Me, Pimms, and the Baroness

Funny story about the first time I was introduced to Pimms (a fruity gin-based drink). Back in the 90s when I was living in Virginia, I was a tenor drummer in a bagpipe band. We were commissioned to play at the British Admiral’s house for a garden party in honour of the Queen’s birthday. I was told that the admiral was knighted so he was Sir Admiral but also that his wife was a Baroness in her own right. I believe at the time he was the head of the NATO command on base.

During the winter and for special occasions we wore full highland dress — feather bonnets, plaid, jacket, spats, and all, so I was decked out.

After we played the Admiral invited us to stay and enjoy the party which I did. I found it a bit boring, a lot of ladies with hats drinking white wine type of party, so I wandered around and soon found the British squids in the kitchen. I did my usual story … Canadian in US Navy, but family was all Royal Navy … and “Bob’s you uncle” I was one of them. They said to forget about the white wine and have some Pimms with champagne. Well for anyone who knows me, I can’t say no to champagne!  The thing about Pimms though is it sneaks up on you because it doesn’t really taste like alcohol (sort of like those Jamaican rum drinks).

After a few, I was quite toasted and decided to wander around outside again. I didn’t really talk to anyone, didn’t trust myself, but I noticed there were a few Siamese cats in the yard and tried to pet one, but they were skittish. After a few minutes, I realized I had to use the washroom, so I went in the house and asked for directions.

Someone told me the washroom was at the top of the stairs, a beautiful sweeping curved stairs right out of Gone with the Wind. I must explain here that the admiral lived on “Admiral Row” on base. These houses were part of the 1907 Jamestown Exposition. (Each home represented the architecture of each state that contributed funding during the event.) After the establishment of Naval Station Norfolk, the homes were eventually converted to houses for flag officers. They are beautiful and very large houses. As I was going up the stairs, I noticed it was lined with pictures and etchings of donkeys. Rather odd I thought.

A few minutes later I’m outside again and I started talking to this older, rather dignified-looking lady. Now, remember, I’m still toasted at this point. During the chitchat, she mentioned that she had donkeys back home in England, to which I stupidly replied “oh, is this your house?” Then I said “So the cats are yours, I tried to pet one but they were skittish.” I must point out that I think she was a little lit herself, but in a polite English way. She was like “Oh yes, you must meet one” and proceeded to take me upstairs to her bedroom because her favourite cat always hid under the bed when strangers were around. Try as she might, the silly thing would not come out when she called so she asked me to help.

So that’s how I ended up, drunk, in full Scottish regalia, prone under a baroness’s bed trying to coax a cat out from under the bed. 

The Deafening Silence

 It’s 3 a.m. and I’m wide awake. Probably the steroids the doctor put me on for my post-COVID cough. I was lying in bed and naturally, my mind went to Cindy. It’s been 56 days since I lost my best friend…but who is counting.

Grief is a funny thing; you react differently each time.

My parents passed away when I was a young adult, my dad when I was 19, and my mum when I was 26. I mourned both differently. I was much calmer when my father passed away for many reasons. For one, I had been having dreams and predicted his death. It happened almost exactly how I dreamed it. At the time I was living on the other side of the country and I had a guilty conscious because I was mad at him over stupid 19-year-old things and wasn’t speaking to him. The day before he died, I had a phone conversation with him about the boat he had bought. I just knew. He died the way a Newfoundlander wanted to go—he had a massive heart attack on the deck of his boat, his favourite ballcap on, and a beer in his hand. I was sad but not heartbroken. I also knew that he was getting COPD and wasn’t going to have a good quality of life. He was only 62.

My mother was different. She passed away from cancer when I was 26. I was lucky, the Navy sent me home on a compassionate transfer so I could take care of her for the last two months of her life. This was not a sudden death and I was very much in denial. For one, she was the healthiest cancer patient I’d ever seen up until the end. She wasn’t gaunt or looked like she was wasting away. She just quickly let go the day my siblings flew down from Canada and all her children were finally together in the hospital room. She was only 61.

I was utterly lost and Cindy came to my rescue. I had to go back to my command in Connecticut and she decided she was going to move up there with me. She sold her condo and came north.

I was a wreck though because I really hadn’t come to terms with losing mum. I remember the guilty feeling the first time I laughed over something. The pain would just overwhelm me. I felt like an orphan. But I had to work, and I was driving boats, a dangerous job if you don’t pay attention. So, I held everything in. Then one of my petty officers came to me because her mother had cancer and she was overwhelmed. In consoling her my pain came to the forefront and I started having medical issues due to the stress of that and the horrid department I was in. I still tear up when something important happens in my life and I can’t call my mother.

With Cindy it’s different. The Grief is a blanket. Nothing that interferes with my life like with mum, but just something that’s in the background…always. I don’t have the gut-wrenching sobbing I had with mum, it’s a little tear that leaks out of the corner of my eyes when I see the flamingo glasses she bought, the flamingo fabric I bought to make her a pair of Bermuda shorts when she was finished with her treatment, the shells on my dresser that we collected so many years ago, the “friends” bracelet I wear, or the puzzle I bought and hadn’t mailed yet. Putting that puzzle together with my husband was very soothing.

I can’t explain the mind-numbing quietness I feel. We communicated for 52 years via letters, phone calls, and later almost daily text messages. And now there is
deafening silence. Her last text to me was “I love you too.”

I bought this soon after she passed away. It seemed appropriate, she loved puzzles and I have a hole in my heart. 

What You Think About at 4 a.m.

 My cat and my bladder decided that I needed to be awake at 4 a.m. this morning. Naturally, I couldn’t go back to sleep and just laid there … thinking, and a long-lost memory popped into my head. A tragedy that I had forgotten about until now.

I was around 11 and was living with my guardians, Aunt Verta & Uncle Eddie. We were on a family trip to upstate New York, somewhere around Watertown, I think. A relative of Uncle Eddie had a farm there and we went for a visit during the summer. I can’t remember how long we were there; in a children’s mind, it seemed like the whole summer but was probably more like a week.

I remember that we took the 1,000 Island bridge across and naturally had to stop at the Never Never Land on Hill Island. The entrance was a bunch of books with Humpty Dumpty sitting on top (I had to look this up, I did remember Humpty Dumpty) 

It was a pretty lame place but for kids rather fun. There were large nursery rhyme statues throughout the park, some even scary like the witch from Hansel & Gretel and the big bad wolf. That was it but at the time it was new and exciting. The only thing that exists there now is the observation tower which we did not go up.

We had such a fun time at the farm. GH and I fed the cows and did other farm chores. We got to see the cows milked, rode on the tractor, and baled hay. To us, these were fun things to do, probably not so much for the cousins who had to do it every day. I can't remember if there were other children there but I'm assuming there were. 

There was also a lake there and we spent a lot of time fishing. I remember Uncle Eddie rowing us out on the lake and all I could catch were lake sunfish or “sunnies” as they were called. They were little fish full of bones and usually, you threw them back because they weren’t worth the work to eat. But after catching not but sunnies I was determined to eat one. So, I cleaned it and we fried it up. There wasn’t a lot of meat and a lot of bones but it was a good fish, very buttery tasting.

It was a great vacation until tragedy struck, and this is the part that I had obviously buried down deep until this morning. I remember a toddler drowned in the lake. The rescuers had brought his body up and were trying to revive him to no avail. The thing I remember the most was how blue he was. We were standing far away and I’m assuming that we were hustled away after that by the adults, but I remember.

Probably why I couldn’t go back to sleep.


 

My Best Friend Cindy

Have you ever seen the movie Beaches? Well, that’s the story of Cindy and me. Only Cindy was the Bette Midler character CC Bloom, the crazy one, she wasn’t supposed to be the one who died. 

Cindy and I met in grade six at Palm Beach Elementary and we bonded immediately. I had just moved down from Canada and was lonely. We had the same name, both were social outcasts at the school, we had a love of tennis, and we lived near each other. That school was brutal but we had each other. We had such a fun time; we’d sneak out at night and raid all the hotel pools near my house. We would play Monopoly for hours. We’d also sneak onto the Breakers Hotel beach and pretend we were staying there and get free sodas and food. Once, we were down at the beach around midnight having a BBQ and were discovered by a cop who sent us home. We were so scared! One Halloween we decided to trick or treat up in the north end of Palm Beach where all the mansions were. No one had candy so they gave us money, and we made out like bandits!   

Then I moved back up to Canada for a year. We corresponded by mail that whole time, keeping in touch with postcards and letters. Just like in the movie: CC and Hillary write to each other for years.

Then I came back to Palm Beach but she had moved to Rivera Beach, about 10 miles away, a long distance for 12-year-olds. We used to watch Here Come the Brides on TV every week; only talking during the commercial and sighing over Bobby Sherman. I found out later that it was a long-distance call but my mother never said a word. She thought of Cindy as another daughter. (We still had a crush on Bobby Sherman, one of my presents to her a few years back was a signed photo of him.)

We still saw each other on the weekends, often I would ride my bike to her house, a trip that would last over an hour, and my mother would pick me up on Sundays. You could do stuff like this back in the 70s. One of the best memories from that time period was when my mother took us to an elegant dinner the British Club was having for the sailors of the HMS Phoebe. Cindy and I were in evening attire and were the only females under 50. Just us and a ship full of sailors. Two of them asked my mum permission to walk us across the street to go bowling. We were in love! What a night. We were so heartbroken when we rode our bikes to the pier a few days later and the Phoebe was gone.

After that, I again went back to Canada for high school and didn’t come back to Florida until I was 20. Except for a visit when I was 18 with my roommate Cyndi Edwards. Yes, three Cindys. Reminds me of a funny story. We went to what they called a "pickup bar" you went there before you went to the disco and hopefully met a dance partner. There was this drunk guy trying to pick us up. He asked our names and we answered, Cindy, Cyndi & Cynde. He was so confused because two were blonde, but one blonde and the brunette had the same glasses. The next day we went to Disney World and confused the lady putting the names on the back of the mouse ears!   

Cindy, Cynde & Cyndi

It was funny that we had the same glasses but not unusual, it wasn't the first time. We tended to get the same cars by accident. We both had Geo Metros, Toyotas, Ford F150s, etc.

Again, we wrote and called each other regularly until I came back in 1979. By this time, she was in Palm Beach Gardens and I was in Boca Raton. I didn’t have a car at the time so my stepfather would drop me off at my grandmother’s house in West Palm Beach and Cindy would meet me there. She would spend time visiting my Nana Goossens (she loved my French Nana) and then we would spend the weekend at her place. Soon I got a car so I spent more weekends at her place, mostly being nursed through a bad off-and-on-again relationship. She had a lot of patience with me in those days. That was the disco era and we would go out dancing almost every weekend. Once, we were at our favorite disco and she disappeared, so I went looking for her. She had crashed a stag party in a private room!

I shouldn’t tell this story but it was a different time. One night after partying at the said disco we drove to her place (it was a block away) but then decided to go out again. We shouldn’t have been driving, we were both wasted. Just outside her condo she missed the turn and plowed into a stop sign. Luckily two guys were nearby and got us back on the road and we drove back home. She couldn’t find her house keys, so we climbed up the balcony and crashed in her room, fully clothed on our backs. Her mom came home and was livid and yelled “what happened” to which we both lifted up our heads and said, “we broke the car” and passed out.

After that our lives again went in different directions when I joined the Navy in 1983 and we were back to letter writing.

In 1985 I was stationed in Connecticut when I got the dreaded call that my mother was terminally ill with cancer. I was lucky that the Navy sent me home to take care of her. During the three months that I was home, Cindy was constantly by my side. When I had to go back to Connecticut, she decided to sell her condo and move up with me. At the time I was married but he was stationed in upstate New York and I saw him on the weekends. Her father and grandmother lived nearby so she wanted to spend some time with them. We drove up the coast in two cars, with her dog and connected through CB radios.

What were we thinking with those hairstyles??

We were roommates until I got off active duty in 1987. That was such a fun time, the two of us in a little cottage I rented outside the base. She was the manager of the Burger King on base. She had this insane dog, Alex and we had two cats, her Siamese, and my grey cat. She loved her Siamese cats. Alex used to bust out of the windows when we were at work. Finally, our neighbor babysat him during the day. 

She caused a funny scandal for me at the time. I was the only female working in the rigger’s loft and one of my friends was a guy named Mike. Everyone knew I had a roommate but I hadn’t mentioned her name. Mike met her and took a shine to her and they started going out. So everyone thought that Mike and I were having an affair because he would talk about being at my place, my cooking, his girlfriend Cindy, etc. We worked in a shop on the lower base where the subs were so Cindy wasn’t allowed down there because she was a civilian. Mike and I realized what was happening and thought it was rather funny. One night we had a department get-together at a local bar, Mike, Cindy and I walked in and we introduced her to everyone. You could see all the lightbulbs going off over their heads. It was rather funny.

She was allowed on the lower base once. We had a hurricane and I had to stay on duty and help protect the boats on our piers. I got permission for her to be with us so she wasn’t home alone. We didn’t have power for three days so we took showers in our building. We were so glad when we got home and saw a light on, but we weren’t so glad to discover that our electric water pump was working and we forgot to turn off the sink faucet. Water was everywhere.

Once we were watching a movie about Armageddon and people surviving a nuclear war. One of the scenes showed nuclear warheads coming up from the ground in the Midwest. Cindy said, “Man it must be terrible having warhead in your backyard.” It didn’t dawn on her that we did have nuclear warheads in our backyard. We lived right outside the base and the weapons bunkers for the subs were on the other side of our fence. She found that a little disturbing.

We missed Florida so the first winter we put flamingos in the front yard. That started a standing joke of us sending each other items with flamingos on them. (I have some flamingo fabric here that I was going to make into a pair of shorts for her to wear when she was better.)

One time I had concert tickets for us to see The Band. She was mucking out at the stables and forgot. She got home in time but didn’t have enough time to change. People around us kept sniffing their noses at her horse manure smell — I laughed because it was my revenge for her being late.   

I loved that little cottage. It was very tiny, the living room was the width of our little loveseat and had enough depth for a little hutch and bookshelf where the TV was. I had a little desk next to the bookshelf where my sewing machine was. We had insulated the outside patio and she had a waterbed in there to keep her warm. There was a window over the kitchen sink into the patio that we kept open so she would get some heat from the furnace. She still had to walk outside from the patio through the front door to get into the cottage which was awkward in the snow. It was cozy.

Fast forward to our 30s. Both of us were married and she has three small children. One day I received a phone call from her husband Steve, Cindy had collapsed and she is having her lung removed. There was a cancerous tumor in her bronchial tube that caused her lung to collapse. She said it was actually a blessing because if the tumor hadn’t been there and collapsed her lung, she would not have known she had cancer until it was too late. This was her second bout with cancer, she had skin cancer in her early 20s. We did spend a lot of time at the beach in our youth.

Like a scene out of Beaches, I called my (now ex) husband and told him I was leaving for Florida now and drove straight through from Virginia. I joked that our roles had been reversed because CC had driven pell-mell to be at Hillary’s side.

Over the years we’ve traveled together. We took a trip up the California coast by train to Hearst Castle; spent the night on the Queen Mary; visited our favorite places on Earth: Disney World and Disneyland, many times. We’d get matching mouse ears — we were kids again there. I told her the next time we would go to Disney we’d rent scooters and zip around from ride to ride. We loved, loved, loved Epcot. We would start in Canada and basically drink our way around the lake. Beer in England, sake in Japan, spiked coffee in France, and then margaritas in Mexico. We’d see the belly-dancing show in Morocco and then backtrack to France for dessert. The last time we were at Epcot one of the rides made me so sick, I mean green-in-the-face sick, which was odd because I don’t get motion sickness. She stood in line and got me some tums which didn’t work. She was so concerned for me, and kept sitting me down on the bench until the waves of nausea passed. Then suddenly I ran into the washroom and upchucked so badly, I mean, how did that much fluid come out of my body upchuck? After that I was fine and the drinking commenced! We always made sure that if it rained, we would head to the pub in England!

Our last trip at Epcot

We took cruises together, got drunk in Cabo, and saw the sites in Havana, Cuba. She flew out once to San Diego to go to a Jimmy Buffett concert with me. Best concert ever!

Jimmy Buffet concert

We had planned on another trip when the pandemic hit. That Cuba cruise would be the last time I would see her in person. 

After a family reunion in Quebec City, she flew up and we toured around Quebec and visited family in Montreal on our way to my hometown of Brockville. In all the years we were together she had never seen that side of my life except through letters. She fell in love with Brockville. We joked that when we were old and grey and widowed (because statistically, women outlive men) we would live together again and become snowbirds between Brockville and Florida. 

Cabo, Mexico

Quebec City, Canada

Havana, Cuba

We had a joke that the first one to get married got a case of champagne, and she sent me a case. She was there for me when I got divorced. She was there for me when I got remarried and came out to meet Bruce. When I was griping about the price of mangos in California, she sent me a box. She was always there for me. It's going to be so strange to not text or call her weekly. 

Her last text to me was “I love you” and an emoji of a cat. That’s Cindy, my best friend.

 

 

It's Hard Owning Amimals

UPDATE: Although Maggie was doing well with chemo treatment. She finally decided enough was enough. She developed a fever and refused to eat. So on Aug 27 she went over the rainbow. 

It was only five months ago that we lost our little Lexi, and now it's happening again. 

My beloved cat Maggie May has cancer. I knew something was wrong as she looked like she was losing weight so I took her in for test. 

She had been out of sorts since Lexi passed away; she's been anxious and prone to crying out in the night. I thought it was her missing Lexi because she would heartbreakingly rub up against Lexi box that was on the bottom shelf. How she knew Lexi's ashes were in that box I'll never know. She didn't act like this when Semper passed away. 

Her bloodwork was great except they showed that she had a hyperactive thyroid, not unusual in older cats, but went to explain her anxiety. She actually weighed the same but she lost muscle mass. 

So I thought okay, we can deal with this and she can live a long and productive life. I was wrong. 

She started to lose weight and looked gaunt. So back to the doctor and this time they did an x-ray and there was something in her intestines. A few years back she was having severe chronic constipation but once I put her on Metamucil it was stabilized. So next they did an ultrasound and it appears that she has a lymphoma. 

The doctors felt that it was treatable though and, thankfully, I have great insurance on her, so we're going to try. 

Yeah, try finding an oncologist. I'm scheduled for an appointment on August 17 and am on a waiting list. I'm also waiting to hear from one down in San Diego.

The waiting game is painful. Maggie is eating, not that well, and has lost almost 2 pounds. I've never been so thankful that she was on the chunky side so she has a bit of wiggle room. But she looks so skinny and gaunt. 

For one her feisty attitude is coming in handy because the vet felt she had a fighting spirit. So hopefully I'll be able to get her in soon before she's too weak to get treatment. 

Owning pets sucks sometimes but they give you so much love. I'm not ready to give up on my crooked-eared warrior queen as long as she has some fight in her. 

Little Lexi

This is a sad week for us, on Friday we are putting our sweet dog Lexi to sleep. We found out that she has heart disease and a large tumor in her spleen. We don't know if the tumor is cancerous, but it doesn't matter, at age 13 and with heart disease she wouldn't survive the surgery. She was on borrowed time as it was, six months ago she was diagnosed with Cushing’s Disease. But once she was on the meds for that she has been acting like a puppy until a few days ago when she suddenly lost it. I thought she had a stroke because she couldn’t walk. My stepsons had to carry her into the vet’s office.

So, I called this morning to have a vet come to the house to do the deed on Friday at 1:30 p.m.

At the time it seemed a wise decision to wait until Friday, so hubby has the weekend to recuperate before going back to work. At the time.... but today, Monday, it doesn't seem like a wise decision because I will have a week of second-guessing our decision and spending the day crying. I've cried so much today I think I'm dehydrated. And as usual, she's acting like a puppy again. They always do, it's almost as if the know that the pain will soon be over, and they can frolic again over the rainbow bridge. 

At one time we had three dogs and over the years they have passed on. First our sweet Sophie, about the best dog you could get. She was inquisitive and smart...a little too smart. She was our first dog and for a while our only dog. We lost her in 2015 to bone cancer. Then there was Semper, our big, dumb, lover boy. We inherited him from stepson #3. We lost him to leukemia two years ago. Semper was a gentle giant and the sweetest boy you ever met. He was my big boy and Sophie was daddy's girl. 

And then we were down to one, Lexi. She was also a hand-me-down, from stepson #4. When he moved back home Lexi came with him and then when he moved out, she stayed. Mostly because by that time her eyesight was going, and we felt that a move away from her dog buddies wouldn't be beneficial to her wellbeing. 

Truth be told, at first Lexi was not my favourite dog, she was neurotic and hyper. You couldn't pet her because she would squirm and kick her feet out at you. But over the years, probably due to her failing eyesight, she mellowed out and I started warming up to her. She still didn't like being hugged or petted but we came to a mutual understanding. 

For a dog that I didn't care for at first, I'm mourning her upcoming demise much worse than I did with Semper and Sophie. I think it's because for the last two years it's just been her and I together, day in and day out. Especially the last year due to the pandemic I’ve not left the house much. Whatever room I'm in she's there, lying in the middle of the room, in the way. We've grown close. 

My sister says that I'm also mourning the fact that for the first time in 16 years a dog won't be greeting us at the door demanding a cookie. There's a lot of truth in that, but mostly I'm just sad because my constant companion for the last two years isn't going to be there anymore. 

Both my husband and I have different ways coping with grief. He made an urn for Sophie. I make videos.  

Goodbye Little Lexi. 

Havana

We only docked in Havana for one day, but it was so memorable.

I really wanted to just walk around La Habana Vieja (Old Havana) where the ship docked and take photos but with all the US government warnings on the brochures they gave us about mixing with the locals, not going into any military or government facility, etc. I was a bit nervous because at the time I only had a green card. Being the dutiful Canadian I thought that the US government would know exactly where and what I did in Havana and not let me back in. Sounds silly but there were a lot of things going on with immigration at that time that made a lot of green card holders nervous. So, we book two excursions. Later the cruise staff said they have to give everyone the doom and gloom from the US government, but everyone ignores it. Wish I knew and hadn’t been such a baby.

The first excursion was an art tour. The bus took us to two beautifully decorated neighbourhoods, then an art museum, followed by my favorite place to be … the cemetery… and we ended the day at a hotel for drinks.

I'm not sure what the neighbourhoods are called, barrios come to mind but that's more of a Southwest word, but its does fit what they were. They have these co-op neighbourhoods that are highly decorated with tiles on all the walls and buildings.

The first one we went to was called Fusterlandia where the famous artist José Fuster created a magical, dream-like environment by decorating his whole house in vibrant tiles. Eventually his neighbors joined in and the whole area has become a colourful wonderment to the eyes. It has also uplifted the economy of this poor neighbourhood because it is filled with little shops full of kitschy touristy items that I'm afraid to say that I bought...couldn't help myself but I just loved this little photo.

I bought it for two reasons: it's helping the local people, and it looks really cool on my teal bedroom wall. I seriously couldn't take enough photos of the place; my artistic senses were on overdrive with all the colours.

The next barrio was much the same but this one had a cultural centre for local teenagers where they could hang out and learn art, and on the weekends, they had music and dancing. They had a local band playing while we were there, and we got to dance and drink a local punch. I also met this wonderful gentleman who was just hanging out laying on the bench. He told me that he had moved to Cuba from Africa. I bought a great Havana t-shirt from one of the students. It’s become one of my fav shirts now that I’ve lost enough weight to fit into it.

José Fuster's home

Nest stop was The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) a museum dedicated to Cuban art. 

It was a modern art wonder. The Cubans do love their modern art, especially cubism. I was gleefully told by the guild that it was because the Soviets hated it so much. The Soviets tried to foist their revolutionary artwork on the island, and they were having anything to do with it, instead embraced all forms of modern art. I noticed a theme that the Cubans loved thumbing their noses up at the Soviets. 

I got another surprise when I was there, our guide was obviously gay, he wasn't hiding it at all and that's a big change in Cuba. A few years ago I saw a documentary about what it was like to be gay in Cuba and bottom line, you were either deep in the closet or in jail. To see a man that was not hiding his sexuality was quite the surprise. The guilds were telling us that things have loosed quite a lot since Castro died. At the time we were there, his brother Raúl had just stepped down and the communist grip that he started to loosen was getting even more slack (they had just been given access to the internet just before we arrived). 

The guild also said that Castro was well loved, and they went in deep mourning when he died. It’s hard to tell what the truth is and what isn’t since they were catering to the tourist industry and didn’t want to put on a sad face, but I did find the guides quite open when questioned even about communism. Not what you would assume of a communist country—my only reference being from the movies and growing up in Southern Florida where all the exiled Cubans lived. I did notice that at the end of the day there really wasn’t much difference between them and us. Their day to day lives were no different than us, they loved, they laughed, they cried.

Across from the museum was a little outdoor military museum with planes and some tanks. I gestured through the fence to this soldier if I could take his photo and he nodded yes. Now he did fit the communist movie stereotype! After we left the museum, we went to a tobacco shop to buy Cuba cigars. I bought a few for Bruce's BFF who loves a good cigar.

Then on to my favourite place in the whole world—I do love a good cemetery, and this one was outstanding. Unfortunately, we were only there for 30 minutes and it was huge! But I got a few good shots of the massive statuary.

The last place the tour bus took us to was The Hotel Nacional de Cuba, the famous hangout of the Mafia (and seen in the Godfather II movie), movie stars, and general big wigs, for some refreshing mojitos. Cindy and I were feeling a bit of déjà vu as it’s the same look as The Breakers in Palm Beach, our old childhood stomping ground. When we were in grade six, we used to crawl over the huge cement breakers that separated their private beach from the public beach and hang out all day drinking free sodas. No one questions kids.

Then we were off to cruise around the city in antique cars. As much as I enjoyed the excursion, I was having an issue with the pollution. It wasn't bothering me before, when I was walking around the ship’s deck or on our first excursion but being in traffic in a convertible was a bit much. They don't have unleaded gas there so the car fumes were bad. And naturally I didn’t think to bring my inhaler. But the drive around town was quite nice and we got to see a lot of the old buildings and parks.

At the end of the car tour, we stopped off at the same cigar shop. I guess they get a kick back from all the tours!

Many of the infrastructure there is crumbling but there were signs of upgrades, there were cranes in the skyline everywhere we went. The guides told us that when the Soviet Union collapsed, they went through an economic downturn so many of the old colonial buildings were crumbling. But to me they weren't ugly, I thought of them as old colourful grand dames, beautiful in their wrinkles! They hid a lot of the damage by slapping colourful paint on the buildings. It reminded me of Charleston or New Orleans where the buildings are old and not in the best of shape but beautiful in their own way. They were having an upswing from US tourism, but we were one of the last cruise ships before the embargos started up again, so I have no idea what it is like down there now.

There is a China Town in Havana!

 Fun fact: Cuba has two currencies and two stores. To confuse everyone both currencies are called peso. One is the Cuban peso and the other is the Cuban convertible peso often called dollar. I heard that they were fazing out this system by the end of 2021. The two stores are the government store and the black-market store. The government one is cheaper but often is low on supplies, so there are still shortages. 

We saw long lines for buses that were always late, but the Cubans were kind of blasé about it. You’ll find that all over the Caribbean though, no one is in a hurry. We used to call it Island Time. I also saw a Army general on a moped, medals and all, that totally made my retired Navy self laugh out loud!

The other surprise I got was the number of churches there. Another myth about communism blown away. Right across the street from the ship terminal was a beautiful Orthodox church. 

I asked the tour guide how many churches they had and she said quite a few, mostly Catholic but that they also had Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Episcopal, Methodists, Quakers, Lutherans, Greek and Russian Orthodox, Jehovah's Witnesses and, as the guide said, “And even one Mormon church.” I knew they had Episcopal churches down there because around that same time the Episcopal Church of Cuba was readmitted into the US Episcopal Church, but I have no idea why I didn’t think there were other denominations there.

They were immensely proud of their little island country, they have a great sense of humour like their attitude towards the Soviets. Can you image the Soviet party leader tourists that went to Havana, what a cultural difference between the two! That 70s Wendy’s Swimware commercials came to mind when the guild was talking about the Soviets in Cuba. And they are proud of their education and medial systems which are top notch. They have some of the best doctors and labs I was told, and everyone can get a college education. The problem though was that because of the embargos, etc. there weren't many jobs for the highly educated. For example, our car driver was college educated but he made more money driving tourist around in his antique car. And a lot of their doctors can only travel to places like Mexico to work.

So, we got back to the ship and I was coughing up a storm. Oh great. I had to go to the ship's doctor and get some antibiotics and other medication just to survive the trip home to California. I was sick for about a month after that with my usual lung infection. But I did have a good time.

My one day in Jupiter before I caught a flight out, I finally got some grits and shrimp. I was a happy camper.