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PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: DONALD TRUMP
a candid conversation with the decade's most flamboyant billionaire
on deal making, self-promotion, world affairs and how much is enough
《花花公子》专访:唐纳德·特朗普
与十年来最引人注目的亿万富翁的一次坦诚对话
谈交易、自我推销、国际事务以及多少钱才够
Donald Trump sits alone. He hasn't slept in 48 hours.
At six A.M., perched high, in the bronze-coated jewel of his empire, Trump Tower; he is bent over a mammoth Brazilian-rosewood desk, scrutinizing spread sheets.
No insomnia, no growing worries.
"Pressure," lie surmises, sipping an iced Coke, "doesn't upset my sleep,'' a standard four hours nightly.
"I like throwing balls into the air— and I dream like a baby."
Three hours later, blond hair marshaled, he announces, with standard chutzpah, his seven-and-a-half billion dollar bid to gobble down the nation's premiere airline, American. On the strength of his $120-a-share bid, the stock vaults from $16 to $99.The 43-year-old billionaire, who owns huge blocks of American Airlines stock ,smiles broadly.
A week later, with the market lumbling190 points, he withdraws his offer, perhaps temporarily. Despite some reports that insinuated his American raid was only cardboard, a poly to rattle up his stock, Trump stares into space:
"Nope, I want it."
Yup, If it's the best, and it's for sale, Donald Trump's stomach begins to growl.
He captured troubled Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi's onyx-and-gold-plated yacht for a mere $29,000,000—now it's worth $100,000,000. Then he bought the Eastern shuttle for $365,000,000 and transformed it overnight into the Trump Shuttle, complete with comfortable cabins and stewardesses rustling in virgin wool and pearls.
唐纳德•特朗普独自坐着。他已经48小时没休息了。
早上6点，高耸的特朗普大厦，上面镶嵌着青铜涂层的宝石;他俯身在一张巨大的巴西木紫檀木办公桌前，仔细查看着那些表格。
没有失眠，没有烦恼。
“压力，”他一边喝着冰可乐一边揣测，“不会影响我的睡眠”，标准的每晚4小时。
“我喜欢把球扔到空中——我睡的像婴儿一样。”
三个小时后，整理了一下金发，用那标准的狂妄口吻，他宣布，以75亿美元的价格吞并美国航空公司。在他每股120美元的出价下，这家公司的股价从16美元升至99美元。这位43岁的亿万富翁拥有美国航空公司的大量股票，笑容满面。
一周后，当股市暴跌190点时，他撤回了自己的报价，或许是暂时的。尽管有报道暗示，特朗普的美式突袭只是一种叫“硬纸板”的保利，但他的目光却盯着天空：
“不,我想要它。”
是的，如果这是最好的，而且是待售的，唐纳德·特朗普的肚子开始咕咕叫了。
他仅以2900万美元的价格买下了陷入困境的沙特金融家阿德南·卡舒吉的镶有码瑙和镀金的游艇，现在这艘游艇价值1亿美元。然后，他以3.65亿美元买下了东方航天飞机，并在一夜之间将其改装为特朗普航天飞机，配备了舒适的机舱，空姐们穿着纯净的羊毛和珍珠沙沙作响。
A year earlier, he had bought the Plaza Hotel for $400,000,000 and is now lovingly restoring her without a name change. Her make-over will be surprised by the Czech mistress of Trump's kingdom, Ivana, a former Olympic skier and fashion model.
At home, Ivana presides over a 100-room Trump Tower triplex, recently expanded from 50 rooms ("Better closet space, "she jokes). Trump proud of the salmon-marbled atrium of Trump Tower, where no expense was spared, says, "I bought the whole damn mountain! You've never seen that color before. Ivana suggested it because it makes people look better."
The couple also has a 47-room country house on ten acres in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the well-publicized 118-room Mar-a-Lago Marjorie Merriweather Post estate in Palm Beach, their commute time shortened by the 727 jet and the French-made military Puma helicopter.
The Trump Princess, or the Khashoggi" boat", as Trump now calls it, has gotten cramped, so a Dutch shipyard is confecting not a Princess but a full-fledged Queen costing more than $175,000,000.
一年前，他以4亿美元的价格买下了广场酒店，现在，他很高兴在没有改名字的情况下恢复了它的光辉。它的装饰一定会让特朗普王国的女主人伊万娜大吃一惊的，她曾是捷克奥运会滑雪运动员和时装模特。
在家里，伊万娜管理着特朗普大厦一套有100个房间的三层公寓，该公寓是最近从50个房间扩建的(她开玩笑说，“壁橱空间更大了”)。特朗普对着大厦里鲑鱼似的大理石中庭感到自豪，他说，“我买下了整座山!你从来没见过那种颜色。伊凡娜建议这样做的，因为这样可以让人看起来更好看。”
这对夫妇还在康涅狄格州格林威治占地10英亩的乡间别墅中拥有47个房间，以及众所周知的位于棕榈滩的马拉歌庄园，拥有118个房间。727喷气式飞机和法国制造的军用“美洲狮”直升机缩短了他们的通勤时间。
“特朗普公主号”(特朗普此刻叫它卡舒吉的“小船“)已经变得破烂不堪，因此一个荷兰船厂现在要做的是要把这位公主打造成一位丰满成熟的价值超过1.75亿美元的女王。
Such ostentation, despite a catalog of charities and good deeds done for sick kids, has predictably yielded a rich crop of snipers. Spy magazine, the New York-based humor monthly, cheerfully carries a scabrous vendetta against the Trumps, comparing them to Dickension monsters. Time did s cover story on the decay of Atlantic City and chided Trump for helping create a crime-plagued urban blight divided between welfare cases and high rollers. On the upper West Side, Manhattanites attack him for his proclaimed desire to build an enormous complex, Trump City, complete with a 150-story skyscraper; Phil Donahue charges that Trump’s casinos pillage the gullible; an aide close to outgoing mayor Ed Koch calls Trump ”the most arrogant s.o.b who has ever stepped onto the earth.
Ah, well, To be young, blond and a billionaire.
It doesn’t seem to matter. The most daunting entrepreneur since the Astors, Vanderbilts and Whitneys, Donald John Trump has made his ”art of the deal” work—not just for making money but for crushing adversaries, too.
Case in point: Merv Griffin. Ten months after Griffin bought Trump’s Resorts International Inc for $365,000,000, for which Trump had paid $101,000,000 the year before, Griffin found himself holding a busted balloon. Not only had he inherited the hotel-casino’s $925,000,000 debt but he embarrassingly had to report first-half losses of $46,600,000. There’s now talk of a possible bankruptcy for Merv and a possible lawsuit against Trump.
Looking beyond his one-billion-dollar Taj Mahal opening in Atlantic City next month, Trump has plenty to consider. There are tumors of his building casinos in Nevada and his buying Tiffany’s, NBC, the New York Daily News or the Waldorf Hotel (“I’ve got to have the Waldorf,” he coos jokingly into the phone. ”I can’t sleep without it”).And the Presidency ?No, that takes an election, and it is clear that Trump is not that patient. Too much to do!
尽管为生病的孩子们做了一系列的慈善和好事，这样的炫耀还是不出所料地产生了大量的攻击者。总部位于纽约的幽默月刊《间谍杂志》兴高采烈地对特朗普家族进行了激烈的报复，将他们比作言辞恶毒的怪物。《时代》杂志做了一篇关于大西洋城衰败的封面报道，指责特朗普帮助打造了一个犯罪猖獗的城市颓势，这个颓势在福利案件和豪赌客之间一分为二。在上西城，曼哈顿人抨击他宣称要建造一个巨大的综合体——特朗普城，包括一座150层的摩天大楼;菲尔·多纳休指责特朗普的赌场掠夺易轻信的人;一位接近即将离任的市长埃德·科赫的助手称特朗普是“有史以来最傲慢的人。“
嗯，好吧，年轻的金发亿万富翁。
这似乎无关紧要。唐纳德·约翰·特朗普是继阿斯特尔家族、范德比尔特家族和惠特尼家族之后最令人畏惧的企业家，他的“交易的艺术”发挥了作用——不仅为了赚钱，也为了粉碎对手。
梅尔夫·格里芬就是一个很好的例子。格里芬以3.65亿美元的价格收购了特朗普的国际度假村公司，而特朗普在前年支付了1.01亿美元。10个月后，格里芬发现自己手里拿着一个破气球。他不仅继承了酒店赌场9.25亿美元的债务，而且还令人尴尬地报告了上半年4660万美元的亏损。现在有传言说梅尔夫可能会破产，特朗普可能会被起诉。
除了下个月在大西洋城开幕的泰姬陵酒店，特朗普还有很多事要做。他在内华达州建赌场，购买蒂芙尼(Tiffany)、NBC、纽约每日新闻或华尔道夫酒店，每件事都会有“麻烦”(“我一定要拥有华尔道夫酒店，”他对着电话开玩笑地说。“没有它我睡不着”)。那么总统职位呢?不，那需要一场选举，而特朗普显然没有那么耐心。要做的事情太多了!
“There has always been a display of wealth and always will be, until the depression comes, which it always does. And let me tell you, a display is a good thing. It shows people that you can be successful.”
“炫富一直存在，也总会出现，直到大萧条来临，大萧条也一直都有。”让我告诉你，炫富是件好事。它人们展示你可以成功。”
“We Americans are laughed at around the world for defending wealthy nations for nothing, nations that would be wiped out in about fifteen minutes if it weren’t for us. Our “allies” are making billions screwing us.”
“我们美国人因为毫无意义地保卫一些富裕的国家而被全世界嘲笑，如果不是我们，这些国家在15分钟内就会灭亡。我们的“盟友”正从我们身上赚取数十亿。
“I’ve always thought the ultimate job for me would have been running MGM in the Thirties and Forties. There was incredible glamour and style that’s gone now. And that’s when you could control situations.”
“我一直认为，对我来说，最佳的工作应该是在三四十年代经营米高梅。那些令人难以置信的魅力和风格现在已经逝去了。那个时候你可以控制整个局面。”
The billion-dollar baby was born in the exclusive Jamaica Estates in Queens, New York, on June 14,1946, to a mere millionaire, real-estate developer Fred Trump, who had racked up his $20,000,000 fortune building low-to-middle-priced homes and apartments in Brooklyn and Queens.
Among the five little Trumps, only Donald seemed to have a passion for mortar and bricks, riding around construction sites with his father—“who ruled all of us with a steel will”—and showing younger brother Robert, now a low-profile V.P. in the Trump organization, who was boss in their 23-room house.
At the age of eight, little Donald borrowed Robert’s cherished toy blocks, glued them together into one giant skyscraper and never returned them, thereafter exercising his fantasies about changing Manhattan’s skyline.
His father, who harped on the importance of ”knowing how to make a buck,” regarded mop-haired Donald as “rough and wild,” shipped him off to the New York Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson and, some say, forever instilled in him a gnawing sense of inadequacy that fueled the boy’s ambition. There followed two years at Fordham and two years at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance, then a few years diddling in middle-income housing until, at the age of 28, Trump delivered the punch that launched him. Taking a hard look at Manhattan’s troubled fortunes, he fastened onto the bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad as his ticket into the big time and nimbly plucked options on Penn’s Hudson River Railroad yards, now the site of New York’s Convention Center, and its 59-year-old Commodore Hotel, now the Grand Hyatt.
The coup was in his persuading bankers to lent him $80,000,000 and in talking politicians into awarding him a $120,000,000 tax abatement.
Persuasion, hype and chutzpah thereafter defined the Trump style, welded to a scrupulous management technique.
1946年6月14日，这个亿万富翁宝宝出生在纽约皇后区的牙买加豪宅里，他的父亲是房地产开发商弗雷德·特朗普，他在布鲁克林和皇后区建造中低价位的住宅和公寓，积累了2000万美元的财富。
在五个小特朗普中，只有唐纳德似乎对灰泥和砖块很有激情，他和“用钢铁般的意志统治着我们所有人”的父亲骑行玩耍在建筑工地周围，并向弟弟罗伯特炫耀。罗伯特现在是特朗普集团一名低调的副总裁，掌管着他们23个房间的房子。
八岁的时候，小唐纳德借走了罗伯特心爱的玩具积木，把它们粘在一起变成了一座巨大的摩天大楼，从此再也没有归还，从此实现了他改变曼哈顿天际线的梦想。
他的父亲曾反复强调“知道如何赚钱”的重要性，认为头发乱蓬乱的唐纳德“粗鲁而狂野”，把他送到了位于哈德逊的康沃尔的纽约军事学院。有人说，父亲永远给他灌输了一种痛苦的不足感，助长了他的抱负。接下来在福特汉姆大学待了两年，在宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿金融学院待了两年，然后又在中等收入家庭的住房上瞎忙了几年，直到28岁时，特朗普打出了让他成功的一击。他认真审视了曼哈顿陷入困境的命运，选择了宾夕法尼亚中央铁路公司的破产作为自己进入大时代的入场证，并灵活地选择了宾夕法尼亚哈德逊河铁路公司和拥有59年历史的康姆多酒店，即如今的君悦酒店。这里现在是纽约会议中心的所在地。
他的妙招在于说服银行家借给他8000万美元，并说服政客给予他1.2亿美元的减税。
此后，说服、炒作和厚颜无耻定义了特朗普的风格，并融入了一丝不苟的管理技巧。
In 1979,at the age of 33,he snapped up the Fifth Avenue site of the old Bonwit Teller for $20,000,000,won a $140,000,000 tax abatement and three years later finished Trump Tower, a 68-story dazzler that includes a six-story atrium and today draws 100,000 visitors daily, with residents such as Johnny Carson and Steven Spielberg.
Amassing a fortune his father never dreamed possible—a cash hoard of $900,000,000,a geyser of $50,000,000 a week from his hotel-casinos, assets thought to total 3.7 billion dollars—Trump soon became as captivated by mystique-making as by money-making.
As the snooty ads running around New York proclaimed,”Everything does seem to be very Trump these days.” There are his residential buildings, Trump Parc and Trump Plaza and the soon-to-be-finished Trump Palace; Trump Castle in Atlantic City and the soon-to-be-finished Taj Mahal; his book “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” written with Tony Schwartz, which held on to the number-one spot on the New York Times best-seller list longer than any business book since “Iocacca”;his high-rise board game named—you guessed it—Trump(reported to be flop);his upcoming TV game show—you guessed it again—“Trump Card”; and the bike race named Tour de Trump, which, as he points out, sure beats its old name—Tour de Jersey. And—well—you get the picture.
“Vision is my best asset,” he says without a shred of modesty, ”I know what sells and I know what people want.”
Along the way, Trump even found time to attend the 1976 Montreal Olympics, marry his match, Ivana Zelnicek (who has vowed never to look a day over 29),and produce his own little Trumps—Donald Jr,12,Ivanka,eight,and Eric, six.
Notwithstanding the good fortune that seems to have attended Trump’s business moves, he and his family have not escaped life’s darker side. While sisters Maryane, a Federal judge in New Jersey, and Elizabeth, an administrative assistant for Chase Manhattan, have found their niches, Trump’s older brother, Fred, hated the real-estate business, became an airline pilot, took to drink and died an alcoholic in 1981 at 43.
Trump was also recently shaken when, last October, three key executives died in a helicopter crash; the boss reportedly narrowly missed death, deciding at the last minute that he was too busy to travel. ”I never realized,” says Trump today, ”how deaths outside the family could have such a profound effect on me. It’s a tragic waste.” As for himself, he’s fatalistic: ”I work, I don’t worry and I protect myself as well as anybody can. But ultimately we all end up going to hopefully greener pastures.”
1979年,33岁的他以2千万美元的价格收购了第五大道的老旧的保罗·邦威特百货商店,赢得了一份价值1亿4千万美元的减税和三年后完成了特朗普大厦,一座68层的焦点,包括一座六层楼高的中庭和现在每天吸引10万名游客,名人如约翰尼·卡森和史蒂芬·斯皮尔伯格。
特朗普积累了一笔他父亲做梦也想不到的财富—9亿美元的现金储备，每周从酒店赌场中获得的5000万美元的进账，以及估计总计37亿美元的资产—很快，他就像对着迷赚钱一样着迷于创造神秘。
正如纽约四处流传的八卦广告所宣称的那样，“这些日子，似乎一切都很特朗普。”“到处都有他盖的住宅,特朗普公园，特朗普广场和即将完成的特朗普宫殿,大西洋城的特朗普城堡和即将完成的泰姬陵;他和托尼•施瓦茨合作的书《特朗普:交易的艺术》紧紧锁定《纽约时报》畅销书排行榜第一的位置，除了“艾科卡”的书以外，比任何商业书籍都要长;他的高层棋盘游戏，取名“你猜-王牌”(据说失败了);他即将到来的电视节目，“你再猜-王牌”;和以他的名字命名的自行车赛“环特朗普”，他说，肯定比原来的名字“环泽西”要好。嗯，好吧，你已经有画面了。
“远见是我最好的资产，”他毫不谦虚地说，“我知道什么能卖出去，也知道人们想要什么。”
即使如此，特朗普还是抽时间参加了1976年蒙特利尔奥运会，迎娶了他的另一半伊万娜·泽尔尼切克(她发誓永远不让自己看起来超过29岁)，还生下了自己的小特朗普——12岁的小唐纳德、8岁的伊万卡和6岁的埃里克。
尽管特朗普的商业举动似乎好运连连，但他和他的家人并没有摆脱生活的阴暗面。特朗普的姐姐玛丽安是新泽西州的一名联邦法官，另一个姐姐伊丽莎白是大通曼哈顿银行的一名行政助理，她们都有自己的事业，而特朗普的哥哥弗雷德讨厌房地产生意，后来成为一名飞行员，开始酗酒，并于1981年因酗酒去世，享年43岁。
特朗普最近还受到了打击，去年10月，三名关键高管死于一场直升机坠毁事故;据报道，那位老板侥幸脱险，他是在最后一刻做的决定，因为太忙没时间旅行。“我从未意识到，”特朗普今天说，“家庭以外的死亡怎么会对我产生如此深远的影响。这是可悲的浪费生命。至于他自己，他听天由命:“我工作，我不担心，我像任何人一样保护自己。”希望我们最终都会去天堂。”
To check out his present-day pastures, we sent New York Daily News celebrity interviewer and syndicated columnist Glenn Plaskin to talk with him. This interview had long been in the works, including two earlier starts. But Plaskin finally got Trump to sit down with him over a period of nearly 16 weeks. His report:
“For our first session at Trump Tower, after being visually frisked by a troop of basketball-player-tall bodyguards, I entered the inner sanctum. There was Donald Trump, as he would be for most of our sessions, slumped behind the cinnamon-colored desk, slung comically low in his chair, clipping his fingernails.
“I think best this way,” he’d deadpan.
“As the weeks went by, I found I liked poking through the hooded dare-me eyes with rapid-fire changes of topic, watching for surprise. Often he parried with rehearsed answers, but we spent enough time together that we entered genuinely fresh territory. When I asked for his stand on abortion, he frowned, pouted and asked ne to turn the recorder off. He didn’t really have an option—what the hell was mine? It was a very human moment.
“Supervising his office like an exceedingly well-run vaudeville show, executive assistant Norma Foerderer would wander in with another gold-framed magazine cover to put up on his wall—or with a seven-pound cheesecake or a stuffed skunk. Trump would take calls during our interview—never for more than a few minutes—that invariably ended with, ”Ok, baby, you’re the greatest.” Then secretary Rhona Graff would walk in, bearing little yellow slips of paper announcing calls waiting: down-on-his-luck financier Adnan Khashoggi, asking to have lunch; a hotel executive, dickering to sell yet another big hotel……By the time Duchess Fergie called about borrowing his brand-new accident-proof helicopter, and Don Johnson to borrow his city-size yacht, I was dizzy.
“To get away from it all, we began our first session hovering above the East River in the cobalt Darth Vader helicopter. Donald Trump was strapped into taupe leather, good-naturedly hyping his empire below.”
为了了解他每天的生活，我们请了《纽约每日新闻》的著名记者和专栏作家格伦·普拉斯金来采访他。这次采访已经进行了很长时间，包括之前的两次。但是普拉斯金终于让特朗普和他坐下来谈了将近16个星期。他的采访报告:
“关于我们在特朗普大厦的第一次采访，在被一群篮球运动员般高的保镖“虎视眈眈”之后，我进入了内部密室。那就是特朗普，在我们的大多数采访中，他都是这样的，耷拉在肉桂色的桌子后面，滑稽地低靠在椅子上，剪着指甲。
“我觉得这样很好，”他面无表情地说。
几个星期过去了，我发现自己必须从裹着头巾的瞪着我的眼睛里，并在话题的快速变化中，观察有没有惊喜。他经常回避事先排练过的答案，但等到在一起的时间足够长，我们进入了真正新鲜的领域。当我问他对堕胎的立场时，他皱着眉头，撅着嘴，让我把录音机关掉。他真的没有选择——我这是到底在干嘛?多么人性化的瞬间啊。
行政助理诺玛福尔德勒把他的办公室管理得就像管理得非常出色的杂剧表演，她会拿着另一个镶金框的杂志封面走进办公室，把它挂在墙上——或者拿着一个7磅重的芝士蛋糕或一只塞满臭鼬的什么东西。特朗普会在我们的采访中接听电话——从来不会超过几分钟——最后总是说:“好吧，宝贝，你是最棒的。”“然后秘书罗娜格拉夫会走进来,晃着小黄色便笺告诉他有电话在线上:倒霉的金融家阿德南·卡舒吉约吃午饭;一个酒店高管嚷嚷着要再卖一个大型酒店……同时，菲姬公爵夫人打电话要借他全新的直升机，唐·约翰逊借他的城市大小的游艇。我有点头晕了。
为了摆脱这些，我们开始了第一次空中采访，乘坐深蓝色的天行者直升机在伊斯特河上空转了一圈。唐纳德·特朗普被灰褐色皮革紧紧裹着，善意地炒作着他的帝国。”

Here is how to make the most of a one-week Mediterranean cruise and see as much of Europe that one can possibly manage in one week. I planned our cruise to minimize any unpleasant surprises and yet leave room to be spontaneous and adventurous.
This article is not about cruise ships and you do not have to be a fan of cruises as my trip was mostly on land other than the overnight cruising. I felt that at the age of 57, I had delayed Europe long enough and with my busy business schedule, the cruise was the only way to get a snapshot of three countries and six cities in 10 days total, plus two days for flying from and to Canada. My wife does not like cruises, and I was left to travel with Lucas, our seventeen-year-old!
In August 2018, Lucas and I flew to Barcelona, Spain, the embarking port for the Norwegian, Epic cruise ship. It was our very first time on a cruise and our very first time to Europe except for England. I do not recommend August or July for this trip as it is high season for local tourism, and it is too hot to walk the cities (well too hot for me). However, if you have kids in school, then you understand that it must be summer, unless you choose to go without them.
Our ship would mostly cruise at nighttime giving us a full day from 7 am to 6 pm in most cities. That was perfect for me because there is only so much staring at water I can enjoy, and spending time in a tiny casino or eating non-stop are not my kind of pastime. If you are a cruise fan, then Norwegian Epic is great. They have about 10 wonderful restaurants, a superbly well-organized huge buffet with great selection of international food, a nice water park on the upper deck, and even a youth club with games, music, and dance to keep your teens entertained.
Every evening after our long city walk, Lucas and I enjoyed a nice meal after our shower and then watched a show or a musical performance before we hit the sack in our comfortable balcony room. I do not like closed spaces and a balcony room was well worth the small difference in price, even though we did not have much time to be on the balcony. Epic was also completely renovated in 2015, which meant it was clean and up to date on amenities. Always check the year the ship was build or was renovated before committing to a cruise.
Our cruise had stops in these cities:
1- Barcelona, Spain - embarking
a. visit Gothic centre, La Rambla, La Sagrada Familia church, Park Güell,
2- Naples, Italy
a. Rented a car and drove to Sorrento (an hour drive)
3- Rome, Italy
a. Took the train to the city centre and then the city tour-bus to Vatican City, San Angelo Castle, Piazza di Spagna – drove past Colosseum
4- Florence and Pisa tower, Italy – walking tour, site seeing
5- Cannes and Nice, France – walking tour, site seeing
6- Mallorca (Majorca), Spain - took a taxi to Palma Nova beach, swam and chilled
What to pack? We traveled very light with one carryon and a backpack. The backpack was for our extra stuff and NOT for touring the city. I do not recommend walking with a backpack, even less in the summer. Other than the usual travel items, here are some essentials I had to buy.
1- Light and cool walking shoes that were comfortable for walking and cool for summer. I bought a pair of nice leather sandals with good support and solid straps for walking. Also packed a pair of dress shoes for evening dinner on the ship and exercise shoes that I never used!
2- Summer shirts. I ordered some European collared Linen shirts. They look nice, are cool, and comfortable. www.bensherman.com has a good selection of those if you live in Canada or USA. Pack lots of tees for less formal places.
3- A couple of dress pants (linen and or khaki) for the evening restaurant and shows and dress shorts for long walks.
4- Beach sandal and swimming trunk for the Beach in Mallorca which I ended up buying in Cannes
5- Your credit card, Euro currency, and travel documents of course. Leave them in the safety box in your room and only take what you need for the day.
Barcelona, Spain: We arrived Barcelona three days ahead of schedule to experience one city for more than just a day. We stayed at the Boutique Hotel Violeta (http://violetaboutique.com/home/) in the centre of the city and only three blocks from the Plaza Catalunya. It was the best and most centric location in my opinion. I loved the hotel.
Violeta was a small hotel that reminded me of my apartment in Buenos Aires. The hotel is in a residential apartment building where they had turned two floors into hotel rooms. The Gothic architecture offered us a giant completely renovated room with a very high ceiling. We had two queen size beds in our room, a sitting area and plenty of open space. The reception was extremely helpful with information, and being small, made check-in a breeze.
Violeta Boutique also included a European coffee and pastry breakfast but if you wanted an American breakfast, there was a small cafe next door on the street level and plenty of other options within a three-block radius.
Our three days in Barcelona coincided with the Fiesta de Gracia (thanksgiving!) which was a 20-minute bus ride from Plaza Catalunya. I had bought a 10-ride Metro-Bus pass (Credit card size) from the Metro (subway, underground) station at Catalunya. Fiesta de Gracia was in the Garcia neighborhood where all the streets were colourfully decorated by the residents and live bands played all night on the streets and restaurants had set outdoor patios. The music was free, the food was reasonably priced, and people were jolly. It was my second favourite part of our time in Barcelona and we went there two evenings.
Barcelona Gothic city
From the airport, we took a bus straight to Plaza Catalunya (Plaça de Catalunya) in 20 minutes and then walked three blocks to our hotel. I had the hotel directions Googled (searched) in advance. I am fluent in Spanish (the Argentine version) so taking public transit was natural for me. Although Barcelona is a destination for international tourism and most people in the industry seem to speak English.
I bought a SIM card for my phone (which was unlocked in advance) at the airport for €30 from Vodafone (https://www.vodafone.com/) that gave me 10 Gig of mobile data covering most of Europe for up to a month. It did not include coverage on the cruise ship.
La Rambla and the old Gothic city in Barcelona were 10 to 15-minute walk from our hotel or Plaza Catalunya. You want to spend half a day walking this area, watching the beautiful shops, the narrow streets of Gothic centre and try a street café or restaurant.
La Sagrada Familia is a must see for its architecture alone. We took a bus there, but you must purchase tickets in advance if you plan to go inside on a specific day and skip the long lineup. This is another half-day venture unless you want to tour the outside which is fascinating enough. I found it amazing to see how much craft and detail was offered to decorate the exterior of the building. It is no wonder that the new extension brings a modern and plain contrast that just does not quite match the elegance and masterful craftsmanship of the old.
https://preview.redd.it/vtg8evyjdv851.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=777149d10c02a875134f6fab5d5ae73072cbf3b7
Park Guell is another 20-minute bus ride to the higher altitudes of Barcelona. It is a beautiful park with some very interesting structures left behind. It was a good half-day break from the city to relax and enjoy the nature. You can also see the entire city from the top.
Restaurant can be pricey in the touristy Plaça de Catalunya area. I managed to venture a couple of blocks off the main streets and find some local small restaurants. We had a great satisfying meal at a fantastic price and mingled with the residents. I even found a little Italian owned pizza place! Of course, we also tried the more refined tapas restaurants. After all, we were tourists.
Naples, Italy: The longest leg of our cruise was from Barcelona to Naples which took a full day at sea. That was perfect because it provided us the opportunity to navigate the ship and the amenities, learn the evening programs, browse the list of restaurants, and to start our reservations. I did not think that Naples had enough to interest me for the whole day and I hungered to see the Amalfi coast. Amalfi coast was too far for a day trip, so I decided that Sorrento and maybe Positano would be close enough. I rented a car from Hertz in advance which was a five-minute walk from the port. The car cost me about $150 Canadian, tax included! Luckily, I still remembered how to drive standard transmission (stick-shift).
We made it to Sorrento on the scenic highway with no problem. Traffic did slow at some points giving the driver (me) an opportunity to enjoy the scenery. About 10 minutes before arriving, atop the hills on the narrow road that took us to Sorrento, I found a little space to park the car and breath-in the fresh view of Sorrento waterfront. We could see the sail boats floating on the Mediterranean blue water, and the colourful little houses built on the slope of the hill from the top all the way to the sea. The buildings were in so many colours as if the quaint Sorrento were architected by Michelangelo to be lived by DaVinci’s Mona Lisa.
Sorrento from the road top
Sorrento was so beautiful that we spent the entire day there. We parked the car in an underground parking across to Gran Hotel Europa Palace (www.europapalace.com) on the hilltop. We must have spend about 45 minutes roaming the exterior of the hotel, admiring the architecture and the impressive iron gate, and then spending time on the back patio taking a closer look at the colourful buildings on the hill rolling down to the water. There were stone walking paths from the houses to the water where a giant deck with seats and shades turned the sea into a giant public pool.
Sorrento Hotel
The ladies in reception were extremely helpful offering us information and allowing me to charge my mobile since I had forgotten my charger! According to one of them, the German war maps were still on the lobby walks behind the giant paintings at this fortress (now hotel). I wanted to go down to the waterfront for lunch. So, the nice lady called her friend, the owner of a restaurant on the waterfront, and they sent us a car at no charge and after lunch they drove us back. The ride to the water was through narrow winding streets of Sorrento. After lunch we took a walk along the harbour and watched the sail boats rock on calm waters. I would like to spend a week or more in Southern Italy some day.
I forgot to mention that my cousin lives in Naples working on his PhD. He was our translator for the day. This was our first encounter in forty years (that is a sad tale that should not ruin this travel story). On the way back, we sat in a very nice café in Naples and had an amazing coffee and pastry before heading back to our ship. Italian pastry is the best, with my apology to mom and all the Persians.
Sorrento harbour
Rome, Italy: The port for Rome is in Civitavecchia, an hour drive from Rome. A tour purchased from the cruise would have been around $300 CDN per person. I like to think that I am adventurous and enjoy experimenting the local ways as much as I can. However, I understand that you may think that I am just cheap. I am fine with that. My son (Lucas) and I took a five-minute bus ride to the train station and paid €10 each to take the fast train to Rome. I love trains a lot more than buses.
We could have ventured Rome with local transit; however, our time was limited and we could not afford any time asking for directions. If I recall accurately, the daily hop-on-hop-off city tour was about €20 per person. To visit Rome and only spend one day should be a crime but a snapshot to calm my itching curiosity was the deal I had taken. I would say that Rome and Vatican City would require at least a week. There are many ancient Basilicas other than St. Peter’s each offering a unique history and that alone is well worth a week for me.
The bus passed by the Colosseum, check mark. We were heading to the Vatican City knowing well that we may not make it inside. After all, Vatical city is a day by itself. The bus dropped us a few blocks away in front of San Angelo Castle also known as Mausoleum of Hadrian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_Sant%27Angelo. The castle was a tall cylinder-like giant stone building walled all around like a fortress. I thought we would take a quick tour of the place at €15 (it was free for minors “Lucas”). We ended up spending over two hours admiring the decorated walls and ceilings with painting that were full of stories, and the museum items there were placed in its numerous rooms. We climbed many rocky stairs all the way to the top of this tallest structure in Rome, ventured the narrow hallways and took some pictures on the roof.
San Angelo Castle
The entrance to Vatican City was a ten-minute walk. Before crossing the bridge over Tiber (Tevere) we sat on the patio of a river-side food booth to have a snack. We walked to Vatican City and spent an hour in St. Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro) observing the architecture, the elegantly attired Guards, the crowd lining up and the shops that lure the tourist.
We took the tour bus back to Piazza di Espagna. This was the cleanest, most modern, and prettiest part of the city that our eyes had seen in the past few hours. The bus left us on the upper escalation of the Piazza where I took some pictures before descending the steep long set of steps into the centre of the shops and restaurants. We walked for about an hour window shopping and then found a restaurant patio in a pedestrian intersection. It was a touristy area but still reasonably priced. We certainly could give ourselves this one treat before heading back to the train station for our hour and twenty-minute ride back.
Piazza di Espagna
Total cost of our Rome venture including transportation, admissions, and food (for two) was €150. Lunch was the biggest expense.
** Picture
Florence and Pisa, Italy: Another restaurant and show evening aboard the Norwegian Epic, and we arrived in Florence (port of Livorno) early morning. Getting to Florence by public transit was too complicated. A car ride from port of Livorno to Florence was about 90 minutes and to Pisa around 30 minutes. I was lucky to find a private mini-van taxi (a brand new eight-seater Mercedes) that needed two more passengers to get going. At €50 per person to take us to Florence and then Pisa and back, it was a great deal. This deal could have been booked online in advance for €40. A lesson learned here. The other people sharing our ride were a family of four from Montreal, and a mother-son pair from Los Angles.
Everyone was very reserved and quiet. Lucas and I sat in the front with the driver and I spend the entire trip learning from our friendly driver. Florence is beautiful and quaint. However, I thought I had enough architecture in Rome and did not feel like lining up for an hour to see another church. We took a walking tour of Florence and had a meal at small sandwich joint run by two very funny and entertaining ladies. They offered a great selection of artisanal sandwiches, but almost two years later now, I cannot remember what I ate.
Pisa was another little town walled all around. I can imagine the great length the leaders had to go to protect people from attacks and we so often take our freedom for granted. Of course, we must protect ourselves from partisan politics and corporate lawyers, but that is easily manageable. At this point of the trip, I had enough sight seeing. I would have been good with a video of Pisa on YouTube. Here is a picture of the magnificent but defected marble structure.
Florence
Residents sunbathing in Florence
Pisa
Canes and Nice, France:
Canes, France was physically the most beautiful city on this trip, in my opinion. It was manicured clean and peaceful. Canes did not have a port for the cruise ships, hence we had to anchor in the sea and take the emergency boats to the shore. The emergency boats were giant, and each held about 200 people. We had a short time here and we were tired. I should have taken a tour bus, but my sense of adventure (or cheapness) had us walking up the steep and narrow winding street and then back down to the city centre for a bite.
I found a small sandwich shop to share a ham and cheese baguette and a couple of drinks with Lucas. In my broken French, I asked the young lady behind the counter if she could cut the baguette in half for us and she gave me a stern “Non”. I am not certain whether that was a lack of courtesy or I had crossed some religious or cultural boundaries. It was simple enough to split the baguette with me hand. We should have continued our tour of the city and stayed in Canes as I had advised our friends from Quebec. However, a sudden urge came over me to take the train to Nice. We did, and Nice’s downtown and beach area were beautiful to walk; however, the injustice I did to my own principals of travelling is unforgivable. The whole day was just too rushed and consuming.
Canes, City Market
Mallorca (Majorca) Spain:
The trip from Canes to Mallorca was the second longest leg of the cruise. We arrived Mallorca around 1 pm giving us roughly five hours on the Island. After seven days of walking the cities in the heat of August, even the young Lucas was exhausted. The port in Mallorca was not walking distance to any interesting place and Lucas wished to spend the day at a beach. Great idea, I thought.
I Googled the most scenic beaches nearby and Palma Nova was the second choice but the only feasible option due to our limited time. We had a brief line up for a taxi right at the port. There was a family of five from Peru from our cruise in front of us in the lineup and they could not all fit into one taxi. I invited the grandpa of the family to come with us since they were heading to the same beach. Grandpa was a good companion and an opportunity for me to learn about Peru. We agreed on a time for going back together and then split to our ventures.
Palma Nova was perfect to spend a day. The beach had the right amount of crowd and was decorated by some rocky hills on one side for us to take a walk in between swims. The water was perfectly tempered, calm, and clear blue. There were no high rises nor big tourist hotels on this beach and plenty of restaurants and shops. For lunch we crossed the street on the beach to a patio and I shared a nice pizza and drinks for €12. We paid €15 for the bamboo umbrella and two chairs to have our spot on the beach and about €35 total for the taxi ride back and forth. That brings our total to €62 for a beautiful relaxing day in Majorca.
Palma Nova beach, Mallorca
I would like to spend a week in Mallorca. There are many scenic quaint towns and beautiful beaches to enjoy. If you are interested to know more, you can search for Palma, Sóller, Valldemossa, and Pollença. All these are on the west side of the island and within an hour drive from Palma. I would stay in Palma and make day trips to each of these towns. If you are a tennis fan, then you will probably add Rafael Nadal’s academy (https://www.rafanadalacademy.com/en) to the list, which is about an hour drive east of Palma.
Palma Nova beach, Majorca
Our last night on the cruise was concluded by a beautiful three course meal and listening to a live band on the middle deck’s lobby. There was a talented singer among the passengers and a few great dancers on board who joined the performance. It was a great way to end the cruise. We arrived Barcelona early morning, well rested, with a fresh shower and a full tummy. We found a taxi and headed straight to the airport to catch our noon flight back to Toronto without rush. I suppose my project management trainings mixed with my entrepreneurial nature, made a perfect schedule for the trip. You can check out www.pmi.org if you are interested in formalizing your skills for time and budget management.