leblogvoyage

Luxor pt. 1

2008-03-03T03:47:00.000-08:00

After the all-day train ride down the Nile (or rather, on the train tracks right next to the Nile), we arrived in the "Upper" (which is actually southern ...) Egyptian city of Luxor. (It's a ways down the Nile on the map above.)

Luxor is a weird town. It seems to have been a favored tourist stop on the route between Aswan and Cairo back when Egypt had tourists. (There was an al-Qaeda-affiliated Muslim extremist massacre of 59 foreign tourists in Luxor in the late-'90s. It wasn't good for business.)

The first thing that stood out about luxor was its weird forms of transit, and their frequently questionable employ. Horse carriages, odd little boats, bicycles with precariously placed passenger seats ...

I asked a taxi driver about the many motorcyclists wearing flimsy construction-site-style helmets: Was it a cheap and easy way around a new helmet law? Yep ... Brilliant! The worst/saddest infraction was a FAMILY OF SIX packed onto a single, small motorcycle. The seating order on the 150-or-so cc motorbike went like this: two small boys sitting on the seat, the handlebars in front of them, their dad (driving) directly behind; behind driver dad was mom - holding a very small baby - and nearly falling off the back end of the banana seat; but her fall was being prevented by the milk crate strapped to the rear cargo rack - which contained her daughter, who was maybe 7 years old.

we walked to non-tourist backside of the main square. this was the entrance to the mosque, lined with sellers of fruit, nuts, incense, etc.

that's the mosque up there. it's actually built into/on top of some of the town's most prized ancient ruins. I somehow doubt they have a city planning commission. or zoning laws.

ann's hair was getting long, so was my beard.

for jim.

the current state of luxor's main police station (and environ, next photo) tell the story of luxor's current economic status.

this shot is taken from the main road in luxor. it goes - west bank (aka "Valley of the King") on the other side of the river, the Nile, east bank, road, luxor.

staying on the east bank (the main part of luxor), directly across the road running next to the river are these ruins.

entrance to Luxor Temple.

the backside of the previously mentioned mosque.

ann doing a hilarious impression of egyptian tour guides. "now i would very much like to tell you about the carvings you will now be seeings. they are, i think, very beautiful and nice! you see the ducks? there is very beautiful and nice carving on the ducks!"

all over egypt's historic sites they seem to be doing some rather dubious "restoration" work.

the next day, we headed a bit north (still on the east bank side) to Karnak Temple.

this site is where they filmed the famous chase scene with classic villain Jaws (tall guy, metal teeth) in the Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me.

it looked a little like this.

and this.

more of the temple.

in front of it, they're new souvenir/gift shops (thus the crane). the current ones are little huts.

later that night, we decided to take a sunset felucca cruise on the Nile.

because he came along before a (car) taxi, we used this caleche (horse carriage). you feel rather lame in them, but it's fun.

we could have gone to the tourist-y "dock" part of the river bank and easily gotten on a fine felucca (feluccas are little sail boats used all over the Nile region for transit, goods transport, fishing, and tourism). but no - we like a little adventure. so we went down this alley ...

figuring we'd find some boats.

and after some quick negotiations and a trip down this rickety ladder ...

we got on a boat

and with the aid of this boy and his father

took a $2, one-hour sunset Nile sailboat cruise.

up next - the west bank, leaving luxor, and our return to berlin.

i love berlin!

2008-03-01T18:21:00.000-08:00

a nice day in berlin

2008-02-09T13:03:00.000-08:00

Today it was 53 in berlin...and same for tomorrow! I took a walk down to the canal (just minutes walking distance from our place) and everyone, lots of families and runners, were out today enjoying the gorgeous weather. Berlin even seemed like a different place, much more romantic, and I can imagine that summer here is wonderful.

The trained evil swan came over begging for food

note from the eu

2008-02-07T12:50:00.000-08:00

some video of george bush giving a speech came on the german news today (not the picture above, just a normal speech at a podium), and my first reaction - without thinking anything or hearing a word he was saying (there was an overdub translation) - was to laugh out loud.

usually, at home, I would see him on TV or hear him on the radio and laugh because of the content. don't even need that anymore - he just seems so ridiculous from this vantage point that a mere image of him is cause for total disbelief and vocalized chuckling.

the primary elections are getting lots of news coverage over here. people are interested. you get the sense they see this as america's chance to not screw up, to maybe redeem itself a little. they see positive change potential in either democratic candidate, and maybe a little even in mccain. (so, now that romney's out, that only leaves Hucka-are-you-kidding-me in the, "well, we guess america is a lost cause" category.)

last time I lived abroad (the first half of 2001), america was not particularly well liked, but it was respected and seen as *the* dominant world power. now, it's greatly disliked and largely disregarded, except as one might be wary of a half-drunk meathead jock who shows up - uninvited and unwelcome - at a relaxed party.

sure, as long as america has the bulk of the money, it will have a large portion of the power - but hey, I just read that some stores in New York are now accepting payment in Euro.

fashion week berlin

2008-01-31T04:01:00.001-08:00

sorry for the slowness updating the blog. we're busy going to Fashion Week Berlin. update coming tomorrow?

PS - check out ann's new berlin arts blog: http://berlinarts.blogspot.com

cairo pt. 2 - fireworks, rock piles & haggling

2008-01-21T14:32:00.000-08:00

it seems as though every city we travel to puts on a guerrilla fireworks show just for us. cairo was no exception, as we got up from dessert (yes, despite our "independent explorers" travel approach, we tried out the hotel's dinner offering as it came highly recommended), we heard explosions in the distance stretching out from the balcony into the blackness of nighttime cairo.

not sure of their source or purpose, but there were fireworks nonetheless.

next day, we hired a mini-coach with driver and guide and took off for the pyramids. we would probably not do it this way again, but everyone's entitled to one free "typical tourist" moment in egypt. this whole private-coach-&-personal-guide setup is *the* standard for cairo tourists setting out for the pyramids. you hire the duo and the car as a package for the day. they pick you up at your hotel at 7 am, drive you to the first set of pyramids, the guide takes you around, takes some pictures of you, then back in the van and off to the next set of pyramids (the cairo area has three sets of them on the typical tourist itinerary).

you see some beautiful things, like this.

and you stand awkwardly in front of some remarkable things, like this.

you walk a lot of columned passageways, like this.

you stand some more, try to look less awkward, more british-colonial-archaeologist.

you eat lunch (included in the price of the day) at a weird tourist sort-of-egyptian-food buffet place. by this point, ann and I were super skeptical of the whole thing - it was all too safe, too prepared, too rehearsed. we purposely seek out restaurants where there aren't any other tourists. this place was *all* tourists - so we initially hated it.

then they brought this meat box to the table. ann got much happier.

a: we later talked with the hotel owners about the tour and choice of restaurant. they have to be very, very careful with what tour people they use and what restaurants they stop at because it is so easy for people to be taken advantage of. our hotel was very concerned with its customer service ratings and had first-hand stories of their own of getting sick on local food.
it would have been interesting to eat all the strange food in egypt but we were warned a number of times not to because of the kitchen conditions being inferior or uncleanly by western standards. we never once saw meat being refrigerated. but then again we saw most meat when it was still alive and grunting on the streets!

and the setting, fake as it was, sort of captured the '60s/'70s-height-of-Egyptian-tourism's-Golden-Age feel we love from James Bond movies.

after lunch, it was back in the van and back to more pyramids.

they made us pose in front these in the traditional pharonic burial pose. it was uncomfortable.

ann's true feelings.

at the "great" pyramids, they take you to a hill behind the area for a "very nice and beautiful" view. they tell you that pretty much everything is "very nice and beautiful" - it's a lie 90% of the time. here, it was rather true.

this shot is looking from the pyramids, across the desert and toward cairo.

the cops ride camels.

the sphinx - smaller than you imagine.

this is the seating area for the nightly (yep, they still do the *exact same show*) sound & light show at the pyramids - the one that figures prominently into that James Bond movie (The Spy Who Loved Me) with the villain Jaws (gold teeth guy). Ann and I like that one a lot.

So we made the guide take a picture of us in front of that area instead of in front of the sphinx/pyramids. he thought we were a little weird.

after the last set of pyramids, it was back in the van and across the nile, back into cairo. mouhammed, our guide, sang and translated the muslim call to prayer for us, we resisted buying any crappy papyrus at the weird store he made us stop at, and we talked about his semi-arranged marriage to a girl whose sister he likes better.

a: he also asked if next time I came to cairo I would be bringing a little prince or princess. I tried to explain that I was too young for babies and that I wanted to buy mine anyways. I think it was lost in the translation to him :)

for whatever reason, the cairo-giza corridor (about 10 mins. drive) sports a lot of mildly pimped vintage VW microbuses.

next day, cairo, I went out to get some water. and remembered to document the everyday weirdness for this blog.

horsedrawn carts are common in cairo. downtown cairo. like, blocks from the times square of cairo. it's a weird mix of third world and modern.

oh, and this street sign was a rare one in that it had an english translation. otherwise, it was all arabic all the time. and google maps doesn't translate well either. getting around was challenging.

but the hotel did have a nice rooftop relaxation deck offering a panoramic view of smog-clogged cairo.

smog- and trash- and satellite-clogged, that is. it's an odd thing there, but they love to throw garbage and debris on their roofs. so, cairo from above looks like a bunch of small, tall landfill islands dotted by satellite dishes.

the morning after Eid, the streets ran with blood from the slaughtered animals.

we strolled around, snapped a picture of a typical egyptian taxi.

ate some kushari - real egyptian street food finally!

it's a mix of rice, lentils, spaghetti, chick peas, fried onions, some other stuff and no fewer than three secret chili/tomato sauces. and a huge bowl of it costs about a quarter. it's quite good.

not sure what's going on here - but I think this restaurant serves brain - and wants you to know it's "exlant". oh egypt.

oh egypt, indeed. the day after Eid (you remember - Sheep Slaughter Festival), the back streets of cairo were literally covered in carcasses and skins. mostly skins. and they were being bought and traded like mad all day and night. pickup trucks piled high, guys tossing them around like pizza dough.

ann made another foreign friend.

a: the stray cats in egypt are quite sad looking. there was an abandoned litter of kittens under a car that limped around and screeched for food.

these random blood splatters on the pavement were common.

as were these giant piles of bloody animal skin. the smell was, how you say, amazingly sickening.

a: it is very strange how fast one can adapt to different surroundings. by the last night in cairo we barely gasped at the site of bloody carcass piles. instead it became more of a game of "give us what you got, cairo" - meaning it took more and more to shock us and we learned to expect almost anything. locals weren't making weird faces about the butcher practices, so why should we act like their way was wrong and sickening? I am not saying that I want to start butchering my own meat but there is something about it that makes more sense than other *modern* forms of meat farming.

McDonald's there delivers - via Vespa.

Egypt is still Africa - and the plethora of people carrying heavy things on their heads doesn't let you forget it.

our last night, we went to the bazaar. ann bought an awesome neon green scarf from this guy and I bought a t-shirt. we got a good price, but the guy was in love with ann and kept saying he would only agree to the low price if he got a kiss on the cheek from ann. yeah, didn't happen.

this guy and I haggled over the price of a large piece of fabric for at least half and hour. he was loving it. he would swear to allah about his low prices, I would ask him for a "bearded friends club" discount. it went on and on. we got angry, we laughed, we gave and refused money and goods. eventually, we settled on a price and took this picture. insane.

a: this was some of the best negotiating I have ever seen! even the locals smiled at keith's hard bargaining skills. I especially like the part at the end, when keith finally gave him the money and he kissed it and rubbed it on his forehead. that is the other man, not keith!

that reminds me, a lot of guys in egypt complemented me on my "very nice mustache" (referring to my beard). A few even asked me if I was muslim. I think it might have helped how they treated us sometimes. Strange, a little sad, but seemingly true.

a: I liked the part when egyptian men would gesture toward me and remind keith that he is "very lucky!"

After five long, weird days in Cairo, we took an 11-hour day train along the Nile and onto our next locale, the city of Luxor. These shots are looking out from the train onto the Nile's flood plain.

once again, our hotel was a little weird (they loved to put up signs with long lists of rules on them. the one by the pool even outright discussed diarrhea! yep, it wasn't the hilton ...). but it was clean and had a rooftop pool.

and balconies off the rooms.

from which you could watch homeless people light fires on the ground floors of half-constructed, half-abandoned buildings situated just across the way.

Hey, welcome to Luxor! (post to come)

mtc

2008-01-21T03:52:00.000-08:00

we're settled into our new apartment - and it has internet, finally!

new post coming very soon.

berlin zuruck

2008-01-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

we had meeting with the visa office this morning. we're now official residents of berlin.

not sure how long we'll be here, but we're good through end of march for now.

more soon when we get internet at the flat again.

cairo - pt 1

2008-01-06T09:15:00.000-08:00

we spent the week leading up to our entry into egypt half-dreading it. when planning a trip like this, most everything about it is abstract: "wouldn't it be cool to go to egypt? see the pyramids? cool, yeah, let's add egypt to the list ..." and that's that. it's just theory and excitement.

until it's a week away - then "EGYPT" looms large in the mind as a land of unknowns. how much will we stand out? how much will we get hassled? will it be fun? will there be sand in the streets and poverty everywhere you look? will it turn out to be mostly opposite and actually *too* touristy? how much does the muslim thing come into play? are the books true about all this "the left hand is dirty, don't even hand money to someone with it" business? and oh yeah, they don't really like americans ... how many times will we have to lie and say we're canadian?

"hmm ..." you start thinking. "why did we want to go to egypt again?"

because there are pyramids and weirdness and it's Africa! Africa!

as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, Africa was the weird, left-in-the-tribal-past, very distant, AIDS/starvation/flies-around-the-mouth, child-soldier-scary continent. of course, egypt isn't and never has been *that* africa - or rather, the place where "that" africa was/is - but it's still, you know, &@#$!*^%-in' Africa.

And that spooked us a little. Just a little. But boarded our El-Al ("the most secure airline in the world") flight from Tel Aviv to Cairo and arrived in Africa two hours later.

the taxi ride in was crazy (see picture at end of previous post). lane markings are meaningless there. it's all, as my dad would have said, "flow driving" - you dance your car through traffic in a complex, fluid series of maneuvers that combines the grace and agility of a ballerina with the confidence and sense of purpose of a swift-currented river.

and my favorite part? at night, everyone drives with their headlights off. yes - off. they flash them once in a while, but otherwise, it's a low-light affair. and it's probably best that way, because if you could really see how close you were coming to running over small, barefooted street children and colliding with wayward cattle roaming the road at midnight, you'd very likely try to jump out of the moving car.

still, we survived and made it to our (super weird) hotel. the picture above is us in the elevator - which you board in a rundown office building's lobby, arriving 12 floors later at this odd little top-floor hotel run by a spanish/egyptian guy, his crazy french wife and their? only her? french daughter, who is married to a mexican guy. they have a child together, and another on the way, but she would rather - as she loudly explained to us with her son playing a few feet away - watch a dog run around than spend time with a child, hers included.

it was, how you say? interesting.

yep, no toilet paper in the toilet.

gotta dispose of it the red receptacle on the left - which we charmingly nicknamed the "poop basket."

so, our first night in egypt we took a midnight walk around the backstreets of downtown cairo. this was one of the first things we saw - the giant chunks of freshly slaughtered animals hanging from hooks out front of the midnight butcher. we soon discovered that pretty much every butcher in cairo is a midnight butcher. the shopping hours in this town very much agreed with us. need sneakers at 2 am? cairo can help. fresh vegetables from a cart? cairo has that cart times 100. computer parts at 4 am? literally right below our hotel.

we were in cairo during the week leading up to the muslim holiday Eid. these guys were dancing in an alley - with machetes. it was, you know, the ol' midnight machete dance. like square dancing. with all men. and lots of large machetes. at midnight.

nothing weird here. nope. totally normal.

another midnight butcher.

and cattle for sale on the street. this 2 am cattle stand was maybe a half-mile from downtown cairo.

we were rather mystified.

lots of scooters here - small hondas and indian-made vespa clones. I love the license plate placement. nothing like putting a sharp-edged piece of flexible sheet-metal right next to your front tire. (and yes, that's the government mandated plate location). oh egypt.

the 2 am fresh vegetable market, of course.

here's ann walking, there's a sheep peeing. cairo, how we miss you.

this ghetto chair still life was outside our hotel's entryway. it felt like home. with muslims. and cattle.

ann was a little unsure of cairo after our first night ...

this was the view from breakfast at our hotel.

half-french/half-egyptian breakfast

we took a daytrip to the pyramids - three sets of them.

ann in the desert.

my boots in the sand.

more on all this soon.
-k

athens to jerusalem

2008-01-03T13:03:00.000-08:00

time for some catching up:
k: we liked athens enough that we stayed for a second week. I took that opportunity to get a shoe shine on the street.

k: As most of you know, I believe in proper shoe maintenance - even when on vacation/extended travel. I have now backpacked europe twice - with shoe trees in tow. I love transitory space-placed shoe shine stands (airports, train stations, subway stations, etc.) and this guy's was just outside a main subway stop, his little box-and-chair setup plopped in the busy pedestrian periphery of Omonia Square.

k: there's the final product. I actually was starting to like how they looked before the shine - all weathered and beaten to a nice patina, but their shabbiness wasn't doing me any favors with strangers renting us apartments and stuff. ok - enough about my shoes.

k: we went to a big department store in Athens. it was like nearly all department stores in europe - very weird. they feel oddly russian or something. the organization by floor is similar to US stores - the men's floor, women's floor, etc. but on each floor, everything is organized by brand name/designer label. each has their own little booth where only their products are sold. you find this in nicer department stores at home, but the divisions are not so severe that each label's space feels like a separate mini-store.

on the top floor there is a cafe. we got some beverages and looked out the windows.

ann had the parthenon on her mind.

(zing.)

k: sorry this picture is so blurry, but the story behind it is hilarious. we needed an internet cafe with a printer so that we could finalize some things for israel and egypt - we found this weird place on the second floor of an office building near a busy tourist area. as soon as we walked in, we saw this balloon animal-making street clown using one of the computers. the only open machine was one seat down down from him, so that's where we sat. at the same time, the clown (remember, this is *literally* a clown - big red shoes, face paint, balloon-adorned silly hat) placed a cell phone call to his long-distance girlfriend. it seems they were trying to have a video chat, and he couldn't get the internet cafe computer to connect to his girlfriend's machine. she, apparently, then logged on to his account to play with the settings - this made the clown extremely angry. he began yelling at her as much grumbling ensued among the cafe patrons. minutes later, the deadlocked australian hippie backpacker girl seated at the computer between the clown and us tried to - in her best "let's all get along, man" hippie way politely ask the clown to keep it down. the clown argued back that he was just trying to video chat with his girlfriend, which sort of set off the hippie and she went from nice-hippie to angry-hippie - a very dangerous situation, as she proceeded to angrily ... do nothing further. oh, hippies.

minutes went by, the clown kept yelling into his phone, the hippie kept quietly, righteously fuming over her "inability to concentrate" ... on checking her facebook messages, and we kept on booking our jerusalem hotel. then, a breakthrough - the empty-nester british couple on the athens stop of the-trip-of-their-lives who were seated at the computers on the other side of the clown and were tired of having the soundtrack to reading emails from their grandchildren be the sweet tones of a street clown verbally abusing his lover via telephone, yelled at him to stop.

I couldn't help laughing. Here was some 65-year-old ex-whatever (civil servant? accountant? mid-level advertising executive) who had worked his whole life to take this grand trip around the world - reduced to screaming at a noisy clown in a shady athens internet cafe.

the clown, now angry with technology, his girlfriend, and most of the patrons at the internet cafe, loudly ended his phone call, saying, "I have to get off the phone, people are complaining! They're making me get off!" You'd have thought he was being dragged out by riot cops.

But no, he just put his phone back in the pocket of his comically oversized trousers, logged off from his computer, picked up his balloon animals and balloon animal making supplies, and headed back outside to entertain the children.

k: after the clown incident, we got an athens specialty - the frappe. they're not like the garbage of the same name at home - they're actually (and this is coming from someone who 1) doesn't really like coffee, 2) doesn't like iced coffee drinks at all, and 3) doesn't like any sort of sweetened coffee/tea beverage) delicious. the head is so frothy and the sugar so subtle but integral that I could not help but like it.

k: our second athens apartment was super nice. brand new - with a fireplace! it was, ironically, in the anarchist part of town. we somehow always seem to end up there ...

k: our typical breakfast spreads. they're cheap and fun to eat. I've realized that multiple beverage choices at breakfast trick me into thinking it's "fancy." as in, "oooh, I'm going to have coffee, water, *and* orange juice! this is so fancy!" as I eat bread and cheese in my haven't-been-washed-in-a-month pajama pants.

k: another thing we seem to run into a lot - strike protests. this one came on our last day in athens, when we needed to mail a package home - and the shipping place was on the far side of this massive demonstration. ann almost got knocked over by riot cops. oh, memories ...(a: this is the day that I learned the lesson every man for himself!)

k: this bread was awesome. it's apparently a greek thing where they mix whole wheat flour with white flour - it creates the perfect white bread loaf. and this was $1 grocery store brand stuff!

a: just in case we need to know the ingredients...oh, wait greek is like chinese. which brings me to another funny saying "it's all greek to me" - well the greeks seriously say "it's all chinese to me!" really!

k: a surprisingly good cake that magically appeared before me in the middle of the night on our flight to israel.

headed to the holy land.

k: we arrived in tel aviv at 4 in the morning. we headed for jerusalem via shared taxi, checked into our hotel and took a nap of sorts. when we awoke, we walked around. turns out, jerusalem looks a lot like ... miami mixed with arizona.

k: we struck out for the Old City - the famous walled-in square mile home to some of the most contested - and most violently contested - land on earth.

these are the walls around it.

k: here's ann reluctantly walking them.
a: why is it that everything that is supposed to be "an amazing way to introduce yourself to the city" always involves very high places with scary stairs!

k: the view toward the outside, overlooking "modern" jerusalem.

k: and here's what part of it looks like inside. this picture shows some of the most famous/religious sites in the world: the jewish-sacred wailing wall (center) and the muslim-sacred dome of the rock (left) and al-aqsa mosque (right); the (now demolished) temple that stood here is known to christians as the place where jesus confronted the money changers; he also prayed there according to the bible.

having been raised reading the bible and hearing adults tell me about jesus the way kids talk about superheroes, this was all a little surreal. I read the bible as a child and I read it again for a class in college, but at both points in my life, it seemed like "long ago and far, far away" mythology - you sort of think, "nice story, but none of these things happened, did they? or if they did, they happened in such a different and distant time and place that I have no way of making them truly real to me." It's difficult to relate on any deep level.

but it has always been a familiar mythology - I've known about these people and places since birth. Jesus and the moneychangers at the Temple story is just as much a part of my upbringing and personal memory as the plot to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer - I've always known it; for me, there is no conscious period in my life before I knew it. I'm sure this is true of almost all American children. This creates a weird circumstance: we can't remember learning about Jesus or Rudolph or the music our parents' listened to (for me, The Beatles), so it's like we were *born* with knowledge of it. At least, I think, that's sort of how our brains process it eventually - "perma-knowledge." I don't recall learning the lyrics to "Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds" or the story of Adam and Eve - and I've known them for so long that I start to subconsciously think they are somehow a part of me: like if my brain were a body, it was born with a Beatles finger and a Bible liver - just integral, innate familiarity - but still almost entirely abstract. I mean, how do you relate to your (forgotten, neglected) spleen?

Anyway, being in the place where stories in the bible occur is weird. even for a kid who hasn't been to church since he was 15. it was like visiting the north pole or the bat cave.

k: the wailing wall is the holiest site in the world for jews. you're allowed to walk right up to it and stand amongst their holiest leaders praying there. it feels a little wrong. a little too permissive.

k: we were there on a thursday - which is bar mitzvah day at the Wall. thing is, it's an orthodox place, so men and women have separate, divided parts of the Wall at which to pray - this creates a bit of a hurdle for female relatives of the young man on his big day - but they stand on chairs, lean over the dividing wall and participate anyway.

k: going over to the Palestinian-controlled, Muslim side of things was a bit tense. the entry and exits are controlled by jewish, israeli military guards, but the actual areas containing the muslim holy sites are like their own little world.

k: and unlike the jews, who practically invited you into their holiest spot on earth, the muslims weren't having it. the dome of the rock is something like the 5th or 7th holiest site in Islam, but - likely due to the prior day's fighting in Gaza - non-muslims were barred from entering the dome and the al-aqsa mosque.

k: this is the market in the Palestinian quarter of the Old City. The most popular children's toys on sale there? Fake plastic toy machine guns. It was depressing and disturbing.

k: an old Palestinian dude with a lunch cart was grilling up fresh falafel balls. some of the best I've ever tasted.

Old City streets

k: Santa made multiple appearances in the Christian Quarter.

k: The Chuch of the Holy Sepulchre was bizarre. It's supposedly on the spot where Jesus was crucified and "buried."

k: people were way into sticking their hand in this hole so they could touch something associated with the Crucifixion. the catholic/orthodox ritual/relic stuff was severely downplayed in my childhood's version of Christianity, thus I'm not so up on the specifics of all that.

k: It was odd to see computer and technology stores set in cave-like spaces in the Old City.

downtown modern jerusalem

k: our hotel room had a balcony - perfect for drying sink-washed socks and underwear.

k: great bagels at Holy Bagel. apparently bagels in Jerusalem used to be hard and bad, but they learned from NY and upped their bagel game.

k: morning TV in jerusalem. this guy was either a wizard or orthodox-something. I'm not sure.

k: falafel sandwich with french fries. yum.

the main food market in west jerusalem.

k: the odd thing about "modern" jerusalem was that, despite being the biggest city in the country, it still felt like a relatively small city in a "developing" (i.e better-off Third World) country. this picture was taken on the main street next to the main square.

k: the market provided a sweet spread of side dishes and dips with which we made a number of lunches.

k: I've been trying the local colas everywhere we go. this ... hawk? ... cola tasted like barn. not so delicious.

k: we stumbled upon an israeli hippie/punk/emo/gutter punk mixed bill show in a cool record store/bar downtown.

a: on saturday, we took a day trip to masada and the dead sea.

a: this was our first and maybe last big "arranged" tour. we waited by the King David Hotel in the morning and a giant tour bus picked us up. this was our potty/drink stop on the way at a gas station in the middle of the desert- that also had israeli flags flying all over the convenience store. oh, yeah and a camel to ride and pose with for the tourists.
k: gas stations in america don't have live camels tied to trees outside? where are you getting your gas, ann?

a: again, why must everything "historic" be so high? thank goodness the lifts up to masada were enclosed! this was the view looking down on the massive desert.
k: that's the dead sea in the distance. the hills of Jordan are beyond.

a: it was probably about 75 degrees but felt like 95 because it was so dry and high. masada is a very historic site. the plateau stands as the site of king herod's palace which became a fortress where the jews fought off the roman conquerers - which led to a mass suicide of everyone on the cliff top. the people believed that it was better to "free" themselves (and dead) than be slaves of the romans.

a: the pile of what appears to just be normal rocks are a placed collection of ancient round cannon stones and walls.
k: a star wars set?

a: then it was off to the dead sea. not only did our tour include a float in the dead sea but it took us to a fancy, tourist spa that included mud baths and different pools and a sulfur bath. we both took advantage to clear up some pores and smeared ourselves with the smelly mud. keith became mud-man!
k: wow, I am ugly!

a: it was recommended that you bring water shoes but we didn't have time to look for any before we left. the shore was a giant hard crystal of salt! I wore my socks in the water but keith was much tougher! or at least it balanced his "european"-style swimsuit..heeheehee...
k: notice - please do not enlarge this photo.

a: here's keith floating! the stomach position was not allowed but we both broke the rules.
k: jazz hands!

a: look at that yummy salt!

k: this hurt. a lot.

a: I think I found my next boyfriend on the beach too!

k: this is the gift shop they made us stop at on the way home. the caves above it are where the dead sea scrolls were found.

a: keith and I are addicted to carbonated water and judge each new city's bubbly water. we found schweppes to be most impressive in jerusalem...it was the kind that explodes in your face when you drink it, and the bottle even had a warning not to open the top in the direction of your face! hahaha!

a: also, in every new city we research the best place to eat. it just so happened that this restaurant was just a few doors down from our hotel. it was recommended on chowhound and also a slow food site, both good eating sites. Eucalyptus specialized in "native Israeli food with an emphasis on local herbs, produce, and historical recipes." the chef, from iraq...probably in his 30's, was amazing and very nice. After our meal, which also included a dessert on the house from the 20-something waitress we started a lengthy conversation with, the chef came out and showed us all the herbs involved in the dishes and even his journal book of dried herbs. it was an incredible experience...I just wish I could remember all the names of the herbs!

a: keith ordered the lentil soup...a favorite of his that he tries everywhere we go.
k: my favorite restaurant in michigan is Jerusalem Garden in ann arbor. my favorite dish there is the lentil soup. now that I was actually *in* jerusalem, I had to try some lentil soup. turns out it's not super popular in that town anymore! ha! but Eucalyptus specialized in traditional recipes, so they had me covered. it was a complex soup - considerably different than most lentil-mush soups at home, and much more interesting that the broth-y vegetable soup-style lentil soups you sometimes get. this one had levels of flavor and texture, and stood out from the field of my experience. very good.

a: I had the artichoke soup...oh, my goodness so wonderful...buttery, savory, creamy.

a: we split the specialty, figs. I had never had figs before but this is the fruit of israel. it was very sweet but it was stuffed with a chicken puree. very different in taste but I would die for another bite right now!

a: this was our main dish, of chicken spices rice and vegtables, which they made a larger portion for us :) very, very comforting - simple but flavorful. the dish had a moroccan feel.

a: and we ate every bite!

a: keith was very satisfied!

a: this was our dessert. sooooo good and soooo simple. just tahina (this isn't the american tehini that is thick like peanut butter but thinner and softer in palate) and date honey. the waitress advised us to eat with our fingers.
k: amazing.

a: keith, or should I say cookie monster, tries the local cookies everywhere we go.
k: I'd rank these third in the world so far.

a: keith counting the last of our shekels

a: yes, don't scoff at us....we never intended to eat mcdonald's but we were at the airport waiting and thought it was the best time to try a kosher hamburger! it actually did taste different than the mcdonald's burgers at home...more grilled flavor and a little drier. keith was excited about the happy meal because of the "squirt-style" applesauce :)
k: I felt like a child, but the applesauce squirt pack was surprisingly refreshing!

a: ......and we arrived in cairo, egypt!

merry christmas

2007-12-25T03:40:00.000-08:00

k+ a: hello friends. merry christmas!

k: until last night, we were in jewish/muslim countries for a while ...

k: the nile, as seen from our hotel's rooftop pool/bar/cafe. it was about 75 degrees outside, sunny every day.

k: ann's favorite activity: menu browsing

k: I, of course, went for a swim.

*****

a: we said good bye to sunbathing and hello to frigid berlin weather. it was actually kind of nice to have it cold for xmas eve when we arrived.

k: yeah, I'm not so in love with the whole cold-weather-for-christmas thing, but it's nice to be back in berlin. the middle eastern part of the trip was interesting and fun and weird and nice and upsetting and revelatory and surprising, etc (more on that to come) and now Berlin seems like home or something. there's christmas music. women aren't wearing veils. the water's safe to drink. that kind of stuff. very nice.

a: this is me posing with the nice 40 cent christmas lights we bought at the sort of dollar store in cairo

k: our attempt at a bad christmas post card shot

k: here's the view from our 10th floor "wintergarten" bed. I almost want to move here.

*******

a: more catch up pictures to come (jerusalem/cairo/luxor). we are in berlin till jan 11 so we expect to try to get some work done. I will talk more about the great place we have...and it has a drawing/studio/writing room with two desks - awesome!

*******

a + k: merry christmas!

luxor

2007-12-21T11:29:00.000-08:00

k: after a somewhat grueling 11-hour train ride, we're in luxor.
a: ah, yes...good ol' day train trip in first class....or wait?...
k: let's see ... I once took a 22-hour train ride through rural china. this was only 45% better.
a: I enjoyed the "wet and cozy" bathrooms...oh, so inviting.
k: anyway, we're in luxor now. I like to think of it as "the egyptian las vegas" to cairo's "middle eastern version of a mostly third world manhattan in the '70s."
a: wait, keith, did they slaughter sheep in the road in ny in the 70's?
k: hmm, I guess that's the third world part.
a: ah, yes.
k: our hotel ($52/night) has three things we're excited about: 1) internet, 2) tv, and 3) a heated rooftop pool. we know, we know - we didn't travel halfway around the world to sit around in the hotel on the internet, etc., but after the exhausting mess that was cairo, this is a really nice break/temporary luxury.
a: I still wouldn't say luxury - there isn't a fancy lobby, in fact it looks like a cross between a jewelry shop, 7-eleven and a disco. let me clarify though - I haven't said I was "this happy" in a while! but kidding aside, we are excited to see the James Bond sites of Luxor (just hope Jaws doesn't get us...)
k: and now, at 9:49 pm local time, we will probably start falling asleep. our train's early departure had us up at 6 this morning ...

cairo

2007-12-18T07:04:00.000-08:00

so ... cairo. where to begin? ... the cows roaming the dirt streets downtown? the "do not flush toilet paper in the toilet" sign (and the accompanying "poop paper basket") in our bathroom? tomorrow's impending "sheep slaughter in the streets" holiday? (we're totally serious on that one.) the headless cow carcass being butchered in the middle of the mud road on our way through a small village on the route to some (not-Great, just these other ones they will gladly tell you are "so very nice and beautiful and you will like...") pyramids? or the french-owned, half-egyptian-run hotel/hostel we're staying in that is so up in your business at all times that you think they may come into the room (while you're there ... say, like, sleeping) and ask if "you are enjoying the nice and beautiful rooms of this wonderful hotel place?" (last night, we asked for a roll of toilet paper around 11 pm. this single, simple request was fulfilled with the assistance of no less than three hotel employees - and required that they come into our room to deliver it. but it's not really in a "wow, this is amazing customer service" sort of way, it's about 1000 times creepier and more annoying. like, don't you guys have anything to do?) but the place is ok, we just have now completely confirmed that we don't like hotels. we like renting apartments/flats and BEING LEFT THE HELL ALONE. yes, oh yes, the ameri/euro way. it's so touristy here it's nuts - everywhere you go there are tourist touts.

still, cairo is fun and interesting, and we look forward to heading down to Luxor for a few days (staring with a 13 hour train ride on Friday), but we're looking forward to getting back to berlin after this weirdness. a lovely christmas present.

ps - we really are excited about sheep slaughter day. it should be memorable! ahh ... one for the old scrapbook.
-a & k

athens

2007-12-15T08:50:00.000-08:00

the ride from the port town of patras into athens, greece was seriously beautiful and, remarkably, entertaining.

I'm usually bored of looking out of a window after, oh, say, 5 minutes ... but this was different. we took a sort of commuter-express train along the coast from the town where the ferry dropped us off (patras) into athens. it was sort of a train/tram hybrid, and there were a lot of shady dudes hanging out on the tracks, doing who knows what. but the view from the windows was dramatically dynamic: picturesque coastline one minute, mountains and cliffs another, rough rural villages the next.

one of the first things we did in Athens (like every other city we've been to/go to) was to head to the central food market. athens' market was hectic and large, with each stall specialising in particularly narrow ranges of specialties, like "the olives guys" (who have who stands that only sell olives) and "the small fish guys" (you get it), etc.

the pita we got here was unmatched. the rest, eh, it was just "euro good," but not super remarkable.

this is one of the best ideas I've had - taking digital pictures of maps/info. instead of copying it down onto paper or pulling out a big, dumb tourist map, we just discreetly zoom in to the map/info pictures on our digital cameras (we hold them like we're checking text messages on cell phones while doing this to further help the tourist camouflage). it works beautifully.

this view of the Parthenon at night was everywhere around the city. look up and ... hey, 2,500 years of history.

we went out to dinner at a place in this touristy-but-you-gotta-see-it part of town call the Plaka (sort of like any "old city" part of any town - small, winding streets, lots of tourist junk shops, etc.). ann made friends with the greek dish moussaka ... and a stray cat we named Mr. Moussaka.
a: yeah, he jumped onto the chair next to me and fell asleep on my purse. I asked when the bill came if the cat came with the bill and the waiter said, "you like, you take cat!"

on sunday, we went to the market/flea market in a central part of town called monastiraki. we then stumbled into some ruins called the agora. they were more intact than the parthenon and, in many ways, more interesting.

ann got new sunglasses in italy.

here's the flea market

here's me with a giant donut. they were popular with the locals - and me.

this is souvlaki. it's a pita rollup with a weird kebab/hot dog hybrid meat in it that is spiced well and actually quite delicious. it's the "hamburger of greece."
a: this place also had the best fries ever!

we took a day trip to the island of Hydra. the ferry left early in the morning and took about an hour an a half.

hydra has been protected from cars and development for many years now, so it retains an "old greece" feel, however artificial it may or may not be.

the first thing we saw there was locals buying fresh fish right off of recently returned fishing boats pulled into the harbor. the cats (hydra is completely covered in wild ones) all gathered looking for handouts.

hydra is the island leonard cohen lived on in the '60s and where he wrote most of the "songs from a room" album (you know, "bird on a wire," etc.). here's me sort of recreating a photo of him on the island at the time that I once saw somewhere.

ann, crazy-cat-lady-in-training once again made friends with the wild ones.
a: I can't help it...they come to me!

meow!

the water was clear, but we suspected it was also quite cold.

this qualifies as a "beach" on hydra - a ladder over the side of the rock cliff. I love the Europeans sense of personal liability and their lack of public liability lawsuits. this type of thing - so cool, only a little dangerous - sadly would NEVER be OK in America. but here, whatever, swim, try not to die - it's up to you. and your responsibility.

the water was cold. and the air was about 62 degrees.

this was another "beach." but we kept it in mind ...

we hiked to the top of the island. it's a harbor and then a large, large hill.

this was the view.

this was the hike.

most people use donkey taxis to get their things transported around the island. we saw one donkey carrying huge loads of drywall and plywood!

back at the old swimmin' ledge.

ann decided to dip a toe in the aegean sea.

it was cold.

confirmed.

then ann went for the playful splash ...

and a half-dip!

I stripped down to my travel underoos.

and dove in.
a: so did I....I think looking back it wasn't much different to swimming in lake michigan when it is on the cold side. oh, but much saltier!

it was cold, but great.

another view of the sweet swimmin' cliff.

a post-swim walk around the other side of the island's outer ring.

to find a secluded second harbor.

waiting on the dock for the ferry home.

back in athens, the grocery stores stocked some unusual items in the freezer case.

out first athens apartment.
a: I think it smelled like a wet dog who just had a perm died in the attic. keith said he couldn't smell anything. I think his nose is broken. but maybe not, because we seem to have another run at a smelly place in jerusalem (this time sewage smell) and he can smell it :) oh, but our second place in athens was a dream...more pics hopefully to come!

more insta-map/guidebooking.

hello!

the 1896 olympic stadium in athens.

my coat's "breadstick pocket"
a: A real life-saver!

temple to zeus in downtown athens.

hey hipsters!

a stray dog (one of about a million in athens) on the hike up to the parthenon.

the parthenon.

the temple next to the parthenon

view from the parthenon (with sea in the distance)

we went out to dinner in a trendy part of town called Kolonaki

got the lamb - delicious.
a: seriously amazing! the meat fell off the bone and it was in a light lemon/egg sauce with giant artichokes.

and "giant beans" (that's really what they call them) - also good.

we snuck up to the bar at the top of the hilton hotel. it's famous for the view - and charges about $20 a drink!

ann realized she really likes fancy hotels.
a: yes, I can't deny it. I think I am fancy at heart.

more agora.

more soon.

delay

2007-12-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

so, there's a nationwide transit strike in greece today. all flights, all buses, all metros - pretty much everything that moves ... isn't.

that said, it appears our flight at 1 am tonight/early tomorrow WILL leave (the strike ends at midnight) - fingers crossed!

more when we get to israel. the hotel has wifi. yes!

leaving athens

2007-12-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

once again, we apologize for the delay in updating the blog. we've only had "borrowed" internet this week, and it's been spotty at best.

we're leaving athens late tomorrow night for jerusalem, israel. hope to get a blog post up tomorrow afternoon covering athens.

the picture was ann dipping her legs/toes into the Aegean Sea off the greek island of Hydra. more on that tomorrow, too.

to greece

2007-12-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

with minutes to spare, we made it from rome to the port town of bari and on to the overnight ferry to patras, greece.

as a treat (and since it was the first time for both of us on anything resembling a cruise - we having previously believed that a stint in prison would be preferable to any time spent on a tourist-packed cruise ship), we booked a private cabin on the ship, which afforded us this window onto the sea:

(it's more impressive in the daytime, but we'll get to that ...)

the ferry leaves port around 8 pm, and we watched it set out to sea from the windy front of the ship:

(ann was a little scared)

the nighttime views were surprisingly fun, as was the actual cruising experience itself.

this is a look back at the Italian coast as we steamed toward Greece:

Here's afraid-of-heights Ann checking out the view by looking over the very tall deck that dropped straight into the cold, dark water some 40 feet below.

(yes, I took that photo *leaning over the side of a boat in the middle of the ocean - at night* - it seemed like a fun idea at the time)

the whole ship felt like a '60s Bond film set. very weird and fun.

we had a snack in the on-board restaurant. here's a shot of a dinner roll for my brother:

(pretty good - nice crust texture in particular)

we took another walk around the outside decks

and then - in our most senior citizen moment yet - played cards (!) in the lounge

it was, somewhat surprisingly to us both, a grand time.

we went to bed happy, and somewhere in the middle of the Aegean Sea. We awoke to this:

It was stunning. we raced outside to the deck.

and arrived around noon at the Greek port of Patras.

Soon ... Athens.

rome recap

2007-12-02T12:32:00.000-08:00

after florence, we went to rome. our apartment was near the coliseum. as in, literally down the street from it.

so, the first thing we saw the first time we got off the metro stop to head to our apartment was a group of "off-duty" gladiators grabbing pizza slices at the local lunch counter.

(these guys normally stand near the big old shell of a stadium and bilk tourists into giving them money for posing in photos.)

we got some pizza of our own.

traditional-style roman pizza turned our to be our favorite of the trip so far. it's thin, crispy and square; when you order, slices are cut - typically with scissors - from a large sheet and then weighed. (you pay by weight.)

we favored the slices at Il Gladatorini - whose mascot was a disturbing little baby gladiator holding a sword and shield. but it was around the corner from our place and very good. ann and I both took a liking toward a hot pepper-topped pie that, despite our ordering it three times in four days, the pizza guy warned us every time was "caliente!" we would then, every time, say "si" and he would confirm - again - that we indeed wanted the "caliente!" he was apparently very concerned that we knew what we were getting was hot, even through it wasn't really so scorching. the nice thing about the heat deriving from actual small hot peppers baked on the pizza instead of coming from red pepper flakes added post-oven was that the spiciness integrated with the overall flavor and, in some ways, mellowed into a slightly new taste rather than sitting on top of the "pizza flavor."

ann liked that we were staying in "the part of town favored by archaeologists and history buffs" because when we walked to the grocery store or the metro or ... anywhere ... we passed ancient ruins.

and this big thing - a lot.

and this one, too:

the deli and fridge cases in the market said this on them:

I don't know why.

The Pantheon was pretty cool, mostly because it was so intact.

Did I mention that we walked by this a lot?

Rome also has a central market, Campo de Fiori. Situated in a piazza that bore witness to countless public deaths by torture during the Inquisition, it's a little surreal and morbid.

The statue in this photo is of a hooded man - a famous guy killed there. kinda creepy when all you want are some tomatoes.

Near the market we bought this rad fabric from an old man selling ... fabric at a ... fabric store. based on the signs and assumed common sense ("this must be the price per square meter, right?"), I asked the guy for 4 meters. he then explained to me, in a lengthy Italian conversation he had with himself and some scissors ... something. I have no idea what. It involved gestures and emphatic looks and questions and - finally - shrugging. on both our parts. I finally just set some money on the counter, showed it to him and indicated that I would please like him to cut off however much that would buy and I would be on my way.

It worked. And we covered up the apartment's smelly couch with this odd piece of (unintentional?) cool.

Some night, we went to Rome's famed Trevi Fountain. It's big and nice to look at for a minute, but the ever-present flower/candy/flashing light toy peddlers really do their best to ruin the whole experience.

That said, those guys offer some of the better customer service hours in Italy. It seems like everything is closed pretty much all of the time. If you want to buy something in Italy, better wake up early and be prepared to go to four or five places to look for it. And don't even bother on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday afternoon or any day from 1-4 pm — as most everything will be closed.

Except this flower shop around the block from us, which was open something close to 24 hours. We think they were dealing drugs. or pasta.

on Thanksgiving Day (see Ann's previous post for a full account), we went to the Coliseum for a little while before dinner.

which reminds me, they keep their eggs out on the shelf here:

it's a little disconcerting at first, but you get over it. just like how they keep the beer right next to the coca cola (hey kids!)

christmas is coming over here, too:

and the whole Mod thing is big right now. we noticed this in france as well.

it's a prevalent theme in many euro designer chain stores right now (Agnes B., anyone?), but overall, street fashion here has been a bit tame. maybe they sort of give up for the winter? dunno, but the obvious kids with style are usually too obvious and too styled and the rest of the population looks like they love the Gap - or worse.

and on the shoe front, Vans and Converse are *decimating* all euro competition. they are everywhere.

anyway, Ann really liked this crazy cooking game show.

it is hosted by a stock type of Italian TV host - the older blonde lady with the large bust. it's bizarre.

we went to the pope's house

and the roman forum (aka - yep, more ruins)

the senate building

an arch or temple facade or ...

it rained. so ann practiced her head scarving for Egypt:

we wandered into this church one evening across from the gelato stand. it was unassuming from the outside, but turned out to be pretty cool inside:

and the courtyard had palm trees

with that, and four more slices of caliente pizza, we left rome and set off on the train for the port town of Bari and the overnight ferry to Greece...

I took the opportunity to try on my sunglasses and look cool.

florence finish off

2007-12-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

sorry for the delay in updating, we've been busy, you know, travelling and stuff.

ok, so, we were in florence. we took a day trip to fiesole, the city on the hill above florence. there are some ancient ruins there.

ann got us good seats.

but it turns out were we something like 1500 years late for the show.

(zing!)

here's the tuscan countryside with our shadows overlooking from the bottom of the frame.

more ruins of the old baths

back to food news ... I discovered this soda-type thing called "Chino."

It's apparently a regional specialty that san pellegrino is now trying to market within tuscany
and beyond. derived from a sour citrus fruit, it contains no alcohol
and tastes like a slightly unpleasant coca cola. slightly unpleasant,
that is, until you learn to love it and drink a can a day for a week
and a half like I did.

halfway through our 10 days in florence, we were really craving mexican food ... so we went out for mexican. the offerings, like all of those found at european mexican restaurants that we have seen/read about, tended toward tex-mex rather than our preferred just "mex", but we were desperate and it was good enough.

since we didn't have reservations, we ate sitting up at the bar. there, ann started talking to a guy our age sitting next to her. turns out he was american (some hippie-ville, colorado), going to culinary school in the city. we went out for drinks with him after dinner.

there, ann and he fake-argued about politics.

then he agreed to cook dinner for us at his apartment a few nights later. more on that in a minute.

*****

we shopped for food at the central market several times during our stay in florence. here's me relishing dried fruits.

at some point, I got us these "cabbage flowers"

we lived on this street

you
will notice that at the end of the block there appears to be an odd
parade. it was actually - naturally - another strike/protest. it woke
us up one morning. we weren't sure what was going on, just heard
yelling and noises - so -naturally - we got dressed *and went toward them.*

the florentine communists have no regard for my weekend sleep-ins. they woke us up the following morning as well.

but that meant I was up early enough to make one of my (ha!) more complicated breakfasts: baked beans and toast:

voila

that night we went out for our fancy dinner of the week/city. based on some Chowhound recommendations, we headed to Osteria de Benci.

and
ordered, after a white bean-covered garlic bread appetizer and quite
good pasta dish, this ridiculous plate of Tuscan-specialty beef covered
in arugula (which Europe awesomely calls "rocket" - a much, much better
name) and shingles ofparmesaen - my new favorite cut-style for eating cheese of any sort.

There was a lot leftover. Enough that Ann made a great stew two nights later with the remainder.

After dinner, we went to this highly regarded gelatto place nearby called Bar Vivoli. It was pretty much worthy of the hype. This chocolate/strawberry double scoop went unrivaled in all of Italy.

Next night, we went to the colorado kid's apartment, where he made us dinner and we observed/helped out when we could.

here's
the stew he made us. the beef was quite nicely done and we learned a
couple of little tricks from him (i.e. prevalent use of large strainers
in making of stocks and sauces), but it wasn'tmindblowing.

I'll conclude florence with two observations:
1)
we stayed there for the longest of any place yet, mostly because it was
easy and relaxing - but the extra days there made a big difference. we
are now set to stay inathens for an extra week simply because it feels
more like relaxing/learning/having fun rather than an intense week of
running ourselves ragged.
2) europe has innovated with bottled water
caps. instead of the cap screwing all the way off and detaching from
the safety/freshness ring, it remains attached - by design - to a small
portion of the ring, forming a hinge. this means you no longer have to
worry about holding onto to the cap while you drink from the bottle.
and I know that worry was causing you great stress.

happy turkey day!

2007-11-22T12:02:00.000-08:00

we're in roma! and this is our thanksgiving feast...

lots of prep....potatoes, chicken (no turkey in italy!), and squash soup...and that's squash that you can't find in the U.S. (turned out to be the best squash ever and one of my favorite dishes!)

yummers

lots of spices and such

that's keith taste testing the mashed potatoes

did we get a caterer? no.....those are just my fancy aluminum dishes that came in handy.

keith bought flowers

the best squash soup, hands down. I don't mean to toot my own horn but this could have been at a fancy restaurant and I would have been dumbfounded and left with a gimpy-hand!
the squash looked like a pumpkin at the market and after roasting in the oven (with apple) it shredded like butternut squash. I added the squash and apple mash to a pan with butter, sauteed leeks and added homemade chicken/porcini mushroom stock and then some nutmeg, salt, pepper... whipped with my fancy immersion blender (see previous post) and added a splash of milk. presto!

drumsticks stewed/sauteed in wine, rosemary, olive oil, olives...

squash puree for keith and chicken off the bone

homemade stuffing - good ol' mom's recipee with the best crust top!

yams! let me tell you that yams are very hard to find in italy. I think they import them from america because the sign at the market said "america yammys"....and two giant yams cost just under $8!! but oh, so worth it. oh, yeah....and no brown sugar in italy...or maple syrup or molasses. so, I still roasted them in oil and then once cool, cut them up and roasted with a bit of chicken stock, orange juice and sprinkled with a litle sugar.

keith's favorite....mashed potatoes!...with no cheese! ahahahhahah

mmmm

keith's first finished plate!

keith doing the dishes...never have to ask...what a gentleman!

keith passing out after dinner

and a brief sidenote: we bought this fun fabric at a strange fabric store in rome because our sofa smelled a little funky. now we love it and want to ship the fabric home afterwards!

hope you have a great thanksgiving - and *thanks* for reading!

keith likes taking pictures

2007-11-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

yet another left-over boboli post, but we leave tomorrow for rome so I wanted to take a second to show how much keith likes taking pictures....

it's sort of an inside joke because you would think that the ex-blogger, artist would be all about taking pictures while traveling but in some ways I hate it. ok, maybe not hate, but it is a combination of going out to art opening in detroit and taking pics for the blog and feeling like I missed out on the actual art because I was busy taking pictures. in that way I want to experience the places we see and not take pics...ok and also, I have a complex about people looking at me while taking pics in a foreign land....but anyways...thank goodness keith likes to take pics or we wouldn't have a lot of these good shots.
this day I was making fun with keith about him taking pictures and took many pictures of him taking pictures!...hahahaha..all in good fun!

so this brings me to keith's future....a tourist traveling with a tri-pod! well, not really, but there were many asians setting up tri-pods in the garden....very professional! I think keith was jealous. the illegal-goods street vendors sell tri-pods too...what is so illegal about tri-pods? they set up blankets with fake Gucci purses and then next to them are tri-pods??

ok, and this keith showing the vertical slope of the hill.

oh, love!

operation kitten calendar @ boboli

2007-11-17T05:54:00.000-08:00

so there's this show that used to be on comedy central called Acceptable tv. The show was ok as a whole but had a few really fun skits. when I found myself at boboli gardens obsessively taking pictures of the cute kitties like all the other visitors I thought that it would make for a good show!
here watch this to get the idea! hahahahh!

firenze pt. 1

2007-11-15T07:59:00.000-08:00

We've been enjoying our week in Florence - it's a small city without a lot of "cool" stuff to seek out and do, so we've really been relaxing. It's pretty much "here are the tourist-y things, here are the main parts of town" - and that's that. there might be a "cool kids" quadrant, but it hardly seems worth seeking out in a place this tiny. So restful has this time been, extended our time in the apartment until monday morning, at which point we will head to Rome for a week.

Down the street from our apartment is the Mercato Centrale. Downstairs houses butchers and cheese counters, upstairs has produce:

Ann's been buying amazing olives by the truckload (I've been casually converted into liking them ... casually). I've discovered dehydrated fruit, like these cherries:

I tend to eat far too many at once and then swear them off, only to return again hours later. it's a vicious, sugary cycle.

a major bonus of living as we have been - staying in "self-catering apartments" (that is, apartments with kitchens) and shopping at markets - is that we get to feast like royalty for comparably little money. Ann's cooking (it's an interest of hers. this isn't me going in some weird '50s husband direction - ann *likes* cooking. I like eating. it works out) is rapidly developing in light of our European dining. We eat out once or twice per town/week, and try to learn things from where/what we eat at those meals. Ann has been able to take that knowledge and then immediately apply it to, say, lunch the next day - cooked in our apartment, at little expense.

A great porcini mushroom and fresh parmigiano reggiano pasta, courtesy of Ann:

That said, she did spend a little extra this week ... on a hilariously ironic immersion blender (long story short: I once gave Ann an immersion blender as a present - she said she really wanted one! - and was *laughed at* for *months*. then she came to love it, eventually. and now, here we are in florence, italy and what does ann buy? an immersion blender! hahahahahahahaha!)

with said blender, Ann made this delicious cauliflower soup:

After which we, naturally, went out for gelato. since it was our third night in town, and the previous two nights we had gotten gelato at a place around the corner, we (via my desire) sought out a highly regarded (on the internet, anyway) gelato place 15 minutes walk from our apartment. it was a small place, praised for its relative lack of tourists and experimental flavors. lack tourists it did. serve amazing gelato it did not. oh well.

we've since returned to the corner place. ann favors chocolate and chocolate/vanilla combos. I've gone for chocolate, chocolate/after eight mint, and most recently something called "contessa" which involved chunks of wafer cookies, their chocolate filling and a fair deal of peanuts. *that* was amazing.

at some point early in the week, we headed to the other side of the Arno River and to the Boboli Gardens (home, Ann hoped, to the famed ready-made pizza dough manufacturers). the gardens are basically the fancy backyard to Florence's old ruling family's palace, dating back to the 1500s.

Ann made friends with some cats there.

I plan to use this shot in my portfolio when I apply to edit "Cat Fancy" magazine. Hot!

Ann has also taken to making/constantly talking about the focaccia-based sandwiches for which she gave the recipe in the prior post. Their excellence has caused Ann's focaccia-based ego to expand wildly, and any time we pass a focaccia sandwich-serving establishment, she quietly mock-shouts "Focaccia off!" I was at first perplexed by the meaning of this. Then Ann explained that it was her way of challenging the proprietors of these "inferior" focaccia sandwich makers to a culinary duel. Yep. Exactly.

Here's one of the better contenders:

Firenze pt. 2 tomorrow.

yummy easy recipe

2007-11-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

if you miss us, here's a couple of things you can do:

rent Ratatouille the movie (the rat is me and the boy is keith...heheheheh)

and...

here's an easy pizza/sandwich recipe that I love right now:

handful of kalmata olives
handful of sicilian green olives (these are the olives that you find at good markets like whole foods...or the like)
roma tomatoes
small onion
ricotta cheese (sheeps milk is the best)
red pepper flakes
(salami slices optional)
focaccia loaf

slice focaccia loaf in half...not like slicing bread but like making a top and bottom
cut up olives/de-pit
add olives and a small amount of olive oil if olives are not coated in oil on bottom layer
cut up onion small and sprinkle on top
slice tomato (roma is best b/c not so watery) then top
add chili pepper flakes to taste
add salami slices if you want
spread ricotta on inside of top slice of bread and put on top of sandwich (ricotta side in of course!)

grill in panini pan or flip in grill pan

eat! yummers...it is like a fast pizza sandwich! the better the ingredients, the better the product - italy's food lesson. italian cuisine might seem simple but the ingredients are very planned. the wrong cheese or spice might make for a luke-warm dish. simplicity is easy and fast but takes smarts!

our place in florence

2007-11-14T10:11:00.000-08:00

here's a quick post on our place in florence:

kitchen set-up

upstairs

downstairs