STAYING IN DOWNTOWN SMALL HOTEL
By Bob Van Leer

  (ROME, Italy, May 20, 1996) - We had just got comfortably seated in an outdoor cafe under an awning when a rain hit in full force. We were at a small cafe near the Victor Emmanuel monument in downtown Rome. Our party of five arrived in Rome the day before. Betty and I were accompanied by our youngest daughter, Sally Shuey, and her husband, Dave, and their three-year-old son, Jordan.

  The Shueys live in Portland, and Betty and I had driven there Friday, May 17, to join them. Saturday morning we flew American Airlines to Chicago and there we boarded an overnight Al Italia flight non-stop to Rome.

SOME OF INFRASTRUCTURE STILL IN USE
By Bob Van Leer

  (ROME, Italy, May 21, 1996) - A Roman ruin is never very far away in Rome, and some of the infrastructure the Romans built is still in use more than 1500 years later. Rome is an old city, we were told 2760 years old. It has a population of about 4 million. Myself, Betty, daughter Sally Shuey and husband Dave, and their three-year-old son, Jordan, are in Italy to take a cruise. We did a little shopping and generally wandered around downtown Rome this morning. Yesterday's rain was long gone and the day was beautiful.

   Prices are high in Italy, a Coke served at a sidewalk cafe was 7000 lira, about $4.66. All our TV channels are in Italian.

BEEF FROM ARGENTINA, NOT BRITAIN
By Bob Van Leer

  (GENOA, Italy, May 22, 1996) - Our cruise ship, Eugenio Costa, left Genoa at 5:00 p.m. today sailing south to Naples. Most of today was spent getting from Rome to Genoa to board the ship. We left our hotel, the Medici, at about 9:00 a.m. Our plane wasn't scheduled to leave until 12:35 p.m., but DaVinci airport is a long drive from downtown Rome and we didn't want to miss the plane. In decent conditions it is a half hour-45 minute drive. The flight is only about 50 minutes aboard another Al Italia jet plane. The weather was hazy, but not enough so that we couldn't get a good view of the Italian coast on the way north.

CITY PRESERVED AT THAT POINT IN TIME
By Bob Van Leer

  (NAPLES, Italy, May 23, 1996) - A trip to Pompeii was the highlight of our stay in Naples. We arrived at Naples at 1:00 p.m. after an overnight trip of 336 nautical miles. Naples is a city of 1.5 million, the third largest in Italy, with another 2 million in its suburbs. It is a major port city and dates its origin to 600 B. C. Shortly after tying up to the dock (we backed in), many of us assembled for a tour of Pompeii. One bus won't do because of the multiplicity of languages.

  There was an English bus, an Italian bus, a German bus and a Spanish bus. Pompeii is 14 miles south of Naples over a busy coast highway. The city was built in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, and that was its undoing.

ERUPTIONS EXPECTED EVERY FIVE YEARS
By Bob Van Leer

  (CATANIA, Sicily, May 24, 1996) - Mt. Etna dominates this region not only by its height (3300 meters) but by its frequent eruptions. It is Europe's largest active volcano and eruptions are expected on the average of every five years. The last was 1992 and the volcano is always smoking. We took a tour up Mt. Etna to the 2000 meter level. The last dozen miles of the road was built through a lava slide of 1983. That eruption took out miles of road and a number of houses.

  One frequently photographed house is in the bend of a switchback and just the roof is showing above the lava. The eruptions don't always come from the same location. There are approximately 100 craters around the mountain. Two small ones were close to the stop we made at the 2000 meter level. At that height, there was still some snow. The restaurant and ski cable tow area at the stop have been destroyed and rebuilt three times. Catania lives with the volcano as a tradeoff.

  Eruptions are a problem, and can be serious, such as the eruption of 1659 that buried Catania. But in a couple of hundred years, the lava breaks down into very fertile soil and supports a prosperous agricultural industry. Catania, the second city of Sicily, has a population of about 500,000,(about a million including the suburbs).

CRUISING FROM SICILY TO EGYPT
By Bob Van Leer

  (AT SEA, May 25, 1996) - Today was a day to lay back and relax. Our cruise ship, the Eugenio Costa, is plodding along at a steady 21 knots per hour on the 821 nautical mile trip from Catania, Sicily, to Alexandria, Egypt. Plotted on a map, our course is a straight line between the two cities. I expected the Mediterranean to be busier, but we haven't seen another ship since we left Catania.

  This morning we were invited to tour the bridge with Capt. Elio Rizzi. Son-in-law Dave Shuey and I accepted the invitation and went to take a look. This is an older ship, about 30 years old, but has been kept up to date. The bridge features a digital radar, something I hadn't seen before. Instead of having to use light-tight eyepieces to view radar as has been the standard since radar's invention in World War II, the viewing screen is a large monitor viewable in ordinary daylight. On the radar, we did see another ship. The ship is rated to carry 1100 passengers, but a crew member said there are just under 1000 on board. U. S. citizens are a minority on board. Of the 1000 passenger, 135 are English-speaking, and many of these are from England. There are 150 German-speaking, 10 Spanish-speaking, 20 French-speaking, and the balance of about 685 are Italian-speaking.

TUT'S TOMB RELICS AT EGYPTIAN MUSEUM
By Bob Van Leer

  (PORT SAID, Egypt, May 26, 1960 - Egypt is one of the world's oldest civilizations, and one of the most interesting to visit. We spent a whirlwind day visiting some of the highlights of the country, including the pyramids, sphinx and the wonders of Tut's tomb.

  Our ship, the Eugenio Costa, docked at Alexandria, Egypt, at 8:00 a.m. today and most of the 1000 passengers on the ship boarded buses for the three-hour trip to Cairo, Egypt, south on the Nile River Delta, the largest delta in the world, I was told. The Nile is Egypt. The 60 million people in Egypt live on about 4% of the land area of the country along the Nile.

ELECTION POSTERS DOMINATE ISRAELI LANDSCAPE
By Bob Van Leer

  (ASHDOD, Israel, May 27, 1996) - Israel is having an election in two days and the countryside is blooming with election posters and plastic campaign banners. No surface is safe. Banners are strung from trees in the forests. The battle of the signs is so intense that one Israeli is charged with shooting another Israeli in the leg for putting his candidate's posters over the other fellow's posters.

UNITED NATIONS KEEPING PEACE SINCE 1963
By Bob Van Leer

  (LIMASSOL, Cyprus, May 28, 1996) - Cyprus is one of a number of intractable international problems. The United Nations (UN) has stationed a peacekeeping force on Cyprus since 1963 and is no closer to a permanent solution now than it was then. In a sense the UN has some success to show, the Greek and Turk communities on Cyprus are separated and not shooting at one another. But the fundamental issues between the two communities appear no closer to solution than in 1963.

  The Turk army made the last significant move in 1974, occupying the northern third of the island. Turks live in the north part of the island, and Greeks in the south.

DOESN'T HAVE TENSIONS OF CYPRUS
By Bob Van Leer

  (RHODES, Greece, May 29, 1996) - Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands, in the Aegean Sea, and only about six miles from Turkey, but without the tensions that mar Cyprus. The population of 78,000 on the island is more than 90% Greek and no one disputes this island is part of Greece. It is considerably smaller than Cyprus and time has passed it by as being any influence in the area.

MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE WINDING DOWN
By Bob Van Leer

  (KYTHERA, Greece, May 30, 1996) - We made a short stop today at a tiny fishing village on a Greek Aegean island. The harbor was much too small for our ship to enter, so we anchored off shore and entered the harbor in lifeboats. here was a lump running in the ocean and getting passengers loaded in small boat was an exercise in coordination. Only one person could be loaded at a time and this with the assistance of two crew members. But nobody missed and fell.

BUT JORDAN'S PASSPORT FOUND ON BUS
By Bob Van Leer

  (AT SEA OFF ITALY, May 31, 1996) - Today was quiet and uneventful as we sailed back to Genoa where we left May 22. We passed through the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy for the second time. Navigation in the strait is tricky enough to require a pilot to take us through. It is not long, just a half hour to go through.