The day after we had our fun, fun, fun dinner with Daniel and Michael, Michael sent a text asking if we’d noticed the quote on last night’s dinner menu.
Virginia who??? 😂
We hadn’t noticed that. And then he sent:
Our kinda yuma!
Friends
Bob’s new best friend
Here he is with Yuliana, one of the bartenders extraordinaire on the riverboat!
Bob is someone who likes to try new things, while I prefer things I already know — especially with regards to food and drink. It’s mid-morning here, and we’re sitting in the lounge and bar where I’m catching up this blog.
Bob to Yuliana: I want to try a drink I’ve never had before.
Yuliana: What kind of liquor would you like in it?
Bob: Vodka.
Fast forward a few minutes, and she delivered my third Bloody Mary along with Bob’s “surprise drink.”
Her: Don’t ever ask me to do this again. It makes me very nervous when someone asks me to surprise them or to “be creative” with a drink.
I said, “I’m the same way!
Laughs all around.
Danube riverboat cruise – Book club at sea
I told my once-grad-school professor and now friend, Susan, about this Danube riverboat cruise and she said she’d always wanted to go on one.
I knew she had a gay grandson, and since the group I’m going with is a gay group, I said, “I said, “You should come on this one, and you should ask Peyton to go with you.” And she did!
Susan and I are both avid readers, and we are each in a book club, but not the same one. I said, “We should both read a (fiction) book involving a Danube riverboat cruise and discuss it on the cruise!”
She thought it was a great idea, so we did. Turns out neither one of us was impressed with the book, and I said, “Sometimes in a book club, the worst books can have the best discussion.” We both said, “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go with that.”
We met today and discussed it.
Afterward, we added a note to the inside front cover and donated the book to the riverboat’s share-a-book collection.
Danube riverboat cruise – Bratislava, Slovakia – Monday, July 7, 2025
This morning, relax on board as we sail to Bratislava. An ancient landscape awaits, where remarkable towers add to a skyline that perfectly encapsulates the history of the city, and preserved medieval fortifications tell tales of a turbulent past.
Today’s program:
Excursions at this port:
Coffee and cake with the locals: You will be invited into the home of a local family to learn more about their traditions and culture over coffee and cake.
Bratislava city tour: Your local guide will take you through the heart of the city, as you soak in the sights of the lavish Episcopal Summer Palace and the neo-Renaissance façade of the Slovak National Theatre.
In what undoubtedly will be the most memorable part of this trip, we visited a Bratislava’s home and connected on a intimate, human level.
Matthew (hysterical) was our tour guide. Ondrus (extremely knowledgeable) was the local expert who told us about the country and what we were seeing on the 45-minute ride to the village where Andre (the homeowner) lived.
Andre was adorable which doesn’t really matter — (but, my goodness, doesn’t it help?) — and he welcomed seven of us (Kayo, Ken, Al, Daniel, Michael, Bob, and me) into his home.
He was an interesting and personable guy who told us about his life here and answered a bunch of questions from us. He likes to make homemade spirits, and even though this program is billed as “coffee and cake,” he offered us, and we took him up on, some of his homemade spirits with the cake.
Some pics of his house and hospitality:
And yes, that’s Bob playing the Steirische harmonika! After his third or fourth glass of spirits, the spirit moved him to ask Andre if he could try it.
We returned to the riverboat for lunch and enjoyed a salad bar and fish and chips!
After lunch, we set out for the city walking tour, and one of the guides was Matej from this morning’s home visit, so we got in his group, because we knew how good and funny he is!
A few pics of the tour:
Matej told two stories regarding these two sites:
About the “Man at Work” sculpture, he said the locals laugh at the tourists whenever they see them squat down next to it for photos and rub its head (which apparently many do “for good luck”), because what they know is that dogs relieve themselves on that statue all day long.
And about the “creeper man,” he said that that guy was a real person, and in fact his grandmother knew him, but he got spurned by a woman and went a little crazy (as in with mental illness) over it. And after that, he started staring and making goo-goo eyes and comments at women and became “creepy,” which today would probably consider what he was doing as harassment.
And tonight’s dinner:
Tonight’s activity was “An Evening with the Stars,” where video or audio clips of movies were played and we had to guess the name of the actors or movies. Our dinner companions from last night (who also do their weekly dinner menus) are in the front of the middle table: Daniel in the blue & black flowered shirt, with Michael to the right of him in the black polo shirt.
The crowd participating in the movie trivia game — the 2 front tables are members of our group.
Mystery Voice
1 – Celine Dion
2 – Nicole Kidman
3 – David Attenborough
4 – Stevie Wonder
5 – Jim Carey
6 – Heath Ledger
7 – Rowan Atkinson
8 – Oprah Winfrey
9 – Hugh Grant
10 – Bjork
Missing Title
1 – Pretty Woman
2 – Finding Nemo
3 – Rocky
4 – Green Mile
5 – Fight Club
6 – Shrek
7 – Shawshank
8 – Lion King
9 – The Matrix
10 – Titanic
Music From Movies
1 – The Breakfast Club
2 – Skyfall
3 – Mission Impossible
4 – The Naked Gun
5 – Rocky Horror Picture Show
6 – Star Wars
7 – Austin Powers
8 – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
9 – Ghostbusters
10 – The Blues Brothers
Danube riverboat cruise – Budapest, Hungary – Sunday, July 6
Today’s program:
Excursion description: Architecture from across the centuries shines a light on the history of the Hungarian capital. Originally two separate cities, Buda to the west and Pest to the east offer incredibly different views on the culture of one of the liveliest cities in Eastern Europe. Today, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the city during a guided tour, including Heroes’ Square and the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Andrássy Avenue and Buda Castle District.
These brilliant devices were provided in our cabins, which you use during the walking tours to be able to hear your guides without everyone having to crowd around them.
We loved our tour guide — “You can call me Charlotte,” she said. She’s in the purple dress in the last picture in this set. A few of my favorite things of this outing:
A few amusing things on the tour:
Late afternoon, we had a “Captain’s Reception” and then our “Port Talk,” which is when they tell you about the next port and everything going on there.
During the captain’s reception, we enjoyed champagne with an amuse bouche, and I treated myself with a change from bourbon and sodas to a treat from the Vodka Cocktail Collection. We had the most expensive, so all-inclusive drink package, so why not?
We had a most delightful dinner, sharing a table with new friends, Daniel & Michael. They’re from Seattle and they’re the first people we’ve met who create a list of dinner menus for the week like we do.
Each night for dinner, there is the full menu, along with a “chef’s recommendation” menu:
Bob and I both chose the chef’s recommendation this evening:
After dinner there was a “Name That Tune” game that I didn’t participate in, but Bob did. There were 3 parts to the game with the emcee playing a clip of music each time.
First round: You had to identify the song title and the artist (or band).
Second round: You had to identify a song that was being played backward.
Third round: You had to say if the song played sold more or fewer than 10 million records.
Bob’s team won, and they were presented a free bottle of spirits and some chocolate.
Organ recitals
While walking around the aforementioned Corvin Square, Bob and I got tickled when we saw this sign:
Whenever “people of our age” get together and start talking about all of their knee and hip replacements, etc. — which Bob hates — I’ll eventually announce, “Okay, the organ recital is over.”
Pre-riverboat-cruise – Budapest, Hungary – Friday, July 4, 2025
7 of us from Raleigh — Al, Ken, Susan, Peyton, Kayo, Bob and I — met for happy hour at a nearby pub called Belgian Brasseire,
which had an incredible (meaning pages and pages) of beer selections.
We had 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6) rounds of spirits. Bob and I drank Maker’s Mark on the rocks, and the rest of the group had beer.
We went our separate ways for dinner, and Bob and I ate at a place called Corvin Gastropub, which we thoroughly enjoyed
and we had the Corvin burger, which came with fries, and which was delicious.
If you’ve traveled in Europe you probably know how hard it is to get some ice in drinks without asking for it, and asking for a lot of it. So imagine our surprise when this cute little bucket of ice with giant-sized ice cubes was delivered with our high balls!
In my defense, I did say to our server (who was great) that, “We’re Americans so you know we like a lot of ice.” Bless her.
As we ate, I noticed that the businesses around the gastropub all had Corvin in their names, and I asked our server if one person (named Corvin?) owned all of these businesses, to which she laughed and said, “No it’s the name of the square here and he was a king.”
Me: “Oh, did you know him?”
She, laughing more: “No he was around in the 1400s.”
After dinner, we stopped in the Mini ABC, which was right across the street and treated ourselves to dessert.
Our first night’s dinner
At the Monastery Boutique Hotel in Budapest, where we’re staying for two nights before we board the Emerald Star for our Danube riverboat cruise, we grabbed an hour-or-so nap upon arrival, and then we had a most delicious dinner in Umo, one of the two restaurants associated with the hotel.
Carlos, who was just adorable, was our server, and when we asked him where he was from he said, “A small city near Mexico City.”
And when we asked him what brought him from Mexico to Budapest, he said, “I came over with a person.” Since any straight guy would have said something like, “I followed my girlfriend here,” we assumed he was on “our team.” And then he added, “But we’re no longer together,” which drew a collective, “Awww” from all of us.
This place had fantastic food.
The menu:
Bob’s and my choices:
And our comeuppance:
Hollaback b-a-n-a-n-a-s!
My friend sent me this image saying, “7’s for me. Is it 12 or 13 for you?”
She’s not wrong:
- She’s a lot like Bob (my husband); he picked #8.
- To me, 12, 13 & 14 are great.
- 13 looks perfect to slice and put atop some cereal that could use a little natural sweetener.
- 14 would be good mixed in some vanilla ice cream.
- And 15 is approaching one that we’d put in the freezer for when Bob makes my annual Best. Ever. Banana. Cake.
This reminds me, Bob knows me so well that one time when I was still working, I wanted a banana for lunch, but he knew the ones we had weren’t ripe enough for me, so he doctored one up with a Sharpie and packed it in my lunch.
Finished book #47 in 2025
Book #47 |
Book: Diamonds on the Danube | Author: Cheryl Dougan | |
| Source: Borrowed from a friend Format: Print |
Pages: 103 | Duration: 06/19/25 – 06/19/25 (1 day) | |
| Rating: ★★☆☆☆ | Genres: fiction, cozy mystery, travel | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Tour guide on Danube riverboat cruise uncovers diamond theft shenanigans. 🖌6-word review: All-around mediocre writing, characters, and plot. |
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| 💭Favorite quote: “Temptations are a reminder that I have a choice.” | |||
| 🎓A new-to-me word: Lipizzan | |||
| Description:* She never expected to be cruising down the Danube trying to catch a diamond thief red-handed. Adelle didn’t expect her 60s to be boring. So when her travel-agent friend asks her to guide a cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam, the born people-pleaser jumps at the chance to help four women have an unforgettable vacation. But when expensive jewelry goes missing, she fears one of her happy travelers could be the culprit. Will Adelle unmask the crook before her adventure sinks into muddy waters?*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I bought this book as a gift for a friend who is also a reader and a book club member (although we’re not in the same book club) and with whom I’m going on a “Danube Delights Riverboat Cruise” soon. We thought it would be fun to read a book related to cruising the Danube — but not a nonfiction book about it — and then get together one day on the cruise and discuss it; you know, sort of like a book club meeting but while enjoying our unlimited drink package and taking in the scenery along the way from Budapest to Regensburg, Germany. With all that said — and I have a lot more to say that I’m not including here but have outlined for our discussion on the cruise — this book wasn’t very good. It was more a travelogue (which is what we didn’t want to read) than it was a mystery. At the end of chapter 7 (out of 13), there was still no mention of diamonds or a crime. We’re hoping that “sometimes the worst books make for the best discussion” will come into play with this one. I definitely would not recommend this book, nor would I read any other books in this series, which is part of the “River Cruise Cozies.” | |||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.
Bartender extraordinaire
We had hired someone to help us with our ambitious “Lotsaversary Gathering” — with 92 attending of 200 invited, but he had to cancel due to not feeling well.
We were going to have him barback, not bartend, but as it turned out our friend Fadia comfortably slipped behind the bar and actually took on bartending of her own volition!
She had a lot to juggle but did it beautifully.
Midway into the evening I was checking in with her, and she told me she was having so much fun, asking people drinking highballs if they wanted singles or doubles, and many took her up on doubles.
It was then that I noticed that the jigger she was using was actually for a double, so she’d really been pouring doubles and “quadruples” — and into 10 oz. cups, no less!” We have little doubt that that greatly contributed to the success of the party!
Our thank-you note to her:
Our “Lotsaversary Gathering”
Back in March of 2024, two lots behind our house went on the market, and we nabbed them! And since January of this year, we’ve been planning a 5/31/25 party to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the closing on that property.
At the beginning of May, we got the notion to replace our outdoor standalone deck bar and decided to have one built into the deck instead of getting another standalone one. Roman, our builder, finished it 2 days before the event!
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We did a test set-up to think about where to put the alcohol, mixers, sodas, and ice to accommodate the best flow as people got drinks.
We invited 200 of our closest friends, and 92 of them attended the party. The weather was precarious, with it raining within 30 minutes of the 6 p.m. start time, but then it cleared up and ended up being perfect outdoor party weather the rest of the evening.
We had mostly catered food, all finger foods to preclude needing utensils. We loved “breaking in” our new bar and the flow of people moving about our backyard and into the lots behind it, and in which Bob has done a tremendous amount of work “cleaning up” over the year we’ve owned them.
The 2025 Mordecai neighborhood yard sales
Because Bob clears out things regularly and donates them to Cause for Paws, we didn’t have that many things to sell at a yard sale, so Bob joined forces with our across-the-street neighbor to be on the map for our neighborhood day of yard sales.
“Being there”
My friend’s sister died on Thursday, and on Saturday I made the 600-mile drive from Raleigh, NC to Conneautville, PA to attend her funeral on Sunday.
It was a 9.5-hour drive, and I decided to stop every 2 to 2.5 hours for a break, since I was driving alone and wanted to keep alert. My first stop was about 2.5 hours into the trip — at the first rest area in Virginia — and I assessed the snacks and lunch my husband had packed for me, which included 2 homemade sausage biscuits that were fantastic.
I arrived at the Quality Inn I’d reserved the day before, ate a quick Fish and Chips meal (would you look at the size of that fish, and those 2 paltry hush puppies, which I paired with the two free cheddar biscuits) at Red Lobster, and hit the sack early.
The visitation and short funeral mass — both at the funeral home — were the next day, and after lunch at my friend’s family’s house I drove 3 hours of the return trip before just walking into a Hampton Inn in Fairmont, WV and asking if they had any rooms available. I’m pretty sure this is the first time in my life I’ve ever gotten a hotel room without having a reservation. That’s out of my comfort zone.
I left at 9 the next morning and got home at around 3.
Three 50-word stories about our recent trip to Scottsdale.
| The Michaelses | The birthday boy | The Thompsons & Stoimenoffs |
| We had dinner with our friends Sherry and Fred at Baby Kay’s Cajun Kitchen in Mesa, AZ. John and Sherry met on an ambassadorial trip in October of 2008 to Beijing, Guilin, and Shanghai. We don’t see each other #IRL often, but like this time, it’s always a great visit. | My husband’s brother, Tommy, celebrated his 75th birthday, and we flew in to attend a surprise party for him. His brother Jimmy and his wife Cindy hosted the gala, and I met a nephew for the first time who also flew in for the occasion. Bob made the birthday cake. | We met grade-school friends of my husband for lunch one day. I was Facebook friends with one of them, so it was great to meet her in person. Bob and I enjoyed a bruschetta board, which was fantastic — second only to the company we enjoyed dining al fresco at Postino’s. |
Remembering our sweet boy — Vincent St. Patrick McVeigh
Bob adopted Vincent, whose full name was Vincent St. Patrick McVeigh, on St. Patrick’s Day.
Here’s a pic we took of him one St. Patrick’s Day and one we took yesterday as Bob wore Vincent’s bow tie for our front-porch happy hour with the theme from Rocky blasting by the street while we cheered on the Pelagic Run Club runners as they passed by our house.
Bob places in our annual neighborhood chili party!
Our neighborhood has an annual chili party that’s been going on for more than 25 years. It has a theme each year, and medals are awarded for 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place in each category of meat and vegetarian. They also added a category for cornbread this year!
This year’s theme was Dune: The Spice Must Flow, and Bob made an Irish chili, and named it “Howya Dune?” And he won 3rd place in the meat category!
This is his third 3rd place medal in 15 years:
And noticing that they’re in 5-year intervals, he wrote this haiku about the feat:
They were each 5 years apart
Twenty-thirty next
Capturing for posterity:
- The 2015 theme was “Eat Local Chili” and Bob’s chili was named: “Bob’s Beanless Batch.” (Context: I don’t like beans, so Bob made the bold choice to make his entry this year without them.)
- The 2020 theme was “Passport to Chili” and Bob’s chili was named: “PORCH-uguese Chile.” (Context: The chili entries in crockpots are set up on tables on the Watkins’ wraparound porch, and John is half Portuguese.)
- The 2025 theme was “Dune: The Spice Must Flow” and Bob’s chili was named “Howya Dune?” (Context: Bob is part Irish and “Howya?” is how Irish people say “How are you?” and “Dune” of course is intimating “doing.”)
I’m proud of what a great and dedicated cook Bob is, and I’m thrilled when he’s recognized by others for his efforts. Congratulations, Bob!
A symphony outing with my friend Wayne
I attended the Friday, March 7 noon performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2 with my friend Wayne.
We had proper brunch cocktails, mimosas, before Bob dropped us off at the performing arts center downtown. We had seats on both sides of a couple, and they were very civil, agreeing to move over one seat so we could sit together.
Thoughts on Timepiece
On introducing the first piece, Cindy McTee‘s Timepiece, the conductor, Leonard Slatkin, called it something like, “a great piece of music, by a great composer, with a great and renowned career — and who just happens to be my wife.”
That reminded me of when I was in the closet and every time I introduced myself when public speaking, I’d be sure to mention my wife so that it was clear to everyone that I was straight. I’m not suggesting this man is gay. He is, after all, on his fourth wife. 🐱 Surely he would have switched teams by now.
After that announcement, and once I cleared my head of words and phrases like “nepotism,” “conflict of interest,” and “you got some cojones, bro,” I opened my mind to the music.
It was a rather short piece, I think he said it was going to be 6 minutes. Words like, “choppiness,” “syncopation,” and “cacophony” came to mind while listening, and I thought, “I wonder if this is Eastern European music.” (As it turned out, the composer studied at the Academy of Music in Kraków and one of her teachers was Krzysztof Penderecki.)
A lot of — and unusual — percussion instrumentation is going on here. I wonder what that instrument is called that sounds like a zipper. Wayne used the word “ratchet” for it, and I thought he was kidding. I mentioned that it reminded me of those washboards on Hee Haw. Turns out we were both onto something — internet to the rescue: here is the list of percussion instrumentation in the piece:
That clopping sound, which I now know comes from “wood blocks,” reminds me of the Sleigh Ride song.
Thoughts on Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2
I had initially thought, “I’m surprised the piano is way in the back of the orchestra when it’s going to be so prominent in the piano concerto,” but in the short break between the first and second piece, they rolled out a gorgeous Steinway front and center.
That dress! The soloist, Olga Kern, had on this dress (not the blue one in that ad glossy above) that reminded me of tiers on wedding cakes or something. It looked something like this but all white and without the picnic basket:
She slouches, is hunched over, actually, when she plays — which made me think of Schroeder’s playing.
And then I thought of our UPS driver, Marie, who has the best posture in the world. Every time she drives by with that open doorway on those brown UPS trucks, we see her sitting upright and toward the front of her seat.
When Olga’s fingers were flying over the keys at one point, I thought about how piano playing has an end game, specifically with regards to arthritis of the hands and fingers.
In the middle of the second movement, I thought, “I can’t believe I did not pee after those 3 mimosas and before this performance started. Oh, boy.”
Wayne and I mused over what the actual performer titles were, specifically with regards to the best players in the string section — was it “first chair,” or “principal chair,” or “principal violinist (or viola or cellist, etc.)” or something else. The internet to the rescue again: looks like: principal, associate principal, and assistant principal, which sounds similar to the hierarchy of college professors.
That conductor looks like Andy Rooney — or Leslie Jordan — and like he has kyphosis.
That cymbal player just stood up, buttoned the bottom button of his jacket, picked up his cymbals, and waited. Then, without playing them, he put them down and picked up a slightly larger pair, which he did crash together one time before putting them down, unbuttoning his coat, and sitting back down.
It made me think that if he got paid by the note, he’d be broke. And that reminded me of Barbra’s classic spiel in her backyard concert for which the tickets were $5000 a piece, and during which she mused for 25 seconds about how much that was per note:
Wayne and I had a delightful walk home after a quick stop at Sir Walter Coffee to ostensibly have a cup of coffee but to furtively use the restroom, avoiding the long restroom lines at the venue after the concert. Lots of bladders needed to be emptied before getting on the vans back to the retirement homes and assisted living facilities.
We felt blessed with beautiful weather and to be able to make the 2-mile walk back to our house. Thanks for a swell time, Wayne.
Coda
If you’ve never seen this 2.5-minute scene from The Seven Year Itch, which Bob just introduced me to and is an homage to Piano Concerto #2, enjoy “Good Old Rachmaninoff“: