Day 31 - Wednesday June 8, 2011 - From Yalta Across The Black Sea to Greece

Pictures: The Azamara Quest – my home away from home in the Black Sea for 10 days

I woke up at 6:30 am and we were still docked in Yalta. We are scheduled to leave at 7 am. I turned over and when I woke back up at 7:30 we were under way – not too far off of the coast of Yalta. We will be sailing back across the Black Sea all day today and tomorrow. We arrive in Mykonos on Friday morning. So today will be a day of relaxation - for reading, napping, Sudoku puzzles, eating, and drinking.

And I did just that. Had a late lunch, finished my second Sue Grafton book and finished my new book: “Buddha: His Life and Teachings and Impact on Humanity”. I learned a lot from my Buddha book but am going to have to read it again. My favorite chapter was “Suchness”, an interesting concept . . . “Anything incomplete is carried by the mind forever and forever. Anything complete is dropped. Mind has a tendency to carry the incomplete things in the hope that some day there may be an opportunity to complete them. You are still waiting for the wife to come back, or for the husband, or for the days that have gone – you are still waiting. You have not transcended the past. And because of such a loaded past, you cannot live in the present. Your present is a mess because of the past, and your future I going to be the same – because the past will become more and more heavy. Every day it is becoming heavier and heavier. When you really accept, in that attitude of suchness there is no grudge, you are not helpless. Simply you understand that this is the nature of things.” Makes you think!

Went to 3 lectures – one on the Borsporus by the guest lecturer on board, one on Mykonos Town, and one on Piraeus (port of Athens). So to finish off a “day of culture”, I went to another piano concert by the very talented Japanese woman, Tomono Kawamura – she was EXCELLENT. Had a late dinner in the restaurant (I’m still eating too much!), read a little in the cabin and went to bed about 11. Expect to get up early tomorrow so I can watch us enter the Bosporus Strait.