Orange Skies over Knoxville

Belgium

2011-10-08T13:24:00.004-04:00

I'm writing about my last stop of Euro 2011 a couple of months after the fact. Belgium was a great time. Specifically, my stop in the city of Brugges is what made Belgium. And the first thing to come to mind? Chocolate!!!

Belgian chocolate is delicious. It's melt-in-your-mouth, creamy good. I also found it reasonably cheap too. I really wish I had brought so much more back.

The cityscapes in the two Belgian cities were breathtaking too, especially at night. I'm having a little trouble with my browser here, but I hope to post some of the shots soon.

My single favorite day in Belgium was when I rented a bike from my hostel and took it out to the countryside for the day. It ended up being a THIRTY MILE ride but I got to see windmills, the beaches and quaint little villages and canals along the way. The perfect weather and bright sunny skies made it really enjoyable.

Sweden

2011-08-17T14:51:00.005-04:00

My first thought on Stockholm was surprise at just how big this city is. In fact, it very much has a feel like so many other cultural capitals like London, Paris, Rome and Berlin. Stochholm is in fact smaller than it feels. It may just be because the city is spread out over so manty islands, canals and along the Baltic.

Prices here are almost just as expensive as the rest of Scandinavia, but you can find pockets of affordability. Like today, I enjoyed a meal of Swedish meatballs with ligonberries. I stopped into an upscale chocolate shop as well and enjoyed some very good and very rich dark hot chocolate.

The main attraction here is the museum housing the famous 1620s warship, the Vasa. It was built at the height of Swedish military power. It was considered to be the mightiest ship of it's time with over 60 cannons spread over two gundecks. The problem was the ship had some serious engineering issues and miscalculations and was too top-heavy. It sunk in just twenty minutes into it's inaugural voyage and sat at the bottom of the Baltic for over 300 years before being rediscovered in the 1950s. The wooden ship was in a remarkable state of preservation and has since been raised and is now displaced and preserved in a Stockholm museum. 95% of the original is intact and it's an amazing site.

The hostel I am staying at is a bit more high-tech than your usual hostel. The lobby has iMac computers everywhere to use. The basement rooms have sidewalk skylights looking up to the streets above. The rooms are keypad entry. There a couches and cushions everywhere...definitely a very comfortable place.

Norway

2011-08-15T16:02:00.004-04:00

It's been 11 years since my first trip to Europe that ended in Norway. My original intent was to have nearly half of THIS trip focus on Norway, but the US dollar had other suggestions. After finding out that an economy car rents for $150/day here with $10-12/gallon in fuel, I very quickly had a change in heart. Oslo is where I have based out of the last two days and it is prohibitively expensive. Even a cheap McDonald's meal comes out to $10-15. everything goes up steeply from there.

The coolest stop here was stopping in at the Viking ship museum.

They have three Viking ships on display that were uncovered and date back to the Vikings in 800 and 900 AD. They are very remarkably intact too. I rode the Oslo subway/train car up the mountain to the newly built ski jump complex. Ski jumping is HUGE here, as are just about any alpine sports. The jump was just finished last year in time for the 2011 World Championships. I got to ride to the top right where the athletes start their lunge down the slope. There were amazing views up there as well of Oslo and Oslofjord (the harbor).

I came upon the Oslo Cathedral last night and had momentarily forgotten about the tragic bombing from 3 weeks ago that occurred here. There were thousands of flowers on the cathedral grounds as a quick reminder and still plenty of tourists and Norwegians stopping by in the rain to pay their respects.

I have a 6 hour train ride booked foe tomorrow morning to Sweden. I'm looking forward to the uninterrupted, no transfer trip.

Latvia and Lithuania

2011-08-13T13:41:00.003-04:00

Things moved further south on Thursday and Friday. I moved on from Estonia to the other two Baltic States and their capitals, Riga and Vilnius. Both countries have a bit more Polish and German influences and both were more Sovietized during their decades-long occupation. While Tallinn has flouished with their newfound capitalism, these cities have been a little more slow to move along. The buildings are a little slower behind in their upkeep and the advent of new bright cages and shops are certainly there but just slightly more scattered.

Riga was WET! It has rained everyday up until this point but really culminated in a soaker on Thursday. Riga actually ended up being a bit of a slight disappointment. Vilnius is a bit better kept however and I enjoyed a couple of very good meals here and a walking tour of the city. Got to meet a couple people from my hostel too, one from Australia and the other from Beijing...nice people. Vilnius is right on the border with Belarus, who still lives in the Dark Ages under Communism and resisted change when the old Soviet system collapsed.

Speaking if the Soviets, I also took a look at the old KGB building and it's museum here in Vilnius...very chilling. They had their own execution chamber in the basement and a few padded cells for their torture victims, especially under the tyrant's Stalin's rule.

Tallinn, Estonia

2011-08-11T15:34:00.007-04:00

Wednesday began with a steady rain and a LONG trek to find the ferry terminal would need to get to Estonia. The ferry was a 3-hour ride across the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea. I stayed up the night before so with my 5a start my first thoughts on the boat were to find a nice place to curl up and sleep. I went to the empty bar on the far end of the ship and found the perfect spot. Well, 45 minutes later the bar was completely full with a live band and drinks flowing and people dancing. And here I was with this HUGE backpacking and wet gear and I'm sitting there out-of-place with the partying locals.

I made it to Tallinn in one piece and was greeted by yet another thunderstorm. The rain is certainly following me around on this trip. It clears up at places after I leave. I checked in at my hostel and then hurried over to the Old Town...no time to waste as all of these stops are so brief.

Tallinn's Old City is visually stunning.

I had positive expectations but this stop far exceeded them. Americans don't travel to the Baltics so there is so little material to base an itinerary or expectations. Estonia has only been under it's own control in recent history. They have been controlled and dominated by the Danes, Germans, Swedes and finally Russians influences until they finally could break away in 1991. The city has blossomed since and has undergone a radical transformation for such a short period. The city tries to theme itself as medieval, Old World and does a fantastic job with the theme matching it with it's 12th - 14th century buildings and costumed employees at shops and restaurants.

I finally could afford a meal and settled on one of these Old World places and had wild boar for the first time...really good. I took a 3 hour bike tour that afternoon and we Saw a number of spots on the outskirts that are more work to reach...like the Soviet "liberation" monument, Peter the Great's summer residence and the city's less transformed areas.

Estonia is still 40% Russians as the Soviets shipped in workers for their great factories. The Russians do not assimilate and there are underlying problems.

Finland

2011-08-10T15:54:00.003-04:00

Part of Monday and all of Tuesday was spent in Helsinki. I took a 2-hour flight to get there. Helsinki is a beautiful, peaceful city. It is not overly large or with too many attractions, but it is easy to navigate and makes for some good walks.the churches in Helsinki are quite remarkable. I also ventured out by ferry to an island out in the harbor which was perfect for a sunny day.

The Finns are separated from their Scandinavian neighbors by both language and history. It technically is not part of Scandinavia because of this. Their language more closely resembles something closer to the Far East (like Mongolia) and their history includes being a part of Russia's sphere of influence in the past. In fact, Finland has only been independent since 1917. Finns are a bit reserved. They must be very orderly as well. You can't get one to jaywalk. I felt like I could be arrested for crossing the street on a red. The locals sure won't no matter if the closest car is 300 yards away.

I enjoyed the intensely sweet strawberries and blueberries...intense because of the short growing season here but also very long days in summer. Helsinki also has a sizable Nepalese population (go figure) and I love their food, so had to try some of that.

Amsterdam

2011-08-07T15:30:00.007-04:00

Sorry everybody, but I am not sure this website will cooperate enough with my iPad to post pictures while on my trip. If you have Facebook access, I have been posting some there.

Amsterdam is happening everywhere. This is a seriously busy city. Maybe I'm just not used to Europe in the peak of summer but there are people everywhere. So many things define this city. There are the canals, more than Venice. Bicycling is huge here and it feels every bit like China in that sense. In the busy parts of the city, there is marijuana smoke everywhere.

I took a train in yesterday after landing in Dusseldorf, Germany. I had to transfer FOUR TIMES so you couldn't relax and make a mistake. The hostel is great. The building is literally a former brothel. In fact, my room is called "the brothel"! No worries, it's no different than any other hostel lodging and is a very friendly place...outside of the fact my room is "themed" too and has naked lady pictures on the walls! I met Courtney, from Colorado, here this weekend and we rode rental bikes throughout the all of Amsterdam for hours today.

The Anne Frank House brought the drama of the Holocaust to life. The canals are beautiful. They aren't as creative as Venice's but are a vital part of the city persona still.

The best part so far? It easily is trading the mid 90s of Tennessee out for the upper 60s here...so nice!

In Search of New Places in Northern Europe - August 2011

2011-08-06T17:12:00.006-04:00

Hang on because we are about to spend 16 days in 9 different countries in Europe. Can't you tell I really do belong on "The Amazing Race"? I went to Norway for 4 days back in 2000 and really miss it. That's the inspiration for this trip actually. Unfortunately, once I found out just how expensive Norway is, I had to expand the trip out some.

So we (yeah, you're coming along) are starting by landing in Germany and promptly taking a train to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. As usual, I'm going to keep you in the dark but look for Amsterdam updates starting this weekend.

China - Final Thoughts

2010-04-27T11:31:00.003-04:00

China surprised me in many ways. I think perhaps the biggest surprise to me was the food. I went into the trip scared to death that I would starve. I have never been one to like rice and the very few culinary experiences, besides pad Thai into Asian/American cuisine had left me running. But in the end and after over two weeks in China, I believe there was only one dish on the entire trip that I did not totally enjoy (the meat pancakes in Beijing). The food takes a little getting used to, but I thought it was absolutely delicious. I'll be interested to try the American version at home sometime. I may yet still run from it, but the real authentic Chinese food was great.

China also surprised me by showing just how modern it has become. The days of Chairman Mao and the hardline Communist economy is over. China is moved as warp speed into the 21st Century. It is happening so swiftly that even the Chinese government or the rest of the world knows where this will lead. The world needs to take notice because China is quickly becoming a superpower.

But with China's swift and unfettered growth, the pollution was everything I imagined. China truly has an environmental catastrophy on hand. Much of the country reminds me of Los Angeles on one of its worst days. Clean air is difficult to find. Clean water is no different. Desertfication threatens to claim Beijing and the country has major water shortage and other environmental issues over vast areas of the country. How will China cope as they continue to grow at a 8 - 10% clip. How will they manage as the population becomes more affluent and the number of vehicles double, triples, etc, over the next few years?

And I'm not even touching the subjects of news censorship, the heavy handed rule of many of the minority groups and religion freedoms.

I feel like I barely touched the surface of China knowing there are so many favorable places to see within the country, but at the same time I have learned and have experienced so much.

Canada's Baffin Island and the Arctic Ocean from 35,000'

Kunming

2010-04-26T14:29:00.007-04:00

Kunming was to the final leg of my journey. The 20 hour train ride in the overnight couchette/sleeper was to be the final train leg. I thoroughly enjoy train travel and especially the overnight trips. They are a great way to wind down, enjoying both the countryside at a leisurely pace and also a chance to just sit back and read, eat, play cards and chat without any worries. It's also a great time to catch up on blogs and to also for the next few days and their activities.

Our group arrived in Kunming early on Sunday morning. Kunming is located far into the South of China, very far inland from the Pacific Ocean and not all that far east of the Tibetan Plateau. It seems the further south you travel in China, the more relaxed the pace is. Kunming is another Chinese megacity of 6-7 million people. The air here in Kunming was cleaner, the traffic more peaceful and the pace of life slower. I wouldn't compare it entirely to the West, but it is as close as I've seen it so far in China. Kunming is very ethnically diverse. There are 26 different distinct Asian ethnic groups that reside in the area. It is not far at all from the borders of both Laos and Thailand and has a sub-tropical climate that they call an "eternal spring" both due to the low latitude and also the city's elevation (6,200').

On our final day, our group took had a local driver take us out into the countryside to see the Stone Forest, which was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The "forest" is made up of colorful limestone ride spires that reach up into the sky. Most of the rock spires were of various light colored shades of blue. The spires were a bit surreal and reminded me of fake-painted toy rocks...maybe a creation you mind find in a theme park. The park was crowded, but most of the groups were guided and we quickly broke off to explore the windy and twisting paths among the maze of spires on our own. Once we got off the main trek, it took over an hour to find the path back to the throngs of tourists. In one of the main assembly areas, there were ethnic dances and music being performed by some of the locals dressed in colorful costume.

That night, our group of five got together for a delicious final meal and to say our goodbyes. We had clear, blue skies that evening after an afternoon thunderstorm and it was perhaps the only time on the trip we could see the bright blue sky from the clouds or the smog. Kunming certainly was a pleasant one day stopover.

Ahead of me, I had a grueling day of travel ahead of me. I left the hotel at 5:30a on Sunday, taking a flight from Kunming back to Beijing (over 1000 miles and 2.5 hours). I had to clear Chinese customs and recheck my bag again. The flight back over the northern polar regions was another 13 hours. Which also followed more US customs checks and another security bag rechecking in NYC and then a final leg to Atlanta after a 4+ hour layover in NY. My flight didn't make it back into Atlanta until 11p the same day, all daylight and covering 30 hours from the time I woke up in Kunming. And yet, I still had the four hour drive back to Knoxville.

Chengdu

2010-04-24T17:25:00.006-04:00

After another 16 hour train ride, we arrived in another massive city. Chengdu is the fourth largest city in China with about eight million people. It's the capital of the Sichuan province, which is very well known for it's hot and spicy food. They do love their hot chili peppers here. Chengdu is considerably more laid back than the other cities we had visited to the North. People are more relaxed with their free time. It's less about business and more about fun. The traffic isn't as aggressive either. You can actually cross the street without the feeling that someone is gunning for you. And as we continue to move further south, the climate is a little warmer still (60s to 70) and continued wetter. Chengdu is somewhat close to the Tibetan plateau and gets alot of the cloud cover and showers that come out of the mountains.

Chengdu is also the focus of the conservation effort to save the giant pandas. It features a world class center, much like a nice zoo, where you can view the pandas and also red pandas. We took a guided trip to the center and saw about 15 of these giant pandas and also about ten of the much smaller and raccoon-like red pandas (the Knoxville zoo actually has a couple). Giant pandas are down to about 1500 in number world-wide and the center in Chengdu has about 80 in captivity, where they successfully breed pandas and they also live about ten years longer than they do in the wild.

We also had a hot pot dinner in Chengdu, much like the one in Zhongwei, but with a much spicier heat option in the center boiling bowl. I was afraid to even put my chopsticks in the center ring in fear that they might burst into flame from all of the chilis floating inside. Hot pot can include just about anything meaty or any vegetables that you can imagine. Think of it as a giant boiling soup and you just pick out the items that you want to eat.

Another activity in Chengdu took us to an ancient village that has been spruced up. The Chinese have also discovered the tourist trap and have dressed up this village much like you would expect from a Gatlinburg (but more tastefully done). There was lots of shopping and snacks along the streets.

We also finished our visit to Chengdu off with a stop at a Chinese disco on the final night. Disco isn't much different than a noisy smoky bar for the younger crowd. I think I was the oldest person there. It was very, very noisy and boisterous with lots of Chinese pop music. I was mercifully thankful that we got kicked out after 90 minutes because we weren't spending enough money to satisify the local establishment. The Chinese have just recently been getting their freedoms since about 1990 and have jumped into the new modern culture headfirst.

a little open air dentistry

Xi'an

2010-04-21T20:21:00.007-04:00

I am at the midway point of the trip as our train pulls into the city of Xi'an. Unlike Beijing and Zhongwei, it is a bit greener here in Xi'an as it is a little warmer and considerably wetter. Xi'an was an ancient city of tremendous importance back around 1000-1500 years ago. It was the terminus of the famous Silk Road that traveled inland from Europe all the way to China. Xi'an at its peak of importance was the largest city in the entire world with a population of over 2 million people. The modern Xi'an still retains a few of it's ancient past, but like most of China, it has grown up into quite the modern city.

We had two full days in Xi'an and three of us got together to ride bikes along the top of the ancient city walls. The entire central area of the ancient city is encircled by this enormous wall that takes nearly two hours to ride by bike. And unlike the city, the wall was nearly deserted which made for a nice peaceful ride and several great picture opportunities.

My original plans were to visit the ancient/holy mountain of Hua Shan, with some of its daredevil steps and walkways, but it rained the entire day and daredevil stairway climbs aren't the brightest thing to attempt on rain-soaked steps. Instead, our entire group went for most of the day to visit the famous Terracotta Warriors. The very first Chinese emperor, Qin, is buried in a tomb nearby over 2200 years ago. He was the first to unify the Chinese nation and built the original 4500 mile section of the Great Wall. He thought of himself as a deity and desired to have immorality and to extend his rule into the afterlife. He had many of his officials and comcubines buried alive with him. And for protection he had over 500,000 help him build an army of stone, called the Terracotta Warriors to protect him in this afterlife. Over 7000 individuals "soldiers" have been discovered since the original discovery was made back in 1974. The warriors are lifesize and made of stone and built in great detail. They surround the tomb in military formation with horses and chariots, archers, calvary and infantrymen. Each was a reallife representation of an actual soldier and were each individually handpainted. Not all of the soldiers have been uncovered yet and archelogical digs still continue.

On the last morning in Xi'an, a couple of us went to visit the Wild Goose Pagoda, which is an ancient 7th century towering Buddist Temple.

Traffic in Xi'an is pretty spectacular. The ride back from the pagoda featured some really bad congestion. Chinese drivers and pedestrians are just daredevils. It's frequent to witness some amazing manuevers individual drivers will make. You really have to be on your toes crossing the street and it's really difficult to watch when you're riding in the taxi. Chinese drivers make up about 3% of the vehicle traffic in the world, but they make up a staggering 25% of the traffic fatalaties.

Desert Safari

2010-04-18T15:59:00.006-04:00

This morning we met up with our hired locals for an overnight camel safari into the desert. I wasn't sure how authentic the experience would be since the surroundings in Zhongwei are really dry, but they used the land extensively for farming. We met up with the two local farmers/guides on the edge of one of this greenhouse farms where eight camels were waiting for our group.

There weren't any lessons necessary as we hopped right onto our camels and were off. Camels aren't the smoothest ride. I don't even care for riding on horses, but they are pretty manageable to work with. We worked in caravan style...one camel tied to another in a line. We rode out of the farm and were into sand dunes within an 30-45 minutes where we spent the rest of the next 24 hours...totally in isolation and the surroundings very much like you might envision in the Sahara with lots of sand with an occasion dry shrub.

We rode for about 4-5 hours with a one hour stop for lunch, mostly fruit. Camels are very tiring to ride. We had plenty of padding, but camel riding uses leg muscles you would never think about using. When I would get off of mine, I could barely even stand.

We pulled up to our campsite around 4p...in a bowl surrounded by high dunes in all directions to block out the wind. We played cards and had a great feast that night. Our feast consisted of pork and veggies and rice, all Chinese style, which is hard to describe how tasty it was. We also had grilled tofu and sweet potatos and spiced lamb and pork on the grill that night.

It got a little chilly during the night, but our campfire kept us warm until bedtime. Thankfully we didn't freeze. I think it got down to about 45 degrees.

Who would have thought of a camel safari in China?

Earmarks

2010-04-17T20:53:00.005-04:00

So as the Chinese discovered capitalism in the 90s, they have also discovered government earmarks. Maybe they are indeed becoming more and more like the West. I'll explain why later.

We freshened up on Friday morning after a long train ride at our locate hotel in Zhongwei (population of about 100,000, which is "small" enough not to register on a Chinese map when there are nearly 100 cities of over 1 million people). We discovered the quickly that the city was not the tourist attraction, but WE instead were the tourist attractions. Zhongwei probably isn't visited very often by Westerners. The Chinese probably have not seen too many of us to often, so this group of five are quite the oddity in the city. The older population in particular had a fascination with us as we got total stares and all eyes were upon us as we made the brief walk to our hotel (no hostel this time). I, being the only male in the group, get an entire room to myself at each stop. That's a pretty nice luxury since I can dump the entire contents of my 40+ pound backpack and 10 pound daypack all over the room.

We cleaned up and had lunch. Again, we had some locals peering into the window initially when we were seated to see this fascinating creatures huddled around the table. Our meal was hot pot. I had no idea what hot pot was before today. It's essentially a big table with a stove in the middle and a big pot of water and some really good food is dumped inside to cook. Ours was loaded up with lamb, beef, lotus flower roots, some green stuff that was good, bamboo shoots, among other things. It was very good. I'm getting better with my chopsticks. My friends, Haiyi and Joel, will know how honorary Chinese I am if I can prove my chopsticks worth when I return.

When this had our local taxi guide and driver take us out into the desert for a view of the desert landscapes and a view of the Yellow River. We are far inland so the mightly Yellow River is not quite so mighty from here, but it is still powerful. It is the second longest river in China and holds an unimaginable quantity of silt from the desert and other places (not to mention the pollution as well).

We took a sheepskin raft float trip for a few miles down the Yellow...Class I only. The sheepskin raft was a rickety framework of "sticks" held together and floating on top of several "balloons" of sheepskin podlike things. You'll have to look at the pictures to get an idea. Let's just say we had a day to kill today.

We then visited a local outdoor amusement desert(ed) theme park. The Chinese had this brilliant idea recently to invest money in this area to help bolster their economy. Maybe it was stimulus money or a government earmark but the brilliant idea was to built some tourist infrastructure to bring people out into the sticks...er...sand to visit. I'm not sure if this park was a result, but the results were pretty humorous. The Chinese have built this little desert-like park with gates and turnstiles and attendants and a complete staff to man it...and yet there is hardly anyone there. They called it a 5-AAAAA tourist attraction. I suggest they stick to promoting their ancient cultures. They had dune buggy rides in the "park" (pay extra). They had camel rides (extra), which we are already doing tomorrow anyway. There were safari rides on top of jeeps and ATVs (extra) on top of the fees you already paid to enter and walk on the sand dunes. The worst part is that at each station you were greeted by Chinese attendants in military desert camo and ladies in blue hotel-like suits that would try to talk you into trying out each of the new different adventures.

I tried the buggy ($6) and got to ride for about 3-4 minutes covering two laps of their park. I wasn't about to try more.

The other side of the park had a chairlift descent down the dunefield to the Yellow River where other "attractions" awaited and there was also a zipline descent to the river along with a bungee tower. We left!

It was an interesting couple of hours trying to figure out what we had just seen. Proof that we didn't miss much..there were no tour buses of Japanese tourists pulling up to snap pictures of this AAAAA attraction in the outskirts of the Gobi Desert.

Train Travel

2010-04-16T08:04:00.005-04:00

We left Beijing on Thurs morning headed deep into the interior of China and the outskirts of Inner Mongolia and the Tenneger Desert (or the edges of the famous Gobi desert). To get there we had to endure a 22 hour train ride in an overnight "hard" sleeper car. I had done several overnights when I was in Europe but was not sure what to expect in China. Ended up that our "seats" on the train were in fact the six person sleepers. Our group of five got a "room" about the size of a king bed (really) with three berths on the left side stacked to the ceiling and three to the right side also stacked to the ceiling and a tiny aisleway in the middle about about two feet wide. There was a tiny compartment for luggage under one bed (about a foot and another tiny compartment near the ceiling. That was it! We were to spend the next 22 hours together in this room with our luggage starting at noon and going until 10a the next day. Just be thankful you were the lucky #6 that got to share the room with us on the trip, which a couple of fortunate souls got to do on a couple six hours shifts. The train had an aisleway outside of our room that ran the length of the train car and was about 30" wide...that was the loitering area outside of the room unless you wanted to go visit the dining car or the haze-filled smoking area between cars. I was very thankful that the interior of the cars themselves were non-smoking. Consider that China inhales 1/3 of the entire cigarette consumption in the world and you can imagine what the streets and restaurants are like.

Oh, and let's not forget that we have restrooms too. Each railcar had a bank of three sinks in a room where the sink drains inexplicable drained right into the floor at your feet. So if you stood to closely while washing your hands or brushing your teeth, you went back to your sleeper with sopping wet shoes. The Chinese find Western toilets a foreign concept. I've been told they see them as unsanitary because they are used to not find the restrooms cleaned frequently. You can understand that you would would not want to use a infrequently cleaned toilet seat either. Of course, the alternative is the "squat toilet". They are not as widespread in China in the tourist zones since the Olympics came about but they can frequently be found in almost all other areas. Trains are heavily used by the locals and by few tourists, so we were fortunate to be served 22 hours with the squat toilets. Thankfully I took care of pressing needs before the train. A squat toilet is nothing more than a hole in the ground emptying out onto the tracks. Don't cringe too much at that. Eastern Europe trains do the same with their wastes. You just aren't allowed to visit the potty when you are approaching a station. If you have riden a train with any frequency you can imagine the difficulties of performing the squat while the train is in motion. Good luck indeed. Oh, and when you are done, there is a bucket of fresh water to wash away any of those who didn't quite hit the target precisely.

Our group did quite well surviving our 22-hour ordeal. We had a few informal Mandarian Chinese lessons along the way. I read about 150 pages of a book (Bill Bryson type travel adventure) about Chinese culture and travel as well. We rolled into the next part of our adventure in the town of Zhongwei the next morning. You'll have to look really hard on your map to find Zhongwei. Maybe a better search would be to Google "Yinchuan, China" and that will give you an idea of the location. So that is part I of China train travel down. We have three more overnight adventures still yet to come.

Pumpkin soup

Scams and more scams

2010-04-15T18:23:00.004-04:00

Apparently, to learn English fluently in China means a life of professionally scamming tourists. I've never seen such an widespread and effective effort to scam tourists as I have seen here.

Some reasons I believe is because it is easy to decipher who are Western tourists. Anyone that travels this far to reach China obviously isn't poor either.

I have been approached many, many times already. My guess is at least 90% of the times I am approached by a local...it is for scamming purposes. How sad is that? I would like to connect with the locals here in Beijing, but I fear that make that impossible. Trust no one is my new motto.

Scam 1 - this one is very widespread across the entire city's tourist infrastructure. You have random locals just walk and and try to start conversations with you (to test their English or just to make friends while they also are traveling). Westerners are already a curiousity so it makes sense. Unfortunately, in neither case, is that the true intention. The first person was a male and after ten minutes of conversation wanted me to meet his sister (who spoke even better English). They were both very, very chatty and completely took me out of my "schedule". Well...after 15 minutes of this...they request that you join them for coffee or tea. Scam! Why...I'll tell you later. I got semi-suckered on Day 3.

Scam 2 - it's almost always girls that approach you. They are always younger. This one grabbed my attention just hours later in the Forbidden City (that's like getting pulled aside inside of an open-air museum...a safe zone? I think not). They took me into a side room of a restaurant to show me their school's artwork. The young lady did a very fine job of explaining the artwork professionally and what all of the Chinese characters and paintings mean. The spill goes on for nearly ten minutes...and that's when you realize she has invested far too much time in this for it to be "Free". Sure enough, the heavy sells pitch begins and so does the guilt. I ended up with a nice piece of artwork, but it set me back about $40 as well. Good deal...not too bad, but it can be had for cheaper in other parts and certainly on your own terms.

Scam 1 revisited - ah yes, they are persistent. I've had random people try to get my attention many times, but these two particular girls were better than the rest and got me started in conversation when I had nowhere in particular to go. They "oodle" over me and butter me up for awhile and then insist they follow me along to go investigate the shopping scene (my original intent). Sure enough, here comes the punch line to go for some refreshments and I kinda agreed to go (theyed seemed innocent) but with some reservations. We bypassed McDonald's (uh oh) and go up to the second floor of this semi-deserted bar. They asked me if I wanted anything and I insisted I did not. They eventually bought some tea and almonds and said I could share some with them. Thoughout the entire chat they kept insisting that I try some of the tea and almonds and I continued to refuse (onto them? yeah). At the end, I started to get some pressure from them that I was being rude not to drink/eat with them. But then the bill comes...$50!!!

My guess is...their plan was to put the entire bill in my lap, but it made it somewhat difficult since I had not eaten or drank anything at all. So they insisted that I split the bill with them, which I refused as well. Talk about guilt and loathing...they were putting it on me. I finally plopped down $7 and told them that was the best I was going to do for them for their "company" and then proceeded to march off. One of the girls was pretty ticked while the other seemed a bit...well, I dunno, realistic to their failures. In the end, I have no earthly idea what the entire scam was about. Was there a kickback with the restaurant involved? It didn't seem so. Was it a way to get a free expensive meal or a thrill to watch a tourist swirm??? Lame. I dunno. I was approached by a single girl one more time that night and I almost just wanted to flip her off on the spot without another word coming out of her mouth!!!

So when in China, don't go it alone. None of this happens when I'm with the group.

The Great Wall

2010-04-15T04:11:00.005-04:00

It's Day 4 now and our last final day in the Beijing area. This morning we are taking a group trip and we are off to see the Great Wall of China. We left the hostel at about 10a and I was a little concerned because I had been told to arrive very early at the wall. This is one of the joys of booking through a small size travel company and arranging a private tour through the hostel using local guides...we visited a little touristed section the Great Wall that was in great condition and which was visited by perhaps a total of 20 other fellow tourists while we where there. How cool is that?!!!

I read some horror stories of the most visited section, Badaling, and the tours originating from Beijing to there. The crowds are suffocating and you can be forced to endure other add-ons such as visits to jade factories or other money-making ventures. Thankfully, our trip was nothing more than an authentic Great Wall experience. This section was completed about 300 or so years ago, one of the final sections completed to keep out the Monguls to the north. The wall was completed in sections, so some places are nearly 2000 years old and barely a trace can be found while others are still fairly new and in their infancy. This section was particularly steep, as I envision most sections of the wall are. We probably walked along the top for about 2 miles and probably ascended 1500 to 2000 vertical feet from the point where we started. The views were tremendous and you could see the snaking wall go on for miles along the ridges and mountaintops in both directions.

On the way back to Beijing and while still in the countryside, we stopped in at a small local establishment and had a very late lunch. The owners and some of their staff were busy outside skinning some unfortunate beast who was probably the tasty meal for some fortunate souls the following day. Meals in China are served banquet or "family-style", which is to say that several dishes are ordered with large portions and it is a free-for-all for everyone at the table to partake. For somebody that was scared of ASian food just a couple years ago, I find most of the dishes to be quite good and this restaurant was no exception. Tofu typically shows on the menu. We had green string bean mixed in with pork. Of course there is rice, and other meaty and veggie dishes (usually one of each mixed together). But the special menu item today was...donkey. Yum! I had my reservations. The meat was served cold and it looked exactly like roast beef. And...I loved it! It's very healthy and a lean meat as well.

Donkey wasn't the only culinary experience of the day. That night, our small group visited the night food market at the center of the city. There are lines and lines of booths hawking tasty unique dishes for the locals and appalled tourists alike. You had your choice of seahorse, locusts, fried strawberry/kiwi, snake and silkworm larvae. I decided to go for most bang for my yuan and give the fried scorpion a try. For about $1.50, you pick a kebab of about five LIVE small scorpions and they deepfry them for you for about 30 seconds so that they are served quite fresh. Scorpion is quite crunchy, as you might imagine. Just be sure to eat it tailfirst, or with the tail broken off, as I am sure the intact stinger might just hurt the tongue a little.

Beginnings in Beijing

2010-04-14T06:23:00.006-04:00

I visited the main iconic highlights on my first full day, which was before our group was to meet at 6p. This took me to Tianenmen Square and into the Forbidden City. Tiananmen is the largest public square in the world. It his absolutely huge. Crossing the front is the portrait of the Communist Party's PRC leader when he assumed power in the 1940s, Chairman Mao. There is not alot visible in the square, as I am sure the Chinese government would prefer there not be too many reasons for the general public to loiter there. Security is omnipresent. I found a light security presence visible at most every other major public sight, but nothing overwhelming. One of the first impressions I have had the first two days is how capitalistic the Chinese society has become in many and most respects.

If you did not know or were not aware of the authoritarian government, you would probably find many commercial parts of Beijing bustling like few other places in the developing world. Things change monthly in Bejing and I have heard that visits that occur every year bring about many changes. Used to, Beijing and China were known for their heavy volume of bicycles, which was the main mode of transport. That has been replaced with a new cheap (30 cents per ride) state-of-the-art mass transit subway and thousands of cars. Beijing's population of 17-20 million sales nearly one thousand new cars every day!

The Forbidden City is closeby to Tianenmen, so I went there next. The Forbidden City was home to the Chinese emperor and the nobility for centuries and up until the imperial system was abolished in China's efforts to modernize in 1911. It's amazing to think about how vastly different China is today from the system back then in 1911 to where it is now. In the Forbidden City, the emperor and the nobility lived completely and totally separate from the peasant society. The general public was strictly forbidden to enter.

At the end of the first day, I met my group and we got together to enjoy a Beijing traditional Peking duck dinner at a local establishment. Meals in China are typically served "family banquet style" where many dishes are selected and everyone at the table digs in, with chopsticks of course. The duck was delicious. The other menu items were too as well. The Chinese like their food spicy, so you have to be selective in your choices or you can quickly find yourself overwhelmed.

As for my group, we are small in number. There are five of us in total with me being the only male. Our group leader is Jenny Lu, with her adoptive first name. I'll introduce the others later.

The second day took us on a hutong tour of the Bejing ghettos. The term, hutong, is a Mongolian word, and is used only in Beijing to represent the busy residential areas with small and narrow passageways. The hutongs are very traditional and a majority of the Beijing public lived in hutongs until the Chinese government has made a policy of transitioning into larger residential complexs, with alot less character. The destruction of these hutongs and relocation of the families has been a major controversial topic in China. Unlike the shantytown favelas in Rio, the hutongs of Beijing feel almost completely safe. Also unlike the favelas, the government has complete and total control here, unlike in Brazil's favelas.

I struck out in the afternoon on my own to explore the famed Temple of Heaven Park. This will end up being the highlight of my Beijing city visit. The park is a huge ceremonial grounds for the ancient and semi-recent Imperial sacrificial grounds of the Taoist. I won't claim to know anything about the religion but the Chinese emperor and his processor would fast and abstain from meat, music and sex twice yearly for three days prior to the ceremony. It involved animal sacrific at the park and was meant to bring good harvest fo r the entire nation for the entire year. The ceremony was quite elaborate and any mistakes were always suggestive of a bad omen for anticipated bad luck that upcoming year. The Chinese temples there are some of the largest traditional and most extensive in the nation. Huge throngs of tourist come out to view the monuments. The entire sacrificial system, which was aimed toward the Imperial System, ended when the emperor was forced to abdicate in 1911.

Also, as pictured below, I had some time to visit the Lama Temple, home to the Beijing's Tibetan Buddist population...

Tibetan Buddist monk & a Tibetan prayer wheel

Decisions and the Start - China 2010

2010-04-12T08:08:00.000-04:00

It has not been that long since I last blogged from South America. One of the benefits of taking a long trip at the end of a calendar year is that you can take another not too far into the start of a new year. I had originally considered going to Australia this year, but quickly changed my mind knowing that China was a possibility and that the Chinese currency, the yuan, will likely soon revalue. At the present, China is quite affordable for the American, but it may not soon stay that way. I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity while I still had the chance.

This year's journey includes a similar format as the South American one. I absolutely loved the social group trip so I decided to sign up with GAP's competitor, Intrepid Travel, for one of their China itineries that sounded really intriguing, "Backroads to Kunming". I didn't want to just do the standard tourist trail trip in China of Beijing/Xi'an/Shanghai like a number of outfitters do. I elected to go for one that gets you back into some lesser known areas and I hope this itinerary accomplishes that.

I started my trip with a drive to Atlanta and a flight to NYC-JFK and then a direct route from NYC right over the Northern Polar region to Beijing, a 13-hour flight to a new time zone 12 hours ahead of the United States. I was concerned about jetlag but have actually had little trouble so far. I took sleeping pills the first night but have not since. I had no trouble getting to my first night's stay in a hostel either. I took a taxi. Taxis are cheap here. A 20 minute ride cost me about $17 and I think the driver took it upon himself to collect a small tip or it would have been even cheaper.

Home...concluding remarks on South American and GAP Adventures

2009-11-28T20:44:00.000-05:00

I am now sitting in the airport in Rio finishing up my blog entries for this trip. It's Saturday night and my flight leaves in two hours at 10:30p. In reflection, my 22 days in South America have truly been a great experience. I enjoyed the new scenery, cuisines and people that I have gotten to know in a part of the world I have never experienced before. I also got to explore a new way to travel for me through GAP Adventures. While I have not had a chance to reflect and compare this trip with some past travel experiences that have also been amazing, this one has been very unique and satisfying.

Main Memories-
Buenos Aires/Argentina - beef, beef everywhere. The city is vibrant and comparable to those in Europe. It lacks somewhere in "attractions" and was enjoyable for
the time I spent there, but will not be something I crave to return to, other than a short layover.

Uruguay - more beef, flat but interesting drives, a bit haphazard. Cannot say I ever have a reason to return but I was glad I got to experience it for the four days or
so we were in the country.

Iguacu Falls (Argentina/Brazil) - stunning and one of the most memorable stops I have ever had. The falls are as immense and surreal as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Valley. I'm
not sure anything can top Yosemite Valley to me personally, but Iguacu comes close.

Coastal Brazil near Rio - mountainous coastlines, amazing panoramas, wonderful beaches, juice!, contrast between Copacabana and the favelas living side-by-side, diverse Atlantic rainforests

As for GAP Adventures, I highly recommend this type of experience. GAP is not the only company that provides a similar experience, but I really loved the social element of the trip. There was little downtime and I never felt alone. I met people that I will share this experience with from around the world. We all hope to stay in touch and hopefully I will get to meet and visit with many of them in their home countries. And maybe, I'll even get to travel with one of them again. The wealth of travel that each of them has provides me a network that will be invaluable in the future.

Rio de Janeiro - favela tour

2009-11-27T21:37:00.005-05:00

Friday's excursion provided a chance to see the stunning contrasts of high society in Rio and the life of the vast majority of those living in Rio, those that live in the favelas. My American friend born in Brazil, Rafael, tells me that 8% of Brazil is the "haves" while the rest are the "have nots". Many of the have nots live in the favelas (slums). You've probably seen pictures in the past of the favelas in Rio or Brazil. We actually got the chance to tour such a favela.

Markus, our tour leader, leads trips into the Rocinha favela everyday. Rocinha represent just one of over 150 such favelas in Rio, but this particular one is the largest in all of Brazil. It's an opportunity for him to spread the story of the favelas and the day-to-day life of the people that live there. The favelas of Rio are a very, very violent place but the people seem to be very happy and most are content with the lives that they have. Markus shared that they surveyed many in the Rocinha favela and 83% were happy and content to stay as they were.

Markus, our tour guide...

Our tour began at the entrance to the favela, which sprawling up into the mountain in all directions before us. We had been warned about what to take pictures of and who not to take pictures of. 99% of the people living there are just the poor living their daily lives, working in the city and having an active part of the Rio's society. But 1% of those in the favela represent the violent lives that make the news in Rio and gives it its violent reputation. For this 1% represents the drug dealers, drug lords and gangs that run and control the favelas. The Brazilian government has no control of the favela or life there. The de facto government is instead the big bosses of the favelas, many of which live elsewhere under a veil of secrecy and possibly reaching far up into the government in Brazil and even surrounding countries.

Markus felt that our his tours were safe, as the boss of the Rochina favela had decreed that the gringos (whites) were off-limits. We started the tour by riding on the backs of motorcycles up the winding streets of the favela...talk about a hair-raising experience.
Traffic was uncontrolled chaos among those winding streets with motorbikes, buses and people everywhere. We rode on the backs of randoming chosen drivers, whom Markus assummingly knows, as they rode up. The ride lasted for about five minutes. We then started our descent from the mountain through the maze of narrow "streets". The favela's population has exploded in the last ten years...nearly doubling.

Markus brought us face-to-face with the locals. We interacted with local artists/painters who were using their talents and skills to organize a gallery and display their work. They chose productive routes to harness their talents rather than using it for dealing drugs. The drug life is very enticing to some. It provides handsome rewards, an exciting lifestyle, but usually at the price of their lives before they even reach 30. Markus also brought us to a local bakery, a market selling handmade bracelets made from colored telephone cable wires and also a daycare. The daycare was a not-for-profit that was established to help the working poor of the favela and their childcare needs. Each instance showed ways that life in the slums wasn't all about drugs and violence.

Unfortunately, the violence is ever present. The day we were there at Rocinha's, there was a war going on in another favela in Rio. We were in Rocinha as we passed TV monitors showing the news as the police entered another favela. The police are hated and despised in the favela, obviously by the drug dealers but also by everyone else in the favela. The stories he shared were griping. The wars can last for a month and can shut down whole sections of the city as these wars affects the lives of everyone in Rio, as the impacts are not limited to just the slums.

I've included some pictures of my four-hour trip into Rocinha. I am also including a link to Markus' organization doing work in the Rocinha favela... www.bealocal.com

All of the pipes and power lines in the favela are just a tangled mess. Wide streets have narrowed to just alleyways. The boundaries of the favela are set, so there is nowhere else to build but up...and up they do go.

Rio de Janeiro

2009-11-26T21:35:00.001-05:00

Rio de Janeiro is an amazingly visually appealing city, probably easily topping the list of
cities in that category that I have been to. It is a sprawling city of great contrasts as well. Rio is the second largest city in Brazil and I believe the third largest in South America. The metro area has well over 13 million people at least estimate. I imagine the exact number is far from known.

Our group arrived in Rio on Thursday afternoon after four hours of travel from Ilha Grande. We would have arrived sooner except for the massive traffic jam entering the city. Unfortunately, two bicyclist had been struck and killed along the main highway entering the city. I wasn't looking but it was pretty graphic according to some in our group and stuck with them for awhile.

My hotel for two nights was along the famed Copacabana Beach. Copacabana has many similarities with Miami Beach. Copacabana was a major hit a generation ago and is still heavily visited, but how been surpassed by Ipanema Beach as the glamour spot in Rio.

Behind the beach at Copacabana is situated the Christ the Redeemer statue that prominently overlooks the city. To the left is the tramways leading up Sugarloaf Mountain.

Most of our group booked a city tour that started as soon as we arrived. It took us to both major landmarks, Christ the Redeemer on Corcavado Mtn and the Sugarloaf tram. The views from both were absolutely stunning. The view from Corcovado was truly like standing on a high pinnacle with nothing but sky surrounding you. I don't believe I have ever been on a mountain or skyscraper before that gave me such a surreal feeling at standing on
the top of Corcovado in the prescense of Christ the Redeemer. The statue was built 80 years ago and the stance of Christ in the statue was decided upon by the people of the city.

Sugarloaf is very impressive as well. The tramcar dangles high above the trees as it makes two cable car ascents to reach the top.

One part of Rio that I really loved was the "juice" cuisine. I always enjoy my trips into Central/Eastern Europe because a wide variety of fruit juices are always readily avaiable, stuff that you could never find at home in the states. We are so deprived with just orange, apple and grape juices!!!

In Rio, they take it to the next level. There were at least 5 and maybe as many as 10 juice "bars" within a block of our hotel. These juice bars offer FRESH selections of as many as twenty different juices, such as cherry, passion fruit, mango, pineapple, banana and fruits you have probably never even heard of, such as a delicious caju juice. The availability in Rio was certainly another highlight to the city, certainly for me at least.

Ilha Grande, Brazil

2009-11-25T22:32:00.002-05:00

We have been on our own Brazilian paradise island called Ilha Grande for the last 2 1/2 days. We arrived after a two hour bus ride and two hour ferry to the island. Ilha Grande was inacessible to the public just 15 years ago, as it was used by the Brazilian government
as a prison site/island for decades. The island is fairly sizeable. It takes about six hours to encircle it by speed boat. The population pretty small, just 500. It's commonly used as a cruise ship stop, probably coming out of/to Rio, which is just an hour's drive away. At least travel magazine that I read listed Ilha Grande as one of the Top 10 "island paradises you have never heard of".

Our group took it easy the first day when we arrived in the afternoon. We've been a pretty cohesive group of 15, so we routinely have dinner together. The couples sometimes splinter off, but most of the rest of us stay together for dinner or break off into small groups for activities.

On our first full day, we hired a boat to take off out to some secluded coves and beaches to have a cookout. There was plenty of snorkeling and we had purchased a soccer ball to throw around in the water. Another GAP group had joined us, so the numbers had now swelled to over 30 for the day. We had steak, chorizo (smoked sausage), hotdogs, salad and bread to go with our meal. We were out on the water for six hours. You can imagine a number
of us had sunburns as the sun is nearly directly overhead in the afternoon this far into the tropics.

On the second full day, my Danish friend, Mathias, and I set off on a hike over the top of the mountain and to a semi-deserted beach on the other side. The hike ended up being over 9 miles and climbed a 1500-foot mountain pass just below the island's tallest peak. It was a cooler day than we had been but the humidity is as bad or worse than Florida in the peak of summer, especially hiking through more Atlantic rainforest.

We found a wonderful pizza/pasta spot in town with some reasonable prices and ended up eating there at least three times while we were on the island. I found some mango and passion fruit juices, but nothing fresh. I'm hoping Rio has some of the frest stuff to try.

Today is Thursday morning and we're crossing back over to the mainland and then taking the short trip into Rio de Janeiro this morning. I'll have 2 1/2 days in Rio to conclude the trip. The GAP tour ends on Friday morning, so many of us will start heading home or to other planned excursions/trips over the weekend.

Our digs...

More foods of Brazil...

Paraty

2009-11-22T19:52:00.006-05:00

So it's 24 hours and two buses later and we have arrived at the coastal town of Paraty (Pear-a-chee). It's a short stay...two nights and a full day. The agenda is a full day of activities with a very local outfit that is to show us all of the highlights on the outskirts of their town.

A little background...Paraty was founded in the 1600s as a result of the discover of gold in the mountains in the region. Paraty was the coastal town that marked where the gold was transported on to Rio de Janeiro and on to Portugal. Paraty was a frequent target of pirates and so they built the town with curved roads so that any invaders would quickly get confused and lost if they needed a quick escape back to the port.

Our small group started early in the day and we were taken to the local surfers' beach with so pretty high breaking waves...high enough to wisely not go out too deep the water and the rip currents. We then traveled on my foot for about a mile along the beach and the rocky outcroppings to an enclosed cove hemmed in my some huge volcanic boulders. It was a great spot for some snorkeling.

Our next stop was a real treat. The local black community was putting on a dinner for their association with some very, very authentic Brazilian food and live samba music. There were about 150 people there in the afternoon outdoor pavilion setting and our small group were the ONLY tourist there.

For about $10, we got a good meal of fish (cooked with plantains without the skin or even the bones removed from the fish), rice, pork sausage and black beans. Just check out the picture as I can't describe everything on the plate. It was very delicious meal and we were treated to the music and dancers afterward.

(pictured from left to right seated...Wendy (NYC), Seamus (Australia), Enzo (France) and Jasper (Holland))

Our trip wasn't over as we then went to the local swimming hole. I wish I could post the videos here (go to my Facebook page if you want to see) but there was a rock "slide" with water running down it, much like what you can find in some spots in the North Carolina mountains. This is in the rainforest instead. The locals were daring and had perfected their slide so well that they would take off on the rocks after a full sprint and glide down the slide nearly a hundred yards on their feet...not their butt like you would expect to slide...but on their FEET! We did it the convention way.

I'll eventually post the video on Facebook of the "sliders"...they were doing it all the way down the face of this rock...

And finally they took us to a local distillery, not much bigger than someone's backyard moonshine still. I'm not sure exactly what the drink was they were producing, but it
have differed too much from rum, as it was made from fermenting sugar cane.

Much of the Atlantic rainforest in Brazil along the coast has been destroyed for crop cultivation, but there are still a few strands remaining and it was nice to spend part
of the day there.

It's Monday morning now...we have finished up with Paraty and are on a local bus and then ferry on our way to the very secluded island between Paraty and Rio de Janeiro called Ilha
Grande.

(pictured...Bhavisha (London), Enzo & Wendy from front to back)

Paraguay

2009-11-20T20:48:00.002-05:00

We are still in Foz do Iguacu today and had a couple of optional tours to take, in which I elected to do both. Our first excursion was to the super massive Itaicu Dam just outside of town and on the Brazil/Parguay border. The dam project was started in 1975 and the final generator wasn't in place until 2007. It is the largest dam in the world in power generation and second only to the Three Gorges Dam in China in overall capacity.
The Itaicu dam is so massive that it supposed 25% of Brazil's power needs and 90% of Paraguay's. Think about that for a second...that is massive!

I'll post a couple pics. I don't have a wide screen camera close to large enough to show the entire dam's width. Just know the top of it stretched well over a mile.

Our second excursion was a little shopping tour just across the border into Paraguay. Many, many Brazilians and Argentinians line up daily to cross the border by car, motorcycle and on foot to illegally buy up electronic goods, alcohol and cigarettes
duty-free in Paraguay. The border is mayhem. It felt a whole lot what I envision some madness I envision in some SE Asia city. I'm not sure that's a fair comparison based upon what some of my tripmates tell me.

My main purpose for this tour was just to mark Paraguay off my map. I admit it. There's really no other good reason to go there. The country is one of the poorest in the world. It has an ongoing Yellow Fever epidemic. The interior of void of much of anything. At one point, I saw a couple of individuals sprinting across the bridge and the border and heave a taped up box over the side onto the first spotting of land on the Brazilian side. Who knows what was in that box (drugs?). We were only there for about two hours, but
I had had my share in probably one.

It's off to the coast now as we go into the final week of the tour. It's a 24-hour bus riding cycle overnight and most of the next day from the border region to the coast, via Sao Paulo. The coastal region should have some spectacular pictures and beachlife.

Brazilian Food

Iguacu Falls

2009-11-19T16:54:00.006-05:00

Iguacu Falls...the second largest waterfall in the world by volume. It is absolutely spectacular! We have been here on the Argentina and Brazil borders for the last two days observing the falls, the first day from the Brazilian side and the second from Argentina.

We spent Tuesday in the Uruguayan border, going to a hot springs and each having cheap massages...both relazing and nice.

Tuesday night, we took the overnight bus from Uruguay, back into Argentina, and to the border city of Foz do Iguacu.

Iguacu Falls has over 250 falls spread over a 1.7 mile area, each dropping approximately 230 feet. The falls were "up" on our visit so the views and walks were amazing.

We took panoramic shots. We did catwalks above the falls. We took a jungle float through the rain forest and finally we took the riverboat below the falls right up to the foot of the spray (just like the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls).

Iguacu is definitely the highlight of the trip and in my top 3 experiences ever.

Oh..and it's HOT here. Try about 95 degrees the last two days with heat indices probably around 105...and sunny skies. Air conditioning is only marginally functional too. Tomorrow we have a couple of activities planned and then over 20 hours of bus connections to our next destination.

Below: our approach by boat. I had the put the camera up in a dry bag at this point because there wasn't a stitch of dry clothing on me after we made our first pass.

A coati ...member of the raccoon family.

Montevideo, Uruguay

2009-11-15T19:27:00.006-05:00

Just finished up an entire weekend in Uruguay's capital city. It's not the most exciting country. It's been a good weekend, but nearly two days here is far too long. Montevideo is huge...well over a million people, but it doesn't have the wealth or feel of a city of comparable size, in say, the US. It also houses over half of the country's population, so Montevideo is very important to Uruguay.

The few happening things in Uruguay:
- the "meat market" down by the piers...there are many parrillas (open grill restaurants) set up inside the market. The food is all meat (steaks, chicken, chicken hearts! and sausages) and all delicious. I've been down there twice.

- there was a huge political gathering in the main square. There were over 1000 people there with several hundred large country flags waving and many, many samba drums playing. Uruguayans are quite a passionate people. It's even more amazing watching people get excited over a political party/candidate. I can think of one I would have gotten this excited about.

Montevideo in pitures - I took a three hour bus tour this morning that was helpful pulling these together...

Uruguay countryside...land of the gaucho (South American cowboy)

Uruguayans favorite drink, mate, made from a local crush holly leave plant and drank like coffee through a metal straw that has a filter...EVERYBODY has them

Any takers on this one?

My favorite building in Montevideo...right in their Independence Plaza

Colonia, Uruguay

2009-11-13T19:22:00.001-05:00

It is finally time to get out of Buenos Aires in what is probably the longest I've ever spent in one city on one visit, besides probably Washington DC. We left BA this morning, taking the fast boat ferry across the Rio de la Platta over to Uruguay. Our first stop, of several, is to be the old Portuguese port city of Colonia. Colonia was founded when the Portuguese needed a city close enough to BA to be their base port for illict trade into Argentina. The Spanish countered by later building Montevideo.

Colonia is small, only about 22,000 people. The old town is still intact with many buildings and streets looking the part of 1700. Our group took a taxi from the port for a short ride over to our hotel. It was one of the few minutes we were sharing rooms in a hostel-like environment, five of us guys to a single room. We quickly had lunch and were then free to explore the city on our own. I rented a mountain bike, great for the semi-hilly and cobblestoned streets.

Uruguay is the third wealthiest country in South America, so I'm not moving into the developing world with the next serious of stops. Uruguay has just enough poverty though to keep things interestng at times. The people are supposedly very friendly and proud of their small nation (only 3 million people) squeezed between larger Argentina and Brazil.

A large thunderstorm hit late in the afternoon, ending the bike ride a little early. It rained for a couple hours and then got very windy for the rest of the evening and overnight. Our group had a more intimate dinner that night at an in-house restaurant in the old city at a couple's house. The menu was exclusively in Spanish and was difficult and confusing to read, but I ended up with the salmon on a sweet citrus orange sauce (yum) with a side of thick-sliced homemade potato chips that were only slightly crisp. I wanted juice for my beverage but couldn't understand the waitress when she was taking orders and went with the safe bet of apple juice, since "manzana" was the only recognizable word I could gather from her verbal list. I thought she said "banana" at one point and jumped for the banana juice only to get a good laugh and jibbing from her to think I could have a banana beverage...lol. I tried. :/

We only briefly stay in Colonia and move on to Montevideo in the morning...the capital city that houses half of the entire country's population.

Aussie David is traveling with his newleywed wife, Eleanore, and is enjoying the chloresterol-bomb, chivito sandwich, shown here (steak sandwich with cheese, ham, egg, bacon, etc)

Empanadas - a South American favorite. They come with just about anything on the inside (but typically a meat and veggie mix)

Our cramped van transport from the ferry port. Shown - Eleanore from Australia, Anzo from France, back of Mathias from Denmark and Emilee (Anzo's newleywed wife). Some of them had multiweek trips prior to this GAP trip (Peru and Bolivia are popular stops...Bolivia sounds like a "hoot")

Day 5 - Buenos Aires

2009-11-12T18:31:00.003-05:00

It's my last day here in Argentina's capital. Reflecting back, my original opinion on BA wasn't a good one. This truly is a magnificent capital city and I have enjoyed my time here. In fact, I might even agree to an extent on it's designation as the "Paris of the Love". It was really by design to. There was wide sweeping boulevards in many areas of the city, many of them tree lined.
There is a cafe culture here as well. Another Paris comparison, the couples here are quite amiable. There is kissing everywhere. And one last Paris comparison, they have Paris' trash problems as well. There are trash cans on every street but the locals have no idea what to use them for. I've seen many people just tear the wraps or lids off of their food and dispose of the garbage right on the street. It's
a shame too, because they don't realize what a beautiful city they are trashing. And the trash is VERY noticeable. Thankfully, it's mostly just plastic and paper and none of the stinking, rotting food you'll find
in many cities.

The itinerary has been a little slower the last two days. I finally got to meet up with my touring group yesterday. For those of you that don't know, I'm doing most of this trip with a company called GAP Adventures(Great Adventure People). I have not done a trip with a touring company since I was in DC in middle school. This won't be you're typical guided tour. Our leader makes clear that he is exactly that, a group leader and not a tour guide. Much of this trip, we are on our own. They just set the city-to-city itinerary together for us, arrange the public transportation, suggest entertainment options and help when any predicaments come up.
It's exactly what I'm looking for really, as my sole purpose to using a touring company is to be a little more social on this solo trips of mine.

Last night, we had a group meeting. There are 16 of us in all, but not everyone showed last night. OUr group consists of people from Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands, Ireland, Aussies (of course), France, Germany and one other American,
who just happens to live in NYC but grew up in Franklin, TN. Many of them have traveled elsewhere, so I hope to pick their brains throughout the trip. Many of them have been to Cuba, so I'm interested in hearing about their experices
there as well.

We left our group meeting and had a group dinner. Zema, our Brazilian leader, as for suggestions...and I'm the first to buzz in. I was so disappointed with my steak dinner for two days prior that I requested red meat. I got my wish.
Not only that, he took us to a place that had a wait and a line out the door, which is something I've not seen all week. I ate a parrilla earlier in the week, but the one last night was an all-you-can eat affair. I forgot my camera,
which is a true shame because you should have seen the hunks of meat that were served. You took your plate to the grill and just pointed at the meat selection that you were interested in. There was chicken, pork, steak, ribs, sausage
and organ meet for the true carnivore. Top that off with a free dessert and also a full liter to drink (wine, beer or soft drink). You got all of that for the price equivalent of $15 (tip included). Wow!

Argentina is cheap for Americans. There's not too many places left in the world where that can be said with the currently devalued US$. Argentina has had major economic woes for a decade now. Their government default on their foreign
debt back in 2001. Part of the arrangement for a $10B IMF loan was the condition that they could no longer peg their currency with the US$, but it instead had to float on the open market. Considering their economic conditions at the time,
this was a very bad thing for Argentina and the peso and a very good thing for incoming world travelers, as Argentina instantly became a bargain overnight. The situation has improved considerably, but Argentina was hit hard again during the
current recession.

So how cheap is Argentina right now?

- my hostel for the first half of the week was $12/night. Typically I pay $20-25 or even $30-40 in Europe.
- I've had good street food for $1.50 (smoked sausage on a bun, ice cream, carton of OJ, etc). Most meals are 50-70% what you would pay back home.
- Subway fares are the rock-bottom single trip price of about 25 cents!!! I'm basically riding the subway for free. The taxi fare roundtrip last night was $6..for about three miles in the city, split three ways ($2 each)

The temps have started to warm. Today was around 83-84 with no clouds in the sky. It's been very nice all week.

Tomorrow starts another day and a new city and a new country. We take a ferry early in the morning for three hours across the Rio de la Plata to Colonia in Uruguay. Get your Google maps out, you'll need it for the rest of the trip.

An impromptu street band...

This skyscraper was built in the 1930s (around the same time as the Empire State Building and was the largest in Latin America at its time. It rises about 350 feet.

Monument to the dead of the 1982 Falkland Islands War between Britain and Argentina. Think the soldier's faces still appear bitter?

Puzzling Argentina questions...does cotton grow on trees?...the trees even "rain" here. It's happened a few times where it will be sprinkling under blue skies and it is spitting raindrops under the trees...weird stuff...answers hopefully to come...

Strike Out

2009-11-10T17:00:00.006-05:00

Day 3 - Still in Buenos Aires

Big plans...I'm going to the most popular neighborhood in BA today...all the way across town. I'm headed to the subway station and...there's picketers, lots of them, wearing the national light blue and white. South America is infamous for strikes, but comeon...it's Day 3 of my vacation and they choose today to go on strike. If you know me, I plan out everything to a T and all of those plans for today just got thwarted.

But all is well in the land of sun and 70s. I still made a good day of it. I just got back from a hour ride along the Rio de la Plata (the giant river/harbor/ocean inlet separating Argentina from Uruguay). It was beautiful out there. I had a delicious steak dinner at a parrilla just prior. I've had dulce de leche and banana milkshakes too. Hopefully all of this biking and walking is burning that off.

So let's back up to yesterday. If you've seen the movie, "Evita", you might recognize the former First Lady of Argentina's gravesite that I visited. Eva Peron and her husband led Argentina in the 40's and 50's before she died tragically of cancer in 1953. The cemetery where she is buried is a giant "city of the dead"...and that's no joke. I've never seen a more decorated cemetery in my life. There were thousands of tombs just like the ones pictured. All of the tombs were monuments to the rich and famous in society and housed stained glass windows, monuments, etc.

I got my Yellow Fever vaccination this morning. I'm supposed to get it ten days before I enter mosquito territory, but I got mine just a week prior. Hopefully those three little days doesn't result in death or anything tragic like that. Yellow Fever is fairly rare, but if you get it you have about a 5% death rate with no cure. Nice huh? It's free here...$100 in Knoxville. It was a no-brainer to me. Thankfully, the clinic I went to was pretty much setup for the sole purpose of this vaccine. Otherwise, it's no telling what I would have gotten with my Spanish.

Speaking of my Spanish, I was still on my sugar kick this afternoon and stopped at a windowside cafe that was advertising hot and cold coffee and chocolate drinks. They had some listings for "dulce de leche" (caramel), which is always delicious stuff and is pretty common here in desserts. They advertised a frasco (translated...a small bottle) of the stuff for about $3. Yum...hot or cold dulce de leche for just $3...give me some of that. I order...paid...and she came literally with a jar of caramel sauce...lol. Um...let's just say that's not what I was expecting AT ALL. I guess I'll have something to go with those bland biscuits/rolls my hostel considers "breakfast" in the mornings. Those might actually turn out pretty well now.

Tomorrow I meet with my touring group in the evening. I don't think we have any plans tomorrow except just a change of residence. Hopefully, that goes smoothly. The fact the subway system is out doesn't make me happy about that tho.

I've been told by a couple of people that I need to be posting more pictures. Conforme!

The second to last picture is the Congress. The Capitol building was built in 1906 and modeled after the one in Washington.

And I swear, with this last picture, you might think I'm in DC, but I'm really not. They have a white obelisk here as well, surround by PLENTY of traffic.
So BA is starting to take shape as the "Paris of the South". Two more days here. I'll explain more once I've had the complete picture. Adios!

Buenos Aries: First Impressions? These people sleep in really late.

2009-11-08T19:16:00.003-05:00

It started off so quietly early this afternoon walking the streets of Buenos Aires. But once they woke up, I found them to be just a little bit, well...crazy. I come back to that, but I should let you know how I got there.

My flight landed in BA (Buenos Aires) a little early and uneventfully at 7:20a. I've learned to take my time in a new city/country...make sure you get your ATM money, your maps, a snack, cleaned up...b/c you never know what you're going to get hit with once you step out of the "safe" confines of an airport in a foreign land. Thankfully, today wasn't one of those days. Last big multi-week trip, I immediately took off the wrong direction on the first train I hopped on. Today was a bus ride into town and it went alot smoother.

So I got checked into my hostel, which is one in the San Telmo district (neighborhood is gritty, artsy, a little rough around the edges). It is approaching Sunday lunchtime now and this city is DEAD. I left the hostel and wandered the streets just to get an idea of the vibe. BA is the self-proclaimed "Paris of the South". I dunno why places like to compare themselves to the grand cities of Europe, but BA certainly wasn't hopping like any Paris I knew. Well, I forgot that Argentinians are on "Spain" time. That means their day doesn't even start until it's time for it to get dark. Peak dinnertime is at around MIDNIGHT. No wonder this morning felt like I was in the early scenes of "I am Legend."

So I had lunch at a curbside parrilla, which is basically just a giant fire spit grill loaded up with all kinds of meaty goodies. It was time to test out my Spanish, which is bad...very, very bad. I ordered a choripan, a thick, split, smoked sausage between two buns for about $1.75 (talk about a deal). Cool..he understood me. I had also dug through my iPod Touch's Spanish to English dictionary and learned that takeaway was "para llevar". So I said that too. He looks at me puzzled and then says a couple of sentences of something back to me and I just have to give him this blank stare...lol. A waiter stopped by and poked me on the shoulder and suggest to just say "takeaway". Sometimes the English just works better.

So now it's getting into the afternoon and I head to this neighbor antiques fair that my guidebooks suggest for Sundays. Trust me...this wasn't as boring as it sounds. The street is turned pedestrian only and there are like 10,000 people lining it for 15 blocks. There are vendors, street performers and animals everywhere. People are selling antiques from some of Argentina's wealthier periods, trinkets, some cool stuff too. But then there were the street performers, some of the stuff was just downright corny. The weirdest was the 60 y/o man that was leading a group of older ladies in a streetside symphony. The 60 y/o man was a large man and he was dressed just like the older ladies...Sunday dress and all (x-large of course). Just corny stuff. But my favorite was the cute little doggy couple tied up at a residence. I'll have to post a picture once I have a second to load up some pics. You'll have a laugh. They fit right in.

I headed to the river shoreline next and discovered that all of BA has descended on the walkways there as well. They have this outdoor park with this band that is performing "something". It's some tune that goes on and on for ten minutes and they has a unicyclist on stage with them doing jumps and random weird things like playing his unicycle like a guitar after one of his crashes. Worst of all, the crowd of 50-60 somethings is really into this and they are all dancing around on the grounds in some sort of merry-go-round like dance. I was facinated. I'm wondering if this is just the Argentine people on the weekends and they are all business and serious come Monday morning. Tomorrow...we will see. I'll start doing a little touring tomorrow. Hopefully, this time BA wakes up before noon.

Two Days Away - South America...here I come!

2009-11-05T21:37:00.002-05:00

When: November 7 - 29
Where: Undisclosed locations in South America
My Mission: Explore the most vast cities, monumental waterfalls, delectable foods, tranquil shorelines & euphoric party cities south of the equator.

But first, I have a 10+ hour long overnight flight to attend to Saturday evening. Check back with me after the weekend to see how I started. I always save my biggest mistakes for the beginning...what will it be this time?

Puerto Viejo and Journey Home - Days 7 - 9

2009-05-31T23:47:00.001-04:00

We're now at Puerto Viejo, down on the Caribbean coastline. Joel and I debated at mid-trip where to go for the beach portion of this trip. The Pacific Coast in Costa Rica has tremendous scenic beauty and great beaches, but there were also supposedly hordes of tourist, ugly condos and not what we were looking for. Joel did some digging and found a small village on the other ocean that was more or less untouched by the tourist hordes. So...we opted to go there.

Puerto Viejo definitely isn't what I envisioned the Pacific Coast to be like. The Caribbean has a more Jamaican feel to it. The people here are more of African descent rather than the Ticos (what the Costa Ricans call themselves) from the interior and rest of the country. It's also really hot. We got a killer deal on a room (no A/C) just inland a few blocks that was pretty much open-air with screens. At one point, the room went over 90 degrees in the afternoon. Amazingly, it cools off considerable indoors at night. Now if I could only get my place to do that without the A/C.

Puerto Viejo has brings with it the lifestyle of Jamaica too. I haven't yet been there, but we got offered drugs on the first walk that first night. The guidebooks pretty much warned of this. The rest of the town was pretty nonthreatening though. I just wouldn't get caught on some sidestreet alone at night, but hey...that's advisable alot of places in the US as well.

The beach here has the rainforest and palms come right down to the shoreline. The beaches aren't groomed, so they don't have that ideal look that you might find in some similar locations.

We went to an even smaller village the next morning called Manzanillo. There was a short little hike along the coastline. Crabs and hermit crabs and coconut shells were everywhere. We rented some snorkel gear and headed out into the ocean. Since the waves were breaking about 200 yards out, we figured the reef would be pretty accessible from this beach. Too bad the ocean was restless, because it stirred up alot of sand. We saw parts of the reef tho and some pretty cool looking fish.

That pretty much wrapped up our Costa Rican experience. The next morning we took a public bus back up to San Jose and got a small hotel room within five minutes of the airport. Thankfully, we managed to keep our time in San Jose limited. We did score a ride with one of the more interesting bus drivers in San Jose. His driving was atrocious and he kept flashing his lights, yelling and flipping off the locals as he switched lanes and swirved through traffic WITH A PUBLIC BUS.

Hope you enjoyed my blog travels to Costa Rica. I'll hopefully get to put another series of posts together this fall when I travel for over three weeks in South America with GAP Adventures to Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and Iguassu Falls.

Rafting on the Pacuare - Day 6

2009-05-28T19:20:00.002-04:00

Best day yet! I knew it would be. Today was whitewater rafting in the jungle day. We're moving out of the Arenal area and go across the divide to the SE corner of Costa Rica. We had a transport pick us up at 5:45a this morning (yeah...early, geez) and we traveled for about three hours (with our entertaining tour operator, Ricky Bobby) to our rendezvous point for our pre-rafting breakfast. We booked our trip with this recommended company called Exploradores Outdoors. They picked us up in Fortuna, drove us to the rafting sight and then took us on to the Caribbean...and all part of the price of admission ($99). Pretty cool huh? Don't you wish the Ocoee would do that for you?

This wasn't your average whitewater trip. It was my highlight of the whole trip. We heard it routinely quoted that the Pacuare is one of the Top 5 most scenic rafting rivers in the world. I think it lived up to its hype. The raft trip was 18 miles long (as compared to 6 miles on the standard Ocoee run) and hit both Class III and IV rapids (comparable to the Ocoee/Pigeon Rivers). We were probably on the river for a good four hours...no breaks!

There was lots to see and the rapids were fairly continuous throughout...not too many breaks. We floating through three canyons, all of which were pretty dramatic. The last was a narrow rock canyon with a decrepit rope and wood bridge high above crossing the river. There was a tall waterfall to the right that was slicing through the rock and falling into the river...very idyllic.

A thunderstorm (of course) hit midway through the trip and we had to postpone our lunch until the very end. It got a little chilly when it did start raining, but thankfully we had reached near the end of our ride.

We pulled into our final destination of our adventure tonight, Puerto Viejo, down on the Caribbean coastline near Panama for a little beachtime.

No camera on the rafting trip, so pic "borrowed" from the "A Dollar a Day" blog by some random girl from Canada.

Volcano Arenal - Part II - Day 5

2009-05-27T15:58:00.001-04:00

We had one more full day in Fortuna and at the volcano. It's really recommended that you go see the volcano spouting lava on its "backside" in the twilight hours when it is really visible. We didn't have that option...afternoon thunderstorms...many of them, and often. Typically the day starts off clear and the clouds built to a crescendo when sometime between noon and 3p, the storms begin. Sometimes they are brief. Sometimes they last until into the night.

We got up a little earlier today so that we could enjoy the outdoor hiking without the heat. Well, the sun rises at 5:30 and we found that the difference between 8:30a and 10:30a is marginal...still hot. We went to the Arenal National Park today. Let's just say it's not to be confused with the national parks back home. They still charged $8 to enter, but the only "facilities" were a single bathroom and a fee collection station. What we got was alot of hiking in sugarcane fields (borrrrring) and some as-close-as-you-can-get views of the volcano, very near the foot of it. There was some gurgling and rumbling coming from the heavens...and then you would see a few semi-molten boulders tumbling down the flank of the volcano. Pretty cool! Unfortunately, I wish I could say more about this park, but it was nothing more than the sugarcane and listless lava fields from twenty years ago. *shrugs*

So...we're out here at the park with no facilities and we need to get back to Fortuna. It's a ten mile trip to get there my taxi, but there's not even a phone within sight. We walked the roads and then the highway for at least 2-3 miles until we came to the famous Tabacon Grand Spa & Thermal Resort. This place is all to well known for some very dynamic hot spring pools in a intimate, tropical setting....and all for the low, low price of $65/visit. Yikes! Now...*enter* the two cheapskates. No way were we paying $65 to smoke cigars, toast champagne, burn money...whatever they do at these luxury spots. We found the hot springs (really a mountain creek) ran right under the highway bridge. So, we found a side trail and ducked in behind Tabacon's own property and enjoyed the hot springs to ourselves...for free!

The springs are pretty cool too. It's a mountain stream that is freshwater runoff from the volcano...very clean and very, very warm (100 degrees or so). I didn't care for the really hot stuff, but the springs were mixing with another cold water stream, creating the perfect bathwater....ahhhhhhh...bliss.

We spotted an iguana chilling on a log over the springs...check him out.

BTW...we didn't hike the entire ten miles back. Thankfully we found a phone just as another big thunderstorm hit. We were spared.

Volcano Arenal - Days 3 - 4

2009-05-26T18:05:00.000-04:00

After the ziplines and a break back at our hostel, Joel and I were off to our next destination, Fortuna and Volcano Arenal.

There were a couple options on how to get to Arenal. We could take the standard public transportation again. Unfortunately, Fortuna is not on a direct path from Monteverde as it must go around Lake Arenal. Total ride - something like 6 - 8 hours. Enticing? NO.

Our other option was taking private taxi van transport directly down the mountain to the lake, float across, and hook up with another taxi van on the other side. Total ride - 3 hours and only $21. Accepted? you bet!

The ride down the mountain from Monteverde was extremely scenic. The boat ride across Lake Arenal was likewise. We had views of two volcano on opposite sides of the lake (one being Arenal). A huge thunderstorm (notice a theme?) was approaching and hit about the time we reached the other side.

We stayed in another quaint location, a small hotel this time...no A/C again. It was a little warmer in Fortuna...mid 80's but the humidity was oppressive here at those temps. We adapted quickly if we wanted to get any sleep.

We decided to hike on our first full day in town. We hired a taxi to another reserve and had a hike planned to summit a inactive volcanic cone named Cerro Chato. Mistake - starting late. Problem - first half of the "vertical" hike was exposed in the sun. It was a five mile hike and was easily the hardest short hike I've ever done. One think I've learned from Costa Rica and Hawaii, if a hike involved assaulting a volcano, it's going to be steep...very steep. Volcanoes aren't gentle climbs. Rocks from the top take the path of least resistance down and so they ALL build fairly steep.

The second half of the hike was in rainforest jungle. It was the trail and then there was dense vegetation on both sides. I was on the lookout for snakes the entire length. Joel's in a bit better shape than me and plowed up the thing...but I didn't linger too far behind and managed to keep a pretty good clip with some occasional stops to accommodate my screaming lungs. Scripps doesn't exactly prepare me for this line of work with the deskjob.

The view at the top of the cone was a very, very rewarding view of the adjacent bigger brother, Arenal. Arenal is the picture attached to the blog. Arenal is steep. I'm used to the shield volcanoes in Hawaii that cover hundreds of square MILES. All of Arenal is right before you here. It is much more of a visual cone-shaped volcano than the immense ones in Hawaii (and there are reasons for that btw).

A hike down into the crater and then the bottom of the cone provided a couple rewards. Joel went swimming in the crater's center where a deep, green lake was formed. I elected to wait until the bottom of the hike and wait for the La Fortuna waterfall and deepwater pool that was at the bottom of the falls. Both were very refreshing after a very hard hike.

With Day 4 complete, I'll post about our activities on Day 5 later...

Monteverde - Day 2 & 3

2009-05-25T14:11:00.005-04:00

Saint Elena (the town) and Monteverde (the reserve) are these cool spots way up into the green highlands of central Costa Rica. Saint Elena is nothing more than a couple of square blocks but is packed with small backpacker hostels and eateries. There are loads of ecolodges and several tourist "attractions" on the outskirts. Here, we're up around 4,000 or 5,000' elevation...away from the heat of the lowlands and up in the cooler, wetter cloud forest as they call it.

So what is a cloud forest anyway? Well, it's a bit different from the rain forest because at this elevation, your on par with the passing clouds in the sky (think Mount LeConte or Clingman's Dome for you Smokies hikers). Every afternoon, the heat in the valleys below builds and sweeps up the slopes of the mountains here...condensing and forming almost daily rain showers. There's constant moisture between the rain and the passing clouds and Monteverde is thus able to support a huge variety of plant, bird, reptile and animal life.

Joel & I are staying in this small wooden hostel. The thing with Costa Rica...you can snag single rooms (rather than your typical dorm bed) for dirt cheap here. We're talking like $25/night, cheap. That comes with a bathroom and a couple beds, but not much else. But hey, we're not here to sleep and relax. We're in Monteverde to be outside.

The first day here was spent at the reserve itself. You had to arrive early if you wanted to take the 2-3 hour guided tour with a local "ranger". These guys are amazing. They can spot a bird on a limb 500 feet away in dense vegetation. You'll see more wildlife in an hour with them than you'll see all day on your own. Our guide helped us spot several of the rare quetzals here. Only a few hundred exist and we saw several that day. We saw guans, an emerald Toucan, a few frogs, many, many hummingbirds and a few active holler monkeys way up in the trees at one point.

We ventured out post-guided tour later also, just avoiding the afternoon requisite rain shower and caught a great view of the entire reserve from the Continental Divide at a viewpoint with the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on both sides far in the distance.

On our second day, it was time for an adrenaline rush and so we hit up the Selventura zip lines that morning (). Check out the website if you want to know specifics, but basically, the "park" has 13 zip lines strung from platform to platform in the cloudforest. Some zip under the tree canopy, some zip well over the tree canopy. Some hit 40mph and one zip line goes over 500' over a canyon for almost a full mile! Joel found the zip lines to be a bit mild...but hey...he owns a motorcycle and is also an adrenaline junkie. Me...yeah, I got plenty enough of a thrill out of the 500' drop being held up by a couple of clips and a rope.

After the zip lines, we were finished with Monteverde and the cloud forest and off to the land of Costa Rica's most famous volcano, Arenal.

Costa Rica

2009-05-23T21:53:00.005-04:00

Just to let everyone know, I'm sure this set of travel blog entries won't be nearly as entertaining as the Europe trip a year ago. For one, I'm already home and I'm backdating all of my entries, since net access in Costa Rica was an issue. With that footnote, here goes...

Day 1 - San Jose

I'm traveling with my friend, Joel, from work. We had been looking for a weeklong "rugged" vacation for the last several months that we could do for this summer. Most of our focus all winter had been a planned backpacking excursion in the summer on the Pacific Crest Trail in either Washington or Oregon. Logistics and the fact that taking a full WEEK to backpack made such a trip a little more difficult and somewhat uninspiring (this year).

So, somewhere along the way Costa Rica got thrown into the mix. We found this "killer" package deal on the net back in the spring, but a little digging showed some flaws. For one, any package involving a 4WD rental car included some nasty insurance and taxes. Costa Ricans aren't exactly known for safe driving and State Farm won't insure my driving down there either.

So a couple months ago, I ran across an Atlanta - Costa Rica airfare for just $308 (taxes included). Booked! So here we are, flying out of Atlanta this very, very early morning and headed for San Jose for 9+ days. This isn't going to be your average Costa Rican vacation either. No ecolodges...no 4WD rentals...no plush beach rentals...just hardcore, independent, by the earth travel. We'll be traveling by local bus, staying in hostels and small hotels and there won't be any frills thrown in.

We land in San Jose @ 10:40a after a brief layover in Miami. San Jose is on Central Time, but they also don't observe Daylight Savings Time. Sun-up is at 5:30a and sunset is at 5:30p. Now doesn't those hours suck? Twelve hour days too? Yep...only down near the equator in summer. The sun's directly overhead and it's very intense too.

San Jose is a city of over a million people. We aren't going to Costa Rica to see city, so we're immediately headed to the bus station on foot and headed up into the mountains. The first bus is a 5-hour trip up the Pan-American Highway and then some rough dirt and rock roads to the city of Saint Elena near the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. That's where we plan to really start our trip. Enjoy!

Final Thoughts - Europe 2008

2008-05-27T18:08:00.005-04:00

It's Tuesday evening. I got home finally at 10p last night.

Thanks to everyone that read and kept up with the blog the last 24 days. I had a great time writing it and had a great time reading everyone's comments and emails. It was nice to hear from home while I was gone.

The trip overall exceeded my expectations, which is great because they were pretty high. The complications were somewhat expected. Anytime you have to juggle as many connections and plan everything by hand...well, it's going to happen. I guess I was fortunate none of them were costly in time or money. Besides, they add to the experience.

Trip favorites...
Country - Slovenia
City - Paris
Single destination - Plitvice NP in Croatia
Biggest disappointment - Trogir, Croatia
Most disappointing - Montenegro (though I still enjoyed it, but it was overhyped)

Other likes: fruit juices in Eastern Europe (blueberry & strawberry), French sweet crepes, gelato, train sleeper cars, French language, sunny/warm weather, hostel friendliness and camaraderie.

Other dislikes: tourist town rudeness (specifically Dubrovnik), Polish Auschwitz hamburgers, 'real' supermarkets, kids on bikes, smoking everywhere (including the airport bathroom yesterday)

Venice

2008-05-27T18:06:00.000-04:00

I’m typing this on my final evening here in Venice (Sunday). Venice is definitely a change of pace, something I definitely themed with this trip as I have gone along. I wanted something different along the way and I think I have succeeded.

Venice is beautiful with its canals, palaces, lagoon and St. Mark’s Square. I’ve spent most of three days here now. I’ve avoided the expensive transportation by water and struck out mainly by foot. The city is massive. It was once the largest and wealthiest in Europe. It’s like a giant maze...a maze with canals and buildings that make sign-reading and a map a necessity. It’s fun to get lost also and then try to guess where you’re actually at. St. Mark’s Square is the centerpiece. You’ve seen pictures of it before with its tall belltower made of tan-colored brick and the Doge’s Palace and basilica in the background.

Venice is also very pricy. I’ve found it to easily be the priciest on this trip. But a lot of the charms of Venice are free, so it’s also easy to keep your costs down. My hostel alone for three nights was $60/night...and that’s with a shared room of six.

Of course, this comes with a long history lesson. Venice is too important not to. It was the preeminent power in Europe for over 700 years (mid 800's - 1571). Venice was founded around 500 AD as the Roman Empire in the West crumbled to its end. Residents of the area fled to the coastal swamps and lagoon in NE Italy in hopes of staying safe from the invading hordes of “barbarians” from the North. Over the next three centuries, Venice grew in size and prosperity as the swamp was drained and built upon. It became a naval power because of its huge fleet of merchant ships. It was also geographically blessed as it fell right in the middle of the East-West trade routes and as Venice built ties with the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantium Empire in Constantinople...now Istanbul). Venice grew in religious prominence in the 9th Century when the remains of St. Mark (the Gospel writer in the Bible) were rescued from Egypt from the invading Muslims. His remains are still housed here today in St. Mark’s Basilica.

Venice was a key in financing and making the Crusades logistically possible (by providing the transport and ships to carry the Crusades to the Holy Land). Venice continued to prosper until the 1500's. But the discovery of the New World, new trade routes around Africa by sea and the collapse of its trade partner in the Byzantium Empire (by the Islamic Ottoman Turks) led to the slow demise of Venice as a world power. Two hundred years later, the final nail came when Napoleon conquered Venice in 1797.

I got to visit the basilica...real amazing since it has elements of the Orthodox religion of Byzantium blended in (something you usually only see in Turkey). The Doge’s Palace was impressive also. The doge was the ruler of the Venice. I’m planning to end my stay tonight with a cruise down the Grand Canal that cuts through the center of the city.

Montenegro

2008-05-27T07:56:00.005-04:00

Following the fiasco of the arrival in Dubrovnik, I decided to take the day off from working and let someone else do the legwork. I booked a group tour with a local agency to go into Montenegro for the day. Montenegro was the world’s newest nation back in 2006 when it separated from their then partner, Serbia. Recently, you’ve heard that Kosovo also separated from Serbia in the last few weeks. Obviously, Serbia isn’t very well liked!
I guess I shop make an attempt to explain the whole Yugoslav situation. The nation was pieced together back at the end of the First World War. It was mostly a marriage of convenience. Each region of the Yugoslav nation was too small to survive on its on back in the early 1900's. Each region is ethnically and religiously different. It was held together after World War II by the Communist dictator, Tito. But once Tito died, the late 1980's and early 1990's led to the slow dissolution of the nation. The Slovenians (Catholic) broke away first with light bloodshed. Croatia (also Catholic) broke away next, and the Serbs were reluctant to allow their Yugoslav nation to break apart. War was started, mostly agged on by a war of escalating words between the two countries leaders (Milosevic being the more notorious one). The first shots were fired in Plitvice National Park. The war eventually reached the walls of Dubrovnik, as ethic Serbs in Montenegro shelled the city from above, destroying over 2/3 of the city roofs and a lot of the city walls I walked on. Bosnia (Muslim) soon also splinted and the Balkan War was on. Serbia and Montenegro are both Eastern Orthodox, which explains Serbia’s current ties with Russia. If it all sounds confusing, it is!

Our day trip to Montenegro included a trip to the Bay of Kotor and the largest fjord in Southern Europe. It also included a trip to the walled city of Kotor and a trip to the Budva Riveria. Montenegro is a much poorer country as compared to its Serbian and Croatian neighbors.

The fjord was beautiful but it wasn’t quite comparable to the ones I had seen in Norway and New Zealand. Kotor had a lot of raw energy. They have city walls that were built around the city and then up the surrounding mountainside (kinda like a small version of the Great Wall). I would have loved to have climbed it if we had had more time. The walls climbed WAY up above the city.

The trip to the Budva Riveria was interesting as well. The coastline is currently being bought up by the Russians. Evidently, the low prices in Montenegro and their ties to the ethnic Serbs make it an attractive destination. The beaches there were quite rocky. They were raking them in preparation for the summer crowds. It wasn’t anywhere near the beach quality we would know by Western standards. Of course, most of the European beaches are also rocky like this...but usually a little cleaner.

It’s Thursday now, and I am bus tripping back to Split. I just boarded by Blue Line ferry for the overnight voyage across the Adriatic. I didn’t get a room (they were quite pricy), so it may become another one of those interesting nights since I will be sleeping somewhere on deck. I should be at my final destination in Venice when I post this sometime on Friday afternoon.

Dubrovnik

2008-05-27T07:53:00.001-04:00

The “Pearl of the Adriatic” as it is called. I can’t disagree with that. Dubrovnik is a cruise port destination that attracts as many as 7 cruise ships at a time during the peak summer travel season. It was recently features in the last year on the Amazing Race reality show as one of their “race around the world” destinations.

Dubrovnik’s old town is an entirely enclosed walled city. It was an independent city-state for several centuries up until a couple hundred years ago. In fact, it was the first independent nation to recognize the United States as a new nation back in 1776.

The city walls, bright blue oceans, the famous red roofs and sunshine are all Dubrovnik trademarks. It’s very picturesque. I spent the entire day on Tuesday in the old town. Doing a 90-minute loop on the city walls is a fun activity. There is one church within the city with a treasury dedicated to the Saint Blaise (centuries ago). They had his leg, forearms and part of his skull encased in precious metals as a religious relic. Kinda scary keeping body parts in the back of your church’s treasury. And you thought those old church Halloween party’s, where you put your hand with the bowls that contained various “fake” body parts was a laugh....lol...not in Dubrovnik!

My trip into Dubrovnik was a little interesting. Nothing like a little drama to get me started into another destination. Dubrovnik has a lack of hotel/hostel options. I’ve only truly run into this problem one other time, when I arrived late into Bratislava and had to sleep on the airport’s metal benches. For Dubrovnik, I booked two days early, but hotels were too expensive, so I had to book a homestay. I’ve never done this before, so I was mildly apprehensive, but moreso because I wasn’t supposed to get a confirmation email until the next day. Of course, it never comes. My bus is 15 minutes late into Dubrovnik at 9p and the booking agency is supposed to meet me at the bus station. He left. I was stranded...it’s late and nothing is open. I called him for a solid hour and only got busy signals. Ok, so it’s time to panic a little. I pull out my rather crude map and attempt to hunt this agency down. Again, nothing is open this late except bus lines, so I’m on my own. After MIDNIGHT, I finally find the place and the guy just happens to still be up. He had to contact my homestay and pull him out of bed to pick me up! It wasn’t my fault. The whole situation was one marked with confusion. Anyway, I finally got t sleep around 1a and stayed in Mladen’s “Villa Banana” separate house for three nights. I’ll post Mladen’s room rules on the next posting if they come out clear. His English needs some work and they are hilarious.

Split

2008-05-19T07:33:00.004-04:00

It's Monday afternoon and things are winding down here in Split, Croatia. I got here off of the train yesterday morning.

Split is a large Croatian city (750,000 people) on the shores of the Adriatic Sea just across from Italy. The Dalmation Coast is known for the many offshore islands, sunny weather and beaches. The centerpiece to the city of Split is the huge palace built by the Roman emperor Diocletian (245 - 313AD) in the 3rd Century. Diocletian and Nero are the two Roman emperors so well known for their persecution of the early Christian church before the empire converted to Christianity in the 4th Century under Emperor Constantine.

Diocletian built his retire home here in his homeland of Dalmatia. In the 7th Century, peasant squats moved into the palace ruins and made a home for themselves. They have stayed ever since and today the palace ruins enclose shops, cafes and over 2,000 residents.

After two weeks of sun, the weather is starting to get a little iffy. It's clouded up today and the forecast is for showers and then RAIN on Thursday. No beaches for me...not that I really planned to spend any time on any. I move on to the walled city of Dubrovnik this afternoon and will be staying there for the next three days. The weather may dictate the itinerary. I would love to do some sea kayaking down there and spend a day in the small and 2nd newest country in the world, Montenegro.

Photo: My sleeper car bunk from a couple night ago when I went from Zagreb to Split. Sleeper cars-couchettes usually come in a triple bunk room with a sink, a six person bunk (3 and 3 with a small isle) or a pricer single private room. I prefer the former two since they come rather cheap. You get a decent night's sleep if you can live with the train's noises and stops. It's best to use earplugs. Sleepers are a great way to travel long distances from city to city without burning up precious vacation time that can be better used touring.

Hostels are great affordable accommodations for the single traveler. I can usually get a bed for about $20 ($40-60 in bigger cities like Paris and Venice). They usually come with mixed dorms of 4-10 people with a shared bathroom. Hostels continue to evolve into nicer accommodations, and if you do your homework, there are some really nice ones out there. They usually come with a commons room with a TV, kitchen, free breakfast, laundry and sometimes a bar with the more upscale ones. They are also a great way to meet other travelers.

Plitvice Nat'l Park

2008-05-18T11:29:00.003-04:00

I spent the full day in the outdoors in Croatia's Plitvice National Park. I had high expectations, but like the Skocjan Caves from a few days before, this place exceeded expectations and just blew me away.

I took a bus out of Zagreb in the early morning hours and rode for over 2 hours to get to Plitvice. Plitvice is on the Croatia/Bosnian border and pretty far out in the middle of nowhere. Plitvice also has a little recent history. It was the site where the first shots were fired in the beginning of the Balkan Wars in the early 1990s (between the Serbs, Croats & Bosnia).

Another likening...I would place Plitvice as one giant outdoor 5-mile Jungle Cruise walk. Plitvice is setup with 16 terraced lakes, each just a little higher than the previous one and drained by waterfalls on all sides. Water ran over falls, through the trees, around plants, under the boardwalks...everywhere! It was like one huge landscaped garden in your backyard and water was flowing everywhere.

The one negative with Plitvice was the unexpected hordes of tourist bus groups...and talk about rude. They would shove and stand in anybody's way to get any picture they wanted. I had to battle with it for the full day.

Pictured: Plitvice's terraced garden from above...I have TONS of these pictures from above and had ground level.

I left Plitvice and returned to Zagreb last night and then took the overnight train to Split (Croatia). I'm in Split now...more on Split/Dubrovnik later.

Finishing up in Slovenia

2008-05-18T11:16:00.002-04:00

I'm a little behind posting. Croatian internet access leaves alot to be desired. I left Ljubljana & Slovenia two days ago, so I'm going back to my last day there.

Friday morning - spent a little time in the morning touring the city of Ljubljana I had been residing in for four days. I've been go so much I hadn't spent much time at all in this little jewel of a city. It's well known for it's unique architecture and colorful buildings.

I booked a short train trip to Zagreb, Croatia for the afternoon. I went to book my ticket in the morning and the cafes/pubs were packed with young people. I'm thinking...surely they weren't up ALL NIGHT LONG and still going strong. Ljubljana was abuzz as there was a student graduation parade @ noon, I found out. EVERYBODY between 18-25 had a whistle on them and were blowing them. It was like having 10,000 three year olds running around town all day with nobody to supervise them. You run into a pack of whistleblowers and you might lose your hearing permanently.

I was waiting for the 2:05 train to Zagreb (and Belgrade) and under typical Eastern European fashion it was late. It was late for about 30 minutes when...they just took the name of the board as if they train left minutes ago. I'm like...where is my train??? Of course, there is no English announcement to tell me what is going on. I finally found out my train had mechanical issues (or something) and it was indefinitely delayed. I had to wait 2 hours for the next Zagreb train. I was getting nervous b/c I didn't have a room booked in Zagreb and I would need to visit the TI (Tourist Info) office before they closed at dark. I ended up making it but my hostel was pretty cramped.

I ended up rooming with two girls (well...one was a lady). I noticed she has an Olympic camera battery charging running on the bed next to me. Guess what kind of camera I have? hehe. She was charging her battery overnight. At midnight, I woke up...removed her battery...and put mine in it's place. I then woke up at 3a after mine was fully charged and put hers back. I don't have to worry about camera batteries now!

Julian Alps

2008-05-15T14:42:00.003-04:00

I LOVE Slovenia!

I can't say enough good things about the place. It's small...only 2 million people. It didn't exist two decades ago, but it's slowly making a name for itself.

I did get my rental car today...no problems with the rental place and no problems on the road either...*whew*.

So first thing I did was drive up to Lake Bled and take that picture I missed two days ago...lol. The lighting wasn't quite as perfect as it was that afternoon, but it still should turn out to be a good picture. I'll see if I can replace the one on the Bled post.

After that, I drove down along the Slovenian/Italian border in the Alps for much of the day. The drive up to Vrsic Pass included 50 hairpin turns and a climb up to 5,600 feet. The Alps here are almost up to 10,000 feet high, not quite Swiss quality but almost. After the drive to the pass, you descend into the Soco Valley. The Soco Valley is quite notorious as one of the major battlefield fronts in World War I (between the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians). They fought in the valleys, mountains and mountaintops here for 3 years with over 1,000,000 casualities...and almost all of those squeezed into this one valley. There are cemeteries, war ruins and memorials to the war everywhere. Amazing that such a beautiful place could have placed so a key in such horrific fighting.

The drive back to Ljubljana was rather uneventful and dull along a long twisting country road for nearly 2 hours at 30 mph...zzzzzzz.

Tomorrow looks to be my final partial day here in Ljubljana and then I'm headed off into Croatia for the next week.

Photo: Soco Valley (I've replaced the Vienna and Lake Bled posts with new pictures as well)

Skocjan Caves

2008-05-14T16:10:00.003-04:00

Tried something a little different today. I learned from my Europe trip three years ago that cathedrals and big cities get old after awhile. I wanted to put some elements of the outdoors (well kinda), or maybe adventurous, on this trip. I wouldn't exactly call my trip to the caves a "wild cave" adventure or anything, but it was alot of fun.

I got up this morning to try to bargain with the rental car reps in person. As expected, they didn't want to offer me anything more than the standard ridiculous rates you would expect from them. I went back to my room in disgust and booked online with one of the places I talked to for TOMORROW, at a lower rate than we discussed in person, of course. I don't trust them, I'm sure they'll come up with a reason to come back to the higher rate.

But TODAY, I reshuffled my schedule and literally ran to the train station so I could catch the 1.5 hour train out to Divaca and the Skocjan Caves. These aren't your Forbidden Caverns (Pigeon Forge) either. The Skocjan system is part of one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. It was discovered in 1904. What makes these caves unique is the river canyon that runs underground. Honestly, they put the Lost Sea to shame (even though the Lost Sea is still cool).

The first half of the cave walk was rather ho-hum...nothing new and it was fairly uninspiring. Mind you, I've seen Carlsbad and Mammoth Caves and both are world class. But the second half of the cave beat both Carlsbad and Mammoth, handsdown. The cave opens up dramatically in front of you as you come into a huge room from the ceiling area. It's a 270-foot drop to the river at the bottom that is roaring underground through the cave. It's every bit of a wide canyon chasm...no some dinky underground creek with a 20-foot ceiling. They have the path below lit up along the path and then the river bottom and you can see all of this from your entry vantage point above. It was really incredible. We were underground for nearly 2 hours, with the last underground river portion lasting probably 30 minutes.

Getting to Skocjan was somewhat easy. I had to take a train and then the tourist "bus" was there waiting for me when the guy saw me standing there helplessly looking around. I was the only person that got off the train looking for the caves. He took me there, but his schedule didn't permit a return trip, so I was on my own coming back.

I had scheduled my return train for 3:30p and the cave tour ended up being over @ 2:45. It's 2-3 miles between the caves and the train station. So here I am, backpack, coat and all huffing it down this backwoods trail that breaks off at least 5 or 6 times hoping I end up at the town and the station.

I made it. *whew*...another adventure in public transport in Europe. Of course, you can usually do this stuff with a tour group, but I refuse to pay the XXX euros to have them drag me around on a huge tour bus all day. It's just...no.

I also had my first experience with a stand-up "toilet" today...the ones with no seat but just a hole in the floor. Yeah...lol. I was a little surprised. The "toilet" was at the train station, and a little unexpected for Slovenia. I would expect my first hole toilet to be in...Romania...or somewhere like that. Just ten minutes later, I'm at the cave visitor center playing on the FREE internet kiosk they have setup for the tourist. You would NEVER get that back home...free at least.

Wish me luck tomorrow with the rental car Nazi's. They'll probably want my car back home as collateral.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Slovenia - Lake Bled

2008-05-13T16:10:00.005-04:00

I slept in a little this morning and got up and went down for some breakfast at the daily farmer's market here in Ljubljana. I ended up buying some strawberries. Fruit must really be in season here b/c it was everywhere.

I then went on to the train/bus station to catch the hour-plus ride to Bled. At first, I went with the recommended bus suggestion. I asked about the buses and told it would be there in two minutes, so I hurried outside to the rendevous spot. There are 22 bus lanes and I waited by the one that said "Bled". Two buses came in and both waived me off saying they weren't going to Bled. I KNEW the schedule, the info office confirmed it, but it never showed...*sigh*. The next bus wasn't scheduled for another hour and I knew I had no guarantees since the first one was botched, so I opted for the train. Unfortunately with the train, I had to also wait the hour AND I it came up 2.5 miles short of Bled, which meant I had to catch a bus there also for the final two miles.

I finally got there at 1:15. Bled is a small resort town on the shores of the lake there. The scenery was both stunning and beautiful. I took the 3.5 mile walk around the lake. It was sunny, of course, so I got the full effect. The lake has the Julian Alps in the distance (with some snow on them) for a backdrop. It also has this little island near the center of the lake with a church on it. I guess you could call that the cherry that goes on top of the sundae. The walk, weather and near perfect day there made it one of the best so far. I say "near perfect" because...I forgot my camera!!! It made me totally sick to my stomach. Of course, those that know me shouldn't be surprised, but I've never done that before on vacation. I NEVER leave my camera behind and this was probably the single best shot I was going to get on the entire trip.

But..there's hope. I have plans to bargain for a rental car tomorrow and Lake Bled just so happens to be on the route into the Alps. The conditions are supposed to be the same, of course, so I'll probably make the small detour just so I don't spend the rest of my life wishing I had that great shot of the church in Slovenia over my mantle.

Also, strung around the lake are small plenta boats that take you out to the island and the Church of the Assumption. I didn't make the boat ride, but there are "gondoliers" that will actually row you out there...think Venice.

Vienna

2008-05-12T17:39:00.005-04:00

I'm slightly behind. The last hostel I stayed at how some pretty inconsistent wifi connections and it was just a waste of time to try anything like posting to this blog. Vienna doesn't have the greatest vagabond travel setup either. Grocery stores were closed on BOTH Sunday and Monday (why?). Wifi throughout the city was extra (not typical in Europe). Restaurants are mostly cafes and are all closed on Sundays...and counter service is difficult. This is my second trip to Vienna, and if you can't tell I have issues with it.

Vienna...grand polished city that has gone from one of the most important cities in the world within the last century to...just another national capital. Vienna used to be the capital of a great empire. The empire originally started as Charlesmagne's Holy Roman Empire back in the Middle Ages (not to be confused with the real Roman empire) to the Austrian and then the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Vienna was the center of Central Europe and carried enormous wealth and power with it...thanks to the ruling Hapsburg Dynasty.

But World War I reshaped alot of Europe and this century's old empire collapsed under the political and financial pressures of World War I. The governments of several WWI nations basically couldn't handle the pressures of the war and they ceased to exist as the fighting came to an end in 1918.

Fast forward to today, Vienna is a city of 1.6 million people. The once grand palaces, operas, cafes and cathedrals of the early 1900s and the empire are still here. The city carries an extravagance to it.

This is my second time around to Vienna. It's a great gateway city to Eastern Europe and has always been through history also. I toured the giant St Stephen's cathedral right in the center of town, the royal summer residence for the Hapsburgs and a quick hour tour of the opera, which is still very big in Vienna.

The weather...still perfect. I'm definitely blessed with that. It's been nine days now of 60s/70s with not a drop of rain...and it will probably stay that way.

I'm in Ljubljana (former Yugoslav Republic) now. I just got off the evening train after my 5.5-hour trip. I'm staying in a hostel that appears to be a converted home. I haven't seen the city yet, but I'm very excited about this stretch of the trip. I'm be in the Ljubljana/Slovenia area for the next three days.

Oh...I had to hunt, but I found some of my favorite foods in Vienna. Bratwurst with kraut today and some type of apple sauce, plenty of gelato (they have a great place here), and apple strudel and Sacher torte (basically, chocolate cake).

Photo: my bratwurst & strudel meal in Vienna

Auschwitz

2008-05-11T02:36:00.003-04:00

Just a quick note....I'm keeping it brief since it's morning here.

Visited Auschwitz-Birkenau yesterday, which is about a 1.5 hour bus trip out of Krakow. It's about as sobering as expected. Auschwitz is really the site of three concentration camps all located in close proximity (Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz). I toured the first two.

Auschwitz was known more of a hard labor concentration camp, while Birkenau's sole intent was quick and efficient mass murder, mainly through the gas chambers. You've probably seen pictures of the entrances to both, but the sheer size of Birkenau is what was so sobering. The buildings went on and on...and on. All of these buildings housed sick and dying concentration camp victims (from Auschwitz) initially until the Nazis built it up into a mass murder machine...at which point they murdered over 1,000,000 people (mostly Jews at Birkenau). As the Nazis realized they weren't going to win the war and as the Red Soviet Army approached, they attempted to hide as much of the war crime evidence as possible. But when you've just murdered over 1 million people at one location, they evidence is overwhelming and obvious.

They had exhibits at Auschwitz where the Nazis had failed to destroy all of the evidence...all of the belongs that was confiscated from the Jews as they arrived. They had room's full on display with mounds of glasses, brushes, shoes, women's hair. The Nazis were so cruel to even use human hair in the textiles production.

One thing that isn't always mentioned in news reports, text, etc as often is the fact that it wasn't just Jews that were mass-murdered. The Nazis also killed of millions of resistance fighters/insurgents, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, and Soviet POWs.

I returned to Krakow around 6p that evening. Krakow was much nicer the second evening around. I guess I just had an attitude adjustment. One of the more exciting parts of European travel is trying to spend your remaining currency. Poland doesn't use the Euro, so I had to burn up any unused Polish money I had left (about $25 worth). So I went on a mini-shopping spree on stuff I don't need...lol. I ended up having an ice cream sundae on the main square in a cafe ($8) that had...orange slices, watermelon, grapes...with your regular expected two scoop ice cream and berries. The Polish are still working on their food as you can tell! I suggest that for our family Father's Day get together...ice cream topped with watermelon slices.

I'm in Vienna now for two days. My mission...to find the best apple streudel I can find.

Image: Auschwitz gate with the words "Work sets you free". Not my picture...it's not that chilly today. I've already used up 50% of my battery space on my camera, so...I'm being careful. I can't recharge!

Krakow

2008-05-09T17:59:00.002-04:00

I survived another leg. Here's how my connection from Paris to Krakow went.

Left Paris, metro to get bags, metro to train station, train to airport, shuttle to hotel, hotel overnight, different shuttle to airport, flight to Krakow, shuttle to train stations, train to Krakow, walk to hostel.

All of that just to get from point A to point B. This European travel is so exhausting. See why I screwed up on day one and ended up going the wrong direction? Try all of that with all signs and directions given in French (or worse yet, Polish). You can't even pronounce Polish names. When I go up to the ticket window in Krakow to buy a train ticket, I actually have to pull out my phrasebook and write down what I want. Otherwise, I might end up in Venice, instead of Vienna.

Krakow has indeed ended up being a slight letdown. The weather was much cooler (mid 60s, cloudy and breezy). That was fine after the Paris heatwave. The tourist infrastructure has significantly improved in Eastern Europe over my Budapest experience two years ago. Prices has jumped too! There's still plenty of bargains over here, but they are quickly catching up to Western standards in the bigger tourist destinations.

I wasn't sure what I had walked into in Krakow this afternoon. I went to the main square after checking on and found it to be....Halloween?

Seriously, it's the end of the semester here and I believe all of the college coeds were decked out in costumes. We had Palestinian bombers, nurses, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, beer mugs...you name it...it was in the main square. And I thought I had missed summer and it had turned fall already, considering the weather.

I'll be going to Auschwitz tomorrow for most of the day (a day trip). I'm sure it will be a very sobering moment.

I'd like one of these

2008-05-08T17:07:00.005-04:00

Imagine the gas mileage on one of these suckers. Wouldn't this be nice for you daily commute to work every morning?

Just...don't take it with you if you go out on any dates...or a family trip...or to get groceries...or...

It would be nice as a secondary car tho, especially with $4 gas on the way. I've heard the "smart cars" are coming to America...we'll see if they catch on.

The best part about them? Try parking at UT games with one of these things! It would be a cinch!

Paris out...Poland in

2008-05-08T17:00:00.003-04:00

I'm near the airport tonight...coming home? no. I just finished up my last day in Paris this evening and I will be flying to Krakow, Poland in the morning. The last four days has been magic. I think I can favorably say that Paris is my most favorite city in the world I have been to. The food, the museums, the variety of people, the history...I loved it!

Day three (yesterday) was the best day I had had. I bought a museum pass that gets you unlimited visits to almost any attraction in Paris (for a hefty fee, of course), so I was in "hyper" mode all day trying to squeeze as much in as possible. I concluded my day with a climb up the Eiffel Tower at sunset. I only went up halfway...and I walked it (500 vertical feet too). Ain't so bad. Word is that the top is so high that you can't even make out sites any longer. In was beautiful tho watching the City of Lights transfer before my eyes as the sky darkened.

My only concern about the great trip I've had to Paris...will the rest of the trip even come close to matching it? I hope so. We'll start with Krakow in the morning.

The weather: still warming up and still sunny without a cloud. It hit the upper 70s...maybe even 80 today. I actually saw a few of the coats go away. But don't fear, there are plenty of diehards. I saw one kid wearing his hoodie WITH THE HOOD ON this afternoon. Why??? I have no idea.

Living like a King (just not Louis XVI)

2008-05-06T16:37:00.003-04:00

Since I spent ALL FREAKING DAY (almost) at Versailles today, all you get is a history lesson from me today. Well, I spill my day out first...then the history lesson.

I was up early (6:30) this morning. That's not easy to do when you're not going to work...lol. But you have to if you want to see Versailles before it turns into the History Ride @ Disney World. I got there just after opening at 9a after riding the local train system (no mistakes!!!...I'm getting GOOD now). The palace @ Versailles is about 12 miles outside of Paris. I spent the rest of my day walking the streets of Paris again...mostly along the Left Bank, or the more artsy, commoners area. That included a stopover at the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris' largest park.

But on to Versailles. Versailles is important, very important to history even today. Versailles is the giant (and I mean GIANT) palace that was built by the very popular King Louis XIV in the 1600s during the heights of French domination in Europe. The palace was extravagant and every way possible. The French kings (14, 15 & 16) ruled here for a century before the heavenly lifestyle they were living led to the monarchy's downfall (the French Revolution, which happened around the same time American was ratifying the Constitution).

Versailles wasn't only the palace fit for a king. It contains more history than any other single spot in Europe. Napoleon was coronated as Emperor of France here in the early 1800s. The German state was born here in 1870 when the French were defeated by the Prussians. The Treaty of Paris was signed here ending World War I and is where all of Europe and the US came together to decided the fate of the entire world. Decisions that were made in that peace conference still have major ramifications today in Europe, Africa, and especially the Middle East.

The palace was huge, the staterooms extravagant, and the gardens...wow. Words can't describe the gardens, but they went on and on for, what I presume to be, thousands of acres. Pictures could never do Versailles justice.

Thanks to everyone posting comments. If you post questions, I'll try to answer them by personal email.

oh...and I'll have some picture posting delays. My camera batteries aren't going to make it if I'm only downloading them every night.

A Paris heat wave

2008-05-05T16:43:00.003-04:00

Seriously! Another 70+ sunny day and the world seemed perfect. No mishaps today...just lots and lots of walking. I bet I covered 8-10 miles on foot. Paris is awesome. I'll list some of the sites I visited at the end of the post, but I think the most impressive thing to me was yet another cathedral. Usually after about two of these they get rather mundane in Europe, but Notre Dame was pretty impressive to me. It's another medieval Gothic stature...this time for the 12th Century. I also saw the spot where the dreaded guillotine chopped so many heads off during the French Revolution.

Speaking of Parisians, they seem to have the desire to just hang onto winter. They supposed dress nice, yeah, pants and jeans...even when it's hot out...that's ok. But what's up with the layering and the sweaters and even the heavy jackets? I've seem so many people dressed for 45 degrees instead of the 75 we're having. It's crazy. I can still imagine them dressed like this when they have one of those rare heat waves. Looks miserable.

Oh yeah...and the contraption from yesterday. I'll post a pic. Would you trust your luggage and valuables to this? It actually takes your luggage underground...somewhere.

I made it!

2008-05-04T17:04:00.004-04:00

I hope nobody had any doubts. The day did have it bumps though.

The plane ride was fine. It was a smaller Delta jumbo jet and surprisingly it didn't have any of the seatback video consoles. I was pretty bummed about that. It didn't help I was sitting 20' from the tiny movie screen and I didn't bring any glasses since you need 20/20 vision to see one that small. I opted for my iPod instead.

I took the train once I got to Dusseldorf...platform 4...9:32a...hear comes the train and right on time. No problems right? Wrong! I was on the train for 30 minutes and the conductor asked for my ticket and then told me I was going the wrong direction. WHAT??? What was supposed to be a 40 minute ride to Cologne (Koln) turned into an hour and a half mini-mess. I still don't know what happened. I read my ticket over-and-over and still can't figure out what I did wrong *shrugs*. Stupido American I guess.

Koln was bombed and basically destroyed by the Allies during WWII. For the most part it, and most off Germany for that matter, was mostly rebuilt in the 1940/50s. Koln doesn't have much of an Old Town or a historical center to it's town, but it does have a massive Gothic cathedral that isn't but a couple hundred yards from the station. Koln's cathedral was built in the 13 century, so it's very old and very impressive. Koln is also situated on the banks of the Rhine River, which gives it a very cool riverfront scene too. It is also home to the Lindt chocolate factory.

I can't post a pic yet, but I'll hopefully edit this post tomorrow when I find my USB cable. I have another story to share about the station's automated luggage storage system.

Anyway...I'm in Paris for the night now. Got a nice hostel I'm staying at, but I've arrived late and I'm pretty tired after only having about four hours of sleep on the plane. Tomorrow is a big touring day.

Au revoir!

It's almost time!!!

2008-05-02T12:25:00.002-04:00

It's lunchtime here on Friday and I'm frantically trying to get everything in place here at work so that I can leave in good standing...lol.

Everything is pretty much packed. I'm carrying EVERYTHING in my backpack...all 30 lbs, so I might need to schedule a chiropractor appointment for when I get back.

I'm flying out tomorrow (Sat)...Knoxville - Atlanta - Dusseldorf, Germany, so here's my flight schedule for those of you following along...

Delta 4415 Knoxville to Atlanta from 1:20p to 2:20p
Delta 24 Atlanta to Germany from 4:35p to 1:40a (EDT)

There's an 80% chance of STORMS in Knoxville and Atlanta tomorrow so.....*gulp*

More from me later....

Planned Euro Itinerary

2008-04-16T23:09:00.001-04:00

I'm putting this blog page together with the HOPE of sharing plans, details and pictures of my 2008 Euro trip to everyone back at home.

Feel free to drop in comments as you see fit. Of course, you can e-mail me too.

And with that...here are my plans if you're trying to keep up. This itinerary is flexible, but I'm sure I'll stick fairly closely to this.

All times are (EDT)...
May 3 Flight out (Knoxville - Atlanta - Dusseldorf, Germany) Depart @ 1:20p
May 4 Arrival in Germany in morning (1:40a EDT)
Train to Cologne, Germany for the day; train to Paris in evening
May 5 Paris
May 6 Paris
May 7 Paris
May 8 Paris
May 9 Depart in morning for Krakow, Poland (12:50a)
Krakow
May 10 Auschwitz concentration camp
May 11 Krakow (night train to Vienna)
May 12 Vienna, Austria (night train to Slovenia)
May 13 Lake Bled, Slovenia
May 14 Julian Alps (car rental day)
May 15 Skocjan cave (car rental day); Ljubljana
May 16 Ljubljana, Slovenia; train to Zagreb, Croatia in afternoon
May 17 Plitvice Nat'l Park, Croatia (car rental day) (night train to Split)
May 18 Trogar, Croatia
May 19 Split, Croatia (bus to Dubrovnik)
May 20 Dubrovnik, Croatia
May 21 Dubrovnik
May 22 Montenegro (car rental day) (overnight ferry across the Adriatic Sea)
May 23 Morning train from Ancora to Venice, Italy
Venice
May 24 Venice
May 25 Venice
May 26 Memorial Day - Flight out @ 7:05a (Venice - Atlanta - Knoxville)
Arrival in Atlanta @ 6:05p
Arrival in Knoxville @ 9:00p

Time Difference: 6 hours ahead in Europe

I hope to have some limited phone access (pay phones) and I hope to take my laptop with me to have some internet access.

I'll try to post daily updates as I have time. I'll try to provide a few pictures, a background and maybe some history with each posting.

Au revoir!