Jackie Olesky Straight, Class of 1955, who lives in Rivesville, from June 27 to July 7 was on an Oceanic cruise from Barcelona that took her to Spain, France and Portugal. She stopped at exotic and historic ports like Barcelona, Valencia and Cadiz in Spain, Marseille in France, sailed by the Rock of Gilbraltar and into Lisbon, Portugal.

With such a plethora of sights to pick from, what was her favorite highlight of the trip? A greenhouse!

Well, to be fair, it is a 100,000-acre greenhouse under a humongous plastic covering that creates the world’s largest salad bar. It’s the Clisol Greenhouse in Almeria, Spain. “They have sweet pepper plants growing up to 10 feet high,” Jackie said. Not one plant that big, but the trellis or whatever supporting the peppers goes up 10 feet.

And “I had a slab of tuna that was three inches thick, nothing like my canned tuna at home.”

To complete the world’s largest salad bar, Clisol has two harvests a year of those delicious sweet peppers, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes. All you need is a vat of salad dressing and you’re all set. With cantaloupe and watermelon to your heart’s content.

Writes Renee Straight, WVU Ruby Memorial pharmacist and Jackie’s daughter:

“The area was nearly a desert but they have found a way to harvest these vegetables and be profitable.  They grow tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon and cucumbers all without any chemicals.  It was very interesting.  We were given samples at the end of the demonstration.”

Jackie added: “Oh, my, everything was so delicious! Their vegetables and fruit were SO good!”

This from a mountain woman who once helped her late husband Dave Straight work his 100-acre farm. That’s like a diamond-cutter being praised by the DeBeers CEO.

But Jackie didn’t exaggerate. The Almeria greenhouses export nearly 300 tons of vegetables and fruit which brings them $500 million dollars a year. That’s a half-billion dollar salad bar!

In another email during the trip, Renee exclaimed: “Our days are rapidly passing as our waistlines expand.”

Jackie has a different explanation: “You eat a lot, but we walked so much” that keeping the waistline trim wasn’t that difficult.

Particularly when “we walked 129 steps to get to this church in the middle of nowhere,” Jackie said. Been there, sister Jackie, and I hear you. I used the Baltic trip by Paula and me to continue rehabbing my store-bought right knee. After climbing all those church steps, mainly because European churches were built on the highest point of the towns, the knee became like new. Climbing Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand, the steepest residential street in the world, all 1,200 feet of it, gave the knee a strenuous workout, too. Better than a week at the Falls Natatorium.

The weather probably helped hold down the weight gain, too. Sweating a lot will do that.

Wrote Renee: “We spent time in two small areas in France.  It was a very hot 100 degrees. There was a ritzy area that was similar to Venice with the water canals.  We went for a little ride around the area. Some of the boats were amazing.  We had some free time so we stopped for ice cream with caramel topping.

“Hopefully this not a primer for the football season!!!” and the sauna days of September football in Mountaineer Field.

Another aspect of the unintentional weight-watching program was running through airports in Atlanta and Newark and Lisbon after flight delays made connections a bit dicey. Paula and I have been through that. We hop one of the roving carts, look more decrepit than we are, and tell the driver which terminal gate we want to go to. Saves a lot of shoe leather and breathless runs before your plane boards. 

Adds Renee about the canals place: “I made the mistake of saying hello in French therefore they thought that I could speak French.  Quickly they learned that was about the limit for my French. 

“We ate dinner at the Grand Dining Hall.  Mom had a large piece of chicken and I had beef tenderloin.  Everything was great from the crab cake appetizer to the salad to the main course.  Mom couldn't eat any dessert but I tried some rum cake dessert.  Drunken goodness.”

A lesser highlight for Jackie was visiting in Valencia, Spain the Oceanogràfic of the City of Arts and Sciences, the largest aquarium in Europe.

Since Jackie loves to eat fish, with dolphins, belugas, walruses, sea lions, seals, penguins, turtles, sharks, rays, sawfish, jellyfish, starfish, sea urchins and crustaceans inhabiting the place, it’s a wonder she didn’t spear one for her dinner.

And in Cadiz Jackie and Renee were entertained by flamenco dancers and music.

Exclaimed Jackie: “It was a wonderful taste of each country.” With the emphasis on “taste.”

Now she’s back at her Paw-Paw Creek home. “I gotta recuperate,” Jackie said, after spending 23 continuous sleepless hours riding planes and sitting in airports.

And dreaming of the world’s largest salad bar! For Jackie, it wasn’t bon voyage, but bon apetite!