Playing games

The Treasure Island Catan game

To pass the time, Marc and I play games when we travel.
We used to play a travel Scrabble game that had little teeny tiles on a kind of board that folded open and held the tiles — except when we dropped one on the way to the board. Then it required some serious bending and stretching to find the tile under the seats.
For the most part, though, it was great and served us for many voyages.
People all around us would offer suggestions and cheer when one of us scored a big word.
But it's a new age now and this time around Marc bought a bunch of games for his iPad: Scrabble, Carcasonne, Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico.
Instead of toting along a game board and bags of tiny pieces, we just opened up the device and selected something to play. We usually had a couple of computerized opponents joining the fray.

The Siena sunset

It took some getting used to since we didn't have any cards or little pieces to hold or see.
It was difficult to know what the other guy had when you needed to negotiate a trade or steal something worthwhile.
But we persevered and pretty soon we were loving the fact that we didn't have to set up or take down anything.
Wherever we were when we were interrupted, the game came back at that spot.
We could play for five minutes or two hours, as long as the battery was charged.
We could play waiting for our food at a restaurant or on the plane as we waited to take off.
It didn't matter whether we had table space or not.
In Siena, we played waiting for the sun to set and in Florence in the Boboli Gardens when it was too hot to walk around anymore.
So now we're spoiled.
We're home and we're still playing our games on the iPad in our spare time — plus we've added a few, new ones, mostly variations of Catan.
It's really quite enjoyable except that Marc wins most of the time.
That's annoying.