We stumbled upon the Bakery on the Water, a great little bakery and restaurant just around the corner from Allerton Cottage. Now we have breakfast there every morning.

A huge chalkboard sign on one wall of the bakery proudly proclaims that Bakery on the Water is owned by the fourth generation of bakers.

Our god daughter Stella and her mom are both great bakers. I wondered how far back this family tradition had existed, so I asked Stella if her grandmother and great grandmother had been bakers, too, and she said, “Yes, they absolutely were. As far as I know, all of the women on my mom’s side have been passionate bakers for a very long time!”

While that’s unusual, it’s probably not as unusual as four generations of professional bakers. Maintaining a successful business and handing it down from generation to generation to generation to generation is a truly rare achievement.

For example, I think my dad always knew that I was not destined to follow in his footsteps as a dairy farmer. By the time I was about five, I had already figured out that the kind of hard, dirty physical labor he performed about 12 hours each day was not for me. In fact, watching how hard he worked was all the motivation I needed to do well in school and go to college to learn to do anything that would keep me off the dairy. The concept of spending the rest of my life rubbing up against 1200 pound shit-covered animals did not appeal to me. Not even a little bit.

On one hand, I think he was very disappointed. On the other hand, I think he knew my interests and skills were different than his and he wanted me to go out and succeed at something that interested me.

Years later, I unintentionally made it easy for my employees to read exactly how my day was going. They knew it was a bad day if they could hear me walking down the hallway, drumming my fingers along the wall while repeating the words, “I could have had the cows. I could have had the cows. I could have had the fuckin’ cows.”

So when you learn that Bakery on the Water has been owned and operated by one family for four generations, it seems like an even greater accomplishment.

Here’s hoping there’s a fifth generation coming along that can make even better cream teas and Chelsea buns. They’ll do fine, I suspect, if they’re even half as good.

Today Jamie and I went to visit Stratford-upon-Avon, a small village just north of the Cotswolds where William Shakespeare was born somewhere around 1564. You may have heard of him. Apparently he wrote some plays and poetry.

Stratford still exists and prospers, primarily because Shakespeare was born there, and apparently in order to provide sellers of souvenirs in central England with ways to separate tourists from their pounds and pence.

Although I’ve been doing it for more than 40 years, I’m the first to admit that being “creative” is an odd way to make a living.

Almost all creative people — no matter whether we’re novelists or painters or sculptors or mere advertising copywriters — are incredibly insecure about what we do. We’re all convinced that we’re frauds and that everything good we’ve created in the past was the result of pure luck and that the last good project we completed will be the final good project we ever do and we dread the moment that the phone rings and we’re given a new assignment because we absolutely know this will be the one that finally exposes the true lack of talent that lurks inside us.

Do not think I’m exaggerating. I’ve had this discussion with many creative people in many fields and 99% of them wholeheartedly agree with the previous paragraph. The remaining 1% just won’t admit it.

With that in mind, you have to believe that William Shakespeare was not your typical creative personality. It’s almost impossible to believe that he looked at himself in the mirror and said, “I’m a freakin’ fraud. Oh, sure, I may have written 37 of the greatest plays in the history of the English language and 154 sonnets that will be remembered for half a millenium, but it was luck. Pure, unadulterated luck.”

I slept through most of Shakespeare when I was in high school, but managed to pass the test because I read the Cliff Notes version of Romeo & Juliet. Luckily, I had a great English lit professor in college. Mr. Piggott’s lectures made Shakespeare come alive. He made it so interesting that I actually read and appreciated Othello.

What you may not know is that the Bard wasn’t just a master of the English language, he damn near created it. Someone with far too much time on his hands determined that in his various plays, sonnets and narrative poems, Shakespeare used 17,677 different words.

But the incredible thing is that he invented 1,700 of them. And for those who didn’t gain an appreciation for Shakespeare from Mr. Piggott, you may be surprised to learn that you’re probably still using many of them every day.

For example, here are a few of today’s common words that were first used by Shakespeare:

accommodation, aerial, amazement, apostrophe, assassination, auspicious, baseless, bloody, bump, castigate, changeful, clangor, control (noun), countless, courtship, critic, critical, dexterously, dishearten, dislocate, dwindle, eventful, exposure, fitful, frugal, generous, gloomy, gnarled, hurry, impartial, inauspicious, indistinguishable, invulnerable, lapse, laughable, lonely, majestic, misplaced. monumental, multitudinous, obscene, palmy, perusal, pious, premeditated, radiance, reliance, road, sanctimonious, seamy, sportive, submerge, suspicious

But Shakespeare didn’t stop with mere words. He also put common words together to create phrases that were completely new to the English language. Until he put pen to paper, none of the following commonly used phrases had ever before been uttered:

all that glitters isn’t gold, barefaced, be all and end all, break the ice, breathe one’s last, brevity is the soul of wit, catch a cold, clothes make the man, disgraceful conduct, dog will have his day, eat out of house and home, elbowroom, fair play, fancy free, flaming youth, foregone conclusion, frailty thy name is woman, give the devil his due, green-eyed monster, heart of gold, heartsick, hot-blooded, housekeeping, it smells to heaven, it’s Greek to me, lackluster, leapfrog, live long day, long-haired, method in his madness, mind’s eye, ministering angel, more sinned against than sinning, naked truth, neither a borrower nor a lender be, one fell swoop, pitched battle, primrose path, strange bedfellows, the course of true love never did run smooth, the lady doth protest too much, the milk of human kindness, to thine own self be true, too much of a good thing, towering passion, wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve, witching time of the night

This remarkable man, the son of unremarkable parents from an unremarkable village in central England, created and recreated an entire language. All on his own. It’s been nearly 500 years and Shakespeare’s words are as alive as ever.

Advertising copywriters like me are thrilled if we can cobble together an amusing little 60-second radio commercial that can still make people laugh the second time they hear it. It’s a lifetime achievement if one of us manages create a single “catch phrase” that becomes part of the vernacular for a week or two.

For example, my proudest achievement in advertising wasn’t even for something I created. It was for recognizing the theretofore unrecognized genius of Harry Cocciolo (Hi, Harry), a kid who applied for a job with my ad agency. I looked at his portfolio and the mystery to me was how he could still be unemployed when his genius seemed so clear. He worked for us for a year and was then hired away by one of the world’s best ad agencies. The first of many great ad campaigns he created there was “got milk”.

It ain’t Shakespeare, but it’s as close as you can come in the world of advertising.

I readily admit that I have a bit of clotted cream, jam and scone on my T-shirt as I write this. Jamie just compared me to her Uncle Terry because I am not embarrassed at all by having that sourvenir of my lunch on my shirt. I consider it to be a fashion statement.

Everyone knows what scones and jam are, but unless you’ve been to England, you may not know what clotted cream is. It sounds horrible, but it’s wonderful. Wikipedia’s description of it does not make it sound any more appetizing:

“Clotted cream has been described as having a ‘nutty, cooked milk’ flavor, and a ‘rich sweet flavor’ with a texture that is grainy, sometimes with oily globules on the crusted surface. It is a thick cream, with a very high fat content (a minimum of 55%, but an average of 64%)…”

“Due to its high saturated fat content, the regular consumption of clotted cream is usually thought to be bad for health. A 2006 survey of nutrition professionals ranked clotted cream as the least healthy of 120 foods selected to be representative of the British diet.”

Well, let me make this as clear as I can: Screw each and every one of those wimpy-assed nutrition professionals, because clotted cream, jam and scones is the food of the gods.

I would eat this stuff three meals a day and snack on it in-between if Jamie would let me. I’m pretty sure I’d pass out and go into a sugar and fat-induced coma after about three days, but before losing consciousness I would use my last breath to beg Jamie to have clotted cream, jam and scones intravenously-injected directly into my bloodstream.

That’s how good it is.

Believe it or not, this is the view out the window of our hotel room in Zermatt, Switzerland. It’s beyond anything the Swiss tourism people could possibly have promised.

We’re staying at the Parkhotel Beau Site, which sits just slightly above Zermatt. The hotel is more than 100 years old and it’s magnificent.

Making hotel reservations online is always a bit of a crapshoot. We’ve learned that we’re better off assuming that hotel websites stretch the truth to the breaking point.

As an advertising guy, I’m skeptical of most advertising. So when the Parkhotel Beau Site’s website said we could get a “mountain view” room, my ad brain kicked in and I wondered exactly what that might mean.

Did it mean a view of the Matterhorn? Or did it mean a view of some other mountain? Was it what real estate agents call “a peek-a-boo view” that you can only get if you stand on a stepladder and look out the bathroom window on a cloudless day?

So I sent the Parkhotel Beau Site an email asking for clarification. Their response was quite clear and clearly not open for interpretation: “Mountain view rooms overlook the Matterhorn.”

Much to our surprise, the delightful Parkhotel Beau Site gave us the best room in the hotel. We don’t know why. It’s far from the most expensive room in the house, but I can’t imagine that any other room has a better view. Our room is on the corner of the top floor nearest the Matterhorn. We have floor to ceiling glass on the Matterhorn side of the room and the photo above is the view from our bed.

Yes, that’s what I said. We can lie in bed and look at the Matterhorn.

But let’s pause now for an aside, which I swear to God will eventually bring us back to Zermatt:

Many years ago, when I was a so-called ad agency executive, I served on a non-profit committee with Jack Lindquist, the President of Disneyland. He was an absolutely wonderful guy. We had weekly meetings in his office at which each committee member was required to make a report on the progress they had made in the prior week.

Jack soon realized that I had absolutely no interest in listening to the other committee members relate details of things that had no impact on my area of expertise. So each week he asked me to make my report first and when I was done he’d said, “Jim, why don’t you go out into the park and see how the Matterhorn is doing.”

I’d leave Jack’s office, wander through back stage Disneyland where I’d see things the public never gets to see, like Mickey Mouse without his pants or Pluto without his head or Snow White in her bra, and then enter the park and stroll past the Matterhorn, ride a horse drawn carriage down Main Street, get an ice cream, and finally arrive back at Jack’s office just before the meeting drew to a close.

Each week Jack asked me the same question: “How was the Matterhorn?”

I always said, “It was perfect”, but I never realized how perfect the Matterhorn could really be until today.

The funicular was not the last of the Godfather’s Lugano recommendations. He also suggested that we try his favorite Lugano restaurant.

To tell the truth, we weren’t too confident in this recommendation because the Godfather couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant and it seemed to us that he might not really know it all that well if he couldn’t remember its name.

“When you’re standing at the lake, looking back toward the Hotel Walter du Lac,” he said, “it’s about four or five doors to the left. It’s a little pricey, but the food and the service is incredible.”

So we wandered down to the Walter at lunchtime and walked four or five doors to the left, and sure enough, there was a lovely looking restaurant called La Cucina di Alice.

We sat down at a sidewalk table across the street from the lake despite the fact that we had already had lunch. We weren’t sure this was actually the restaurant the Godfather had recommended, but it was a very warm day so we thought we’d dip our toes in the water slowly by ordering cold drinks and desserts.

Let’s cut to the chase:

Jamie had a molten chocolate cake. I had cheesecake. Not only were they fabulous, but so was our waiter Edwin. So we made dinner reservations and asked to be seated in Edwin’s section.

Dinner was even better. Edwin was funny and gracious and responsive and he gave us free drinks, which as far as I’m concerned, makes even the finest meal taste even better.

So, Godfather, we hope La Cucina di Alice was your favorite restaurant in Lugano, because it certainly has become ours.

We just happen to be here at the same time as this year’s Lugano Blues-to-Bop Music Festival. They have stages all over town and different groups perform on each stage every night.

The photo above is an American gospel group that performed on the main stage on opening night. They were pretty damn good, but the audience just didn’t seem to be into it.

A brief aside:

One day a few years ago, Jamie and I were going through some old boxes of paperwork and ran across all my elementary school report cards. Turned out my mom had saved them all. Jamie thumbed through them and howled with laughter when she got to the one from kindergarten.

“You won’t believe what your teacher wrote,” she said. “Jimmy does not participate in rhythms.”

Mrs Kelsey had me pegged at an early age. Fact is, I have no rhythm. I have nary a scintilla of musical ability nor even comprehension. I can’t keep a beat. I am, I admit, pathetic when it comes to music.

Anyone who’s ever been to a concert with me knows that nothing has changed since kindergarten. We went to a Rolling Stones concert in Dallas a few months ago and while 80,000 other people were dancing and singing along with Mick, I basically stood with my two feet planted in place for the whole show, hands at my side until a song ended, when I applauded as if I was really feeling the music. I wasn’t.

I tell you this for one simple reason: The Swiss audience at the American gospel group’s concert looked like it was composed of a thousand me’s.

“If you like to dance,” the lead singer screamed, “come on down in front of the stage.” No one moved.

“Come on down,” the lead singer reiterated. “We want the dancers right here in front of the stage.” No one moved.

Jamie’s theory is that no one in the German, Italian and French-speaking Swiss audience understood what he was saying because of his strong Louisiana accent.

I choose to believe that the Swiss do not participate in rhythms.

We decided to end our stay in Toronto with a traditional Canadian meal. So we took the subway down to Chinatown.

There were a thousand Chinese restaurants within a few blocks and we didn’t know one from another, so we came up with a brilliant plan — we stopped at the only non-Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood and asked the host to recommend his favorite Chinese dining spot. He pointed across the street to Best of China.

I was a bit leery because there’s a donut shop in the town in which we live that is called Best Donuts. One would think that after a lifetime in advertising I would have become innured to the power of suggestion, but, no, I’m just as big a sucker as anyone else. I drove by Best Donuts every day on my way to the gym and thought, “Damn, those donuts must be good if they’re willing to name the place Best Donuts.” Finally, Jamie was out of town one day and I found myself unable to resist the sweet, sweet siren call of Best Donuts. I stopped in and ordered one glazed twist and one white cake with chocolate icing.

I was drooling before I got them back out to my car. Oh, how I looked forward to biting into the smooth, velvety goodness of the best donuts EVER. I beat myself up pyschologically for so long denying myself the pleasure of these gastronomic delights.

But, alas, I was disappointed. Sorely disappointed. Those donuts were not the best I’d ever tasted. Don’t get me wrong because I’m not saying they were bad. Hardly. They were average, maybe even better than average. BUT THEY WERE NOT THE BEST DONUTS.

In advertising, you’re taught not to overpromise. We learn that the fastest way to kill a bad product is to do good advertising for it. Good advertising will drive customers to try the product and when they are disappointed by it, they will not buy it again. Neither will their friends. Before long, no one will buy it and the product’s failure can be laid directly at the feet of good advertising that overpromised and a bad product that underdelivered.

But back to Toronto’s Chinatown where Jamie and I are standing on the street looking at the menu posted in the front window of the Best of China restaurant and all I can think of is Best Donuts and wonder if I will really experience the best Chinese food if I step inside or if I will again be disappointed.

Jamie finally said, “What the hell. Why not?” With that decisive statement, we walked in and a middle-aged Chinese woman waved her hand dismissively, indicating that we could sit anywhere we wanted in the nearly empty restaurant. We chose a table near the front window and I moved one chair so that we could sit side-by-side and watch the passing parade out the front window.

The same Chinese woman eventually brought us menus. She did not seem happy that I had moved the chair.

Jamie and I continued to pore over the menus and we had a couple questions before ordering.

Jim: What’s in the General Tao Chicken?
Waitress: (Loud and angry) Chicken!
Jim: I assume there’s chicken in the General Tao chicken. But what else is in it?
Waitress: (Louder and angrier) Look at picture!
Jim: (Looks at photo on menu, which reveals nothing except that the General Tao Chicken is red) Very pretty. But what’s in it?
Waitress: (Even louder and even angrier) It got sauce! Very spicy sauce!
Jim: In that case, we’ll take the sweet and sour chicken.
Waitress: (walks off muttering in Chinese) Stupid Americans don’t know General Tao Chicken contain chicken!

We don’t speak Chinese, so we can’t swear that those were her exact words, but we suspect they’re pretty close.

When the waitress came back with our Crunchy Shrimp Spring Roll appetizer, she tossed it angrily onto the table, spit out the words, “Yummy, yummy!” and walked away.

A few minutes later when she returned with our Sweet and Sour Chicken and Supreme Fried Rice, I made a point of asking her name and making introductions and then asking if I could take a photo of her with the food.

Mae did a 180 fast enough to give herself whiplash, and became the sweetest little woman ever. A huge smile spread across her face and she sat down and posed with Jamie and our lunch. Then she insisted that I sit down with Jamie while she took photos of us.

The sweet and sour chicken was excellent. And it turns out that the sour waitress was pretty sweet, too.

The only problem was that Jamie and I must have taken each other’s fortune cookies by mistake.

Her fortune said, “Others appreciate your good sense of humor.” Mine said, “You tend to be contemplative and analytical by nature.”

In the end, I cannot honestly say that Best of China offered the best Chinese food I’ve ever tasted. But for reasons I can neither understand nor explain, I loved Best of China as much as I was disappointed in Best Donuts.

What we looked like when we arrived in Toronto.

What we looked like when we arrived in Beijing.

This train trip had a bit of an inauspicious beginning with the missing bed fiasco, but all has turned out well. Really well.

After we got settled in, a steward came by our cabin and invited us to the observation car for champagne and canapés. Really. Champagne and canapés aboard a train. This, we thought, may actually live up to the hype.

It also prompted us to begin thinking about the differences in service between the Canadian Pacific train and the Trans-Siberian Express. They couldn’t be more stark despite the fact that First Class tickets on the two trains were roughly equivalent in price.

The Canadian dining car – Oh, my god. Crisp, clean tablecloths changed between each service. Fine china. Silverware. A truly delicious selection of meals. Service at your table. “Would you care for anything else, sir?” And daily breakfast, lunch and dinner are included in the price of our First Class tickets.
The Russian dining car – We were expecting finery fit for a czar. What we got instead was formica from my parents’ 1950s kitchen and a matching menu. Not to mention plastic plates and aluminum eating utensils that looked like they had been used to tunnel out of a gulag. And, of course, ZERO meals were included in the price of the tickets.

Canadian food – For dinner tonight, I had roasted duck and Jamie had glazed salmon. Three meals a day and every one a gourmet delight. We may gain five pounds before we reach Toronto.
Russian food – On our first morning I ordered oatmeal. The surly Russian woman who served as cook, waitress and cashier would not allow me to have it because it was reserved for children. I pointed out that there were no children on the train, but she didn’t care. I then tried to order yogurt, but she said that was impossible because it had not been delivered before the train left Moscow. To make matters worse, she looked like Nikita Khrushchev and was even more bellicose.

Canadian service – Incredible. If you want it, they’ll bring it to you. A friendly server passes through the observation car with platters of canapés. Another passes through with your choice of champagne or apple juice. They’re all wearing crisp, clean uniforms and big, broad smiles.
Russian service – The closest the staff came to service was when they pointed to their watches and grunted out a gruff, “Get on train” when it was time to leave a station.

The Canadian cabin – We have a sink with hot and cold running water. A three-way mirror. An in-cabin water closet. Multiple electrical sockets. A bed with a real, 6-inch thick mattress. Soft sheets. Soft, warm, comfortable blankets. A fan.
The Russian cabin – Cramped. No sink. No toilet. No power outlet. Two fold-down beds with about an inch of foam rubber for a mattress. We each got one scratchy blanket. But as a special bonus, the Russians provided a television set that didn’t work.

The Canadian “facilities” – Not only does our cabin have hot and cold running water and a toilet, but a full shower is located right outside our door. Sure, it’s shared between all the guests in our car, but that’s a small enough sacrifice to make in return for being squeaky clean every day.
The Russian “facilities” – Hahahahahahahaha, that’s a good one. Our cabin had no toilet, no hot water, no cold water, and no sink. There was one communal toilet down at the end of our car, but no shower. Let me repeat that in case you didn’t get it the first time: No shower. During the seven nights it took to get from Moscow to Beijing, we were somehow transformed from looking like a prosperous 21st century couple into immigrants at Ellis Island.

Information aboard the Canadian train – First thing we found in our Canadian Pacific cabin: A little map with a bit of information on each stop we’ll be making. As I’m writing this a pleasant female voice just announced that we were pulling off on a siding to allow a freight train to pass and that if we looked out to our right we would see Pyramid Falls. The train even slowed down and crawled past the falls so everyone could take photos.
Information aboard the Russian train – We groused that no information was available aboard the Russian train. How difficult would it have been to print up a little map with a bit of information about each stop? Or each point of interest? There was nothing. Nor were there any announcements except for the names of each station just before our arrival. The train spent hours clanking its way around Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest fresh water lake, but no mention was made of it.

Entertainment aboard the Canadian train – There’s a reason the train has a special car referred to as “the entertainment car”. It’s because they have actual entertainers aboard. Today we had a singer and guitar player who actually weren’t too bad. They also show nightly movies.
Entertainment aboard the Russian train – Sit in your cabin and wait until the next station, where you get to mill around on the platform waiting for the signal to reboard. Or you can stare at the inoperable television in hopes that it will miraculously spring back to life and pick up “The Real Housewives of Vladivostok” on some distant Siberian TV station. Good luck with that. Hope you brought an iPad full of books, because seven days and nights is a long time.

The staff aboard the Canadian train – Pleasant. Personable. Helpful. Respectful. Often hilarious. Everything you could ever want.
The staff aboard the Russian train – When the train gets to the Chinese border, the Russian crew is replaced by a Chinese crew, which leaves the Russians with nothing to do for the next two days. Throughout our last night on the train, the Russian crew partied in an empty cabin two doors down from ours. They screamed. They yelled. They laughed at the top of their lungs. They were clearly drunk. And I’m not exaggerating when I say throughout the night. I’m a pretty easy going guy, and I put up with it until two in the morning. Then I put on my pants, walked into that cabin and screamed, “Shut up. Be quiet. Go away.” and I motioned to them to leave. They didn’t. They continued their party with no regard nor consideration for the paying passengers.

Socializing aboard the Canadian train – There are multiple observation cars where sophisticated bon vivants (like us) from around the world chat with each other. This morning I spent an hour talking to the guide of a Smithsonian Institute tour group. Our dining companion at breakfast was a Chinese Phd candidate studying business and engineering at Cambridge (hi, Shin). At lunch (and several other meals) it was a Toronto attorney and his marketing executive wife (hi, Peter and Jane). At dinner it was two young Chinese girls studying business in Vancouver (hi, Ivy and Allison). We also dined a with the Chair of the Business School at the University of Western Australia and his wife, an international business consultant (hi, Dave and Patricia). By the way, guys, please let me know if I got any of your titles or job descriptions wrong.
Socializing aboard the Russian train – As the Russians say, “Nyet” (no). There was no observation car, no activities car, no entertainment car. That means everyone was basically restricted to sitting all day in their cabins or standing in the aisle. We did meet a delightful German couple (Hi, Lars and Denise) with whom we socialized on the platform at every stop and a young Russian couple who took us to lunch at one extended stop. But that was it. Most of the Russian passengers seemed content to sit in their cabins with the doors closed all day every day. (It should be noted that Lars and Denise, our German friends, conceived their son during this trip, so they were apparently more social than most aboard the Russian train.)

We’d barely been on the Canadian Pacific train for 24 hours when we started making plans to come back and do it again.

When we finished the Trans-Siberian train we agreed that it was a once in a lifetime experience. And that wasn’t meant as a compliment.

We bought First Class tickets on ViaRail’s Canadian Pacific train between Vancouver and Toronto. It looked spectacular (or “Spak-tacular” if you’re our friends Don and Jennifer Spak) online, but we’ve been fooled before.

Our trip two years ago across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express was also supposed to be first class. We didn’t know that the Russian definition of First Class is something similar to the conditions Ben-Hur experienced below deck on the Roman battle cruiser.

I won’t bother you with recounting those stories from the Russian trip, but if you’re interested you can find them here and here and here and here and here and here. Suffice it to say that Jamie may never forgive me for taking her on that trip. We always say, “It was a once in a lifetime trip.” And when we say that we mean we’ll never do it again.

When we got to our First Class cabin here in Vancouver, Jamie immediately looked around the small room (shown above) and suffered a minor meltdown.

“Where are the beds? First class was supposed to include beds. Are we in the wrong cabin? Are you sure you got First Class seats? Where are the beds. I don’t see any beds. We’re going to be on this train four nights. I want beds. Where are the beds?”

(I just asked her to read the preceding paragraph. She said, “That not what happened.” But she looked very guilty while saying it.)

I must admit that I was also a bit nervous. Instead of beds the room had just two padded seats that were not attached to the floor. You could slide them around on the floor into any position. Definitely not OSHA-approved.

“I hope those aren’t the beds,” she continued. “I can’t sleep on those for four nights. I need beds. Where are the beds?”

“Calm down,” I responded. “I’m pretty sure the beds must somehow fold down out of the wall. Or the ceiling. Or something.”

Turns out this same conversation was going on in the next cabin. When we stepped out into the hallway, the woman next door, right on the edge of panic, looked at us and said, “Have you found your beds? Where are the beds? Have you figured out how to open them up? We can’t find the beds.”

Diversion alert! This story will continue after a brief pause for a back story.

Many years ago I was cursed with a troublesome raccoon. I guess all raccoons are supposed to be troublesome, but this one was tearing up my landscaping and carrying off anything in my backyard that wasn’t tied down.

One night I had a brilliant idea. I borrowed a large cat carrier from my next door neighbor and put some cat food in it. As soon as I saw the raccoon go into the cage and begin eating, I slammed the door shut and covered the cage with a beach towel. My theory was that the raccoon would go to sleep in the darkened cage and the next morning I would put the cage in my car, drive to a nearby national forest and release the raccoon into the wild, where I reasoned, he would be much happier than he was in my backyard.

All worked according to plan until the next morning. When I went out to get the cage I discovered that the raccoon had absolutely shredded the beach towel. He had frantically pulled pieces of the towel into the cage through air vents. Pieces of the towel were sticking out everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong. The raccoon was fine. In fact, he was sitting back looking fat and happy and pretty damn proud of his destructive handiwork.

The story has a happy ending for the raccoon, if not for my beach towel. I drove the little bugger out to the national forest where I’m pretty sure he found a lovely lady raccoon, settled down in a hollow tree trunk, and raised a passel of little raccoons.

Either that or he was eaten by a coyote.

But that is neither here nor there.

Now let’s return to the Canadian Pacific train.

Our neighbors in the next cabin, like us, did not know where their beds were. But the man had apparently begun freaking out like Jamie. He had discovered a couple small corners of a sheet poking out from what he assumed was the bed hidden in a wall. He had pulled and tugged on those exposed portions of that sheet until it reminded me of what the raccoon had done to my beach towel.

But while the raccoon had looked pleased with his destruction, our next door neighbor just looked embarrassed.

The story has a happy ending.

We went to the observation car for a few minutes and when we returned two beds had magically appeared in our cabin. We’re not quite sure where they came from nor where they’ll go, but we don’t care because we have beds. Beds with lovely sheets, comfortable mattresses, and cushy pillows. Jamie couldn’t have been happier.

No telling if the guy next door can say the same.

Jamie lost our passports the day we were scheduled to leave on our previous trip around the world. I screwed up our Sri Lanka visas this trip.

When I first suggested that we add Sri Lanka to our itinerary, Jamie thought I was crazy. She didn’t really know much about the country, but was vaguely aware that it’s usually mentioned in the news for two primary reasons: Grinding poverty and a longtime civil war. Neither, she reasoned, were good reasons to visit. Fact is, I’m not even sure why I wanted to visit Sri Lanka except that I was vaguely aware that it’s supposed to be exceptionally beautiful. Well, that and the fact that science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke lived there from 1956 until he died in 2008. I figured that if it was good enough for the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, it was good enough for me.

I was persistent enough that she did some Googling. She found out that we could take a safari to see elephants in the wild. And I found an absolutely incredible resort built in the middle of an 18th century tea plantation. Believe it or not, the combination of those two things turned Sri Lanka into the one place we most wanted to visit.

Then I screwed up our visas.

You apply for the visas (actually ETAs, Electronic Travel Authorities) online. It was a simple form that any moron could have filled out, but I screwed it up. I didn’t know I’d screwed them up until the next day when they arrived via email. When I read them they said “Must be used before 9-12-15”.

Uh-oh. I started sweating. It appeared to mean that our visas expired the day before we were scheduled to arrive.

The application had asked for our Port of Departure and our travel date and I assumed it meant “Where are you flying from and when do you arrive?” so I wrote “London” and “September 12” but it actually meant “When are you leaving Sri Lanka and from where?” and the answer should have been “Colombo” and “September 22”.

I immediately sent an email to the address shown on the Sri Lanka ETA website. I explained my mistake and begged them to help me correct it. No answer after 24 hours. No answer after 48 hours. So I sent another email. Again, no response.

I should probably point out at this point that I hadn’t mentioned my screw-up to Jamie. Sri Lanka had, by this point, become her obsession, the place she wanted to visit more than any other. She wanted to see the elephants in the wild. She wanted to be pampered at the luxurious Tea Trails plantation. I knew I was dead meat if I couldn’t correct my screw-up.

After a week went by I actually called the Sri Lankan phone number shown on the ETA website. I ended up on one of those frustrating phone systems that takes you around in circles and never actually lets you talk to anyone. I called several times and never got connected to an actual human being. (I couldn’t help but wonder if Sri Lanka companies outsource their phone services to Bangalore, India.)

Desperate, I finally had an idea. I called the visa consultant who got us visas for Russia two years ago. Nothing’s tougher than getting in and out of Russia, so I figured he could solve my problem or at least tell me how to solve it.

Instead, the consultant who had been so helpful two years ago said, “There’s nothing we can do.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“Your nearest Sri Lanka consulate is in Houston. Try calling them and explaining your problem.”

Crap. That wasn’t the answer I wanted.

So I called the consulate and explained my problem to the pleasant young man who answered. He didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. He asked me to explain it again.

“Our ETAs say ‘Must be used before 9-12-15’ and we don’t arrive until September 13.”

He laughed.

“Sir,” he said, still laughing, “In Sri Lanka we put the day first and the month second like they do in England. So 9-12-15 means the ninth day of the twelfth month and your ETAs are valid until 9 December.”

I couldn’t believe it. I made him explain it again.

Whew! What a relief. I don’t have to sit Jamie down and explain that she’s going to miss her elephant safari and her pampering at Tea Trails because her husband is an idiot.

Well, she won’t miss them, but her husband is an idiot.