up until all hours of the night this far north.
Our late night look at the bergs had us itching to get a closer encounter, so the next morning we hightailed it down to St. Anthony and jumped aboard a boat for a whale and iceberg tour.
Things seemed fine as we left the harbor, but before we got to where the whales were hanging out, the weather took a nasty turn.
Our three hour tour had us humming “If not for the courage of the fearless crew, The Minnow would be lost…” as we crammed into the wheelhouse of the tiny ship (that was being tossed) along with two dozen other passengers.
One humpback flipper was spotted for a fleeting moment, but photos were impossible in the driving rain.
The Skipper knew a lost cause when he saw one and set sail for the safer waters of a sheltered cove.
The storm relented just in time for us to go out on the deck and get right next to a floating chunk of polar ice.
Soaked and chilled, we felt a little like icebergs ourselves, but we were too thrilled to care.
Watch:We go hunting for icebergs – and like all good hunters – we eat our prey!
Back on shore, we stopped in to learn about Dr. Wilfred Grenfell at the Grenfell Interpretation Centre just up from the dock.
In 1892, Dr. Grenfell came from London to Labrador on a charity mission to help the fishermen. What he found was a woeful lack of medical services, not only for the fishermen, but also the native population.
He began to address the needs by traveling to remote areas to provide treatment, often making his house calls by dogsled.
Over the next forty-five years the good doctor raised funds and supervised construction of hospitals and clinics in both Newfoundland and Labrador, all the while continuing his hands-on care.
Grenfell’s hospitalThe rotunda of the “new” hospital. Jordi Bonet’s murals depict those who have carried on Grenfell’s mission.
He chose St. Anthony as the site of his headquarters and built his main hospital, an orphanage, and also his home in the town.
This helped to make the fishing village into the hub of northern Newfoundland, meeting the medical needs of the entire region.
In fact the original hospital now stands in the shadow of a new state-of-the-art modern facility that serves as the culmination of doctor Grenfell’s vision.
With the skies clearing, we walked up the hill to The Grenfell House, which now serves as a museum.
The entire home was open to walk through, so we really got a feel for life in the early nineteen hundreds, as well as a look at many of the doctor’s instruments.
With so much more of Newfoundland left to see, the time had come to set back out onto that lonesome road known up here as The Viking Trail.
By the time we pulled into the Tuckamore Lodge in the tiny town of Main Brook the rain had made a return, but not enough to keep us from checking out the incredible surroundings.
The Tuckamore is tucked tightly between a picturesque pond off The Salmon River and an arm of Hare Bay in The North Atlantic.
The innkeeper, Barb Genge, showed us around and then we joined several other guests in the main room.
As we got to know everyone we found that most were returning visitors, some have been coming up to the lodge for many years. It has become like a family summer home.
After a great meal and lots of conversation, we were ready to hit the hay. Strolling back to our room, a group just coming in waved and said that it was a good thing we were safely in and off the road because there were moose all over the highway.
Nice try, like we were going to fall for that old myth.
There is something quintessentially southern about the Louisiana bayou country known as Acadiana, so it seemed strange that we would go north of the U. S. border to discover its roots and origins.
The Cajuns’ ancestry traces directly back to Canada’s Maritime Provinces, so there was no better place to begin our investigation than in Nova Scotia at the Grand-Pré National Historic Site. It was along this coast on The Bay of Fundy that the first French settlers to come to the new world arrived in 1605, before… CONTINUE READING >>
Thanks to Road Scholar for providing this lifelong learning adventure through the Canadian Maritimes! As always, all opinions are our own.
Cajun musicians in Louisiana
Since our first trip to South Louisiana, over two decades ago, we have been enamored with Cajun culture.
We have returned numerous times to enjoy the food, music, landscape, and people of this unique region. They work hard, play hard, and stay deeply connected with family, friends, the land and their history.
There is something quintessentially southern about the Louisiana bayou country known as Acadiana, so it seemed strange that we would go north of the U. S. border to discover its roots and origins.
The Cajuns’ ancestry traces directly back to Canada‘s Maritime Provinces, so there was no better place to begin our investigation than in Nova Scotia at the Grand-Pré National Historic Site. It was along this coast on The Bay of Fundy that the first French settlers to come to the new world arrived in 1605, before any arrived from England.
Through the 1600s the colony became known as Acadia, or Acadie in French, and grew to cover all of Nova Scotia, as well as parts of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
The name is thought to stem from one of the earliest maps of North America, when explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano labeled the entire Atlantic coast from Virginia northward as Arcadia.
The theory is that the R was dropped at some point, or possibly the name is from Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec City and New France in 1608, and called the coastal French territories La Cadie.
As we entered the Visitor Center we noticed a display demonstrating how these colonists reclaimed the salt water marshes, rather than clearing the forests. By building an ingenious series of dykes and canals they converted the once useless swamps into fertile farmland.
More than anything it was that skill that set the Acadians apart from the other French settlers that soon followed and populated Quebec.
Though they were joined by language and ancestral homeland, they remained distinctly different, and do to this day.
The Center overlooks a vast plain of this reclaimed land, and as we walked the impeccably maintained grounds of the Grand-Pré National Historic Site, we came to understand the significance of this area and the events that took place here.
It’s no wonder Henry Wadsworth Longfellow chose this as the setting for his epic poem Evangeline.
The story, while fictitious, describes the plight of the Acadians in intense, personal terms, through the eyes of lovers, Evangeline and Gabriel, who were torn apart by circumstances beyond their control.
The poem came to be regarded as a classic, and because of it Grand-Pré has become central to Acadian and Cajun legend and lore.
Both the author, and his heroine Evangeline, are honored with statues at the Historic Site.
The tale takes place at the culmination of years of conflict between the English and Acadians after British control of the colony began in 1710.
Many of the Acadians were not content to accept foreign rule, most simply desired to remain neutral in the ongoing hostilities between Britain and the rest of New France.
Some others engaged in guerrilla warfare against the English.
By the mid-1700s all were required to sign an oath of allegiance as England began to dominate, and demand loyalty to the crown from the vanquished Acadians.
But many refused, arguing that they wished to stay out of the struggle for control of The New World.
Some fled into the wilderness areas of Cape Breton and New Brunswick, while others escaped to Quebec, but thousands were forced to leave Acadia in what became known as Le Grand Dérangement, the Great Upheaval, or Great Expulsion.
The Monument at Port-la-Joye depicting the deportations.
The deportations took place over several years, and from a number of locations, but Longfellow likely chose Grand-Pré as the site to be immortalized since it was the first place where thousands of Acadians had their possessions confiscated, their homes and farms burned, and were shipped south to the American colonies.
The refugees were not welcome there either, so they were sent away and scattered across the globe, winding up in Europe, Haiti, The Falklands, Saint Pierre and Mequelon, and Guyana.
Later more Acadians were deported from all across Acadie and sent directly to Europe, with as many as half dying on the voyages.
We had the chance to visit and learn about several of these other sites in our travels throughout The Maritimes, including Port-la-Joye on Prince Edward Island, the Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, and Fort Beauséjour near Grand-Pré.
After years of exile in foreign lands, some Acadians managed to assimilate into their new surroundings, some found their way back to Canada, and many ended up migrating to Louisiana.
That is where the story of Evangeline continued, as the lovers arrived there separately, unbeknownst to each other. They spend the rest of their lives searching across America for one another, with their paths coming agonizingly close, but never crossing until too late.
Lighthouse on Port-la-Joye, Prince Edward Island. Port-la-Joye was the capital of the island when it was under French control and called Île Saint-Jean.
The Tantramar Marshes takes its name from the Acadian French word tintamarre, meaning din or racket, in reference to the noisy flocks of birds living in the reclaimed swamp land that is now a National Wildlife Area and bird sanctuary.
Even though it was written one hundred years later, Longfellow’s masterpiece served to enlighten the world to the tragedy of Le Grand Dérangement, but perhaps more than anything it helped connect the Cajuns to their Acadian roots.
A fascinating bridge that spans a continent from south to north.
