So Eilat......Eilat. Eilat. Eilat. Eilat was not our favourite city. But, to be fair, we came to it from an absolute highlight of the trip, Mitzpe Ramon and the Succah Ba Midbar where we enjoyed the wilderness, the stars at night, a vegetarian retreat, and the wonders of the desert. And then we plunged into this loud, touristy, 24/7 resort town with all the trimmings of any such place. The first day there we went to the coral reef reserve where we rented snorkeling equipment. In our, oh so Canadian way, we inquired about the cleanliness of the the mouthpieces. We were assured that all clients returning equipment are required to dip their mouth pieces into a special cleansing bath next to the front desk. We stepped outside, and the first thing we saw was a not-so-hygienic looking man washing his feet in said “cleansing bath”. We headed straight to the washrooms and we each thoroughly cleaned our mouthpieces with warm soapy water! After the cleaning fest we headed out into the sparkling blue waters of the Red Sea where we snorkeled for a couple of hours, admiring the coral and the gorgeous fish. It was really fun to swim together as a family, pointing out various things to each other as we went along.
The next day we took a tour to Petra, Jordan - the ancient Nabataean city carved out of a soft stone canyon. Crossing the border into Jordan was an event unto itself. We were given all kinds of instructions from the Israelis: you can’t bring any food or water with you, your tour guide will be in cahoots with the horse and camel handlers and will try to get you to pay for things that are already included in the price, etc. As it turned out, we brought food and water in, and our tour guide did not try to get us to pay for any extras! More on the actual border crossing: the oddest part of the whole thing was that we handed in our passports to the Israelis who gave us some stamped piece of paper. Then, with no instruction, we were left to walk across this 500 meter, fenced-in, no-man’s-land between the two countries. On the other side, we went through security a second time, and had our passports stamped up some more.
After a brief and very boring tour of Aqaba, Jordan (where they pointed out various hotels, most of which are still under construction, and one of which is considered a “six star hotel” - whatever that means) we headed off to Petra through some amazing desert terrain. Along the way, we stopped at a truck stop where we peed in real middle eastern toilets: two foot rests and a hole in the ground + a spray nozzle to tidy up afterward. We also had outstanding Arab coffee - they put cardamom in it, and it is so good. After the stop Aaron decided to use the toilet on our bus (mostly out of curiosity), unfortunately he proceeded to get stuck in the washroom and we had to get the driver to stop the bus and he and the tour guide worked for several minutes on freeing Aaron. Ultimately it was Aaron himself who worked the lock and got the door open!
When we arrived in Petra we got a very good, low key Bedouin guide named Madji, who toured us around the place. At the outset there was a bit of an altercation between Madji and one of the horse handlers who offers rides down the last 800 meters through the canyon and to the entrance to the city itself. No one on our tour opted to go by horse, and as a result, one of the horse handlers started yelling at Madji in Arabic. The only word we could glean from his tirade was “Arba”, the number 4. We all figured he was saying something like this: You schmuck! You promised me at least 4 of these suckers would ride my horses! ......or words to that effect.
We walked down to Petra through this amazing canyon, while Madji explained how the Nabataeans figured out a way to bring water down to their city through these extensive clay water pipes that they carved into the canyon walls. We learned about their gods and some of their rites, although much of this is still speculation as there are many questions remaining about this ancient people.
The last major site we visited while in Eilat was a hike in the Red Canyon as well as taking out kayaks in the laguna. Both were low key, but fun activities. Of note, the Canyon was completely deserted, so we wondered if everybody else knew something we didn’t about the Canyon. We emerged unscathed, had an amazing meal in a Pan Asian restaurant called Ginger, and headed off a bit late for bed. Little did we know that Thursday night would be party night in Eilat and that the “Sport Hotel” across the Laguna, would be blasting loud Arab/Israeli pop music and shouting over the mic until 4:30 in the morning. Noah and Aviva were finally able to fall asleep after midnight by moving themselves onto the floor in the hall of our apartment, Diane fell asleep around 2:00 on the living room couch; Rob was only able to fall asleep after the very last performer closed the show at 4:30 in the morning......and Aaron slept through it all.
We drove straight from Eilat to Tel Aviv the next day; traversing a huge swathe of desert, and transitioning into farm land as we got further north. We dumped our car at the airport and took a cab to our apartment. About where we’re staying: we are on the fourth floor in this amazing penthouse right in the heart of the city in a very funky neighbourhood. Also staying with us in our place are Bubu and Schnitzel, the owner’s cats. They spend most of their time on the roof outside, petrified of us, and we have worried on several occasions that Schnitzel had died due to dehydration. Another of our responsibilities is to care for his plants. Every morning Rob or Diane send Aviva out to the roof top garden, watering can in hand, to water the marijuana plants. Yes....you read it right, our landlord has a number of marijuana plants that he is licensed to have in his garden. Why? Because he is a film maker working on a documentary about the medicinal uses of marijuana. His film will air in early October in Israel and through the process of making the film, he has become quite involved in advocating for the medicinal use of marijuana in Israel to treat a number of medical disorders. He now also attends medical conferences, and brings the plants along for demonstration purposes.
Here in Tel Aviv we have visited with family and friends, dined amazingly well, and enjoyed the sites and sounds of the city. We saw our family friends, the Bar Selas for a delicious Friday night dinner and a 21st Birthday party; we are now in the 4th generation of a friendship that dates back to Budapest!. We spent shabbat with the Kofetz family; Rob’s dad’s cousin’s family. Michael (Rob’s dad’s cousin) and his wife, Sarah, made a huge feast for us. Once again, we have a long history with them also dating back to Budapest. A theme here. While there, Sarah told a story about when Rob visited them when he spent the summer in Israel at the age of 19. Apparently while waiting for the bus, he had taken off his shirt. Once he got on the bus, someone told him in Hebrew to put his shirt back on, at which point he claimed not to speak Hebrew (ah, the recklessness of youth).
The next day we rented bikes and rode all over Tel Aviv and to Jaffa. It’s a very bikeable city, and they have done a lot in the last few years to create bike lanes that are safe - a good thing given that you take your life in your hands when you go on the roads here....and that’s in a car. As per our experience in the past, the bike rental guy was able to give us an outstanding dinner recommendation (a place called “Sheila’s”) when we returned our bikes to him.
Yesterday we hung out at the beach. We took two chaise longes and an umbrella. At some point Aviva and Diane were approached by a guy who asked them in Hebrew to pay for the spot, at which point they claimed not to speak Hebrew (sound familiar?). Unfortunately this time the guy spoke English....so we told him we had no money and he went away.
Last night our family friend, Yoram Barsela took us to Mini Israel, a reproduction of much of Israel’s major sites and regions, but 25 times smaller than the real thing. It was the perfect way to wind down this amazing trip, as we saw so many of the places we had been to. After, we went to Abu Gosh for incredible, authentic Lebanese food.
Today we went to an arts and crafts market here in the city and we are now heading out for our last dinner. Tomorrow we fly out!!
Love RANAD.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Israel Entry 3
So, we got to Ein Gedi.....without any of Jeremy the GPS’s help; a good choice since most of the drive was again through the West Bank and he gives us the silent treatment when we do that anyway. Noah was particularly happy about Jeremy being shunned to the glove compartment as he has serious sibling rivalry with Jeremy (Noah has quite the navigational skills, as many of you know).
In Ein Gedi we stayed at the Kibbutz/spa/resort with breakfasts and dinners included. Breakfasts and dinners were in fact plentiful, fresh and quite good....so much so that we helped ourselves to “extra” breakfasts, that we stored in our knapsack until lunch every day. Note to future travelers: remember not to squish hard boiled eggs, yogurts, and buns in knapsacks already containing large bottles of water, unless using separate containers. We’ll leave the appearance of our first lunch to your imaginations - serves us right for yet again trying to beat the system!
For our first full day in Ein Gedi we went on a water hike to a hidden water fall (not the usual touristy 30 minute hike). In Israel it is popular to hike in rivers...yes, in the rivers not beside them. We thought this very strange when we heard about it in Canada, but having done it, it makes perfect sense. The heat is oppressive, but the mountain water is cool and refreshing, and we frequently immersed ourselves, in our clothes, and continued hiking. At the outset of the hike, Aaron noted some black creatures that we now believe are water slugs, but he worried that they were leaches, and was reluctant to step on the water, preferring to hop from one stone to the next. Eventually he was reassured and joined the rest of us as we slogged through the water. When we got to the hidden water fall we went for a lovely swim, but then quickly continued up another half hour to the fresh water pools that feed the river. The water comes down from the hills of Jerusalem, leaching through the rock over a period of days to years, and first emerges at these pools, cool, filtered and clean enough to drink. On the way up, we heard a cute little boy yelling out to the echoes in the hills. We called back to him a couple of times. Within moments of our arrival at the top, a person who we initially thought was a 12 year-old boy, but turned out to be a 20-something female park ranger, accosted us angrily saying, “Didn’t you hear me yelling at you earlier?!” Once again, we were in trouble with the Israeli authorities- this time for not responding appropriately to a park ranger; it turns out that the yelling child we'd hear earlier, was no child, but said angry park ranger. Apparently we were not supposed to have gone up to the very top after 2:00 pm. We consequently received a ranger escort back down the mountain. So we sang religious songs in 3 part harmony in the hopes of either entertaining her, or annoying her. We wondered if she was particularly angered by us because she doesn’t like kids, so Aaron renamed her “The Kid-Stop-o”. After the hike we went for our first dip in the Dead Sea and all enjoyed the floating, but not the stinging in various body parts.
The next morning we awoke at 3:45 am!! You’d think this would be an annoyance, but not for us; we did it on purpose. We got in the car and started driving further south.....to....Massada for sunrise. The hike is a steep 45 minutes, and you definitely need a flash light as the Snake Path is not lit up and it was pitch dark at the beginning. Even in the dark it was still quite hot, but manageable. When we got to the top, we sat on an ancient wall overlooking the Dead Sea. We watched the sun come up over the mountains of Jordan. It was beautiful. We then walked around the grounds of Massada, discussing the story of the 967 people who died there in order to be free and not to become Roman slaves. We took the cable car down; a mere three minute ride.
Back at the kibbutz, we had breakfast (and fed the knapsack more carefully its lunch), and then went off to bed for two hours. In the late afternoon, we headed to the spa of Ein Gedi, where we swam in the pool, smeared ourselves with mud and took typical tourist pictures of ourselves. The next day we went the spa once more so that we could soak in the Dead Sea again, and then we made our way to Mitzpe Ramon.
Mitzpe Ramon is a small desert town on the ridge of the world’s largest “erosion crater”. We stayed at a place in the desert called “Succah BaMidbar” which means, Huts in the Desert. This was the most amazing place we’ve stayed at so far. It is way outside the town, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in the Negev Desert. It consists of several straw huts each quite isolated from the others. A gong is rung twice a-day, when it’s time to eat amazing, plentiful vegetarian meals in the main succah. The first morning we went on a hike to the crater and saw its immenseness. It reminded some of us of the Grand Canyon - vast, inspiring, and untouched. In the afternoon we met up with a guide, Oded, who took us off-road cycling along the ridge of the Canyon, as well as into the desert. He was the best guide we’ve had to date - knowledgeable, fun, and totally rugged. He described the geology of the place, pulled up a plant whose leaves have oils and salt and with a few drops of water can be lathered into a kind of soap, and found some camel poop that he opened up and dissected; bringing it up to his nose and taking a long sniff, claiming it smelled fine (camels are herbivores).
In the village of Mitzpe Ramon, we had a few adventures. It is a weird combo of artist colony and army base. So, in the main square we saw oodles of Israeli soldiers, young men and women, stocking up on junk food, buying pizza and falafel, and generally hanging out like the normal teenagers that most of them are. Around the corner from their is an artists’ cooperative and a true french chocoatier, where we nibbled on home made truffles and sipped on chocolat chaud. While driving through the town, we found ourselves being chased down by Israeli authorities yet again. This time the police pulled us over and we had no idea why. Turns out Rob ran a stop sign and made an illegal left turn all in one combo move. The police officer seemed quite irritated as Rob tried to explain that we were looking for a restaurant and got confused by traffic. The officer wasn’t impressed and said, with a thick Israeli accent, “If you were an Israeli citizen, I would take away your license and take away your car and make you take the bus. But since you are a tourist I will just give you a warning. Now, for restaurant recommendations......” - and he proceeded to tell us all the local restaurant options we could choose from. This is now our prime example of the Sabra (Israeli native); prickly on the outside, but sweet on the inside.
The next day we drove to Eilat, which is where we are now, reeling with culture shock as we have gone from a silent desert retreat to a booming beach resort town.
Until the next time....RANAD!
In Ein Gedi we stayed at the Kibbutz/spa/resort with breakfasts and dinners included. Breakfasts and dinners were in fact plentiful, fresh and quite good....so much so that we helped ourselves to “extra” breakfasts, that we stored in our knapsack until lunch every day. Note to future travelers: remember not to squish hard boiled eggs, yogurts, and buns in knapsacks already containing large bottles of water, unless using separate containers. We’ll leave the appearance of our first lunch to your imaginations - serves us right for yet again trying to beat the system!
For our first full day in Ein Gedi we went on a water hike to a hidden water fall (not the usual touristy 30 minute hike). In Israel it is popular to hike in rivers...yes, in the rivers not beside them. We thought this very strange when we heard about it in Canada, but having done it, it makes perfect sense. The heat is oppressive, but the mountain water is cool and refreshing, and we frequently immersed ourselves, in our clothes, and continued hiking. At the outset of the hike, Aaron noted some black creatures that we now believe are water slugs, but he worried that they were leaches, and was reluctant to step on the water, preferring to hop from one stone to the next. Eventually he was reassured and joined the rest of us as we slogged through the water. When we got to the hidden water fall we went for a lovely swim, but then quickly continued up another half hour to the fresh water pools that feed the river. The water comes down from the hills of Jerusalem, leaching through the rock over a period of days to years, and first emerges at these pools, cool, filtered and clean enough to drink. On the way up, we heard a cute little boy yelling out to the echoes in the hills. We called back to him a couple of times. Within moments of our arrival at the top, a person who we initially thought was a 12 year-old boy, but turned out to be a 20-something female park ranger, accosted us angrily saying, “Didn’t you hear me yelling at you earlier?!” Once again, we were in trouble with the Israeli authorities- this time for not responding appropriately to a park ranger; it turns out that the yelling child we'd hear earlier, was no child, but said angry park ranger. Apparently we were not supposed to have gone up to the very top after 2:00 pm. We consequently received a ranger escort back down the mountain. So we sang religious songs in 3 part harmony in the hopes of either entertaining her, or annoying her. We wondered if she was particularly angered by us because she doesn’t like kids, so Aaron renamed her “The Kid-Stop-o”. After the hike we went for our first dip in the Dead Sea and all enjoyed the floating, but not the stinging in various body parts.
The next morning we awoke at 3:45 am!! You’d think this would be an annoyance, but not for us; we did it on purpose. We got in the car and started driving further south.....to....Massada for sunrise. The hike is a steep 45 minutes, and you definitely need a flash light as the Snake Path is not lit up and it was pitch dark at the beginning. Even in the dark it was still quite hot, but manageable. When we got to the top, we sat on an ancient wall overlooking the Dead Sea. We watched the sun come up over the mountains of Jordan. It was beautiful. We then walked around the grounds of Massada, discussing the story of the 967 people who died there in order to be free and not to become Roman slaves. We took the cable car down; a mere three minute ride.
Back at the kibbutz, we had breakfast (and fed the knapsack more carefully its lunch), and then went off to bed for two hours. In the late afternoon, we headed to the spa of Ein Gedi, where we swam in the pool, smeared ourselves with mud and took typical tourist pictures of ourselves. The next day we went the spa once more so that we could soak in the Dead Sea again, and then we made our way to Mitzpe Ramon.
Mitzpe Ramon is a small desert town on the ridge of the world’s largest “erosion crater”. We stayed at a place in the desert called “Succah BaMidbar” which means, Huts in the Desert. This was the most amazing place we’ve stayed at so far. It is way outside the town, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, in the Negev Desert. It consists of several straw huts each quite isolated from the others. A gong is rung twice a-day, when it’s time to eat amazing, plentiful vegetarian meals in the main succah. The first morning we went on a hike to the crater and saw its immenseness. It reminded some of us of the Grand Canyon - vast, inspiring, and untouched. In the afternoon we met up with a guide, Oded, who took us off-road cycling along the ridge of the Canyon, as well as into the desert. He was the best guide we’ve had to date - knowledgeable, fun, and totally rugged. He described the geology of the place, pulled up a plant whose leaves have oils and salt and with a few drops of water can be lathered into a kind of soap, and found some camel poop that he opened up and dissected; bringing it up to his nose and taking a long sniff, claiming it smelled fine (camels are herbivores).
In the village of Mitzpe Ramon, we had a few adventures. It is a weird combo of artist colony and army base. So, in the main square we saw oodles of Israeli soldiers, young men and women, stocking up on junk food, buying pizza and falafel, and generally hanging out like the normal teenagers that most of them are. Around the corner from their is an artists’ cooperative and a true french chocoatier, where we nibbled on home made truffles and sipped on chocolat chaud. While driving through the town, we found ourselves being chased down by Israeli authorities yet again. This time the police pulled us over and we had no idea why. Turns out Rob ran a stop sign and made an illegal left turn all in one combo move. The police officer seemed quite irritated as Rob tried to explain that we were looking for a restaurant and got confused by traffic. The officer wasn’t impressed and said, with a thick Israeli accent, “If you were an Israeli citizen, I would take away your license and take away your car and make you take the bus. But since you are a tourist I will just give you a warning. Now, for restaurant recommendations......” - and he proceeded to tell us all the local restaurant options we could choose from. This is now our prime example of the Sabra (Israeli native); prickly on the outside, but sweet on the inside.
The next day we drove to Eilat, which is where we are now, reeling with culture shock as we have gone from a silent desert retreat to a booming beach resort town.
Until the next time....RANAD!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday August 17, 2009
Israel entry 2
Jerusalem
So, obviously we made it to Jerusalem safe and sound. Jeremy, our GPS, was not happy with us driving through the West Bank, and so he gave us the silent treatment the entire time. And then, suddenly, once we arrived in the city, he woke up from his passive-aggressive slumber and decided to start giving us directions again.
Our apartment here has been great. Great location. Great lay out. Great price. Great cockroaches. OK, we’ve only seen two, at the beginning, but they are massive here in Israel, so they are pretty scary. Consequently, we come home from our touring every night and have done “Makak checks” (Cockroach checks). By the way, both roach murders were committed by our hero, Rob. The first, squeezed between two bottles of olive oil. The second squashed with his foot (well....with his sandled foot; he’s not that barbaric).
The first day in Jerusalem we took a comprehensive guided tour of the old city, although not necessarily all that well organized. Our enthusiastic guide, Dorit, explained tons; everything from the coming of the various Messiahs to the current political situation, with a little about local plant life along the way. We went to all four of the Old City’s quarters, met the Armenian Arch Bishop in a little shop, hung out in all of Jesus’ stops along the Via Dolorosa, saw the Western Wall, where the kids placed notes they had written, saw a bunch of Mosques, one synagogue, and went into a gazillion churches. The number of churches we saw per minute kept increasing in our minds as we subsequently relayed our day’s site seeing to others. We also toured the Western Wall tunnel, which was most excellent thanks to a superb tour guide and really cool archeological work, and we ended with a tour of the Arab Shuk, which was totally cool. At one point during the day we went into a Messianic church, and received a little lecture from a New Yorker turned Jews-for-Jesus. The lecture started out factual, but was followed quickly by a healthy dose of full-on attempted conversion. We got outta there quickly. Of course, it goes without saying that we saw many Roman ruins. At one spot, there was a bunch of highly under-supervised kids, one of whom was whacking at a Roman pillar with a mallet; okay, it was a toy mallet, but still...
That evening we ate at an amazing Armenian restaurant in the Armenian Quarter of the old city. On the English menu they offered pieces of chopped lamp (perhaps they meant lamb?). On our way home from dinner we bumped into Rob’s dad’s cousin Michael and his wife, Sarah, who were in town from Tel Aviv to celebrate their 37th wedding anniversary. In the same block, we next ran into our friends from Toronto, the Newmans, We don’t typically run into as many people we know in downtown Toronto as we did that night in Jersualem!
The next day we had to buy Rob pants. You see, he somehow thought that he could show up at this Bar Mitzvah we were invited to in shorts and a t-shirt. So Diane had to explain to him that he is no longer 12 years old, and that grown men actually dress like grown men when they go to functions. While we waited for his pants to be altered, we ate lunch at Sam Bagel’s, which in the rest of the world is called Sam’s Bagels; one of many interesting alterations to the English language here. While on the topic of alterations in language, the hardest part about reading Hebrew is reading the English words transliterated into Hebrew. The other day, Diane saw a business and said “Oh look, that place is called ‘Disco-net’, I guess you can dance and go on the computer there!” It turns out it was really a bank called ‘Discount’ (both look the same when written with Hebrew letters). At the end of that day, we visited the museum of Islamic art, which is in the neighborhood we’re staying in. The first exhibit we went to could have been called Islam for dummies; it was very basic. But the exhibit on swords, shields, and armour, from the Persian and Ottoman empires was very cool. That evening we had Shabbat dinner at our friends’ Lee and Shira, who graciously answered about a million questions that we had been saving up for them on Israeli politics, army duty for Orthodox Jews, and so on.
Saturday morning we took a walking tour of the new city of Jerusalem, offered by the city. This time, our tour guide was less than desirable - speaking in a monotonous, quiet and uninspiring manner. He was far more organized, however. It’s amazing that the city of Jerusalem is this ancient ancient place, and yet the modern city only began in 1860. After the tour and a quick brown bag lunch, we went to watch a time elevator movie. Time-elevator is a company that makes video experiences for ancient cities. They take you back in time thousands of years, teach you the history in an animated way. All the actors were dubbed into English, including a 14-year-old boy who had the misfortune of having a woman dub his voice; he sort of sounded like he was on helium. For the afternoon we went to the Newman’s, grazed and hung out with them until the end of Shabbat. It was so fun, and we rolled out of there at the end of the evening.
The Newmans have a nephew named Ilan who has a vast amount of knowledge about the history of Jerusalem. On Sunday, he took us on a wonderful tour of the rooftops of the old city. We learned a lot about the current situations in Israel, as well as a ton of historical information. After having taken three tours of the city of Jerusalem, we feel as though we have barely scratched the surface of this incredible city. We then took a tour of the City of David, just south-east of the old city. This tour goes through underground tunnels that used to be the water system for the city of David, 2700 years ago. During the entire walk through the tunnel, we were submerged in water up to our thighs. The enthusiastic tour guide kept turning around to explain stuff to us. Since the tunnel was very thin, we all had to walk in single file, and so every time he would tell us something, we would have to relay it back to the people behind us who then told the people behind them, and so on. It was like a real life version of broken telephone. We figured that when he told us there were calcium deposits on the wall of the tunnel, by the time the last person heard it, they would think that’s where you can make bank deposits.
That night, we went to the Ellis Bar-Mitzvah. Aaron and Noah’s friend Eitan had his Bar-Mitzvah in Israel, and it was really lovely. It felt like a Heschel school reunion, as there were a number of families here in Israel from the children’s school. We had an amazing time schmoozing with everyone. On a funny note, Aviva was seated directly next to some of Eitan’s cousins, who had a bickery moment. The sister yelled at her brother about how disrespectful he was for not wearing a kipah to a Bar-Mitzvah. They had an elaborate argument in Hebrew, assuming that no one could understand them.
The next day, we all went to Yad Vashem for an emotionally-moving and informative journey through the history of the Holocaust. It’s hard to find words to describe it without sounding trite. We didn’t want to miss anything, so we only got part-way through the museum. We’re hoping to return.
Yesterday, we went to the Soreq caves in Beit Shemesh. The caves are just outside of Jerusalem, and so we took a sheirut to get there and back. A sheirut is a cross between a public bus and a taxi. People get on and request where they want to go, and the price is negotiated accordingly. Our bus driver was driving barefooted. On the way back, he kept yawning and shaking, and we realized he was falling asleep. So Diane asked Rob to start firing questions at him in Hebrew to keep him awake.
As for the Soreq caves themselves, they contained huge stalactites and stalagmites. We were forced to take a tour in Hebrew, with a guide who had a thick Russian accent. Through the five of us understanding various segments, we eventually figured out the full picture. That is, they were the result of millions of years of water dripping through limestone, leaving behind tiny deposits along the way, creating these formations. The caves were gorgeous, true natural wonders. This was the most impressive part of the trip, in Aviva’s opinion. We felt as though we were in a Dr. Seuss novel, because the formations were so surreal feeling.
We had dinner at this funky courtyard near the old city. At our table, there were a bunch of cats begging for food (Jerusalem, apparently, is the stray cat capital of the world). At one point, an off-leash dog chased one up a tree where we were seated. Rob was convinced that the cats, in the tree just above, would poop on his head. He insisted on wearing a napkin, and finally settled for a safari hat for protection. Then, one of the cats started having a coughing and sneezing fit, but eventually, the cat quieted down and fell asleep. We were all certain, at this point, that the cat had died, and Rob became convinced the dead cat would fall on his head. In explaining the situation to the confused waitress, we learned how to say, “We are afraid that a dead cat will plop on his head,” in Hebrew.
Today we are driving to Ein Gedi, an oasis near Massada and the Dead Sea.
Love to all of you,
RANAD
Israel entry 2
Jerusalem
So, obviously we made it to Jerusalem safe and sound. Jeremy, our GPS, was not happy with us driving through the West Bank, and so he gave us the silent treatment the entire time. And then, suddenly, once we arrived in the city, he woke up from his passive-aggressive slumber and decided to start giving us directions again.
Our apartment here has been great. Great location. Great lay out. Great price. Great cockroaches. OK, we’ve only seen two, at the beginning, but they are massive here in Israel, so they are pretty scary. Consequently, we come home from our touring every night and have done “Makak checks” (Cockroach checks). By the way, both roach murders were committed by our hero, Rob. The first, squeezed between two bottles of olive oil. The second squashed with his foot (well....with his sandled foot; he’s not that barbaric).
The first day in Jerusalem we took a comprehensive guided tour of the old city, although not necessarily all that well organized. Our enthusiastic guide, Dorit, explained tons; everything from the coming of the various Messiahs to the current political situation, with a little about local plant life along the way. We went to all four of the Old City’s quarters, met the Armenian Arch Bishop in a little shop, hung out in all of Jesus’ stops along the Via Dolorosa, saw the Western Wall, where the kids placed notes they had written, saw a bunch of Mosques, one synagogue, and went into a gazillion churches. The number of churches we saw per minute kept increasing in our minds as we subsequently relayed our day’s site seeing to others. We also toured the Western Wall tunnel, which was most excellent thanks to a superb tour guide and really cool archeological work, and we ended with a tour of the Arab Shuk, which was totally cool. At one point during the day we went into a Messianic church, and received a little lecture from a New Yorker turned Jews-for-Jesus. The lecture started out factual, but was followed quickly by a healthy dose of full-on attempted conversion. We got outta there quickly. Of course, it goes without saying that we saw many Roman ruins. At one spot, there was a bunch of highly under-supervised kids, one of whom was whacking at a Roman pillar with a mallet; okay, it was a toy mallet, but still...
That evening we ate at an amazing Armenian restaurant in the Armenian Quarter of the old city. On the English menu they offered pieces of chopped lamp (perhaps they meant lamb?). On our way home from dinner we bumped into Rob’s dad’s cousin Michael and his wife, Sarah, who were in town from Tel Aviv to celebrate their 37th wedding anniversary. In the same block, we next ran into our friends from Toronto, the Newmans, We don’t typically run into as many people we know in downtown Toronto as we did that night in Jersualem!
The next day we had to buy Rob pants. You see, he somehow thought that he could show up at this Bar Mitzvah we were invited to in shorts and a t-shirt. So Diane had to explain to him that he is no longer 12 years old, and that grown men actually dress like grown men when they go to functions. While we waited for his pants to be altered, we ate lunch at Sam Bagel’s, which in the rest of the world is called Sam’s Bagels; one of many interesting alterations to the English language here. While on the topic of alterations in language, the hardest part about reading Hebrew is reading the English words transliterated into Hebrew. The other day, Diane saw a business and said “Oh look, that place is called ‘Disco-net’, I guess you can dance and go on the computer there!” It turns out it was really a bank called ‘Discount’ (both look the same when written with Hebrew letters). At the end of that day, we visited the museum of Islamic art, which is in the neighborhood we’re staying in. The first exhibit we went to could have been called Islam for dummies; it was very basic. But the exhibit on swords, shields, and armour, from the Persian and Ottoman empires was very cool. That evening we had Shabbat dinner at our friends’ Lee and Shira, who graciously answered about a million questions that we had been saving up for them on Israeli politics, army duty for Orthodox Jews, and so on.
Saturday morning we took a walking tour of the new city of Jerusalem, offered by the city. This time, our tour guide was less than desirable - speaking in a monotonous, quiet and uninspiring manner. He was far more organized, however. It’s amazing that the city of Jerusalem is this ancient ancient place, and yet the modern city only began in 1860. After the tour and a quick brown bag lunch, we went to watch a time elevator movie. Time-elevator is a company that makes video experiences for ancient cities. They take you back in time thousands of years, teach you the history in an animated way. All the actors were dubbed into English, including a 14-year-old boy who had the misfortune of having a woman dub his voice; he sort of sounded like he was on helium. For the afternoon we went to the Newman’s, grazed and hung out with them until the end of Shabbat. It was so fun, and we rolled out of there at the end of the evening.
The Newmans have a nephew named Ilan who has a vast amount of knowledge about the history of Jerusalem. On Sunday, he took us on a wonderful tour of the rooftops of the old city. We learned a lot about the current situations in Israel, as well as a ton of historical information. After having taken three tours of the city of Jerusalem, we feel as though we have barely scratched the surface of this incredible city. We then took a tour of the City of David, just south-east of the old city. This tour goes through underground tunnels that used to be the water system for the city of David, 2700 years ago. During the entire walk through the tunnel, we were submerged in water up to our thighs. The enthusiastic tour guide kept turning around to explain stuff to us. Since the tunnel was very thin, we all had to walk in single file, and so every time he would tell us something, we would have to relay it back to the people behind us who then told the people behind them, and so on. It was like a real life version of broken telephone. We figured that when he told us there were calcium deposits on the wall of the tunnel, by the time the last person heard it, they would think that’s where you can make bank deposits.
That night, we went to the Ellis Bar-Mitzvah. Aaron and Noah’s friend Eitan had his Bar-Mitzvah in Israel, and it was really lovely. It felt like a Heschel school reunion, as there were a number of families here in Israel from the children’s school. We had an amazing time schmoozing with everyone. On a funny note, Aviva was seated directly next to some of Eitan’s cousins, who had a bickery moment. The sister yelled at her brother about how disrespectful he was for not wearing a kipah to a Bar-Mitzvah. They had an elaborate argument in Hebrew, assuming that no one could understand them.
The next day, we all went to Yad Vashem for an emotionally-moving and informative journey through the history of the Holocaust. It’s hard to find words to describe it without sounding trite. We didn’t want to miss anything, so we only got part-way through the museum. We’re hoping to return.
Yesterday, we went to the Soreq caves in Beit Shemesh. The caves are just outside of Jerusalem, and so we took a sheirut to get there and back. A sheirut is a cross between a public bus and a taxi. People get on and request where they want to go, and the price is negotiated accordingly. Our bus driver was driving barefooted. On the way back, he kept yawning and shaking, and we realized he was falling asleep. So Diane asked Rob to start firing questions at him in Hebrew to keep him awake.
As for the Soreq caves themselves, they contained huge stalactites and stalagmites. We were forced to take a tour in Hebrew, with a guide who had a thick Russian accent. Through the five of us understanding various segments, we eventually figured out the full picture. That is, they were the result of millions of years of water dripping through limestone, leaving behind tiny deposits along the way, creating these formations. The caves were gorgeous, true natural wonders. This was the most impressive part of the trip, in Aviva’s opinion. We felt as though we were in a Dr. Seuss novel, because the formations were so surreal feeling.
We had dinner at this funky courtyard near the old city. At our table, there were a bunch of cats begging for food (Jerusalem, apparently, is the stray cat capital of the world). At one point, an off-leash dog chased one up a tree where we were seated. Rob was convinced that the cats, in the tree just above, would poop on his head. He insisted on wearing a napkin, and finally settled for a safari hat for protection. Then, one of the cats started having a coughing and sneezing fit, but eventually, the cat quieted down and fell asleep. We were all certain, at this point, that the cat had died, and Rob became convinced the dead cat would fall on his head. In explaining the situation to the confused waitress, we learned how to say, “We are afraid that a dead cat will plop on his head,” in Hebrew.
Today we are driving to Ein Gedi, an oasis near Massada and the Dead Sea.
Love to all of you,
RANAD
Thursday, August 13, 2009
RANAD Philipp-Muller family blog.
Summer 2009. Trip to Israel.
Israel entry 1:
Haifa and the Galilee
Our trip was scheduled to begin like any other. We had five tickets for Israel, scheduled to leave at 8:40 P.M. Our plane decided to leave two hours early, or more accurately put, Diane had the times mixed up, and realized that we had two hours less than we thought we had. This of course was no issue for the Philipp-Muller family who, as always, was completely ready far in advance, in fact, our bags were packed 8 days ahead of time. NOT.
Anyway.....we had a restful plane ride, relatively uneventful, and ate vegetarian meals along the way. Aaron, however, was still hungry after his vegetarian breakfast, so Diane scored him an extra one by hiding her platter beneath her tray table, and “innocently” accepted a regular meal when they came around a second time.
Upon our arrival, we got off the plane, got hit by a wall of Israeli heat, and collected our bags. You all know the song “United breaks guitars” (if not, check it out on u-tube), well here’s a new one for you: “Austrian Airlines breaks bag handles.” Diane’s bag handle was completely broken off, and she had to perform immediate surgery to salvage her bag.
We picked up our rental car, and all seemed to be going as planned. That is until Rob tried to put the car into gear. The car growled its disapproval. After a couple of laps around the airport, we finally figured out the problem with this crazy car - that we have nicknamed ‘the golf cart' as it continues to growl disapproval anytime we climb a hill.....not great if you’re touring Haifa and the north, where we were headed.
So we raced out of the airport at a fast clip, only to hit terrible traffic en route in Tel Aviv. A drive that should have taken an hour ended up taking three hours.
We arrived in Haifa, excited to get to our apartment, only to realize that we forgot to get the address, telephone number or any means of communication with the owner of the apartment building. We had a little adventure in “Burger Ranch” trying to access internet, because this is the only joint in Haifa, that our lame Canadian brains could find, that has free internet access whatsoever, no matter how crappy it is. After about an hour, we were finally able to open our email and we retrieved this elusive information.
We had dinner at a pizza place and headed off to bed from our tiring adventures.
The next morning we ate breakfast using the groceries we bought from a very Israeli location. Apparently the Hebrew word for drugstore is drugstore - although actually it was a convenience store; very confusing. We had a gorgeous two story apartment with magnificent windows overlooking the Haifa harbour, and the entire city and skyline of Haifa. In every Israeli home there is a metal room that exists in case of attack, the entire family should hide to be safe. This room happened to be Aviva’s room. So essentially she was sleeping in a bomb shelter.
The first day in Haifa we went to Dado beach, which is a beautiful beach on the Mediterranean, but not before we had to buy a GPS. With great difficulty, we finally reached the Grand Canyon Centre, the mall where we purchased our wonderful GPS. We realized that the reason no one could give us directions to the Grand Canyon centre was because we don’t know the proper Israeli pronunciation of the term. In Haifa, they call it “Grond Conyon Centerrr”. Our GPS has never failed us once. We named him Jeremy. Jeremy has told us to turn where there is no turn. Jeremy has sent us going around and around in circles, destined to never reach our destination. Jeremy has told us to turn straight into the Mediterranean. Jeremy has not failed us once, he’s failed us multiple, multiple times.
After purchasing our little friend, we spent the afternoon body surfing, swimming, and lying on the beach and resting. Sitting next to us were several characters. There was a man laying to our left that had a huge tattoo of Jesus on the cross covering his entire back. Rob thought “Wow, these Israelis are becoming so edgy that they tattoo crucifixes on their backs.” This was the moment that Rob remembered that there are, in fact, Arab Christian Israelis as well. Behind us, there was a group of kids smoking a very large bong, or hookah as the kids these days are calling it. Aviva explained the basic concept of a hookah to Rob and Diane who were nicely listening to their little lesson.
After the day was through, we went to an amazing beach-side restaurant called Ha Chavit, or Barrel, for supper. While at the restaurant, Aviva had a little adventure in the bathroom. She realized that she had literally locked herself in the washroom stall. This would have been an okay situation if this were a normal bathroom door that had a gap at the bottom, out of which she could crawl. In fact, in her jet lagged state, her Hebrew was so poor that she couldn’t even remember how to call for help. She wasn’t worried, however, because she knew that eventually her family would sense her absence and look for her. In the end, she figured out how to unlock the door, and she rejoined the rest of the Philipp-Mullers for a wonderful meal.
After dinner, we went for a nice walk on the boardwalk of Dado beach. We saw some Israeli guys playing an interesting combination of volleyball and hackie-sac. There were two guys on either side of a net, hitting the ball over without the use of hands. They used their heads, chests and legs to basically play volleyball. We then encountered a rooftop wedding ceremony, which we admired from afar. And here comes to an end the first day of our Israeli experience.
The next day, we went to Akko, and learned about the history, culture, and architecture of the ancient city. We learned about the significance this historical town has had through the past 4000 years. We learned about the various empires that have taken over this city, and we recognized the differences in architecture. We joked that Akko reminds us of Toronto, in that the various occupiers would just tear down old buildings to build new ones. Upon arriving in Akko, we wanted to go to the visitors centre to pick up headsets to tour the city. This is the day we came to the realization that Akko-ians are just not that great at giving directions. One man told us to go straight and then turn at the orange man. We wondered whether by “orange man”, he meant a man who was literally orange, was wearing an orange shirt, or was selling oranges. We decided he meant the latter. We finally found the visitors centre, after passing three orange men; making erroneous left turns at the first two.
We ate our bagged lunches in the shade in a beautiful garden in Akko. In the middle of our lunch, a little hassidic boy of 3 or 4, right next to us, pulled down his pants and took a whiz. Rob thought he looked like an unmanned hose, and told Noah to take cover, as he was in this boy’s potential line of fire. The boy was quite prolific as he sprayed just about everywhere. He then ran away from his sister, still naked from the waist down, as she chased him around the garden of the visitors centre. We had our second lunch of Shawarma, where the owner gave us complimentary slushies, and taught us how to say “thank you” in Arabic (shukran). There were a lot of “independent” cats in Akko.
That night, we went for Shabbat dinner at Diane’s father’s second cousin’s house. Amos, looked strikingly like Rudy, his cousin. Oddly enough, his wife Pninah, did not. Amos and Pninah were incredibly hospitable, knowledgeable, and kind. Amos has been a ship-man since birth. After the navy, he became a ship builder, and has always been interested in the sea. Pninah, who is almost 60, took up drumming five years ago, and now drums about two hours each day. The running joke throughout the evening was Amos trying to convince us all, especially Aaron and Noah, to drink more wine, and take up cigar smoking ....Well, we think he was joking.
The next day, Amos and Pninah took us out for the day, giving us a tour of the area, and the Golan Heights. The kids sat in their car, while Rob and Diane followed behind in the golf-cart car. Amos explained about different locations and landmarks that were involved in the six day war. We saw the Jordan river, the border between Syria and Israel, and plenty of abandoned Syrian tanks along the side of the road. We took a chairlift up Mount Hermon, the only ski mountain in Israel. We got to the top of the mountain, and could see Syria down below. Pninah was very proud that it was her first time ever on a chairlift. She told us that Amos is afraid of heights, but he hid it exquisitely. We had dinner at a restaurant called “Milkman and Witch Casserole” (it loses a bit of it’s catchiness in translation) The food was unbelievable. They had the best ostrich Rob and Diane have ever tasted. Amos and Pninah took us to see a lovely view of Haifa and the Bahai gardens, and then we said our goodbyes.
The next day we started out with a ride on the only subway in Israel. It is actually only 6 stops and goes up and down the mountain in Haifa. Even at rush hour there was hardly anyone on it. Kind of weird.
Next we headed off by car to the Galilee. We arrived at the Shavit Guest House on a Moshav in the Arbel. We ate a fantastic meal, made by the owners and explored the gorgeous, lush grounds of the guest house. There were trees of all sorts everywhere. We could pick our own fresh grapes and figs whenever we wanted. There was a beautiful pool, and clay tiled pathways. On our first day on the Moshav, we went for a short hike. Rob and Diane, the supposed parents, tried to get us all to sneak into the nearby national park, in a very adolescent way, but in the end we were caught, and payed the full price. Serves us right.
After our hike, we headed to Tsfat, where we met Susie, our niece/cousin. Tsfat is a Kabbalistic town, that has many artsy folk and had a Klesmer festival going on that week. Susie had quite the adventure on her way to Tsfat. She took the bus from Jerusalem to Tsfat, and it was incredibly crowded. Old people were shoving others with their canes, trying to find a spot on the bus. At some point, the driver turns to Susie, and asks her if she knows how to get to Tsfat. Apparently this was his first time driving there. Eventually, after much yelling and gossiping at and about the bus driver, a man from the back of the bus comes forth, and leads the bus to Tsfat. This is the most eventful bus drive we had ever heard of!
Susie showed us around Tsfat, showing us her favourite restaurants, art galleries, shops, and tourist sites. We saw a weaving shop, a candle store, and many art galleries and jewelry shops. Susie was amazing showing us around the bustling city; including a tour of an amazing synagogue. That night, the Klesmer music we heard was fantastic, but we were very tired, so we headed back to Arbel, until the next day.
The next morning we went on a much longer hike on the Arbel cliffs. The hike was a scramble on sheer cliff with hand and foot holds. It was like rock climbing but without the harnesses. Okay okay, the holds were permanently welded into the rock, and the majority of the hike was performed on all twos. But still, it was one of the most challenging hikes our family has been on, and included some moments of serious anxiety as Diane’s fear of heights reared it’s ugly head. Fortunately she had her handy pocket psychologist, Rob, to help her do some deep breathing exercises mid-cliff. Along the way, we saw many caves, that had clearly been used thousands of years ago as a dwelling place by centuries of humans. We saw an ancient castle that had been used by the crusaders. And when we got back from the hike, we went for a much appreciated swim in the glistening pool and had a blast.
That night, we went to Rob’s father’s cousin’s house for supper. Avi and Yonit were great hosts, and we enjoyed practicing our Hebrew with them. In fact, we had no choice but to speak in Hebrew, as Avi does not speak English. All five of us were surprised with the amount of Hebrew that flooded back, the moment we began using it in conversation. It helped that Yonit used to be a Hebrew as a second language teacher, and therefore used basic vocabulary, and spoke at a slower pace.
As we write this blog, we are driving through the West Bank, witnessing lots of dry desert, rocks, cliffs, rocks, abandoned formerly Israeli Kibutzim, rocks, palm trees, rocks, agriculture, rocks, settlements, and.... more rocks. We are currently sort of nervous about our location, but you couldn’t tell by our style of writing. If you’re reading this blog, we emerged okay.
RANAD Philipp-Muller
Summer 2009. Trip to Israel.
Israel entry 1:
Haifa and the Galilee
Our trip was scheduled to begin like any other. We had five tickets for Israel, scheduled to leave at 8:40 P.M. Our plane decided to leave two hours early, or more accurately put, Diane had the times mixed up, and realized that we had two hours less than we thought we had. This of course was no issue for the Philipp-Muller family who, as always, was completely ready far in advance, in fact, our bags were packed 8 days ahead of time. NOT.
Anyway.....we had a restful plane ride, relatively uneventful, and ate vegetarian meals along the way. Aaron, however, was still hungry after his vegetarian breakfast, so Diane scored him an extra one by hiding her platter beneath her tray table, and “innocently” accepted a regular meal when they came around a second time.
Upon our arrival, we got off the plane, got hit by a wall of Israeli heat, and collected our bags. You all know the song “United breaks guitars” (if not, check it out on u-tube), well here’s a new one for you: “Austrian Airlines breaks bag handles.” Diane’s bag handle was completely broken off, and she had to perform immediate surgery to salvage her bag.
We picked up our rental car, and all seemed to be going as planned. That is until Rob tried to put the car into gear. The car growled its disapproval. After a couple of laps around the airport, we finally figured out the problem with this crazy car - that we have nicknamed ‘the golf cart' as it continues to growl disapproval anytime we climb a hill.....not great if you’re touring Haifa and the north, where we were headed.
So we raced out of the airport at a fast clip, only to hit terrible traffic en route in Tel Aviv. A drive that should have taken an hour ended up taking three hours.
We arrived in Haifa, excited to get to our apartment, only to realize that we forgot to get the address, telephone number or any means of communication with the owner of the apartment building. We had a little adventure in “Burger Ranch” trying to access internet, because this is the only joint in Haifa, that our lame Canadian brains could find, that has free internet access whatsoever, no matter how crappy it is. After about an hour, we were finally able to open our email and we retrieved this elusive information.
We had dinner at a pizza place and headed off to bed from our tiring adventures.
The next morning we ate breakfast using the groceries we bought from a very Israeli location. Apparently the Hebrew word for drugstore is drugstore - although actually it was a convenience store; very confusing. We had a gorgeous two story apartment with magnificent windows overlooking the Haifa harbour, and the entire city and skyline of Haifa. In every Israeli home there is a metal room that exists in case of attack, the entire family should hide to be safe. This room happened to be Aviva’s room. So essentially she was sleeping in a bomb shelter.
The first day in Haifa we went to Dado beach, which is a beautiful beach on the Mediterranean, but not before we had to buy a GPS. With great difficulty, we finally reached the Grand Canyon Centre, the mall where we purchased our wonderful GPS. We realized that the reason no one could give us directions to the Grand Canyon centre was because we don’t know the proper Israeli pronunciation of the term. In Haifa, they call it “Grond Conyon Centerrr”. Our GPS has never failed us once. We named him Jeremy. Jeremy has told us to turn where there is no turn. Jeremy has sent us going around and around in circles, destined to never reach our destination. Jeremy has told us to turn straight into the Mediterranean. Jeremy has not failed us once, he’s failed us multiple, multiple times.
After purchasing our little friend, we spent the afternoon body surfing, swimming, and lying on the beach and resting. Sitting next to us were several characters. There was a man laying to our left that had a huge tattoo of Jesus on the cross covering his entire back. Rob thought “Wow, these Israelis are becoming so edgy that they tattoo crucifixes on their backs.” This was the moment that Rob remembered that there are, in fact, Arab Christian Israelis as well. Behind us, there was a group of kids smoking a very large bong, or hookah as the kids these days are calling it. Aviva explained the basic concept of a hookah to Rob and Diane who were nicely listening to their little lesson.
After the day was through, we went to an amazing beach-side restaurant called Ha Chavit, or Barrel, for supper. While at the restaurant, Aviva had a little adventure in the bathroom. She realized that she had literally locked herself in the washroom stall. This would have been an okay situation if this were a normal bathroom door that had a gap at the bottom, out of which she could crawl. In fact, in her jet lagged state, her Hebrew was so poor that she couldn’t even remember how to call for help. She wasn’t worried, however, because she knew that eventually her family would sense her absence and look for her. In the end, she figured out how to unlock the door, and she rejoined the rest of the Philipp-Mullers for a wonderful meal.
After dinner, we went for a nice walk on the boardwalk of Dado beach. We saw some Israeli guys playing an interesting combination of volleyball and hackie-sac. There were two guys on either side of a net, hitting the ball over without the use of hands. They used their heads, chests and legs to basically play volleyball. We then encountered a rooftop wedding ceremony, which we admired from afar. And here comes to an end the first day of our Israeli experience.
The next day, we went to Akko, and learned about the history, culture, and architecture of the ancient city. We learned about the significance this historical town has had through the past 4000 years. We learned about the various empires that have taken over this city, and we recognized the differences in architecture. We joked that Akko reminds us of Toronto, in that the various occupiers would just tear down old buildings to build new ones. Upon arriving in Akko, we wanted to go to the visitors centre to pick up headsets to tour the city. This is the day we came to the realization that Akko-ians are just not that great at giving directions. One man told us to go straight and then turn at the orange man. We wondered whether by “orange man”, he meant a man who was literally orange, was wearing an orange shirt, or was selling oranges. We decided he meant the latter. We finally found the visitors centre, after passing three orange men; making erroneous left turns at the first two.
We ate our bagged lunches in the shade in a beautiful garden in Akko. In the middle of our lunch, a little hassidic boy of 3 or 4, right next to us, pulled down his pants and took a whiz. Rob thought he looked like an unmanned hose, and told Noah to take cover, as he was in this boy’s potential line of fire. The boy was quite prolific as he sprayed just about everywhere. He then ran away from his sister, still naked from the waist down, as she chased him around the garden of the visitors centre. We had our second lunch of Shawarma, where the owner gave us complimentary slushies, and taught us how to say “thank you” in Arabic (shukran). There were a lot of “independent” cats in Akko.
That night, we went for Shabbat dinner at Diane’s father’s second cousin’s house. Amos, looked strikingly like Rudy, his cousin. Oddly enough, his wife Pninah, did not. Amos and Pninah were incredibly hospitable, knowledgeable, and kind. Amos has been a ship-man since birth. After the navy, he became a ship builder, and has always been interested in the sea. Pninah, who is almost 60, took up drumming five years ago, and now drums about two hours each day. The running joke throughout the evening was Amos trying to convince us all, especially Aaron and Noah, to drink more wine, and take up cigar smoking ....Well, we think he was joking.
The next day, Amos and Pninah took us out for the day, giving us a tour of the area, and the Golan Heights. The kids sat in their car, while Rob and Diane followed behind in the golf-cart car. Amos explained about different locations and landmarks that were involved in the six day war. We saw the Jordan river, the border between Syria and Israel, and plenty of abandoned Syrian tanks along the side of the road. We took a chairlift up Mount Hermon, the only ski mountain in Israel. We got to the top of the mountain, and could see Syria down below. Pninah was very proud that it was her first time ever on a chairlift. She told us that Amos is afraid of heights, but he hid it exquisitely. We had dinner at a restaurant called “Milkman and Witch Casserole” (it loses a bit of it’s catchiness in translation) The food was unbelievable. They had the best ostrich Rob and Diane have ever tasted. Amos and Pninah took us to see a lovely view of Haifa and the Bahai gardens, and then we said our goodbyes.
The next day we started out with a ride on the only subway in Israel. It is actually only 6 stops and goes up and down the mountain in Haifa. Even at rush hour there was hardly anyone on it. Kind of weird.
Next we headed off by car to the Galilee. We arrived at the Shavit Guest House on a Moshav in the Arbel. We ate a fantastic meal, made by the owners and explored the gorgeous, lush grounds of the guest house. There were trees of all sorts everywhere. We could pick our own fresh grapes and figs whenever we wanted. There was a beautiful pool, and clay tiled pathways. On our first day on the Moshav, we went for a short hike. Rob and Diane, the supposed parents, tried to get us all to sneak into the nearby national park, in a very adolescent way, but in the end we were caught, and payed the full price. Serves us right.
After our hike, we headed to Tsfat, where we met Susie, our niece/cousin. Tsfat is a Kabbalistic town, that has many artsy folk and had a Klesmer festival going on that week. Susie had quite the adventure on her way to Tsfat. She took the bus from Jerusalem to Tsfat, and it was incredibly crowded. Old people were shoving others with their canes, trying to find a spot on the bus. At some point, the driver turns to Susie, and asks her if she knows how to get to Tsfat. Apparently this was his first time driving there. Eventually, after much yelling and gossiping at and about the bus driver, a man from the back of the bus comes forth, and leads the bus to Tsfat. This is the most eventful bus drive we had ever heard of!
Susie showed us around Tsfat, showing us her favourite restaurants, art galleries, shops, and tourist sites. We saw a weaving shop, a candle store, and many art galleries and jewelry shops. Susie was amazing showing us around the bustling city; including a tour of an amazing synagogue. That night, the Klesmer music we heard was fantastic, but we were very tired, so we headed back to Arbel, until the next day.
The next morning we went on a much longer hike on the Arbel cliffs. The hike was a scramble on sheer cliff with hand and foot holds. It was like rock climbing but without the harnesses. Okay okay, the holds were permanently welded into the rock, and the majority of the hike was performed on all twos. But still, it was one of the most challenging hikes our family has been on, and included some moments of serious anxiety as Diane’s fear of heights reared it’s ugly head. Fortunately she had her handy pocket psychologist, Rob, to help her do some deep breathing exercises mid-cliff. Along the way, we saw many caves, that had clearly been used thousands of years ago as a dwelling place by centuries of humans. We saw an ancient castle that had been used by the crusaders. And when we got back from the hike, we went for a much appreciated swim in the glistening pool and had a blast.
That night, we went to Rob’s father’s cousin’s house for supper. Avi and Yonit were great hosts, and we enjoyed practicing our Hebrew with them. In fact, we had no choice but to speak in Hebrew, as Avi does not speak English. All five of us were surprised with the amount of Hebrew that flooded back, the moment we began using it in conversation. It helped that Yonit used to be a Hebrew as a second language teacher, and therefore used basic vocabulary, and spoke at a slower pace.
As we write this blog, we are driving through the West Bank, witnessing lots of dry desert, rocks, cliffs, rocks, abandoned formerly Israeli Kibutzim, rocks, palm trees, rocks, agriculture, rocks, settlements, and.... more rocks. We are currently sort of nervous about our location, but you couldn’t tell by our style of writing. If you’re reading this blog, we emerged okay.
RANAD Philipp-Muller
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Hey, this is our third installment on this trip. We realized we forgot to mention a couple of other highlights from LA. One of the nights we were there we also went to Little Japan, which is near the downtown core. It’s such a cool little neighbourhood and really looks like the photos we’ve seen of a downtown Japanish neighbourhood... in Japan, well you know what we mean. Also, we stayed in this cool Mexican neighbourhood, where no one seemed to speak English, except the guy at the local laundromat, who cleaned our clothes for us.
Also, at the Doubletree we stayed at, every morning they charged us a different price for breakfast, depending on how old they decided our children were; ranging from all three being under 10, to not charging for the kids at all.
The train station in LA (Union) was an absolutely gorgeous structure. The wait for the train was unremarkable, except that everybody stood in this really long, organized line until it was time to board. Then all hell broke loose and all started running in a chaotic way to get on the train.
ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO:
So the night on the train from LA to Flagstaff, Arizona, was our worst so far. It was packed, so we didn’t have as much room to spread out, plus there was a group of people in our car who were talking noisily, laughing about how they’d never been on a train before, getting up and moving around, etc. Now we know what you’re imagining, a group of teens or twenty somethings. But no. These were a bunch of obnoxious, loud, silly and inconsiderate.... senior citizens.
We got off the train in Flagstaff at about 6 in the morning (the early arrival time also contributed to the yuckiness of the ride). We found a greasy spoon and had breakfast there and received a recommendation from the waiter who told us that if we wanted to get really good coffee, we should really go somewhere else called Macy’s, the crunchy granola, universityish hang out. It was totally cool and really did make the best coffee we’ve had so far.
We headed off to Grand Canyon, in yet another SUV (no not hybrid....burn fuel, yay!!). The Grand Canyon is such an awesome experience. You have no idea you are approaching something so spectacular until the moment you arrive and see it. We only looked at it briefly that first day, as a thunderstorm broke out, and we had been told by the rangers that you can’t be near the rim during lightening. After the rain we set up camp, in a gorgeous campground. Note: this was after Noah had a “hysterical hissy fit” (his words) when we were briefly considering hotel-ing instead of camping because of the rain.
During the two days at the Grand Canyon, we went on hikes each day. The first, Bright Angel Trail, was more touristy but the views were spectacular. On the second day we did a much longer and more rigorous trail, called the South Kaibob trail. There were much fewer people, and the views were even more spectacular. By the end we were exhausted, low on our water and a bit dehydrated, but exhilarated by our adventure. We refilled our water bottles at the top and each drank like a litre or so. On that second hike we went 4 miles down into the canyon, where it was close to 40 degrees celsius, but an extremely dry heat. Rob kept going on and on about how he loves dry heat. The hard part about hiking the Grand Canyon is that the easy part is when you’re going down, and the hard part is the return, so it can be deceiving for people. We learned that 250 people need to be rescued from the canyon each year.
On the first day we also went to an Imax movie about the Grand Canyon made by the National Geographic Society. It focused more on some of the history of the early discoverers of the canyon. Much of it was a dramatization of these early explorers, using replicas of the original boats. So we got to see some amazing white water rafting on fairly rickety looking boats, and the cinematography was one of the highlights of the movie.
Words can’t describe how beautiful the Grand Canyon is; it should be on a list of the things you need to do before you die or perhaps before you catch your next cold.
The last day in Arizona we spent back in Flagstaff getting hair cuts for Rob, Diane, Noah and Aaron (i.e. not for Aviva!). Aaron and Rob both had their hair cut by a stylist who had just gotten out of jail. We learned this by eavesdropping on a series of conversations. The recent trip to jail didn’t seem to be a problem, as both of them got great cuts anyway! Noah and Diane’s stylist also gave great haircuts, despite not having gone to jail recently. Of course we also returned to Macy’s for more awesome coffee and an incredible vegan “chicken” sandwich. Next we headed off on Route 66 to New Mexico.
One of our pit stops along Route 66 was Winslow, Arizona where we committed obscene touristiness. We took a picture of ourselves “...standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona.....”. And that is all we did in Winslow, Arizona, ‘cause it really ain’t “such a fine site to see”. In fact, route 66 was kind of a grave yard of has-been towns. It was more sad than interesting.
We had intended to go to Santa Fe next, where we had a reservation in yet another campground, however, by the time we got to Albuquerque it was really late, so instead of making “a left toyn in Albakoyki”(*Bugs Bunny) we decided to stay in Albuquerque. It was a pleasant surprise, as so many had told us that we shouldn’t bother with Albuquerque, we should just go straight to Santa Fe. The first and only day that we had there, we went to the museum of Atomic Energy. This older vet/volunteer gave us a whole private guided tour of the entire museum, including how atomic energy works, the history of the creation of the atom bomb, the testing that went on in New Mexico, the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Cold War.
On our way to dinner, we discovered that Noah’s toe, which he had been complaining about for a day already, seemed to be infected. So....we trotted off to the local pediatric urgent care centre at the University of New Mexico. Here’s the story that Noah and Diane told Aviva about what happened during that visit: an intern came in and examined Noah. She began stabbing Noah repeatedly in the toe to try to drain it. There was blood everywhere, so Noah started screaming really loudly and hyperventilating. They had to give him oxygen. Then the pediatrician came in and said “What the hell are you doing?!” to the intern, who burst into tears. The End. Here’s what actually happened: the intern drained Noah’s toe successfully and sent him off with a prescription of antibiotics and a dinner recommendation at a local New Mexican restaurant, which turned out to be outstanding, just as the care at the hospital had been.
What was even more outstanding, was the fact that Noah swallowed his first couple of capsule pills! He was so proud of himself.
The next day, we caught the train back to Chicago. What we mean by “caught” is: first we missed the train in Albuquerque. And there is only one train per day. We had arranged to drop the car off at the train station Hertz. Only problem: there is no Hertz at the train station. So as we stood on the train tracks with the train rolling away, with the kids...and Diane, all wailing, the conductor shouted to us that we could try to catch them in Las Vegas, New Mexico, two stops ahead. So we raced the clock to get to Las Vegas, New Mexico, making arrangements with Hertz along the way. We got there with 45 minutes to spare, when Rob and Diane got the bright idea that we now had enough time to go and get some food. Rob and Aaron took off to get burritos for the family at the local bakery, and when they returned not 10 minutes later Diane was frantic since the train was already pulling in. As we raced once again to get on that same train, Rob tossed the car keys to the train station attendant and we managed to make it in the nick of time.
We took the train overnight to Chicago, arriving in time to make our Second City reservation for that evening. In case our kids didn’t already know how to swear and talk rudely about the birds and the bees, Second City completed their education. It was actually another highlight of the trip; we all laughed our heads off, even if it was quite raunchy and political as well as extremely politically incorrect.
After breakfast and a morning stroll on the Magnificent Mile (the most elegant stretch of Michigan Ave in Chicago) where we got our next read aloud book in our series and a shi-shi picnic lunch (chevre, baguette, and jelly beans) we are now on the train to Detroit, once again annoying our co-passengers with our loud, obnoxious behaviour.
Tomorrow we drive our mini-van back to Toronto.
Talk to you later,
RANAD (always capitalized)
Also, at the Doubletree we stayed at, every morning they charged us a different price for breakfast, depending on how old they decided our children were; ranging from all three being under 10, to not charging for the kids at all.
The train station in LA (Union) was an absolutely gorgeous structure. The wait for the train was unremarkable, except that everybody stood in this really long, organized line until it was time to board. Then all hell broke loose and all started running in a chaotic way to get on the train.
ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO:
So the night on the train from LA to Flagstaff, Arizona, was our worst so far. It was packed, so we didn’t have as much room to spread out, plus there was a group of people in our car who were talking noisily, laughing about how they’d never been on a train before, getting up and moving around, etc. Now we know what you’re imagining, a group of teens or twenty somethings. But no. These were a bunch of obnoxious, loud, silly and inconsiderate.... senior citizens.
We got off the train in Flagstaff at about 6 in the morning (the early arrival time also contributed to the yuckiness of the ride). We found a greasy spoon and had breakfast there and received a recommendation from the waiter who told us that if we wanted to get really good coffee, we should really go somewhere else called Macy’s, the crunchy granola, universityish hang out. It was totally cool and really did make the best coffee we’ve had so far.
We headed off to Grand Canyon, in yet another SUV (no not hybrid....burn fuel, yay!!). The Grand Canyon is such an awesome experience. You have no idea you are approaching something so spectacular until the moment you arrive and see it. We only looked at it briefly that first day, as a thunderstorm broke out, and we had been told by the rangers that you can’t be near the rim during lightening. After the rain we set up camp, in a gorgeous campground. Note: this was after Noah had a “hysterical hissy fit” (his words) when we were briefly considering hotel-ing instead of camping because of the rain.
During the two days at the Grand Canyon, we went on hikes each day. The first, Bright Angel Trail, was more touristy but the views were spectacular. On the second day we did a much longer and more rigorous trail, called the South Kaibob trail. There were much fewer people, and the views were even more spectacular. By the end we were exhausted, low on our water and a bit dehydrated, but exhilarated by our adventure. We refilled our water bottles at the top and each drank like a litre or so. On that second hike we went 4 miles down into the canyon, where it was close to 40 degrees celsius, but an extremely dry heat. Rob kept going on and on about how he loves dry heat. The hard part about hiking the Grand Canyon is that the easy part is when you’re going down, and the hard part is the return, so it can be deceiving for people. We learned that 250 people need to be rescued from the canyon each year.
On the first day we also went to an Imax movie about the Grand Canyon made by the National Geographic Society. It focused more on some of the history of the early discoverers of the canyon. Much of it was a dramatization of these early explorers, using replicas of the original boats. So we got to see some amazing white water rafting on fairly rickety looking boats, and the cinematography was one of the highlights of the movie.
Words can’t describe how beautiful the Grand Canyon is; it should be on a list of the things you need to do before you die or perhaps before you catch your next cold.
The last day in Arizona we spent back in Flagstaff getting hair cuts for Rob, Diane, Noah and Aaron (i.e. not for Aviva!). Aaron and Rob both had their hair cut by a stylist who had just gotten out of jail. We learned this by eavesdropping on a series of conversations. The recent trip to jail didn’t seem to be a problem, as both of them got great cuts anyway! Noah and Diane’s stylist also gave great haircuts, despite not having gone to jail recently. Of course we also returned to Macy’s for more awesome coffee and an incredible vegan “chicken” sandwich. Next we headed off on Route 66 to New Mexico.
One of our pit stops along Route 66 was Winslow, Arizona where we committed obscene touristiness. We took a picture of ourselves “...standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona.....”. And that is all we did in Winslow, Arizona, ‘cause it really ain’t “such a fine site to see”. In fact, route 66 was kind of a grave yard of has-been towns. It was more sad than interesting.
We had intended to go to Santa Fe next, where we had a reservation in yet another campground, however, by the time we got to Albuquerque it was really late, so instead of making “a left toyn in Albakoyki”(*Bugs Bunny) we decided to stay in Albuquerque. It was a pleasant surprise, as so many had told us that we shouldn’t bother with Albuquerque, we should just go straight to Santa Fe. The first and only day that we had there, we went to the museum of Atomic Energy. This older vet/volunteer gave us a whole private guided tour of the entire museum, including how atomic energy works, the history of the creation of the atom bomb, the testing that went on in New Mexico, the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Cold War.
On our way to dinner, we discovered that Noah’s toe, which he had been complaining about for a day already, seemed to be infected. So....we trotted off to the local pediatric urgent care centre at the University of New Mexico. Here’s the story that Noah and Diane told Aviva about what happened during that visit: an intern came in and examined Noah. She began stabbing Noah repeatedly in the toe to try to drain it. There was blood everywhere, so Noah started screaming really loudly and hyperventilating. They had to give him oxygen. Then the pediatrician came in and said “What the hell are you doing?!” to the intern, who burst into tears. The End. Here’s what actually happened: the intern drained Noah’s toe successfully and sent him off with a prescription of antibiotics and a dinner recommendation at a local New Mexican restaurant, which turned out to be outstanding, just as the care at the hospital had been.
What was even more outstanding, was the fact that Noah swallowed his first couple of capsule pills! He was so proud of himself.
The next day, we caught the train back to Chicago. What we mean by “caught” is: first we missed the train in Albuquerque. And there is only one train per day. We had arranged to drop the car off at the train station Hertz. Only problem: there is no Hertz at the train station. So as we stood on the train tracks with the train rolling away, with the kids...and Diane, all wailing, the conductor shouted to us that we could try to catch them in Las Vegas, New Mexico, two stops ahead. So we raced the clock to get to Las Vegas, New Mexico, making arrangements with Hertz along the way. We got there with 45 minutes to spare, when Rob and Diane got the bright idea that we now had enough time to go and get some food. Rob and Aaron took off to get burritos for the family at the local bakery, and when they returned not 10 minutes later Diane was frantic since the train was already pulling in. As we raced once again to get on that same train, Rob tossed the car keys to the train station attendant and we managed to make it in the nick of time.
We took the train overnight to Chicago, arriving in time to make our Second City reservation for that evening. In case our kids didn’t already know how to swear and talk rudely about the birds and the bees, Second City completed their education. It was actually another highlight of the trip; we all laughed our heads off, even if it was quite raunchy and political as well as extremely politically incorrect.
After breakfast and a morning stroll on the Magnificent Mile (the most elegant stretch of Michigan Ave in Chicago) where we got our next read aloud book in our series and a shi-shi picnic lunch (chevre, baguette, and jelly beans) we are now on the train to Detroit, once again annoying our co-passengers with our loud, obnoxious behaviour.
Tomorrow we drive our mini-van back to Toronto.
Talk to you later,
RANAD (always capitalized)
Monday, August 18, 2008
California
August 13-18, 2008
So we got to San Francisco-ish by train, but we needed to take an Amtrak bus to get to the Caltrain to get to the shuttle van, to get to our hotel. Somewhere along this foray into various forms of transportation, during a mad dash to catch said Caltrain, Aaron unfortunately left his camera on the Amtrak bus seat, never to be seen again. This was very upsetting, as he had had it since his 10th birthday :(. It was very late so we all hit the sac without dinner :( (again) Oh, but first we all washed up because we hadn’t bathed since the morning we had left Chicago (which was 5 days).
The first day in San Francisco, we took a shuttle to the airport to take the air train to a van which took us to a car rental place. Yes folks, despite our best laid plans to use only public transit, the various systems were going to be so cumbersome and expensive in San Francisco, that it turned out to be considerably cheaper and more convenient to simply rent a car for the three days here.
So, next we made our way down to Fisherman’s Wharf and took a Bay Cruise. It was a bit cheesy, and they probably violated several codes by jamming 100’s of people onto a small boat, but we actually liked it (especially the cheesiness). We learned a lot about the history of San Francisco, e.g., people from San Francisco hate the term “Frisco”, the Golden Gate was the first construction site that used a safety net, and Alcatraz means pelican in Spanish. There were windsurfers on the bay and it was a gorgeous day. That first night we went for dinner in China Town followed by Gelato on the way back. It was excellent. We could have had Budweiser beer flavoured ice cream, sesame flavoured, avocado, etc. but we all stuck to more traditional flavours, On our way back to the hotel we drove down Lombard Street. As a man we met on the train said “You haven’t seen San Francisco till you’ve looked down the hood of your car and not been able to see the road beneath you”.
After stealing oranges and bananas from our breakfast buffets and catching a few minutes of the China vs. U.S. men’s basketball game, (summer Olympics) we headed off to Berkeley to eat lunch at a restaurant called Chez Panisse. This was a very special experience for Aviva because when she was little she used to love to read this book called “Fanny at Chez Panisse” all about the owner’s daughter. Aviva had this book read to her so often by Rob and Diane that we all started calling it “the bible”. The restaurant had outstanding food, although pretty pricey. After eating they even let us tour their really nice kitchen. We spent the afternoon in Berkeley and saw a protest by Tibetans against China’s oppression of Tibet. Their have been a lot of such protests with the Olympics, but this one was quite large (and some of the speeches were in Tibetan). We had dinner at a Turkish restaurant and watched what we thought was “Turkish Idol”. We drove home via the “Golden Gate Bridge” Damn those aliens they’re at it again go away- away I tell you!!!!!!!!!!
The next day we headed straight to the Cable Car museum and saw how the whole cable car system runs from that building and we also learned about the history of the cable car. We then went on an actual cable car along California street. We rode the whole line hanging the side poles like the true tourists we are. It was not that long a ride so we walked back. Next we went to a fortune cookie “factory” in a sketchy looking back alley in Chinatown. This wasn’t really a factory sorta just three little old people at two fortune cookie machines; there hands whizzing away at hydraulic speed. Which reminds us, Aviva has discovered that she has hydraulic force; but that’s a different story. We got some samples of chocolate and strawberry flavoured fortune cookies and bought sesame cookies and fortune cookies. We opted not to buy the bag labelled “adult fortune cookies”. We went to little Italy and ate dinner with no dessert because we’d had some hydraulic flavoured cookies and mummy and daddy thought that was enough for one day.
The last day of San Francisco...otherwise entitled “Noah Gets His Cast Taken Off” (remember, he broke his pinky in a freak portaging incident in Algonquin). The doctor thwacked off his cast with a large jackhammer and replaced it with buddy taping. Meanwhile... Rob and Aaron tried one more time to find Aaron’s camera with Amtrak, while Aviva changed our GPS to shout directions at us in Spanish.
As you may know our sole passion and purpose in life is to destroy pollute and wreak havoc on the environment as much as humanly possible in our short time on this planet. Our reputation is at stake here people! So...we rented a non-hybrid SUV for our loooooong ride down the pristine coast to Big Sur on route 1 (This was where some of the fires had happened in Calif.). We just thought that now would be a good time to mention that everything up until now that we have written in this very blog that you few people are reading has been grammatically correct and not awkward in the least!!!!! That’s all.
The coast line was spooky and SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!! That was an alliteration... heh heh heh. Actually as Aaron pointed out it was more on the eerie side than spooky. The waves were crashing against the rocks down below, the fog lingering in the cool air. This made it very difficult to navigate on the narrow winding roads. It quite reminded us of our drive in Scotland to Inverness (see summer 2006) except this time we chose to drive on the right side of the road. COWS! we saw cows grazing by the ocean. Cows are Diane’s friends.
We arrived in Big Sur and pitched camp in darkness, trying to find soft ground to put the stakes into. Eventually we came up with some pretty creative solutions to tie down our tents. Next we arrived at a beautiful cozy and overpriced pub style restaurant where Diane and Noah saw a small animal scurry across the rafters. After, we sat around a campfire outdoors (controlled) and met some french people who gave us some recommendations for some hikes. The next day we went to the beach in Carmel. We know you’re imagining towels, swimming, sunscreen, lifeguards, parasols etc. but no dice my friend; you are sorely mistaken. The water was bone-chillingly-cold, the beach, not much better. The guys went in up to their ankles, Noah played tag with the waves. Rob and Aaron chased ginormous flocks of various races of birds including huge-ass pelicans, while Diane and Aviva huddled together on the windy beach using their towels as blankets. The guys joined up to go rock climbing along the shore. We had a picnic with the birds on the beach which was rather traumatic for Aviva who conquered her fear of birds- a little- with the help of her Mummy.
The next day we went on a hike in a Redwood forest. Some of the trails had been burned during the wild fires that swept Calif. two weeks ago. In fact the region was only un-evacuated quite recently. We saw many Redwood trees on our hike that were spectacularly large, although apparently considered somewhat on the small side but we were impressed none the less anyway and needless to say. Of note, even though Diane has no problem with sleeping on the floor of an Amtrak train she had a hissy-fit about sitting on the ground to eat our lunch during the hike but we forced her to do it anyway. Apparantly it has something to do with her protest against the cows being held hostage by the martians- more on that later.
We left Big Sur, bye-bye. On our drive down to Los Angeles we stopped to admire thrashing whales in the sea, scenic coffee breaks and most importantly we saw Elephant Seals who are cool and look like seals, laze around, throw sand on themselves to keep cool with their flippers and look like they have socks hanging off of their schnozes. Apparently they only come to this beach once a year to deal with the birdsies and the beesies; and let us tell you, we saw some pretty awesome seal action going on in the water.
Hey, we should mention that place in Santa Barbara where we hit our max. on some pretty rad mexican food. It had a name. But that is not important right now. Our guide book and Julia Child conveniently both recommended it. It was this cheapo total hole in the wall, and we got a local to tell us what to order. YUM!
We arrived in L.A. where our S.U.V. fit in perfectly. Swimming pools, movie stars. Since we lost the family read aloud book, we all got into Aaron’s book called Fart Party by Julia Wertz. We f*$%ing love it. Side note: our family is irresponsible; we lose things. The list is infinite: a Croc, important classified documents (if found please memorize them, burn and proceed to eat), the family book, and a camera. We’ll lose more don’t worry.
The next day in L.A. we went on a v.i.p.tour of Warner Bros. studio. Everyone who takes a tour is a V.I.P., so we managed to fit in. Of course Warner Bros. is the home of the most gifted actor of the 20th century: Bugs Bunny- Rob’s hero. The tour was frickin’ amazing. We saw an entire fake town made to look like NYC, Philly, Chicago etc. We saw an Ersatz mini-Central Park, the city sets for “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan”, and E.R. and the set for the TV show “Chuck”. We even saw the now retired set of “Friends”. You would have to go on the tour yourself to grasp the awesomeness.
The next day we went to Beverly Hills, Rodeo drive, and Malibu. We went to a beach in the latter. This beach was more normal this time. The guys were able to actually play in the water; body surfing, while the girls worked on their tans. They can now graduate from ghostly pale to slightly pasty. There were surfers on boards all over the place, from as young as about 5 to as old as 60. We were struck by how suburban everyone looked in Malibu, and even in LA. For dinner we went to this place that also had a name, but that’s not important. What’s important is that we were told we might see movie stars there. We did see lots of very Thornhill-looking people (that can be taken however you would like to take it, if you’re from Thornhill - hey, it’s probably flattering to think you look like you come from Malibu to us). And....we saw.....or at least we think we saw.....two tables over.....talking very animatedly.....the woman who played “Coco” on the TV show Fame!!
These past days we have been watching the Michael Phelpslympics known to non- Americans as the Olympics of Beijing 2008. And now we are whizzing along on Amtrak, which surprisingly left only half an hour late. We’re off to see the Grand Canyon next.
Love,
RANAD (always capitalized).
So we got to San Francisco-ish by train, but we needed to take an Amtrak bus to get to the Caltrain to get to the shuttle van, to get to our hotel. Somewhere along this foray into various forms of transportation, during a mad dash to catch said Caltrain, Aaron unfortunately left his camera on the Amtrak bus seat, never to be seen again. This was very upsetting, as he had had it since his 10th birthday :(. It was very late so we all hit the sac without dinner :( (again) Oh, but first we all washed up because we hadn’t bathed since the morning we had left Chicago (which was 5 days).
The first day in San Francisco, we took a shuttle to the airport to take the air train to a van which took us to a car rental place. Yes folks, despite our best laid plans to use only public transit, the various systems were going to be so cumbersome and expensive in San Francisco, that it turned out to be considerably cheaper and more convenient to simply rent a car for the three days here.
So, next we made our way down to Fisherman’s Wharf and took a Bay Cruise. It was a bit cheesy, and they probably violated several codes by jamming 100’s of people onto a small boat, but we actually liked it (especially the cheesiness). We learned a lot about the history of San Francisco, e.g., people from San Francisco hate the term “Frisco”, the Golden Gate was the first construction site that used a safety net, and Alcatraz means pelican in Spanish. There were windsurfers on the bay and it was a gorgeous day. That first night we went for dinner in China Town followed by Gelato on the way back. It was excellent. We could have had Budweiser beer flavoured ice cream, sesame flavoured, avocado, etc. but we all stuck to more traditional flavours, On our way back to the hotel we drove down Lombard Street. As a man we met on the train said “You haven’t seen San Francisco till you’ve looked down the hood of your car and not been able to see the road beneath you”.
After stealing oranges and bananas from our breakfast buffets and catching a few minutes of the China vs. U.S. men’s basketball game, (summer Olympics) we headed off to Berkeley to eat lunch at a restaurant called Chez Panisse. This was a very special experience for Aviva because when she was little she used to love to read this book called “Fanny at Chez Panisse” all about the owner’s daughter. Aviva had this book read to her so often by Rob and Diane that we all started calling it “the bible”. The restaurant had outstanding food, although pretty pricey. After eating they even let us tour their really nice kitchen. We spent the afternoon in Berkeley and saw a protest by Tibetans against China’s oppression of Tibet. Their have been a lot of such protests with the Olympics, but this one was quite large (and some of the speeches were in Tibetan). We had dinner at a Turkish restaurant and watched what we thought was “Turkish Idol”. We drove home via the “Golden Gate Bridge” Damn those aliens they’re at it again go away- away I tell you!!!!!!!!!!
The next day we headed straight to the Cable Car museum and saw how the whole cable car system runs from that building and we also learned about the history of the cable car. We then went on an actual cable car along California street. We rode the whole line hanging the side poles like the true tourists we are. It was not that long a ride so we walked back. Next we went to a fortune cookie “factory” in a sketchy looking back alley in Chinatown. This wasn’t really a factory sorta just three little old people at two fortune cookie machines; there hands whizzing away at hydraulic speed. Which reminds us, Aviva has discovered that she has hydraulic force; but that’s a different story. We got some samples of chocolate and strawberry flavoured fortune cookies and bought sesame cookies and fortune cookies. We opted not to buy the bag labelled “adult fortune cookies”. We went to little Italy and ate dinner with no dessert because we’d had some hydraulic flavoured cookies and mummy and daddy thought that was enough for one day.
The last day of San Francisco...otherwise entitled “Noah Gets His Cast Taken Off” (remember, he broke his pinky in a freak portaging incident in Algonquin). The doctor thwacked off his cast with a large jackhammer and replaced it with buddy taping. Meanwhile... Rob and Aaron tried one more time to find Aaron’s camera with Amtrak, while Aviva changed our GPS to shout directions at us in Spanish.
As you may know our sole passion and purpose in life is to destroy pollute and wreak havoc on the environment as much as humanly possible in our short time on this planet. Our reputation is at stake here people! So...we rented a non-hybrid SUV for our loooooong ride down the pristine coast to Big Sur on route 1 (This was where some of the fires had happened in Calif.). We just thought that now would be a good time to mention that everything up until now that we have written in this very blog that you few people are reading has been grammatically correct and not awkward in the least!!!!! That’s all.
The coast line was spooky and SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!! That was an alliteration... heh heh heh. Actually as Aaron pointed out it was more on the eerie side than spooky. The waves were crashing against the rocks down below, the fog lingering in the cool air. This made it very difficult to navigate on the narrow winding roads. It quite reminded us of our drive in Scotland to Inverness (see summer 2006) except this time we chose to drive on the right side of the road. COWS! we saw cows grazing by the ocean. Cows are Diane’s friends.
We arrived in Big Sur and pitched camp in darkness, trying to find soft ground to put the stakes into. Eventually we came up with some pretty creative solutions to tie down our tents. Next we arrived at a beautiful cozy and overpriced pub style restaurant where Diane and Noah saw a small animal scurry across the rafters. After, we sat around a campfire outdoors (controlled) and met some french people who gave us some recommendations for some hikes. The next day we went to the beach in Carmel. We know you’re imagining towels, swimming, sunscreen, lifeguards, parasols etc. but no dice my friend; you are sorely mistaken. The water was bone-chillingly-cold, the beach, not much better. The guys went in up to their ankles, Noah played tag with the waves. Rob and Aaron chased ginormous flocks of various races of birds including huge-ass pelicans, while Diane and Aviva huddled together on the windy beach using their towels as blankets. The guys joined up to go rock climbing along the shore. We had a picnic with the birds on the beach which was rather traumatic for Aviva who conquered her fear of birds- a little- with the help of her Mummy.
The next day we went on a hike in a Redwood forest. Some of the trails had been burned during the wild fires that swept Calif. two weeks ago. In fact the region was only un-evacuated quite recently. We saw many Redwood trees on our hike that were spectacularly large, although apparently considered somewhat on the small side but we were impressed none the less anyway and needless to say. Of note, even though Diane has no problem with sleeping on the floor of an Amtrak train she had a hissy-fit about sitting on the ground to eat our lunch during the hike but we forced her to do it anyway. Apparantly it has something to do with her protest against the cows being held hostage by the martians- more on that later.
We left Big Sur, bye-bye. On our drive down to Los Angeles we stopped to admire thrashing whales in the sea, scenic coffee breaks and most importantly we saw Elephant Seals who are cool and look like seals, laze around, throw sand on themselves to keep cool with their flippers and look like they have socks hanging off of their schnozes. Apparently they only come to this beach once a year to deal with the birdsies and the beesies; and let us tell you, we saw some pretty awesome seal action going on in the water.
Hey, we should mention that place in Santa Barbara where we hit our max. on some pretty rad mexican food. It had a name. But that is not important right now. Our guide book and Julia Child conveniently both recommended it. It was this cheapo total hole in the wall, and we got a local to tell us what to order. YUM!
We arrived in L.A. where our S.U.V. fit in perfectly. Swimming pools, movie stars. Since we lost the family read aloud book, we all got into Aaron’s book called Fart Party by Julia Wertz. We f*$%ing love it. Side note: our family is irresponsible; we lose things. The list is infinite: a Croc, important classified documents (if found please memorize them, burn and proceed to eat), the family book, and a camera. We’ll lose more don’t worry.
The next day in L.A. we went on a v.i.p.tour of Warner Bros. studio. Everyone who takes a tour is a V.I.P., so we managed to fit in. Of course Warner Bros. is the home of the most gifted actor of the 20th century: Bugs Bunny- Rob’s hero. The tour was frickin’ amazing. We saw an entire fake town made to look like NYC, Philly, Chicago etc. We saw an Ersatz mini-Central Park, the city sets for “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan”, and E.R. and the set for the TV show “Chuck”. We even saw the now retired set of “Friends”. You would have to go on the tour yourself to grasp the awesomeness.
The next day we went to Beverly Hills, Rodeo drive, and Malibu. We went to a beach in the latter. This beach was more normal this time. The guys were able to actually play in the water; body surfing, while the girls worked on their tans. They can now graduate from ghostly pale to slightly pasty. There were surfers on boards all over the place, from as young as about 5 to as old as 60. We were struck by how suburban everyone looked in Malibu, and even in LA. For dinner we went to this place that also had a name, but that’s not important. What’s important is that we were told we might see movie stars there. We did see lots of very Thornhill-looking people (that can be taken however you would like to take it, if you’re from Thornhill - hey, it’s probably flattering to think you look like you come from Malibu to us). And....we saw.....or at least we think we saw.....two tables over.....talking very animatedly.....the woman who played “Coco” on the TV show Fame!!
These past days we have been watching the Michael Phelpslympics known to non- Americans as the Olympics of Beijing 2008. And now we are whizzing along on Amtrak, which surprisingly left only half an hour late. We’re off to see the Grand Canyon next.
Love,
RANAD (always capitalized).
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Crossing America
Aug 2, 2008
So RANAD (Rob, Aviva, Noah, Aaron, Diane) is off on another adventure. A train journey across the USA! And we’re writing this blog, once again as a joint effort between all five of us, on various Amtrak trains. And, as any journey starts, we start at the beginning.
We drove to Detroit. Unfortunately we didn’t start the drive till 9:00.....p.m.. And then we hit bad traffic around London. So we only got to a hotel in Detroit at 2:30 am.
The next day we headed to Royal Oak to get on the train. We raced to get to the train station, to unload our luggage from the car, to park the car, and get to the platform and wait and wait and wait. In fact we waited over two hours. The train was apparently late because a live wire had fallen on the tracks and for some reason they didn’t feel comfortable driving over it.
The train was um remarkable mostly do to our neighbours; an obnoxious grand mother with her two grandsons. It all started with the idea that we could turn the seats to face each other. The highly agitated and easily excitable conductor was not uh interested in this plan. She was very concerned about filling every single seat before 200 more people got on. A deal was struck. The grandmother proposed that we that sit together as a party of eight. this seemed like a good plan. Four of us sat together facing each other, while Diane sat with the grandmother and her 2 grandsons it was very squishy. Diane mentioned so. Twice, the grandmother told Diane that she was “welcome to sit somewhere else”, but Diane said that she wanted to be near her family. Finally the grandmother angrily moved saying that she didn’t know why Diane “insisted” on sitting next to her. In the end, the five of us ended up squishing together in the four seater while Aviva read the book “The Lightning Thief” aloud to the family (no accents this time it takes place in U.S.).
We arrived in Chicago, took a cab to the hotel, and met up with Grand-mummy.... surprise, surprise. (We actually planned to meet her for our stay in Chicago). We then went out for dinner to Weber’s grill which is part restaurant and part advertisement for Weber’s bbq company. Oh we forgot to mention that we hadn’t eaten a meal all day other than dinky little snacks and paw fulls of bread and cheese and humus (we had no knife).
The next day Grand-mummy woke us all up in time for breakfast. After six showers, and a big breakfast, we went on a boat tour of Chicago’s architecture-that was amazing! We saw the biggest building in square footage in floor space. The tallest building in the world known only by it’s street address. And the Sears tower which was the tallest building for 28 years. On this boat ride we also got complimentary Starbuck’s paraphernalia. This is probably an apt moment to mention that Rob has been off coffee for a week and a half, and the mind bogglingly horrific migraines have just about ceased. After the boat tour, we went for a jacuzzi at the hotel; except for Noah. :( This is probably an apt moment to mention that Noah has been in a cast (well his pinky has) for about a week now, having broken it during an unfortunate portaging incident in Algonquin park. That night we went to see Mamma Mia which was quite cute. We all had barrels and heaps of fun and laughter but than the aliens came and we all knew we were screwed. The fun and the laughter was now over.:( That night, for dinner, we had Chicago’s famous paper thin pizza. Um well actually Chicago kinda isn’t famous for their paper thin pizza, that would be Italy. What Chicago is famous for is their deep dish pizza. But that was an hour’s wait and none of us even like deep dish pizza so there goes that plan.
The next day Grand-mummy woke us up in time for breakfast. After 5 showers, a bath, and a big breakfast we headed out for Chicago’s Ferris Bueler’s day off day. This is a civic holiday and no one can work. In honour of Ferris we started off at the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts and systematically destroyed each and every piece of artwork.....
Rob managed to get in as a student and Grand-mummy managed to get in as a senior and Diane managed to get in as an adult. We saw Grant Wood’s American Gothic, finding out that the two models were really his dentist and sister. We saw American and European impressionist art. And it made a big impression. We then had a half hour tour of Sunday at La Grand Jatte by George Seurat. We rode the “eL” to a Grecian restaurant in Grecian town where they rushed us out faster than we could say “Homer”. We then took the “eL” to the Sears tower and together we scaled our way to the top with suction cups. The view was very impressive. We got there just after sun set and we saw the city lights not to mention the nightly fire works by lake Michigan. The aliens returned and stole all of our souls and any pink buttons we happened to have on us. Unfortunately we had a lot.
After a send off to grand-mummy and a mad dash to the train station we are now on our way to Colorado on a train, acting quite hysterical and out of control.
Point of interest:
One of the two conductors, both of whom are named Gary, explained to us the reason for what looked like Lakes around the Mississippi between Illinois and Iowa. Turns out the levies broke on the banks of the Mississippi, causing thousands of acres of flooding this past June. Vehicles and farmhouses were still almost totally submerged. The bridge we just crossed on the train was reconstructed only two weeks ago.
Currently, we are traveling 80 miles an hour across the very flat state of Iowa.
August 6, 2008.
So to pick up from where we left off, we had our first night on a train, and we got about 12 hours of sleep...between the five of us. Actually, we each got from 4-8 hours of sleep, depending on who you speak to. Rob slept on a bench in the lounge area. Aaron fell asleep peacefully with Aviva, but then awoke at 4:30 am to roll over, but kicked against a foreign object below. Diane’s head popped up from the floor underneath the seat and both let out a yelp. Aviva played musical chairs, and floors, but won the most sleep contest. Noah was comfortably sleeping on two chairs, with his feet hanging out in the aisle, but was the first up to see the sun rise over Nebraska.
We arrived in Granby Colorado at mid-day. Strangely, we were two hours late, since Amtrak always runs on time. We picked up our rental car and headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. The drive was spectacular, amazing vistas, birds, the cutest chipmunks and even some elk. When we arrived at the camp site the ranger who checked us in warned us that there had been a bear “incident” a few days earlier. He then proceeded to tell us what precautions to take, but he said it at ninety miles an hour, so that it was almost completely incoherent. To top it all off, the second ranger we spoke to contradicted what the “motor mouth” ranger had said about what to do when encountering a bear.
On each of the two days in the park we went on a huge hike. The first day was up to Alberta Falls and Loch Vale and the second day was up to Flat top mountain, which is at 12,324 feet, and is above the tree line (we only hiked the last 2000 feet). We had our first experience with altitude sickness, which hit us all on the descents both days. We were all fine once we drugged ourselves up on Advil and Starbuck’s after the hikes. During the first hike we were a bit low on water and that was a bit stressful as we really had to pace our intake (and may have helped us with developing the altitude headaches). The views were gorgeous and both hikes were quite challenging; uphill for 2 hours on the first day, and “relentlessly uphill” for three hours on the second day.
First a little about the weather here in Colorado. It starts our sunny and beautiful in the morning. Around mid-day the clouds start to build up and then for about half an hour in the mid-afternoon it pours for about 30 minutes, including thunder and lightening. And then it’s beautiful again by late afternoon. If you’re unfortunate or stupid enough to be above the tree line during a lightening storm, you’re at great risk for being hit by lightening, and it has happened. Both days we were just finishing our descent when it started to rain. But, on the second hike, as we were reaching the bottom, and it started to rain, by some mystical force, Rob magically knew to bring us under a small shelter along the path. Less than a minute later, it started raining giant hale stones, the size of grapes. It looked like everything was covered in moth balls. Within a period of about 1 hour, the weather went from feeling like a hot summer’s day, to looking like a cold winter’s day, and back again. When it had all stopped, Aaron and Noah went out and scooped up handfuls of ice pebbles and were throwing hail balls (far away from people).
On the second night in the park, at 4 in the morning from inside our tents, out of the blue we heard these dog-like creatures howling. It started with just one and then it seemed like there were dozens of them chiming in. It sounded like a combo of howling and yelping. At first we were scared they were wolves, then we knew it was the aliens, but by the next morning we figured it was Prairie dogs....probably because we also had their two foot deep holes all over our camp ground. In fact Rob fell into one of them while cooking one time. There were also deer grazing all over the camp ground, within feet of the campers. On our last night we had a cornucopia dinner consisting of sushi, Mediterranean salad, followed up by fruit and whipped cream-topped pancakes. And just as we were finishing up, we had another burst of rain, followed by a phenomenal full-arc rainbow.
The last morning we had to wake up at 6 am to pack up and clear out by 7:30 am, which we did by 7:55 am. We made great time on the way back to Granby. On the way we stopped to fill up the car with gas, but we had a little trouble opening the gas tank. After we searched for a good five minutes, these motor-cyclists started helping us as well. We all searched all over for 15 minutes including one or two other motorists. Then the cashier came out and the first place she looked was underneath the carpet under the driver’s seat, and there it was, the button to open the gas tank! This is just one example of how remarkably friendly and helpful people have been here. People have struck up conversations with us all over the place, most recently at the Amtrak station with a man and his deaf father. The son chatted with us at length, translating back and forth for his father in ASL. Even the attendant on our train here was incredibly kind and friendly. He was clearly expecting us when the train arrived, having already prepared 5 seats for us, with a plan to re-seat us after Grand Junction so that we can have better seats. Oh and by the way, the train was two hours late.
Now we’re sitting in the lounge of the Amtrak train, writing our Blog, reading Lightening Thief and enjoying the Colorado landscape, which looks like something out of the Zoom Zoom commercials or the TV show Bonanza. We are amazed by how vast, variable and undeveloped so much of the terrain is. We’ve also managed to scare off anyone who was seated around us by our obnoxious, loud behaviour while writing this Blog. Next stop: San Francisco.
So RANAD (Rob, Aviva, Noah, Aaron, Diane) is off on another adventure. A train journey across the USA! And we’re writing this blog, once again as a joint effort between all five of us, on various Amtrak trains. And, as any journey starts, we start at the beginning.
We drove to Detroit. Unfortunately we didn’t start the drive till 9:00.....p.m.. And then we hit bad traffic around London. So we only got to a hotel in Detroit at 2:30 am.
The next day we headed to Royal Oak to get on the train. We raced to get to the train station, to unload our luggage from the car, to park the car, and get to the platform and wait and wait and wait. In fact we waited over two hours. The train was apparently late because a live wire had fallen on the tracks and for some reason they didn’t feel comfortable driving over it.
The train was um remarkable mostly do to our neighbours; an obnoxious grand mother with her two grandsons. It all started with the idea that we could turn the seats to face each other. The highly agitated and easily excitable conductor was not uh interested in this plan. She was very concerned about filling every single seat before 200 more people got on. A deal was struck. The grandmother proposed that we that sit together as a party of eight. this seemed like a good plan. Four of us sat together facing each other, while Diane sat with the grandmother and her 2 grandsons it was very squishy. Diane mentioned so. Twice, the grandmother told Diane that she was “welcome to sit somewhere else”, but Diane said that she wanted to be near her family. Finally the grandmother angrily moved saying that she didn’t know why Diane “insisted” on sitting next to her. In the end, the five of us ended up squishing together in the four seater while Aviva read the book “The Lightning Thief” aloud to the family (no accents this time it takes place in U.S.).
We arrived in Chicago, took a cab to the hotel, and met up with Grand-mummy.... surprise, surprise. (We actually planned to meet her for our stay in Chicago). We then went out for dinner to Weber’s grill which is part restaurant and part advertisement for Weber’s bbq company. Oh we forgot to mention that we hadn’t eaten a meal all day other than dinky little snacks and paw fulls of bread and cheese and humus (we had no knife).
The next day Grand-mummy woke us all up in time for breakfast. After six showers, and a big breakfast, we went on a boat tour of Chicago’s architecture-that was amazing! We saw the biggest building in square footage in floor space. The tallest building in the world known only by it’s street address. And the Sears tower which was the tallest building for 28 years. On this boat ride we also got complimentary Starbuck’s paraphernalia. This is probably an apt moment to mention that Rob has been off coffee for a week and a half, and the mind bogglingly horrific migraines have just about ceased. After the boat tour, we went for a jacuzzi at the hotel; except for Noah. :( This is probably an apt moment to mention that Noah has been in a cast (well his pinky has) for about a week now, having broken it during an unfortunate portaging incident in Algonquin park. That night we went to see Mamma Mia which was quite cute. We all had barrels and heaps of fun and laughter but than the aliens came and we all knew we were screwed. The fun and the laughter was now over.:( That night, for dinner, we had Chicago’s famous paper thin pizza. Um well actually Chicago kinda isn’t famous for their paper thin pizza, that would be Italy. What Chicago is famous for is their deep dish pizza. But that was an hour’s wait and none of us even like deep dish pizza so there goes that plan.
The next day Grand-mummy woke us up in time for breakfast. After 5 showers, a bath, and a big breakfast we headed out for Chicago’s Ferris Bueler’s day off day. This is a civic holiday and no one can work. In honour of Ferris we started off at the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts and systematically destroyed each and every piece of artwork.....
Rob managed to get in as a student and Grand-mummy managed to get in as a senior and Diane managed to get in as an adult. We saw Grant Wood’s American Gothic, finding out that the two models were really his dentist and sister. We saw American and European impressionist art. And it made a big impression. We then had a half hour tour of Sunday at La Grand Jatte by George Seurat. We rode the “eL” to a Grecian restaurant in Grecian town where they rushed us out faster than we could say “Homer”. We then took the “eL” to the Sears tower and together we scaled our way to the top with suction cups. The view was very impressive. We got there just after sun set and we saw the city lights not to mention the nightly fire works by lake Michigan. The aliens returned and stole all of our souls and any pink buttons we happened to have on us. Unfortunately we had a lot.
After a send off to grand-mummy and a mad dash to the train station we are now on our way to Colorado on a train, acting quite hysterical and out of control.
Point of interest:
One of the two conductors, both of whom are named Gary, explained to us the reason for what looked like Lakes around the Mississippi between Illinois and Iowa. Turns out the levies broke on the banks of the Mississippi, causing thousands of acres of flooding this past June. Vehicles and farmhouses were still almost totally submerged. The bridge we just crossed on the train was reconstructed only two weeks ago.
Currently, we are traveling 80 miles an hour across the very flat state of Iowa.
August 6, 2008.
So to pick up from where we left off, we had our first night on a train, and we got about 12 hours of sleep...between the five of us. Actually, we each got from 4-8 hours of sleep, depending on who you speak to. Rob slept on a bench in the lounge area. Aaron fell asleep peacefully with Aviva, but then awoke at 4:30 am to roll over, but kicked against a foreign object below. Diane’s head popped up from the floor underneath the seat and both let out a yelp. Aviva played musical chairs, and floors, but won the most sleep contest. Noah was comfortably sleeping on two chairs, with his feet hanging out in the aisle, but was the first up to see the sun rise over Nebraska.
We arrived in Granby Colorado at mid-day. Strangely, we were two hours late, since Amtrak always runs on time. We picked up our rental car and headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. The drive was spectacular, amazing vistas, birds, the cutest chipmunks and even some elk. When we arrived at the camp site the ranger who checked us in warned us that there had been a bear “incident” a few days earlier. He then proceeded to tell us what precautions to take, but he said it at ninety miles an hour, so that it was almost completely incoherent. To top it all off, the second ranger we spoke to contradicted what the “motor mouth” ranger had said about what to do when encountering a bear.
On each of the two days in the park we went on a huge hike. The first day was up to Alberta Falls and Loch Vale and the second day was up to Flat top mountain, which is at 12,324 feet, and is above the tree line (we only hiked the last 2000 feet). We had our first experience with altitude sickness, which hit us all on the descents both days. We were all fine once we drugged ourselves up on Advil and Starbuck’s after the hikes. During the first hike we were a bit low on water and that was a bit stressful as we really had to pace our intake (and may have helped us with developing the altitude headaches). The views were gorgeous and both hikes were quite challenging; uphill for 2 hours on the first day, and “relentlessly uphill” for three hours on the second day.
First a little about the weather here in Colorado. It starts our sunny and beautiful in the morning. Around mid-day the clouds start to build up and then for about half an hour in the mid-afternoon it pours for about 30 minutes, including thunder and lightening. And then it’s beautiful again by late afternoon. If you’re unfortunate or stupid enough to be above the tree line during a lightening storm, you’re at great risk for being hit by lightening, and it has happened. Both days we were just finishing our descent when it started to rain. But, on the second hike, as we were reaching the bottom, and it started to rain, by some mystical force, Rob magically knew to bring us under a small shelter along the path. Less than a minute later, it started raining giant hale stones, the size of grapes. It looked like everything was covered in moth balls. Within a period of about 1 hour, the weather went from feeling like a hot summer’s day, to looking like a cold winter’s day, and back again. When it had all stopped, Aaron and Noah went out and scooped up handfuls of ice pebbles and were throwing hail balls (far away from people).
On the second night in the park, at 4 in the morning from inside our tents, out of the blue we heard these dog-like creatures howling. It started with just one and then it seemed like there were dozens of them chiming in. It sounded like a combo of howling and yelping. At first we were scared they were wolves, then we knew it was the aliens, but by the next morning we figured it was Prairie dogs....probably because we also had their two foot deep holes all over our camp ground. In fact Rob fell into one of them while cooking one time. There were also deer grazing all over the camp ground, within feet of the campers. On our last night we had a cornucopia dinner consisting of sushi, Mediterranean salad, followed up by fruit and whipped cream-topped pancakes. And just as we were finishing up, we had another burst of rain, followed by a phenomenal full-arc rainbow.
The last morning we had to wake up at 6 am to pack up and clear out by 7:30 am, which we did by 7:55 am. We made great time on the way back to Granby. On the way we stopped to fill up the car with gas, but we had a little trouble opening the gas tank. After we searched for a good five minutes, these motor-cyclists started helping us as well. We all searched all over for 15 minutes including one or two other motorists. Then the cashier came out and the first place she looked was underneath the carpet under the driver’s seat, and there it was, the button to open the gas tank! This is just one example of how remarkably friendly and helpful people have been here. People have struck up conversations with us all over the place, most recently at the Amtrak station with a man and his deaf father. The son chatted with us at length, translating back and forth for his father in ASL. Even the attendant on our train here was incredibly kind and friendly. He was clearly expecting us when the train arrived, having already prepared 5 seats for us, with a plan to re-seat us after Grand Junction so that we can have better seats. Oh and by the way, the train was two hours late.
Now we’re sitting in the lounge of the Amtrak train, writing our Blog, reading Lightening Thief and enjoying the Colorado landscape, which looks like something out of the Zoom Zoom commercials or the TV show Bonanza. We are amazed by how vast, variable and undeveloped so much of the terrain is. We’ve also managed to scare off anyone who was seated around us by our obnoxious, loud behaviour while writing this Blog. Next stop: San Francisco.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
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
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
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.
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