Egypt Day 5, An early morning and power tourism

The wake up call comes at 6 on your second cruise day, and as I alluded to in the title of the last post, you're not really cruising, since you're still right there at the dock where you have been since you boarded the day before. I looked out my cabin window as the sun rose to see the hot air baloon crowd getting underway. Add this to the list of things I'd do if I find myself back in Luxor. After a quick attempt at eating some breakfast, we found our other 6 group members now affectionately dubbed the "tigers". Our really nice tour guide, Achmed (please stop giggling, yes his name really was Achmed and No, he was neither dead, nor a terrorist) dubbed us the Tiiiiiii guhs! because that was the name on the side of the bus we had for our days in Luxor. Oddly enough I was wearing my white Auburn hat (for the record I really really dislike white hats, but it was perfect for sunny days in the desert) and one of our fellow travelers turned around and said war eagle! She too was an alum, and now lives in Texas. We took a small boat across the river, and got on the bus at the other side saving us from having to drive through town down to the bridge and all the way back up. The take home message from our second day in Luxor is that the sun rises on the east bank of the Nile, so that's where the Temples are, and sets on the west bank, so that's where you bury your dead. So day two was west bank for the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and Temple of Hatshepsut. The valley of the kings is where Tut was buried, but we decided not to pay the extra money to go inside and see his tomb. You get inside 3 better looking tombs for the price of admission, so paying extra to be hot again, and see where all the stuff was before they carted it off to the museum didn't seem all that interesting. You'll never believe this, but they don't allow pictures inside any of the tombs. Some of them are very well preserved, with vibrant colors and really wonderful scenes on the walls. Totally worth climbing up and down the steep stairs to see them, but also really hot and stuffy. In the Valley of the Queens we visited the tomb of Nefertari, and Amenherkhepshef. Amenhekhepshef's tomb was really interesting because he died as a child and all the pictures in the tomb show the pharaoh introducing his son to the gods.
The next stop on our west bank whirlwind tour is Hatshepsut's mortuary temple. If you followed yesterdays link, you know later kings tried to erase Hatshepsut from the record, so they did a real number on the temple she'd built. It's sometimes listed as the arabic Deir el-Bahri. She wanted to convince everyone that she was a male, and the son of the god, and her son busted the heck out of the temple after her death. It is really well restored, and sorrounded by mountains and allows pictures! We did a quick drive by the collosi of memnon, but our group was so tired only me and one other person jumped out to take the obligatory photo. We were back on board by lunch time and had a lazy afternoon watching the nile drift by as we actually started moving south (up current) on the river. At some point the boat stops to wait for it's turn to go through the locks, at which point an army of small rowboats pulls up to the boat to sell their wares to people standing out on the decks. You should have seen the arm strength on these guys throwing things up to a 5th deck on our boat. And since we started this post with a sunrise, lets finish it off with another nile sunset for your viewing pleasure.

Egypt Day 4 Sort of cruising the nile

W and I were up fairly early the next day, so we sprung for the buffet breakfast at the hotel.

Buffets for breakfast are sort of wasted on me because my stomach usually wakes up last, but we went for it anyway. After that we packed up, stocked up on some more bottles of water and tonic, and made our way to check out. We asked the concierge for a hand to get some transportation to the boat, and they seemed to be acting quickly, and one cab arrived, but after 10 minutes we were still standing there waiting on a second car. When dave walked out to grab a cab, they finally chased down two for us, and sent us on our way. Getting out of the cabs and getting our stuff back required some intense negotiations, but we finally reached the boat, The Sonesta Sun Goddess. We learned from our visit the night before that the boat dock is well below the street level, and wondered how one get's their bags down, but sure enough several guys run up the stairs to grab your stuff, each expecting a baksheesh. So, if you're counting at home, we've tipped the bellman at the hotel, the guys who brought our bags down from the street, and the guy who brings your bags to the room. It's never much, but you're always going in your pocket. When we arrived on the boat, they sat us down in the lounge with a cool glass of fruit juice while they checked us in and copied passports and arranged keys. It was one of the few free beverages you get on the boat, so drink up. After checking in and getting unloaded in the room, it was time for lunch. Our rooms were on the 4th deck, so you take a central spiral staircase down to the lowest passenger deck, part of which is below the waterline. We were officially all known as the Goodell Party, and we were given a round table big enough for the six of us that we would eat at the entire time. The food was good, and there was a large variety of items to choose from. After lunch we had about an hour before our first real excursion. We didn't quite know what to expect as far as a tour group, but as we looked around at lunch time we couldn't find a whole lot of other unnattached english speakers. There was a large group of high school kids from a Latin Club in D.C. and we assumed they'd do their own tours, but who knew for sure. When we showed up at the lounge, we saw there were only six others, so we'd have a really great sized group to do our excursions with. The 12 of us loaded onto a little bus with our tour guide and off we went to Karnak Temple. The details of all the temples we saw sort of blend together at some point, So I'll let you read the external links to get the real deal on them. After our tour of Karnak temple, we climbed back in the bus and rolled a mile or 2 down the road to Luxor Temple. Luxor temple has a room built for Alexander the Great, including pictures of him paying tribute to the local gods, and his name carved in the form of a cartouche. The Scale of both Temples is really impressive, expecially the columns. We made it back to the boat in time for afternoon tea, and then relaxed on deck until dinner time. After dinner, we witnessed more belly dancing, and then the boat turned pretty dead, since everyone had an early morning the next day. You get an Itinerary for the next day with your turndown service, and the next days itenarary started with breakfast at 6.

The pictures here:

1. the view from our cabin

2. a picture of hatshepsut, that her son did not want us to see

3. Karnak's Hypsotyle Hall

4. Luxor Temple: it was buried by time and a mosque got built on top

5. A Christian Frescoe painted over heiroglyphics

6. Luxor Temple

And finally a Nile Sunset

Egypt Day 3 a semi-relaxing day at the pool in Luxor

I anticipated waking up early on day three and rounding up whoever else was awake to go explore Luxor and find ourselves a place to eat for the night. Let's just say we had enough fun the night before that I didn't find a lot of takers. I started the morning with a trip down to the poolside bar, where the bartender there makes a delicious cappuchino, when I returned I read for a while until W was awake and felt bad that I didn't have anyone to walk with, so she got up and decided she'd tough out a walk with me to see what we could find. We grabbed a sandwich and a delicious lemonade coctail, and then went on our way. Our really talkative driver from the night before told us how much Luxor had been cleaned up for tourists, but we had a hard time finding any proof of that. There are hundreds of horse carriages that cruise up and down the main street, so every inch of it smells like horse. By 11 a.m. it was already very warm, and you get the impression that tourists there absolutely never ever ever walk anywhere, because every 10 feet you are asked if you want a "taxi...tax" or a "Carriage...Carriage" always asked twice, and in an accent I managed to master in my 3 days in Luxor. You are also spoken to in as many languages as it takes to elicit at least a head turn. We found some cheap internet, and at least let everyone who cared know we were alive, and made a quick facebook status update, and then went back out in search of a place to eat. Along the way everyone really wants you to take a look in their store despite the fact that they have the same thing as the other 100 you've already walked by. Even more funny are the signs that say "No Hassle Best Price"; Yes I just got here, but no, I was not born yesterday. We made it to the Sonesta St George hotel, where we checked out the menus of the restaurants and asked the front desk how to get to the boat for our cruise. They were nice enough to write down a landmark in arabic for us, so we knew we'd get there somehow the next day. We walked a bit farther, but had enough and took the walk back, fighting off shopkeepers, carriages and taxis all along the way. We still did not know what we'd eat for dinner. We did however chance upon a sign for a shuttle to the Luxor museum, and decided we'd take that and go check out the place. The first shuttle of the evening shift would leave at 5:30 pm, so that gave us a full afternoon of relaxing at the pool to tend to. The poolside service was very nice, and we even shared a little Mezze platter to help tide us over. We caught that first bus of the evening and really enjoyed the musuem. Unfortunately they do not allow pictures, something I'll at least try to say a little differently each time I write it here. After the museum we wandered a bit more, and even bumped into our nile cruise boat. That gave us the opportunity to step aboard and asked what time we should arrive the next day, and then continue our search for food. We managed to walk back to the museum just in time to catch the hotel shuttle, and when we heard it was going to make a stop back by the St George, we thought we'd go there for dinner. The Oriental restaurant, Alladin, there was outside on the nile was lit by candle light, and served delicious egyptian specialties. Everyone at the table orderded the mixed grill except me, I bucked the trend and ordered the very sophisticated stuffed pigeon, it was worth the effort to eat it. We then walked back to our hotel, where we already knew the manager was anxiously awaiting a return to the bar from our group, but we decided to let him down. We still had plenty of duty free, and there was a kiosk right at the front gate at which you could buy all the tonic and fruit juice you need in life.

Egypt Day 2 Moving South to Luxor

On our second day in Egypt, We had a mid afternoon flight from Cairo to Luxor, so we just sort of lounged around early on. We grabbed a little breakfast downstairs at the Garden Promenade Cafe. The Eggs Benedict is tasty, even though it is served on a piece of beef ham. We managed to arrange with the same company that gave us a ride to the hotel to find us another van. At the same time we were trying to wrangle a payment for our cruise. The travel agency really wanted us to go someplace to pay, so we were going to send Dave, and have him talk the travel agent into taking him to the airport if he couldn't make it back in time. The travel agent showed up late, right as our van arrived, so we ended up having the travel agent jump in the van with us and ride to the agency to pay. We had to unload a few people on a busy downtown Cairo street, and somehow while getting out someone managed to step on an under seat fire extinguisher. Angie screams out "Oh no, someone just threw something in the van", and I turn around to see what appears to be smoke building in the back, and think for a brief moment that it's a lit fuse, and we're all going to die right there on the street. Needless to say we didn't die, and my heart rate eventually came back down. Our driver and the travel agent had traded numbers so as soon as they made the transaction we were to go back and pick everyone up. Milly and I stayed in the van and drove around the block a bit. We landed in front of a little local eatery, that looked a lot like what we'd recently watched anthony Bourdain eat on his trip to Egypt. Despite having only just finished my hotel breakfast within the hour I was dying to try some local food, and when the driver asked if we wanted to try it, I couldn't help but say yes. What we ended up with was a plastic dish about the size of a bowl of Kool whip full of rotini pasta in a tomato sauce, served witha spicy sauce on the side and some pita chips. It was delicious, and based on the volume of people we saw eating at this little place, it was clearly a local favorite. Milly, the Driver and I waited for what seemed like an eternity, and finally I convinced the driver to just go drive by where we'd dropped off everyone else. We were fortunate to time it just right, and they ran out to meet us and off to the airport we went. We left ourselves a lot of cushion and ended up arriving at the airport pretty early. We sat down for a snack at a coffee shop, and the guys working the counter were suprised to see us eating regular food, and one came right over stirred it up, warmed it up in the microwave and brought it back on a plate with forks for everyone to share. When he first came over we thought for sure he wasn't going to let us eat outside food there, but he mostly just seemed impressed that we were eating non-tourist food. We arrived in luxor, and found a van that seemed like a resonable deal, until we got to the hotel where they had the fare to the hotel posted outside. We paid a robust two dollars more and had to listen to the pushy sales pitch about more transportation and tours the entire way. We checked ourselves in to the Sheraton Luxor, only to find out the renovated parts of the hotel had one bed per room, which doesn't really work for 6 people sharing 2 rooms. So they moved us out to the older bungalow rooms, which turned out to be much bigger, although our air conditioners had to get a quick boost from a repair guy. We started in our room with a little happy hour, and we decided on dinner at the Agra Indian Restaurant in the Hotel Complex. We took a much smaller ordering strategy after ending up with so much food the night before. The food was tasty, and our waiter was actually really great. There's a wall size 3 D Taj Mahal on the wall in the restaurant that's a nice touch. When the check comes the waiter brings 2 boxes and says one is for the ladies and one for the gentlemen and made someone choose. One contained a check, and the other, 4 flowers. At dinner, the Manager at the hotel practically begged us to come to the bar for the belly dance show, so we were happy to oblige. We enjoyed some beverages, and and went back to the room to finish off happy hour. The plan for the next day was to relaxby the pool, and possibly explore Luxor a little.

Is Salaam 'Alaykum Egypt

I feel guilty that I haven't posted since the last trip, but let's face it, that's what you want to read about. Globe hopping makes for a far better read than everyday spreadsheet jockeying. That being said, let me tell you about on enormous adventure to Egypt and Jordan. You should know that getting things done with travel agents in Cairo is difficult, and we struggled mightily to get a Nile cruise set up. Cairo is 9 hours ahead of San Francisco, and things just move at a pace that's hard to be patient with. On the day we left, we at least knew we had a cruise to get on, and the rest of the stuff might just sort itself out as we went. We jumped on a SFO-LHR flight, and managed to score some business class seats, but unfortunately, no window for me. In London, we are working our way through a security check, right in the middle of a shift change. Half of our six person group got through without incident, and three others including me, got told our carry on bags would be too large to carry on. So we get shipped all the way out to check our bags, picking up a UK stamp in the passport for our troubles. Heathrow is notorious for losing bags, so it was with great nervousness that I passed off my bag and hoped for the best. At passport control, the officer says to me "Where you headed today"? "Cairo", I replied. He looks down at my passport, sees where I was born, and without flinching says: "That's a long way from Kansas!" I've been laughing about it ever since. We got a British Midland flight from London to Cairo, and were totally impressed by how good the service was. They nearly wore out the carpet going up and down the aisle with the drink cart. The food was nice for coach too, but sitting in the back of the plane on the aisle means lots of people heading to the lav. bump into you on their way through, making sleep far too difficult. We got to Cairo with no real way to get to the hotel, but a guy who sort of looked like he belonged in the airport (he had some sort of badge, but that means nothing) offered us a ride in a van for what didn't seem like a huge rip after I negotiated down a little. It's a long warm smoggy trip from the airport to the Cairo Marriott, which depending on who's driving can include a claustrophobia inducing tunnel. We arrived at the hotel and got our first taste of the security measures. Your vehicle stops outside gets sniffed by a dog and viewed carefully by someone looking underneath with a mirror. and then they let you in. There's a metal detector at every door, that if you're not Arab or it's daylight, no one seems to care whether you go through it or not. The Marriott is a huge complex that we had time to explore a little, finding where all the bars, restaurants and currency exchange were, and looking for a little something to help settle an uneasy stomach. Dave and I even managed to grab an Egyptian Beer(our first Sakkara of many) at the Irish Pub. Yes, you read that correctly Egyptian beer at an Irish pub, although to be fair, it is a Heineken product. For dinner we settled on the local Cuisine at Egyptian Nights. We started with the Mezze platters, There is a hot, and a cold, and ended up with what would have been enough for dinner on its own. There was Babaganough, Tabbouleh, Kofta, Calamari, Tahine, and the most delicious bread I've ever eaten. It's a flat bread, cooked on site, outside, in an oven that you walk by on the way in the door. It's amazing, and worth paying for a night at the Marriott just for this bread. The main dishes were also tasty, but unfortunately we were so full we couldn't even consider dessert. I did however enjoy my first Turkish coffee, which is a little like rocket fuel served in a demitasse, with a sprinkle of cinnamon and ground cardamom on top. After dinner we took the whole group down to the Irish pub to take part in their week long St Patty's day celebration. It was a nice makeup, since we'd spent all of the holiday on a plane. There was even an imported Irish band. At that point you could easily forget where on earth you were, and we felt a little guilty not experiencing any local culture at all, but we got over it eventually.

Bavaria Day 5, bumming around Munich

On our last day in town, If we did nothing else, we only wanted to do one thing for sure, and that was catch the glockenspiel. We slept in, did a little shopping at the Aldi, and then made our way down to the Marienplatz. We got there pretty early, so we had time to wander around the victualien markt. Picture the best farmers market you've ever been to with an amazing assortment of local and imported vegetables and fresh fish, cheeses and meats and all kinds of interesting stuff. We wandered back into Marienplatz just in time to grab watch the show and catch up with Dave. We grabbed some lunch at the Nordsee and then were ready to go hit the museum circuit. My original plan was to hit alte pinakotek and the the Deutsches Museum, but alas, I hadn't noticed that alte pinakotek is closed on Mondays. Good thing too, because we spent 4 hours in the Deutsches Museum and saw less than a quarter of it in any meaningful detail. The good news is most of it has descriptions of things in English and German. If I were you, I'd avoid the mining section unless you are fluent, because it is a really really really long section with very little translation. After the museum we stopped back in Marienplatz to do some shopping at the very insane Kaufhof. I'm not sure if it was the time we were there or what, but it was absolutely crazy busy, and the heat must have been turned up to 70 degrees. It made it hard to buy anything despite the fact they had much of the stuff we were looking for. It didn't help that I was lugging around a giant box full of Weihnachtspyramide. I had fallen in love with them on my first visit and had been pricing them out the entire trip, and had finally found the best prices from among the 3 seperate markets that I'd visited. After loading up on some more chocolate, we grabbed a train back to the hotel. I'm not sure how I always end up traveling during rush hour carrying a giant box, but I manage to do it about every other trip. We met back up with Dave and Kathy and wandered out to grab some dinner. Today was the big day to visit the Hofbrau. We had a wonderful dinner there and enjoyed the delicious beer (some of us a little too much) and then wandered back to the hotel. The flights on W's employer turned into garbage, so we ended up taking the mid day flight the next morning on a partner airline. I didn't love ther business class seat, it got almost flat, but was still at an angle that made you feel like you were constantly sliding out of it. They did give us a really cool lindt advent calender (mine wasn't quite this fancy, but close) that I enjoyed every day since then. Their entertainment was cool, and I even got to see the Knut the polar bear movie. It is definitely worth watching. Best part of the flight: the house gin is Bombay Saffire. The rest of the pictures are here, Enjoy!

Bavarian Winter Wonderland

Bavaria Day 4, Riding the Rails to Nurnberg

Another Early morning on our 4th day found us once agian on the DB headed for Nurnberg. Word association always leads me to Nurnberg trials, but it's reputed to have a really fabulous Christmas market, and we intended to go find out for sure. The Train drops you off a short distance from the Alstadt, and we took a brisk walk through town, trying to make it in time to see Nurnberg's Glockenspiel. We were bombarded with candy shops and Gluhwein and Nurnberger sausages and Lieb Kuchen along the way, and made it just in time to stare up into the huge clock tower to see it's slightly dissapointing clockworks. But it's one of the things you're supposed to do when you're there, and we were happy to oblige. The Christmas Market itself was a lot of fun, and we even found an official Christmas Market Beer.



Even more interesting were the sister city stalls, with some representatives from Atlanta. They had oreos, a jack daniels punch, and little bulldogs and yellow jackets to sell. ( you can assume I did not buy, or go talk football). We were headed off to see the Kaiserburg when we got distracted by by the beauty of St Sebalduskirche. We stopped in to take a gander and while there realized there was an english walking tour that we really should consider. Unfortunately at this point my trusty camera started to misbehave, and I started to imagine life with a new camera. While we were waiting for the walking tour of Nurnberg to start I tried changing the battery, which reset the camera date and made the order of my pictures wacky, but did lead to the camera actually functioning properly again. I wasn't sure whether or not to be dissapointed by that.
The tour Makes stops at a museum, a delicious looking friedp potato stand at the market,the Kaiserburg, a leper colony turned student dorm and the Albrecht Dürer haus. Along the tour we saw a really great looking bakery that W and I stopped into grabbed a coffee and dessert and ended up sitting at a table right next to some other people on the tour who had the same idea. We met back up with Dave and Kathy, and decided to take a tour of the Frauenkirche, which promised an overhead view of the christmas market. Unfortunately the tour was in German only, but we tolerated it for the Balcony trip payoff. We were not dissapointed by the views.

We were then ready to wander off and find a little dinner, and we stumbled upon the best find in town. Inside a door that seems too short for people and down a steep flight of stone steps is the most charming little restaurant perhaps in all of Bavaria. If you're in Nurnberg, you absolutely must visit Nassauer Keller. It would have been a great restaurant for the atmosphere alone, but then the food arrives. We found it quite accidently and were greatly rewarded for bravely climbing down the stairs. After dinner, we once again climbed on the train and made our way back to munich.
We climbed right into bed anxiously awaiting sleeping in a little the next day and just bumming around Munich. And here's this picture, for no other reason than I love churches at night.

Bavaria Day 3 Living out Fairy Tale Dreams

On our third day we rose early again and made our way over to the train station to make the 2 and a half hour ride from Munich to Fussen. We found some good seats on the train and settled in for the trip. We'd brought along some coffee, and packed our standard German breakfast for the ride. We even met a nice young couple to talk to, she was doing an internship at the Hofbrau (Jealous!!!!).
We were on our way to see to of Germany's most famous castles, Schloss Neuschwanstein and Schloss Hohenschwangau. We were working from the Lonely Planet Bavaria and the Black Forest Guide, and it walks you through the process pretty well. Get off the train, catch the bus to Schwangau, walk to the ticket booth buy your tickets to both castles, and enjoy. The tickets you buy are for a specific time, so we got ourselves a little cushion and stopped in for a little lunch at the Hotel Mueller nearby . We then marched up the hill to Hohenschangau and took some pictures, and then went in for our tour. Unfortunately they don't allow pictures inside, because the furnishings and decorations are as fancy as you might expect of monarchal spending gone wild. Especially impressive are the wedding gifts given to the castle's inhabitants, they are truly the answer to what do you give the couple who has everything. After the first tour, we wandered down and got in line for the horse drawn carriage ride to Neuschwanstein. We were afraid the timing would be a little tight, but the carriage ride only takes about to minutes, and it is a long way up hill for tired tourists. The best Karmic retribution of the day came when we watched people who were in line behind us practically run us over running up to the front seat of the carriage so they could sit in what they thought were the best seats, and they probably were nice seats, until the horses took a little bathroom break about half way through the journey. The finished parts of Neuchwanstein are absolutely amazing (it was never completed due to Ludwig's mysterious death during construction), and our tour group (70 strong) was big enough that lots of people were snapping pictures while the guide wasn't looking but I chose to take the rule abiding position and just enjoy the sights for myself. After the tour we had a drink at the cafe and sat down to watch the little movie about the life of Ludwig II. Unfortunately for us the power went out right when it was getting good, and it was closing time so we'll just be left to wonder. By the time we were done, the carriages had stopped running so we took the walk downhill on our own. That did give us time to shoot some pictures on the way down. We then made our way back to the bus stop where we had to wait for what seemed like forever on a night that was getting to be quite cold.We grabbed a bite to eat in Fussen at a restaurant not really worth mentioning and then made the train ride all the way back to Munich, there was some heavy napping along the way, and when we arrived back in munich we decided to try one of the many Kebab shops nearby. The food there was tasty, and just enough to fill us up for sleepy time. After this day we really could live happily ever after.

Bavaria, Day 2 Remembering a dark time for humanity

On our first day we'd paid a visit to the Aldi to buy some bread and some meat and cheese, so we could start day 2 with a delicious German breakfast. We were up early, and headed for Dachau to visit the concentration camp. The S-bahn ride takes about 25 minutes, and then you catch a bus out to the concentration camp. For such a serious activity, the bus was filled with english speaking tourists.

We got there just a touch too late to see the documentary movie in english, which I suspect probably contains the most sobering images. We spent the 2 Euro on the self directed audio guide and bundled up tight to walk around the groounds. I'd been to the Holocaust museum in St. Petersberg Fl, and one of the things I remembered most about that experience was they actually wanted you to reach out and touch the railcar they have on display because it adds an extra sense to your experience. As much as was physically possible I reached out and tried to touch the items on display. In the warmth of a St. Pete summer day, it's hard to imagine the stark coldness of a winter day in a concentration camp at Dachau. From the creaky opening of the wrought iron gate, to the harshness of the cement walls, there are not enough adjectives to describe the misery that must have been felt here. Hardest of all to imagine was the roll call on the wide open parade ground. The prisoner uniform didn't look nearly warm enough to make survival possible on this windsept open field where prisoners were forced to stand at attention rain or shine to be counted. The inscription on the gate says work will set you free, a propaganda play since Dachau was supoosed to be a re-education camp not a death camp or source of civilian labor. As you walk through the museum, you can't help but feel nauseated by the way people were denied their humanity for no apparent reason other than their place of birth or disagreement with Nazi ideals, not that any reason is ever good enough to treat any other human being like anything less than fully human. The tour includes a thorough museum, a reconstucted baracks where regular prisoners stayed and the original isolation cells. The Long dark hallway of the isolation cells still gives me a chill to relive, I can't imagine a worse place to live in constant fear. The final piece of our tour was the cremation/gas chamber area where what looked like a shower turned into death. The numbness you feel here is almost unbearable. We finally made our way back out tot the front gate, and took the bus back to the train station, ready to eat and ready to start enjoying the trip again. We just sort of started walking through downtown looking for a restauarant and discovered a cozy little place called Gasthaus Drei Rosen

It's off the beaten tourist path, but does have an english menu and the most wonderful Bavarian food. W had a ribeye with herbed butter that I'd still like to go back and get 3 more of, and I had the Allgäuer Käsetopf, Schweinelendchen auf Käsespätzle mit Rahmschwammerlund gemischtem Salat, Which is a pork chop seved over a pot of cheesy german noodles with a mixed green salad that was absolutely amazing. Have yourself a Lowenbau Dunkel (Dark) while you're here, and it will easily wash away some of your sadness. From there we had a few minutes to try to walk up the hill to get to Schloss Dachau before it closed. We didn't make it in time, but the Hofgarten behind it was still open, so we stopped to take some pictures and then spent some quality time at the Dachau Kristkindlemarkt and enjoyed a Gluhwein and watched some little angels parade in to open up the market. We grabbed the bus back to the train station and made our way back to Munich from there. After a brief respite at the hotel, we made our way out to the Spatenhaus for dinner. We ate more typical Bavarian fare, and snuck out with a few of the pretzels that they start you with (a to-go box is not a very common site in Germany). We arrived not really all that hungry and struggled mightily to put down a whole meal.

We then made our way to once again to the tollwood festival for a gluhwein and a dessert crepe I managed to get us a little lost on the U-bahn on the way there because there's a Theresenwiese station and a Theresenstasse station. After our gluhwein and dessert, we took the little stroll back to the hotel, we had another early morning to face the next day.

Grüß Gott Bayern

For the past couple of weeks I'd spent every spare moment sitting at a computer trying to cram as much German into my cluttered brain as was physically possible. It didn't go all that well, but for what we paid for our copy of Rosetta Stone, If I learned anything at all it would be worth it. Filled with a few German words and big dreams, we piled into a plane on Wednesday with travel buddies Dave and Kathy and made our way to Germany. W's employer has recently upgraded some of their vehicles, so we got to play with the new video games and on-demand movies that are available in Business class. You can play Tetris against another passenger, which turned out to be pretty cool or hold em against several others, but it wasn't working that well. Unfortunately for me, I was so entertained that I didn't sleep very much on the new lay flat seats and arrived nice and tired. We landed in Frankfurt, and decided we'd grab the short flight from there. On a 45 minute flight Lufthansa manages to get you a nice little meal in business class, and we were suddenly on the ground in munich. It's a 45 minute S-Bahn ride from the airport to the Hauptbanhopf (main train station), and only a short walk from there to our destination. We rested and freshened up at our hotel, The Courtyard Marriot Munich City Center. Not much of a view, and the service isn't spectacular, but it is only 2 blocks from Munich's Central train station. Plus, it's right next to a discount clothing store and an Aldi. The Kik is particularly handy if say you forgot to pack your long underwear and need something to stop your legs from freezing at night. After a little time for rest and a refreshing shower we wandered off to the train station and took the S-Bahn to Marienplatz. The Christmas market hadn't opened up yet, so we made our way to a restaurant that Tanta Rosita recommended for us. We sat down for dinner at Haxnbauer and had some really delicious roasted pork products. Kathy who had originally turned up her nose at the idea of pork knuckle but was a good sport and ordered it anyway. It was worth taking the risk. Dave had what turned out to be the best Weiner schnitzel of the trip. We enjoyed the first of many tasty beers, and had a really fabulous apple strudel for dessert. W and I dropped them back off at the hotel and made our first trip over to the Tollwood festival. On our visit last year we thought we'd just happened upon the timing of this festival, but it turns out it lasts most of December every year. We even recognized a rude crepe vendor from last year (we got our crepes elsewhere). No pictures the first day, except for the restaurant, we didn't see anything we hadn't seen on our first trip.

Trapped in the Office

Trapped in the Office
Originally uploaded by jrherron

Some days even a crappy mind numbing day at the office can lead to this view out our building's windows. Did mention how nice it is to live here?
Yeah.... I thought I did.

Yikes, a whole month!

My My.Yahoo page always shows me how long it's been since my last post, and I was a little alarmed this week to see that it had been a whole month since I'd stopped in to post. Trust me, you don't want to read about how I spent 12 hours in my cube being a spreadsheet jockey, that enriches neither your life or mine. So, what have I been up to lately? Well,I got myself nice and dressed up for Halloween, going as scrooge,trailed closely by 3 co-workers who were dressed as ghosts of products past, present and future. It was well received around the office, and landed my team and I the best group prize in our little competition. That got us all lunch at the San Francisco Soup Company, the place where most of my company's executives eat. Despite how busy we'd been at the office I still found time to get out and vote on November 4th, and for the most part I was pretty pleased with the results. In some movie I saw long ago, there was a fellow lightly complected brother who said that "one day light skinned brotha's would be back in style". (This was in those days where dark skinned bald headed guys with goatees were all the rage) It would appear at least for now, that the long promised day has arrived. I say I was pretty pleased because somehow a gay marriage ban made it through all the way on to the California state constitution. The fact is that a vote for yes means that you not only disagree with gay marriage, but that you think it's the state's responsibility to make sure that two people who love each other can't make a formal statement of that. I think those ought to be separate issues. I'm pretty sure we haven't heard the last one though. It's likely to be tied up in court forever, and even more likely to re-appear on a ballot at a later date. Oddly enough the gay Marriage ban passed, but parental notification for abortions did not. So it's quite possible that people got out and voted for one and not the other? Very strange indeed. I somehow managed to get older last week too, celebrating in style with friends at a restaurant I'm suddenly very passionate about: Betelnut in San Francisco. I'd heard good things about it, and it completely lived up to the hype. I don't know that I've ever had better fish than the Oven smoked seabass with ginger-cucumber namasu (order two, they're small, and you'll want more). We also had the Szeshuan style green beans that are even better than the famously delicious green beans that we had at the little restaurant across the street from the Lido Hilton Beijing. On Friday, we had a chance to check out a place on our side of the bay, Bellanico. Wine list: Great, Food: Awesome, Seating: a little tight, and kind of noisy, but really a cool neighborhood place. Desserts: Amazing. Over the weekend I watched another disappointing Saturday for my beloved Auburn Tigers.

Shrimp on a reef
Originally uploaded by jrherron

It's been a long season an has the potential to get much better or much worse with Alabama on the schedule in a week and a half. Today's awesome news, I might actually have a picture published in an online travel guide called Schmap. Needless to say I'm stoked. I'm "on the short list" so it's not final yet, but it's one of the few times someone who doesn't know me has actually thought my photography was worth while. It almost makes me a professional travel photographer (excluding the getting paid part...minor detail).

Day 12, Australia Again

On our first trip to Sydney two years ago, we were there just before the opening of the Sydney Wildlife World. This trip, that was our first priority. After a good nights sleep, we wandered our way over there, and sat down at the attached Lizard Lounge and had some breakfast. When we were buying our tickets we let them talk us into the Wildlife World and Sydney Aquarium combo pass, since we like a good aquarium anyway. We really enjoyed our trip to wildlife world, getting nice and close to koalas, hanging out with the butterflies, and getting uncomfortably close to creepy crawly bugs. Then we wandered over and played at the aquarium, mostly breezing through the exhibits since we'd been there before, and spent most of our time hanging out with the seals and at the big tank with the sharks in it. But we did find a really cool looking fish that I've renamed an Auburn Tigerfish. Next we took the subway to Bondi junction and grabbed a bus out to the beach. We tried to remember where we'd eaten before, but ended up finding ourselves an outside table at Papa Giovanni Pizzeria and Seafood. We had some tasty Calamari, and a four cheese pizza, along with a few beers. With a little lunch to keep us going, we then walked down to the beach to test the water, and decided we'd have to be crazy to get in it that cold. So we walked from Bondi down to Bronte beach, and caught the bus from there back to Bondi Junction. There we caught a bus to take us to Randwick for dinner at Bombay Bloomers. W met the owner a few years ago at work, and we've made a point to visit every time we're in town. So far it's still the best Indian food I've eaten in the world. We grabbed a bus back down to Circular Quay from there and then went out to explore The Rocks a little. We found the Observer Hotel and decided to sit down and have a pint, and listen to the live music there. W managed even to win our bar tab on the slots. We explored The Rocks a bit more then headed back to the room, worn out from a full day on the go in much hotter weather than we'd experienced just 48 hours before. The next morning we grabbed a little brekkie at City Extra, Which is seriously good food at an awesome location. You have to order something that gets you the fresh bread while you're there. It has what might be the best views in town, and it was fun to watch Sydneysiders shuffle on and off the ferries. Then it was time to get on our way, a quick cab ride to the airport, and on our way back home. A couple of first class seats and one of the nicest domestic based crews I've ever flown with were waiting for us at the airport, and we even managed to pick up a few bottles of a delicious aussie wine we'd had on the flight in from Queenstown. It was a great end to a trip, and a quick transition to being back at the office. To catch up with the entirety of the photographic experience be sure to see:

New Zealand 1 (Auckland to Huka Falls)

nz part 2 (Huka Falls to Queenstown)

NZ Part 3 (Doubtful sound to Sydney)

Day 11, Crossing the Tasman

Finally the time had arrived to bid farewell to New Zealand, we packed up all of our stuff got in the car once again and made our way downtown. We had a very delicious final lunch at Fergberger (site works poorly in some browsers) . I had the little lamby and wished I had discovered it earlier in the trip, I might have eaten one every day. Yes, that does mean I held a baby lamb one day and had a lamb burger the next, but... circle of life. Then we reluctantly went to the airport, and bid adieu to our faithful rental car companion. Be warned that rental car dropoff is a long hike from the terminal across an unpaved lot, not easy to manage with lots of overstuffed luggage. We were disheartened to hear about a canceled Qantas flight as soon as we got on the terminal, but fortunately it was an Auckland flight. When we checked in they asked us to wait nearby, a familiar tactic if they're not sure you're going to get on. The weather was lousy, and they frequently weight restrict the flight, so it was a little touch and go. Eventually they did give us 2 exit row seats, so we were glad, and hustled through the terminal out to the plane. The flight from Queenstown to Sydney is only 3 hours, but we still got surved a hot lunch (we both went with the lamb casserole) and got a little bottle of wine that we really enjoyed. (there was no charge for the wine either). The dessert was the best part, because just when I thought we weren't getting a dessert, out comes a flight attendant with a Streets Magnum Chocolate Ice Cream bar for everyone. Best. coach. class. dessert. Ever. We arrived in Sydney after watching Get Smart, and needed to figure out some way to get to our hotel. We also had to bypass the very tempting tax/duty free store that you are forced to walk through. We found a shuttle service to hotels for only $13AU per person, which seemed much easier than navigating the train and then walking with our bags, or overpaying for a cab. We set ourselves up at the Sydney Harbour Marriott Hotel at Circular Quay. Our room was awesome, and we got a view of the harbour and opera house without having to spend an arm and a leg. After our somewhat stressful day at the airport, and 2 weeks of hustling we were ready to spoil ourselves a little bit so we stayed in to eat at the hotel. The Seafood buffet on the weekends is incredible. We splurged on the buffet our last trip to Sydney when we stayed at the Hyde Park Marriott, so we knew it would be good, but this was above and beyond even that. There was tons of fresh sashimi, balmain bugs as far as the eye could see, crab legs, and lots of lots and other choices. There was even someone preparing noodle dishes to order. The range of Desserts available was like nothing I have ever seen. But those are not even the most important features. The real maker of this deal was the wine buffet. $24AU for pour your own from a selection of 4 local reds 4 local whites and a sparkling. Between wine and sashimi, we more than got our money's worth. Stuffed, we rolled ourselves back to our room and crashed.

Day 10, Down on the farm

The tenth day was our final full day in New Zealand, so we had to make it count. We started the day with a bit of laundry, and then we were ready to find some breakfast. We found a little mall food court and sat down to eat at the Sagun Cafe and Indian Cuisine our waitress for the morning was a very nice lady who we correctly gussed was from Brazil, she chatted with us for a while about what to visit in Brazil, and where she'd been in Florida, and how it was perhaps time to start using her masters degree. We wandered around a bit downtown, and then it was time for our Water Peak Farm & Barbeque Excursion. We had spent the previous 8 days seeing sheep at every turn, so it was finally time to get up close and personal. We spent about 45 minutes cruising across lake wakitipu, landed on the farm and dug right in to a delicious lunch of grilled meats (including lamb) and they had a nice selection of cheeses for dessert. Then we went over to watch a sheepdog and shearing demonstration, where we finally got W her opportunity to hold on to a little lamb. The sheepdog demonstration was cool, they have two types of dogs, some that bark, and some that just use eye contact to move the sheep. In this case we saw the "eye" dog. After that they had a spinning demonstration, and not long after that it was time to head back on the boat. We sailed over on the TSS Earnslaw a fully functional coal steamship, where you can look down into the engine, and see a guy down there with a shovel and a big pile of coal. We had a short turn around back in Queenstown for a charter fishing trip. We fished with Stu Dever, and I caught one trout, the 2 other people on the boat caught a couple of nice salmon, and poor W didn't catch anything. I forgot to warn her that going on a guided fishing trip with me is a bad idea I frequently end up just throwing away money while other people catch fish. The captain definitely knew what he was doing and was a nice guy about it, he just wasn't quite good enough to overcome my fishing jinx, but we can't blame him for that. Plus he promised us half off next time, so we'll definitely have to come back and take him up on it. We worked up a big appetite reeling in all those fish.... oh wait that's not what happened. We were hungry, so we found ourselves some dinner at Avanti. I had the frutti del mare pasta, and W had some prawn skewers that we both enjoyed. Then it was time to go back and pack for our trip to Sydney the next day, and we had two weeks worth of accumulated information pamphlets to sort through. and a 1 carry on bag limit to try to deal with.