Hi everybody!
So here we are at the end of our 2007 summer vacation, and we've decided now's a good time to start writing our blog! We've just been too busy up till now to take the time to jot anything down. So here comes a very long entry!
PENNSYLVANIA:
Well actually, let's start with trying to leave Toronto. Throughout our trip we read Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix, mostly read by Aviva complete with accurate and detailed British, Scottish, and Irish accents. Aviva quote (and we all agree): "My best ones are Snape, Hermione, Luna, Cho, and Ron."
It took us all weekend and most of Monday July 30th to get our acts together (including purchasing clip on fans for our un-air conditioned car) and get on the road, but we finally did it by about mid-day...only to find ourselves stuck in terrible traffic around Oakville. So we got off the road and found this little hole in the wall Korean bbq and had a really nice lunch for ourselves (although Rob and Aviva ate subs just next door). Then we drove and we drove and we drove and we drove, and we still didn't make it to our destination: Lancaster county PA. But we did make it to PA: Williamsport, where we spent the night.
The next morning we headed straight to....Starbucks (a typical morning on vacation) and then hit the road and drove and drove and drove till we got to our final destination by late afternoon: Gifford Pinchot State Park (oh, but first we had to drive past the entrance three times and take about 1 hour trying to find it). The park was gorgeous and our site was amazing: tons of trees, spacious, and direct access from our site to the lake (although the actual beach was about 8 sites over). This year setting up camp went so well, as the kids were really able to actually help (as opposed to thinking that they were helping). We had a swim in the lake just before sunset, and it was so lovely and warm and fun. The evening was spent at various stores, completing our preparations for our trip...as if we hadn't spent enough time on that in Toronto.
The next day we hit Amish Country. First we went to an Amish market where we bought: Apple butter, Pickled bean salad, fresh produce, and shoe fly pie (which was delicious the first time-on an empty stomach, good the second time we ate it, and actually mediocre the third time we ate it). Next we went to this Amish centre where we saw a movie about the Amish people (called "Jacob's Choice"- when the Amish are teens, they are allowed to go hang with the "English" and then they have to chose whether they want to remain Amish. It is only then that they get baptized into the faith). Then at the same centre, we went to a replicated Amish house. The guide was in his 60's, but could apply for a job as a rap singer 'cause he rattled off the information about their clothing and habits at 90 words per second (probably memorized from a book). Then we later that evening did a tour of three actual Amish families. First we went to a dairy farmer's house at milking time. Everything is automated since they use propane. They just don't want electricity coming into their homes from the English (non-Amish). Next we went to see a quilter, at quilting time (LOL). Actually it was her daughter, who was about 20 and had been a teacher for three years prior. We learned a lot about their schooling from her. They only have to go to school till grade 8 and it's all done in one room school houses, of which there are many in the area. They do not learn science. The teachers take a couple of courses over the summer before they start teaching. Finally, and this was the highlight of the day, we went into the actual home of an Amish family, and talked. We talked about school systems, marriage, holidays, church, eating habits, jobs, and about technology. It was fascinating, but at the beginning, a bit awkward because no one had much to say, but soon we were all chatting away. We found out that their kids spend a lot of time playing vollyball 'till all hours of the night. In addition, we found out that if they quit being Amish after they are baptized, they are shunned. But if they decide not to be baptized, then they can always continue to have a relationship with their families.
While visiting one of the Amish farms, Aaron found some "All-Bran" in his pocket, or at least that's what Rob thought it was, when Aaron offered it to him as a present. Rob popped it in his mouth, and then asked what it was. Aaron stopped in his tracks and said, "Hey that was the goat food from the farm we visited on my sleepover with Jesse and Anna." To which Rob didn't know whether to laugh or cry. But he thought in the end, that it tasted not too bad, and actually, a lot like All-Bran.
The next day we went to Hershey. There we went on a goofy ride where we they showed the process of making milk chocolate, complete with dancing cows with purple bows around their necks doing the can-can, and taking pictures. But it also gave us some information about how the chocolate is made. Then we went on the "chocolate experience," which was a chocolate tasting where we got to taste their more common varieties (the original Hershey's recipe), down to more pure forms of chocolate, including their more expensive brands and more pure dark chocolates. Interestingly, we found out that Hershey failed three or four times before meeting success with chocolate. They were huge philanthropists, giving many millions to start a local school for orphans and poor children. Finally, we went on a bus tour of the town of Hershey, which would be great, if you were 7 years old. Actually it was quite entertaining and they plied us with lots of chocolate samples throughout.
Later that evening we went to try Amish food, which we never need to try again. It was like going to Nanna's house for sunday dinner. The next day we packed up the campside had one last dip in the lake poured gallon bottles of water over our heads and headed for Phily. That evening we went to General Lafayette restaurant, which is the longest continuesly running restaurant in the region (dating back to the 1700s). Rob had one of the best beers he (or the kids) ever had (a dark chocolatey taste). Incidenataly we all hated the expencive local specialty crabcakes. The next day on our quest for the other local specialty, phily cheese steak sandwitches, we got directions from a cop who seemed to have dificulty discerning here left from right, but nor can anyone in Philidelphia, but they like virtually everyone that we met on this vacation were extremely friendly and helpful and sweet. We went to the reading terminal market where we had multiple outstanding phily cheese steaks (like seriously they're amazing). Oh and by the way it's not the Philidelphians who are famous for cheescake no that's cheese steak. something we found out in the not so cheesecake capitol, Philidelphia. Then we took the hop on hop off bus tour of Phili and we hopped off at the Rodin museum and when we hopped back on we got a guide who seemed more of a standup comedian than a guide, and made reference to almost every movie ever made in th 70s, but we managed to still learn a bit from him. Anyways back to the Rodin museum, we saw all these famous sculptures that are original bronze casts (including the thinker). We found out all these different funfacts about his life (he was visually impaired people didn't believe he was actually sculpting the sculptures because the work was so good etc. etc.). For dinner that night we went to the Continental, which is a totally funky fusion tapas restaurant. Which had the coolest seating plan with floating ok fine hanging chairs and wrap around benches. The food was great especially the deserts. Oh by the way we did see the liberty bell... It's a bell... with a crack.
WASHINGTON DC:
We made our way to DC and on our way there, there was horible traffic folowed by horrible rain, so the whole thing took us twice as long. (still no A.C.). In D.C. we stayed in an amazing hotel that was two weeks old. The first day of touring we took a tour called "Bike the Sites". We went to various monuments (WW II, Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Vietnam, Korean, and Einstein) in the monument neighbourhood, as well as seeing the state capitol and white house. The guide was excellent, giving neat anecdotes and history about each of the monuments. Near the end, Noah was changing gears and didn't notice a pedestrian, so he smashed into him. The pedestrian wasn't hurt at all, but Noah's elbow was badly scraped and bleeding all over the place. But Noah did not feel any pain, because he felt so ashamed that he had hit a pedestrian. The guide traded front wheels with Noah ('cause Noah's was warped from the accident) and headed us back to the bike shop. On the way there the guide was hit by a bus!! Seriously. He was very slightly outside of the pedestrian cross lane (probably in the bike lane) and this city bus came barrelling along and side swiped him, knocking him over. Luckily he was OK, but he and the rest of us on the tour were very shaken from the whole thing. That evening we had another outstanding meal, at a restaurant called something like Zeitanias but we can't remember exactly. It was a mediteranean tapas bar, also very funky.
The next day we went to the holocaust museum, we spent many hours there and it was very moving and interesting. There was an exhibit about the children in the Lodz ghetto which was particularly touching to us one story in particular about a boy who recieved half a loaf of bread for his Bar Mitzvah. The museum was very well done in terms of lighting and architecture, really setting a tone in keeping with the seriousness of the material. Oh by the way we had our butter knife stolen by security just in case, you know, we decided to attack someone, maybe spread butter on them.
The next day Diane left for a mini visit with her parents back in TO. Rob and the kids spent that day at the air and space museum. Noah quote: This is the best museum in D.C. We saw the Wright brothers exhibit, and we learned about their family history. We saw airplanes, learned about early and late world records, saw a planetarium show which was about the formation of earth and the universe, and we saw a 3-D movie (narrated by Tom Cruise) about the space station. It showed about life in space, experiments that they are doing at zero gravity, such as growing huge crystals in space, and growing onions very quickly. The second day that Diane was was away, Rob and the kids did an amazing bike ride along the Potomac river (just at the Virginia side of D.C.). It started to shower just as we began along the river, and we took refuge first under a clump of three big trees, and then under a bridge. We biked for about 8 miles, stopped at a small town, Alexandria, and ate and drank them out of house and home. Rob got into a bit of a tif with a grouchy man who yelled at him because the kids were riding their bikes on the sidewalk. When Rob pointed out that we just saw a bicyclist get his by a bus in Washington, he said, "I would have a bus hit all you bicyclists, to which Rob told him to go
F-*&@ himself. Both nights that Diane was away, Rob and the kids ate Indian and Mexican food in Georgetown.
VIRGINIA BEACH
Diane returned and we headed for Viginia Beach. Just after arriving, she noticed that Rob had a brown spot on his nose, perhaps a bruise, but it bugged Rob who was convinced it was cancer. Later that day, we were in bumper to bumper traffic on the highway yet again in boiling heat with no A.C., bored to tears despite Aviva's brillian reading of Harry Potter. At one point, Rob was looking at his "cancer" in the rear-view mirror, when he failed to notice the truck in front coming to an abrupt stop. Luckily, the fellow was nice enough to let us go without even wanting our insurance info. "I trust you," he said, accepting only Rob's business card, in case he needed to contact us to pay for any body work. But his truck looked pretty good. Our van, unfortunately, did not fair nearly as well. We lost our front license plate, crunched our bumper, and the hood looks pretty sorry.
Our campsite was a KOA, and was quite nice, with a large refreshing pool. We were a 20-minute bike ride to the beach, which was fabulous. We would bike practically every day from our campsite to the beach; on one of those times, we, again saw a bicyclist get hit by a vehicle, this time an S.U.V., but he also was okay. We spent two different days at the beach playing in the waves. Aaron was in 7th heaven playing on the beach in the waves, especially on the second day when Rob got him a boogie board. Unfortunately, Rob first got a skim board which we all tried, but failed miserably at. On three different nights we ate amazing seafood and hush puppies. Diane got to have her crabs legs three times, which she loves. And the boys overcame their fear of creepy looking crabs, because the taste won out over the look. Noah actually ended up dissecting a crab claw to figure out how it works.
We also visited Jamestown and Williamsburg.
Jamestown was the first English settlement in the Americas. We saw the replica village which also had replicas of a Powahatan Indian village as well as the three original ships on which the settlers came over. At the end of the day, Rob and Aaron spent a while doing an imaginary game on one of the boats, pretending they were two settlers coming over to the new world on a boat, discussing what they were planning to do in the new world. Diane and Aviva were back in the settlement village. And Noah....was lost (Rob thought he was with Diane, and Diane thought he was with Rob). Eventually, Noah got help from a staff member and was reunited with Diane. It was a bit scary for him.
In Williamsburg, Diane asked for directions to the parking lot from two working guys who were very excited to tell her about where to park for free. Rob later pointed out that one of them was oggling her; perhaps that helped in getting us free parking for the day. Continuing on the free theme, once we realized how much the entrance fee was, we decided to proceed without paying, managing to get into several of the exhibits animated by actors playing the part of colonial Americans of the late 1700's. The town itself was terrific; and we learned a lot, and the actors were highly entertaining. One of whom pretended to marry Aviva, through a ceremony called "setting the broom," (jumping over a broomstick together) which was practiced by the slaves who were not allowed to marry legally.
WEST VIRGINIA
For this part of the trip we decided to let the road lead us to where it would, and this time it led us to ACE adventure tours. Along the way, however, we encountered the most stunning electrical storm we've ever seen. There was literally no break in the lightening for three hours. Although it was night, the sky would turn bright every few seconds. The rain deluged down on us, and we had such poor visibility, we had to pull to the side of the road for 45 minutes, during which we ate cereal and cheese in the car. After getting back on the road (following dinner at the Olive Garden), we tried to get back on the highway, only to discover that the entrance was blocked by a tree. In the pouring rain, we tried to get the people behind us to back up, but there was one woman who refused to budge; in fact, even refusing to roll down her window and talk with Diane who was trying to reason with her while standing in the pouring rain.
For our first day at ACE, we played in the water at the lake, which included ziplining, water slides, and playing on these huge plastic inflated water toys like an enormous water trampoline.
It was a blast, although on the last day, when we returned to play on them again, we endured a couple of injuries: Aaron jarred his back jumping off of this tower thing, and Diane jammed a toe on the same dumb tower thing. Before that, though, the kids were all having fun on it, since it works like a catapult, with one person's jump causing the other person to go flying.
The second day there, we went whitewater rafting. We took a trip that included class two to five rapids. The positive highlites from the trip were getting to ride the rapids, swim some of the easier rapids, and general thrilling excitement. Our tour guide, Cassey, was quite funny, throwing the kids overboard and looking a bit like a cave-man/Moses mixture. An unwelcome highlite of the trip was Aaron's falling overboard on a class five rapid, which freaked both Aviva and Noah out, considering he went under the boat; within about 10 seconds Aaron was bobbing up beside the boat, and Rob hauled him in. Aaron quote: "My hero." Aaron was scraped and bruised, but mostly just shook up from the experience. However, he handled himself really well and by the book.
The next day, we went on an awesome bike ride along a different part of the same river, the New River Gorge. The first half was 95% downhill and really fun, although a bit of a challenge for Rob to negotiate the rocks on his racing bike. At the midpoint, we saw a beautiful waterfall, and went to a ghost town called Thurmond where 5 people currently live. In its day, it was a thriving coal-mining town. On the way back, it was, of course, 95% uphill; one of the most challenging bike rides we've had, especially in the heat. We were all soaked by the time we got back. So the boys jumped in a lake, and the girls jumped in the showers. An unfortunate ending to a great day, was our discovery of having been robbed (of our Coleman stove and one lantern --odd things to steal, not worth very much) while we were on our ride.
Of note was hearing from two different servers of the poverty of West Virginia. At the IHOP a couple days earler, one waiter told us of how the education system is about two grades behind at each level, and how he plans to get out for college. On the last night, our waitress told us how there is no middle class, and tried to solicit us to use her as a tour guide should we return to the area. It reminded us a bit of being in developing courtries we've been to. Consistent with that was frequently seeing houses that looked quite dilapidated, littered with old vehicles or parts of vehicles, garbage, broken toys, dogs off-leash, and the occasional child roaming in only a diaper.
Currently, we are on our last day, just outside Pittsburgh, en-route to Toronto.
RANAD
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Friday, August 25, 2006
Hi it´s us again. So after we left the internet cafe, Rob got a haircut which the kids say makes him look like a bald rat. Actually, it´s not too bad, because hair does grow back. We went on to see the monastary at El Escorial, and then to Avila, a medieval town with perfectly preserved 11th century walls. While there we broke another of our travel dining rules: never eat in a restaurant where the staff stand outside bekoning you to try their food. And as Aaron noticed, there were 4 restaurants all called "Restaurant".
In the quiet, family campground that we stayed in, quiet time once again began nice and early at midnight and ended at 7am. Needless to say, we were a little sleep deprived during these four nights.
While here, we also got some more laundry done including all of our towels, this time by a more compitent laundress. So, then when Aviva and Rob both wanted to take showers, there was only one towel for them to share. Unfortunately this "towel" was actually just a bath mat, that Rob had inadvertently stolen from the guest house in Glasgow, Scotland. We had been wondering what to do with it ever since, and finally put it to good use.
On the second day in the region, we went into Madrid, and took one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours of the city. At first we tried very hard to pay attention to the somewhat incoherent commentaries by this droning british male voice saying things like "...and here you can admire the beautiful blah blah blah, that was built in the beautiful period of blah blah and it is very beautiful. Many people from all over the world have come to admire its beauty". Actually, it was a lot of fun, once we stopped trying to follow and started to make fun of the tour.
That night we had an amazing grilled fish dinner and Sangria which were deliscious.
The next day we did a day trip to Toledo. We went to the jewish museum, which was housed in a former synagogue....converted to a church after the expulsion of the jews during the Inquisition.....converted to an army barracks, and then an army cemetary, only finally to be restored in its original state. A lot of it was simply answering basic questions like "What is a jew?", but we were able to learn a fair bit about the history of the jews of Toledo, the region and in Spain (although we still don´t know what the present day situation is). That evening we went to eat in this really good restaurant. We were all having a lovely time, until we got......THE BILL. The ¨policy¨in this restaurant is to charge an extra euro per measely slice of baguette you eat (but nowhere in the menu do they mention this, and they bring the bread to you liberally through the meal). Anyway, Diane and Rob had a little "discussion" with the owner, and we fixed the bill. If only things had gone so smoothly with the phone call back in Catalunya. Oh well.
Now let´s talk about the breakfasts in Madrid/El Escorial. Every morning we went to a cafe and had danishes, which the Spanish eat with a fork and knife....so we did too. We also ordered about 7 orders of tostados (toasted baguettes), and Rob and Diane had about 3 cafe con leches each. The waitress was stunned by our capacity to eat. She also was a bit taken aback when Diane ordered orange juice for Aviva, insisting that it be without any octopus in it (pulp is "pulpa" in Spanish, Octopus is "pulpo"). On the final morning we gorged ourselves on churos (straight pieces of fried dough that you dip in your cafe con leche) which caused quite a few tummy aches. But we were all ok enough to take down our campsite and head off to Andalucia.
During the drive down to Andalucia we passed by the 400 million olive trees in the province of Jaen, ending up at our Bed and Breakfast amidst one of the many olive groves (in the province of Granada). When we arrived, we were greeted by Denise our British ex-pat host (who says things like "don´t drink the tap water or you might get a chippy stomache") along with Zack, Luna, Felix, 2pak, and Yogi. These five guests sharing the bed and breakfast with us happen to be three dogs and two cats. Yogi, one of the dogs, wakes us up every morning at 9 begging us to play fetch, not with sticks or balls, but rather with rocks. At first Diane and Rob forbid the throwing of rocks after one of us had a near head injury, but soon that was forgotten, and Yogi´s needs took precedence, and since then we´ve been treating Yogi like the family dog. Actually, he´s quite remarkable as he´s able to identify the exact rock thrown to him based on smell alone among the multitude of rocks that occupy the spectacular property. The B & B is located in a white farmhouse in an olive grove, with fig and pear trees, grape vines, and a gorgeous swimming pool overlooking a valley. We make our way over to the fig trees several times a day to help ourselves to the sweetest juiciest figs we´ve ever tasted. Unfortunately, every morning we inform Denise of yet another thing we broke the day before. It keeps getting worse each day. Starting with the shower door, moving on to the toilet, and then finally, last night, Rob knocked over a lamp in his sleep shattering it into a million pieces on the hard tile floor.
The first night in Andalucia we ate at Marcelo´s, a fabulous restaurant, which like all the others, start serving only at about 9 at night. We ate garlic soup, garlic shrimp, and garlic chicken. And for dessert...garlic ice cream! Just kidding. No dessert that night. But we stank like heck the next day. That day, we went to Monte Frio to see the tower, which, unfortunately was closed. But we had a great homemade lunch of pimiento, bagette, and pickled onions, olives, etc.
We swam in the pool that hot afternoon. The next day, we drove into Granada, and took another hop on hop off bus tour. This time we learned a lot. We´ve been reciting one of the rather strange, but interesting poems we learned on that tour, ¨Dear Granda, if it were legal I would marry you.¨ We saw an incredible example of Flamenco dancing in a show that took place in the gardens of the Alhambra palace. The show started after about 10 p.m. and ended well after midnight, so that by the time we got back to the B & B by about 1 a.m., the chlildren were practically delerious with fatigue. The dance numbers were not typical traditional flamenco, but rather arty, modern interpretations, with spooky lighting, eerie vocals, and very Spanish-sounding fast paced guitar accompanyment. All the pieces were very interesting except for the last one, which was the only one without fighting, spooky police, sex, or stripping. The next day we went to the beach in Salobreña, an absolutely spectacular, but chilly corner of the mediterranean. But after a while the water is not so bad, because your body is completely numb. Besides the cold water, the beach was warm and gorgeous. We spent some of our time there carefully deliberating the question of which of the topless bathers had implants. The half naked women with cigarette butts hanging out of their mouths are particularly attractive. We spent a long time skimming stones and playing in the sand. As we were preparing to leave, we noticed a Spanish girl running by with a bunny, then she threw the bunny, then picked it up by its ears, then she created this little island in the water out of sand, and put the bunny on it. The bunny having no idea what to do, tried to jump, and then fell in the water. She ended this interesting series of experiments by literally ringing out the bunny. This whole experience made for some fascinating conversation about the nature of cross cultural differences in cruelty to animals, which was not unlike our prior conversations which took place following the bullfight we watched on television a couple of days before. That night we ate amazing grilled fish at a straw hut overlooking the sunset on the beach (and no...that night, we did NOT eat rabbit stew).
Yesterday we got an early start at 11:30 in the morning and hiked a mountain in the Sierra Nevada. It was an exhausting hike, in part because we had to be back down from the summit by 5:45 to catch the last lift down the rest of the mountain. So we basically had to sprint up the mountain. But once we got to the top, we had a gorgeous panaromic view of a lot of Andalucia, and even a bit of Morroco (well, really we couldn´t actually see Africa, because it was too hazy, but let´s just say we did). By the time we were down, our feet, legs, hips, and butts were killing us and we had headaches from the altitude, so we all solved it in our own way: Diane and Rob, by drinking caffeine, Aviva by sleeping in the car, Aaron by trying to sleep in the car and Noah by eavesdropping on Rob and Diane´s conversation.
We ate dinner again at Marcelo´s, but when we got there, our lungs were greeted by a little surprise: Raid, being sprayed at the entrance by Marcelo. After sputtering, coughing and taking a walk, we returned and headed to the rooftop terrace. Unfortunately Aaron´s headache had morphed into a full-on migraine and he was not able to eat any of the garlic that we had. He is feeling top notch today, but all day he has been complaining, at times violently, about our atroscious breath. He has asked to eat a clove of garlic in retaliation, but we haven´t been able to find one. Remarkably the children got 11 1/2 hours of sleep, in contrast to our previous complaints about sleep deprivation in Spain.
We´re at the beach again today, at this cafe. Noah has a bit of a fever, so he´s a little off his game today. But we´ve been having fun writing this blog together.
Oh, we have a few other things to add:
Last night during our post-Raid/pre-dinner walk,on the tiny winding roads of Tarzo, one of those white villages you see perched on a hill with two-way traffic on one lane roads, where the houses end at the edge of the road, and everyone drives like it´s the 401, we saw a 6 year old boy driving a mini, motorized 4 wheel motor cycle (with another child holding on as a passenger). He drove up towards an oncoming car, and adeptly manoevered his way up and around the car, without slowing down or looking fazed.
Yesterday, we also saw a car with padding all around it. We noticed it was from Great Britain, and so Rob and Diane wondered if this might have been a good option for us when we were in Scotland!
So that´s it for now. We have one day left in Granada and then we start heading back home, via Scotland. We´ll see about squeezing in one more entry before the end.
Talk to yo soon,
RANAD.
In the quiet, family campground that we stayed in, quiet time once again began nice and early at midnight and ended at 7am. Needless to say, we were a little sleep deprived during these four nights.
While here, we also got some more laundry done including all of our towels, this time by a more compitent laundress. So, then when Aviva and Rob both wanted to take showers, there was only one towel for them to share. Unfortunately this "towel" was actually just a bath mat, that Rob had inadvertently stolen from the guest house in Glasgow, Scotland. We had been wondering what to do with it ever since, and finally put it to good use.
On the second day in the region, we went into Madrid, and took one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours of the city. At first we tried very hard to pay attention to the somewhat incoherent commentaries by this droning british male voice saying things like "...and here you can admire the beautiful blah blah blah, that was built in the beautiful period of blah blah and it is very beautiful. Many people from all over the world have come to admire its beauty". Actually, it was a lot of fun, once we stopped trying to follow and started to make fun of the tour.
That night we had an amazing grilled fish dinner and Sangria which were deliscious.
The next day we did a day trip to Toledo. We went to the jewish museum, which was housed in a former synagogue....converted to a church after the expulsion of the jews during the Inquisition.....converted to an army barracks, and then an army cemetary, only finally to be restored in its original state. A lot of it was simply answering basic questions like "What is a jew?", but we were able to learn a fair bit about the history of the jews of Toledo, the region and in Spain (although we still don´t know what the present day situation is). That evening we went to eat in this really good restaurant. We were all having a lovely time, until we got......THE BILL. The ¨policy¨in this restaurant is to charge an extra euro per measely slice of baguette you eat (but nowhere in the menu do they mention this, and they bring the bread to you liberally through the meal). Anyway, Diane and Rob had a little "discussion" with the owner, and we fixed the bill. If only things had gone so smoothly with the phone call back in Catalunya. Oh well.
Now let´s talk about the breakfasts in Madrid/El Escorial. Every morning we went to a cafe and had danishes, which the Spanish eat with a fork and knife....so we did too. We also ordered about 7 orders of tostados (toasted baguettes), and Rob and Diane had about 3 cafe con leches each. The waitress was stunned by our capacity to eat. She also was a bit taken aback when Diane ordered orange juice for Aviva, insisting that it be without any octopus in it (pulp is "pulpa" in Spanish, Octopus is "pulpo"). On the final morning we gorged ourselves on churos (straight pieces of fried dough that you dip in your cafe con leche) which caused quite a few tummy aches. But we were all ok enough to take down our campsite and head off to Andalucia.
During the drive down to Andalucia we passed by the 400 million olive trees in the province of Jaen, ending up at our Bed and Breakfast amidst one of the many olive groves (in the province of Granada). When we arrived, we were greeted by Denise our British ex-pat host (who says things like "don´t drink the tap water or you might get a chippy stomache") along with Zack, Luna, Felix, 2pak, and Yogi. These five guests sharing the bed and breakfast with us happen to be three dogs and two cats. Yogi, one of the dogs, wakes us up every morning at 9 begging us to play fetch, not with sticks or balls, but rather with rocks. At first Diane and Rob forbid the throwing of rocks after one of us had a near head injury, but soon that was forgotten, and Yogi´s needs took precedence, and since then we´ve been treating Yogi like the family dog. Actually, he´s quite remarkable as he´s able to identify the exact rock thrown to him based on smell alone among the multitude of rocks that occupy the spectacular property. The B & B is located in a white farmhouse in an olive grove, with fig and pear trees, grape vines, and a gorgeous swimming pool overlooking a valley. We make our way over to the fig trees several times a day to help ourselves to the sweetest juiciest figs we´ve ever tasted. Unfortunately, every morning we inform Denise of yet another thing we broke the day before. It keeps getting worse each day. Starting with the shower door, moving on to the toilet, and then finally, last night, Rob knocked over a lamp in his sleep shattering it into a million pieces on the hard tile floor.
The first night in Andalucia we ate at Marcelo´s, a fabulous restaurant, which like all the others, start serving only at about 9 at night. We ate garlic soup, garlic shrimp, and garlic chicken. And for dessert...garlic ice cream! Just kidding. No dessert that night. But we stank like heck the next day. That day, we went to Monte Frio to see the tower, which, unfortunately was closed. But we had a great homemade lunch of pimiento, bagette, and pickled onions, olives, etc.
We swam in the pool that hot afternoon. The next day, we drove into Granada, and took another hop on hop off bus tour. This time we learned a lot. We´ve been reciting one of the rather strange, but interesting poems we learned on that tour, ¨Dear Granda, if it were legal I would marry you.¨ We saw an incredible example of Flamenco dancing in a show that took place in the gardens of the Alhambra palace. The show started after about 10 p.m. and ended well after midnight, so that by the time we got back to the B & B by about 1 a.m., the chlildren were practically delerious with fatigue. The dance numbers were not typical traditional flamenco, but rather arty, modern interpretations, with spooky lighting, eerie vocals, and very Spanish-sounding fast paced guitar accompanyment. All the pieces were very interesting except for the last one, which was the only one without fighting, spooky police, sex, or stripping. The next day we went to the beach in Salobreña, an absolutely spectacular, but chilly corner of the mediterranean. But after a while the water is not so bad, because your body is completely numb. Besides the cold water, the beach was warm and gorgeous. We spent some of our time there carefully deliberating the question of which of the topless bathers had implants. The half naked women with cigarette butts hanging out of their mouths are particularly attractive. We spent a long time skimming stones and playing in the sand. As we were preparing to leave, we noticed a Spanish girl running by with a bunny, then she threw the bunny, then picked it up by its ears, then she created this little island in the water out of sand, and put the bunny on it. The bunny having no idea what to do, tried to jump, and then fell in the water. She ended this interesting series of experiments by literally ringing out the bunny. This whole experience made for some fascinating conversation about the nature of cross cultural differences in cruelty to animals, which was not unlike our prior conversations which took place following the bullfight we watched on television a couple of days before. That night we ate amazing grilled fish at a straw hut overlooking the sunset on the beach (and no...that night, we did NOT eat rabbit stew).
Yesterday we got an early start at 11:30 in the morning and hiked a mountain in the Sierra Nevada. It was an exhausting hike, in part because we had to be back down from the summit by 5:45 to catch the last lift down the rest of the mountain. So we basically had to sprint up the mountain. But once we got to the top, we had a gorgeous panaromic view of a lot of Andalucia, and even a bit of Morroco (well, really we couldn´t actually see Africa, because it was too hazy, but let´s just say we did). By the time we were down, our feet, legs, hips, and butts were killing us and we had headaches from the altitude, so we all solved it in our own way: Diane and Rob, by drinking caffeine, Aviva by sleeping in the car, Aaron by trying to sleep in the car and Noah by eavesdropping on Rob and Diane´s conversation.
We ate dinner again at Marcelo´s, but when we got there, our lungs were greeted by a little surprise: Raid, being sprayed at the entrance by Marcelo. After sputtering, coughing and taking a walk, we returned and headed to the rooftop terrace. Unfortunately Aaron´s headache had morphed into a full-on migraine and he was not able to eat any of the garlic that we had. He is feeling top notch today, but all day he has been complaining, at times violently, about our atroscious breath. He has asked to eat a clove of garlic in retaliation, but we haven´t been able to find one. Remarkably the children got 11 1/2 hours of sleep, in contrast to our previous complaints about sleep deprivation in Spain.
We´re at the beach again today, at this cafe. Noah has a bit of a fever, so he´s a little off his game today. But we´ve been having fun writing this blog together.
Oh, we have a few other things to add:
Last night during our post-Raid/pre-dinner walk,on the tiny winding roads of Tarzo, one of those white villages you see perched on a hill with two-way traffic on one lane roads, where the houses end at the edge of the road, and everyone drives like it´s the 401, we saw a 6 year old boy driving a mini, motorized 4 wheel motor cycle (with another child holding on as a passenger). He drove up towards an oncoming car, and adeptly manoevered his way up and around the car, without slowing down or looking fazed.
Yesterday, we also saw a car with padding all around it. We noticed it was from Great Britain, and so Rob and Diane wondered if this might have been a good option for us when we were in Scotland!
So that´s it for now. We have one day left in Granada and then we start heading back home, via Scotland. We´ll see about squeezing in one more entry before the end.
Talk to yo soon,
RANAD.
Hi it´s us again. So after we left the internet cafe, Rob got a haircut which the kids say makes him look like a bald rat. Actually, it´s not too bad, because hair does grow back. We went on to see the monastary at El Escorial, and then to Avila, a medieval town with perfectly preserved 11th century walls. While there we broke another of our travel dining rules: never eat in a restaurant where the staff stand outside bekoning you to try their food. And as Aaron noticed, there were 4 restaurants all called "Restaurant".
In the quiet, family campground that we stayed in, quiet time once again began nice and early at midnight and ended at 7am. Needless to say, we were a little sleep deprived during these four nights.
While here, we also got some more laundry done including all of our towels, this time by a more compitent laundress. So, then when Aviva and Rob both wanted to take showers, there was only one towel for them to share. Unfortunately this "towel" was actually just a bath mat, that Rob had inadvertently stolen from the guest house in Glasgow, Scotland. We had been wondering what to do with it ever since, and finally put it to good use.
On the second day in the region, we went into Madrid, and took one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours of the city. At first we tried very hard to pay attention to the somewhat incoherent commentaries by this droning british male voice saying things like "...and here you can admire the beautiful blah blah blah, that was built in the beautiful period of blah blah and it is very beautiful. Many people from all over the world have come to admire its beauty". Actually, it was a lot of fun, once we stopped trying to follow and started to make fun of the tour.
That night we had an amazing grilled fish dinner and Sangria which were deliscious.
The next day we did a day trip to Toledo. We went to the jewish museum, which was housed in a former synagogue....converted to a church after the expulsion of the jews during the Inquisition.....converted to an army barracks, and then an army cemetary, only finally to be restored in its original state. A lot of it was simply answering basic questions like "What is a jew?", but we were able to learn a fair bit about the history of the jews of Toledo, the region and in Spain (although we still don´t know what the present day situation is). That evening we went to eat in this really good restaurant. We were all having a lovely time, until we got......THE BILL. The ¨policy¨in this restaurant is to charge an extra euro per measely slice of baguette you eat (but nowhere in the menu do they mention this, and they bring the bread to you liberally through the meal). Anyway, Diane and Rob had a little "discussion" with the owner, and we fixed the bill. If only things had gone so smoothly with the phone call back in Catalunya. Oh well.
Now let´s talk about the breakfasts in Madrid/El Escorial. Every morning we went to a cafe and had danishes, which the Spanish eat with a fork and knife....so we did too. We also ordered about 7 orders of tostados (toasted baguettes), and Rob and Diane had about 3 cafe con leches each. The waitress was stunned by our capacity to eat. She also was a bit taken aback when Diane ordered orange juice for Aviva, insisting that it be without any octopus in it (pulp is "pulpa" in Spanish, Octopus is "pulpo"). On the final morning we gorged ourselves on churos (straight pieces of fried dough that you dip in your cafe con leche) which caused quite a few tummy aches. But we were all ok enough to take down our campsite and head off to Andalucia.
During the drive down to Andalucia we passed by the 400 million olive trees in the province of Jaen, ending up at our Bed and Breakfast amidst one of the many olive groves (in the province of Granada). When we arrived, we were greeted by Denise our British ex-pat host (who says things like "don´t drink the tap water or you might get a chippy stomache") along with Zack, Luna, Felix, 2pak, and Yogi. These five guests sharing the bed and breakfast with us happen to be three dogs and two cats. Yogi, one of the dogs, wakes us up every morning at 9 begging us to play fetch, not with sticks or balls, but rather with rocks. At first Diane and Rob forbid the throwing of rocks after one of us had a near head injury, but soon that was forgotten, and Yogi´s needs took precedence, and since then we´ve been treating Yogi like the family dog. Actually, he´s quite remarkable as he´s able to identify the exact rock thrown to him based on smell alone among the multitude of rocks that occupy the spectacular property. The B & B is located in a white farmhouse in an olive grove, with fig and pear trees, grape vines, and a gorgeous swimming pool overlooking a valley. We make our way over to the fig trees several times a day to help ourselves to the sweetest juiciest figs we´ve ever tasted. Unfortunately, every morning we inform Denise of yet another thing we broke the day before. It keeps getting worse each day. Starting with the shower door, moving on to the toilet, and then finally, last night, Rob knocked over a lamp in his sleep shattering it into a million pieces on the hard tile floor.
The first night in Andalucia we ate at Marcelo´s, a fabulous restaurant, which like all the others, start serving only at about 9 at night. We ate garlic soup, garlic shrimp, and garlic chicken. And for dessert...garlic ice cream! Just kidding. No dessert that night. But we stank like heck the next day. That day, we went to Monte Frio to see the tower, which, unfortunately was closed. But we had a great homemade lunch of pimiento, bagette, and pickled onions, olives, etc.
We swam in the pool that hot afternoon. The next day, we drove into Granada, and took another hop on hop off bus tour. This time we learned a lot. We´ve been reciting one of the rather strange, but interesting poems we learned on that tour, ¨Dear Granda, if it were legal I would marry you.¨ We saw an incredible example of Flamenco dancing in a show that took place in the gardens of the Alhambra palace. The show started after about 10 p.m. and ended well after midnight, so that by the time we got back to the B & B by about 1 a.m., the chlildren were practically delerious with fatigue. The dance numbers were not typical traditional flamenco, but rather arty, modern interpretations, with spooky lighting, eerie vocals, and very Spanish-sounding fast paced guitar accompanyment. All the pieces were very interesting except for the last one, which was the only one without fighting, spooky police, sex, or stripping. The next day we went to the beach in Salobreña, an absolutely spectacular, but chilly corner of the mediterranean. But after a while the water is not so bad, because your body is completely numb. Besides the cold water, the beach was warm and gorgeous. We spent some of our time there carefully deliberating the question of which of the topless bathers had implants. The half naked women with cigarette butts hanging out of their mouths are particularly attractive. We spent a long time skimming stones and playing in the sand. As we were preparing to leave, we noticed a Spanish girl running by with a bunny, then she threw the bunny, then picked it up by its ears, then she created this little island in the water out of sand, and put the bunny on it. The bunny having no idea what to do, tried to jump, and then fell in the water. She ended this interesting series of experiments by literally ringing out the bunny. This whole experience made for some fascinating conversation about the nature of cross cultural differences in cruelty to animals, which was not unlike our prior conversations which took place following the bullfight we watched on television a couple of days before. That night we ate amazing grilled fish at a straw hut overlooking the sunset on the beach (and no...that night, we did NOT eat rabbit stew).
Yesterday we got an early start at 11:30 in the morning and hiked a mountain in the Sierra Nevada. It was an exhausting hike, in part because we had to be back down from the summit by 5:45 to catch the last lift down the rest of the mountain. So we basically had to sprint up the mountain. But once we got to the top, we had a gorgeous panaromic view of a lot of Andalucia, and even a bit of Morroco (well, really we couldn´t actually see Africa, because it was too hazy, but let´s just say we did). By the time we were down, our feet, legs, hips, and butts were killing us and we had headaches from the altitude, so we all solved it in our own way: Diane and Rob, by drinking caffeine, Aviva by sleeping in the car, Aaron by trying to sleep in the car and Noah by eavesdropping on Rob and Diane´s conversation.
We ate dinner again at Marcelo´s, but when we got there, our lungs were greeted by a little surprise: Raid, being sprayed at the entrance by Marcelo. After sputtering, coughing and taking a walk, we returned and headed to the rooftop terrace. Unfortunately Aaron´s headache had morphed into a full-on migraine and he was not able to eat any of the garlic that we had. He is feeling top notch today, but all day he has been complaining, at times violently, about our atroscious breath. He has asked to eat a clove of garlic in retaliation, but we haven´t been able to find one. Remarkably the children got 11 1/2 hours of sleep, in contrast to our previous complaints about sleep deprivation in Spain.
We´re at the beach again today, at this cafe. Noah has a bit of a fever, so he´s a little off his game today. But we´ve been having fun writing this blog together.
Oh, we have a few other things to add:
Last night during our post-Raid/pre-dinner walk,on the tiny winding roads of Tarzo, one of those white villages you see perched on a hill with two-way traffic on one lane roads, where the houses end at the edge of the road, and everyone drives like it´s the 401, we saw a 6 year old boy driving a mini, motorized 4 wheel motor cycle (with another child holding on as a passenger). He drove up towards an oncoming car, and adeptly manoevered his way up and around the car, without slowing down or looking fazed.
Yesterday, we also saw a car with padding all around it. We noticed it was from Great Britain, and so Rob and Diane wondered if this might have been a good option for us when we were in Scotland!
So that´s it for now. We have one day left in Granada and then we start heading back home, via Scotland. We´ll see about squeezing in one more entry before the end.
Talk to yo soon,
RANAD.
In the quiet, family campground that we stayed in, quiet time once again began nice and early at midnight and ended at 7am. Needless to say, we were a little sleep deprived during these four nights.
While here, we also got some more laundry done including all of our towels, this time by a more compitent laundress. So, then when Aviva and Rob both wanted to take showers, there was only one towel for them to share. Unfortunately this "towel" was actually just a bath mat, that Rob had inadvertently stolen from the guest house in Glasgow, Scotland. We had been wondering what to do with it ever since, and finally put it to good use.
On the second day in the region, we went into Madrid, and took one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours of the city. At first we tried very hard to pay attention to the somewhat incoherent commentaries by this droning british male voice saying things like "...and here you can admire the beautiful blah blah blah, that was built in the beautiful period of blah blah and it is very beautiful. Many people from all over the world have come to admire its beauty". Actually, it was a lot of fun, once we stopped trying to follow and started to make fun of the tour.
That night we had an amazing grilled fish dinner and Sangria which were deliscious.
The next day we did a day trip to Toledo. We went to the jewish museum, which was housed in a former synagogue....converted to a church after the expulsion of the jews during the Inquisition.....converted to an army barracks, and then an army cemetary, only finally to be restored in its original state. A lot of it was simply answering basic questions like "What is a jew?", but we were able to learn a fair bit about the history of the jews of Toledo, the region and in Spain (although we still don´t know what the present day situation is). That evening we went to eat in this really good restaurant. We were all having a lovely time, until we got......THE BILL. The ¨policy¨in this restaurant is to charge an extra euro per measely slice of baguette you eat (but nowhere in the menu do they mention this, and they bring the bread to you liberally through the meal). Anyway, Diane and Rob had a little "discussion" with the owner, and we fixed the bill. If only things had gone so smoothly with the phone call back in Catalunya. Oh well.
Now let´s talk about the breakfasts in Madrid/El Escorial. Every morning we went to a cafe and had danishes, which the Spanish eat with a fork and knife....so we did too. We also ordered about 7 orders of tostados (toasted baguettes), and Rob and Diane had about 3 cafe con leches each. The waitress was stunned by our capacity to eat. She also was a bit taken aback when Diane ordered orange juice for Aviva, insisting that it be without any octopus in it (pulp is "pulpa" in Spanish, Octopus is "pulpo"). On the final morning we gorged ourselves on churos (straight pieces of fried dough that you dip in your cafe con leche) which caused quite a few tummy aches. But we were all ok enough to take down our campsite and head off to Andalucia.
During the drive down to Andalucia we passed by the 400 million olive trees in the province of Jaen, ending up at our Bed and Breakfast amidst one of the many olive groves (in the province of Granada). When we arrived, we were greeted by Denise our British ex-pat host (who says things like "don´t drink the tap water or you might get a chippy stomache") along with Zack, Luna, Felix, 2pak, and Yogi. These five guests sharing the bed and breakfast with us happen to be three dogs and two cats. Yogi, one of the dogs, wakes us up every morning at 9 begging us to play fetch, not with sticks or balls, but rather with rocks. At first Diane and Rob forbid the throwing of rocks after one of us had a near head injury, but soon that was forgotten, and Yogi´s needs took precedence, and since then we´ve been treating Yogi like the family dog. Actually, he´s quite remarkable as he´s able to identify the exact rock thrown to him based on smell alone among the multitude of rocks that occupy the spectacular property. The B & B is located in a white farmhouse in an olive grove, with fig and pear trees, grape vines, and a gorgeous swimming pool overlooking a valley. We make our way over to the fig trees several times a day to help ourselves to the sweetest juiciest figs we´ve ever tasted. Unfortunately, every morning we inform Denise of yet another thing we broke the day before. It keeps getting worse each day. Starting with the shower door, moving on to the toilet, and then finally, last night, Rob knocked over a lamp in his sleep shattering it into a million pieces on the hard tile floor.
The first night in Andalucia we ate at Marcelo´s, a fabulous restaurant, which like all the others, start serving only at about 9 at night. We ate garlic soup, garlic shrimp, and garlic chicken. And for dessert...garlic ice cream! Just kidding. No dessert that night. But we stank like heck the next day. That day, we went to Monte Frio to see the tower, which, unfortunately was closed. But we had a great homemade lunch of pimiento, bagette, and pickled onions, olives, etc.
We swam in the pool that hot afternoon. The next day, we drove into Granada, and took another hop on hop off bus tour. This time we learned a lot. We´ve been reciting one of the rather strange, but interesting poems we learned on that tour, ¨Dear Granda, if it were legal I would marry you.¨ We saw an incredible example of Flamenco dancing in a show that took place in the gardens of the Alhambra palace. The show started after about 10 p.m. and ended well after midnight, so that by the time we got back to the B & B by about 1 a.m., the chlildren were practically delerious with fatigue. The dance numbers were not typical traditional flamenco, but rather arty, modern interpretations, with spooky lighting, eerie vocals, and very Spanish-sounding fast paced guitar accompanyment. All the pieces were very interesting except for the last one, which was the only one without fighting, spooky police, sex, or stripping. The next day we went to the beach in Salobreña, an absolutely spectacular, but chilly corner of the mediterranean. But after a while the water is not so bad, because your body is completely numb. Besides the cold water, the beach was warm and gorgeous. We spent some of our time there carefully deliberating the question of which of the topless bathers had implants. The half naked women with cigarette butts hanging out of their mouths are particularly attractive. We spent a long time skimming stones and playing in the sand. As we were preparing to leave, we noticed a Spanish girl running by with a bunny, then she threw the bunny, then picked it up by its ears, then she created this little island in the water out of sand, and put the bunny on it. The bunny having no idea what to do, tried to jump, and then fell in the water. She ended this interesting series of experiments by literally ringing out the bunny. This whole experience made for some fascinating conversation about the nature of cross cultural differences in cruelty to animals, which was not unlike our prior conversations which took place following the bullfight we watched on television a couple of days before. That night we ate amazing grilled fish at a straw hut overlooking the sunset on the beach (and no...that night, we did NOT eat rabbit stew).
Yesterday we got an early start at 11:30 in the morning and hiked a mountain in the Sierra Nevada. It was an exhausting hike, in part because we had to be back down from the summit by 5:45 to catch the last lift down the rest of the mountain. So we basically had to sprint up the mountain. But once we got to the top, we had a gorgeous panaromic view of a lot of Andalucia, and even a bit of Morroco (well, really we couldn´t actually see Africa, because it was too hazy, but let´s just say we did). By the time we were down, our feet, legs, hips, and butts were killing us and we had headaches from the altitude, so we all solved it in our own way: Diane and Rob, by drinking caffeine, Aviva by sleeping in the car, Aaron by trying to sleep in the car and Noah by eavesdropping on Rob and Diane´s conversation.
We ate dinner again at Marcelo´s, but when we got there, our lungs were greeted by a little surprise: Raid, being sprayed at the entrance by Marcelo. After sputtering, coughing and taking a walk, we returned and headed to the rooftop terrace. Unfortunately Aaron´s headache had morphed into a full-on migraine and he was not able to eat any of the garlic that we had. He is feeling top notch today, but all day he has been complaining, at times violently, about our atroscious breath. He has asked to eat a clove of garlic in retaliation, but we haven´t been able to find one. Remarkably the children got 11 1/2 hours of sleep, in contrast to our previous complaints about sleep deprivation in Spain.
We´re at the beach again today, at this cafe. Noah has a bit of a fever, so he´s a little off his game today. But we´ve been having fun writing this blog together.
Oh, we have a few other things to add:
Last night during our post-Raid/pre-dinner walk,on the tiny winding roads of Tarzo, one of those white villages you see perched on a hill with two-way traffic on one lane roads, where the houses end at the edge of the road, and everyone drives like it´s the 401, we saw a 6 year old boy driving a mini, motorized 4 wheel motor cycle (with another child holding on as a passenger). He drove up towards an oncoming car, and adeptly manoevered his way up and around the car, without slowing down or looking fazed.
Yesterday, we also saw a car with padding all around it. We noticed it was from Great Britain, and so Rob and Diane wondered if this might have been a good option for us when we were in Scotland!
So that´s it for now. We have one day left in Granada and then we start heading back home, via Scotland. We´ll see about squeezing in one more entry before the end.
Talk to yo soon,
RANAD.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Hi, it´s us in Spain. So now we need to get you caught up on our time here on the continent. First, there was our flight, which was the day before all those people were arrested in the UK, so we got here without a hitch.....let´s see what happens when we try to leave. Anyway, we got great sets on our budget flight with Ryanair, because we told the staff that we were flying with our three small children, and so they let us preboard (otherwise it´s first-come-first-serve on these cheapo budget airlines).
We rented our car and were happy to be driving on the right side of the road again.
We stayed in a campsite with Eurocamp (which isn´t really camping, it´s more of a hotel suite in a tent, except you don´t have a washroom, which is only a problem for those of us that are middle aged men who need to use the washroom multiple times during the night). Anyway, lucky for us quiet time in the campground started nice and early......midnight. But it´s all good, because you can´t actually get dinner until 8:30-9:00 pm in Spain.
While in that campground, we had a couple of adventures. On the first night, Rob had an urgent call to make to one of his students. The campsite provides a phone service and no calling cards are allowed. The price quoted was 1.33€/minute. It seemed a bit expensive, but given the convenience of making the call on site, we decided to go ahead. After a rather brief call, we were informed that the actual price was 60x what we were originally quoted!! Needless to say, we did do some negotiating with the campground around the bill, but given that they held Diane´s passport, we were not as successful as we would have liked to have been. In the end, the call cost almost as much as the stay in the campground. We have been using calling cards successfully ever since!
The second adventure involved our laundry. Rob and Aviva went to go do the laundy and there were some interesting communication problems. We asked for wash, dry and fold through mime and french, and the next day she handed us a pile of unfolded wet laundry. As well, when Aviva and Rob dropped the stuff off the lady wrote down ´secado´.Aviva kept asking what this meant in her own mixture of french and mime, and the woman kept answering "si, si secado". (Diane later informed us it meant ´dry´.) Oh and of course one of our bags of laundry was also missing. We retrieved it and are all fully clothed at this time.
On our first full day on the costa Brava, we went to the beach. Aaron and Noah made a city in the sand. Aviva Rob and Diane took siestas (when in Spain, do as the Spanyards), and we all played in the Mediterranean.
The next day we drove to Figueres to see the Dali museum. This building is the weirdest we´ve ever seen. There are giant eggs on the roof, statues of people with baguettes on their heads, and an old fashioned submarine guy. The art inside was equally weird. He made an installation of a living room, which when viewed from above using a special lens was actually a woman´s head. He also liked to paint his wife, Gala, a lot, especially with one breast showing.
After the museum, we went to a hotel and had our third mediocre dinner in Spain (athough the best of the three at that point). On the plus side, the place was very fancy and nice looking, and the ice cream was excellent for dessert (oh, and that´s where we made the previous blog entry).
Our food exprerience changed dramatically the next day. We moved on to Zaragoza. On the way, we used our most important rule in travel dining. Never eat in a place that speaks English unless in an English speaking country. We stopped at a hole in the wall stand where they served take out roasted chicken and bean salads (we chose not to get the salad with roasted snails in it). We bought a mess of stuff and took it to a picnic stop on the side of the highway. With one mini fork with three tiny prongs for the five of us, and 50 fingers, we gorged ourselves on one fabulous meal (that by the way, was far cheaper than the crappy, tourist-trap junk from before).
Then we got to Zaragoza (try pronouncing that, but remember that the ´z´is pronounced ´th´). There we had our first try of tapas. It was so cool. We just told people we were from Canada, and they told us what to do. In one place we had potatoes and eggs (sounds boring, but it was out of this world - except Aviva and Rob didn´t think so). In the next we had garlic mushrooms. And in a third bar we had tomatos with goats cheese, etc. You go to different bars for different foods. We had fun, but didn´t finish eating till 11 (when in Spain....).
We stayed in a gorgeous hotel. This was a big leap, more like a hotel suite in a hotel and with washrooms!
The next day we moved on to the Basque country, which is really called Euskadi in their language. We stayed in Bilbao, but hung out more in San Sebastian, a gorgeous resort town. We headed straight to the beach and played in the fabulous Atlantic waves. Diane lost one side of her bikini top, and Noah noted that she was like Dali´s wife, Gala. On the first day at the beach, there were some gun shots. Or so it seemed, to Aviva. It actually was fire works during the day (a bit odd). There was a big festival there,with boat races and bands. It was so crowded, and it was a bit hard to get pinxtos (tapas in Euskadi). But we managed to have an awesome meal squished in with all the other Spanyards.
The next day the festival was still going on and there were tons of buskers, including 5 siblings doing acrobatics. We went on a hike that day, up one of San Sebastian´s mountains overlooking the harbour. We went pretty far up, but not as far as Jesus, who was at the very top, with a lightening rod attached to his back. Later that evening, when it was actually dark, they had fire works that were quite impressive.
By the way, we stayed in an Etap hotel in Bilbao. Rob and Diane describe the rooms as looking like what we would imagine a bedroom would look like on a train, but at least we had beds, showers, and toilets.....something we no longer can claim to have.
We are now camping outside of Madrid, in this beautiful town near El Escorial. The night we got here, since according to Aviva we´d been couped up in the car driving for 5 hours straight, while Rob, Diane, Aaron, and Noah were eating in this terrific, elegant restaurant, she was running around jumping up and down outside, getting her ya-yas out.
Before going to dinner, Noah had a bit of a melt down about constantly having to eat tapas "I can´t stand tapas. I´m sick of tapas. I don´t want anymore tapas!!...."By the way I´m starving". To which Aaron replied "You need some tapas".
We were supposed to have a bungalow here, but it was not ready yesterday, so we´ve pitched our tent. Only problem, it rained last night, so even though we could have a bungalow now, we can´t put the tent away.
It rained this morning so we came to this cyber cafe (although, as Noah points out, there´s no cafe part to it). And hopefully we´ll get into town soon. We´ve been drinking lots of cafe con leche, so perhaps the fact that there´s no cafe here is a good thing.
Talk to you soon. Love,
RANAD
sorry no photos, no one has SD ports in Europe we shoulda brought our cable.
We rented our car and were happy to be driving on the right side of the road again.
We stayed in a campsite with Eurocamp (which isn´t really camping, it´s more of a hotel suite in a tent, except you don´t have a washroom, which is only a problem for those of us that are middle aged men who need to use the washroom multiple times during the night). Anyway, lucky for us quiet time in the campground started nice and early......midnight. But it´s all good, because you can´t actually get dinner until 8:30-9:00 pm in Spain.
While in that campground, we had a couple of adventures. On the first night, Rob had an urgent call to make to one of his students. The campsite provides a phone service and no calling cards are allowed. The price quoted was 1.33€/minute. It seemed a bit expensive, but given the convenience of making the call on site, we decided to go ahead. After a rather brief call, we were informed that the actual price was 60x what we were originally quoted!! Needless to say, we did do some negotiating with the campground around the bill, but given that they held Diane´s passport, we were not as successful as we would have liked to have been. In the end, the call cost almost as much as the stay in the campground. We have been using calling cards successfully ever since!
The second adventure involved our laundry. Rob and Aviva went to go do the laundy and there were some interesting communication problems. We asked for wash, dry and fold through mime and french, and the next day she handed us a pile of unfolded wet laundry. As well, when Aviva and Rob dropped the stuff off the lady wrote down ´secado´.Aviva kept asking what this meant in her own mixture of french and mime, and the woman kept answering "si, si secado". (Diane later informed us it meant ´dry´.) Oh and of course one of our bags of laundry was also missing. We retrieved it and are all fully clothed at this time.
On our first full day on the costa Brava, we went to the beach. Aaron and Noah made a city in the sand. Aviva Rob and Diane took siestas (when in Spain, do as the Spanyards), and we all played in the Mediterranean.
The next day we drove to Figueres to see the Dali museum. This building is the weirdest we´ve ever seen. There are giant eggs on the roof, statues of people with baguettes on their heads, and an old fashioned submarine guy. The art inside was equally weird. He made an installation of a living room, which when viewed from above using a special lens was actually a woman´s head. He also liked to paint his wife, Gala, a lot, especially with one breast showing.
After the museum, we went to a hotel and had our third mediocre dinner in Spain (athough the best of the three at that point). On the plus side, the place was very fancy and nice looking, and the ice cream was excellent for dessert (oh, and that´s where we made the previous blog entry).
Our food exprerience changed dramatically the next day. We moved on to Zaragoza. On the way, we used our most important rule in travel dining. Never eat in a place that speaks English unless in an English speaking country. We stopped at a hole in the wall stand where they served take out roasted chicken and bean salads (we chose not to get the salad with roasted snails in it). We bought a mess of stuff and took it to a picnic stop on the side of the highway. With one mini fork with three tiny prongs for the five of us, and 50 fingers, we gorged ourselves on one fabulous meal (that by the way, was far cheaper than the crappy, tourist-trap junk from before).
Then we got to Zaragoza (try pronouncing that, but remember that the ´z´is pronounced ´th´). There we had our first try of tapas. It was so cool. We just told people we were from Canada, and they told us what to do. In one place we had potatoes and eggs (sounds boring, but it was out of this world - except Aviva and Rob didn´t think so). In the next we had garlic mushrooms. And in a third bar we had tomatos with goats cheese, etc. You go to different bars for different foods. We had fun, but didn´t finish eating till 11 (when in Spain....).
We stayed in a gorgeous hotel. This was a big leap, more like a hotel suite in a hotel and with washrooms!
The next day we moved on to the Basque country, which is really called Euskadi in their language. We stayed in Bilbao, but hung out more in San Sebastian, a gorgeous resort town. We headed straight to the beach and played in the fabulous Atlantic waves. Diane lost one side of her bikini top, and Noah noted that she was like Dali´s wife, Gala. On the first day at the beach, there were some gun shots. Or so it seemed, to Aviva. It actually was fire works during the day (a bit odd). There was a big festival there,with boat races and bands. It was so crowded, and it was a bit hard to get pinxtos (tapas in Euskadi). But we managed to have an awesome meal squished in with all the other Spanyards.
The next day the festival was still going on and there were tons of buskers, including 5 siblings doing acrobatics. We went on a hike that day, up one of San Sebastian´s mountains overlooking the harbour. We went pretty far up, but not as far as Jesus, who was at the very top, with a lightening rod attached to his back. Later that evening, when it was actually dark, they had fire works that were quite impressive.
By the way, we stayed in an Etap hotel in Bilbao. Rob and Diane describe the rooms as looking like what we would imagine a bedroom would look like on a train, but at least we had beds, showers, and toilets.....something we no longer can claim to have.
We are now camping outside of Madrid, in this beautiful town near El Escorial. The night we got here, since according to Aviva we´d been couped up in the car driving for 5 hours straight, while Rob, Diane, Aaron, and Noah were eating in this terrific, elegant restaurant, she was running around jumping up and down outside, getting her ya-yas out.
Before going to dinner, Noah had a bit of a melt down about constantly having to eat tapas "I can´t stand tapas. I´m sick of tapas. I don´t want anymore tapas!!...."By the way I´m starving". To which Aaron replied "You need some tapas".
We were supposed to have a bungalow here, but it was not ready yesterday, so we´ve pitched our tent. Only problem, it rained last night, so even though we could have a bungalow now, we can´t put the tent away.
It rained this morning so we came to this cyber cafe (although, as Noah points out, there´s no cafe part to it). And hopefully we´ll get into town soon. We´ve been drinking lots of cafe con leche, so perhaps the fact that there´s no cafe here is a good thing.
Talk to you soon. Love,
RANAD
sorry no photos, no one has SD ports in Europe we shoulda brought our cable.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Before moving on to Spain, we wanted to mention a couple more things about Scotland. During our time in Inverness we got lost for the umpteenth time, and had to ask for directions from a burley looking, fat, moustached, balding, trenchcoated man, who answered our question regarding directions with a very high
pitched voice. Also, during our harrowing drive up to Inverness, while driving really slowly, a lovely
gentle young scottish woman passed us on the highway, and screamed "Get off the road you stupid fuck.!!!"
Aaron has been dilligently quoting her since then.... bye for now.
pitched voice. Also, during our harrowing drive up to Inverness, while driving really slowly, a lovely
gentle young scottish woman passed us on the highway, and screamed "Get off the road you stupid fuck.!!!"
Aaron has been dilligently quoting her since then.... bye for now.
Hi everybody, it´s us again! Sorry we haven´t gotten back to you in a while. So, last time we wrote we were still in Glasgow. The next day we took a day trip to Edinburgh and the Fringe Festival was on. It was crazy there, but kinda cool since we saw a few good shows in the street. We walked up to the castle and walked from there to the palace along the Royal Mile (by the way, what the heck is the difference between a castle and a palace??). Along the walk there were (in addition to all the street perfomers there for the Festival) these things called "closes". For those of you that don´t know, which would´ve included us up till now, a close is a little alley way connecting the main street to a court yard where the doors to the houses were.
After the palace, we hiked up this really cool hill. If we´d had a guide book with us, we could even tell you the name of the hill. But we didn´t, so there. (actually, maybe it was something like Hollyrood....seriously).
On the train ride back to Glasgow, there were three Irish 20-somethings drinking beer. The kids got a lovely education in drunken behaviour on trains, including foul language, spilling beer, watching your friend sit in the spilled beer, spraying beer at your friend, talking about sex.....you get the picture.
Later that night, Rob arrived, having had a train ride that was similar to the one just described, including
some of the best examples of fine Scottish parenting, such as how to use profanity with your child, how to
bonk your child in the head when annoyed with your child, and finally how to give your child a gameboy to make up for bad parenting behaviour. The reunion as a family was great. We had only one small problem. That is, we were in a room for a maximum of four. So we had to sneak Rob in, had to sneak him to breakfast, and had to sneak him out again.
After sneaking around in Glasgow, we "hired" a car and drove up to the highlands. The drive required a crash course (no pun intended) in British driving, including learning how to drive on the lefthand side of the road, driving with the gear shift on the left, dodging oncoming traffic on insanely narrow highways that sometimes became single lanes, learning to deal with your wife screaming "You´re too close to the edge of the road," all while balancing a cup of coffee, and trying to enjoy the spectacular scenery. Add to that the occasional signs showing upcoming falling rocks, dear crossing, sheep crossing, and elderly persons crossing (seriously!). When Rob finally did drive off the road, he said, "Oh my," and Diane looked smug.
We can laugh about this now, because we´re all alive.
We stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast where they served us vegetarian Haggis, which tastes a lot like vegetarian Cholent. Delicious.
On the first day in Inverness, in the highlands, we went on a hike above Loch Ness. We met a skinny retired schoolteacher who told us about an amazing 1800 foot hike for the next day. This dude was walking at about double our speed, but we somehow kept up. His suggested hike, the next day, was totally awesome. And freakishly we ran into him later that day in town, and told him so.
We finished off our visit to the highlands by gorging ourselves on high tea at a little cafe by the river. High tea there is supper followed by about 5 cakes/scones each and some tea.
That´s it for now, we´ll tell you about the plane ride to Spain next time.
Love, RANAD
After the palace, we hiked up this really cool hill. If we´d had a guide book with us, we could even tell you the name of the hill. But we didn´t, so there. (actually, maybe it was something like Hollyrood....seriously).
On the train ride back to Glasgow, there were three Irish 20-somethings drinking beer. The kids got a lovely education in drunken behaviour on trains, including foul language, spilling beer, watching your friend sit in the spilled beer, spraying beer at your friend, talking about sex.....you get the picture.
Later that night, Rob arrived, having had a train ride that was similar to the one just described, including
some of the best examples of fine Scottish parenting, such as how to use profanity with your child, how to
bonk your child in the head when annoyed with your child, and finally how to give your child a gameboy to make up for bad parenting behaviour. The reunion as a family was great. We had only one small problem. That is, we were in a room for a maximum of four. So we had to sneak Rob in, had to sneak him to breakfast, and had to sneak him out again.
After sneaking around in Glasgow, we "hired" a car and drove up to the highlands. The drive required a crash course (no pun intended) in British driving, including learning how to drive on the lefthand side of the road, driving with the gear shift on the left, dodging oncoming traffic on insanely narrow highways that sometimes became single lanes, learning to deal with your wife screaming "You´re too close to the edge of the road," all while balancing a cup of coffee, and trying to enjoy the spectacular scenery. Add to that the occasional signs showing upcoming falling rocks, dear crossing, sheep crossing, and elderly persons crossing (seriously!). When Rob finally did drive off the road, he said, "Oh my," and Diane looked smug.
We can laugh about this now, because we´re all alive.
We stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast where they served us vegetarian Haggis, which tastes a lot like vegetarian Cholent. Delicious.
On the first day in Inverness, in the highlands, we went on a hike above Loch Ness. We met a skinny retired schoolteacher who told us about an amazing 1800 foot hike for the next day. This dude was walking at about double our speed, but we somehow kept up. His suggested hike, the next day, was totally awesome. And freakishly we ran into him later that day in town, and told him so.
We finished off our visit to the highlands by gorging ourselves on high tea at a little cafe by the river. High tea there is supper followed by about 5 cakes/scones each and some tea.
That´s it for now, we´ll tell you about the plane ride to Spain next time.
Love, RANAD
Friday, August 04, 2006
Glasgow, Scotland
Hey...we're in Glasgow now. Day 2 of our adventure. Still minus Rob, who is busy eating Saur Kraut and learning how to order in German (Nich Schvine bitter). We miss him a lot, but his flight is due in tomorrow evening.
The minute we got here, Aviva insisted on taking a shower. It was a typical American in Europe shower experience. You try to hook the shower head to the hook thingy above, and then it falls down as it's spraying water all over the bathroom, hitting your head on its way down, and then your towel falls in the bath tub. Of course the plug doesn't work, so you're standing in a foot of water. And by the way, there is never a shower curtain, so the entire bathroom is hosed down by your little cleaning experience.
Later that day we took a hop on hop off bus tour of the city and we finished off with a great Indian meal in a restaurant called....Kamasutra. Now the kids know all about that (ps, if you're one of Aviva's friends, it's ancient religious pornography, but don't tell your parents you learned that here).
Today we went to check out the cathedral and the museum of transportation. For lunch we had awesome fish and chips, but it's 8 pm, and we're only starting to get hungry again now, so maybe it was a tad heavy on the oil?? But when in Glasgow do as the Glaswegians......eat fatty fish and fries on the curb with your fingers. Yum Yum.
And now we're blogging at an internet cafe. How cool is that. We would've included a picture of us waving from the top of our double decker hop on hop off bus, but we can't find an SD port on this thingy (computer). Maybe we'll post it at our next site.
Till then you have our love and kisses with lips covered in fishy grease,
Ranad.
The minute we got here, Aviva insisted on taking a shower. It was a typical American in Europe shower experience. You try to hook the shower head to the hook thingy above, and then it falls down as it's spraying water all over the bathroom, hitting your head on its way down, and then your towel falls in the bath tub. Of course the plug doesn't work, so you're standing in a foot of water. And by the way, there is never a shower curtain, so the entire bathroom is hosed down by your little cleaning experience.
Later that day we took a hop on hop off bus tour of the city and we finished off with a great Indian meal in a restaurant called....Kamasutra. Now the kids know all about that (ps, if you're one of Aviva's friends, it's ancient religious pornography, but don't tell your parents you learned that here).
Today we went to check out the cathedral and the museum of transportation. For lunch we had awesome fish and chips, but it's 8 pm, and we're only starting to get hungry again now, so maybe it was a tad heavy on the oil?? But when in Glasgow do as the Glaswegians......eat fatty fish and fries on the curb with your fingers. Yum Yum.
And now we're blogging at an internet cafe. How cool is that. We would've included a picture of us waving from the top of our double decker hop on hop off bus, but we can't find an SD port on this thingy (computer). Maybe we'll post it at our next site.
Till then you have our love and kisses with lips covered in fishy grease,
Ranad.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
So the tickets are all bought and we're ready to go on our road trip in Europe. Rob's already in Germany, learning a new tool for his research. The rest of us will be joining him shortly. The picture here is of the kids this past Easter. Hopefully we'll do more posts and be able to load more pictures as we go, but don't expect too much from us; we'll be on the road and all this new fangled technology is a bit overwhelming to us!
Talk to you once we're there.
RANAD
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