Tag Archives: travel

The Suitcase

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“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

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The Suitcase

Sometimes, packing takes me a long time. I would like to take my suitcase out the week before and see what fits but I  can’t because of my dog. I have to wait until the last possible second.

Dogs live in the present moment.  I spend a lot of time and money learning how to live in the present moment. Here is the bad thing.  When my dog sees the suitcase, all he knows is that I am leaving. He doesn’t remember what will happen to him.   In his mind, he will be alone  and there will be no food.. He has forgotten that he might be sleeping with my son,  playing with Olga’s kids,  going everywhere with Julie or hiking  all day with KT. He is not locked up in a kennel.  He gets a lot of attention when I am gone.  He has forgotten that when I return,  he will sit at the front door for three days waiting for these people. He has forgotten that after a big welcome back, he will ignore me for those three days.

He walks into my bedroom  with his tail wagging and  sees the suitcase. His whole body droops. He lies down and puts his paws over his eyes. If that doesn’t work ,  he sits on my clothes as I am packing them.  He  rolls  around on them to leave his smell so I remember him.  When he can’t stand it anymore, he leaves the room . He walks slowly with his head down and his tail between his legs.  He looks back every few seconds to  see if I  understand the severity of what I am doing to him.

He returns an hour later. He is running  with a toy and wagging his tail.  He has forgotten.  He stops short . “Oh no, it’s the SUITCASE ,” and the drama begins  again.

Fly Safe,

JAZ

Things I Learned In The U.K.

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“From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere!”

― Dr. Seuss, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Things I Learned In The UK

There is nothing the Brits love better than musicals where they already know the songs, drinks that light up in the theatre,  and drag queens,  as in Mamma Mia, Thriller, Dirty Dancing,  We Will Rock you and  Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

The UK did a composite of the worst drivers in the UK. The worst woman would be a hairdresser from Gloucester, driving a BMW. Hairdressing must be lucrative in  Gloucester.

An ATM is called a hole in the wall.  As in, the hole in the wall is not working.

Buckingham Palace seems to be a lovely place to grow up.

If you are starving and you don’t know what you would like to eat, the food department at Harrods would not be the place to go. ( so big and overwhelming. )

The guards at the  Tower of London  are called Yeoman Warders or the “Beefeaters”. Their job description is to look after  the prisoners in the tower and guard the crown jewels.  Their actual job is tour guide. They are called Beefeaters because up until the eighteen hundreds, they were paid in part with chunks of beef.(life seemed a lot easier –no vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians – just beefeaters)

I love watching the news on the BBC. It is much less stressful than CNN.  If it rains a little more than usual  here,  we are on Storm Watch.   An engine shuts off on a plane in the air and they have “ a bit of a problem”.

If you have no sense of direction, then walking from the National Gallery in London to Harvey Nichols is probably not a good idea, unless you have done it before and for some reason, your feet go in the right direction and you get there

There are no sales in   Edinburgh or London when I am there.

In the UK, they say sorry instead of excuse me, which does make it better when they bump into you.

In London, you can be engaged just by closing a bathroom door.

In the Uk, everyone says  no worries. We have recently taken that one. I still worry.

If you are walking down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and you see men on stilts, Vikings, people  in animal costumes, a lot of Elizabethans, mimes, magicians  and assorted costumes; and they happen to be begging, cajoling, pleading, persuading, enticing, sweet-talking you into seeing their plays, you have arrived in August at the Fringe Festival .It is one of the largest and most popular theatre arts festivals in the world.  My daughter has performed there and my son has worked there.  It is one of my favorite places to be in August.

The Edinburgh Tatoo, which has been sold out in advance for the last two decades, plays every night in August.  It is a ceremonial performance by military musicians. There are military corps from all over the world playing bagpipes and drums. It has turned into quite the extravaganza and like nothing else I have ever seen. I have to say I teared up at the end when 8000 people linked arms and sang Auld Lang Syne with correct pronunciation.

Not everyone in Edinburgh speaks like Sean Connery and sometimes understanding the Scottish brogue can be a bit of a problem.  I just smile and nod and I hope I didn’t agree to anything important.

In Heathrow Airport there is a sign with a picture of a woman and two men. It is not the international symbol for menage a trois,  It means elevator(?)

The Saatchi Gallery is always closed when I get to London.

The Tate Modern is always open when I am there. I love to walk from there across the Milennium Bridge to St Paul’s Cathedral.

Heathrow Airport has the best sales in July.

The British Museum houses all the antiquities that the British plundered from other countries. It probably would have been great to see the Rosetta Stone , Elgin Marbles and ancient Egyptian statues in their own countries instead of the Hall of the Stolen Goods.

If you have no sense of direction in Scotland, it doesn’t matter because when you ask one person for directions, everyone on the street will stop and give you their opinion as to the best way to get there.

Traditional British food is anything high in cholesterol and fried in grease.  They have names like Bubble and Squeak ( some left over mashed potato and cabbage pancake  -no bubbling or squeaking), Bangers and Mash (sausages and mashed potatoes), Haggis (pork guts cooked in sheep stomach, ) beans on toast (Brits are obsessed with toast) Yorkshire Pudding ( not pudding –bread),Cornish Pasties (meat in a pastry almost as good as the many different types of canned meats),  black pudding (sausage? Is everything edible called pudding?) Scotch eggs (hard boiled egg fried inside a sausage inside a pastry).  Dessert can be Sticky Toffee Pudding (yum)  or (yes) Spotted Dick. (yellow cake with raisins) followed by digestive biscuits  .(need I say more here?)

The most common phrase in the UK seems to be “Is this the queue?

For more info read London with a little help frim my friends

https://havefunflysafe.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/best-things-to-do-in-london-with-a-little-help-from-my-friends/

Fly Safe

JAZ

Things I’ve Learned In Spain

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“ When Columbus started out he didn’t know where he was going, when he got there he didn’t know where he was, and when he got back he didn’t know where he had been. “                               anonymous

Things I’ve Learned In Spain

Two out of the three bullrings in Barcelona have been converted to shopping malls.

Don’t eat fish in Barcelona on Mondays because the fishermen don’t go out on Sunday.

Rebaixes and rebajas mean sale in  Spanish.

The security at the Alhambra was not the best. Twenty-one out of the twenty-two ruling Sultans were murdered.

When a bull kills a bullfighter, both the bull and his mother are killed. (bad genes).

Olive oil cures everything. If you are sick, it will make you well. If you are fat it will make you thin.  If you are short, it will make you tall.

Ole comes from the Moslem Allah is great and Hola comes from the Moslem come with Allah.

If you have no sense of direction, trying to find the Beaux Arts Museum in Seville during siesta time in 107-degree heat, is probably not a good idea.

Christopher Columbus was quite the wild and crazy guy.  Today, he would have been in the movie business.

Many great cities in Europe have a Jewish Quarter, where they have killed the Jews but saved their buildings.  Spain has them.

Las Descalzas Reales is a working monastery in the center of Madrid near the Gran Via and Puerta Sol. A large number of wealthy women seeking refuge from bad marriages in the sixteenth century joined the convent. It became one of the wealthiest convents in Europe with an amazing art collection. Despite the wealth, the sisters had taken a vow of poverty and by the mid twentieth century they were living in starvation among a sea of art. The state intervened and opened it as a museum. The tours are in Spanish and given by the nuns who still live and work there.  You can figure it out and understand words like Titian and Brueghels, while watching the nuns  tend to their vegetable garden. It is a very tranquil place in the midst of a very busy city

The effects of inbreeding can easily be seen in the Velazquez paintings of the royal family in the Prado.

No one really knows why Goya painted those “black paintings.”  No biographer really knew Goya. He was the painter of the court and the painter of the people. He had no rival in life. Were the paintings a result of the Spanish Civil War – a decade before? His deafness or serious illness?

It is always my first stop at the Prado.

Bullfighting can be watched on TV in Spain . The close-ups and slow reenactments of the bull being tortured and killed are quite gruesome.  I have questions about the Spanish culture. (Of course, the thick hot chocolate with churros for breakfast does make up for it)

El Rastro is the oldest and most crowded  flea market in Spain (Madrid).  Once home to criminals and rogues  , now it is just pickpockets. The Nineteenth century writers Hilario Penasco and Carlos Camabronero wrote “There in muddled heaps, appear side by side a militia uniform and a chipped crockery set, a portrait of the Duke of La Victoria, a carnival cape, a mantilla and an eighteenth century swordsman. Therefore, the father of the household, the amateur actor, the industrious wife and the antiquarian will always find  at the Rastro something that answers their needs to satisfy their pastimes.”

My thpanish is tho much better thinthe I have been here. (they lisp because the King of Spain had a lisp so they all had to speak like that-it stuck!)

You can make a meal of tapas ( best with Spanish sherry or red wine (tinto).   You can go around eating tapas  and then have  a big Spanish meal at 10:30 at night. If you walk into a restaurant before 9:30 you are the only diners and  clearly  tourists.

I love  going to La Boqueria in Barcelona ( the big fruit and vegetable market  ) on Las Ramblas for a light lunch  ( they do breakfast but i cant eat like that for breakfast) at Bar Pinoxto.

Antonio Gaudi was very short for someone with such a huge imagination.

The Church of the Sagrada Familia has been under construction since 1882 so don’t complain about your renovations.

Gaudi’s influence is all over Barcelona and if you are walking down a side street and see a house that looks like his, it probably is.

They have Museums of Ham in Madrid.  You eat ham even when you don’t know you are eating it or expect it.

One of my favorite modern art museums in the world is the Reina Sofia in Madrid.  If you only have time for one museum in Barcelona go to the Joan Miro Foundation on Montjuic and skip the Picasso (his early works) and MACBA.  I tell you this because I already made this mistake.

There are no words to describe the Mexquita in Cordoba and pictures don’t do it justice. It was originally the second largest Mosque in the world. In the twelfth century it was reclaimed by the Spanish and turned into a Roman Catholic Church. The blend of architecture is confusing and amazing. My personal opinion is that it is sad that both religions can’t use it because it is a history of two religions.

There are way too many Corte Ingles in Spain ( a department store like Nordstroms) as in, turn left at the Corte Ingles and then turn right at the next Corte Ingles.

Grathiath,

Viajen con cuidado

JAZ

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Tell Me How Much You Have Traveled

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“Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.” — Mohammed

I’m sorry to start this blog on a sad note but one of my close friends died this morning unexpectedly.  He was a world renowned geneticist.  His vocation  gave him the ability to do what he loved  –  do good work and see the world.

Besides medical questions,  you could go to David with any travel question you had and he  probably had the answer.  He was his own travel agent. He was an expert in the field of airline savings (his specialty was business and first class) and was a mileage savant. His area of expertise was finding the best websites  for travel deals. His  forte was five star hotels.

He lectured and treated patients all over the world,.  His patients and colleagues became his friends.  Therefore his own travelogues  were filled with personal recommendations and interesting people.  I’m particularly jealous of his trip to India.  (where he was treating one of the princesses)

I’m also in awe of the packing skills of David and his beautiful wife Ann. I happened to be staying at their house on the morning they were leaving for India for a few weeks.  It was their first trip  to that country.  They hadn’t started thinking about packing till the night before. They were still packing  in the morning as the car pulled up to take them to the airport.   I am not that casual of a traveler.

David loved to tell his travel stories and I loved hearing them.   Whether he was driving through Yugoslavia, trying to get to the airport in China, seeing the cremations at Varinasi,  meeting friends in Red Square, or  visiting Annie in Africa, it always sounded like an adventure.  He went to more places than most of us will ever go in our lifetime.  Ann, Lauren and Michael were always ready to join him.

My last travel question to him was two weeks ago. (My last medical question was one week ago) Should my son stay on the Hong Kong or Kowloon side?  Of course David had been to that country  many times and had the answer.  I will miss him. Fly safe David.

JAZ

Travelers Don’t Know Where They Are Going

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Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

I must confess that I have more travel knowledge than computer skills.  I think I finally have this blog correct and have been able to send it to friends, family and facebook.   Sorry about the slow start up.  I’ll try to write more regularly. We have a new site.  Havefunflysafe@wordpress.com.

I don’t travel with a laptop or an ipad. (I do have an ipod and a kindle)   I take a computer break when I travel.  I read a lot more.   I get lost much more and usually have to ask real people for directions instead of mapquest and navigation.   I do a lot of research beforehand so anything that changes becomes an adventure.  I’m a planner so it is good for me to get out of my comfort zone.  The restaurants I plan to eat in   get changed the moment I run into a place where the grandmother is cooking.  If I like the food somewhere, I take recommendations from the chef.  If I connect with a good concierge or tour guide, I do the same. You have to be careful with that because sometimes they recommend places that pay them or give them perks.  I have found myself in some tourist traps.

 I get a lot of info at home about the cultural events in a city. There is always something I miss and  when I get there that becomes a priority. ( Diana Vishneva  is dancing at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg; an International Music Festival  is in Dubrovnik,  a morning market in Vienna,  No Sex Thai Massage in Bangkok,)

 I use the business center when I need a computer  and meet  kids from different  countries playing  computer games. They always show me how to use the computer there even if I don’t speak their language. .  (The kids from Kazakhstan did not think  that  Borat  was funny . The French kids   cursed nonstop in English . They said that was the only English they knew  – Merde)

My notes are with a pen or pencil (preferably taken  from a hotel or my friend Cindra) and one of those moleskin notebooks.  There is something about taking out a pen and notebook in a village somewhere, that makes me feel more like Hemingway  and less like Carrie Bradshaw.   But I don’t always have it with me, so at the end of  a trip I have a collection of bits of paper, envelopes, napkins, business cards, pieces of place mats , menus and hotel stationary.  Not the most organized data, but definitely the most colorful.

It is from this  collage of notes that I will  be telling you my  stories.

Does anyone  still have my Russia and the Baltics info?  Mine is missing.

                                                                                                              Fly safe,

JAZ

Things I Learned In……..(fill in country)

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I havent been everywhere but its on my list.”

For the last several years , I have traveled  alot.  Probably to make up for the last twenty years that I have not traveled at all.  Sometimes I travel with friends and family and sometimes I travel alone. I dont know when I became this person who could travel alone. but Ive learned how to enjoy it and make friends along the way(mostly virtual friends when I return)
I usually write  about the things Ive learned to my friends and family. People have been telling me for a while to be a travel writer, so I thought Id start out here.  Ill go anywhere that I havent been.  I always have anxiety before I go on a trip alone. Sometimes when I get to a place, I wonder what possessed me to pick this. This is the strangest place I have ever been.  But the next day, it doesnt feel so strange anymore.
I can eat anything raw.  I can go to the bathroom standing up. I am fluent in hand motions and can speak Spanish  in the present tense only..  Though directionally challenged, I can find my way  in any airport  to the gate and the luggage terminal. I must be an airport savant.  I can cram more things into a suitcase than it is supposed to hold.  If I have a few drinks, I forget that I cant speak the language of the country i am in.  I still carry travelers checks for an emergency thought no one will cash them anymore.  I make sure to learn how to say coffee with milk and no sugar  in every language.  I have accidently used tap water to brush my teeth in countries that you shouldnt and I am still here to write this. I have been to the gynecologist in Greece,  the dentist in the Kyushu Islands in Japan and the emergency room in Edinburgh twice ( that trip was with my kids).  Heels are my walking shoe of choice. (though I always have the appropriate shoes with me in case I need them)  Ive perfected speed shopping and no matter how many bracelets i buy as gifts, it is never enough. Im afraid on small planes.  I always have another trip planned (even if it is just in my head) before I return from the one I am on.   Those are my credentials.
                                                                                                                     Fly Safe,
                                                                                                                        JAZ