Well, that's pushing it. The pace has nothing to do with flying and there are no shelves, just an ocean of wooden boxes behind a little counter. Million of stamps. Two clerks. Amazingly, they find whatever you want very quickly and they do take AmEx. Nothing electronic, mind you. I'll keep the beautiful receipt. I get a dinosaur set for Arthur, one of Marilyn of course, and one of Alexander Hamilton [Note for the Frenchies - c'était le premier ministre des affaires étrangères des US. Un beau gosse, qui aurait sûrement fini président s'il ne s'était pas fait tuer en duel par Aaron Burr, le troisième vice-président.]. He was born in Nevis, and left at 17 to attend... Columbia University (I'm sure Leon and Paul knew this). We missed his house. Well, in fact the house was destroyed in a 19th century earthquake. So we missed the reproduction of his house, rebuilt in a different location...
As there is really not much else we can do here, and hunger pains are coming, we go back to the ship. Obviously, most of the other 1798 tourists had the same idea. There is a loooong line waiting for the tenders, manhandled by the local port authority - as efficient as everything else. The line snakes around and around, with little shade. People are getting cranky. This is the first fault in the perfect organization of the cruise, likely not by their fault. We enter the enclosure where everyone is parked toward the front of the line, and we make our way - up current - towards the end of the line. When we get there, there is no space to extend the line within the enclosure. The only option is to spread out on the street. The port authorities don't want that, so they order us to go start a new line. We were thinking that we'd be in a different location, but that we'd go after everyone. But, in fact, they order us to start a new line, just next to the other one. The poor, red-faced, sweaty people who've been in line for an hour become even more red-faced and start hurling insults at us. Trying to explain that we're just following the orders of the uniformed people doesn't really help. We are going to be lynched. But we are not particularly unhappy to not have to wait another hour before having lunch. After a few minutes, they order a first group to move forward. To calm the crowds, we let a few people go ahead of us. We are part of the second group. They push us into a circular gazebo, and we wait again. As there is only one entrance to the gazebo, the people who were first in line are now stuck at the back of the gazebo... It would make sense that they would gather the number of people that fits in a boat. But that would be too organized. So, we don't get into the first boat. It's a zoo, a stampede. But we learn from our experience and we maneuver to be close to the exit. We end up being just next to Romero LuBambo, Diane Reeves' Brazilian guitar player. He's a brilliant guitarist. But a very normal man in his fifties, with a real wife (not a surgeried barely legal babe), and a bunch of children. No diva attitude here either. They are taking their being trapped in the gazebo in stride.
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