tsavard's travel blog

Spain Slideshow - Sorry

2012-02-06T10:52:00.002-05:00

It occurs to me that I never built a slideshow of my Spain trip. Due to being first very busy then very forgetful it was an oversight. I will rectify the situation soon.

Iceland in Late May

2012-02-06T10:49:00.000-05:00

After a couple months of having nothing at all planned (which was extremely painful to me) I can now announce that I am heading to Iceland for the time frame of Memorial Day week. This trip is being motivated by our friend Dee so I might go a little light on the planning details. For the time being I will state that we have purchased our airline tickets already and are going to be there for around 5 days. It appears that there will be at least 5 of us. Of course we are flying Iceland Air as it is a direct flight and fairly cheap. I have only passed through on my various trips to Scandinavia and have never strayed from the airport (fortunately my layovers there have been short) so I think it will be a fun trip with a lot of outdoorsy activities and some viking heritage hopefully. More details as they are hashed out by the group.

Spain Day 9 - One Week Late

2011-11-07T09:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, the last day of my trip to Spain became more of an adventure than it needed to be but not because of anything much from Spain, but what had happened at home.

I had a flight scheduled to take off at 1:55pm Spain time and that meant I was to take the 10am shuttle van from the hotel to the airport because that would only cost me 8Eu rather than the 35 or so it would be for a taxi. I woke up early and decided to eat breakfast at the hotel to kill some time before getting fully packed and heading to the lobby to check out. That was quick but they apparently didn't have a van ready for me for some reason so the hotel paid a cab to drive me to the airport. The driver was a nice guy and I tipped him a couple Eu because I felt generous. Madrid airport apparently separates the US international flights from the rest of the international flights but they won't let you to the gate areas until around an hour before departure. Check in and all that was fairly simple but I had to wander around the airport for a while to kill time before I could get to my gate. For whatever unknown reason though the plane took off at least 45 minutes late even though we started boarding on time. This was the single most disorganized boarding process I've ever seen. It was terrible. So with the late departure the basically uneventful flight arrived in Boston over an hour and a half late. I was seated next to one of the flight attendant's son.

When I got home I got a ride to my house by way of Flightline and found that the snowstorm on Saturday had knocked power out all over the place including my house. It had been out of power since Saturday and it was freezing when I finally got home (aside from being dark and having no water). I unpacked a bit and eventually tried to get to sleep but it was just too cold so I ended up driving to my brother's house to spend the night. And I had to do that all the way until Thursday when we finally got power back. The outage set me back a lot on getting things sorted out. So that is why this post was late. Anyway, I enjoyed Spain a lot. I wasn't sure going into it, especially with the lack of prep on my part but things sorted out well and I had a lot of fun. Aside from the bad weather day things were good.

Spain Day 8

2011-10-31T01:41:00.000-04:00

So guess what. The time change happened here already. It happened last night at 3am back to 2am. That is good for the fact it was light out much earlier but it is bad for the fact I get to do it twice because the US happens next weekend. Bleh. In any event, I woke up and got cleaned up and headed to the Dunkin Coffee (it is not Dunkin Donuts here for some reason) across the street from the tourist place. I had a coffee and a chocolate donut which I forgot to take a picture of then headed over to the office to check in for the tour. Today was the monastery of El Escorial. The tour was actually a combination of 2 tour groups. Those just going to El Escorial like I was an then a lot of people who were going to do a Toledo tour in the second half of the day.

The drive was about 40 minutes out of town back towards the mountains. El Escorial is a 16th century monastery built by Phillip II. The idea was it was going to be a tomb first but I guess he decided along the way it could be more than that and he built up a monastery, cathedral and residence in the location. In its time there was no supporting town because the king wanted his privacy so everyone was kept far away. The theme of the monastery was St Laurent who was tortured by being cooked on a grill as a martyr so the there is a theme of looking like a grill that is present in the monastery. The building is quite large and unfortunately no where in the tour did we get a good place to take a picture of the whole edifice. I would have liked that opportunity. On the outside I suppose it is the size that is really what is impressive about it. It has the look of a very large French style palace but without any adornments or at least very little. In that sense I guess it is not picturesque.

Because it was Sunday the tour started in the Library while they had services in the Cathedral. Apparently it is still an active library for the monastery which is still active with Augustinian brothers. The books are kept spine to the back so that the pages have more ability to breath. They do not get much humidity so the books are well protected. The entirety of the monastery's decorations inside are Italian in style. Unfortunately there were no pictures allowed and I didn't get a chance to find a good book of the site so I will have to go without. The inside did remind me of a lot that I saw in Rome and was very much distant from the dark lesser adorned cathedrals I had seen so far in Spain.

I was apparently the only person in the tour who required English which made things a touch difficult at first because I think the guide wanted to dispense with a bilingual tour but I ended up meeting Inez and Jessie who are both from Florida and they helped translate for me a lot of what he said that he didn't translate himself. Jessie apparently owns her own translation business and Inez works for her. They were very nice and very helpful and I had a lot of fun talking to them for the remainder of the tour. The tour moved on from the library to the cathedral which did remind me of the cathedrals I had seen in Italy and was much more bright and agreeable looking. The residence of Phillip II and his wife were built just off the church and we visited those next. From there we wound our way through their residential and show areas and then finally back out to a small cafeteria for a few minutes where we had coffee then on to the tour bus and back to Madrid by say 1:30. The tour was basically more interesting than this telling but without pictures it is probably not as good a story. I did like the place. Apparently a support town has been built in recent centuries and approximately 10000 or so people live in the vicinity.

After we returned to Madrid I ended up eating lunch with Inez and Jessie and we chatted until they had to move on the second part of their tour in Toledo. I obviously hadn't signed on for that as I had already done the full day tour in Toledo. We ate at a small tapas, cafeteria type place and had their menu of the day. For me I had their black rice (which is black by way of squid ink) and their roasted lamb chops. The rice was excellent and very tasty. The lamb was good but very fatty. They included a bottle of wine for us and we had an inlcuded dessert which I had flan. Inez suggested we have a carajillo which is a coffee with brandy in it and we all had one of those as well. It was interesting and the brandy must have been sweet because the drink was very sweet in flavor. As we finished it was basically time for them to rejoin the tour so I brought them back to the tour office and then headed back to the room for a pit stop.

At that point it was just past 3pm and I decided I would see the bullfighting ring by walking there. I knew that I needed to head up the Gran Via to Calle de Alcala and that the ring was a fair distance down there. I would pass the parks I was in on Saturday along the way so I really was retracing a fair bit. After passing the park I was basically in a not very interesting standard city area. It took me about 50 minutes or so to walk to the ring. It was of course closed probably because it was Sunday. All the same I took some pictures of it and the couple statues around it and then headed back. All in all the process took me just short of two hours and I think it was probably in the 3.5 mile range for distance based on my walking speed which was mainly my get somewhere speed since there was little new to see until I got there. For good or for ill it had gotten very warm out and I was glad I was wearing a short sleeve shirt unlike the majority of people out here. Aside from the rain my first full day in Madrid the weather has been quite nice. At times the breeze had a bit of a chill across it when it happens but I quite like that. I suspect today was in the 25C or so range. Upon returning to the room I basically wrote this then relaxed for a while before heading out to dinner early.

Being that I had to travel back home on Monday I decided to just head back to the Italian restaurant for dinner. I knew it would be a sit down meal and that it would be open early. I also knew it wasn't going to be too expensive so it all worked out for me. I had a more Spanish type lunch anyway so that requirement was fulfilled. At Pizza Marzano I had a beer and their calzone vesuvio which had spiced beef, pepperoni, green peppers, red onions and mozzarella. It was actually quite good though the spicy was on the tamer side. Still I really enjoyed it so I guess that was what mattered. From there I just headed back to the room to start the packing process in order to be on my way home.

Not a lot of pictures for day 8 but they can be found here.

Spain Day 7

2011-10-29T17:19:00.000-04:00

Today I planned to visit the Palacio Real de Madrid. I wasn't sure what time it opened but I figured it would be later than I wanted. The night before I had been talked out of taking a walking tour of the city then having a tour of the palace after the walking by the guy at the hotel desk. He said most guests don't find it that good and it is cheaper to do it on your own or to even take the hop on hop off bus of Madrid to get the tour stuff. After I got cleaned up I just headed on down towards where the palace should be. I knew I needed to take a left when I reached the Plaza de Espana but I wasn't totally sure how long it would take to get there. I reached the Plaza de Espana with it still being too dark to take any good pictures of the couple monuments there so I kept on past it and down the hill further. I eventually came to the Jardines de Sabatini which is on one side of the palace. I knew it was still early so I walked through them a bit. They were more in the Italian style as a landscape garden rather than a flower garden type. After that I walked up and around to the side of the palace where I found another park that was completely covered in litter. I suspect it was too early for the city cleaners to have gotten out to have picked up after the messy punk kids and thoughtless tourists. However it go there there was a ton of trash. From there I walked on through to the entrance of the palace to find out that it opened at 10am. It was still before 9am by a good deal at this point. So I basically wandered around for the time to kill. I entered the cathedral and took a couple quick snapshots but they were about to have a service and there were a bunch of nuns there as well as a camera crew that was going to shoot something happening there. From there I found the ruins of a Roman crypt being excavated. After that I wandered around without purpose to kill the time. About 20 minutes before 10 I decided to just get near the entrance and wait. People started to line up so I did as well. When the doors opened I bought the ticket, had to screen security and headed to the royal apartments first. I really must have moved quick. I think the few people ahead of me must have stopped right away in the gift/book shop. I managed to get more than half way through the apartments being the only non-security person I saw. Finally folks moving through at a quicker clip did catch up to me but I was happy to be in a royal palace and mostly uninterrupted for as long as I was. Unfortunately they had a no pictures indoors policy so I had to buy the book for that. They were fairly nice estate rooms most of which had been set up the way they are in the 18th century with some done in the 20th century. In any event I quite enjoyed the royal apartments and moved through them at a reasonably slow pace to look at everything. From there I moved on to the temporary exhibit of their clocks collection. I had noticed that some of the clock pieces referenced were missing and this turned out to be why. Apparently some of the former Spanish royalty had a huge interest in clocks so they collected a lot, especially from England and France. It was a cool exhibit which might have been nicer if the clocks that had animations were displaying them. There was a movie that did so though. After the clock exhibit I went to the royal pharmacy followed by the royal armory. The armory was mainly a collection of armor owned and possibly worn by the Spanish kings. It was nice but of course it was small, or smaller than many other collections I've seen. It took more than a couple hours to get through everything.

After the palace I headed up Calle Mayor and found the Plaza Mayor. I ended up eating a quick lunch at the McDonald's there mainly because I couldn't see any lunch places that had seats otherwise. There were a lot of people just sitting and drinking coffee at a lot of the cafes around. In any event I had the McNuggets meal with a coke and was out the door quick. After the plaza I headed up toward the Parque de Madrid and wandered around that. They had a largish boat pond and a couple other things but mainly it was a park that was just filled with people. I got a beer at a stand and watched the boat pond for a while then headed on to see the Palacio de Velazquez which turned out to be nothing but a museum with an exhibition for some awful looking paintings from some artist I haven't heard of. I of course am not good with art and maybe, probably, others think it looks good. In any event, I didn't go in. After that I found the Palacio de Cristal but that was closed for renovations it appeared. There was a lot of heavy machinery inside it anyway. There was a smaller pond outside it though and that had a fountain and a fake waterfall. It also had water fowl of various sorts and a bunch of turtles too which was unexpected. After that I just wandered the perimeter of the park and eventually because I couldn't find public toilets and it was getting urgent I headed in to the hotel, perhaps a bit earlier than I had intended. The weather remained beautiful all day though. I had basically done a giant loop around the older part of the city so far as I can tell. It really wasn't difficult to figure out at all. Since it was early I chose basically to make it just a pit stop and drop off the stuff I had bought to lighten the load. From there I headed back out to see the Plaza de Espana in better light.

The crowds were already beginning to pick up but I did a quick run down to the Plaza and took a few pictures then headed on to Calle Mayor again. On the way I found a place for helados and had a dulce de leche ice cream which was good. From the plaza I worked my way back towards the hotel and then spent a couple hours watching another Japanese movie called Tajomaru which wasn't quite as interesting as Machine Girl though it was about samurai. After the movie I headed downstairs, booked a tour for El Escorial and then headed back to the Plaza Mayor (or perhaps the Plaza Santa Cruz depending on how bad I read maps) and found dinner sitting outside at a restaurant called Helgar. I had a set menu which started by my choice with a fish and seafood soup that was tasty but most of the fish in it (especially the shellfish) was extremely chewy. The main course was a grilled Dorada which is a whitefish around here I guess. It was very good and fresh but there were a couple spots that weren't properly cooked. Being a sushi eater it wasn't a big issue for me but I should bring it up. I had two large Cruzcampo beers (it was my birthday after all) and finished with an espresso included in the menu. All in all it was a decent meal. Not bad for a totally tourist place anyway. Maybe a touch more expensive than it need to be. The beers were really too expensive comparatively to what I have been paying. The price of finding a tourist place which is more understandable. From there I headed back into the hotel and crashed for the evening.

The pictures for day 7 are here.

Spain Day 6

2011-10-29T01:03:00.000-04:00

Today was another of the packaged tours, this time to Toledo which is south of Madrid. I woke up at the typical time and got ready then headed out to find something like breakfast without having to spend 9Eu on a not so thrilling buffet. There really aren't a lot of breakfast place choices so I ended up at the McDonald's down the street. I went in trying to order a toasted muffin and black coffee. The toasted English muffin showed right on the menu. I instead got an Egg McMuffin with bacon and a double shot of espresso. Not really being a fan of eggs I managed to eat it anyway. I guess it was similar to what I ordered though. It did have bacon. I would much have preferred a plain old cup of coffee but that was not in the cards either. The espresso was fine but just not what I wanted.

The tour departed on time and we had a bus ride south to Toledo. The landscape to the south was similar to what I saw heading towards Avila and Segovia except it was missing the mountainous rock formations. Everything was still grey, yellow and brown. There were less trees also. The weather however was proving it would cooperate for the first time since I arrived in Madrid and we had sun the whole day and by the end of the day it was fairly warm too. The bus ride had a brief stop outside of Toledo at a tourist trap rest area but I didn't really bother with much there as it was a shortish ride of maybe an hour and the place was crowded with every tour bus heading to Toledo when we got there.

From the rest stop we headed into town by way of a scenic road that allowed us to stop and take pictures at an overlook across the valley from the city. I have the feeling it is expensive to own a home around Toledo. Those on the outskirts are quite large. According to the guide, Magdalena, there are about 80000 inhabitants in Toledo. So it is not really a large city by any stretch. The city of Toledo dates back 2500 years in many various forms. The land was owned by the Romans, Visigoths , Arabs and Castillans throughout its history and there are buildings and ruins from pretty much all the various cultures. I will state that the tour was a series of visits mainly to churches. I cannot expect much else from the very Catholic Spanish. It started with entry in to the city up a long escalator installed in 2000 that brought us up to the city wall. The wall was 12th century if I understood the guide correctly. Some of it had been modified by the various inhabitants along the way. From the wall we walked in to the center of town where stood the cathedral. Apparently this one took 500 yeas to build and dates between the Gothic and Rococo periods. The front of the cathedral shows the Rococo influence. There are baroque elements as well. As with the cathedral at Avila it was not the most impressive church I've been to having that same never finished quality to it.

From the cathedral we walked to a small museum of the back of the church of St. Tome depicting a painting by El Greco of The Burial of Count Orgaz that is considered his most important work. Wasn't thrilling but I guess it was a good painting. From there we moved on to a synagogue that was built by the Arabs for the Jews in the 12th century then bloodily captured and made Christian in the 15th century. Now it is just a museum. Apparently though there are Jews in Spain there is not a true Jewish community here since they were driven out in 1492. The Arabs were also driven out in 1492 incidentally. In Spanish history 1492 is a very significant point. The synagogue was not decorated much and was mainly empty. It style was definitely more Arabic. I thought it was an odd novelty and would have liked it a bit more without the Catholic work put into it. From the synagogue we walked on to a Franciscan monastery, the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, that was built by command of Queen Isabella and dedicated to St John the Evangelist. The church here has the honor of being the church most used for weddings in Toledo. I will give it credit that it is bright and well lit and looks much less gloomy than most of the churches I've seen in Spain so far. From the monastery we walked to a small cultural museum on a nice terrace at the edge of the city. The former owner was an artist named Victorio Macho who donated the land and belongings to the city for display. I was mostly interested in the views of the Arabic bridge off the balcony. I liked looking down at the river from up there. At this point we walked down to the bridge and across it and then took the bus to our restaurant.

The place was named something like El Cigaralle or something like that. It is in reference to the types of homes that exist in the region. The big expensive ones I mentioned before. I assume this place was built into one of them. In any event I had the typical lunch which started with water and wine and bread and olives. The first plate they gave us was a starter course of various foods. There was a couple of fritters of some sort as well as a couple slices of a tort or somesuch and a lot of mushrooms and a slice of cheese and some form of tomatoey sauce. I ate the stuff, it was all good. From there we moved on to the main course which was roast lamb shank with boiled vegetables and french fries. The lamb was extremely tender and just fell of the bone and melted in the mouth. Needless to say I really liked it. The veggies weren't so exciting and the fries were soggy. The lamb juices couldn't really save them. Fortunately I really wanted the lamb most so that is what I ate. There was a lot of meat on my piece too. After the main course there was a cake with vanilla ice cream. The cake had many layers with different flavors on it. It was tasty and very moist. The ice cream was not as good quality as the day before unfortunately but I never turn the stuff down. They also gave a small coffee included with the meal. I was quite full by the time we were done and headed on to the bus to get the people who didn't buy the included lunch in the tour back at the bridge.

After picking up the rest of the tour we headed up into the city to visit a small shop that shows how a specific gold and steel craft is made in Toledo. It is called Damascian if I heard the girl correctly. Basically they take gold thread and wind it into patterns then hammer it into place in the steel and then heat it to blacken the steel. The whole thing was an excuse to get you into a shop and make you spend money but I am not particularly interested in stuff like that, nor do I have the space for it so I had to just wander in circles until we could finally move out of there. Of course many people bought stuff. One Mexican man bought a Toledo steel show sword. Have fun taking that on the plane...

From the shop we headed to the Alcazar of Toledo. Like in Segovia the Alcazar is a palatial fortress. The term Alcazar can only be used on fortresses in cities apparently. In any event this Alcazar was destroyed in 1936 in the Spanish civil war and was rebuilt again in the 40s. When it was rebuilt it was made into the Army Museum. They intended it to stay as museum from that point on. Apparently in more recent years there have been many collection additions and it also home to what used to be the military museum of Madrid. The building is quite large and though destroyed some sections of it are original if restored. Some of it is fully rebuilt. According to Magdalena they tried to copy the original building as best as possible at least on the outside but concessions were made when building it into a museum. I was a bit curious about the story and she explained that the Alcazar of Toledo had always been a symbol of power in the region. In her words it was like to the world in its time as the White House is to the world in our time (I got her to concede that Wall Street is the real power though). So throughout the list of cultures that had inhabited Toledo over time all of them used the location for some form of stronghold or fortress. That Toledo is not really in any strategic location towards conquest must accentuate the importance of Toledo itself. She went on to say that when the civil war happened the rebels took hold of the Alcazar as a symbol of political power. The fact that they did not hold the rest of the city was probably bad for them but they wanted the symbolism more than anything strategic out of it. I didn't get great details on how it was destroyed but she did tell a story of an important man whose son was taken hostage and he basically let the son be killed than give up the Alcazar it was that important a symbol to both sides. In any event she said that the government has been trying to improve the reputation of the building because to many the Alcazar of Toledo is synonymous with the civil war. Obviously there are still people alive who remember it. As such that is why the so many additions to the exhibits.

I should also point out that there were ruins of all sorts all over the city it is quite beautiful and I am very happy I made this visit and much happier that the weather cooperated. I would probably not have liked it as much in the rain. I also will use this moment to point out something I should have a while ago. The Spanish are further behind in their smoking cessation than even the French and Germans are. The hotel rooms are all smoking and people here smoke like crazy. I have eaten outside a lot and have not been to a true Spanish restaurant for dinner really so I am not sure if they smoke in restaurants. I wouldn't be surprised. The otherwise restaurants were non-smoking indoors so hopefully they at least have that law.

After the Alcazar it was an hour long bus trip back to Madrid where we disembarked at the tour office and I headed up to the room to rest and get this started before heading out to find food again. We got back at about 5:30pm.

Seeing Madrid with a bit more sun from the bus I still think it has a grimy feel even if it is clean. I mean the sidewalks and buildings look stained and blackened a bit. I am sure that affected my belief that it felt dirty. I don't think it is a dirty city but it just doesn't fully feel clean either. During my relaxation time I watched a bizarre Japanese movie called Machine Girl. It definitely had a nod to the old Peckinpah days but was often quite amusing. After that I headed out to find food in the official Spanish time frame but really fell over on my back trying to locate something that didn't look to cafeteria style for me. I guess they must like that a lot. Tapas would make sense but it really seems a social food and I am solo of course. So I ended up at the Rong Hua Chinese restaurant where I had Chicken with Hot Pepper that had no hot pepper in it but at least wasn't sweet. I coupled that with white rice and a couple beers. It was good anyway. After dinner it was back to the room to crash for the night after maybe a short time kill to digest for a bit.

The pictures for day 6 are found here.

Spain Day 5

2011-10-27T16:55:00.000-04:00

Today I was set up to do the tour of Avila and Segovia. The weather was threatened to be cold and rainy and I decided I should be prepared for it even if there were significant bus times on the tour. I therefore opted to bring an umbrella with me and I guess I am glad I did.

I started out first trying the buffet breakfast at the hotel which wasn't bad but isn't worth 9Eu. So I won't be doing that again even for the coffee which was from a machine but not bad. After breakfast I had to make my way to the tour office which is literally a 5 minute walk down the street. I think it is closer from this hotel to the tour office than the walk in Prague. This tour office is a bit more hidden but the girl at the desk of the hotel gave me great directions so I had no issues getting there. It rained pretty much until the tour actually started at 9:15 but when we got outside there was actually sun. This lasted for maybe about 25 minutes of the drive as we headed up into the mountains and then pretty much it was rain or overcast the rest of the day. The landscape around here is all shades of grey, brown and yellow on the rocky ground. There is a dark clay for soil it looks like and there are more rocks than back home perhaps. I would hate to have to dig around here. The shovel blade would be blunt in minutes. The yellows came from the dried tall grass that is everywhere. They have a lot of conifers around here and some deciduous trees which did sprinkle in the green that was still overwhelmed by all the darker colors. I am curious how much different it looks out here in the summer. I hope it is more green. If not for all the rain I would say the countryside looks arid.

The first stop on the tour was the city of Avila, which is one of the oldest cities in Spain. If I understood the guide Andres correctly the city was formed somewhere around 2400 years ago. I am not sure if I heard him right though. In any event it has a well preserved city wall from the 11th century that I suspect must have been reconstructed a couple times. It was beautiful but in too good shape to be completely the original. The guide said there were 88 towers along the wall. Avila was the birthplace of St. Teresa who formed the Carmelite monastic order. So we visited several churches that had a theme involving her existence. The church of St Vincent was where she was baptized I believe. We did not go in the cathedral but only walked the perimeter and heard a little bit about it. I guess it wasn't too stunning inside or it must have been too expensive to include in the tour. The last church we visited was the Convent of St. Teresa. It was built on the land where her familial house was. Apparently there is a chapel in there that represents the location of her mother's room in the house and therefore is the place where she was born. There was a lot of history about St. Teresa in this part of the tour. I'll be honest with you. I didn't know who she was before the tour.

After Avila we headed on to the bus and drove to Segovia. Segovia really is an old city as well. It has a Roman aqueduct that dates back 2000 years or so easily. That was supposed to be the first stop the guide brought us to but I guess we were behind schedule and the included restaurant was just down the hill from it so he brought us to the restaurant and dropped us off. It was called El Cordero I believe. I had the Gastonomic lunch which included a bottle of wine for the table, white bean soup (the beans were huge and it had smoked pork in it), roast suckling pig (they gave me a huge hunk), salad and bread. The pig was very tasty but the skin on it was very thick and hard and I didn't try to eat it. The dessert was a "Segovian cake" which tasted like it had rum in it and vanilla ice cream. That was followed with a coffee. Around lunch time I met Mary who is from Michigan, though originally she is from Hungary so far as I could gather. She was very nice and owned a spa in the richest town in Michigan, Bloomfield I think. She had been to Spain before and told me a couple things to do. So we chatted away lunch until we were done then I headed up the hill to see the aqueduct before heading on to the cathedral. Since the guide had dropped us off we were on our own to make it where we needed to be. I took a few pictures and climbed up along the aqueduct then headed toward the cathedral. I was among the first to get there even though I took the long way around. He told us to go into the cathedral and wait for a few minutes at the main altar while others came in. Even then he started his speech with less than half of the tour there. I spent the time wandering and taking pictures of the place while I waited. It is a strange place in the sense that the outside is Gothic but the inside is a mess of Baroque and Romantic styles that really make it unusual to any other cathedral I've seen. I can't say it was all that impressive as it was dark and not very decorative. The high ceiling of course is a feat but after seeing so many cathedrals it becomes sort of banal. From what I understand it was built externally then stopped for nearly 250 years when the construction resumed. I would guess financial issues. In any event it was interesting but kind of ugly. From the cathedral we walked down to the fortress of Alcazar which has an Arabic name but the place wasn't really Arabian at all. It was a full on medieval style castle that overall had been kept in good condition but for a fire that happened in 1819 (might have been 1890) which damaged some of the wood work in ceilings. That was rebuilt according to the original plans according to Andres though so what we saw was basically what it looked like before the fire. It was fairly cool looking and I only wish the weather was more cooperative for pictures of the outside. In any event I liked it a lot. It had a nice series of views over the lower part of Segovia.

After the Alcazar we headed back downhill to the bus and then on the road back to Madrid. I think we got in about 6:15 which wasn't too bad. I was expecting and possibly hoping for a tad bit later knowing that dinner would be later for my standard and it meant killing time. At least it was not raining when we got off the bus at the tourist office. I basically headed back to the room and freshened up and wrote this in the time I had then headed down to buy a tour to Toledo for Friday. No not Ohio... After doing that I walked around for a few minutes and it was still terribly early for dinner in Spain, at least in Spanish places, so I opted to try Pizza Marzano which turned out to be a reasonably good Italian place. I had a couple Mahou Classicas, garlic bread and penne quattro formaggi. The food was tasty though the garlic bread could have used a touch more garlic to the flavor. That was basically enough for me to head in to the hotel and watch a Korean movie I had in my collection. It was strange but funny, called The Good, The Bad, the Weird. Ask me about it some day.

The pictures from day 5 are here.

Spain Day 4

2011-10-26T16:11:00.001-04:00

My flight to Madrid was at 11:20am so I really didn’t put a lot of effort into getting up early. I wasn’t about to move around town when nothing was really open so basically it was clean up, pack up and eat breakfast. I basically had toast for breakfast along with orange juice and coffee. The buffet hadn’t changed much from the day before and I really am not into the cold cuts as a start for the day concept like most of these people seem to be. The fact the hotel is able to survive with how much the majority of people take is sort of surprising. I think they don’t expect to eat again until the next breakfast or something. In any event the whole morning was basically bland. After finishing up breakfast I went back up to the room and surfed the web for a few minutes before heading down to check out and get a taxi to the airport. It was only a couple minutes wait for that and I will say that she was the best looking taxi driver I’ve ever had. Ironically I had female taxi drivers in both directions here in Ibiza. Interestingly the cab fare was even cheaper to the airport ringing in at about 11.50Eu. From there it was a quick check in. I don’t think Iberia does a lot of flights to and from Ibiza. The line was non-existent and the security check moved quite fast. I did ring off the metal detector but I am not sure why. Either my buttons/zipper on my pants or perhaps my chain did it? Never has before. I was fairly early for the airport as is my usual. I don’t like to show up late. So I had a lot of time to kill before the flight. The airport was small of course and there weren’t a lot of shops to look at. I did find a book store with a really interesting non-clubber’s guide to the island and would have bought it if it was not a paperback for 26Eu. That means it would have been in the range of $40. It was not worth that by any stretch. It did have history though so I read it for a couple minutes. As I suspected there were all sorts of folks that lived here from pre-Roman times on. I am fairly certain it is that way for all the inhabitable islands in the Mediterranean.

Of course I was on the one flight that was delayed. The weather was basically perfect out so it was something causing the plane to come in late from Madrid. I think it might be the regional airline of Iberia that is perpetually late as that was the only late departing flight when I headed to Ibiza. The flight was delayed departure at least half an hour. We were late for boarding for more than 40 minutes. We also arrived to the airport at least 50 minutes later than scheduled. I can honestly say that this was the worst conceptual flight I have been on yet. Why? Delays are one thing but they must have surveyed the passenger roster and asked themselves which person dislikes children on planes the most and surrounded him with as many children as they possibly could. That person was of course me. They were loud and obnoxious from beginning to end of the flight. I realize it was only an hour and change on the plane but it seemed like an eternity. I really question why people travel with children under 3 years of age all over the world. One couple was doing 26 hours of flying to get somewhere they said. That with 2 children. Basically the flight could not be over fast enough for me. It was not unpleasant by way of turbulence or anything though. After we finally landed I was able to get my bag and get to the taxi stand and on my way to my hotel, the Best Western Atlantico on Via Gran. The ride was bearable and about 35Eu, so I guess it was cheaper than I was expecting. I always think the taxi is going to cost 50Eu. Of course I would prefer not to pay for a taxi but I was not fighting with trains or buses by this point.

The weather was a bit chillier than in Ibiza. Though it said it was 21C out there was definitely a chillier wind on the air (apparently it was 14C so the thermometer I saw must have been wrong) and it made sense that people would be wearing jackets. It also went from sunny to overcast during this flight so I may have left the good weather behind too. Check in was a snap and the hotel room is small but nice although I would prefer a view better than a very tight alley. I must be on the inside of the building which is a tad depressing. I got into the room at about 2:15pm without having had lunch. In theory I should have arrived around an hour earlier. I got settled in then decided I would have to forage for food. I was very hungry by this point. Foraging became walking next door to the Burger King and having a XXL Bacon Double which was probably more than I should have ordered. I didn’t see anything normal sized on their menu. I did notice the chicken tenders later but by then I had already eaten the burger. I will say that the burger was better than the McDonald’s fare a couple days before but that will be it for American fast food for me on this trip I hope. They had Pepsi products to drink so I ordered the lemon soda which turned out to be a carbonated lemonade. Not at all what I was expecting. This was possibly the most busy Burger King I’ve seen in my life. Odd for about 2:45pm on a Wednesday how busy it was. There were people flowing through like crazy. The lines never died. I wonder if 2:30pm is lunchtime around here?

After eating I decided to walk around a bit and see what I can see. I am going to reserve judgment on whether Madrid is a clean city until I can see it under the sun. I know I have an unfair assessment right now because it was cloudy and darker than it should be which makes all the building seem darker and the place in general more dirty looking. I did not see much trash on the ground. I can say that for certain. But things looked grimy probably because there was no sun. Plus they are starting into fall season now. It is a bit behind home as the leaves are just starting to turn it appears. That’s also going to make things seem more grim. Overall I don’t think I walked very far but there are a couple main streets and a huge messy maze of side streets it appears. I am on one of the main streets of the city on Gran Via. That means that in general it should be hard to lose my hotel. The fact there is a spider web of cross streets up and down hills and in all directions definitely does make it a touch more difficult though. I tend to like cities formed up like this though. I just didn’t feel like pushing too hard as it was getting later and the weather wasn’t looking like the dryness was going to hold out. After pushing around a little bit I headed back to the hotel room to relax for a while then consider trying out the bar/cafeteria at the 9^th floor a bit later on.

First I headed downstairs and purchased a tour of Avila and Segovia for Thursday. It is more Grey Line Tours. I did these in Hong Kong and in Prague. Obviously the ability for them to vary country to country is great but I figured I could take the risk and if I liked it I would book a couple more. After that I headed upstairs to the 9th floor. It basically turned out to just be a bar, and not a busy one at that. I was the only person there for a while. I had two beers. The brand was Mahou (no idea how it is pronounced). The label said 5.5% alcohol. They weren't bad but nothing to write home about either. Better than a Bud or a Corona. It was on towards 7pm but I was still full from the BK and decided to just call it a night sans dinner. The late lunch early dinner was probably a bad idea, at least it being fast food was. I should have tried to find something more enjoyable. Giving up for the night I headed back to the room and watched The Mechanic which is probably the worst Statham film I've seen in entirety. I will admit I haven't seen Dungeon Siege and don't intend to. But The Mechanic was basically nonsensical and didn't even have that much action. Not sure who thought it was a good idea.

The pictures from day 4 can be found here.

Spain Day 3

2011-10-26T01:19:00.000-04:00

I was able to start earlier than the day before by a fair bit after waking up and getting breakfast once again down at the hotel buffet. I managed to have less people there so getting toast for my ham and cheese sandwich was easier. I was not being blocked by the old guy again. Still it was basically the same except I swapped the plum for a tiny orange instead. I finished quickly and headed out. My agenda for the day was to find postage for a postcard for my nephew William, which proved to be tougher (or at least less intuitive) than I expected. I had expected there would be a post office of some sort once the idea of perhaps having the hotel sell me postage and mailing it for me fell through. Apparently that is not the case. I had a map that suggested there were post offices somewhere. At least the map had pictures of envelopes on it so I assumed that meant post office. I didn't find anything resembling post offices where the symbols were on the map though. After wandering for about 20 minutes I gave up and figured I'd come back to the concept later. It was still around 8am or so and I figured things were still closed.

I opted to walk up the coastline to a beach area called Talamanca. It was on the map and probably not too far beyond what I'd walked out past the port the day before. It turned out there is a lengthy boardwalk that follows the beach. I walked along that all the way to the other side. It was very early so of course no one was out there in the sun. There was lots of sun but also a cool breeze. The humidity of the day before was missing as well. It was quite nice. Beyond the beach boardwalk was more rocky shoreline trails like I had found the day before. I figured that was my sort of thing so I just followed it out as far as it would let me. I am not sure on the distance but I think it took me more than 2 hours and 30 minutes at least to get to the furthest point I reached. I only turned around because it appeared I had hit dead ends on any trails I could find. There were some steep drops and a walled off area that basically prevented further passage. I would guess I was at least half way to St Eularia (the next town up) by the time I turned back. I really didn't waste much time and just headed back into town to once again do the postage search. The weather was still very nice and breezy so I had a good walk back though there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It had the potential to be really hot out if it wasn't for the wind. Getting back in town I tried again to find postage and after asking around a couple times and failing I basically found the tourist office and they said to go to a tobacco shop across the street in a galleria and there I was able to buy postage and mail the card. I know why I don't like doing that stuff now. It is certainly a lot of hassle. In any event it was basically 1:30pm by the time I had accomplished the task so I figured lunch was a good idea so I headed in towards where the cafes were and chose the Madagascar Cafe. Same menu different name. I had a couple more Estrella Damms and a toasted cheese sandwich which was open face. It was reasonably good at least.

After killing some time at the cafe I opted to climb back up to the Dalt Vila and look around some more. With all the sun it was going to provide different pictures than the day before I figured. Still it was basically a lot of repeating what I had done the day before and I didn't necessarily linger a ton in any specific area. It did give me a lot of uphill to walk as well as a lot of downhill too. I think my broken in hikers from when I went to Machu Picchu are now broken and I will have to get a new pair when I get back. The heel area of the upper has finally worn out and is starting to cause chafing. Bleh. In any event I am sure I will survive this trip with them. After wandering around for a while it was getting on past 4pm. I knew I wasn't going to eat dinner so early as the night before (or at least didn't plan to) so I headed to the hotel to rest my feet for a bit before I decided to forage for food. I thought it a good idea versus trying to walk around for 4 more hours without purpose. I will say that I am not sure how much I would like it here if it was peak season. I am sure it would be overrun with hippy druggies trying to get the music vibe that is promoted around here. Fortunately all that ends by the end of September or maybe early October it looks and the majority of tourists aren't looking for that. The scenery is quite beautiful though. I love the rocky ocean coasts a lot. The local architecture is probably very typical Spanish but quite nice. I need to do more research on the Vila so I can speak better to it. Unfortunately the Museum of Archaeology was closed both days I was here. I suspect it is closed for the off season. Couldn't see much else that would give me information.

Back at the hotel I started to write this up then basically relax for a couple hours. I decide to watch The Green Lantern. It was bad, but not as bad as I expected. Not an endorsement. It just could have been much more painfully worse. After watching it I moved my way on to finding dinner. But first I thought I would try to catch sunset over the island. I pretty much hauled butt to get to the top of the hill where Dalt Vila is and missed the actual sunset all the same. I suspect it is because the sun was behind some hilly mountains or whatnot to the west side of the island from Eivissa. All the same there was a little bit of color to be seen. Since there were few to no clouds I should be happy I saw anything at all I guess. When I had filled of that I worked my way back downhill and then into the streets of the city where I found a restaurant named La Caracola not too far from the marina. It already had a couple people eating there so I figured I could risk it. I had a couple glasses of red wine and the waiter suggested the seafood paella which I ordered. It was good but the shrimp were whole and not deveined so it was a mild difficulty to eat. All the same the seafood was all very fresh and tasty. There was a ton of rice so I didn't remotely finish it. I ate quite a lot though. When I had finished I settled up and headed back to the room for the night. I sort of wanted dessert but I decided to stay off it for the sake I already ate a lot and spent a lot. At the room I finished this up and pretty much took it easy until bed.

The pictures from day 3 are located here.

Spain Day 2

2011-10-25T01:30:00.000-04:00

I started off late for me today but that was mainly because it isn't really getting light out until 8am. I find that strange since it is later than at home yet I appear to be in a near tropic area. They appear to be on DST also as they are only 6 hours off from us. Either way I chose to get up a bit late and then have the buffet breakfast at the hotel which was basically breads, hams and cheese, a few fruits and a small thing of corn flakes. I just had a ham and cheese sandwich on some form of multigrain bread. I want to toast the bread but there was this old guy getting in my way every step, almost like it was on purpose (maybe it was?) so I just took my stuff to the table and ate it. I had the tiniest plum I've ever had along with orange juice and coffee. The coffee wasn't even terrible if it wasn't really very good either. I will call it passable.

After breakfast it was time to start exploring. I knew I wanted to heard towards the Dalt Vila location and figured I could do so by heading first towards the shoreline then up the hill. It sort of worked out as the shoreline was quite spectacular. It was a series of rocky areas that met the water with some very incredible views and a lot of good hiking around. I walked my way around the shore towards the Vila and took a ton of pictures. It was definitely not hot out but there was a humidity in the air. I'd say it probably got up to about 25C which should be about the mid 80sF. There was however a very nice breeze out there most of the day and the sun kept hiding behind clouds at intervals to make things a little less horrible. Certainly there were people dressed in jackets and sweaters here but fortunately there were also a lot of people in shorts and t-shirts too. I've gotten used to the winter clothes at relatively high temperatures out here in Europe but there were some people I can consider less insane here anyway. I'd say my tour around the shoreline might have taken an hour and a half to 2 hours by the time I turned into the Dalt Vila. The Vila is basically an old castle turned gun fort so far as I can tell. There is a cathedral on the top of the hill. I think if there had been a little effort to preserve the chronological integrity it would be quite stunning indeed. It is still very nice to look at even with the touches of modern sprinkled throughout it. I will forgive the cranes that are being used to help restore some of the buildings at the top as they mean it will probably look even nicer in the future. Basically I wandered through the fort until about noon when I had found my way downhill again. I chose to eat at Cafe Vila which was on the opposite end of the square from the place I ate at the day before. It was a small cafe and like most of them had a very limited menu for around lunch time. I ended up having to Estrella Damm beers and a ham and cheese sandwich which was actually quite good. I know, it repeated breakfast. Such is the breaks but there really weren't a lot of choices. The beer is actually Spanish though I suspect someone of either Dutch or German origin imported it into Spain many years back (it said since 1904 I think). It wasn't bad if a touch sweet. It had 4.8% alcohol.

After lunch I decided I would walk out towards the port area and maybe beyond. The marina and port is gigantic. I don't think I've seen a place with near as many boats as it has. And many of them look very expensive. I walked all the way around the port to the sea wall on the far end of the harbor then turned around and headed back into town. I will say that it is nearly impossible to get lost here. By the way, here is the town of Eivissa. It appears to be the largest city on the island if not the coolest. When I turned back inland I found the downtown area of the city and wandered that for a bit. After I felt I had seen most everything I turned back towards the Vila and wandered around that some more. My intention was to try to locate restaurants for dinner but it was still moderately early by Spanish standards. I did a lot of climbing up and down the hill that the Vila is on and found a lot of places that looked very closed and perhaps like they were closed completely for the off season. It is the off season here which is probably why it is crowded but not overcrowded. I bet it is nuts in the dead of summer. There is no question this island makes all its money on tourism and the other businesses here only exist to sustain the tourism. After quite some time of wandering I decided to have a beer at a cafe near the top of the Vila and kill some time. The brand was named Cruzcampo and it was also Spanish. I can say it wasn't terrible but I definitely liked the Estrella Damm more. The place did leave some to be desired as the service was terribly slow and the glass they gave me was quite dirty to the point I drank out of the bottle as there was no saving it. Still that killed some time for me and then I started wandering around a bit more. It was getting on towards 6pm which is still 2.5 hours too early for dinner here but I was feeling optimistic I could make it to then. That is until it started to spit some rain. I am not really a late eater if I can help it. In fact getting to 6:30 is basically late for me to eat. Once the rain started I chose to cut my losses and walked to the McDonald's to get a quick dinner and then head into the room. I wanted to try something authentically Spanish but I fear that might have to wait until Madrid as I had not spotted a lot of restaurants that might be open out here. In any event, I had a McBacon menu which means a burger with bacon and what tasted like cheese-wiz on it. It was not awful. I followed up with a soft serve ice cream sundae which I ate walking back to the hotel. It had stopped raining while I was in the McDonald's but started to pick up again while I was walking back. Traffic also seemed to be picking up as I was walking to the hotel. It had been relatively normal all day that I had been out but there were definitely more cars out at about 7pm than at any other time I have seen. I assume that is normal for them. It also appeared that some shops that had been closed started to open around 6pm. I realize the island is known for a night life but I figured with it being off season that most of them just weren't going to open at all. In any event with the rain I felt I would just head in and call it a day. It was a pretty full one anyway. Certainly many miles of walking.

Today's pictures can be found here.

Spain Day 1

2011-10-24T03:01:00.000-04:00

The day started with a fairly early departure from Boston at about 12:30pm. Unfortunately the first flight was to Chicago O’Hare. I do not like going backwards to go forwards but there were other reasons to accept this sacrifice. The flight to Chicago on a 737 was basically uneventful and the time in O’Hare really wasn’t bad. I found a bar named the Prairie Tap and had a couple Sam Adams and a mushroom burger with cheese. The food was ok, though the burger was cooked more than I like, all the way to well destroyed. By the time I was done I had to figure out where my gate was and of course it was basically one of 2 not listed on a giant departures board of over 50 (and probably more). I solved this problem by asking a girl at a desk for a different flight and she told me to go to gate K19. It wasn’t posted right away but a few minutes later it did pop up on their screen. Boarding was easy and the flight itself was a little bit bumpy here and there but not much to mention. I was stuck in a window seat but only 2 people on the sides as it was a 2 5 2 configuration. The plane was an A340. They had limited entertainment system and only showed one movie which was Mr Popper’s Penguins. I did actually watch it even though I am not a fan of Jim Carrey. It was about what you would expect of it. Aimed for children and not remotely plausible and of course with the jerk turns nice guy ending. All because of the penguins who touched his life. Anyway it could have been much worse than it was. I was able to get through it which is more than I can say for The Green Hornet. The meal was either beef or chicken and I tried the beef and it was like a beef stew with mashed potatoes. It didn’t taste bad but I think it negatively affected me because I was having stomach pains the rest of the flight.

Nonetheless I was able to survive and get off the extremely hot airplane into a cool hallway in one piece. I was of course deceived because the rest of the airport was as hot as the plane. I was also confused because it was nearly 8am and it was still very dark out. I wasn’t prepared for that. I was beginning to think I had my timetables wrong though it couldn’t add up any other way than just before 8am unless I entered an episode of Dr Who. After disembarking I had to ride a tram to get to my checked luggage then exit the arrivals area and find the departures area. It was very early but I still had a flight to Ibiza to take at 12:35pm. I figured I would have some trouble trying to check in as it was so early for that flight and basically I was right. There are boards that tell you which counters to check in with in Madrid Airport. The boards only went so far as 11:40 for a long time and I had to wander around to kill some time until I found a place to sit. I chose to spend a few minutes jotting down the early part of transit to help kill the time better but I still had a lot of time to kill. They didn’t post where I could check in until about 2 ½ hours before the flight. Of course it was self check in. That was fine because I bypassed a lot of lines. From there it was the brief tour through security which wasn’t bad at all then on to the get section where all I could find was that I was in the wing named K. No gate posted. I walked to the end of K and found a departures board there and then found a spot to nap some more while waiting for the gate to post. It did eventually post to pretty much where I was but not until less than 45 minutes before the flight was supposed to push off. Of course that was because it was late. It turned out to be almost exactly ½ hour late.

The last leg of my flying was in a Bombadier CRJ200 which is a 50 passenger plane. There was one flight attendant on the plane but it was indeed a jet. We had to walk out onto the tarmac to board it and again to exit the plane. I’ll be honest, like a lot of these flight legs I slept through almost the whole thing. By then my stomach was feeling better somewhat which was nice. So basically I can say little about the flight except the boarding and disembarking procedures which were both quick. The airport reminded me a little of the airport at Cusco but maybe a bit nicer. Getting my bag was quick then it was to the taxi stand where it took probably at 10-15 minutes to drive to the hotel. It is the Hostal Europa Punica. With the word hostel in the name it sounds scary I guess but it turned out to be quite nice. Maybe it is not on a prominent street but the room is largish and clean and there is even a nice patio to sit on. Of course it turned out to be blazing hot with the sun (at least to a New Englander) so I wasn’t aiming for that right away. I of course needed to get settled in and cleaned up. After that I figured I would take a small exploration walk.

I really didn’t end up going too far before I found an area with a few cafes and decided to stop and get a beer and something to eat. It was practically 5pm and I hadn’t eaten since the dinner on the flight across the ocean. Unfortunately I think my stomach was still a touch messy. I had a couple beers which appeared to be German Warsteiners. I also ordered the pizza carnival which was basically a cheese pizza with bacon on it. It tasted really good but I started to feel full almost instantly. I only ended up eating half of the pizza. I hung out for quite a while before moving on. I then started to do a more random walk around the town. It reminds me a little bit of Palermo only cleaner and more well off. Of course, both of those would not be difficult feats to achieve. It is obviously at least close to tropical here with all of the palm trees and such and the weather was definitely humid and about 23C it said so not terribly hot but the sun is very effective here. If it wasn’t for the cooler breeze I would probably not like it much. With a short play at trying to get myself lost and found I ended up back at the hotel rather early but I was exhausted from the travel so I decided I would relax and finish out watching Yamato which I had started to watch on the Jeep Jamboree. After that I pretty much crashed for the evening even though it might have been a touch early.

The pictures from day 1 can be found here.

Departing for Spain Today

2011-10-22T11:11:00.000-04:00

Spain in Less than 2 Weeks

2011-10-10T07:36:00.000-04:00

While I have been so busy I haven't really had a lot of time to mention things, my Spain trip is less than 2 weeks away. With all I have been doing for work over the summer I'm really looking for the week of freedom. Granted I will be forced marching all over the place but I find it relaxing.

Unfortunately I haven't had a lot of time for extra research either so it will probably fall as a similar trip to the Czech Republic for me in that I will have to wing a lot of what I intend to do. All the same I am sure I will be able to figure out something. I may take some day trips on my own or find a tour company to take them if that seems cheaper and easier. The difficulty part I am worried about is dinner times which don't start until 8pm at the earliest. It is going to be like on Sicily. I was not terribly happy with that. I will have to eat good lunches I guess. I hope that lunch places are easier to find than in Sicily.

Jeep Jamboree 2011 Bethel, Maine Day 4

2011-10-03T08:10:00.000-04:00

We woke up late. It was still pouring out. I would have nothing to do with running. We got cleaned up and aired up our tires and eventually met the Watermans at a Shell station to gas up and then get breakfast. We ate at a diner that was in way shape or form ready to handle the traffic that was there on an early fall Sunday morning. We were the only Jeepers there but there must have been a ton of leaf peepers. In any event it took us a while to get seated and then forever to get a refill of coffee or our food. I had blueberry pancakes and bacon which were good but the pancakes were gigantic and I didn't finish them. From there we split up into our directions for the long and rainy drive home. I managed to get home in time to see the Bills lose and the Patriots win so it worked out ok for me. All in all it was a great trip. Minus the rain I really loved it. I would definitely do a Bethel Jamboree again. I would like to actually finish the Chili Trail next time. I would probably want to do the Chili trail on every trip I went up there.

Jeep Jamboree 2011 Bethel, Maine Day 3

2011-10-03T08:06:00.000-04:00

The rain started before I woke up and I decided not to run with the dark and wet and the major thruway. If we had trails I would have considered it but the hotel wasn't near any. So we basically had breakfast, got cleaned up and again headed to the line up. We managed the same basic positions for the Chili Trail as the day before minus Aaron who was doing a different trail on the easier side. Since he was open/open with no winch he opted for the less difficult path. Before we actually hit the trail head they have a Saturday tradition of running a parade of the Jeeps through town. All the locals come out to watch it and even with the slight rain that was coming down we had a good turnout. It was fun to see basically all the Jeeps in the jamboree because we had to loop back and pass each other through it. After the parade we headed to the trail head and those that needed to disconnect and air down did so.

The rain was light in the morning and the Chili Trail had a different kind of mud than Ridgeline so we really didn't have a lot of traction issues. In fact I only recall one winching or strapping through the entire run. The lead guide, Scott, whom we had met in Killington a few years before is an awesome guide and spotter and we really kept moving the whole day with relatively few stops. I really liked the trails we took. There was challenge without it being so tight in the trees that every turn was a potential brush on the body. Instead it was a lot technical rock gardens that were relatively open and even the water crossings and mud holes were basically fun to go through. We got to our lunch spot basically a little bit late because there was a flat tire that needed to be fixed but overall it went well.

This trail is called the Chili Trail because the lunch stop is at Scott's parent's "Summer Camp" which is incredible to see and his mom makes a huge batch of Chili for each trip and they serve that to all the participants for lunch along with some bread, desserts and mulled cider and coffee. The chili was excellent as was all the foods there. As we ate the rain started to pick up and it got to a drenching type. My sister-in-law had fallen down a couple time while walking around the slick trails and had bruised her leg fairly badly and she wanted to get out of the trails. I knew David would take her out but I also knew he would much rather stay in and finish the trail so I let him stay and drove her back to the hotel. I had to exit through the trails because Scott didn't want to have to de-mud his dad's driveway but it was not too bad to get down. The GPS on the Jeep failed me for the first time and we had to reset twice before we pointed in the correct direction and got back to the hotel. From there I started preparing dinner and watched a bit of a movie while they were still on the trails. I guess they did about 2 more hours worth of trail but a lot of it was basic with a couple neat obstacles. Based on the pictures they took it was obvious they kept moving the rest of the run and while I am disappointed I missed the rest I am fairly sure there was nothing so astounding I should regret I missed it. The better parts of the trail were definitely in the morning.

When David got back we headed out to the fire department Jeep wash. They were much better than the Killington version. When we returned we called Sean and Carl over and had dinner which was roasted chicken thighs, green beans and a pre-packaged pasta side. I enjoyed it. We had a couple beers and eventually the Watermans and Evelyn came over and had a couple too. I was exhausted again and I was glad to get to bed when we finally did.

Jeep Jamboree 2011 Bethel, Maine Day 2

2011-10-03T07:52:00.000-04:00

Friday started with an early rise for me. The rain had stopped in the early morning along the way and I wanted to try to get a run in. The road were were on was wide with very wide shoulders also so I figured I could give it a shot. I ran 10 minutes out and then back and after checking with the odometer on the Jeep it appears I ran about 2.2 miles or so. It was still basically dark out and cars were moving through a lot so I didn't fully feel safe on it but I managed. When I got back Dave and Beth were having breakfast and such and I had to cool down for a bit before showering. Sean came over and joined us for some coffee then we gassed up the Jeeps and headed to line up for the trails.

We were up front in the line up behind the Watermans 2 Jeeps, they Noyes Jeep and silver 4 door JK owned by a guy named Aaron. Dave got in front of me and Sean got in behind me. We aired down the tires and got the rigs ready for the run before the Jamboree meeting then we pulled out behind our lead guide to head to the trail head. It was a short drive to the trail, maybe 6 or 7 miles. We had a large field to start in and there was the lead trail guide's brother-in-law and sister in a brand new Ford Raptor to follow us. They tore up the field a bit in it. Definitely not a cheap bit of equipment there. After air downs for the rest of the folks who didn't want to drive the roads that way (and disconnecting sway bars for those folks too) and a brief meeting we headed into the trails.

I should state here that the weather was absolutely perfect and we had sun all day with just a few clouds at the very end. The trails however were totally greased up by the rains the previous couple days. It meant that a trail they listed as difficulty 5-6 on a scale of 10 was really probably 7-8 because this mud gave absolutely no traction. The obstacles were overall fun but it took us a very long time to get everyone through all the mud holes and hill climbs that we needed to pass. As the day progressed and we were moving so slowly, especially past 1 hill climb that David had to turn around and winch me up (first time I have ever been winched) they only let a couple more rigs through and then had everyone go around instead. By the time we got everyone around through that we were at the lunch spot. Ironically it was 4pm instead of lunchtime. At the lunch spot while we were waiting for a couple more rigs to show up there was a rockface climb that several Jeeps hit. I was just getting around the path to get to it when the lead guide returned and tried to do the climb himself. It would be lengthy to explain this the full way but basically his Jeep was seriously built up. I am sure it was thousands of dollars ahead of mine. He tried a couple times to get up the face but kept sliding back down. We think it was because he was too heavy in the back. In any event on probably the 5th try he skipped over to the left to a steeper part of the face and ended up rolling backwards. Fortunately for him it was a slow roll and he landed on his spare tire and didn't go all the way back. It meant his nose was fully up in the air. We got pictures from all angles. They eventually pulled him back to the ground and he backed out really pissed that he couldn't clear the face. Another guide took a few attempts to get over it with a flat fender Willy's but I went after him and got over it on the first try. I have to admit the guide scared me to it a bit but I had already committed and it wasn't really so bad after all.

After that he offered us the chance to go through one more obstacle called Moose Back and we said sure. It was a quick climb over a ridge that had a drop on either side then down a very steep set of steps made of tree roots. It was fun but the downhill part was a touch scary, especially for an automatic that couldn't really crawl down it even in 1st gear. From there we headed off the trails and the into the hotel eventually and made dinner. David cooked fajitas. Sean and another friend Carl came in to join us and eventually the Watermans came over to hang out for the night. I will say I was exhausted from the day and I was able to sleep relatively well after all of that.

Jeep Jamboree 2011 - Bethel, Maine Day 1

2011-10-03T07:34:00.000-04:00

The first day of the Jamboree started with a moderately early start at about 9am from my brother David's house. We started our way up to the Cabela's just off 95 where we met up with the rest of the convoy which consisted of the Watermans, the Noyes, Sean and Evelyn. I did convince myself to buy a pair of Merrell barefoot trail runners while there. The stop wasn't very long though. After everyone arrived we lined up and headed on to Bethel which was probably another 2 hours or so further up. As we drove in the rain picked up more and more until it was basically a steady rain for the rest of the day.

When we arrived in Bethel we needed to go through tech inspection and register for our trails but that wasn't supposed to start until 5pm and it was between 1 and 2pm. Dave Waterman convinced them to leave our jeeps lined up at the front of inspection so we could get through fast. They closed up the entrance to tech inspection behind us. Bethel's administration building is right in the center of town and there isn't great parking there so we got lucky on that count. After getting lined up we ate lunch at the Bethel Inn which was probably a poor choice as the waitress was slow and didn't really seem to care about us. We were warned at about 3pm that they were going to start tech inspection and ran over to get that done. That went through quick but we then had to wait until 5pm for the registration portion. I would rather they had started both at the same time.

David checked us into the hotel and I stayed with the Watermans as they checked into their hotel which was next door to the administration building. At just past 4pm we got in line for registration. There were already a few people ahead of us. It was pouring out by this point and we got lucky to get inside the building to wait unlike the people behind us who got drenched outdoors. Another reason I would rather they started registration early. Once they started registration it moved rather quickly. We all managed to get on the same two trails except Evelyn who had a Jeep not able to do them (30" tires and no lift). We signed up for Ridgeline on Friday and the Everett Chili Trail on Saturday. Ridgeline was listed as the harder of the two.

After registration we headed over to Suds Pub for dinner where we basically got a lot of pizza and some beer. After hanging out there for a short while we split up to our respective hotels and relaxed for the night. We were staying at the Inn at the Rostay. It is off route 2 I think, or was it 26? In any event it was only a couple miles outside of town. We got an efficiency apartment as we were able to register for trails only again and that meant we needed a kitchen. The place was nice, my main complaint being the shades on the windows blocked 0 light at all. I had to hang the bedspread over it the second and third night because I really didn't sleep on Thursday night. Still the place had a lot of room, 2 bedrooms and even a spare set of bunk beds in the TV room.

Jeep Jamboree - Bethel, Maine

2011-09-29T07:56:00.002-04:00

The Jeep Jamboree trip in Bethel, ME starts today. The trails run Friday and Saturday and we'll be home some time in the afternoon on Sunday. Here's hoping the weather holds up and the 4-wheeling is good.

Jeep Jamboree in Less than a Week and More...

2011-09-24T16:45:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since I have posted because I have been so busy. I have actually traveled 3 times in the past couple months but all 3 trips were inside the US. I had a trip to Delaware and 2 trips to the DC area in Virginia (not necessarily in that order). During those trips I was working, either installing systems or having a few meetings and the like. The trips were good but overall were work so there was not really much to report. I will admit that on the second trip to the DC area I was able to get a couple hours in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum which was really cool. But that was about it. I do have some pictures from that visit even though they came off my cell phone and I will try to post them soon. Since my cell doesn't do image stabilization (for those of us with shaky hands) and has an interesting delay before the actual image is captured many of the pictures didn't turn out so hot. That said, they are better than nothing.

Another interesting development involved my planned birthday trip to Spain. I had booked a flight through Spanair to Ibiza right after I landed in Madrid. That flight got modified so that it would depart at 9:50pm instead of the 10am or so it was originally scheduled for. Spanair wouldn't do anything for me except refund the money. Ironically I was able to find a cheaper flight through Iberia after I canceled the original. It does depart at around noon instead but it is better than having to completely rebuild my plans to either skip Ibiza or do it in different days of the trip. I suppose it gives me more opportunity to make the flight I am delayed crossing the Atlantic. Since there is less than a month to that trip I hope that Iberia doesn't spring any surprises on me.

Typically I have done a lot of planning for a trip by now but since I am so booked solid with work I haven't had much chance to do more than the basics on it. I might have to do a lot of winging it. I hope it works out OK.

This all leads up to the fact that I have the Bethel, Maine Jeep Jamboree starting with this upcoming Thursday. I have the Jeep basically in order. There were no major modifications since the last time I went 4 wheeling and that was expected on my part. I did have some mechanical issues that I had to contend with and that ate up some of the Jeep budget. I think it will be interesting to try the Jamboree in a different location this time. I have heard good things about the Maine trip. However it was sad to hear how much damage Irene caused up in Vermont where we had done our previous 3 Jamborees. The folks up there are really nice and seeing some pictures of how bad the damage was I am sure they didn't expect nor deserve it. Hopefully they can recover in due order and get back to their lives.

Spain Planning

2011-07-22T13:18:00.001-04:00

Ok, so I am making my birthday trip this year for Spain and I already had booked the flight before I even flew out to Prague but I had nothing else done. Over the past few evenings I have managed to make some decisions on the itinerary of the trip and book some more.

I have actually booked a flight to Ibiza straight after I land in Madrid. This is an hour long flight to the island that should be about 3 hours after I land. I would have preferred to be closer together but it will probably work out for the best if there are any delays. It really means that first travel day is going to be very long. I realize Ibiza is not an October destination but something about it is calling to me and I figured that was reason enough to book it. I am staying at Hostal Europa Punico that is cheap but appears to have good ratings from guests for the price and is in a good location until the Wednesday when I will hop back on a plane to Madrid and then stay at the Best Western Atlantico which is a touch more expensive but also has good ratings and is supposed to be in a good location.

I expect I might try to make some day trips out of Madrid while I am there. Well at least one anyway. I am torn between trying to get to Valencia, Seville or Barcelona. I think the first two are more what I would like. A lot of people have said Seville is a really good visit so that might take some weight over Valencia. I haven't done enough research yet to sell me on Barcelona. It is there on name recognition alone. In any event I am going to make those calls later on. I am unlikely to rent a car or buy a rail pass for this trip as I do not think I will do more than one day trip. I can buy one round trip ticket for less than the pass will be I am sure.

I'll be flying home on Halloween this time. I had wished not to but the fact I needed to be home on Halloween to work on November 1st made me do it. I also didn't want to travel the day after my birthday thus cheapening the day. So Halloween was my only choice. If I didn't have the schedule issue I would have come home on the first.

Czech Republic Day 7

2011-07-12T19:40:00.000-04:00

Today was of course the transit back day. I woke up at 6am because I had a 9:55am flight from Prague to Frankfurt. I got cleaned up and finished off packing and checked out of the hotel around 6:30am. The hotel has a taxi service and I used that to get to the airport. The driver was basically 95% psychopath and 5% criminal but he was also very funny so while I probably should have been scared for my life I actually enjoyed the ride. He told me since I was flying to Frankfurt I could have left much later and he was right. The check-in took a few minutes but the security line was quick and I was in the terminal by 7:30 which gave me two hours till boarding time. I had to find where the gate was but even that didn’t take long. Prague’s airport is 2 terminals and the one that I was in is apparently not that big or busy. The driver said the other is a mess with security and lines.

Inside the terminal I couldn’t find someplace reasonable to get breakfast so I just bought some stuff from the Relay store to snack on. Mainly a chocolate bar, a can of cold espresso (in concept like the canned coffee from Japan but not as good) and bag of potato sticks. I started with the sticks and coffee and that gave me something in my stomach well enough. Later on I had the Aero bar but it had been damaged and was very difficult to eat. The thing about Aero bars is they crumble real easily. It was sort of disappointing. I also spent a few minutes spending the remaining Czech crowns I had left, well most of them anyway. Eventually the plane arrived, maybe about 10 minutes late and disembarked and maybe about 10 minutes late we were able to board. I had a window seat but was next to a very narrow British (I think) woman and her husband was on the aisle so I had plenty of room. It was a short hop flight and not much bother at all. They gave us some Muesli for breakfast as the in flight snack which was odd but ok.

Frankfurt is a large airport and I had to make it from terminal gates B to A63 which was a lot of walking and a couple floors difference. Being insane I took the stairs up to the gates I needed. It was very fast work to go through passport control and be on my way to the gate. No security rescreening at all. I was surprised at that. I had basically 50 minutes to kill before the unofficial boarding time. I chose to just hang out at the gate. I had used my Euros for the cab on the way in so really didn’t have anything to spend except a couple hundred Czech crowns which I am sure they wouldn’t take. The plane did board basically on time and I found myself seated way in the back in seat 53C. By the way, the first plane was an Airbus A320-200 and the second a Boeing 747-400. The flight started off really bumpy when we took off and remained very bumpy for quite some time before it finally seemed to even off around an hour to an hour and a half in. They served drinks and snack first then the meal which I chose turkey with potato wedges. It was on the edge of not bad which I guess is a triumph. As the meal finished I worked on some documentation from work for a bit then they started to show Rio the animated bird movie and I watched that. It was typical animated bird movie stuff but it wasn’t bad. I laughed a few times anyway. After that they showed Just Go With It but I don’t like Adam Sandler so opted to do some more documentation work rather than watch it. When I was tired of that I decided to watch a movie on the computer which was Kick-Ass. I am not fully sure what I think of it. I’ll have to digest it for a bit. It certainly was not typical in any way shape or form and that should be commended. By that I mean that risks were definitely taken in its making. By the time it was over we were about an hour out from landing and I just relaxed while the served the scary pizza I never eat.

We landed basically on time but I think my bag was amongst the last offloaded from the plane. The passport control guy was not in a good mood but I got outside without any hitches. I had figured he had set me up to be inspected by customs but fortunately that was not the case. I had to wait a few minutes for my van and there were 5 people to be driven somewhere on it but fortunately I got split off to a separate van at Ballardvale and was driven home solo which definitely got me there a lot quicker. The traffic up 93 on the first van was fairly rough all the way past 129. I expected it to end at 128 but it continued for some reason. In any event once we turned off to 125 it got a heck of a lot easier.

All in all I liked the Czech Republic a lot. There was good beer and reasonably good food. Things weren’t too expensive and the city of Prague is beautiful. Pretty much everyone there speaks English. I never had an issue with that. My hotel was in a great location. The tour company I used was convenient so I didn’t try any others. I’ve used a lot of Grey Line otherwise but Premiant was closer. I don’t know that the experiences would have been that much different. They all sell the same basic tours. I am sure each company has its own spin on the same motif.

No pictures for today as it was a purely transit day and I didn’t feel like unburying the camera for the couple snack foods in the airport.

Czech Republic Day 6

2011-07-11T15:19:00.002-04:00

The last real day of the trip I didn't have anything planned but had an idea of what I wanted to do. I got up at 6:30 and got cleaned up and had breakfast then walked into town and headed over the Charles Bridge to the Lesser Town and the castle. I had sort of intended to find the castle gardens and visit those along with another garden that had some fake cave walls in it but I did not really manage either though I did wander around the area and see a large park and a couple monasteries and/or churches. Being so early not much was opened yet and I walked around for a couple hours before I started to see the gardens open. I couldn't tell which one had the fake caves in it so I basically saved my Czech Crowns for another use. Most of the gardens looked quite small and I am not sure they were worth paying for. Besides, I thought a guide had said they were free which definitely threw me off.

After basically deciding I had given up on the gardens I walked back across Charles Bridge and into the Old Town and considered trying to get up the Old Town Hall tower to take some pictures but it wasn't opened after 10:30am so I feared it would not open for the day and decided to skip on it. I couldn't imagine it would open any later than 10am. I had sort of thought of doing the Kutna Hora tour the night before and decided that I would just go ahead and do it. A lot of stuff in Prague is closed on Monday and I wasn't sure I could fill up the whole day with stuff being closed. So I walked to the tour starting point and booked the tour for a 1pm start. That meant I had a couple hours to kill so I walked back to the room for a few minutes then headed back out and bought lunch at the McDonalds. McNuggets meal. Nothing spectacular but basically what you'd expect. After that I walked around the corner and bought a two scoop ice cream cone, one called cookies and one called caramel, and ate that for what was the majority of the time left before tour while walking around. I quickly bought some water and waited for the van for just a few minutes.

Kutna Hora was once a very wealthy town due to some very prolific silver mines in the middle ages. The town housed all sorts of miners and even a mint to make silver coins. It appears it should be about 45 minutes out of town but apparently the roads are wicked bad and the ride was a bit over an hour by the route the tour takes. The guide was named Ysa. The first stop of the tour was the Ossuary that was decorated in human bones. If I understood the story correctly, the church housed a very popular cemetery because someone brought back some soil from the holy land and thus everyone wanted to be buried there. The cemetery housed people from all over Europe and not just Bohemia. As time went on the town's silver mines became exhausted and apparently the monastery/church was closed down. A wealthy family bought the church after some years and in order to renovate it they opted to use the bones of the people buried there to decorate it. The idea being that it was a reminder that we all will die one day. I am sure I am missing some of the finer points of the story but that was the gist. So inside the church is decorated with thousands of bones of humans. I can say it was a bit creepy I suppose but it didn't really bother me much. I will say for certain that it was strange and felt like it should have been out of an Indiana Jones set. All the same, they allowed you to take pictures so I took a bunch.

The next stop was the Church of Saint Barbara, patron saint of miners. As I said it was a mining town and apparently the church was built by the wealth of the miners and minters instead of the church or a wealthy king. It was a large church originally built in the Gothic style then later made to the Baroque style. It fell into disrepair after the mines went dry and was rebuilt to suit the Baroque tastes of the times when it was renovated. It was certainly a large church and had unique decorations in it. Again we were allowed to take pictures. Some of the miner oriented artwork was definitely unique. It had nothing to do with the Bible or Jesus or anything other than mining. Not something I've seen in a church before.

After the church we walked a bit over to the Italian Square with a couple informative stops along the way. The Italian square housed a meeting hall and mint if I understood the tour correctly. At the least it was currently a museum dedicated towards the mint along with the stately rooms. We had a local guide who seemed quite young and self conscious but she did a good job other than she needed to speak a bit louder. The chapel in the building was quite impressive but we weren't allowed to take pictures of that.

After the Italian Square it was over to a small restaurant to take a break. Food was not included in the tour and I just opted to have a beer and speak with a Texan couple along for the tour too. That took about half an hour until the bus arrived and we headed back into town again. I sort of conked out for a bit of the ride back so at least it didn't seem as long as the way out. When I got back into town I headed to the room to use the facilities then quickly headed back towards the square with the intention of getting dinner. The funny part was the Old Town Hall tower was open so I decided to go up. They have installed lifts to the top but I trudged my way up the stairs then ramps because I don't see the fun in an elevator in a middle ages building. The view up there was nice. The town is not very tall in the region around the Old and New Towns and you can see right up to the lesser town quite well too. The modern parts of the town are not easy to see. I really only passed those on the various tours I took and went nowhere near them in walking. I managed to be up there as the clock chimed 7pm so I got to see the guy play the trumpet to sound off the hour up at the top of the tower.

After that I trudged back down and walked across the square to the Jazz and Blues Restaurant Bily Konicek. It was outdoors seating and they served Gambrinus beer which was one I hadn't yet tried but had seen around town a bit. I ordered a yellow beer and they only came in .3L so I drank it sort of quickly. For food I had the beef goulash and this was much better than the first goulash I tried. They had 3 different sorts of dumplings to accompany. The beef was not overcooked and the sauce was not too salty so overall it was a very enjoyable meal. After I finished the yellow beer I tried the Gambrinus dark and liked that one a lot. When I finished eating I settled up and headed to the room to start the preparation for the long day of travel just ahead.

Pictures are located here.

Czech Republic Day 5

2011-07-10T15:53:00.001-04:00

Today I didn't have a tour set when I woke up and I afforded myself an extra half an hour of sleep. After I got cleaned up I headed down to breakfast and mainly had coffee because I wasn't hungry that much for some reason. I did keep the stomach settled with some toast over the coffee. From there I decided I would walk a little bit of the local area until 8am when the tour place opened. It hadn't made sense to keep getting rides for less than a kilometer of walking so I figured that it would be easier to buy a tour right at the starting point. This time I opted for Terezin which was a Nazi concentration camp though not one built for exterminating the Jews. Instead, this one was a staging area where most of the prisoners were eventually shipped off to Auschwitz for extermination.

The tour started at around 9 and there was about an hour drive to the town of Terezin. The guide was Helena, same as the day before. Her voice seemed bit stronger today but she was still struggling a bit with annunciation as I had expected. Nonetheless she seemed more confident in her knowledge about this tour and the material within so probably she had done it more often. She spoke some about the camp on the way in and a little bit about Reinhard Heydrich who was a Nazi official in Prague, the leader of the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under Hitler, because we passed the monument that marked the location where he was assassinated by the resistance.

Terezin was built in the 18th century as a gun fort to protect the region but it was never attacked and never used. It is a serious multipointed star shaped fortress with many ramparts and at the time a fully floodable moat (that again was never used though it did flood twice in 2002 and this year due to heavy rains). I was actually really interested in the location as a gun fort but obviously the majority of the tour consisted of the explanation of the Nazi concentration camp. The tour started out with a small museum in the center of the large fortress (there were two, the large and the small) where the majority of the Jewish prisoners were kept. The roads there had some great views of the ramparts and other parts of the construction of the fort but unfortunately all of our stops brought us no where near those points so I failed to get any good pictures of the large fortress. I won't take pictures from cars, vans, buses or trains because it just frustrates me. By the time I see it it is already too late to take a picture. The first museum involved some of the culture that the Jews had in their camp. Since this wasn't a death camp they were allowed to sing and have theater and write and paint. Though some of the paintings had to be hidden because they were anti-Nazi. There must have been other stuff as well.

The next stop brought us to the museum that was the house where the Jewish children were kept. We saw a brief movie on the location and saw some of the drawing the Jewish kids made while in the house. It was also a brief stop. After that it was on to the Crematorium. Though the Jews should not be cremated the Nazis had to start burning their bodies because they were dying so fast of disease and starvation. The crematory was an interesting stop and a small cemetery was erected next to it where exhumed bodies were given gravestones though of course they are generally anonymous. This also was a fast stop but probably more interesting than the first two museums to me.

After the Crematorium we made our way to the small fortress which was the prison used for important Nazi prisoners. The political and rich were brought here rather than just to the large fortress. The small fortress was all original as the Nazis left it. As with the large fortress it was all constructed in the 17th century and is part of the same fortifications. The small fortress housed the Germans who ran the town as well as the prisoners. Ironically that bit of World War I history hit here as well as the men who assassinated Franz Ferdinand including the primary Gabrielle Princip were imprisoned here and died before the Nazis took it over. There was a plaque explaining this in the dark solitary cell he was imprisoned in. The small fortress was a tour guided by a local guide named Eva who had a good strong voice and was very interesting. She knew a lot about the camp and the town and we got to see all aspects of the prison from the registration area to the large cells that housed hundreds of people each to the smaller cells that house around 70 each to the solitary cells for prisoners who were to be tortured and sentenced to execution. There was a lot of information packed into the hour long tour. We saw where the 3 men who successfully escaped were able to escape. The base commander had the ledges torn off so no one else could do it again. They did it in winter when they had 2 meters of snow to jump down onto.

We also saw the execution location after we got to walk through some of the original underground tunnels that were sealed up and never used by the Nazis. I liked the tunnels a lot. We did maybe 500 meters or so. The base commander had 3 other like aged prisoners killed in retaliation to the escape. Eventually the Nazis realized they were losing the war and they started to build a gas chamber but in truth just about all the prisoners of Terezin died because of typhoid anyway. Most that should have been freed after the liberation still had to remain quarantined or they could spread the disease. Many also died from eating too much when they were finally allowed to eat again. Their bodies couldn't handle it. It was certainly not a death camp but in many respects it did amount to one. It was the last camp that was liberated and also was used as a propaganda camp for the Red Cross to pretend Jewish prisoners were being treated well.

After the tour we made our way back to the van and the hour long drive back to town. I took a quick run to the hotel and then headed out to find lunch which I had at an Italian restaurant. I had a Pilsner Urquell and lasagna. The food was good but it was a tad late for lunch for me being already past 2pm. I was starved so maybe I liked it more for that (put starved into perspective after visiting a concentration camp I guess). By the way, the tour consisted of 4 Aussies who didn't speak outside their own much, an American couple in their mid to late 40s who did the same and an around 40 year old guy who was an English teacher in Turkey for a very prestigious school there and was in Prague for a course on Czech literature. His name was Andy and I talked to him about literature for the majority of the ride back into Prague.

After lunch I headed towards the new town and found the New Town Hall and the Dancing House and then on to the Vysehrad which is an old cathedral that was built on the grounds where the other castle in Prague was built. That castle was destroyed many centuries ago but the fortifications remain and it was cool to walk through the park where the fortifications were. Well, it would have been if it wasn't over 30C (it was probably near 90F). I enjoyed walking around there though and even visited the cathedral for 30 Czech Crowns. After that I headed back towards the old town and did some souvenir shopping to get it out of the way and then headed to the hotel to drop it off and back out to find dinner.

For dinner I found a place called Vasele Basy not too far from the hotel. I ordered the 1/4 duck which I knew would be leg and hindquarter meat. This was accompanied by Czech dumplings and red and white cabbage. I had a couple Staropramen to round out the meal. The duck was a touch overcooked but tasted good and the skin was crispy. The dumplings were very similar to others I have had in Prague already and were good as was the cabbage. Overall it was a mid-range enjoyment meal that probably cost a bit too much money for what it was worth. Food here is still cheap by European standards but since I have gotten better for cheaper I will have to rate the place lower on the list. When I finished that I found an ice cream place and had a single scoop of coffee ice cream on a cone. It was definitely good.

From there it was back to the hotel and time to crash for the night.

There are a lot of pictures and they are located here.

Czech Republic Day 4

2011-07-09T15:57:00.001-04:00

Today was also a day I had booked a tour that would take up the entire day so I got up at 6 and was out the door to breakfast by 7. After breakfast I had enough time that I didn't want to just sit around so I walked up to the National Museum and the monument to St Vacislaw in front of it and took a couple pictures and then turned right around and headed back to the hotel to be picked up by the van. The real irony is that I passed the starting point for the tour twice but since I had booked from the hotel I didn't want to cause any confusion and not show up for the van ride. Of course, all the van did was drive me around the corner to the starting point again. If I had realized where it was when I booked my tours I would really have booked them right at the office instead of the hotel.

After sorting out the tours we departed for the Konopiste and Karlstejn Castles tour. I think we kicked off at about 9am and we had approximately a 45 minute to an hour drive to the first castle Konopiste. We didn't run into any traffic, nor did the driver have any issues with the car. He drove like a Bostonian but other than that things were fine. The British couple obviously didn't trust him much but I thought he was safe. We had 2 American couples, from Virginia and Las Vegas and one British couple. The oldest were from Vegas and obviously retirement age. The other two couples were probably in their fifties. They were all nice people but the Vegas folks were the loudest. Our guide was named Helena and she struggled with annunciation in English a lot so it was difficult to understand her at times especially when it appeared she was going on a set speech given by the company. When she was off script she seemed to speak a bit easier but she also had a difficult time following what people were saying or asking. In any event she did well overall and I liked her.

Konopiste Castle was owned by Franz Ferdinand. Those of you who are World War I buffs might recognize his name because he was assassinated by Bosnian terrorists and that kicked off the events that started World War I. The Castle it self was built in the 13 century originally but then redone several times right up to the 19th century where Franz had it redone for the modern including modern plumbing, electricity and an elevator among other amenities. He was also an avid hunter so the decoration has a lot to do with hunting as well as having a collection of his trophies. There is also a sizable weapon collection that he inherited as a child of 12 or so that is on display in the upper floors. The inside of the castle is quite impressive. The main guide turned us over to a tour inside the castle. The castle guide was a younger girl who was actually very good at English and very knowledgeable about the subjects at hand. She spoke about almost everything we saw in the castle. I liked her a lot. Of course they didn't allow us to take pictures so I had to buy the book at the end. The main issue with this castle was that the outside was hard to photograph. There are no good angles to it from any distance as it is on a hill surrounded by trees. The guide said the best spot was across the lake but we didn't get a chance to see that. I took what pictures I could of it but it was not easy.

After Konopiste it was about an hour drive overland to the second castle Karlstejn. The drive was mainly through country roads and though a bit windy it was not the sickening experience of the day before. It was however a bit hot and I am sure it was in the mid to high 80sF during the course of the day and also humid. The AC in the van was not the best in the world but it did take some of the edge off. At the end of the drive we had dinner at a restaurant near Karlstejn Castle. I didn't get the name of it but surprisingly we had roast pork and potatoes with a cabbage soup for starter. I ordered a beer and got a Pilsner Urquell. The food was good but it is a bit repetitive to have pork each day for lunch.

After lunch we walked the short path up to Karlstejn Castle. This one is very impressive from the outside. It was a bit more easy to take pictures of Karlstejn than Konopiste. We arrived with a few minutes to spare before our tour started. Again our main guide would hand us off to a castle tour. I took a few moments to scout out some picture locations and then bought a Magnum Gold ice cream bar and ate that. That about took up the time and we were moved in with a much larger tour this time than Konopiste. This guide was also a younger girl that spoke English well and had a good sense of humor. She had a very good knowledge of the subject matter and was, well, smoking hot. The inside of Karlstejn is not much to look at. It was built in the 13th to 14th centuries and was meant to house the crown jewels of the Austria-Hungary Empire. It was renovated a few times and the most recent had all of the Renaissance period decorations removed from the interior and exterior. It for all intents and purposes feels more like a functional castle than a royal palace though Charles IV did actually stay there at points. The castle is made up of 3 towers and one housed the crown jewels. Apparently the castle was attacked several times and the Swedes came the closest but did not capture the main tower where the jewels were housed. For the record the Czech Republic is one of the only countries that does not commonly display its crown jewels. They are only shown every 5-10 years on special occasions, and then to only 10000 people and are put away again. So even though the insides of the castle were a bit dull I quite liked listening to and looking at the guide so it worked out well to me. This tour took approximately an hour or so because we did see several rooms as well as a courtyard.

After the tour was over we walked the long way down and around the castle rather than back the way we came. This afforded me the chance to get several different angle pictures of the castle and also to find a reasonable magnet though I couldn't find a book for it. I will probably look when I search the gift shops of Prague before I leave. The walk may have taken 45 minutes or so the long way around with the couple stops for pictures and shopping. After that we were back on the van and driven into Prague to the starting point again. I am fortunate that it is no difficulty to get back to the hotel from the starting point and I tromped back through the heat to drop off the stuff I bought and use the facilities before heading back out to dinner. It was an earlier return than Cesky Krumlov. I did use the opportunity to crank on the AC in the room too.

I trudged out into the heat and wandered around in circles for probably 45 minutes before deciding to eat at Mama Lucy's Steakhouse which was just a corner off the Old Square. I was indecisive before this point and I guess I took it as a good sign that the restaurant was displaying a poster from the NHL premier in Prague between the Bruins and the Coyotes. Unfortunately it was signed by the Coyotes and not the Bruins but Chara and Krejci were featured more prominently in the picture so that was nice. I ordered a dark beer which had a really awful name like Velpopovicky Kozel. It was a decent beer and I enjoyed it and had two during the meal. For dinner I opted for a the bacon cheeseburger which was many times better than the McDonald's version if a bit more expensive. The waitresses were really cute if hideously under-aged so overall it was a reasonably good experience. Their light beer was just a Pilsner Urquell and I'd had that before a couple times now.

After leaving that place I opted to have another beer or two at a place right on the square whose name was difficult to find. They served Krusovice beer and I enjoyed that enough to have two after all. It was a simple Pilsner style but it was tasty enough. That carried me past the point where the sun was visible over the buildings any longer and I really had to use the bathroom. So I raced back to the room to call it a night.

The pictures for today are found here.

Czech Republic Day 3

2011-07-08T14:55:00.001-04:00

Today started with a 6am wake up and quick shower and breakfast in the hotel. I stuck to pretty much the same food as the day before and probably will for the rest of the trip. I had already purchased the night before a tour to Cesky Krumlov (Chesky Kroomlov for easiest pronunciation) and had to be in the lobby for 8:30am which I had time enough to relieve myself of the excess coffee before the required time. The real irony is that the main starting point for tours with the company that my hotel uses (Premiant Tours) is literally a 3 minute walk from the hotel yet I have to get picked up in the morning. It might have been easier for me to book the tours right at the starting point but I didn't realize at the time how close it was.

Cesky Krumlov is a Unesco site. It is basically 16th century and earlier through a lot of it and most of the buildings are original if modified for modern use. It was the Unesco bill that sold me to try the trip. The town is basically about 2 and a half hours or so drive from Prague and the tour starts with a brief explanation of some of the city of Prague as we drove through and exited the town. The guide was named Janna and was a retired school teacher who gave the tour in both English and Italian. There were 16 of us on the tour. More than half were Americans, there were 3 Italians and 3 from Barcelona who figured they could follow along with the Italian because I guess their dialect is close enough. Of the Americans I was the only east coaster, the rest being from California. 3 were college girls in Prague for a course they were taking over the last month. There was an older couple just touring Europe as well as a couple of guys also touring Europe for a couple weeks and a mother and son who didn't really speak to anyone. The college girls reminded me why I regret not doing all this at an earlier age... ouch.

The tour started with a long drive to the town of Cesky Krumlov where we got stuck in traffic a couple of times and the driver appeared to have issues with the van stalling or not shifting properly or something where he kept restarting it mid-drive. That said we did make it to the town but where typically the tour gets to walk through the gardens of the castle instead we had to rush straight in because we were late arriving. The guide traded us to a castle guide who ran the tour inside. I think the tour lasted about an hour or so and took us through the various parts of the castle. They did not allow pictures inside so I had to buy a book. The castle started in the mid 13th century and was added to over the years. It is a large complex. Not as big as Prague castle but the second largest in the Czech Republic after it. The castle is built on two large rocky platforms and they built a very decorative bridge between the two parts. Inside the castle was probably rebuilt several times and it was obvious by the styles, most of which was Renaissance or Rococo. Since the castle is older than those period it was obvious a lot of it was redone over the centuries. The castle is quite impressive if more of a palace in style than a castle at this point as with Prague Castle. The guide was nice and knowledgeable and I enjoyed the tour quite a bit. This castle is not as impressive as Versailles and much of the paintings could use some restoration but it was still a very unique and interesting place. They had 3 bears as the Rosenberg family that owned it considered themselves related to the Italian Orsini family and that basically means bears. I did manage to get pictures of one of the bears. For some reason he had a keg in his habitat.

I should point out that the day was basically cloudy and below 60F with sprinkles so far and continued so as we exited the castle. The Premiant guide walked us down out of the castle and through the town to where we would have lunch, in a restaurant that used to be the local jail originally. I am sure it had not been used for that for quite a long time. Their specialty was roast pork and that was what I ordered. The place was dim and had a lot of medieval furnishings that included weapons and animal furs. I ordered a beer and got the Budweiser Budvar we've all heard about. This is the Czech beer that the American company bought the recipe from. The agreement was that the US Bud would not alter the recipe but that fell through many years ago. There must have also been an agreement that this Budweiser could keep its name because obviously the other one never tried to sue them to drop it like most gigantic corporations would. It is a reasonably good beer. Certainly better than the Bud of the US. I could not mark it amongst my favorites but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The lunch was roast pork and a baked potato and I really enjoyed the meal a lot. It was basically a pork chop but it was properly cooked and quite tasty. They served it on a wooden plate as a representation of the fact we were in a prison. We finished with some tart like pastries that were called wedding cakes by our guide.

When we stepped outside from lunch we were told we had about 50 minutes to wander the town. Somehow the grim and grey had turned into about 80F and sunny. It was nice because I got to walk around the town and retake some of the pictures I took with better sunlight than the grey overcast we had before. Mostly that was what I did with my free time only stopping to get a magnet and castle book. The town is actually bigger than it seems at first and the river that runs through it has several bridges to cross and lots of different points to take pictures from. I managed to find the local church but there was some sort of service going on so I really just ran in and out. I was the first to arrive at the allotted spot at the correct time and then the rest of the tour slowly trickled in. We were walked further through the town where our guide explained a few more features and then marched our way to the van where we loaded up and then started the long drive back into town.

They did not take the same route out as they took in. This direction took us through a national park that the Czech Republic shares with Austria (again I was very close to Austria) and then on to the major roads again eventually. This would have been an ok thing but the driver was moving very fast and the roads were very windy and up and downhill a lot. I actually wanted to shut my eyes but I was getting motion sick from it all and didn't get to do so until we got back on the major roads. There I probably catnapped for 20 minutes or so and then woke up with a stiff neck as to be expected. The remainder of the drive in was relatively uneventful and we made it into town a some time after 7pm. This was a long tour but a lot of it was really on the road. Still I enjoyed it. They dropped us off at the starting point rather than our individual hotels which works out best for me of anyone on the tour because of how close my hotel was. I was ready for dinner it being close to 8pm already and opted first to make a quick pit stop at the hotel and drop off my book and use the facilities.

I wasn't sure what to do for dinner but decided to walk slightly askew to the main throughway and found the Restaurant Templar (in English) which was actually an Italian style restaurant. Not really sure how Templars translate to Italian food but who am I to question these things. I didn't even realize the name until I had already ordered. I had another Budweiser Budvar or two and penne aglia i olio. It was actually quite good and I am glad I ordered it. They had red pepper in it to add some nice spice to it. After I finished dinner I had an Irish coffee (not sure why I ordered it but I did) and their ice cream plate which had a berry compote, whipped cream and some chocolate sauce accompanying vanilla and strawberry ice creams. I liked both quite a bit. When I finished I took an indirect route back to the hotel to hit a couple souvenir shops because I was in the neighborhood then headed back in to crash for the night.

The pictures from day 3 can be found here.

Czech Republic Day 2

2011-07-07T14:31:00.000-04:00

While I went to bed early I slept fairly well throughout the night and woke up at 6:30am which is a half an hour later than I normally do. The bed is small but comfortable. I got showered and dressed and went down to the included breakfast which was a typical European breakfast buffet. I didn't really eat more than a sandwich made of brown bread with ham and cheese and then accompanied with some apple juice that didn't have a lot of flavor and some ok but not great coffee.

After breakfast I went down to the front desk and booked the Grand Sightseeing Tour: Prague Castle and Boat Trip. The tour pickup was at 9:45am at the hotel so I had a lot of time to kill and decided to just go out and walk around the town sort of trying to get lost and see what I could see. I did this for around an hour and a half and had some reasonable luck seeing things I hadn't on day 1. I set my phone alarm for 9:15 and headed back to the hotel for the pickup then. I got back at say 9:20 and used the facilities and drank some water before heading back down. I got to the lobby just as the van was arriving to pick the tour up. Along with me there was a Norwegian woman and her granddaughter that left from the Meteor Plaza. The van took us to a starting point location and we were separated off to our respective tours. Ours was not too full having half Spanish speaking guests and half English speaking (including the Norwegians). There was a couple from NYC Ahmed and Beth around their thirties and a couple from South Carolina Delton and Cindy who were retired age for the English speaking group. Our guide was a tall Czech man who said his name really fast though I think it was Michael (or the Czech equivalent). He spoke both English and Spanish and said everything on the tour twice.

The tour started with the van ride through the old town and some of the new town and then over the bridge into the lesser town. Old and new are relative as they are talking 13th and 14th centuries I believe he said. The lesser town is 16th century. As we crossed into the lesser town we came up past the royal gardens to the back side of Prague Castle where we disembarked and started a walking tour of Prague castle. The walking part carried us to the castle and the scenic overlook then had us see the changing of the guard which was not terribly filled with pomp but still was neat and then into the castle courtyards and into the cathedral which dated back originally to 12th century but was added too over the centuries. From there it was through the rest of the courtyards and down to meet the van again. A lot of this was recap walking from day 1 for me and I didn't take tons of repeat pictures but tried to take new angles when I found them. The van took us down to the river and actually to the boat where I saw something being filmed for TV (it looked) on day 1. The guide didn't know about the filming.

The boat tour basically takes you up the river to the locks and then spins around for a little while and then back to the starting point. Along the ride the guide explained features and all of this was recap visuals for me. i found that the huge metronome was a symbol of the national government after communism was removed and that a statue of Stalin was originally up in that location. The boat ride was pleasant and I ordered a beer named Bakalar (pronounced Bah-kah-lahsh) and enjoyed it. Along the boat ride guide had set us up in English and Spanish tables to make it easier on him and that's where the batch of us got to talking and even though he spent a lot of the ride talking to the Spanish we didn't really mind. They were all very nice people and it was fun to talk to them. Everyone had traveled quite a bit and seen different things and it was fun to compare notes.

After the boat ride was over we walked through the Jewish Quarter and then on to the Old Square where the guide finished his tour speaking about the Old Town Hall with the clock. In all the tour was about 3 and a half hours and was fairly pleasant. The guide was a fast walker which was fine by me but a lot of the tour was not happy with trying to keep up with him. I guess he was worried about time schedule. I am sure he had to be back to the starting point for a 2pm departure as well. Before we left him we asked him to suggest someplace to eat for lunch and he sent us to the Red Peacock which was less than a five minute walk away. We Americans had decided to stick together to talk and eat because we were having a good enough time. The Red Peacock (I won't try to type in or even say the Czech name) was apparently an expensive bordello a long time ago and had some famous customers including Otto von Bismark according to the menu. This was not a touristy place as it was around 2 corners in a back alley. I ordered a dark beer which was served in a Pilsner Urquell glass but was not that brand (the menu just said dark beer) and I had the roast boar with dumplings and cabbage. I liked the food a lot. The dumplings were more bread-like than I was expecting but they were still very good especially with the sauce from the boar meat. The boar meat was very dark and sort of looked like beef but still had a pork flavor to some degree. I am glad I ordered it and cleaned the whole plate including the cabbage. Apparently everyone else liked what they ordered because they all ate what they ordered too. An odd note to mention was the noose hanging right next to the table where we ate.

After settling the bill we decided to walk around the town a bit together some more and talk and the women did a little bit of souvenir shopping as both groups were heading home on Saturday. We all had maps but I had the best understanding of the land and we steered ourselves around a few more streets I really hadn't visited (which had a lot of shopping stores) and then eventually around to the Old Town Hall again to watch the clock go off for 6pm. From there I guided them to the Charles Bridge which is the large walking bridge across to the Lesser Town that I had crossed already a couple times. Delton and Cindy had to go to a hotel up past the castle and it would have been a long walk so I guided them to the bridge and then showed them on the map how to get to a tram that would take them near their hotel. With that we all parted our ways. Ahmed and Beth were going to visit the bridge as well and take some pictures as they hadn't yet.

It was basically 6:30 or so by this point and I just started wandering again not sure what I wanted to do for eating. I realized that staying off the main thoroughfares would be cheaper and I tried to see what I could find off the beaten path but I guess I didn't choose my direction well and eventually decided to eat at the McDonald's up heading toward the National Museum. It was already past 7pm and I was tired and didn't feel like putting a lot of effort into dinner at that point anyway. I make it a point to hit a McDonald's once per trip anyway so this was it. I ordered a Big and Tasty Bacon Cheeseburger and it was big and not terrible tasting. I think the meal cost around $7 US equivalently. Since it was a large burger I can live with that. I think I was more anxious for the drink than the food as I was more thirsty than hungry by that point. The weather had cooperated quite well on the day being sunny and warm to hot most of the way through. I got a bit of a burn again as I forgot to sunblock up before I left though not anything terrible. After dinner I headed back to the hotel and booked my next two days' tours at the front desk then headed up to the room to relax.

Overall it was a fun day. I met nice new people and had a good time. The guide was reasonably good though didn't answer a ton of questions off topic and I am sure he spoke Spanish better than he did English. I heard him speaking Spanish and though it was slow by their standards it was clear and he didn't pause to think what he wanted to say near as much as he did in English. I don't speak Spanish but I could understand about 50% of what he said.

The pictures for today are located here.

Czech Republic Day 1

2011-07-06T14:02:00.003-04:00

I was picked up from home by Flightline at about 1:40pm for a 5:05pm flight on Lufthansa. The ride in to Logan was not bad. There was very little traffic and I was checked in and waiting by 2:30pm. I opted to walk around the terminal a bit then ended up in O'Brians for a couple beers until it was time to board. I talked with my neighbor at the bar for a bit about the Casey Anthony trial which I had paid no attention to but watched the verdict of being not guilty discussed on CNN right there. It meant little to me really but a lot of people at the bar were appalled that the jury came to that decision. Oh well.

The flight boarded a touch late but pulled from gate on time. I was fortunate in both flights because I was in an aisle sit with no direct neighbor. Just someone at the window. I had a glass of red wine. Nibbled at some of the food and then when it was obvious they weren't going to play any movies I liked - it was a 747 with only the overhead screens - I went to sleep. Unfortunately to get to that point wasted probably 2 hours and it was 2 hours more sleep I could have used. The flight was a tad bumpy but I did sleep through most of it. 3 and a half hours or so anyway, plus some catnapping during the descent.

In Frankfurt it was easy to go through passport control and get to my gate which was still in Terminal A this time. An easier transfer than last time. I had to wait a while to board because that one also boarded a bit late but pulled from the gate on time. I slept through the majority of this flight too. It was uneventful. I didn't even get the snacks or a drink.

After exiting the plane it was a fairly quick bit of work to get the luggage and basically walk straight through customs with nothing to declare. No passport control at all. It is not a very big airport in Prague and I was quickly outside and getting a taxi to the hotel. I was tired and I didn't feel like finding the buses or trains. Plus it is relatively cheap compared to other European cities. The taxi dropped me off right at the hotel and I was able to check in directly as my room was ready which was a relief because I desperately wanted to take a shower and was able to. After getting settled in I cleaned up and then dressed for the weather, which included shorts as it was probably just near 80F and sunny.

I took a quick look at a map and realized to turn left out of the hotel and then basically it is a straight line to the old square, on to the old bridge and up to the castle. I walked that path and then through the castle area for a while. Before reaching the castle I stopped and had lunch at a roadside cafe named the Golden Star. I had the Czech beef goulash with potatoes and a couple of Pilsner Urquell beers - one large and one small. The food was reasonably good if a touch on the salty side for my preference.

After lunch I hiked up the hill to the castle and around through its grounds and back down the hill. I came to the river at a different bridge and crossed there and then turned back towards familiar ground before taking a couple extra detours just to see the neighborhood. I walked around for about 4 hours before heading back into the hotel to hide from the heat which had grown stronger. Fortunately the hotel has AC and wifi. I picked well on that count. The location is quite good too. I can also book tours with the front desk and will be doing that I am sure especially for a couple that go outside of town. The bed is a small one but I've grown used to that in hotels. I have to say this city is beautiful. I really like the architecture and the really old feel it has. The streets are a tangle rather than a grid and I like that so much better. Planned cities are really boring to me.

After resting for a short time to cool off I headed out to do a bit more walking and get some dinner. I decided to walk out to the bridge across the river but not cross and instead turn right and follow the river. I did that for a while and found a lot of the river boat tours depart from that area. There was a park with a huge metronome at the top of a hill that I could see also. Along the way I saw a boat load up with a bunch of Danish kids in a marching band. I assume they were Danish because they had a Danish flag and were all wearing the Danish flag as an insignia. Further up I saw some sort of TV show being filmed and they had a local music band play something. It was sort of neat. On the walk back when I figured, with the aid of a map, that I was exiting the region of anything interesting I decided to go up to the park with the metronome. It was a lot of steps and it appears the park has been taken over by skateboarders mostly. Still it was neat to get up there. Wish I knew what the metronome was about.

After that I headed back up towards the castle after following the river to the pedestrian bridge. I should get the name down before I leave here I bet. I did a basic climb up the hill and turned right back down and over the bridge again. It had gotten to being 6pm and I was ready to eat so I found the Hotel Zlateho Stroma in the main alley leading back towards the old square (and eventually my hotel). There I decided to order a beer and got a Staropramen which I like better than Pilsner Urquell and to look at the menu. I had Staropramen in Sweden way back when. I decided to get the meat skewers which had beef, chicken, pork, bacon, peppers and onions along with a baked potato side. The meat was not individual flavor chunks but all the types except the bacon rolled into one. It was good though a touch dry. I think it probably needed one minute less cooking. Still the flavor was good and I ate it all. I opted to have a beer for dessert too as I people watched. A wicked lot of foot traffic passes that restaurant and sitting outdoors in the nice weather it was great. There was no one wearing jackets or scarves now. They must realize it is actually summer around here. I was impressed. We definitely got into the low 80sF today but that hasn't stopped Europeans from wearing jackets before. It makes me sweat thinking about it.

I was exhausted after dinner and just decided to head in to the hotel and crash for the evening. It was early by most people's standards but I only had the 4 hours of airplane sleep and the brief bit of rest on the day. I was ready to crash and start off a more full day on day 2. Still considering how early I got in on day 1 it was also a very full day besides.

The pictures from day 1 are located here.

Leaving for Prague Today

2011-07-05T11:06:00.000-04:00

Flying out for the Czech Republic this evening. Here's hoping I get to see the Stanley Cup with some of the Bruins players. Maybe I'll be lucky and they'll take their 24 hours while I am there. Has to be soon I think.

My flight is with Lufthansa and I will be styaing at the Hotel Meteor which is a Best Western. Never stayed at one of them before. The price was reasonable though. Probably won't mind the airplane for the air conditioning considering the temperatures around here.

Spain in October

2011-06-30T13:25:00.000-04:00

Originally it was my intention to travel to Greece for my late October trip but the unrest and strikes there really made me think I should skip that for this year and maybe see how things are next year. Having a birthday late in the fall definitely limits the number of places that might be having decent weather while I visit so for this trip I will be heading to Spain. I have booked a flight through AA for Madrid and will sort out the rest of the details after I return from the Czech Republic. The flight was reasonably cheap and even included a direct from Madrid to Boston on the return. I can definitely deal with that.

Warrior Dash Photos

2011-06-27T14:25:00.002-04:00

I did not take any of these pictures but I hijacked them from other people. They are located here.

Warrior Dash

2011-06-26T10:28:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the New England Warrior Dash and I and a few friends participated. The premise is that it is a 5k trail race where they include some obstacles along the way to make the run even harder.

First off let me say I had a blast participating and by the end I was completely covered in mud. The obstacles listed in the description turned out to be somewhat different from what we experienced and I think that was because of the several days of rain and the heavy downpour we got the morning of the race. The entire course was mud from beginning to end and there were very few stretches where footing was easy to run on. Most of it was very slick and slippery and the sections inside the woods were loaded with rocks and roots besides the slick mud. I think they made some of the obstacles a bit more tame because of how difficult the running course itself was. The obstacles we did face included a web maze, walls to jump over with barbed wire to crawl under, two large walls to climb over, fire pits to jump over, a tire swing maze to run through, a balance beam to run across, a small downhill slide, a huge downhill slide (on the mud of course) and a web bridge to climb over. The running was fairly grueling and most of the obstacles were easy but the walls to climb and balance beams were tough for me with heights issues, though I got over them. The web bridge was really strenuous and I had a girl who stalled in front of me making it even harder. Possibly the most fun obstacle was the large downhill mud slide. I am fairly certain I got to about 30 miles per hour coming down, or it felt that fast anyway. I crashed into the girl ahead of me because she veered into my path at the bottom and I couldn't steer away, but no one got hurt.

The issues with the day were that they didn't really have a good handle on the traffic coming in and while we left at 3:45pm for a 5:30pm heat time we got stuck on route 110 until 5:10. The website said no refunds and if you miss your heat you are out of luck but fortunately they must have realized that too many people were getting stuck in the traffic and they basically let people go whenever they wanted. We ended up in the 6:30 heat instead of the 5:30 heat. I was getting really angry with the traffic until we talked to a kid walking out that said they were letting people go whenever. I still wasn't happy with the traffic but at least we weren't sitting in it for no reason. They had over 10000 people participate for day 1. The course was completely torn up by the end of the day when we went and I do not envy the day 2 people at all for how much worse it probably will be. The organization for the event itself seemed reasonable and after the shuttle ride from the parking area to the actual race area things went fairly quick. They had a lot of school buses to use as shuttles and it was quick to get there and even back at the end of the day though the line looked to be a quarter mile long at least. The registration tables and gear check tables were organized and it was easy to get into the heat when we were checked in. They had snow makers to clean yourself of the mud at the end. Obviously they were just spraying water rather than making snow but the water was freezingly cold. I could only be in for a short burst at a time.

The people who ran were Brien, Cathy, Reed, my nephew Will and myself. Shockingly, I came in with the best time of 52 minutes 51 seconds though I must point out that due to the difficult footing I had to walk a lot. Not that I didn't have the energy to run but every time I tried it was trip and fall basically. Reed came in second about 9 minutes later. My nephew followed him by 7 minutes saying he rolled an ankle during the run. Brien and Cathy came in at 1 hour 22 minutes. My brother and sister-in-law and some friends were spectators and two people took some photos but I will have to gather them before I can post them. I obviously was too muddy to carry a camera and therefore I had to rely on others for the pictures. I will post them as soon as I can get them.

Assuming we do it next year I think we'll register early and make sure we get in early to have more of a day of it. Getting in late everything was shutting down a short while after we finished and there was a lot of food and festivities around the park. I had a blast and I definitely would do it again. Even the spectators enjoyed themselves.

Czech Republic in Less than 3 weeks

2011-06-16T13:21:00.000-04:00

Hard to believe how fast time is flying. I will be heading off for my six day vacation in Prague in less than 3 weeks. My new found hope is that the Stanley Cup might be hanging about in the region due to certain Bruins players who might bring it there. If it is in town I am definitely doing all I can to see it!

Most Recent Trip Slideshow

2011-06-02T05:48:00.001-04:00

I've updated the most recent trip slideshow to the right for those of you interested in the short form of the pictures.

Pictures for Germany Day 11

2011-06-01T21:08:00.002-04:00

The Germany Day 11 pictures are located here.

Pictures for Germany Day 10

2011-06-01T21:05:00.002-04:00

The pictures for Germany day 10 are found here.

Pictures for Germany Day 9

2011-06-01T20:07:00.002-04:00

The pictures from Germany day 9 are here.

Pictures for Germany Day 8

2011-06-01T19:59:00.001-04:00

The pictures for Germany Day 8 can be found here.

Pictures for Germany Day 7

2011-06-01T19:45:00.002-04:00

The Germany day 7 pictures can be found here.

Pictures for Germany Day 6

2011-06-01T19:36:00.002-04:00

The pictures for Germany day 6 can be found here.

Pictures for Germany Day 5

2011-06-01T19:20:00.001-04:00

The pictures of Germany day 5 are located here.

Pictures for Germany Day 4

2011-06-01T18:57:00.004-04:00

Germany day4 pictures can be found here.

Pictures for Germany Day 3

2011-06-01T18:34:00.002-04:00

The pictures for Germany day 3 are here.

Pictures for Germany Day 2

2011-06-01T18:33:00.002-04:00

The pictures for Germany day 2 can be found here.

Germany Day 11

2011-05-31T21:03:00.000-04:00

Today started out with an early start to get everything packed. For a change I was not really in the mood to get everything done before I went to bed even though it was relatively early. So I showered and packed up the suitcase as well as I could before going down to breakfast. At breakfast I waited until Sid showed up so I could make sure I said goodbye to him. I had already talked to Juliano the night before because he would be off at class before the official breakfast time. After chatting for a few minutes I headed to downtown to do a small bit of souvenir shopping but really didn’t find anything much and then headed back in and checked out of the hotel. I was able to get on the road by about 11am. Maybe a few minutes before I wanted to but really I didn’t have much else to do and I wasn’t sure exactly how long the drive to the airport was going to take. I have to mention exactly how expensive gas was at this point. I paid a fortune for the various fill-ups I needed during my epic drives and such. I managed to get gas on the road for the most expensive price I paid on the trip. I shudder to think how much it was and will not admit it publicly. The car was not really my favorite but I have certainly driven worse. I drove 2008 kilometers during the trip.

The GPS took me on a different route to get to the airport than I had taken to get to Oberammergau so I was seeing new things including driving basically right on the edge of Munich. I was lucky that there was little road construction and the traffic was still fairly light even in the city. I think it took me about an hour and forty minutes to get to the airport from the hotel including the stop for gas. Checking the car rental back was fairly quick and I was in the wrong terminal when I was done but it was not really that hard to get to the right terminal so I can’t complain on that. Check-in at the airport was quick because there were no lines and I managed to be under weight on the luggage which sort of surprised me. I think I should have put more into the suitcase than I did but I wanted to make sure I was not getting extra charges. After check-in I was able to find the gate area quickly and did a bit of souvenir shopping in the airport before eating at a small restaurant named Airbrau. I had a couple beers and the Kasespaetzle, which is basically the German version of Macaroni and cheese. I liked the food and the beer, which was unfiltered quite much. After eating I basically headed right to the gate. It was very early but I really had nothing else to do. Unfortunately I had a couple of gay guys who sat down next to me and commented on all the other passengers for the duration of my sit. I was quite happy to get on the plane and get away from them honestly.

On the plane I sat next to a woman named Beth who was coming back from a vacation in Budapest. She lives in Malden so this was her last stretch of flight. We chatted for a while through the meal and then she started to read then slept and I watched a couple of movies on my laptop. There was a weak selection on the entertainment system so I didn't bother with anything on it. The flight was uneventful really and we landed on time and I managed an easy passport control, the guy directing traffic was wearing Bruins things and I got to talk hockey and the Stanley Cup Finals for a few moments before passing through that. It was not a long wait for my bag and customs just took my slip and I was out the door. My brother picked me up and we were home quite quickly.

I have to say that this was a great trip from beginning to end. I had great fun with the class at the start and did some fun stuff around Brussels and saw Amsterdam of course. I also had an incredible time on the vacation portion of the trip. Yes it was a long time to be away from home but I was fine with that. I was still a bit disappointed when it came time to pack up. Bavaria is beautiful and really the location and the history is just something I love. I got to hike and bike aside from see castles. If only the ocean were also nearby, then I would have found my heaven I think. I would definitely enjoy going back there. I am sure I have other places to visit first but it definitely is going to rate amongst my favorite vacations I am sure.

I will try to get all the pictures posted in the next couple days and a quickie slide show for those of you who want the condensed version hopefully before the weekend is out.

Germany Day 10

2011-05-30T15:59:00.001-04:00

My plans for today were not really set until the morning. Even with the late return on Sunday I woke up early and had breakfast as usual. I wrote that post this morning before and during breakfast. I spoke to Sabine and she said that it would be a good day to go to Zugspitze, which is the highest mountain and point in all of Germany. It is not really far away from the hotel so it at least seemed like a good starting point for the day. I packed up and headed to on my way before 9am easily. Erich and Sabine both said the earlier the better. The drive was not difficult though I had a tough time deciding which point I was supposed to go to when setting the GPS. I missed a turn and drove a bit out of my way and had to turn around. Still I was there fairly quickly and actually the timing was quite good.

The plan was to ride the cog railway up to the first stopping point. When I bought my round trip ticket the train was only 2 minutes away. I really didn't have to wait at all. The cog railway goes up through the woods a fair distance, has a nice view or two along the way then it basically turns into an all tunnel ride for the larger part of the trip. They have some small facts on a TV screen while you are in the tunnel because, well, it's kind of boring.

At the first stop you could see all the snow from the past couple storms quite easily. I walked around outside and took a few pictures. I should point out I was the only guy wearing shorts and a polo shirt with no jacket. It was perfectly cool out though and not cold. After stomping around the area for a few minutes I again timed my next stage perfectly. The next step is to ride to the summit in a cable car. The cable cars have a 90 person limit (I am sure that means European, bet they could fit 120 Asians or 50 Americans). When I got there it was mostly loaded but I was able to squeeze in and it wasn't but a couple minutes before we were on our way up. As cable car rides go it was not really all that scary, probably because I was in the middle of a full car and it was really tough to see anything to get a sense of height. It was a very brief ride, only a few minutes. At the top everyone piles out and you get to walk around several platforms around the summit area. Technically you can climb to the summit summit where there is a gold cross but the path was closed due to the slick and snowy conditions. It looked quite scary and maybe I would have tried it on a day without snow but never today anyway. It involved a ladder and pull rope to get up there.

Even at the summit the weather was cool and enjoyable. It was very sunny out. The view was clear for many miles and I took a ton of pictures. I wandered around the whole area from front to back and front again and pretty much captured all the views I could see as best I could. After a while I saw the lower beer garden wsa not really busy, only one couple there and decided to stop there for a beer or two and lunch. It was before 11:30 but I figured it was a good stopping point for the time. I ordered a Franzikan Weisbier which was ok and I had the roast pork with the large dumpling and red cabbage. It was quite good. I actually liked this one better than the one from Edelweis. Not long after I came down another couple of customers came down and ordered the same thing as I had so they must have thought it looked good too. It wasn't really long before the entire place was packed solid with people. I kind of felt like a trendsetter to some degree. Even all the black birds up there got in on the action and customers were giving them bread from their hands. In any event I had my second beer and the settled the bill and wandered for a few minutes more before taking the other cable car back down to Eibsee which is where I started the cog railway ride up. This one again was a large car with a lot of people in it. I got near a window but there still wasn't the same complete sense of height. I wonder if the car just felt too big or something. There were some incredible views. I am not sure. I think it took about 15 minutes from top to bottom. It might have been longer but it didn't feel like it.

At the bottom I wandered for a few minutes trying to figure out where my car was in relation to the cable car terminal rather than the train station. It wasn't long before I sorted things out and got in the car to figure out my next move. I decided I would again try out Reutte. I had only passed through it last time and I was hoping to get a small souvenir or two from Austria without having to go back to Innsbruck. The route I took by not using the GPS must not have been the most efficient even if I was following signs because I was on the road for a while. In any event as I was nearing Reutte I came across Ehrenberg. Let me say that I had found the name and idea of Ehrenberg in my research for this trip and it was what I actually planned to do in Austria. Ehrenberg is a medieval castle ruins that looked very interesting to me. So here I stumbled upon it by accident. There was no way I couldn't go there. I pulled into the exit and then down into a space in the lot and realized there are several things that make up Ehrenberg. More than I thought.

At the parking area is Ehrenberg Krause which is a fort at the base of the mountain. I really didn't bother with it much. It is in renovations right now and it is 18th century work. Then up the hill about 30 minutes they say (I think I walked it in about 15 minutes) is Ehrenberg Schloss. The castle was started in the 13th century and was built up over the years through the 18th century. It is all ruins now. Amazingly, or enjoyably or both, yes definitely both, there was not another soul in the ruins when I got there. I started to clambering through it and taking pictures from all angles. The grounds are huge and there are a lot of great things to see. They posted signs that explained the structures and when they were built. I was pretty much in heaven here. Castle ruins and no one else to ruin the experience, no pun intended (I suppose I could have said spoil). In any event I was in the main castle for quite a while. As I started to head out I saw the first people that came up there besides me. They were older and were definitely tired from the climb.

Of course there is also Schlosskopf. That is an 18th century for that is built on a higher peak that overlooks the castle. I saw the sign for it and it said 30 minutes up. I would have kicked myself if I didn't do it even though I could see how steep a climb it was going to be. It took me about 20 minutes to get up there. I had to stop and rest a few minutes at one point because it was also very hot out. They thought it was going to get over 30C here and it did. That is over 85F minimally. Anyway, I made it to the top of Schlosskopf and again was the only person up there. Perhaps it was a little less interesting to me being more of a gun fort than a castle but I still spent a while up there. I was able to hide in some shade for a bit and I was able even to spend 2 Euros on a bottle of apple soda that I desperately needed. They had nothing without bubbles in it, especially the water so I figured it was the least damaging. It actually was quite enjoyable, probably because I was so thirsty. Nice of them to put a soda machine up there.

After finishing up my drink and taking all the pictures I could take I started my way back downhill. The sign said 60 minutes to Ehrenberg Krause which is where my car was but it took me more like 30 minutes. I am always happy when the signs are for people other than me... At the car I decided I could see Reutte from the castle so I would just drive there sans GPS. It was a few minutes but easy to find. I found a parking space near the center that was for a supermarket and had a one hour limit. I walked through the center and then back to the car. Nothing touristy at all. I was not surprised but a touch disappointed. I ran into the market and bought another soda from the same company because again they have something against cold still water out here. I do hate them for that. This was a black currant looking thing and I kind of liked it too but I actually liked the apple stuff better. Typically I like black currants. It might have been a different type of berry. I set up the GPS for the hotel and drank that in the car on the way back. The route it took me was by the lake I passed the rainy day I went to Fuessen. I didn't stop for pictures. There were a lot of people sunbathing on the edges of the lake. It was very hot out. My car thermometer said 31C at that point and it was basically 5pm. It wasn't a long ride back but I had to contend with a bunch of jerk motorcycle drivers along the way. I think they are really bad out here thinking they own the road. In any event I let them all pass me and eventually I felt like I was the only one on the road which was a nice way to finish it up. I pulled into the hotel a bit past 5pm and freshened up then started writing this before dinner.

At dinner I started with watermelon instead of soup. Since the day was hot they offered the melon as an option to the soup. It sounded like a good idea and I was happy with the choice. I had 2 Koenig Ludwig Hell beers which are their basic pilsners. I hadn't tried it before so I figured now was the time. I liked the dark beer and this one was decent too. I had a stuffed cabbage roll in for dinner and that came with mashed potatoes. It was very good and I used the sauce from the cabbage rolls to season the potatoes. I figured I should have something that seemed local for the last dinner here at the hotel. I again have to state that Peter is an excellent chef and I really loved his food. After I finished my second beer I had the dessert which was a sorbet made with blue caracao and I also had a grappa to finish off the trip since I saw it in the drink menu. Both Sid and Juliano came down to dinner and we talked about what happened on the weekend and so on. By accident some of Juliano's classmates found the hotel while finishing their hiking and came in to eat. So after I settled the bill I headed off for the evening.

I fly out on Tuesday in the mid afternoon so I have some time in the morning to get some stuff done. I will probably need to start for the airport at about noon or so. It should be an hour and a half drive to the airport. I am not really looking forward to that but after two drives of five and a half hours each I am sure it will be nothing.

Germany Day 9

2011-05-30T01:56:00.002-04:00

Today started a bit later than I would prefer because Kate does not wake up early. Still I was able to get up, write yesterday’s journal and shower just before she woke up so maybe too much time was not wasted. After she got ready we headed outside for the bus again and took it to Bonn to have breakfast at the Bagel Brothers, which is her favorite place for breakfast. I had a bacon, egg bagel and a cup of coffee. She had a ham and turkey bagel. After breakfast we walked to the the Bonn Hauptbahnhof which is the central station of the city and rode to Cologne spelled (Köln but I am too lazy to fix it that way, sorry). The train ride took only half an hour so the two cities are close together.

The most important thing to see in the city is the Kölner Dom which is a very old cathedral. It dates back to the 1200s so while I am sure it was added to over the years it still has a very deep history. In some respects it is not the best looking church. On the outside it is very dark with years of pollution but the stonework is very detailed and ornate so it is still interesting to look at. The inside of the church is very large feeling. There is not much by way of decoration, especially after seeing Wieskirche and Ettal but still the grandeur is felt due to the height of the ceilings. They were having mass because it was Sunday. We didn’t stay inside too long. After that we paid the 3 Euros each to climb the steps to the top of one of the steeples. There are twin steeples on the church and you can climb to the highest point where anyone can stand safely. It was nearly 500 steps to the top and the majority of the climb is through narrow spiral steps. It did feel like we were climbing forever and definitely by the time we got to the top there was a real sense of height. The problems were that people had damaged all the stonework up top with graffiti which bothered me a lot and also that they had some series wire fencing to prevent people from falling which sort of made the view a touch less impressive (and more difficult to get pictures). Still it was very cool to have done it and though the day had started cloudy by the time we got to the top the sky was clear and it was getting warmer. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as the top of St. Peters in Rome, which was nice.

After we walked all the narrow spiral steps down we turned just a little bit and saw the Stadthaus or local town hall (at least the old ornate one). The walked around seeing the main shopping street of the city (she is a girl after all so it is something that interests her). All the stores were closed because it was Sunday. This route brought us to a small wine bar named Divine where Kate used to work for a couple of years. She was hoping the owner was there but instead it was his Polish girlfriend soon to be wife. She is very nice and my goodness was she attractive. Kate explained that she had a baby 4 months ago and you couldn’t tell at all. In any event we each ordered a couple of a local beer called Fruh Kölsch and talked for a while. It was very relaxing. Towards the later part of our stop the owner did show up with their baby for a few moments and then a bit later we left.

Our next goal was to get to the train station again so we could cross the river towards where their arena is to eat at a restaurant named Vapiano. It is an Italian place that is sort of cafeteria style. When you enter you are given a card and you can walk around and order things at very stalls. They will cook it right in front of you. Kate had not been to the one in Cologne but to at least one in Bonn and again she really liked it. So we both decided to get pasta. She got a scampi and I got the arrabiata as I often do. The cook was not particularly the quickest but it was sort of neat to watch him do his work for the couple people in line before us and then for us. He was a touch heavy on the salt but overall the food was real good. It was already getting time to consider driving home so I had an iced tea and Kate bought a Vita Malz which I tasted (it is odd). By the time we were done eating we were both very full. From there we just walked back to the train station and rode straight back to Bonn. I forgot to mention the bridge we crossed with the train has a couple of chain link fences on either side of the pedestrian walkways and people attach locks to the fences. The locks have the initials of the boyfriend and girlfriend carved into them. There were seriously a lot of locks especially on the side we were closer to on the ride back. I couldn’t really take a picture from the train. After that we swapped to a subway and then walked not very far back to Kate’s house.

We basically traded pictures and I had a quick glass of water before I was out the door and in car for the epic drive back. I left about 6:30pm and was able to get to the hotel at just before midnight with one stop to fill up the car with gas. I pretty much just dropped everything and got right into bed at that point. I was exhausted. It was a very enjoyable day as was Saturday. Kate was an excellent tour guide.

Germany Day 8

2011-05-29T03:42:00.002-04:00

Today started at the regular time with me getting downstairs to eat breakfast maybe a few minutes early because the wireless was not working when I woke up. I found out at this point it only works when their computer in the lobby is turned on and they turn it off at night. Breakfast was moderately quick with no changes to menu. After checking over a few things and packing an overnight bag I was pretty much immediately on the road. It had rained all night and all through breakfast and in some respects I didn’t mind that I would take some time away from Bavaria as beautiful as it is there. I explained what I was doing to Sabine so she wasn’t concerned and asked if I should take my room key because I was not sure what time I would return home on Sunday. She said yes and I’ll just have to try to get back in time for dinner.

I suppose there isn’t a ton to describe about the epic drive across Germany. It was about 5 and a half hours with 2 pit stops including the one to get petrol on the autobahn. The Opel is not really the most screaming car in the world but I was up around 100mph a couple times. Over 160kph that is. Since the car has no pickup especially at high speeds the European driving tendencies could be a problem at times. Basically, they drive on the right lane of multilane highways (the autobahn) and in general move out to the left lane to pass. That I like a lot. But so many of them wait until a car that is moving up really fast to pass is just behind them to move out to the left lane and force them to brake and lose all momentum. It is like they are completely unaware of the rest of the cars on the road. I really didn’t see much scenery because I was concentrating on driving mostly. What I did see looked nice and at times repetitive. I had a tough time finding music on the radio and had to surf channels constantly. Often I was listening to songs I hadn’t heard since the 80s or so. Bleh.

When I arrived in Bonn I missed the house by the GPS but pulled into a lot not too far up the road. I found that Kate had texted me a few minutes before and I texted her back with where I was. She said she had just got home and was outside in front of her place so I pulled out and found her and we found a place to park. From there we quickly stopped into her place and she changed from her work clothes and we made some basic plans and then headed out to catch the bus to downtown Bonn. It is about a 10 minute ride away. Of course it was weekend schedule and the buses come less often. We also seemed to have the bus we were expecting disappear and had to wait for what should have been the second bus. Not really a big deal, but about a half an hour lost. It was ok though. We talked about what had been going on over the last few weeks.

When we got into downtown she started to show me the sites such as the part of the old medieval wall, the university buildings the scene down to the old palace like building which is apparently now a museum. I was a bit hungry but she ate at work so she brought me to the place with her favorite pizza and I had a half a small pizza. Then we continued on walking. I am sure my order of memory is poor because we saw a lot of things like the town hall buildings (old and new). In fact I think the new town hall was among the first things I saw. There is a lot of interesting architecture around Bonn. It seems like a medium sized city that had to go through a lot to reidentify itself after the changeover from being the capital of West Germany to just being a city again when the wall fell. During the walk we each got an ice cream cone as well. She had mango flavor and I had cappuccino. It was quite good. She said it was her favorite place for ice cream. I think that was before the university. Also I got to see the Rhein. It is much more a functional river than a tourist river as say in Paris or London. I didn’t see any tour boats out there but there were definitely ferries. They don’t appear to have a lot of bridges across it around Bonn.

Out in a suburb there is a small town called Koenigswinter which has some medieval castle ruins that she wanted to take me to so we started our way to the train that would get us there. We had 15 minutes to kill so we walked further on and she got us a doenner to split. It is basically what I would call a gyro. We had a chicken one. It was good but a real mess to eat and I think the guy could have mixed things up a bit better. We finished those on the train as we had cut it kind of tight. The train ride was about half an hour to forty minutes. Along the way an elderly woman yelled at a kid who was playing with a lighter on the train. Good for her I thought. The kid was punky but he did eventually listen to her which surprised me. The ruins are called Drachenfels. It means dragon rock. There are 7 hills to climb to make it to the top where the ruins are. The hills are quite steep and you can instead take a cog railway up but we missed the timing and chose to walk. It was nice but the humidity was painful for me. We made it up though. It was very similar to the walk from Hohenschwangau to Neuschwanstein. While we were getting near the top we stopped to take pictures of the views. There is another castle there as well that was already closed when we got there. It is a fairly impressive gothic looking building but Kate didn’t know a lot about it. She had never been in it. As we neared the top we found a couple baby mice near a bench which we used to sit down for a few minutes. They were cute, and with very short tails. I took a small video of them.

At the top the ruins felt like some of the stuff I had seen in Sicily. It was kind of nice up there. The view was very beautiful. It was strange to see a completely forested set of hills just right there next to where we were on one side and a city on the other. It gave a good view of Bonn and you can even see Cologne in the distance. The place is basically open to the public and it was good to see it was basically clean and free of graffiti there. We stayed up there for a couple minutes then walked back down. Kate hated walking down more than up due to the steepness at times. We had to wait about half an hour for the train and got a couple sprinkles of rain but that was fine too. We took the train back to town and got out at a different stop than we started from and she walked me through the area that made up the most of the political buildings that were used when Bonn was the capital. There is a strange looking statue of the head of Konrad Adenauer that makes him look sort of like a vampire. There is also their equivalent building to the White House to see. From there we walked to the museum building we had seen from the University. It definitely appeared to be a former palace. Now it houses a geological and zoological museum. Natural history I guess. After the brief stop there we went to have dinner.

It was already about 9:30 by then and we got to the restaurant at about 10:00. Fortunately they stay open to midnight. The place is called the Café Roha. They serve Ethiopian food. Kate really likes it and says she has been there four or five times since she has been back in Bonn. I have never had Ethiopian food so I liked the idea of something different. I had an Erdinger weisbier and we ordered a combination plate for 2. Basically it is a lot of different things to eat that you pick up with bread and just eat with your hands. The food was quite good. There was some lamb and pork and a lot of vegetable type things such as lentils and spinach and potatoes and a scary looking hard-boiled egg. I liked that a bit of the food was spicy, which is not something I have had since I have been in Europe this trip. It was too spicy for Kate but she must have like it anyway because she continued eating. We stuck around and had a second drink at the restaurant before find a place to have one last beer then we could catch the night bus back to the house. The service at this place wasn’t the best but we managed to get our drink and then get back out. Kate had something I had never considered trying which is beer with soda mixed in. It was coke and beer basically. I tried a sip and thought it was just too strange. The carbonation of the coke changed the carbonation feel of the beer. Anyway I think I could skip on it. The apparently will also mix Sprite and orange sodas as well.

The night bus takes a lot longer to get to her house than the two stops it took on the day bus so we actually got out early and then walked about 10 minutes to the house where she set me up in her brother’s room as he was not in and then I crashed for the night almost immediately. I think we got in near 2:00am. I was very tired.

Germany Day 7 Addendum

2011-05-28T01:48:00.002-04:00

In my excitement about getting the some more pictures posted I forgot to describe the actual food I had for dinner. I had 2 Paulaner Roggen Dunkels. As far as I can tell a roggen is a rye beer. That seems to be what it translated as because it was not barley and it was not wheat. Not sure what else it could be. The soup they served was a cream of asparagus. Out here they serve white asparagus so the soup was completely white. Not sure the fascination with the white stuff really. It is fresh asparagus season though so they serve it a lot right now. In the restaurant in Fuessen and the restaurant in Linderhof they had special asparagus menus for the season. In any event, the soup was followed by a very nice garden salad lightly dressed with vinegar and oil and a few herbs. Next, the meal I chose was spaghetti Bolognese which is pasta with meat sauce of course. It was quite good. The pasta was not overcooked and the sauce was pleasant. I quite enjoyed it. After the pasta I had a coffee and a their dessert of the night which was a stracciatella mousse. It was very tasty and I am glad I got it. I chose to get it because Juliano got it and said it was very good. I was thinking of being good about eating and just getting the coffee. After that was done Sabine convinced me to get another beer which was a good choice I think too. All in all an excellent meal. I think it is going to be hard for me to find better meals than I can get here at the Friedenshoehe. For the record, Erich told Juliano the name of the place translates to “Higher Peace.”

Pictures from Luxembourg Day 2 - Germany Day 1

2011-05-27T15:45:00.002-04:00

The pictures for Luxembourg day 2/ Germany day 1 can be found here.

Germany Day 7

2011-05-27T15:44:00.000-04:00

Today the weather showed it was going to continue not to cooperate so I decided it would be a driving day. I ate breakfast fairly quickly and then headed out to the car. It fortunately still hadn't started raining and I managed to get a good morning of driving in with only a few sprinkles. I decided to drive out past Linderhof and south through Austria and past a town called Reutte. I did manage to stop and take some pictures of scenery on the way especially by the lake before Reutte. Truthfully that town didn't look very much to see and I just ended up passing through it. I was going to stop and get petrol but the station was too crowded so I opted to pass on through and got back on the roads to Fuessen. When I pulled into Fuessen I figured I should stop and look around. It is a tourist town that is bigger than Schwangau so hosts a lot of the tourist traffic that stays for the Ludwig castles. They have their own small castle as well that I could see as I pulled into the parking lot.

So far the rain was staying light and I was able to get into town and walk around a little bit and then turned towards their main church and visited that. The main church is just below the castle which I think is referred to as the Auldstadt which means old town or at least that area is. I couldn't see an actual name for the castle. Like Ambras it has been emptied out and is now an art gallery. It was starting to rain a little bit so I figured it was a good idea to go in and check it out. There were not a lot of pieces but some were interesting. Most of it was from the 1800s it appeared. The grounds appear to be from Medieval times but of course it was damaged and rebuilt a couple times. After I finished up the castle I got outside and the rain had picked up a bit so I hid under a tower for a little bit then decided to move on. I had to move in stages as the rain slowed up for a little bit here and there.

When I made it back down the hill I found the first restaurant I could reach which was the Ghasthaus vom Schwanen. I mainly chose to eat there because of the rain and it was basically the first door I crossed. I could see a few people inside as well. They had Croatian specials as well as German food and I had their Grill Plate Schwanen which was a huge amount of food. It was a mixed grill including turkey, pork, pork sausage, beef, bacon, French fries and their special Croatian style rice. I accompanied with two small Koenig Ludwig Dunkels and then followed with a coffee to hopefully make the rains go away. Unfortunately I got back outside and the rains had only increased in intensity.

I basically did some canopy dodging to make my way towards the car until I found a place selling umbrellas for a reasonable price and then bought one for less than 3 Euros. That allowed me to get to the car and pay the ticket out. 3 Euros there too. A lot less than Innsbruck anyway. With the rain showing no signs of let up I decided I would just set the GPS to the hotel and take my time getting back. I didn't manage to get stuck behind any tractors for significant amounts of time so it was generally a wet but pleasant drive. I got back around 3pm or so and Erich was in the lobby so we started talking a bit and eventually he told me about the wireless he has and where I can reach it in the restaurant so I ran upstairs and grabbed my laptop and set up the wireless. It is so much nicer to be live online and not have to deal with the QWERTZ keyboard and things in German though I figured out most of the German I needed for the computer. Still I would have preferred to be out a bit longer and have seen more, especially of Fuessen but the weather was akin to the rains I had when I was on Gotland during my Sweden trip and I just didn't have the will to fight it. It probably didn't help that I had shorts and a polo shirt on with no jacket though I didn't feel it was cold. It just isn't great shielding from the wet. So I made it a lazy afternoon in the hotel until dinner time and caught up on some computer things I hadn't been doing when not using my own laptop. After that I took a short nap and listened to some music on my cell phone until about dinner time. Along the way Kate texted me to come visit her in Bonn for Saturday so I agreed to do that and then went down to have dinner.

They had moved us indoors rather than on the porch for the weather and it was perhaps a bit quieter in there. Juliano was downstairs for dinner too and since the indoor room was more spread out we opted to share a table instead of sit at our own. We chatted about the past couple days and what we were doing on the weekend and such while we ate. Sid came down a bit later and joined us and we talked about things for a while before heading off to bed for the evening. I had already figured out that the wireless does actually reach my room so I had set that to uploading my second day Luxembourg photos to see if the speed was reasonable and unfortunately it is not great so I will still have load the larger number of picture days when I get home I am sure, especially with heading to Bonn on Saturday. Still, I will post a link to those pictures separately.

Germany Day 6

2011-05-27T01:54:00.003-04:00

My thoughts for today were to get to Austria. It really isn't that far away from where I am and it seemed like a reasonable thing to be able to do. I had talked to Erik earlier in the week and he said Innsbruck is not really that far away and has good things to do there so I did a bit more research and found they have a castle there on the outskirts of the town as well and I decided that was what I would do with the day. Since my previous two days had been so active I sort of needed to just let my legs rest a bit and see things by way of car more so than bicycle or walking.

I went to breakfast at the typical time and took my time eating and eventually Sid came down to breakfast and I offered for him to come along. He had never been to Innsbruck in all his visits here so the idea intrigued him. I figured that it would be good for me to have him along because I needed to rest a bit and having someone else along would make me walk slower and do a bit less than I might do if I was solo. This plan did work out to my advantage in the long haul so I was happy with the day. We left probably about 10:00am and the drive down was quite nice. We stopped over the border in Austria to buy a special sticker for the car that allowed us to drive on the Austrian autobahn without getting fined then continued on to Innsbruck. Sid said there was a good cafe to stop at on the way that apparently would overlook one of the towns but the cafe turned out to be closed for renovations so we had to just continue on. From the parking lot there were no good pictures to be taken but I could tell the cafe itself had some good views.

There was a very steep downhill ride that apparently had a lot of safety outlets for trucks that had break issues on the way into Innsbruck but we got there without much issue. Once the GPS had basically gotten us into town I turned off routing and just followed signs to the Zentrum and then to a parking garage for the auldstadt area of town which is the old town. It turned out the garage was a touch expensive still it was better than risking a parking space and getting towed for not knowing the rules.

Innsbruck was kinda neat. It is a city where most of the Bavarian region does not really have cites except Munich, still it was not a very large city though it did have its own small airport. We drove by the airport on the way in. After parking we walked to what appeared to be the old town area and guessed correctly. We verified by a city map and then sort of wandered around to see the area. We walked out to a statue on a high post after seeing the golden dome, which is really not a dome but a golden roof on a sort of outcropping from a building, still it was very nice looking. After the statue we walked back to the main pedestrian street and found lunch at a restaurant that mainly served pizza and had a couple pasta dishes. I nevver got the name. I had a pizza capricoccia which is one with ham, olives, mushrooms and artichokes and Sid had one with spinach and feta. The pizza was quite good. I accompanied with a small local beer. It was a decent lunch and both of us finished our whole pizzas. They were very thin crust and very tasty.

After lunch we found the two churches on the map, one a Jesuit church and the other Saint Jakob's Cathedral. Both were nice and I am sure Sid appreciated visiting them. From there we walked out past that statue I mentioned before so I could find the Triumphal Arch and take a couple pictures of that then the Olympic ski jump they have on the outskirts of town. Innsbruck is a former Olympic town from long ago, I think most recently in 76. I think they still have some serious ski jump competitions there each winter. Obviously there was no snow for jumping today. Indeed by the afternoon I am sure it had gotten to about 30c and was kind of humid too. On the way back in we wandered a bit and did some souvenir shopping before getting some really excellent gelato at a shop on the corner of the street we had lunch on. The girl at the counter was very cute and she made my ice cream cone into a flower with the way she put on the ice cream. I had coffee on the inside and bourbon vanilla as the petals. It was quite neat and also excellent gelato. We ate it in the shop then basically headed back to the car and got out of the garage.

After that we used the GPS to get us to the local castle, Ambras Shloss. It is basically a large palatial residence of the royal family of the Austrian region dating back from the 15th century. The rooms were all bare of any furnishings in general and they had used the palace as a portrait gallery of all the important nobles from the region. They had small armory museum which was cool to me because none of the pieces were behind glass so I could take reasonable pictures and the interior of the palace courtyard had a really interesting set of al fresco paintings that made the plain walls look much more detailed. The palace also had a small chapel that was nicely setup with ornately carved pews. Unfortunately, Siemens had rented out the spanish hall for some company function so we did not get to visit that part of the castle but they did discount my ticket by 3 Euros for the inconvenience. I liked the castle a lot. I think really it is fair to call it a palace and not a castle but I have learned to ignore those distinctions as fewer castles and more chateaus and palaces are what have survived out here. I prefer the stuff that looks like Warwick Castle in England but that type of structure just didn't survive the ages well.

In any event, when we finished the castle it was back to the car and on the road to the hotel. On the way back we spent a fair bit of time climbing the mountain out of Innsbruck behind a truck and several other vehicles going 10 miles an hour as a diesel truck could not seem to get going any faster. Fortunately things did speed up when we reached the point we crested the hill but then he got stuck behind a tractor and that still kept us slow until the trucks too a different route and we were able to pass the tractor. The remainder of the way back was relatively uneventful if the views were incredible in either direction.

Today was the day that Peter and Sabine and everyone have a day off and the hotel restaurant was not open for business to night. I guess this happens every Thursday which Sabine informed me of in the morning. So basically none of Peter's cooking tonight. Sid and I deciced we would go to Ettal and eat at a cafe there and we hoped to find Juliano but he wasn't at the hotel. We had gotten back at about 5:30pm and literally a few minutes after we did the skies started to open up in some serious downpour thunderstorms. We waited for a while hoping to find Juliano, hoping he hadn't hiked himself into some horrible place before the storms hit but eventually it was obvious he wasn't going to arrive at the hotel and the rain slacked up a bit. We got in the car and drove around a bit to see if we could find him but were unable to do so. Along the way we got stuck in a serious bit of storm that included hail as well as the incredible downpours. We had to pull over because the windows fogged over and the rain was coming down so hard it was impossible to see. We waited until the defroster kicked in enough then headed on to Ettal to the Cafe Edelweis. The menu was in German and I mixed up my words a bit so ordered a roast pork dish with two types of dumplings that came with a cabbage salad as well. I had two Ettaler Dunkel beers as well in the evening. The food was very good and not really all that expensive either. During dinner we had a couple more outbursts of rain but it had basically stopped by the time we left.

After dinner we drove to the hotel and I headed up to the room to type this in and call it a night.

Germany Day 5

2011-05-26T02:07:00.002-04:00

Today I wanted to visit Linderhof. It is one of the 3 castles that King Ludwig built and the only one that was actually completed. I believe he had planned a fourth but both his money and his life were gone before that happened. Linderhof is about 15 kilometers away from Oberammergau and I took up Erik's offer to borrow a bike to get there rather than drive. He suggested I take the bike trail there and then ride the road back. I figure each day I can do stuff without driving is a day I don't have to spend money on gas. As long as I enjoy what I am doing it is a good plan. I got up and had breakfast and was able to borrow some of Sid's sun block before I left. I had to wait a couple minutes after I was finished for Erik to return so I could borrow the bicycle. He had ridden his into town to buy a newspaper. He let me borrow his own bike mainly I think because it was the easiest to get. I borrowed a lock and basically with my camera bag strapped to my back was on my way. I think I left about 9:00 to 9:15 or so.

The ride started out along trails I had already walked for some distance including part of what we had walked by accident to get to Ettal the day before. The bike route to Linderhof is clearly marked with signs so you always know which way to go. It is sometimes along the road and sometimes in the woods. I liked the shady parts of the ride a lot. It was a little bit cooler to start the day than the previous day and with the motion of the air around the bike it felt quite good. I even didn't sweat too much. I can admit my legs were still tired from the two previous days of walking and I actually was able to take my time riding, something I am not normally able to do. I think I exited the gate quickly but as soon as I was on new trails I slowed up a bit to keep my legs from being too destroyed for the ride back. It would be another 13km back by the road. There was some stunning scenery along the way and that gave me the excuse to stop and take pictures also which helped me pace myself a bit more. I am sure I rode through Graswang along the ride although it didn't look like much to see. Less than Ettal which would be nothing without the monastery. The ride to Linderhof is up hill generally but the slope is very slight most of the time so overall it was not that difficult a ride. Erik said one area was going to be tough but I really didn't notice it much if at all. When I finally made it to Linderhof it was probably about 10:40 or so. I arrived into a parking area with one small souvenir shop. I found there were not bike racks so had to lock the bike to a tree. I think if it were my bike I might not have worried about it so much. I don't think it would have gotten stolen, but where it wasn't mine I had to be responsible and make sure. After I secured the bike I bought a bottle of water at the shop and drank it down rather quickly.

From there it was a matter of following the signs to the castle ticket office and buying a ticket for the tour. This works similarly to Neuscwanstein in that you buy your ticket for the tour and then walk to the castle and are let in by an automated barcode reader. It was a little bit looser than Neuscwanstein but it effectively worked the same. I was a few minutes ahead of the tour but not much so I used the time to take pictures of the outside of the castle and the surrounding grounds until it was time for my English language tour. I guess maybe a lot of English speakers don't go to Linderhof or something because my tour consisted of a mother and her 4 children and one other girl who didn't say a word the whole tour. I like the fact that the group was so small but I would rather the kids were a bit less restless than they were. I suppose a couple of them were to young to get the process. Nonetheless they really weren't that bad and their mom only shushed them a couple times. The guide was a woman who brought us through basically all the rooms of the castle.

Linderhof is the first castle that Ludwig built and the only one that was completed as I said before. It is the castle that he lived in the longest, which I think was about 3 years. As with Neuschwanstein the castle construction was dedicated to someone, basically Louis XIV. So it is designed to look like the palace of Versailles in miniature from the inside. The outside has a similar feel to with the French style gardens and fountains. Each room was somewhat based off the idea of Versaille though there are not that many rooms. It is a small castle. The king's bedchamber was quite magnificent as the bed was huge and the room very detailed. The room was set up to be a receiving room for guests the same as if it was Louis XIV's time. The view from his bed is of a large waterfall type fountain that is quite impressive looking. Additionally, the castle had a hall of mirrors. It is fairly impressive if not quite up to the hall in Versailles. Standing in the right place makes the room look gigantic of course as the repeated reflections go on forever. It is a cool effect. Apparently it was Ludwig's favorite room to read in. The guide said the many candles that could be seen in the room would typically be lit and that would add to the effect incredibly. I am sure it was a great sight. They won't light the candles now I am sure for fire safety and to protect the room from damage. I think the tour was about a half an hour long and ended in the hall of mirrors. From there they send you down the servants steps to a small gift shop in the bottom of the castle. No pictures allowed inside the castle again so I bought the book.

After the castle proper I walked up the hill to the Moorish Pavillion which is also quite stunning looking. I did not write down the German name and my book is only in English without reference to the German names of the sites. The pavilion is supposed to be themed after the book 1001 Arabian Nights. The door is covered by curtains and as you go inside you find the room is protected by glass panels so you can look in but cannot actually get in. I am sure that is because too many people cannot look but not touch. It was very cool looking inside but the glass made it tough to get good pictures and to see the whole building. Still, I liked it.

After the pavilion I headed over to the Grotte which is a fake cave built into the ground made to look like a natural cave. I believe Ludwig used it as an entertainment chamber. It was set up so he could have musicians play while he either was pushed around in a small boat or perhaps sat in his special booth. The ticket price for the castle includes the tour of the Grotte but it is not set for a specific time on the ticket so you can go when you want but they only appear to do tours every 10 minutes or so. The tour is initially done in German by a guide. There were a lot of people who went in and it was difficult to see at first but fortunately they have a prerecorded audio version of the tour for after the German part so I got to stay around and listen to that with only myself and girl from the castle tour still inside. She didn't say anything this time either. The Grotte is definitely something that points out the eccentricity of Ludwig beyond some of the other stuff they had. They were playing Wagner when we entered. Something from Tanhauser. Of course all I could hear is, "What's Opera Doc?" Still it was kind of cool. I guess it was the first structure in all of Germany to be set up for electricity which is also a cool fact to know.

After the Grotte I walked back towards the ticket office with a brief stop for the Moroccan house which is a neat structure that also had a set of glass panels to allow you to see inside without being able to enter. I took a few pictures but as I was doing so a large crowd started assending the steps to the house noisily and I beat a hasty retreat. From there I worked my way back into the ticket and souvenir shop area and decided to have lunch at the Hotelshloss Linderhof's restaurant.It is basically the only location I could see to have a sit down meal though a few of the shops also sold on the go type food. I wanted to sit down and relax though so I chose to eat there. I had a dark beer from Haubrau Munich. The glas said it was a weisbier but I think it was just the wrong glass because it didn't taste like a weisbier. Either way it was quite good. I ate a turkey cutlet with asparagus which was white asparagus. The food was tasty and filling. After eating I also had a Shokokuss which was a chocolate sundae with both chocolate and chocolate chip ice creams. They put a macaroon on the spoon and it had a wafer cookie stuck in it as well. I really enjoyed it a lot. I am sure it was more calories than I really needed but I earned it with the biking I think.

After lunch I basically headed back to the bicycle and mounted up for the ride home. Taking Erik's advice I took the roads rather than the trails. He said I wouldn't have to pedal at all on the way back. This probably would have been true if it wasn't for the giant headwind I seemed to find as soon as I got on the bike. I am not saying I had to struggle to get back but it definitely wasn't pedaling-free as the wind kept pushing me to a near stop on the flatter surfaces. Still it was basically downhill the whole way. Where the trails were probably about 15km the road is about 13km. I did like the trails for being able to hide from the sun somewhat which was not something I could do as much on the road. Either way it was basically a pleasant ride and I fell into town about 2:45 or so. I have to admit my legs were jelly and I couldn't ride up the hill to the hotel. I am embarassed for that but I walked the bike up and locked it away for Erik.

After a quick run up to the room to get some water and wash up a bit I walked back into town to see if I could find some sun block of my own and was able to get some for a reasonable price at a sporting good shop that I am sure seasonally changes from hiking to skiing. I had washed my face so I applied some more as soon as I bought it and then walked around town a bit more sort of randomly then headed back to the room at around 3:30. Sid and Juliano were in the lobby talking and I chatted with them a few minutes. Sid convinced Juliano not to follow his plan to hike to Pershling which really would have been about 9 or 10km out and then back and instead offered to drive him to another town where he could see something different and get some hiking around a pond that is there. He offered for me to go too but my legs were just too shot to consider anything and I figured my best bet was to climb up to the room and get on the balcony and write the blog to this point. The nice thing about my balcony is it is on the shady side of the house so I could sit out and relax and write in the cool breeze with my friends the bees.

After I was done writing the early part I took a short nap because I was exhausted then headed downstairs to dinner. I had 2 Koenig Ludwig Dunkel beers and the chicken fricasee with rice and peas. The fricasee was a cream sauce with mushrooms and was quite good. There was a lot of food and I managed to eat it all which surprised me. I guess I was really hungry. Along the way Sid and Juliano came back and had their dinners and we chatted. They found a mud treatment area and put their feet in the mud and they said they felt much better after doing it. I followed dinner with a coffee and no dessert since I had the big dessert at lunch. After that we still chatted for a while longer then it was off to finish up this and get some well deserved sleep.

Germany Day 4

2011-05-25T01:46:00.002-04:00

Today I didn't really think I wanted to drive so I decided I would do some local walking and hiking. I went down to breakfast at 8 and ended up talking to the British guests who were leaving today for a while such that I didn't leave the hotel until about 9:15. My first task was to climb Kofel. Kofel is the mountain right behind the hotel. The Venezuelan guest had already climbed it twice since I had been here but he is also around 15 years younger than me and obviously a runner. Still I knew I had to do it or I would not be fully happy with my trip.

To climb Kofel I needed to walk outside of town to the cemetery and the cut through it to a trail behind it. This trail leads to the trail up the mountain. The start of the trail cuts through a cow pasture with several cows hanging out and lots of cow pies along the way. It was a bit disconcerting because you basically have to pass a few feet away from them to get through or I guess maybe walk all the way around the outskirts of the field. There is a bench with a message in German inscribed on it on the other side of the pasture. From there it is basically switchback trails straight up the mountain. The Venezuelan kid said he did it in about 45 minutes but I took about an hour and 15 minutes to get to the to point before the last stage of the climb. At this location is an intersection of trails that come from different points along the mountains. I am sure some come from very far away, in the range of several kilometers. Starting up the final stage to the peak isn't so bad but it comes to a point where the climb gets a bit steeper and they have cables on spikes to help you pull yourself up. I've documentd many times my fear of heights and this is the area that definitely struck me right away. I was able to do it by not thinking about what it would be like on the way back down. I can tell you there were a few spots that definitely I searched for alternate routes and perhaps at least one location I made up my own because of how close to the edge without any security cable I would have to go. I did manage to get to the very top where the crucifix is. It was apparently erected in 1988 if I get the inscription correctly. It is quite large. The view from up there is totally spectactular. The weather was perfect if maybe a touch warmer than I would have prefered and I could see very far around the region. I stayed up there cooling off for a bit because the climb was very intensive to get up there and I was soaking with sweat by the time I got to the top. Even with the sun there was a slight breeze that made it nice to be up there.

Working my way down was the adventure I expected it to be and there were many places I had to crab crawl my way through or I would have probably just sat there and cried. Still there's no crying in mountain hiking so I just had to suck it up and work my way down. I had been at much higher points in Peru but nothing so hand over hand for climbing that I can remember. Perhaps I erased it out of my brain. After getting through the areas with the pull cables it was a bit easier to deal with and I made much better time and cooled off again from the sweat I had remanufactured while coming down the sheerer bits. Still it was basically switchbacks straight down the mountain and even going downhill it is fairly straining to the legs. After passing back through the cow pasture I headed to the cemetery and back into town. My hotel is on a hill if I haven't mentioned that... I got in at about 12:00 so was out for nearly 3 hours or so. I was filthy from all the crawling and sweat and since my room was next to be made up I opted to wash up quickly instead of take a shower.

After cleaning up I headed into Oberammergau and decided to have lunch at the restaurant at the Hotel Wolf which I am going to have to walk past again to get the name it appears. I ordered a beer and they gave me a Paulaner which was a typical Munich beer, so maybe less flavor than I like but not bad. I also ordered a Wolf Burger. Had I had any idea what I was getting I would never have done so. The thing was gigantic. I could only eat about half of it and I made a mess of myself and everything around me along the way. It was seriously a terrible scene of carnage. While I was eating I had decided I was going to walk to Ettal which should be about 5km away. Not that far for me to walk. Sid happened to find me at the restaurant and joined me to have a coffee. When I told him what I was going to do he asked if he could join because he needed to get his walk in. I agreed but he needed to get changed so I told him I would finish eating and get an ice cream at the really popular place right in downtown and then meet him at the hotel. I had to change and wash my pants of all the tomato wreckage that fell out of the burger anyway. I got a coffee ice cream cone that was really very good dense ice cream. I really liked it a lot. I ate that on the walk back to the hotel and then got up to the room, changed and washed the other shorts off and put them on the balcony to dry and found Sid downstairs.

Apparently along the way to Ettal we managed to take a wrong turn and what should have been an easy 5km walk turned out to be a 7.5 or 8km walk as far as I can tell. In the long run I think both of us were happier with the longer trek because we got some really nice views along the way and I think seeing Ettal from the path we took was much nicer than the path that we should have took. Ettal is a small village that has a monastery in it. The monastery also has the baroque (I think, it might be Rococco) church and apparently is used as a school as well. The town is small and pretty much the main thing is the church itself. It is as detailed and spectacular in its own way as Wieskirche was. Also it is Catholic. When we finally got in town we stopped at a cafe and I had a water and Sid had a coffee and an applekugel that looked really good. If I hadn't had my giant lunch I might have tried it also. After that we visited the church quickly and I took a few pictures of it then we found a place to buy some more bottled water for the walk back. This time we took the correct path back and it was the basic 3 miles it was supposed to be. This trek took us until almost exactly 5pm so I used the time before dinner to quickly wash up again and to then write this on the balcony. The weather was still perfect out and there was a nice breeze blowing to make it even nicer. The bees still like me but I guess I am learning to deal with them.

At 6pm I went down to dinner and had a breaded fish that I was told was a pike style fish that was excellent. I accompanied with a Hacker-Pschorr double bock beer named Animator that was really enjoyable, in fact I had 3 before the night was over. 8.9% alcohol which ain't bad for a double.The soup starter was a chicken rice soup that Sid said was a new experiment for Peter who is actually the chef these days. In my time with Sid I learned a lot more about the dynamic. Erik is Peter's father and Peter is the chef. Erik definitely speaks better English than Peter. Sabine is Peter's either wife or girlfriend and is the main waitress here. She is really sweet and fun to talk to. So I think technically Erik is the owner but is in his 70s.It sounds like the survival of the hotel is a bit precarious and a lot of that may be due to their location which is outside of the center of town and up a hill. It would be a sad thing because while the hotel is not a 4 or 5 star establishment it is clean and they are so nice, friendly and helpful that I want them to be successful on that merit. I hope they can continue on. If you ever consider visiting this region please look up the Hotel Friedenshoehe. I mean that sincerely. Sid had dinner with Sebile who is a local area actress who was taking him to the theater tonight. She was a very nice woman who spoke enough English that we chatted through dinner though she said she lost a lot due to lack of usage. All the same she spoke English very well. I had a coffee before my third beer and decided I wanted that last brew before retiring. While I had that our Venezuelan guest came in from his hike after class. His name is Juliano. He hiked Laber but did not reach the top. Technically he was 5 minutes late for dinner but of course they were nice to him. We chatted a bit and then he headed off to bed so he could wake up for his class and I talked to Sabine and Peter for a while before heading off to bed myself. I had a very active day in which I accomplished a lot and a very enjoyable night as well.

Germany Day 3

2011-05-24T01:48:00.001-04:00

Today was the day I had decided would be my visit to Neuschwanstein Schloss. I have to admit when I woke up the weather looked a bit grim and I am sure it had rained a couple times in the night as well but I was told the weather would be good and it would not be a bad day to do it. I had breakfast again at 8am because that is when they start. I didn't want to miss the coffee anyway because I was pretty sure it would be a full day ahead of me. I basically had the same as the day before and I am sure that will be the routine for the duration of this stay. After breakfast it was a quick job of packing up the car (which basically means getting the GPS) and then setting it for my destination and I was on my way. I do not think it is hard to get around here but that little device is certainly going to make it hard for me to learn the roads. I am fine with that though as I will be in the area only for a bit over a week. By the time I got started I could see some blue in the sky and perhaps things were really going to get better. During the drive I took my time and I think it might have taken about 45 minutes to get there in all.

On the way in you reach a church and you have a view of Neuschwanstein in the distance. I stopped there to take a few pictures and then I headed into town. The castle is definitely as stunning looking as I thought it would be. I am not sure if it was that same, "Oh wow," moment I had with Le Mont Saint Michel, but it was darked close. I think the castle being visible from a further away distance makes it look smaller at first view so maybe that limited the wow factor a touch. I found the first parking lot at the bottom of the hill for 5 Euros and decided it would be my easiest place to park. It wasn't very full but of course it was still early in the morning, before 9:30 I think. After packing up the GPS I worked my way up the hill to the ticket office and bought tickets for both Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles. The former is the castle that King Ludwig II spent all of his money building and is one of the best looking castles out there as subjective opinion goes. The latter is the castle he grew up in with his parents. It was built on the site of a Norman fort if I understood it correctly. That fort had been destroyed in the Napoleonic wars and the family rebuilt it to the castle it is today basically. In theory it is not as extravagant as Neuschwanstein but it is still a very nice castle.

When you visit Schwangau and book your visits you have to book for a specific time for each castle. The girl at the desk, who was really cute, suggested English language tours for Hohenschwangau at 10:50 and Neuschwanstein at 11:55. Each tour takes about a half an hour. You are responsible for getting to the castle at the appropriate time for your tour. It appears they do tours in German, English, Italian and French (maybe) or you can get an audioguide tour. I chose the English tours of course. When you get to the specific castle the entry is automated. Your ticket has a barcode on it and they have a automated ticket booths which will only let you enter if your tour is active. When your tour number shows on the screen at the right time for your tour you barcode your ticket and the turnstyle lets you in. No need for anyone at the ticket booth. After you get in you line up for your tour number in a queue and then they let you in and you start the tour. As I said, I started with Hohenschwangau. I wandered the area around it and took a bunch of pictures until it was my time to do the tour. The guide was quite good if his voice didn't carry quite as well as I would have liked. The castle is very nice inside and being a completed castle that had been lived in it was quite well furnished. Apparently as with Neuschwanstein most of the furnishings are original. That is pretty cool to know. Unfortunately you can't take pictures inside either castle for this reason. As usual this meant buying th pretty picture book. Ah well. The tour lasted about 35 minutes and most of the details were of Ludwig's mother and father as well as Wagner who stayed there as a friend of the family some many times. More on that in a little bit. Overall it was a quite enjoyable tour.

When Hohenschwangau was over I had to make my way to Neuschwanstein. Typically people take either a bus or a horse drawn carriage it appears but many people also choose to walk as I did. Since Neuschwanstein is much higher up on the mountain than Hohenschwangau the walk is basically all up hill. I took the climb as a challenge to meet in order to help me train for the Warriors Dash coming up in June. I can tell you it was about a 25 minute walk or so and it was non-stop uphill. By the time I reached the top I was pouring sweat because the sun had started to come out and my calfs were burning from the strain. It felt kind of good but it did take a while for me to dry down. Since the walk was quick for me, I had plenty of time to kill before the tour and I did that by wandering around and taking pictures and then just resting in the shade for a while. At 11:55 my tour was up and again I had to barcode my way in then queue up. This time we had a young woman guiding the tour. Her voice did carry a bit better than the guy from the other tour but she at times seemed to be straining to annunciate. It was fine though, she did a great job. I would say the guy might have been doing his tour longer because he had a fair bit of extra facts that she didn't have for Neuscwanstein. If you didn't know Ludwig had a love of castles and commissioned this one built and the were working on it for I believe 17 years before he moved into it. It was not completed when he moved in. The second floor was to be for guest rooms and had not been finished at the time of his death. The first floor was for the servants and did appear to be completed. You see the kitchen at the end of the tour and it appears to be the ground floor so with the living quarters for the King being on the 3rd floor it was 4 floors up for food. In any event, the completed rooms are quite spectacular, especially the throne room, though there is no throne in it. It was never built. The room was set up in the style of a Byzantine chapel and the chandelier is gigantic. Going up to the fourth floor you find the music room which is grand and has some incredible paintings. In fact the whole finished part of the castle (sans the servants rooms) are all wonderfully painted in themes based on Wagner's operas. Ludwig was a big fan of Wagner and had actually dedicated the design and decoration of the castle to Wagner. Thus all the rooms had the paintings with themes based on his operas. I am not sure that Wagner stayed in Neuschwanstein, but Ludwig lived there for less than 180 days. When it was obvious he had run himself out of money building castles the government created a secret council and declared him insane thus allowing them to depose him from rule. It is the reason he is known as Mad King Ludwig they say. 3 days after he was removed from power he died under mysterious circumstances, it sounded by drowning in a lake. They say know one knows if it as suicide, murder or an accident to this day.

After completing the tour of the castle I had a hasty lunch of a sausage on a bun and a beer that was moderately forgettable if 4.9% alcohol. After that I took some pictures from a small supsended platfrom in front of the castle then I walked up and around to the Marienbrucke bridge (not sure I spelled that correctly). The bridge is over a waterfall and gives an incredible view of the castle. It again was mostly uphill to get there but was not quite as far a distance between the two castles. I took quite a few pictures there hoping that at least one or two of them do the place justice. The bridge is metal with wooden planks running as floorboards. The planks were often very bouncy and flexy and it was a bit disconcerting for one afraid of heights. I did however manage to stay on it for quite some time and didn't skitter off at the first wierd bounce, so I felt good about that. I crossed it to the other side and then back again in the time there. I believe there are other paths that could be followed in the region but without a great map I wasn't going to risk sending myself far out of town by accident so I just worked my way back into town when I was through with the bridge. On the way down I stopped and got an ice cream at a cafe along the route. I had a choco-coconut flavored ice cream in a waffle cone. It was quite good and reminded me of a chocolate coconut donut, my favorite type of donut. When I was back in town it was a bit after 3pm so I decided to do the souvenir shopping I needed to do and then got back to the car, paid my 5 Euros and drove out of town.

On the drive back I got stuck behind a tractor being followed by a truck. They do allow passing on these two lane roads but it is all windy and in the forest a lot of the way so I really didn't get a chance to get around them. Fortunately I had already made up my mind I was going to detour to Wieskirche on the way back because it was still before 4pm. So when I made that turn the tractor and truck stayed straight. The detour couldn't have been more than a mile and a half. The Wieskirche is a huge baroque style church. It is really massive looking from the outside. I am not sure it rivals Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome but I am sure that it is another quite stunning use of parishoners' money. Apparently the Bavarian region is Catholic in general and this church is Catholic. It felt Catholic to me. It is free to visit and they don't appear to mind taking pictures so I did leave a couple Euro donation. If they want to charge me to get in in the first place I might skip but if it is free to get in I can donate, if only to keep the place up. I didn't really spend a huge amount of time at the church but appears all there really is to see around Wies so after the visit I packed back up and drove back to the hotel for the evening. Since the food in the hotel has been good and it keeps me from having to worry about drinking and driving I figure it is the best that I try to eat here each night. So far I have enjoyed it. At the hotel I was a bit early for dinner but got out on the balcony for my room and set about writing this. It is a beautiful night out and if it weren't for the bees that liked the flowers in the flowerboxes on the balcony it would have been perfect. Still they only bothered me a little bit and I can't tell if they are stinging types or not though one definitely enjoyed getting in my face while I was typing. All the same I don't think it bothered me too much or I would have moved inside to continue.

I went down for dinner basically right on time. No nap today because I arrived at the hotel at around 5pm. I spent a few minutes just standing on the outside portion of the porch watching the locals cut the huge field of hay and spread it around until the waitress showed up. It was not the normal waitress who is Sabine, but instead Jeannette who is a neighbor apparently. All the same the service and food were excellent. I had to Koenig Ludwig Weissbier Dunkels to accompany a rolled meat roast stuffed with pickles and onions and bacon, spaetzle and mixed vegetables. The food was excellent and I found the spaetzle really grew on me the more I ate them. If you are unaware they are basically the German answer to pasta being a dough that is strung through a press and boiled. In the brown sauce from the meat they were very tasty. Along the way Sid and the guest who is here for the Nato school who is from Venezuela originally and lives in L.A. right now all talked about various subjects. It was a beautiful night out and a very enjoyable evening. The weather was perfect from about noon on though I guess it was warmer in Oberammergau than it was around Schwangau where I was most of the day. Sid said it really got too warm with the sun. By the time dinner had come though the temperature was just perfect. I'd guess around 22C or and no wind. After the dinner I finished off my second beer slowly and then had the dessert and a coffee. The dessert seemed to be a peach cobbler type thing without the crumble. I am not sure what it was called because I never saw the menu for the day. They didn't have it ready at breakfast and I ordered based on description before I left for the day. It was also quite good. We talked long after we were all finished eating. It is always great to get different perspectives on life and the world. It reminds me that for all the people in the world there really are a lot of persons out there. I differentiate the two. People as a group and persons as individuals. Life would be awful if we only acted on the will of the group rather than as individuals. But enough philosophising. I definitely like it down here in this corner of the world. I can see why Sid keeps coming back so often very easily. Neuschwanstein was definitely the reason I came to this region, but it is obvious there is something beautiful about the whole area.

When I get to post them there will be around 280 pictures from today.

Germany Day 2

2011-05-23T01:43:00.001-04:00

Today started out late by Tom standards and I might continue that for the remainder of the trip. I am not sure. Breakfast starts at 8am which is late for me, but since they have good coffee I may as well aim for it each day. After getting cleaned up I found the computer for the internet. Fortunately I had made a text file of my writing before I even got to the computer so though I was having a difficult time with the QWERTZ keyboard I really only had to worry about it a few times. The real challenge was in also trying to figure out what meant what in German. I can figure out Kopiern, but there are many choices that one takes for granted on a computer. I think if it was Windows I'd not even have to worry about what it says because I know where things are in Windows. Heck I even turned on showing file extensions on my Ukrainian student's computer and it wasn't even in our lettering scheme let alone English.

In any event I was able to past in my post and get on to breakfast which was continental in style as I expected and had a ham and swiss cheese sandwich along with yogurt, fruit cocktail and a peach to go with the coffee. I told the waitress whom I suspect is one of the owners along with Erich the chef that I didn't need the milk and sugar for my coffee because I drink it black. She said to me, "In Germany we have a saying that you drink your coffee like your the color of your soul." I agreed mine was probably black. She joked she drinks hers very white. After breakfast Erich found me and gave me all sorts of maps and detailed information about the area. It was very nice of him to spend time to explain things and I used his advice as soon as I was off on my way.

I had decided I would just stay around the Oberammergau region for the day and not bother to drive anywhere. He had told me some good ideas for walks and I started with what seemed the simplest. Apparently King Ludwig had given the town a statue of the crucifix after seeing their passion play here and that was just up the hill from the hotel about a 5 minute walk. At the time it was the largest single piece sculpture in the known world and was made of a German soft marble. The statue of the crucifx stands over 12 meters tall. There are statues on either side as well each done from single pieces of rock. It is in very good shape and you can see it from some areas of the town as well I found out later on in the day. After the statue I decided to follow the nature trails that he had pointed out for me and walked along to the mountains near the hotel and away from it. I managed to find enough solitude to relieve my bladder along the trail and then around towards a stream or river (not really sure what to call it, too small to be a river I think) along its course for about 4km until found a bridge to cross over and could walk the trail on the other side. I didn't walk my normal full speed because there was a lot to see and there was no real rush for it. I wanted it to be a fun day but also partially a lazy day though my idea of lazy is still more active than most people I think. Anyway, I made my way into Oberammergau proper and strolled around the town for a while and found the building where they hold their passion play. Apparently they do this every so many years and it is a very big deal when it happens. Obviously being past Easter it was not something going to happen right now. It was obviously closed when I got there though I think a tour may have had access to get inside. During the amble about town I visited a few gift shops to get ideas for later in the trip though of course I didn't feel it urgent to buy right now since I have many days around here. At around noon, 3 hours into the day of walking, I stopped at cafe to have lunch. They had a limited English language menu but I was happy with what I chose which was a cream of potato soup and grilled trout with parsleyed potatoes and salad. I accompanied with 2 beers that were a bit watery in flavor for my taste but might have had a better alcohol content than I was expecting. The beer, named Hacker-Pschor, was from Munich and was very pale. After eating I found a place to get a small ice cream cone, having caramel ice cream then wandered around town for a bit longer.

Eventually I decided I would go up to Laber which is a mountain that has a cable car, gebahn, to the top. I figured it would be another good test of my fear of heights and I was hoping there would be some nice views up there.The walk to the gebahn was not long but it was all uphill and was fairly enjoyable. I kid you not when I say that the second I stepped inside the building it started to pour out. I was totally not expecting it though it had been getting cloudier as the day went on. Honestly the morning was perfect sunny and warm weather. So by the time it was my turn to ride the car I thought it would still be raining. It wasn't though. Not sure if that would have added to the effect. I think it would have. I shared the ride with a German couple where the wife spoke some English and an elderly German woman, someone who must have been her grandson and a pointer that was very upset to be stuck still for as much time as he had to endure. He whined a lot during the ride. I felt bad for him. After we got to the top I set about taking pictures of the views and maybe about 10 minutes into that it started to rain again. Looking at the sky it was apparent it was going to continue to rain on and off and instead of walking down the mountain which I had tentatively thought of beforehand I opted to take my return ride back down in the cable car. Mainly it was getting into real bursts of downpour and I was wearing shorts and unprepared for out and out rain. I didn't want to soak my feet or destroy my camera mostly. So when I rode down I was solo which was something that added to the fear effect concept a bit but was not really all that bad. There were a couple points where some strong gusts of wind pushed the car about a bit and I was mainly glad when the trip was over.

After the cable car rides I walked back into downtown and wandered around a bit more but the rain was finding its way into the town as well as it was in the mountains so I opted to go the drier path and head back to the postage stamp sized room to write out some of this. I opened up the door to the balcony though to let some air in and relaxed after I was done writing before dinner. I had some time to kill and managed to sneak in a short nap.

Around dinner time I ran downstairs and did a quick check of my email then headed into the dining room. I had already agreed that I would have dinner at the hotel and I was going to have the pot roasted oxen with horseradish sauce and boiled potatoes with peas and carrots. The starter was a vegetable soup that had incredibly finely minced vegetables in it and was quite tasty. For beer I had more of the beer, Hacker-Pschorr, I had in the afternoon and was able to read the bottle and find out it was 5% alcohol by volume, so yes it was definitely a stronger beer than I was expecting. I had two of those, they came in Grolsch style bottles with the resealable stopper top though brown glass. The oxen was very nicely done and the horseradish sauce was creamy and mild and actually went really well on the potatoes as well. I enjoyed the meal very much and only left behind one wedge of potato and a little bit of the peas and carrots. I got my second beer a bit late in the meal and rather than rush it I decided to take my time and enjoy it before moving on to dessert. In the meantime a fellow guest came in and we started talking. His name is Sid and he's from Montpelier, Vermont. He has been coming to this region for a very long time and it was interesting to talk to him. He gave me some more good advice on things to see around here. He is friends with Erik as I am sure visiting the same place over many years will definitely help along. We talked about politics and travel and many other things and along the way I had an ice cream dessert and a coffee that were both very good. Some Americans from Alabama came in for dinner in the time frame and things got a bit loud at times but overall it was a very nice night. The rains eventually let off and the sun across the mountain behind the hotel was truly spectacular to look at. I should have opened the door to the veranda and taken some pictures of it but hopefully I will get a similar chance later in the week. In all it was a very enjoyable night and I spent several hours downstairs just hanging out. After I settled up the bill it was on to the room to complete the post and get my pictures downloaded to the laptop and backed up externally.

I can say today was more like I am used to where I took around 240 pictures. The prior days really limited totals had me down a bit. This is more the picture taking Tom I know. As mentioned before I will have to post them when I get home.

Luxembourg Day 2 - Germany Day 1

2011-05-22T02:04:00.001-04:00

I sort of think the best way to represent today is to consider it like in an Indiana Jones film. There is map in the background and a red dotted line that goes across the stages of my travel. It was the better part of 11 hours of travel from start to finish, so needless to say it is basically all I did for the day.

I woke up at a 6am in order to get breakfast at 7 when the hotel breakfast buffet opened. I got cleaned up and mostly packed up. I should point out that this was the second shower in a row with only a half wall for water stoppage which meant that I crammed myself into the corner again so as not to soak the whole bathroom. The extra bonus was the half wall was not properly sealed to the top of the tub. After that it was down to breakfast. It was a typical European continental style breakfast where I chose have a sandwich with ham and a sandwich with cheese and some yogurt. I had an orange juice and two cups of coffee. The breakfast was included in the room rate.

After I finished eating I headed back upstairs completed my packing and checked out of the hotel. The few minutes it took to get to the train station were very easy. It was definitely going to be a nice day in Luxembourg. I sort of wished I had chosen to stay one more day before my epic train rides to Munich then on to my hotel in Oberammergau. Nonetheless I had to go so there was not much else to do unless I wanted to reach my hotel at some ungodly late hour. I found the ticket office and got a schedule of how to get to Munich. I needed to get on the 8:22 to Cologne and then from there I could switch to the 11:55 to Munich. The scenery at the start of the first ride was very stunning and everything I would expect old fashioned Germany to look like. As it went further in towards Bonn and Cologne it got more industrial. I guess I wasn’t surprised at that. During the ride I watched The Fighter on my laptop and quite enjoyed it. I ended up sharing a 1st class booth with two elderly German women and a mentally handicapped man for the majority of the trip. They didn’t really speak English and I don’t speak German so we really just nodded at each other a few times. Getting out of the train I met a German woman who lives in Melbourne now as she asked me to help another lady take her gigantic bag off the train which of course I did. She helped me find my train to Munich.

In Cologne I was to make a switch to the 11:55 to Munich which turned out to be 21 minutes late. Leave it to me to make the German train system late. I have been told that it never happens. I think there were issues with the first train they wanted us to use and they had to switch it out or something. It is what looked like happened anyway. Since there was a delay I chose to buy a sausage at the stand on the train platform as my lunch then wandered out to where the first class cars were supposed to be. After a while the train showed up. Once on our way I started to watch a Japanese movie from 2005 named Starfish Hotel. It was strange but definitely felt related to a Haruki Murakami book I had read before. I really liked the rabbit guy. I suppose he was sort of the sheep guy in the Murakami book. After that I still had maybe an hour and a half of battery life on the laptop but decided it would be best to just relax rather than try to squeeze another movie in. There didn’t appear to be any power outlets in the car. Along the time in the train it appeared we were going to make up the majority of the late departure. By the time we were on the second last stop we were only 5 minutes later than we were supposed to be, but then as we neared Munich an announcement came over the intercom, in German only of course but I could make out the gist of it, and we had to delay so we would be over 20 minutes late. I think it was due to having to wait for another train using the same track we needed. It meant we lost all the time we had regained. I was not on a time budget but this only lengthened the travel of course.

When we arrived in Munich I asked how to get to the airport and I had to take a subway, the S8 to the airport. It was just downstairs and easy to find. The train arrived a minute after I got there. It was a forty minute ride to the airport that was basically uneventful. It was obvious the weather was beautiful outside. After the subway, stage 3 completed, it was on to stage 4. I found the rental desk relatively easy and was able to get my car sorted out in fairly short order. I took an automatic this time so as not to add to the stress. I knew I was coming to another mountainous region and I didn’t feel like making myself not like the place because of my car. I ended up with an odd green Opel Astra. It only had 171km on it before I started to use it. No picture for today due to the timing explained soon. It took about an hour and a half to get from the airport to the hotel. It was basically all highway driving. I was driving 90mph for some of it but there was also spots of construction that had me lower than 50. All the same since it was Saturday the traffic through Munich and to the south was fairly light. It does mean I need to be aware how long it is going to take to get back to the airport. Along the drive I ran into a few bouts of rain, a couple of which were very much the downpours which also slowed me up a bit.

I got to the hotel around 7:30pm. It was still light out but the weather was playing around so it was cloudy. I checked in and found that dinner was technically until 8pm but they would serve me because I was late, the check in took a few minutes so it was probably already 7:50 by the time I got to eat. The chef is the person who checked me in. This place is a small village bed and breakfast type place. The name is the Hotel Friedshoehe (I don’t do the umlaut so well). I am sure it is family run and they speak English well. He told me they have guest specials for dinner and suggested I have the pork leg, a very traditional Bavarian meal. I agreed to that and quickly stuffed my belongings in the room and headed down to the porch where they serve dinner. The place is very cute. I need to point out my room is smaller than a mailbox but the cost was about $30US a night. I am not going to complain at that. I do have a private bathroom but as I expected the internet is going to be limited.

I had a Koenig Ludwig Dunkel Bier (which is a dark beer) to start and they served a soup with some form of meatballs as part of the meal. They were a very pale meat so I suspect it was probably either veal or chicken. I can’t really be certain. The soup was good if a touch salty (not badly, I quite enjoyed it, I also hadn’t had anything since that sausage in Cologne before noon and it was basically 8pm). The pork leg came out and it was huge and juicy and tasty. I loved every bite of it even when I had eaten too much. I swear there was no way I could manage to eat the whole thing. It was just too big. They served it with steamed dumplings and red cabbage which was not overly sweetened. I loved this meal honestly. I am sure being hungry to start helped, but everything was excellent. After finishing I followed with just a coffee that was a normal coffee and very enjoyable. Possibly the best cup of coffee I have ever had in Europe (though of course that is not hard to do being I don’t like Italian style which is everywhere out here). My expectation is that the pictures of the pork leg would make a couple people I know jealous.

From there it was up to the room to sort out my stuff and settle for the night. It was a long day of travel and I was exhausted by the time I started to write this. All the same I think it was a good day. Rail travel is so much more interesting than air travel. I really believe that, even with the delays.

Pictures will have to be posted when I return it looks. Sorry, I am working on a Ubuntu computer in the lobby of the hotel with a QWERTZ keyboard which is killing me...

The Other Thing About Trains Out Here

2011-05-21T01:06:00.000-04:00

In Japan they have trains that are very on time. That much I have mentioned before I am sure and then I also have mentioned how cynical the train system here is that it actually has a box for how many minutes the train is going to be late right next to the expected arrival time if it has a sign for it.

The other issue I have also compares to Japan. The platforms are all neatly labeled as to which part of the platform will belong to which car and where the entrances will be. It appeared relatively similar in Hong Kong as well. The really nice thing was that I could find the Green Car, or first class car, without much issue. Here in this part of the world it is a complete guessing game as to where a first class car is going to be. For my rides back and forth to the office I was on 2nd class cars. The same scheduled train every day had different setups for how the cars were laid out. When I was trying to find a first class car for my trip to Luxembourg I could not walk to one in time before the train shipped out. My suitcase was too much of a bother to try to get through the narrow aisles of the second class car trains so I just stayed in a second class car for a ride. If the platforms had been labeled or they used some sort of consistency I would not have had to guess and of course guess wrong...

Belgium May 2011 Day 13 - Luxembourg Day 1

2011-05-20T15:15:00.000-04:00

Today was the last day of class. The students handed in their tests and I corrected them and happily everyone passed. Because they were a fun crowd it was kind of sad to see them on their separate ways but all things come to an end, good or bad. After seeing them off in their taxi to the airport (or in their cars for those that were from France) I made my way back to the hotel to pick up my bag which I left there after checking out. Quickly I turned around for the train station again where I bought a bag of chips and a coke to be lunch. I got on a 1:30 train which was an international train so had less stops than an intercity. It was still not a fast train but I got to Luxembourg at about 4pm. I quickly checked into the hotel which was only a few minutes walk from the train station and set out to the downtown area. For the first couple hours it was a bit humid and overcast but fairly nice but after that we had a couple bouts of downpours. One was very brief. The second fortunately happened while I was eating dinner.

Luxembourg is a nice looking city. My hotel is about 10 minutes or less walk from the downtown area. The large bridge that spans the valley through the city is very picturesque. The downtown area is pedestrian only. I walked around town to get my bearings and see what could be seen in a couple hours before the rains started to hit. After the first downpour ended I tried to find a place to eat and chose La Boucherie which was on the main square. I had a rump steak cooked rare of course. That came with fries and a summer squash medley. I accompanied with a Diekirch beer, which is a local brew. It was nothing to write home about but not bad either. Standard pilsner. Not up to the Belgian snuff though. After dinner I had a sundae with coffee ice cream that was supposed to have chocolate sauce on it but by accident I convinced the waiter to put an espresso in it instead. It was awesome. A mild mistake that worked out perfectly. I would definitely order that again.

After dinner I found my way down into the valley and walked underneath the big bridge. From there I headed back to the upper ground and the walked back to the hotel at a leisurely pace. Perhaps it was still a bit early at nearing 8pm but I had a full day and was tired so I decided to call it a night. Besides the humidity after the rain was positively dreadful. At the hotel I got undressed, found out I had to get a password for the internet, got dressed again to go down to reception because they wouldn't give one to me over the phone - apparently because they use a random generator, then finally got to get back to the room to relax.

My intention is to leave moderately early from Luxembourg because it is going to be a long day of travel to Munich on Saturday. I can guarantee my day will be little more than transit, almost like I was flying except flying would have been much faster. There are a lot of places for me to screw this up but I am hopeful I will be able to manage it.

This trip to Belgium was nice. I really enjoyed the class a lot. With more time spent outdoors I realized even more how much these people smoke though and that was evident in Luxembourg as well. It seems to be something about French speakers that makes them have to smoke at all times (I am not sure what the Luxembourgers? speak, but I heard mainly French here as well). I don't fully get it. Perhaps it is why they don't pronounce most of the letters in their words. I should remark on the quality of the trains in Belgium. Some are moderately nice but the majority are old. Also it is strange the difference in quality from station to station. Some have signs that tell you every stop the train is going to make so you don't accidentally end up on the wrong train (which is nice since they never speak English on the trains though I guess I understand the French well enough) and some don't even have signs as to which track is which train, just a monitor in the station house. It's a bit confusing. I suppose Boston is somewhat like that. I wasn't totally sure I was on the train to Luxembourg until they announced the stop today. Amusingly I went from a very small country to an even smaller country in the process.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Moving out of the business part of the trip

2011-05-20T00:41:00.000-04:00

Today I will be transitioning from work to vacation. The first step involves getting to Luxembourg via train and spending the night there. It should be a little bit less than a 3 hour train ride. I am not sure what time I will be able to depart the office.

After spending the night in Luxembourg I will have a marathon train ride to southern Germany to the tune of 7-8 hours including changeover delays. From there I will rent a car in Munich and drive to my hotel in Oberammergau. I'll be operating out of that town until I drive back to Munich Airport to return on the 31st of May.

I state this because although my upcoming hotels claim to have internet I cannot be certain it will be reliable enough for me to post and especially post pictures. On the off chance I am unable to post I figured I would let you know what was up before I fell off the grid. More than likely it will not be an issue though.

Belgium May 2011 Day 12

2011-05-19T14:59:00.000-04:00

The last full day of class went by ok. The students did well enough and we were taken out to lunch at the Chinese restaurant we went to dinner at the last trip. The food at the place was ok but it was a longer lunch than normal. Still we did manage to get in what we needed to get in for the day so I guess it worked out. After class I headed back to the room to try to get some laundry done and start packing for the next leg of the trip. I made some soup for dinner in the room and accompanied that with a couple of the Ramee's that I had left in the room from earlier in the week. Otherwise it was watching some stuff online.

The pictures of my dinner can be found here.

Belgium May 2011 Day 11

2011-05-18T18:21:00.000-04:00

Today was a tough day for the students. I present a lot of information to them in a short amount of time. I know that a lot of it doesn't stick today but will tomorrow so it is for a good cause. My Ukrainian student gave me a gift at the end of the day. I am not sure what to do with genuine Ukrainian vodka though...

After class I rode back into the hotel with intention of trying to get some laundry done but the one machine in the hotel was taken . I had to instead just kill time until I would walk to Andrea's house to have dinner with her and Youssef again. They invited me on our last meeting and since the class was going to have lunch on Thursday instead of a dinner on Wednesday I agreed. I stopped off at the local store to buy a bottle of wine as a gift. Not being a true officionado I bought a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. I had to leave at around 8:00pm to get to their flat. The walk was very pleasant with some nice things to see along the way. I am not sure I took the best route, but I followed one given by google maps.

I apparently arrived just as Youssef did which was right on time. They set to work cooking the dinner which consisted of Mussels and French fries. Both were excellently done. They cooked the mussels in broth with white wine. They were very fresh though perhaps she bought too much. I ate a lot so they didn't have to throw too much away. After eating we chatted a while until it was quite late. I left their place at about 11:30 and got back to the hotel after midnight a very tired man. They were excellent hosts and their flat is probably 4 to 5 times the size of George's apartment in Denmark.

The couple pictures from today can be found here. I didn't take a lot of pictures because it feels like invading in someone's house.

Belgium May 2011 Day 10

2011-05-17T13:39:00.000-04:00

Today was another day of not much to mention. Class went well enough and I think a lot was learned today. After class I managed to catch a train that was late but would be early for me to Brussels Central and managed to get in town a bit earlier than normal. I decided to have one beer, an Affligem Brun - the first Affligem I've had in Belgium, at a place on the square then had dinner at La Rose Blanche because they have felt to be the most consistent place I've been to on the square and I wanted to eat outdoors. I had the lamb shank cooked in Grimbergen beer and a Grimbergen brun to go along. They announced a lamb shank and I thought it was mine but it belonged to someone else there so I have 2 pictures of lamb shanks. One of his and one of mine. I only ate mine. It was quite good. After dinner I headed to the room to watch a movie online for the evening.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Belgium May 2011 Day 9

2011-05-16T14:57:00.000-04:00

Very generic day to report today. Mostly it was up early for class then to teaching. Things went ok overall with a couple hiccups that I have grown accustomed to out here. Otherwise nothing really interesting to report on it. After class was over I headed straight back to the hotel with a quick side trip to the market. I made a prepackaged ravioli dinner which I accompanied with a Chimay blue and a slice of bread and then watched the most recent Doctor Who and Game of Thrones episodes online. Not very exciting I realize but some days just have to be this way, especially when working.

The pics of my dinner are located here.

Belgium May 2011 Day 8 - Amsterdam

2011-05-15T15:04:00.000-04:00

Today I woke up at my normal 6am and decided that I should take the Amsterdam trip that I missed on Saturday. Realistically this weekend was my chance to visit Amsterdam on this trip as it would be very far away from where I will be staying in Germany. I was able to walk down to Brussels Central and get on the 8:22am train to Amsterdam by way of Antwerp, so basically I rode right by the office but this train didn't stop at Vilvoorde. The ride took about 3 hours. It was supposed to be shorter but there appeared to be a few delays offloading and onloading people at the various stops. In any event it was not too much extra time lost.

The weather was a bit chillier than in Brussels probably because it is coastal and has all the canals. I didn't bring a jacket to Europe for this trip but I truthfully didn't feel I needed it even with all the people wearing winter clothing around here. The first thing I did was to take an hour long canal tour of the city. It was interesting and in all languages so I was able to learn a bit about the city. The guy captaining the boat was very incredible at navigating the tight passages and turns that needed to be done to get through the tour. I learned mainly that Amsterdam is a big sprawl and that there was no way I was going to have enough time to see it all and get back to Brussels in time. All the same the weather went from cloudy to sunny and back all through the day there and when it was sunny it was warm and when it was cloudy it was chilly. By the time I was done with the canal tour it was getting close to 1pm and I was fairly hungry so I sorted out finding a place to eat. I wasn't sure enough of the layout of the city so I walked randomly. Eventually I found a restaurant promising traditional Dutch home cooked meals so I decided to try it. It was called Oud Nederlands. I basically put myself in the hands of the waiter and he gave me what tasted like an Amstel Light and a mixed grill dish that was accompanied by stoemp (same as the night before), roasted potatoes, boiled carrots, spiced cabbage and a mixed salad. It was an incredibly large amount of food. The mixed grill included chicken, pork and beef with the beef being prepared in a ginger sauce of some sort and stewed. I enjoyed the food quite a bit. There weren't many customers there but the other guests seemed to like their food as well.

After lunch I set about to wandering. I managed to find what looked like a main square and there was a British kid performing there. He only had an amplifier and some mixing pedals and he basically did all his music by voice using the mixing pedals. It was not really my type of music but I have to say watching him lay down the foundation tracks and making it sound like there were instruments behind him was very impressive. I watched him do a couple songs, one in a hip hop style and one more reggae. There was a very large crowd around him and he seemed to be making quite a good haul of donations from the onlookers. Good for him. I usually don't pay attention to street musicians but he was actually good and was doing his own music rather than just playing the Beatles. From there I just spent a couple hours wandering around and taking pictures and did a little bit of souvenir shopping. I can say fully that I did not remotely get the full Amsterdam experience, but I was not looking for the coffee shops or anything like that. I did pass a few but so what...

My wanderings basically headed me back into the central station at about 3:30 and I found there was a train leaving for Brussels at 3:50 or so and decided that was my cue to head back home. I would have liked to stay later and had it been Saturday I would have definitely but with class impending on Monday I thought it best not to chance it. Perhaps in the future I will have better time to explore Amsterdam for real but at least I can say I was there at this point. Including train rides and the city I think I spent about 7 hours in the Netherlands so it counts to me as a country visited.

On arriving in Brussels I thought I might be able to get to the supermarket near the hotel before it closed but got there about 7:10 which was 10 minutes too late I guess. I decided then that I would try the hotel restaurant which I hadn't yet tried, The Cafe Parnasse (named after the street the hotel is on). I had a Leffe blond and a cheeseburger with thick wobbly bacon on it. More like British bacon than American bacon. It was quite good. They served me bread with tapanade as a starter besides. I finished with a coffee and what they called apple pie which was more like an organized apple crisp. It was not bad per se, but it was certainly not apple pie. After dinner I headed to the room to write this and crash for the evening as it was already getting toward bedtime for a tired instructor.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Belgium May 2011 Day 7

2011-05-14T16:38:00.000-04:00

Today was definitely a day to list as odd. Very last minute Kate and I got in touch with each other and she decided she was going to come to Brussels because it would have been very long for her to get to Amsterdam. My initial intention had been to go to Amsterdam but with this happening I had to stay in Belgium. I was happy with the idea for what it was worth. If you don't recall, Kate is the German girl I met in Hong Kong. She was supposed to leave for Australia right as I was getting into Belgium but she changed her plans and will be in Germany for longer than I am in Europe now. Certainly I was happy with the idea because she is fun to hang around with and talk to. When things were basically sorted out I opted to walk downtown and increase my knowledge of the surrounding territory. I visited the park I had passed a few dozen times by now and never entered and walked down to a church I had only seen in the distance and visited Le Botanique as well. My travels brought me back to the center of town eventually and I decided to have lunch at an Italian restaurant I had eaten at last time called Pizzeria Etna. I had a pizza margherita and a Grimbergen brun as well. The pizza was enjoyable. While eating I received at text from Kate that she had a hard time with trains and she was going to drive out with her brother and his girlfriend and she hoped I didn't mind. Truthfully I figured it would be awkward but I didn't mind.

After lunch I walked around for a short time more then walked back to the room and relaxed for a while until they were supposed to arrive. I watched a little bit of television and surfed the web a bit while I was waiting. Eventually I got a call that they were lost. They had a GPS but it didn't have the appropriate information for Brussels apparently. So they found a place to pull over and gave me the street names and I walked out and found them. From there we found them a parking space that was safe just outside a park near the hotel and walked downtown to see the sites. The odd thing was that both her brothers came no, just the one along with his girlfriend. None of them said much at all to me and I don't think they spoke English well at all. I had some students from Germany in one of my classes late last year and this sort of felt like them. The whole time Kate and I were going around and talking they all stayed back about 5 paces and just followed us. It was strange.

We walked downtown past the Royal Palace. I kept on calling it the Imperial Palace because I had the Imperial March from Star Wars running on my head because I felt her brothers were like the Imperial Guards from the Star Wars Movies, you know, the ones with red uniforms... In any event we headed downtown and walked around a bit. I probably haven't already mentioned that today was apparently the gay pride parade of Brussels and they were starting to set up for it during the week already. As we neared the center we were heading in towards all the stuff they had going on. I wanted to take them to a restaurant that was across the other side of the parade route, but Kate's brother refused to get even to distance sight of the parade so we had to turn around. With all that it was decided that they were not going to eat in Brussels apparently for some reason and I just went with it because I really didn't have much choice though I was hungry by this point. So basically we walked away from the parade (which certainly didn't bother me either, but then it wasn't that big a deal to me) and walked around the city going a couple places I hadn't already been before along the way. After a few hours we headed back to the car and Kate came up to the room for a few minutes to trade pictures and then I walked her back to the car and sent them on their way.

After that I walked back downtown for the third time and ate at Le Char D'Or (The Golden Chariot) and had a Leffe Brun and Stoemp and Sauchisses, which the Brits would basically call Bangers and Mash except there were carrots in with the mash. I ate at about 9:15 when all was said and done. Much later than I normally do. After that I walked back to the room to crash for the night. I was tired after all. It was good to see Kate honestly but the circumstances were just too weird for me to have really enjoyed it.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Belgium May 2011 Day 6

2011-05-13T16:15:00.000-04:00

The first Friday of class. One week down and one week to go. Today went quite well. I got in early and fixed the main problem my fussy system was having thanks to parts that arrived the day before. It turned out to be a faulty board. That done we were able to get through the lessons in a reasonable amount of time for the day and everyone was finished before their cab was to arrive.

After class I accompanied Livonet to downtown and we met up with James and Karim to eat dinner at a restaurant recommended by Melissa who works in the Belgian office. The place was called the Spinnekopke or something similar to that and happened to be 2 streets over for the restaurant I had dinner at the night before. The name of this place means "The Little Spider" and it has a spider relief in the wall. The food was quite excellent and it was far enough off the main concourse that it was not overrun with tourists. I had a poached cod with cream sauce and boiled potatoes. Two of them had vol-au-vent and the last had a whole sole prepared with lemon. The portions were good and the food was properly cooked. For an aperitif before we started we had a whitbeer with cherry liqueur in it. It was interesting and not as sweet as the Kriek we had the other night. I had a brun beer that was their house brand. I am not sure if the glass was the appropriate brand or not. In any event the beer was also enjoyable. We followed up with coffee and dessert. I had coffee ice cream basically. It was very good ice cream also. So overall it was a top notch dining experience. There was a little hassle getting the bill split up but we managed it. Livonet also managed to have the place give her the tiny bottle they used for the cream for the coffee. I would highly recommend this place.

After dinner I walked them in the direction of the train station. We had to walk slowly due to the cobble stones and Livonet's 3 inch high heels but eventually I dropped them off at the train station and headed back to the room arriving just as it was getting dark out. From there I opened up another Chimay blue and wrote this. As class days go this was quite fun.

The pictures for today can be found here.

Blogger

2011-05-13T15:50:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the delay and loss of posts. Blogger was messed up for the past couple days.

Belgium May 2011 Day 5

2011-05-13T15:49:00.003-04:00

Today some trains were on time and some weren't. The class went well enough and we were basically all caught up by the end of the day so the rest of the week (being tomorrow) should work out quite well. The students seem to be learning fairly well and they are a rather fun group so it has been good so far, even with the early issues.

Before getting back to the hotel I did a quick bit of shopping. After that I settled into the room for about an hour and had a Chimay blue or 2. I then walked downtown to meet George's niece Andrea and her boyfriend Youssef for dinner. They have been living in Brussels for a while now and when it was discovered I was visiting this was sort of arranged...

I met Andrea at the Bourse steps and she took me to the restaurant named Fin de Siecle (which means End of the World, but has a word play on hunger) where Youssef showed up a few minutes later. They were both very nice to me and the conversation was fun and interesting. I had a Chimay blue (irony of ironies) and the rabbit dinner at Andrea's suggestion. It was much better than the rabbit I had a couple days ago. It was not overcooked and very tasty. There weren't even too many bones to make it difficult to get the meat. After dinner we all had dessert and I had a dame blanche and a coffee (which was by default an espresso) to go along. After eating dessert and chatting for a few more minutes we parted company and I headed on to my hotel which took about 20 minutes to walk to. It was a late night for me but I had a very good time.

The pictures from today can be found here. Again there aren't too many. That's Andrea and Youssef towards the end.

Belgium May 2011 Day 4

2011-05-13T15:49:00.000-04:00

Today went a bit smoother than yesterday. I have a plan of action for fixing components and we really didn't need those components to work to do what we had to do today so the class was maybe a touch behind still by the end of the day but not too badly. The trains were even on time today too...

After class I rode to the center of town and walked around a bit but decided to eat dinner in the room where I had a prepackaged meal. It was a meatloaf with gravy and carrots and some pasta on the side. The instructions were of course in 3 languages that weren't English but I deciphered microwave directions and cooked it if a little bit less than I was supposed to because I popped the bag. I think I was supposed to cut a slit in it. In any event it was cooked through if a touch cooler than it was supposed to be but I ate it that way anyway. It wasn't bad if a bit bland. I accompanied with a piece of bread and a Westmalle Tripel from the fridge, which left me with a Grimbergen Dubbel to drink after I was done eating. I also had some salt and pepper chips to go with that while sitting on the balcony. After that I took the time to watch the 4th episode of Game of Thrones online.

The couple pictures from today can be found here.

Belgium May 2011 Day 3

2011-05-10T16:01:00.000-04:00

Today started with train troubles after I awoke and ate a hasty breakfast in the room. Both trains were delayed and I had to take a local train with more stops to get to the office so that I arrived about 20 minutes after I wanted to.

So, not getting into details this class has had many issues due to the equipment I have here. I spent most of the day fixing issues on one system rather than teaching which is not ideal at all. The students seem understanding and helpful however it is adding a level of unpleasantness to the class that rivals the language barrier I had in Hong Kong. I will say that overall the students speak English well and that is a very helpful thing. I can tell jokes and they get them, so I am happier with that.

After class I took the train to Central again and found dinner in another restaurant on the main square where I could eat outside called L'Estaminet according to the receipt. The menus on the table were in French and Dutch and I asked if the waitress spoke English and she asked if I wanted the English menu. That set the lady next to me who turned out to be from Cincinnati to asking for the English menu to with a sigh of relief. She was also in Belgium for work and we chatted a little bit about food and our travels as we waited for our food to arrive and ate. I ordered the rabbit stew which was tasty if a bit overcooked. They also served me the boniest portions of the rabbit which made for less meat than I would have liked of course. My neighbor got the salmon which looked incredibly good. I wish I had gotten that. In any event I accompanied with Grimbergen Blond.

While I was settling the bill some of my students were downtown and found me and I went to have a drink with them. We went to a place near the Central station and each ordered a Kriek Mystic, which is a cherry flavored beer. It was good but the sweetness would make it a one beer order before I needed to switch. Where the students weren't beer drinkers they all liked it thinking it tasted like cherry soda. I had seen the Krieks a few times on tables and was curious to try one so I am glad I did it even if I wouldn't drink it often.

After the drink I got them off to the train station and walked back to the room to write this and have another beer. A Westmalle Tripel which I have had a few of here in Belgium on the last trip and quite enjoy. I should point out my Belgian student Yves from the last class showed up at the office and I ran into him today so that was also kind of cool. Overall it was a rough day but I made it through it.

The pictures from today are located here.

Belgium May 2011 Day 2

2011-05-09T14:07:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day of class and in keeping with my last trip I am not going to give the gory details of the work day. I will say that I have 6 students: 2 from France though one is from a French island rather than France itself, 1 from Ukraine, one from England, one from Qatar who is actually Lebanese (he knew my last student from Qatar as well) and a Venezuelan woman who now lives in Norway (I know, odd change). I woke up early and got to the office before anyone had arrived by way of not missing any train connections. Of course I didn't have a badge to get in the office so I had to wait outside for a few minutes until someone arrived and I was let in. I still couldn't get into the classroom for several minutes more but eventually was able to do so. Not all of the stuff I needed was there but I was able to get it with some help. They put me in a different classroom to teach this time but I was able to sort out the differences fairly well and the students arrived and class started on time with less issues than my first visit to Belgium. They are still getting lunch from the same place every day. I cannot see how the folks who work there can stand it but they all seem to get lunch there as well. It must be cheap or something...

After class was over I walked to the train and rode back into Brussels Central where I went into the Grand Platz and decided to eat dinner at LeRoy E'Spagne. I sat outside to eat because the weather was really nice. I had a Leffe Brun and their Flemish beef stew. It was reasonably good and filling, though not the best meal I have had in Brussels. After that I got ice cream on the walk back to the hotel at a place named Australian Home Made Ice Cream. I got the moka in a cone. It was very enjoyable. From there I walked the rest of the distance to the hotel and took it easy for the rest of the night. Having to teach really keeps you tied to staying in even when the weather is as nice as it can be. Overall the day went reasonably well considering the circumstances.

The few pictures from today can be found here. Realistically I should have taken a picture of the second classroom but didn't. Maybe tomorrow.

Hotel Room

2011-05-09T03:28:00.000-04:00

I forgot to mention this in the post yesterday but you may have realized I didn't take any pictures of the hotel room on this trip. I am staying at the same place as the last trip to Belgium and oddly enough ended up in the exact same room as I did last time. I figured since I already took those pictures that trip I didn't need duplicates of the exact same room.

Belgium May 2011 Day 1

2011-05-08T13:55:00.000-04:00

This was the first time I have flown Lufthansa and it wasn’t really that bad of an experience. I got to the airport a couple hours early and check in was not that long. I got through security fairly easy too. The guy at the x-ray machine commented that it looked like I had done this before. Inside the terminal I was able to get a seat at O’Brians and have a couple beers and a works burger. The bartender is still the same girl that has been there since I started using terminal E and she remembered me and treated me well again so I was happy with that. The flight was basically full but boarding wasn’t bad and I had plenty of overhead space for my backpack so that worked out well. I sat next a kid a few years younger than me and at the window was an older Russian gentleman from Moscow who had a good sense of humor. We talked a fair bit amongst the three of us. He was one of the better neighbors I have had on a flight. The meal was a choice of chicken and rice or vegetarian pasta and I chose the pasta. It wasn’t bad but the pasta was a bit mushy (I guess to be expected for stuff sitting in a reheater forever). I had 2 glasses of wine with the meal. The Russian guy thought it was the worst wine he had had. I told him it was better than the wine I had in first class on the way back from Chicago to Boston on the last trip (because it really was). After dinner the movie came on. It was a 747-400 so only the overhead displays. They were showing The Green Hornet. I talked with the Russian guy for the first 20 minutes or so then started watching it but I passed out during it and slept the majority of the flight quite nicely. I was able to sleep right up to landing almost though it is certain that seated sleeping is not as restful for the body as laying down sleeping (at least for me). Frankfort is a big sprawling airport with little aesthetics so I tried my best to get through it quickly. Unfortunately I had to go to passport control and rescreen security to get to the flight to Belgium but I guess it was fairly quick. After a 20 minute wait they started boarding which was a ride on a bus to the plane in a remote location. The flight was not full at all. I was able to sleep through the majority of that flight too. After landing clearing passport control was very fast and then getting luggage was a bit of a wait but not terrible. After securing a cab I was able to be at the hotel by 10am.

Unfortunately they did not have my room ready so early and I had to either wait in the lobby of the hotel or hoof it around to kill some time. I chose to do the latter, carrying my backpack with both laptops strapped inside. It was easily over 80F today and I was tired and sore after the wandering. I walked down towards the center of town and found that Brussels was having some sort of festival starting later in the day. I walked for a couple hours then headed back to reach the hotel around noon. By then they had a room ready for me and I was able to check in (I had left my suitcase in their storage room). I was desperate for a shower and that was basically the first thing I did. With the heat and the sun and the extra weight of the backpack and the fact I felt like I needed to shower when I landed I was very happy to get it. I took my time so I could feel a bit better and maybe wake up a bit. After cleaning up and putting on some shorts against the heat instead of jeans I went shopping for groceries for the coming week around the corner then after dropping them off headed back to the downtown area. By the time I was on my way there it was past 1pm. I decided to eat a quick lunch at the McDonald’s (I know, very lame) but I wanted to keep moving and then concentrate on dinner later. So I walked all around the festival that was happening in town and doubled back on myself several times in doing so. I was not going for efficient as much as what can I find that is interesting. They had many stages placed around the area and each had different types of live bands or DJs. Most of the bands were ok and I listened to a song or two from each. After I was able to sit on a store windowsill for a while I rebuilt my energy level and found a band at one of the stages that I quite liked. They were a Belgian ska band named The Jammin’ Troopers. I know, the name sucks but they sounded quite good. I am still a closet fan of ska from before it became big in the 90s and I can still admit that. They had a black girl singing who was very good and I liked their horns (even though it was only a trumpet and saxophone duo). After watching them finish their set I headed back towards the city hall and decided to get a beer and dinner at the outdoor seating for The Rose Blanche (which I had eaten at indoors last trip and enjoyed). I had a couple Grimbergen Bruns and the vol-au-vent which was also very enjoyable. It was not fine dining basically being a chicken pot pie, but it was tasty and quite filling. After dinner it was moving on to 7pm and I decided I should head back to the room. I was exhausted from flying and had to teach on day 2 so it was best to just call it a night even though I was having a good time. I sort of wish I had gotten in on Saturday instead. Then I wouldn’t have been so tired, plus the festival appeared to start on Saturday as well. Anyway, I had a very good day considering the exhaustion level I was at.

The pictures from day 1 are located here.

Flying for Belgium Today

2011-05-07T07:49:00.000-04:00

I depart for Belgium for the second class I am going to teach there today. My flight leaves around 5:30pm and I should get there around 10am Sunday their time not counting for any delays. I am interested to see how the area looks now that the weather should be warmer and there is no snow around. I expect the pictures will look different. My class is only supposed to be 6 students but I am sure there will be many challenges. I am looking forward to it. I am sure there won't be many pictures during the class days as with my last trip there but I will take what I can.

As I've mentioned before after I finish the class I am heading to Germany by way of Luxembourg for a few days. I am really looking forward to it. It does however mean I am carrying the heaviest suitcase I have ever traveled with to start a trip as I have to have work clothes and vacation clothes packed. I still come in under 50 lbs. though.

My next post should be from Belgium.

Warrior's Dash in June

2011-04-26T07:46:00.000-04:00

A few of my friends and I have signed up for the New England Warrior's Dash in Amesbury, MA for 5:30pm on Saturday, June 25. I have been getting back into shape since Hong Kong and I am going to have to challenge myself to not eat too much chocolate and drink too much beer during my next trip to Belgium and Germany. I think I'll lose that challenge so I am going to do my best to keep active to the point I do not gain too much weight.

I will have less than a month back from the trip before the Dash so I have a chance to get back into training mode a bit.

The fun part will be to see who injures himself the most.

Czech Republic in July

2011-04-15T08:11:00.000-04:00

Having to use up a few extra days of vacation before the change of fiscal year at work I have scheduled a 6 day vacation to Prague in the Czech Republic. It looks like a beautiful city and I will be staying right downtown. It appears I should have a few castles to visit in the region. I am sure that I will have a full trip for the 6 days. Of course I have the trip to Belgium for work followed by the stay in Bavarian Germany right after to go through first so I will probably have more information on Prague after that is done.

Next Trip Belgium+ in May

2011-03-23T07:51:00.000-04:00

My next trip originates from another work trip to Belgium. I will be leaving early in May and gone the rest of the month as I am going to piggyback a trip to Germany off the need to be there to teach class. Basically after class is over on the second Friday I am going to take a train to Luxembourg and spend the night there. After a bit of time in town I will take another train to Munich where I am going to rent a car and drive down into the Bavarian region near Neuschwanstein Castle. As most of you know by now I am very much into castles and the Bavarian region offers several, some of very spectacular style. Also during the trip I hope to get to the Black Forest region as well as getting into Austria for a day.

In the first weekend between class weeks I will probably try to visit Amsterdam as it is only a quick train ride away. I realize the tourist reasons for visiting Amsterdam are generally centered on the red light district but that is not really why I want to go. Either way I am sure I will make it a fun day for myself.

So basically my expectations are to be able to visit 4 more countries I haven't visited before on the trip. Yes, a couple of them will be very brief. All the same I will be able to see things on my pace anyway. If need be I can stay overnight in Amsterdam that first weekend.

I am quite looking forward to it.

Hong Kong for Business Day 17 - Epilogue

2011-03-22T09:28:00.000-04:00

Today started off with an earlier run through breakfast and then checkout of the hotel. I was downstairs and in the taxi by about 7:45am. I realize this is extremely early for my scheduled 11:25am flight but I figured it would be better to be in the airport before traffic rather than get myself stuck in traffic trying to get there. It was a fairly easy ride to the airport . The cabby was nice and of course today there is sun where there hadn’t been in the past several days. You should always expect the weather to be at its best when you are leaving a location to go back home to winter. After checking into the flight in the business class line which was basically empty I was told to go to gate 60 for the lounge and the flight would be somewhere near there. I did some shopping in the immediate area before taking the tram across to the gate 60 area. I was very early of course for the flight and by the time it was posted it was showing as half an hour late. I did some shopping in the gate 60 area then found the lounge and checked in. They again informed me my flight would be late. In the lounge I was able to get on the internet and play around for a while on the computer and check over emails. The lounge provides snacks and drinks and so that is also nice to have. I could definitely get used to business class travel.

The flight out of Hong Kong was on a 747 and I sat in the upper section which was fairly isolated from any noise and had plenty of bag storage space. The odd thing was being in a seat that was rear facing instead of front facing. Overall it didn’t do anything different for the flight but for takeoff and landing it was harder to see out the windows even though I was on a window seat. The flight was mostly uneventful with a little bit of turbulence. Unfortunately I only got about 3 hours sleep on it. Which meant I was awake from the majority of the 14+ hour flight. I watched several movies to pass the time away including Faster, with Dwayne Johnson (the Rock from WWE) and that was a fairly bad movie that made very little sense. I then followed up with Hereafter, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Matt Damon mainly. I liked it but it was definitely on the odd side. After those two movies was the point where I slept. During the first two I had the dinner which was a filet mignon and potatoes and root vegetables. I didn’t eat the root veggies because they were not good. I skipped the dessert. After my short bit of sleeping I was awaken by the teenage Chinese girl next door turning on the seating light and couldn’t get back to sleep. First up for after sleep movies was a Hong Kong film called Frozen. It was not martial arts or anything like that and was the strange story of a woman who was cryogenically frozen in the 80s meeting her daughter and the boyfriend who got her pregnant in the modern day. It had an odd sense of humor by far. I liked it but it would not be for everyone, I can promise that. After that I ended up watching the third of the Narnia films. I was never nuts about the first couple but it was there and I hadn’t seen it . It was about the same as the others so just sort of there. Finally, I watched Inception mainly out of not knowing what else to choose. I think it was an ok movie with Leonardo Di Caprio and a few other people I recognized, including a really old and fat looking Tom Berenger, but the idea and plot were definitely more complex than I was expecting. I think it surprised me because most dream concept movies are too convoluted to be enjoyable. It was a little on the convoluted end but in some strange way it made sense. After the movie was over there was less than an hour to go in the flight and I played a bit of trivia on the entertainment console and basically did really poorly.

After I landed passport control had no line and was really quick. My bag was out of the carousel quickly and I got through customs with no issue. Onto the tram it wasn’t a bad ride from terminal 5 to terminal 1. I had 3 hours for the next flight so of course it was going to be quick. Entering terminal 1 is where the snag came in. I was sent through a full body scanner where I was told there was a “groin anomaly” during the scan. I refrained from any jokes and ended up getting the full pat down search which was a pain of course but I didn’t complain or anything like that. It is easier just to deal with it and be nice or they’ll do it to you every time I suspect. After that treat I found out where my gate was and ate a quick lunch at McDonald’s because I was sort of hungry and it was technically lunch time in Chicago or at least in Boston. Since Boston time was 12 hours off of Hong Kong time I opted to just leave the watch alone completely.

Of course since I was in Chicago and had 3 hours to kill already the plane needed to be delayed an hour before we started to board then another hour on the tarmac. The flight itself was fine. It was an Airbus 320 and I was seat 1A, front row first class. The red wine was not amongst the best I've tasted and the lasagna was too dry to eat so I skipped and ate the salad, roll and cookie. Entertainment was TV shows on the small overhead screens so I just slept what I could. It was a short flight at least, but it was in 2 hours later than I was originally scheduled to land so I didn't get home until 10:30pm. The blamed the delays on air traffic control issues in Boston due to earlier weather. Well, I made it home anyway.

I really liked Hong Kong a lot. Thinking back on it, I had something to do my entire second week there. I can say that I would have liked to get home on Saturday to be used to home time again before starting work. I am at work now and though I wrote most of this on the trip yesterday I can say that I am very tired. Still I cannot complain for the accidental 2 extra days. I got to see a little bit more. I am looking forward to the next trip there already. I liked the office a lot. The people were very nice and helpful. The class was definitely a challenge to deal with the lack of classroom feedback. I realize the reasons for it but it definitely makes things more difficult to do. It sort of makes you feel like you're doing a bad job even if you know you are presenting things correctly. Still I chalk it all up to a learning experience and I will be better prepared for the next class.

Hong Kong for Business Day 16

2011-03-20T07:49:00.000-04:00

As mentioned yesterday today was another package tour, this time to Shenzhen, China. As much as anything it allowed me to say I officially visited the mainland under Chinese administration. The day started with breakfast in the lounge then downstairs for the pickup at 7:50. There followed about 50 minutes of bus ride picking people up and switching buses to the one to take us where we were going and all that which eventually had me one train stop away from the hotel in the opposite direction I had generally been taking. A long time to go someplace it could have taken me 5 minutes to get to.

On the tour were 3 other people, a family from Australia, more specifically Perth. They were mother and father and daughter all come to Hong Kong together. They have apparently done this trip a few times and even similar tours into Shenzhen a few times as well. They were very nice and easy to get along with as with most Aussies. The trip officially started riding the East Rail Line to Lo Wu. Amusing, it started from Hung Hom, the last stop out on the line just beyond Mong Kok East where the hotel is. The ride was first class and ran all the way to Lo Wu. It took about 45 minutes to get to the immigration center. There we had to clear Hong Kong immigration then China immigration. The tour basically vouches for the tourists so you don't have to get a real visa to get into China like would be the normal situation. Instead everyone is listed on one sheet and have to go in order on that sheet. I was number four. They were lucky because apparently they won't process the visas without 4 so if I hadn't signed on it would have been canceled. We didn't get stamps of any sort from China on our passports.

First stop out of the immigration center was the Meridian Building where we went up to the 69th floor to see the pea soup clouds outside. Our guide in China was named Maggie and she was nice and spoke English better than I expected though her pacing was oddly sing-songy, probably a product of her speaking Mandarin. The stop wasn't long and with the lacking view it wasn't very exciting either. After the Meridian center we went to the China Mineral Center and Museum. The early part of this stop was a guided tour of a small museum about jade and other materials and they even have a couple of the actual Terra Cotta Army on display. It was reasonably a fun bit and the girl who ran that part of the tour was very cute and also spoke English well (no pictures allowed inside so I couldn't get her picture). After that part it was like being in TSL. I again was not interested in buying jewelery so I waited it out and then we had a short tea tasting before moving on to lunch.

I am not sure what the lunch place was called but I can say that the meal was less than stellar. There were hairs on the table and I found one in the salad too. They had beef with broccoli, radish strips with chili, hacked chicken, bok choy and rice. Because we were only 4 they gave us a hard time about drinks and we really didn't get any. Definitely not my favorite meal of this trip but the food was edible and no one appeared to get sick.

After lunch we split up with the family going to the Window of the World theme park and myself going to the Chinese Cultural Village theme park. My park is apparently complex and the guide stayed with me and brought me through it and talked about the various stuff inside. It is basically an open air museum dedicated to the various minority cultures in China such as the Mongols and the Tibetans. There are apparently 55 minorities in China. They enjoy status that allows them to avoid many of the rules the majority families have to deal with such as child limits and the like. It was an interesting park and the extra help from the guide made it kind of neat. After that I had a few minutes to run to the Splendid China part of the park and see miniature versions of the Great Wall and Forbidden City and the like. The Window of the Wold was apparently a park that has a lot of world monuments in miniature, not just Chinese stuff. I was very happy with my choice instead of that.

After the theme park we had to pick up the Aussies and then headed back to Lo Wu to do the shopping center market thing. I was not really nuts about this. The place is filled with people that jump at you at the instant you are in sight. You have to not make eye contact and not acknowledge them or they will not leave you alone. I would only have been in to buy tourist souvenirs but there wasn't a one to be found in the entire center. We had an hour in there. I didn't buy anything. They bought a couple things. After the shopping it was back through both immigrations and onto the train back. Fortunately they just let me get out at Mong Kok East and I could head right back to the room.

I was fairly hungry by this point so headed out to get dinner but since I was fairly tired I decided to just go to Freshness Burger in the mall. I apparently witnessed an American having a breakdown about being in Hong Kong as she flipped out over what type of burger she ordered versus what she was given. I think there was a disconnect in terminology. In any event the burger was reasonable enough for me and I followed up with an end of trip ice cream at Hagen Daz repeating the caramel, biscuit and cream cone that I had before because I liked it. From there it was time to head up and start packing for the return home on Monday.

The pictures from today are located here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 15

2011-03-19T09:45:00.000-04:00

There was a potential I could go to Macau with Henri who works for Hologic here in Hong Kong (actually he travels a lot but is based here from what I can tell). However the weather did not remotely cooperate so instead I chose to take a ride on the East Rail line (which is the one I used to get to the office every day) out to Fanling Station where I visited Fung Ying Seen Koon Temple. It is a Taoist temple and the complex has a cemetery and is quite large. I walked around for a bit and up into the cemetery. Of course the whole day it rained so before I left I borrowed an umbrella from the concierge for a deposit of $100HK (maybe $11US). The umbrella helped a lot but it was tough to get pictures while holding it having only one hand free for the camera. All the same I tried to get a bunch. As I came back down towards the temple it was obvious a mass or ceremony was going on and I watched it for quite some time. I recorded a couple short videos as others were taking pictures too so I guess if I was invading, so were they. I actually watched it for at least 45 minutes and maybe more like over an hour.

After the temple I walked around the Fanling stop very briefly but I couldn't really say there was much else to see so I didn't bother with it for too long and headed back to the station where I got on the train again and this time stopped at Tai Po Market. There I walked out and found the market and the Man Mo Temple. The temple is also Taoist and is dedicated to the gods of literature and war (Man and Mo). It wasn't very big but there were a few people there actively praying and the like. During my stop at Tai Po Market the rain got fairly heavy and it was also very crowded so I really didn't take any pictures though I wanted to. I didn't want to ruin the camera was the main issue. I think it would have been neat to see it without the rain so I could have gotten some good pictures anyway. Maybe next time. After the temple I walked back to the station and found a McDonald's to have lunch at. I just had a number 9 (quarter pounder with cheese) with a coke.

After lunch I got back on the train and headed back in past the office and into the Mong Kok East Station which puts me right at the hotel. I dropped the umbrella back to the concierge and got my $100 back and headed up to the room to relax a bit. Henri and Priscilla were going to come get me for dinner at 5:30 so I thought it would be good to rest a bit and have time to get cleaned up. After a short rest I decided to book a tour to China for Sunday. I wanted to book one for Shekou and Gaungzhou but apparently I was too late for the cutoff for a visa. I was able to book one for Shenzen though. I can't figure out what the difference would be for either visa. In any event it is not really that much a cultural spot tour as it is a city tour. I will have to deal and will try for the one I wanted on my next trip here. Either way this trip will officially notch off China for me and not just the recently reacquired territories.

When the time came I met Henri and Priscilla downstairs in the lobby of the hotel and we took a cab to Sai Kung where Henri wanted to eat seafood at the Hung Kee Seafood Restaurant. I think the area is very nice but the weather was still rainy and unpleasant as with the earlier parts of the day so it was not necessarily represented as nice as it could have been. We looked at the boats that were selling fish right off the water for a few minutes and then went to the restaurant. These restaurants have the feature of selecting your own dinner from the tanks out in front of the restaurant. Yes, everything is still alive and they kill it, clean it and cook it for you right then. I guess you really can't get fresher food than that. Priscilla and I let Henri pick the fish out and we had scallops, razor clams, lobster and something like small lobsters or langoustines along with a whole fish. I am sure the people who know fish well can tell me what they were but I just eat fish really and haven't fished much or cooked much fish so I really don't know. They served it all family style as with most of the Asian food I have eaten out here. There was a lot of food and it was all very good. We also had some vegetables and an Australian Merlot accompanied with some Chinese tea as well. I was full fairly quickly but I ate a lot. We had the leftovers packed up and they took them home. Much like with the Korean restaurant the night before we finished with oranges and the waitress lady gave us seconds because she liked us or at least Henri I guess.

After the dinner we did a quick loop around the area at night because it was still raining but only a light drizzle at this point. Then I got in a cab and they got in another and we both headed home. My driver didn't speak English well and I didn't have a hotel card so he had me talk to his friend on the cell phone and they were able to decipher where he needed to take me. It seemed he was honest. The fair was cheaper than the on the way out so I can't complain. When I got back it was past 9pm so I just went to the room and wrote this and posted the pictures for an early bed. The trip to Shenzen won't start as early as the one to Macau did but still I could use the sleep I had been missing.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 14

2011-03-18T10:43:00.000-04:00

Today started with early rise to speak to Travel one more time. I posted about that already. I ate breakfast and spoke to the hotel about extending my room for the two days that seemed apparent. After that I got to the office for what was an easy day. The second Friday of the class is typically a half day but since I handed them the tests the night before and they were able to do them overnight only a couple had to finish up some questions and they all handed them in really quickly. I graded the tests and finished off all the necessary paperwork. After that it was basically shaking hands and sending them on their way. I stuck around the office for a bit talking with the locals and helping clean up a little. After that I headed back to the hotel and then struck out for lunch where I ate dim sum at the hotel restaurant, suggested by the executive club manager. I chose 3 items: steamed pork shumai, a scallop and rice dumpling and steamed meatballs. They were all good and filling. I accompanied with Chinese tea. I was the only non-Asian in the place. I am sure it was expensive for dim sum but all the same it was easier than trying the authentic solo. After dim sum I went into the mall and had an ice cream at the Hagen Daz stand. I had Carmel Biscuit and Cream flavor. It was actually quite good.

After lunch I decided to head into Central station and figure out what to do. I was told I needed to ride the tram to the peak on the island. When I got out of Central I was able to find the route to the tram via street signs. I walked to the tram and bought a round trip ticket. It rides up the mountain to the peak and then is sent right back down again, each direction filled with new passengers. The wait was less than 10 minutes. I think the ride was about 10 minutes. When I got up their the bad weather was all you could really see. There is a mall up there but not with a ton of stores. The Madam Toussaud's is up there but I wasn't really interested in that. There was no point in visiting the observatory in the pea soup out there but I did check out the whole mall which has a Bubba Gump and a Burger King amongst other things. Fortunately I had just eaten. While up there I got in touch with Jack and he said his office was practically right at the tram station and I should call him when I got down. I did so and then met him at his office where I went up and saw the insides of Merryll Lynch/Bank of America for a short time before we headed out to get his wife and eat dinner.

We rode the train back to Tsim Sha Tsui and then walked a couple blocks to a Korean restaurant where we had barbecue including all sorts of stuff and probably too much. I know there was beef plain and marinated. Seafood and tofu soup. Bacon. Noodles with black bean sauce. Beef tongue. I am sure there was more beyond that even not counting the generic sides like kimchi and such that are always there. The food was real good and I can say I ate too much. We got a bottle of shochu which was a tad harsh and not really the best thing I have ever had to drink and some tea came with the meal. After we were done we sent Angela back home in a cab and walked around to try to find Japanese baby formula for their daughter for a short time. Since the Japan crisis the stores have apparently been both rationing and gouging. Most Hong Kong parents don't use Chinese formula. Most buy Japanese. People are also trying to stockpile salt in case of radiation and also Japanese soy sauce and seaweed. In any event we had no luck and after a bit we took the MTR back to Mong Kok station and he headed home as I headed to the hotel. It started to rain about the time we left Jack's office and it remained a steady drizzle throughout the evening. It definitely limited the desire to explore any more or to take pictures.

During the evening I spoke to travel and got confirmation of my flight to Boston on Monday. I get in around 7:30pm or so. So with the email I know for certain that I am booked. I know travel was working hard on it but it has been a bit frustrating to deal with while half a world and a whole clock away from home.

The few pictures from today are located here.

Travel Arrangements Update

2011-03-17T18:47:00.000-04:00

I spoke with travel and they have told me that I could get a flight out of Hong Kong on Monday with no extra charge. I am still waiting for the confirmation from them but supposedly the flight was reserved for me. I had an option to fly out on Saturday but the cost was equal to the cost of my initial round trip ticket for just the 1 way. I figure it will be cheaper to spend 2 more nights in Hong Kong than to spend thousands of dollars on the flight. When I get a confirmation I will post...

Hong Kong for Business Day 13

2011-03-17T11:26:00.001-04:00

Today was breakfast and class as per the rest for the early day. I had a really unenjoyable lunch of a turkey sandwich that was very dry even with the mayonnaise. The class went well enough. It was the students' last real day of class. I made them fix things I broke then I handed them their tests to complete for tomorrow so it should be a really easy day for them all on Friday.

After class I went back to the room and got cleaned up. Henri and Priscilla were visiting as it was John's last night in town so I chatted with them before I had to head downtown to meet Kate. We met at the Tsim Sha Tsui station and then walked to the harbor to see the light show. I took a couple segment videos of it. It was neat but not necessarily anything spectacular. After that we decided to get something to eat. She wanted Pizza Hut so I obliged. She had a broccoli, cheese and potato dish and I had the Diavolo pizza which was sausage mushrooms and red peppers. It was good enough I guess. The nice thing about restaurants outside of the US is that you can sit there and talk forever after you are done and they won't try to rush you out. So that's basically what we did and left around 10:30pm or so. The light show started at 8 and was done about 15 minutes later. So I figure it was a two hour stop in a Pizza Hut. After we got outside it was raining and quite late. She has an early morning flight and needed to get packed still and I had to get back to sort out flight changes and get some sleep for the class tomorrow.

When I got back to the room I spoke to travel and they promise me I will have something before they go home tonight. I realize it is a balancing act but I have said that being on standby for Saturday isn't going to work for me. I need to know I am on my way out. So she said she will have something and call me. I will try to make sure I can wake up and get things finalized rather than have to wait another day through to get in touch with them. I will definitely have more information by tomorrow and will post that as an extra.

The picture of my pizza can be found here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 12

2011-03-16T11:12:00.000-04:00

Not a ton to report today in the early going. It was of course another day of class and that was basically all well and good. I had cold chicken and rice for lunch with the class. One of my teams broke their machine just before lunch and I had to run back to the office to get it fixed before lunch was over. Fortunately I figured out how to fix it fairly quickly and all was well and good.

After class was over a bunch of people from Hologic got together for dinner. We went to a restaurant called The Pawn because it used to be a pawn shop apparently somewhere back in the 1800s. The food was good. I had a parma ham salad for starter and lamb prepared 3 ways for for the main. I had one Stella for a beer and then for dessert I had a chocolate and coffee mousse accompanied with a coffee.

The restaurant was on Hong Kong island we took the Central line to Admiralty stop and then switched over to the Wan Chai line (I think) we took one stop there and then were basically at the restaurant. We took the trains back to the hotel as well. It was fairly simple. There were 8 of us for dinner and it was good to meet some people from the company I hadn't met before.

I am still working with travel on getting my flight home sorted out. I've opened up more options so hopefully things will have progressed by the end of the day for the travel department in the US. That means hopefully they will wake me up tonight with news.

The couple pictures from today are found here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 11

2011-03-15T09:40:00.000-04:00

Today was basically just another class day. Nothing exciting or different to report about the morning or class time. We had Korean stone pot for lunch again which was enjoyable. After class was over we headed back to the hotel and then my coworker and I went out to the night market to do some shopping but I didn't take any pictures. Night market is basically a street market of people selling all sorts of stuff and junk. Officially it is Temple Street. It is different from the lady's market mentioned earlier in the trip because it is all haggling. I did buy a couple things then we headed back to the hotel where I had to call travel to see about changing my flight back home. My expected return flight was to pass through Narita Japan. That is no longer really a great option with everything happening in Japan right now. If I leave it be I figure the reactors will melt down and spew out tons of radiation causing issues for everything. As much as I'd prefer not to incur extra expenses and miss my chance to get some Japanese candies I think it is best that I avoid the country right now.

As I mentioned earlier no pictures for today.

Hong Kong for Business Day 10

2011-03-14T11:18:00.001-04:00

Today started out much the same as the rest of the work days with an early rise and breakfast in the executive lounge. We made it to the office and started the day out fairly well. I bring my camera to the office every day and today looked to be sunny in general so I tried to bring it out to get some pictures during lunch with hopefully a bit better light than I had gotten last week. I took a picture of the drunken chicken with rice that we had for lunch. The chicken was cold and hacked on the bone in the traditional Chinese style. I think the overhead clouds rolled in just in time for us to eat and left as soon as I started up class again. All the same we made it through the rest of the day. Just before I left I emailed with Kate and we agreed to get dinner together.

When I dropped my stuff off at the hotel I had to figure out how to get down her way. I had to take the Central line from Mong Kok station much the same as the night I went out with Jack. The difference is I needed to get out at Tsim Sha Tsui instead of Central. It was a couple stops less and a fair amount of time easier. We had sort of set up a meeting place and after a few minutes of wandering around she managed to find me. We walked through the Tsim Sha Tsui region for a bit and I let her decide what to eat. She decided she was a bit tired of Chinese and wanted to eat Italian as we stumbled across a place named Al Dente. It was small and very quiet for a restaurant in Hong Kong which was nice. She ordered a seafood pasta dish and I had the penne alla puttanesca. It unfortunately wasn't very spicy but it wasn't bad really. I had a Perroni to go along with the pasta. She thought her dish was spicy so I apparently ordered wrong.

After we had dinner we walked out to the harbor and wandered around the area for a while talking and taking pictures. We even ended up back at the Avenue of Stars. I didn't bother to retake the pictures of the hand prints though. After a bit more wandering she dropped me off at the subway station where we said goodnight. I had to manage my way back up the Tsuen Wan line to Mong Kok station and then back out and through the pedestrian overpasses to Grand Century Place and the hotel. I got back at about 10:50 or so and got this penned up as quick as I could before heading to bed.

The pictures from today are located here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 9

2011-03-13T09:35:00.000-04:00

Today was an even earlier start than normal. I only woke up 10 minutes earlier but was in the shower very quickly as I needed to be downstairs for the tour pickup by 7:10am. I got cleaned up and ate a quick breakfast and was downstairs with a few minutes to spare. The pickup guide was already waiting for me but the bus hadn't arrived so I had to wait a few minutes. From there it was circling through the city to pick up other people on what was apparently only our tour. Kate was not on this bus route. Apparently they had two different buses working different routes. The bus dropped us off at the ferry terminal and that was where we met up with the other group and Kate was indeed there.

She had to repurchase her tour because apparently they couldn't find her in the voucher list even though she had booked the tour before she even arrived in Hong Kong. They told her to purchase now and they would sort it out tomorrow for her when there was more time. She was definitely annoyed at having to put up more of her money. The tour basically started with us going through immigration to head off to Macau which is a territory of China formerly owned by the Portuguese but returned to the Chinese in 1999, a couple years after Hong Kong was. The territory is still separately run like Hong Kong is but somewhere down the road (I think it was 50 years from return to Chinese ownership) they are going to be fully absorbed again. Macau is a peninsula off the edge of China. We took a high speed ferry to Macau. The trip lasted about one hour and was fairly painless.

After getting off the ferry we had to clear immigration on the Macau side then we met our guide for the tour who is from Macau and not Hong Kong. The people from Macau speak Portuguese and Mandarin. I am sure more speak Mandarin than Portuguese as she said that about 3% of the population is Portuguese. That doesn't stop the territory from having very heavy Portuguese influence as well as a bit of Dutch influence from some previous time where they also held the land. The first stop of our tour was to see the gold lotus flower statue that was given to Macau when the country was returned to China. It was a very short stop. This was where we discovered that Kate's cell phone was missing. She had just bought it the day before and she had 2 sim cards in it. As we left we checked her jacket and everything in the bus but couldn't find it.

The next stop was at a small shop where you could sample some of their almond cookies or their dried meat meat products. We spent the stop searching everything for her phone but it didn't turn up. We talked to the guide form Hong Kong and he told her it was probably already stolen. She decided to try the guide from Macau and she called the ferry company and them the ferry type and time, her seat number and the colors of the phone and they said they would call back if they were able to find it. Of course this set Kate a bit off as she was worried about it but I tried to keep her positive about it. We knew she had it when we got on the ferry but not if she had it when we got off so it was most likely to be on there.

The next stop was at the Saint Paul's Cathedral which had been previously been destroyed I believe in World War II. This meant that there was really only the front of the cathedral there. It was kind of a neat stop. The sun really started to come out by this point and it was getting a bit warm for me. The stop also had us go through a museum of the history of Macau and our guide took us through to a lot of the exhibits and explained a fair amount of it to us. It was a reasonably good tour and after it was over we basically headed over to lunch in the fisherman's wharf. During the ride there the ferry company called the guide and told her they found the cell phone and there was much rejoicing... This definitely lightened up her mood quite a bit.

Lunch was a Portuguese style meal which started with a potato style soup, followed by a slaw and fried fish (think fish and chips without the chips) with the main course being a chicken stew of some sort that was very yellow and rice on the side. The food was generally good although the glasses looked a touch scary for dish washer spots (I hope they were dish washer spots). They served us coffee and a coconut pudding that was very jellylike and not very flavorful for dessert. After eating we were told we needed to be back to the bus by 2pm but we could wander around the fisherman's wharf. We wandered and returned at 2 along with almost all of the tour except for people from Singapore. Unfortunately they didn't show up until 2:30. This is when the guide told us she said 2:30 to everyone and we all disagreed with her. It kind of sucked a little to sit on the bus for half an hour for no reason but at least he had the AC running because it was fairly hot outside by this point.

After lunch we were taken to Macau temple. Apparently the territory is named after the temple because the Portuguese thought the name of the temple was the name of the region. The old temple is about 700 years old we were told though it has since been built up a fair bit. I liked the temple a lot. It had a lot of stairs and stone gardening and maybe a bit too much incense. The old temple is smaller and made of stone and is the main entrance to the rest of the complex. The newer temple is much larger and red. In the new temple there was a brass bowl that had handles that apparently if you rubbed the handles it would predict your luck. One of the Singaporean ladies tried it first and that pretty much got everyone in the temple trying it. Basically, it had water in it and if you rubbed it the right way the water would vibrate and percolate. She did it very well. Kate watched her and wanted to try and after a couple other people went with mixed results she didn't really have a good go at the start but as she started thinking happy thoughts it started to work for her. I tried it out a bit later and it was a bit better than Kate's try but not really anything spectacular. It was fun anyway.

After the temple we headed to Macau Tower. It is 228 meters tall, so shorter than the Eiffel and the Tokyo Towers. The first stop up is the 58th floor which is enclosed and has the glass bottom sections on the floor. I have gotten over my fear of those sections by this point and it was amusing watching other people be afraid to step on them. I convinced and Aussie woman to do it so her husband could photograph her doing it. It was sort of fun. The view might have been a touch nicer without the obligatory haze that has been in the area the whole time I have been here but it was still quite nice. After that it was on to the 61st floor which is open aired but not really in the sense there is a glass wall but the top is open. They sell bungie jumps and skywalks on this floor. We didn't really have time to try either nor would I have. You should know what a bungie jump is. The skywalk is done by putting you in a harness and hooking you up to a rail that allows you to walk around the building on the outside. The idea is to push your weight off the edge so the harness is suspending you. There appeared to be more takers for the bungie jumps on this day than the skywalks though apparently famous people have done both. Charlize Theron was one who had done the skywalk anyway.

From there we headed back downstairs and met up with the bus again. The tour brought many of the members to a casino where they would stay for 3 more hours then brought us back to the ferry station. We had to clear immigration then board the ferry and ride it back to Hong Kong. The people at the Hong Kong side had Kate's phone we were told so we would have to get it there. It was again an hour long ride and we basically dozed off during the trip because it was a fairly full day and we were tired. Back in Hong Kong it was actually quite easy to get her phone. The brought us to a security booth, she had to sign a form and she had her phone back. From there it was what I felt was an interminably long line to get back through the Hong Kong side of immigration. As soon as everyone was through we were lead through the terminal and split up to our respective buses. Kate and I said our goodbyes and I got on my ride to the hotel. Of course the Royal Plaza was the last stop and I got back at about 8pm.

I was fairly hungry but not willing to put a lot of effort into eating so went to the McDonald's in the mall and got a quarter pounder with cheese meal and ate that very quickly. I can say it was reasonably OK but I liked the Freshness Burger from the day before more. After that I headed upstairs to finish off the night with writing and posting. It was a very long day for me and I was quite tired when I got in.

The pictures from today are posted here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 8

2011-03-12T08:24:00.000-05:00

Today I took a tour of Lantau Island as the main activity. I had made up my mind I was going to see the giant Buddha during the week and so on Friday night had purchased the tour. The bus arrived at 7:50am so I basically got up early like for a work day and had breakfast in the executive lounge before heading downstairs to the hotel lobby to wait for the bus. It was a couple minutes late but I was the first stop for the pickup service. After a few stops everyone on the route was aboard and we were brought to a central location to be put on our own individual tours. I had chosen the Lantau 360 which was a small bus and the tour was about 10 people. Our guide used the name Joelle and we had a guide trainee on the tour as well.

The first stop of the tour was the Avenue of Stars which has hand prints and placards in the walkway of famous Hong Kong movie stars. I guess it was opened in 2004 or so which means the Bruce Lee placard had no hand prints. All the same there were placards or hand prints for a few people I recognized such as Jackie Chan of course, and Jet Li, Michelle Yeo, Sammo Hung and Steven Chow. There was also a fairly good statue of Bruce Lee there. The stop wasn't long but it was nice out if there was a bit too much haze still.

The second stop was at a Hong Kong jewelery factory named TSL. It was a brief tour of what they do followed by a bit longer stay in the shop for people to buy stuff. I am not really interested in jewelery and my brother works for a jewelery company besides so this stop was really not up my alley at all. After the tour part I pretty much just waited for the store part to be over. While waiting I started talking to one of the other tour members. Her name is Kate and she's German but living in Australia. She's in Hong Kong for a few days on holiday before going back home to Germany. We ended up hanging out together during the tour and got along pretty well.

After the jewelery store we had a 45 minute ride to Lantau Island. The guide told some stories along the way and the ride was not bad. It was basically the reverse of the taxi ride I took to the hotel on my first night and I even recognized some of it. The bus dropped us off at the Ngong Ping cable car ride which takes you up over the water and some mountains and around to the giant Buddha statue. You have two choices of cable car: standard or crystal. The crystal cars have glass bottoms. I had chosen the crystal car because I use these moments to face my fears of heights. Kate had bought her tour remotely rather than at the hotel like I had and she wanted to try the crystal car when she found out what it was and she got the tour guide to change that for her which was cool. Of the tour it was us 2 and a couple from England in the crystal car and all the rest were on standard car. The ride takes about 25 minutes and I really enjoyed it. The glass bottom was really neat. The cars do get up fairly high at times too. Since we left first we had to wait for the rest at the top before the tour could continue.

The tram basically puts you right in the temple and giant Buddha statue area. We got a tour of the statue but unfortunately we could not go inside it. It looks a lot like the one I visited in Japan in Kamakura which we were able to go inside and I suspect you can in this one too but it was not part of the tour. After a brief stop for some pictures we were supposed to meet with the guide to head over to the temple and monastery. One pair of the tour was late by about 15 minutes in getting back to the meeting point and this made the guide agitated a bit. We took a short bus ride to the temple and she tried to tell us about and bring us in but there was a ceremony going on so instead she told us about it off to the side then we had our vegetarian lunch. The lunch was served family style and was a soup starter followed by many different types of vegetarian dishes and a bowl of rice on the side. All the food was very good and there was a fair amount of it. I think the only thing I didn't try was the spring rolls because they ran out before the dish got to me on the lazy Susan. All the same I was happy with the meal. We had free time after eating to check out the temple and the immediate surroundings. This time another couple was late to the meeting point and our guide got even more agitated. This couple was French and apparently didn't speak any English. After waiting more than 15 minutes the guide called in and it was decided to leave them behind.

The next stop was a fishing village down the mountain. This was actually a neat area with a lot of tiny little houses on stilts over the water. The place was fairly run down as you might expect and there were all sorts of shops selling dried and live fish and the like. I thought the village was really cool. There were different sights and sounds and scents around it. The guide told us various things about it along the way but I was more into just looking around. This time no one was late returning to the bus and we got back up the mountain to the Buddha area where we were given half an hour of shopping time. Kate and I walked around and looked in a few shops but didn't buy any souvenirs. During the wait we found the French couple so they were able to get back to their hotel through the tour which was nice. It is too bad they missed the fishing village but them's the breaks I guess.

We rode the crystal car back down to the base after that and then the bus took us home. During the ride Kate said she was taking the same company's tour to Macau tomorrow and asked me to go along. I told her I would try to buy the tour when I got to my hotel. I was last stop of course just like being first picked up. I got up to the room and got cleaned up then headed down to the concierge and booked the Macau tour for Sunday so hopefully that will be as fun.

I have to say our guide could have been better and she was the first that was adamant about not having her picture taken so I don't have a picture of her, but I had a lot of fun on the tour. The trainee was a really nice guy and knowledgeable but it was his first time on that tour and he wasn't allowed to say a lot as a trainee he told us. It seemed like he was the guy that had to look for the late comers. The only bit I could have done without was the jewelery store. Other than that I had a lot of fun. It was a very full day.

After getting my tour for Sunday I opted to jump into the mall and eat at the Freshness Burger to compare it versus Japan and it was fairly good. Better than McDonald's for certain but not maybe as good as the ones in Japan. The mild complaint would be the thickness of the grilled onion slice but I enjoyed it anyway. After eating I headed back up and my coworker was in the executive lounge so I grabbed a drink and hung out and chatted for a bit before heading in for the night. The Macau trip is going to be even longer than the Lantau trip so I figured it best to get to bed sort of early.

The pictures from today can be found here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 7

2011-03-11T17:28:00.000-05:00

The bad news is I am coming down with a slight cold and my nose has been leaky for the past couple days. During the course of the day I also developed a headache that wouldn't go away. The day started off as the rest of the week with breakfast in the lounge followed by the train and bus combo to the class. I think the class went better today but by nature it is a short day dedicated to one subject. Typically I send the guys away early on the first Friday to get out and see what they can that night but since my students are stuck using a shuttle bus to their hotel they really didn't get any benefit from it. So we all had to hang around until 5:30 anyway. By the time we got back to the hotel I was definitely not feeling like I wanted to do much but I purchased my tour for Saturday then we stopped by the lounge for a couple hours and chatted but I didn't eat. During the time we saw the reports about the big earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It looked fairly frightful and it is a good thing Japan is very prepared for earthquakes or it could have been really much worse. I have gotten news that my friends in Japan are ok which is very good to hear.

Again, no pictures for today as it was classroom then bed early for my headache.

Hong Kong for Business Day 6

2011-03-10T17:34:00.000-05:00

Basically like all the other days today started with an early rise and then breakfast in the executive lounge. After breakfast we took the train/bus combo to the office and started the day. The class went well enough but the students are sort of cheating themselves because one of the Koreans knows too much about the system and they are letting him do all of the lab work. It also means they are racing through the material that normally takes a full day. It is posing minor problems in that they think the class is light on material when it really isn't.

After class was over we headed back to the hotel and I dropped off my stuff and headed out to meet Jack for dinner and a couple drinks. I had to walk from my hotel to the Mong Kok station rather than just using the Mong Kok East station we have right at the hotel. All of the walk is on a covered overpass over the streets as soon as you exit the mall. It took maybe 15 minutes to get to Mong Kok station. From there I had to figure out the maze that was the station and that took a minute or two. I had to cross the station from where I entered to practically the other side and go down two levels. The ride to Central station was about 15 minutes and say 6 stops or so. I was supposed to meet jack at the Starbucks but I couldn't find it and called him and he came and got me at the Mrs. Fields instead. Yes they have all the American places...

We first went around the area of the station and had a couple drinks at a bar there that was relatively not too crowded. After chatting for a bit we walked out of that area and got a cab heading back towards the island our hotel is on. Central station is on Hong Kong Island, our hotel is not. We took a cab to an area with a bunch of restaurants then he thought we would have Mexican food so we ate burritos at a place I think was called Agave. In any event the food wasn't bad. I had a spicy pork burrito to continue on with the spicy theme of food for the day. After dinner we walked around the area and found a place to have another drink. The place had a live band that was apparently Filipino and there were all sorts of scantily clad Filipina women around trying to pick up guys. It felt like it was probably mafia owned and Jack basically said it was. The band sang songs in English that were basically dance songs current and old from America. After a while there we picked up a cab and headed back in for the night. I got in at about midnight and basically headed straight to bed.

The few pictures from today are here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 5

2011-03-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

Today started early with breakfast followed by heading to the office. The students upped the ante a bit today by starting a heater war in the classroom. It was set before to 23C and I was quite happy with that. When I got into the classroom just before starting my students had snuck in and set it to 28C. The heater fan was on full blast and a wave of heat greeted me as I stepped inside. I basically said, "Oh, no, we aren't doing that," and cranked it back down to 24. We really had more lab than classroom time but the rest of the day was the students turning up the heat and me turning back to human levels. After class we headed in and I spent a bit of time in the lounge with my coworker until I decided I was tired and headed in for the evening. I will definitely have to eat dinner out tomorrow since I didn't today. Again there were no pictures taken today.

Hong Kong for Business Day 4

2011-03-08T07:33:00.000-05:00

Not a whole lot to report today. I got up early and had breakfast at the lounge then headed over to the office. The class was a full day affair. We had lunch provided at a different place near the office and I had a Cesar salad with fries. After class we headed back to the hotel where I was tired and not that hungry so stayed in the lounge and had a light snack and a couple beers. I didn't take any pictures today as really all there was was class time. The weather wasn't cooperative in that it was hazy and overcast all day. I liked the temperature which seemed to be about 60F. It was cold for a lot of my students, but I considered it short sleeve short weather easily. In the cool air the humidity wasn't as daunting. Hopefully I will find reason to take pictures tomorrow. I may force myself to go out for dinner at the very least. I am leaning that way right now.

Hong Kong for Business Day 3

2011-03-07T07:52:00.001-05:00

Today was the first day of class so basically from here until Friday a lot of my days will be taken up with work of course. I started out with a breakfast in the executive club lounge that was basically the same as Sunday's breakfast and met my coworker during that time. We both ate and then we headed to the train station to take our train from Mong Kok East to University. From University Station we needed to take the 272K train to a short distance away from our office in Science Park. The trip probably took about a half an hour total though I wasn't keeping track of time.

My class is fortunately only 8 students. 2 Koreans, 3 Chinese (one from HK), 1 Indian, 1 Saudi and one Iranian. My fears were moderately founded. Most of them are struggling with English and asking questions of the class basically only brings back blank stares. I will deal with it as best I can but I do not expect miracles here. It definitely means the sense of humor is right out the window. How do you tell jokes with proper timing and all that when they barely understand a third of what you are saying? In any event they do seem very nice and like most people who aren't American, very eager to learn so it should be a good class. We had some mild ice-breaker incidents along the way today so it should hopefully only get better. It will be a struggle from beginning to end all the same, I am sure.

The weather today was basically perfect. Sunny, not too humid and cool and breezy.When we broke for lunch we had to travel outside for a little while to get to the place we ate. I regretted not taking my camera to lunch because the office is in a really nice looking area. For lunch I had a chicken and pork over rice dish that was good. Typical to most Asian foods it was bone in and you are expected to spit out the bones. I have already gotten used to that concept and the food was actually enjoyable. Much better than the lunches from the Belgian office. After we ate we took a short walk around the area and could see some of the bay we must be situated on.

When I sent the class home for the day I walked out to take the pictures I missed at lunch. It was still light out though twilight would hit soon. The best light was sort of gone but the haze still wasn't as prominent as the day before so hopefully the pictures came out well enough. I think I would have had the best effect from the lunch time sunlight but I will have to take what I could get.

After that I got on the bus (272k same as the way in) and then from University took the Hung Hom line back to Mong Kok East which is where the hotel is. My coworker had already left earlier so it was solo. All the same it was fairly easy and not too unpleasant. It was crowded, but not horribly so. The train was amongst the noisiest I have ever been on. You don't hear quite this many people talking on the MBTA in Boston. After a few minutes in the room I opted to hit the lounge for a couple free beers, one Asahi and one Tsing Tao. After that I decided to cruise the mall underneath the hotel for a little while to kill some time. I wasn't particularly hungry so I opted to just see what sort of stores and restaurants there were but really just spent about half an hour wandering around.

After that I opted to just kill some time watching TV for the night.

The pictures from today are here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 2

2011-03-06T09:05:00.000-05:00

I woke up at around 6am but decided to force myself to stay in bed until 7 thinking it would help me out for the day. I do think I slept some more. The bed in the hotel is quite firm and I like that. After getting showered I headed over to the club lounge and had breakfast from about 8-9am taking my time. I had expected to meet my coworker there but he wasn't around by 9 so I headed back to the room for a few minutes and then rechecked the lounge and he still wasn't there. I decided to take a walk for a few minutes and did a small loop around the area local to the hotel and then headed back in to see if he was there by 10am. I still didn't see him in the lounge so I opted to give my friend Jack a call and we made arrangements to meet. He had to get a few things in order so I had a little bit of time to kill and headed back out to some walking in the local area.

In walking I managed to find a parade that was going on and I watched that for a few minutes. I had dragon (or lion) costumed dancers and a bunch of older people doing traditional dances as well as a lot of puppet type things, for lack of a better word. I was watching that when Jack called me back and I headed to the hotel lobby to where they met me. I haven't seen Jack in a couple years or so but he still looks the same. It was good to see him. He is a project manager for Bank of America. He hired on to them full time when they were Meryll Lynch but BofA bought them out. He also now has a 6 month old daughter which should be news to a few people, as it was to me. Her name is Nicole and her eyes are so big they don't look Chinese. It was obvious he loves the idea of being a dad. What was amazing to me is that she already has 4 teeth.

They took me out to dim sum and ordered up a whole bunch of foods that ranged from roast pork to chicken feet to jelly fish. I think I tried everything on the table. I liked pretty much all of it. It was a lot of food and I was pretty well full by the time we headed out of there. Angela's fried Peggy also came out to join us for the dim sum. She was really nice and spoke her English with a British accent because she was taught English in the UK. After eating we took a short walk around the area where the restaurant was and then they got some Starbucks coffee too (never been a fan of Starbucks so I passed). After that they took me to their apartment which is spacious for a room in Hong Kong. It is a nice place though I am sure it is quite expensive. They needed to give Nicole a bath and such so we hung out for a bit then Jack took me for a walking tour of the local area for a while. I am not sure how far we walked but we saw the "Lady's Market" amongst other things. After that we headed back to his apartment and picked up the wife and kid and headed out to find dinner.

They took me to a Thai Restaurant they really like and eat at a lot. The place is not much a tourist would look at but the food was really good and I was full before I knew it. They ordered all sorts of stuff from satay chicken to pad thai to a soup that had a citrusy and spicy taste the name of which I couldn't pronounce I am sure. We had a couple Thai beers as well. It was an excellent meal. I really enjoyed everything I tried. I haven't had a lot of Thai food before. Jack said the Thai food here is much better than he remembers it being in the states. I hope it didn't spoil me too much to eat it here.

By the time we were finished dinner. it was already past 9pm and I was very tired and they said I looked exhausted so we took a cab to my hotel and they headed back home. In the writing of it all it doesn't look like I did a ton but it was a very full day and very tiring. The humidity here in Hong Kong is something to be reckoned with. It was probably about 70F during the bulk of the day which is of course a great temperature to me but the humidity was at times daunting. I felt like I was never going to have enough deodorant to survive this island. In all though I had a great first day here and it was great to see Jack again. He is one of those really good people you never forget in life. I am glad to see he is doing well and loving the whole parenthood thing. It is very cool.

Hong Kong is basically a giant sprawling city that feels a little bit like New York City and a little bit like Tokyo. I think Tokyo is cleaner but Hong Kong is cleaner than NYC. The area where the hotel is basically is a large shopping district with streets dedicated to specific types of merchandise. I know I walked the jewelery street at the very least. I would have to say that if you weren't into cities then Hong Kong is probably not the place for you.

I didn't take as many pictures as I should have but the ones I did take are posted here.

Hong Kong for Business Day 1

2011-03-05T08:05:00.003-05:00

I had a Flightline van pick me up at around 2:45am. That brought me to Dascom Road where I switched to a different van. That van forgot to pick up one person and after we left we had to turn around and go and get her as well. After that we headed into the airport and going to United in Terminal C I was the last to get off the van. The airport was open but United wasn’t for another 25 minutes so we had to wait in line to get processed. After that it was an easy run through security and to the gate to wait for the plane.

This was my first ever flight in higher than coach class. The first flight was to San Francisco and I had first class for that bit. It is definitely a lot more roomy and you get armrests all to yourself. I took an aisle seat right up front. The plane was a 757 and was not too filled with the high tech conveniences unfortunately. I had the cold breakfast of fruit and cereal because I didn’t want the omelet. The only movie they showed in the 6+ hour flight was The King’s Speech which I watched and thought was reasonably good. Yeah, yeah, it won the Oscar, etc. Not something I care about. All the rest was television shows which I really didn’t watch and was able to nap here and there. As a side note, one of the flight attendants apparently knew how to make balloon creatures and several of them were carrying around or wearing balloon things.

The flight landed a little late and of course the transfer was all the way across the airport but I had enough time that it was not a big deal. I pretty much just got to the gate and waited for the plane to board. Boarding as business class I was supposed to wait until the first class and special members boarded but it wasn’t really bad and I was on without any issue. The seat in business had its own entertainment center with a larger screen than you will get in economy if you have it, but since it was a 747-400 there was common entertainment for the economy class. My seat was the last aisle seat in front of the economy section right next to the serving station which could at times get a little busy and a little noisy but overall I was happy with the location. Since the seat folded into a bed I spent more than half of the flight successfully sleeping. They served the meal early in the flight. I had an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon named Yarumba or something like that. They served a grilled chicken salad to start and I had the braised beef short rib for the main meal. It was by far the best food I have ever eaten on a plane. I finished with a raspberry flavored ice cream in a dark chocolate shell. I enjoyed the food greatly.

After the meal I started to watch a couple movies. I watched The Town which I liked a fair bit. Always good to see Boston in the movies. Ben Afflek was even reasonably good in it. I think he gets pummeled as an actor but really he isn’t that bad. After that I watched the remake of True Grit with Jeff Bridges. It was ok but I did dose a couple times during it. I don’t think I missed that much of it. I was happy that I watched it but I think I don’t need to rewatch it even with what I missed. After that I turned on Bullitt (heck, it was there) and instead used it as a sound to fall asleep to. I am sure I was completely out before the big car chase scene. After that it was just sleep for several hours. I woke up with about 2 hours to go in the flight. From there I listened to music and they handed out fruit plates and juice as an end of flight snack.

After landing it wasn’t that bad to clear passport control and customs was a walk through. I found the taxi stand and took a taxi to the hotel. Of course the driver didn’t speak English well and the taxi didn’t take credit cards and I just realized I didn’t get a receipt for it. It was 205.5 HK dollars for the fare. Doh. He did stop so I could get cash out of a machine at least which got me the money to pay for it. The ride seemed to take about 45 minutes but I’m not probably the best judge of things. It was a bit after 7pm when I got into my room.

After dropping off my pack I went to the common area where I found my coworker John hanging out for the evening talking to a guy from Belgium who was living in Shanghai and had just needed a table to sit at when he got to the common area. I hung out and had a couple beers before settling in for the night to relax a bit and write this. Too tired to go out and get lost I opted to just take it easy in the hotel for the evening.

I was a touch hungry and decided to get room service though. I ordered a set menu and though I should have gotten Chinese style foods the best offering was sweet and sour pork which is definitely not my thing. So instead I got cream of mushroom soup to start, a burger for the main and a chocolate brownie with vanilla cream to finish. The food was good but the burger had avocado on it which made things sweet. I did have to take it off because I didn't care for the effect. That should be the only day I do room service though. After dinner it was already past 10pm. I just watched a little English Premier League soccer commentated in Chinese and then went to bed when it was over at about 10:30pm. West Brom beat out Birmingham 3-1. I am sure of the West Brom but Birmingham I may be wrong about. I was half out of it.

I didn't take many pictures but here are the few.

Hong Kong for Business Departs this Friday

2011-02-28T08:41:00.000-05:00

I should have posted this earlier but I have been very busy as of late. I am flying out this Friday morning to Hong Kong where I will be teaching a two week course for international students. I am looking forward to the trip for a couple reasons. First, I have never been to Hong Kong before so it will be another place I have visited. Second, a former coworker from a previous job lives on HK and I have already made plans to see him somewhere during the length of the visit.

Much like the Belgium trip I will not be blogging a blow by blow of the work part of the trip (which will indeed be the majority) but I will post the tidbits from outside the classroom.

I am curious as to how this one will play out. I am sure I have several Asian students but also at least one from the Middle East as the roster stated when last I checked. I wonder if the students will be able to speak and understand English well enough or if it will be a chore to get through each concept. It is not like I am teaching basic stuff that it is easy to get across with hand gestures and the like. Previous instructors have said that at least most of them can read English well enough for the class to get by. I guess I will just have to see.

The flight is going to be long enough that the company pays for business class so this will be my first foray outside of cattle class. I hope it doesn't spoil me too much.

Belgium for Business Day 16

2010-12-20T08:35:00.000-05:00

I started at 6am and was out the door of the room for checkout by 7:30. Checkout was quick and a cab already happened to be waiting at the hotel so I got an instant ride to the airport. I think I was there by about 8. Inside I thought I was supposed to check in with Delta and after waiting 25 minutes in their line I was told there was another desk for KLM and because my flight was to Amsterdam I had to check in with them. I was brought over to their desk where there was no one working for another 25 minutes and then had to wait while I was line cut by 2 families for another half an hour. I had already done the kiosk checkin and just needed to drop off my bag. When I spoke to the woman at the desk she told me they weren't sure if the flight would get out on time or if it would even get out at all. They had canceled an 8:25 flight. They wouldn't know until the plane left Amsterdam. I asked what I should do and she said just go inside and sort it out if it doesn't come.

Inside I then had to wait until 45 minutes before the flight to find out the gate. I got down to the gate instantly and then the check in to the plane took an extra 25 minutes even though the plane and crew were ready because they didn't have a bus to drive us to the remote location for boarding. This meant that when we got to Schipol I had to run across the airport, checking through passport control to basically get in line to be one of the last to board the plane. In so doing I fully expected to not have overhead room to put my backpack but fortunately it wasn't a full flight and I did indeed have the space. I was ready for an argument as I was not going to let them check my bag with 2 laptops in it.

We managed to get out of the airport on time. The flight was 7 hours or so. I watched Despicable Me again, followed by a British movie called The Damned United about the 1974 Leeds United football club. It was interesting and had a bunch of Brit actors I've seen before. Not a lot of soccer footage, it was more about the manager of the team than a pure sports film. After that I watched Avatar because I knew it was long enough to fill up the majority of the rest of the flight. By the time it was over they were announcing the half hour till landing. We managed to get into the airport about a half an hour early. From there passport and customs were easy because I guess a lot of flights from Europe have been canceled over the past couple days.

In all it was a successful trip. The Hologic Europe employees were very nice and extremely helpful. My students were all attentive and interested in learning, even the ones that had a lot more experience on the system. It was probably the easiest it could have been for the first time teaching the class in a different location. Hopefully it will turn out the same in Hong Kong in March.

As a parting gift I provide this explanation of Belgium given to me by one of my Belgian students. Beware it has a couple of swear words in it.