dyer0930's TravelStream™ — Recent TravelPod.com entries

dyer0930's TravelStream™ — Recent TravelPod.com entries TravelStream™ news feed for member dyer0930 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/dyer0930 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:06:06 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com Another Day, Another Palace — Seoul, Korea Rep. http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1259182219/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1259182219/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1259182219/tpod.html Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:06:06 -0500 Whirlwind East Asian Tour

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Seoul, Korea Rep.

Today was cloudy, rainy, and cold in Seoul, but we still had fun!  In the morning (when the hour became decent enough for places to finally open) we headed over to Gyeongbokgung, the main palace of the Joseon kings.  We rented audioguides to tour the extensive palace.  The palace was laid out much like Changdeokgung, which we saw yesterday, but the buildings were more impressive.  However, this one didn't have the huge secluded garden in the back.  Instead, in the back of this one was the Blue House - Korea's presedential residence a la the white house.    After seeing the palace (which is mostly outside) we headed to the National Folk Museum, since it seemed like a good day to be inside a museum.  It turns out that this was the place that I had been looking for when we ended up at the National Museum yesterday.  The National Museum is more like an art museum - pieces for looking at without much explanation.  This, however, was all about learning and explaining Korean history, and the way that life was like during the Joseon period (1300ish to mid 1800s).  If you are in Seoul and have time/bandwidth/patience for only one museum I highly recommend the National Folk Museum. After that we were ready for lunch, so we headed up to another LP recommended joint, Tosokchon.  There is one thing on the menu at Tosokchon (besides cabbage and radish kimchi, of course): samgyetang.  Samgyetang is a stew whereby a  half a chicken is stuffed with rice, chestnuts, ginseng root, and some other good stuff and cooked up in a broth.  The result?  Think "chicken soup with rice," and on a day like today, it was just what the doctor ordered.  The fact that there was only one thing on the menu made ordering over the language barrier easy - we didn't!  They just brought the steaming chickeny goodness out to us.  Again, this was a traditional Korean place, with seating on the floor at low tables, and we removed our shoes.  The soup was hearty, but kind of bland.  What I've noticed about Korean food, is that it's either crazy spicy (with lots of red chili paste) or kind of bland.  We didn't taste a whole lot in between. With just a few more hours until we left for the airport, we wandered around the COEX mall, a large shopping complex with a swanky gourmet food court and grocery store located underneath the Intercontinental Hotel.  Of all things we were looking for a pair of scissors.  This, my friends, is the end of a story I forgot to begin for you yesterday, so let me tell you now: For our Vietnam entry visas, we need to have passport sized photos.  I has spares of these all printed up in the office at home, and wouldn't you know it, but we forgot to bring them.  Luckily, we brought a memory stick, and I happened to have the picture files on the lappy.  We were trying to figure out where we should go to have photos printed (a camera store?) when T spied a photo booth in the subway station.  As we got closer we realized that low and behold, it had a USB port!  It also had no instructions in English!  I fumbled through the Korean, and started to load the pictures for printing... and it turns out that on this USB stick I had all 300-some-odd pictures from our wedding slide show stored.  Twice over.  AH!  So our lives flashed before our eyes as each picture loaded up into the machine, and somewhere around photo #597, our passport photos finally loaded.  We got them printed (only the two we needed), and away we went. The adventure for today was to locate a pair of scissors with which to liberate these fine photos into their true 2" x 2" form.  After searching the COEX mall in vain for either office supplies or kitchen utensils, I suggested we ask at the desk of the Intercontinental where they (a) probably spoke English and (b) probably had scissors.  Which I did.  And they did.  Problem solved!  We only looked a little out of place in our scrubby "backpacker" clothes in the lobby of the swanky hotel.  Oh well. We picked up our bags from the hotel, and caught the bus back to Incheon.  And now we are enjoying the hospitality of the Asiana lounge before our Thai Airways flight.  On to Bangkok!
]]> So much for "adjusting" — Seoul, Korea Rep. http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1259062707/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1259062707/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1259062707/tpod.html Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:32:05 -0500 Whirlwind East Asian Tour

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Seoul, Korea Rep.

Before I get into the details of yesterday, the editor of this blog has requested that I publish an addendum to the last entry.  See, he had already fallen asleep when I wrote that and couldn't read it over and remind me of a couple cool things i forgot.  (Poor baby - gets to sleep while the wife blogs.)  So here we go.Thing the first: When our plane pushed back from the gate at SFO a Korean Asiana Airlines rep (the station manager?) ran out onto the tarmac and waved to every single window on the airplane as it rolled out to taxi.  When the plane stopped for cross traffic, he stopped waving.  When the plane started again, he resumed.  When he was sure that he had waved at every window, he ran back inside the concourse.  Quite a send off.Thing the second:  We happened to look out of our window when we were over extreme northeast Russia, just past the Bering Strait.  It happened that there were no clouds up there so we had this incredible view of Siberia.  It was just a vast, unending landscape of mountains, snow, and ice, apparently untouched by any sign of human existence.  Miles and miles and miles of wasteland.  Magnificent desolation.  It was incredibly awesome.  Despite being so far from civilization, we saw another jet going in the opposite direction.  It had a red tail, but that's about all we could determine.  Polar routes are really cool, especially when you get a view through the clouds!Okay, onto more recent happenings.  Yesterday (Tuesday) we woke up nice and early around 6am (thank you jet lag), and had a little while to figure out what we wanted to do.  It turns out that about half of the big palaces (which are the sights to see around here) are closed on Tuesday.  We decided to head off for the biggest one that wasn't closed (Changdeokgung) and go from there.The Seoul Metro is pretty easy to figure out.  The signage is in both Korean Hangul writing and in romanized Korean/English.  They announce all of the stops on the train in English.  So it's pretty straightforward.  The trains are like the rest of Seoul: clean, modern, and busy.   Tantalized by the awesome aroma, we grabbed a sack of fritter or doughnut like things (freshly made) filled with some kind of sweet goo from a stand in one of the massive subway stations for breakfast.  Once we arrived at our destination stop, we found a roadside cart that was selling "egg toast" - basically just your standard American breakfast sandwich with ham, egg, cheese, some green onion, ketchup and mustard on toast.  Delicious!When we got to the palace, we found that the English guided tour would go at 11:30, and it was only about 9:45, so we bought our tickets and then took off walking for a bit.  We toured another small "palace" up the road - Unhyeongung - and stopped by Tapgol Park, which features a pagoda from a Buddhist temple formerly located on the site, and was the location of a demonstration declaring independence from the Japanese occupation in 1919.  Apparently it is, in general, a popular site for political demonstrations.We made our way back up to Changdeokgung.  It turns out that they offer tours in Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English, and that for people who don't speak the other languages, the English tour becomes a bit of a catch-all.  So we ended up on a tour with about 250 people, most of them belonging with a Thai vacation tour, spending a long weekend in Seoul.  Changdeokgung is expansive.  It is the second biggest palace around here - originally supposed to be the "backup" palace, it became the primary one after the first one was considered "no longer auspicious."  (Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.)  the front section includes many huge buildings including a formal "throne room" for receiving heads of state, impressing your friends, and striking fear into your enemies, the king's "office, male and female quarters, etc.  In Confucianism (and Korea has a past of [sometimes violently] flip flopping between being a generally Buddhist place and a generally Confucianist place) men and women are supposed to remain separate.  Although the King did have a little walkway over to the Queen's apartments to get on with the business of making an heir.  The Palace then also features a huge "secret garden" out back, which is quite a peaceful retreat in the middle of the city.  All told, the palace encompasses 110 acres.After our tour it was time for lunch, and we took a Lonely Planet recommendation for a Korean BBQ joint called Hwanggeumjeong.  Unfortunately, the restaurant signage was only written in Hangul.  Fortunately, I've been learning to read Hangul (a little bit) and I found the restaurant!  We went in side, and it turned out to be a traditional sit down place, so we removed our shoes at the door, as is good etiquette.  Then we sat on the floor at the low table.  We ordered pork ribs, which were then brought out raw and cooked on the open grill in the middle of our table right in front of us.  The meat was served with a bunch of side dishes, mostly cold: cold cabbage soup (not bad), golden tofu with chili and garlic (yummy, but cold), kimchi (okay for a couple bites), pickled radish in chili (ok, T didn't like it), chili peppers in red chili paste (I didn't even attempt that one), greens that looked like kangkong (cold, but spicy), and a boiling hot seafood and tofu stew (very hearty).  We also ordered some rice.  The waitress then showed us how to load some meat up into a lettuce leaf with onions and chili paste and make a little Korean lettuce taco.  This was super delicious.  We wished we could have more of the meat and less of the cold sides.From there we headed up to the National Museum of Korea for a look at more of the history of the country.  The museum itself is absolutely HUGE, incredibly modern, and very impressive.  We only saw the first floor (of three) of one ginormous wing (of two).  We also strolled around the gardens surrounding the museum.  After this we found that we were nearing total exhaustion, so we headed back toward our hotel on the metro.  Stopping only at Sleven for more ice cream and green tea, we headed up to our room to rest before heading out to the COEX Mall food court for dinner.  Or that was the plan, anyway.  Instead, apparently the last thing T heard me say was, "If I fall asleep, I don't think I'm going to get up."  And then I was out.  At 5:30 pm.  And now I am awake.  It is 4:33am, and I have been up for about two hours.  Oh well, we're supposed to get into Bangkok tonight (tomorrow) at 1am, so if we sleep on the plane, maybe this lack of adjustment will be beneficial. :oPEditor's note:  The weather has been really nice in Seoul.  Low 50's with mostly sunny (though hazy) skies.  It feels like fall, and is honestly the firs time I've been to Asia that I wasn't sweating my &$%#s off!  (OK, that'll probably change tomorrow in Bangkok, but for now, it's a beautiful fall day!)Also, our Seoul stays have been at the Tiffany Tourist hotel.  A very functional hotel on the south bank of the Han.  It's about 2 mins from a subway stop, and also just a short walk from the bus to / from the airport.  Subway rides to the palaces are lengthy, but for a city of Seoul's size, you are bound to be far from something.  The deal here was great -- 15 British pounds per night courtesy of the Expedia.co.uk deal from earlier in the year.  So about $22 per night after the deal.  Despite being on an 8 lane street, it's actually very quiet.  No complaints at all.  Fortunately, we read a review on-line saying that you should take bus 6010 from the aiport (ICN), and indeed, that is the correct bus.  
]]> Seoul Food — Seoul, Korea Rep. http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258978888/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258978888/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258978888/tpod.html Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:57:10 -0500 Whirlwind East Asian Tour

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Seoul, Korea Rep.

We started off this morning with the hop from Salt Lake City to San Francisco, where we chillaxed in the Singapore Airlines Silver Kris Lounge until it was time to leave for our Asiana flight.  Asiana leaves from Concourse A at SFO, which means ducking out of, then back into, security.  Well, getting out could certainly be described as ducking.  There was a Japan Airlines, an Asiana, and a Virgin America flight, all leaving right about the same time.  This made for a chaotic scene with not a lot of native english speakers in a big mob from security.  After some confusion that business class on Asiana, actually *is* first class (because it's only a two cabin aircraft, we made it to the premier security line which moved slowly, which was an improvement over the glacial pace of the regular line.The experience on Asiana was a mixed bag.  The service was absolutely impeccable.  The flight attendant nearly had a heart attack when I put my fleece jacket on the floor.  She ran off, bemused, and came back with a shopping bag - like, will you at least put it in here?  I finally relented and hung it on the coat hook at my seat.  I can't imagine what would've happened if I'd have walked to the lav in my stocking feet without using the slippers they provided.  I didn't risk it - I wore the slippers.  The other nice thing is that the Asiana business cabin is very private.  It's separated from coach by two heavy curtains and the galley.  It felt like we were the only people on the plane.  Then add in that the cabin had only 12 of 28 seats filled and it felt very spacious and personal.The seats themselves, however, leave much to be desired.  They are like the United old barcalounger-style that are trying really really hard to be lie flats, but not quite making it.  The result is something that only reclines as much as the old style, but with less cushioning.  The good part is that no one reclines over top of you - the seat back just slides down into the pod, and the entertainment screen is well placed, but you would have thought that if they were going to spring for the pod-style seating they would have just gone all the way to a lie-flat.Also, the video was loop style (have to wait for the movies to finish, rewind and start over) instead of AVOD (on demand) which was a bit disappointing.  The food was decent but not anything to write home about (oh, wait...).  We both had the Korean meal for dinner, consisting of Bibimbap, a dish where you mix up rice with veggies, meat, and chili paste, which was nice, some kind of yellow pickle we can't yet figure out which was okay, and kimchi, spicy pickled cabbage, which neither of us really liked.  This is unfortunate because kimchi is ubiquitous here.But is was a nice uneventful flight.  Since this was a "day flight" - leave at noon, arrive at 5pm (the next day), we didn't sleep much, opting instead to nap and rest and then sleep once we got to Seoul to reset us to the Asian clock.  We watched a couple movies - 500 Days of Summer and My Sister's Keeper.Once in Seoul, our plan of action was extremely straightforward.  Incheon airport is large, clean, and well-marked.  Once outside, it was immediately obvious where we should wait for our bus into the city, which was incredbily clearly marked, and not only that, but there were attendants with nametags there to help find the right route.  Talk about service!  It was awesome!  The bus ride to the city was a little over an hour, but the bus was a very nice coach-style and we enjoyed views of the many bridges over the Han river.We easily located the correct bus stop, and from there it was a short walk to our hotel.  It was on of the easiest "first nights" we've ever had!!  After dropping our stuff we strolled the streets of Seoul right around our hotel.  First impressions of Seoul: clean, super modern, sophisticated, snazzy, lots of smokers, trendy, very cool - cooler than New York (I know, right?).  We stopped at a very small shop for some dumplings (mandu -- I'm trying to remember so I can learn the language), that were awesome and totally hit the spot.  I was potentially interested in noodles too, but I couldn't figure out how to order them as they didn't have a menu with pictures for pointing and I had accidentally left my phrasebook in the room (oops).  Speaking of noodles, we saw a guy in another shop window tossing noodles the way New York Italians toss pizza crusts.  It was wonderfully entertaining!  After our traditional (it seems) first-night-in-Asia Sleven stop for ice cream, we are totally crashing out.  Looking forward to some cultural/historical sites tomorrow and learning more Korean language besides "hello" and "thank you." 
]]> One last immersion in Americana — Provo, Utah, United States http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258859530/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258859530/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258859530/tpod.html Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:30:30 -0500 Whirlwind East Asian Tour

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Provo, Utah, United States

Yes, this is a blog about a trip to Asia.  But our first stop on the itinerary was the last Air Force Football game of the season, at Brigham Young University.  BYU was by far the most hospitable away stadium that we have visited.  They had a welcoming committee!  They greeted us heartily as we picked up our player guest tickets, and then said, "One thing we like to do for friends and family of the visiting team is give them a little tour of the stadium.  Would you like to see the press box?" So we were escorted up to the second highest level in the box and look out over the field and the gorgeous mountains beyond while our Air Force guys were in warm ups.  Awesome!There was a lot of pain in the way the game went, but... we also took come chances that we don't normally take.  So I was definitely proud of our guys.  Final score: BYU 38, AF 21.Now we are happily installed in the Super 8, a night, along with last night, which was 100% free thanks to the late "Best Rate Guarantee" deal (may it rest in peace).  Over the past 2.5 years, we have stayed in many hotel rooms for free across the country.  Alas, Wyndham has changed their Best Rate Guarantee (known affectionately as BRG) policy so that it doesn't include free rooms, and this is the last room we had booked under the BRG deal.  It's the end of an era, and boy, did we have a good run.
]]> Heeeeeeeeeeeeere weeeeeee gooooooo! — Denver, Colorado, United States http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258774420/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258774420/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/8/1258774420/tpod.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:40:18 -0500 Whirlwind East Asian Tour

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Denver, Colorado, United States

Welcome to another edition of dyer0930 international adventure!  We rolled out of the driveway this afternoon, and couldn't believe that we'll be around the world before we see home again.  Of course, first we're going to Utah, which is... not such a foreign place.  We're easing into it, I guess. The theme of this blog on previous trips has been "The best trips begin with bumps," and we were given tantalizing "commitment cards" at check in for volunteering.  Buuuuut the Red Carpet Club agent says that they are undersold by 7, and that's about what we expected.  "The best trips begin with Commitment Cards" just doesn't have the same ring to it.  This adventure is brought to you by the letters F, T, and about 3 years worth of travel knowledge and frequent flyer miles gained over a long-distance relationship.  To familiarize you with how we got here and why we do what we do, have a look at this timely article, which appeared on CNN today.
]]> The Beginning — Denver, Colorado, United States http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250565637/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250565637/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250565637/tpod.html Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:37:52 -0400 Honeymoon in Barbados

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Denver, Colorado, United States

We started out this morning at 4am Eastern (2am Mtn), catching the shuttle back to CAK.  There was disappointingly no bump activity (they managed to not oversell, even with the cancelled flight?!).  Our CAK-ORD flight ended up delayed on the tarmac for a good hour and a half, putting our ORD-DEN connection in danger.  But, as we are the fastest people in the airport (it's why we train, after all), and because I know that it takes me a mere 10 minutes to cover ORD from the back of F to the far corner of C, there was no panicking.  We made it to our awaiting 777 in plenty of time.In order to get us on this flight, the CAK agents yesterday had booked us into First (full F, which is nice).  First class was just a lovely, relaxing, pampered way to end the trip, especially on a 777, even if it was a domestic config.  The crew and their service on both flights was absolutely spectacular.  Such a change from our experiences on the dAArk side (that's American Airlines, for non-airline geeks).  This is not to say that United is perfect, I know.  But they are an airline that does things right, perhaps more than they do things wrong.  And I'm glad to be a United flyer.Case in point: as the purser was coming around to take breakfast orders, he was addressing folks by their name, according to the flight manifest -- always a nice personal touch of customer service.  He spoke to Travis ("Mr. S--") first and then turned to me: "Miss S2...?  Travis smiled at him and said, "If you *really* want to make her happy, call her 'Mrs. S--.'  You see, we're newlyweds."  That lit the purser right up.  He congratulated us heartily,noted the Mrs. on his manifest, took my order, and then moved on.Later, after breakfast, one of the other flight attendants came back and asked, "Just out of curiosity, what kind of wine do you prefer?"Thinking 9 am was a little early for heavy red wine I said white.  She walked away with a sly smile and a nonchalant, "No specific reason I'm asking..."  It then occurred to me that wine is free anyway in FC, so we probably weren't getting served glasses.Just before our final descent she brought us a full size bottle of Chardonnay, wrapped in a United first class linen napkin.  On the napkin was written in ballpoint pen, "Best Wishes!  United XXX [the flight number], August 17, 2009."  It was awesome!!!!  Totally made our morning and capped off a most excellent trip in a most excellent celebratory way.On the way home from the airport we were reviewing the plans for this week (which -- there aren't many).  Travis said, "I feel like this is the beginning of our life!"Yeah.  Welcome to the beginning.  :o)
]]> False Start — Canton, Ohio, United States http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250474284/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250474284/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250474284/tpod.html Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:16:33 -0400 Honeymoon in Barbados

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Canton, Ohio, United States

We had a spectacular weekend up in Michigan at my folks' place.  There was a wonderful party, great food, and a house filled to the brim with love.  Still haven't gotten over introducing Travis as "my husband" - it still gives me very girly giggles.We made the trek to Canton today (well, CAK, to be precise) to fly out on the CAK-ORD-DEN route that we have attempted to take in the past.  And similar to the past, CAK-ORD was cancelled due to weather.  It's deja vu all over again up in here.  We tried for about 15 minutes or so to figure out another way out of here tonight (via CLE, CMH... any other carrier... etc.) to no avail.  But in the end this is okay, because am I really gonna argue about extending my honeymoon by another night?There are two pieces of most excellent news.  First, we were rebooked onto very full flights.  not only that, but the reason for the cancellation was storms in ORD, so *everything* in and out of Chicago is a mess.  And out of chaos comes beauty: hopefully there will be a bump fest tomorrow.  :o)The second piece of good news is that as United 1Ks, we are entitled to hotel accomodation in these overnight-delay cases, even if the delay was caused by weather (I know, right?!).  There were a couple of really sweet and patient girls handling a huge line of passengers from our cancelled flight, and they bent over backwards to take care of us.  Did they put us up in the perfectly normal Hilton Garden right next to the airport?  No!  They put us up in the Marriot McKinley Grand, Canton's finest hotel, with dark wood, velvet curtains, chandeliers, and poster beds.  Quite luxurious.  It's right across the street from the First Ladies' museum, and I would love to have another day to explore it, and the surrounding President-McKinley-oriented sites.  Luckily, I think I'll be back in this area before too long...Before coming over to the hotel, we all stopped at the 356th Fighter Group -- one of those crazy-awesome airport plane-spotting restaurants like Bombers in Cleveland or that one I can't remember at LAX.  They had an amazing Sunday night prime rib special, in which we all indulged, even though I was good and ate lots of delicious vegetables on the side as well.  While we dined, we watched several planes take off and land -- no United tails among them.I was supposed to be writing this blog's closing entry tonight, but I'm always up for more adventure.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring!
]]> Road trippin' — Arecibo, PR.PR, Puerto Rico http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250130942/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250130942/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250130942/tpod.html Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:42:04 -0400 Honeymoon in Barbados

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Arecibo, PR.PR, Puerto Rico

For our final day in the tropics, we ventured out on somewhat of a road trip of the island.  Today was also science "geek-out" day.  We began early, driving west out of San Juan, thankfully opposite rush hour traffic.  Our first two destinations were south (inland) of the north coast town of Aricebo: the caverns and the observatory.  It is often recommended to combine these two attractions into one day, which we did. Our first stop was Parque de las Cavernas del Rio Camuy.  This is a spectacular underground cavern - absolutely huge.  The geology of Puerto Rico is this porous limestone.  Where there were ancient underground rivers and oceans, there are now giant caverns.  Every now and again (in geologic time of course), the ceiling of one of the caverns collapses and causes a sinkhole.  This yields a topography called "Karst" topography, which can be observed even as you are driving along the highway in Puerto Rico (as we did) by the rounded bumpy ridgelines and vast, crater-like valleys.  This particular cavern sports an enormous "gallery" with wonderful formations just inside the natural entrance.  The main room is over 150ft tall!  It also features the third largest underground river (known, of course) in the world.  The place ran a Spanish tour and an English tour.  The people on our tour were mostly from the NYC and Philly areas, with one family from Tampa and us.  Our tour guide was herself a caving geek and member of the local caving socety.  She told us about rapelling down from the sinkhole entrance into a side cave.  Awesome! The funny anecdote from the Caverns was that when we turned into the facility, a man stepped out of an official looking "welcome" booth and motioned for us to stop.  "Buenos Dias!" he said cheerfully.  "Good morning!" we replied, and we readied to hand him our $3 parking fee, which was completely expected.  Instead of taking our $3, he launched into a sales pitch about the restaurant he owned, just up the street, and would we consider eating there for lunch?  He handed us brochures listing the entire menu - authentic Puerto Rican cuisine!  And have a nice day - he waved us on through. We were bewildered.  Was he affiliated with the park?  Definitely not.  Did he rent that booth from the park? Unclear.  We pulled up to a *second* roadside booth where a lady took our parking fee and pointed us in the correct direction for the tour, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.  Our first inclination was to ignore this crazy guy who was so obviously targeting hapless cavern tourists.  On the other hand, we figured, why not reward the entrepreneurial spirit?  More importantly, this appeared to be the only restaurant between the caverns and the observatory that wasn't a roadside stand hawking hot dogs and bootlegged CDs.  So What the hey, right? Yeah, it was pretty awful.  The restaurant itself (named El Taino, by the way, for future advice-seekers) was a bland, underlit warehouse of a room with overworked air conditioners, and a front door left hanging open so that they didn't do much good anyway.  On the side, there was a table of cheap, made-in-China tchochkes for sale and a small sign that read "gift shop."  We sat down, the first patrons to arrive, or perhaps the only suckers to come in from the caverns, and ordered our meal.  As we waited, I started absentmindedly scratching my legs.  "My legs are itchy," I told Travis, and he said that yeah, actually, he were too.  We looked down to discover about 6 new mosquito bites, each.  Nasty ones.  Just then, our waitress appeared out of the kitchen door and wordlessly handed Travis a can of OFF! before disappearing again.  Would you like some bug repellant with your pre-dinner drinks?  We sort of winced, shrugged, and applied the Off... right there in the dining room.  This only partially fixed the problem as those little buggers stayed around throughout the meal (the front door still hanging open, but not enough ventilation to keep them at bay), and even got me through my shirt. Meanwhile, while all this was occurring, another family from our tour group arrived... and then promptly got up and left.  Our waitress never really came back other than to deliver the Off! and the food.  When our food came, we shoveled it in pretty fast in order to get out of there.  This was a pretty good thing because the food was fairly bland and tasteless... and then sat like a brick in my stomach for the next 3 hours.  On the way out, we caught another US couple headed in, coming from the caves and the tourist trap.  We recommended against dining here.  Unfortunately, I do feel bad, because there was no other food establishments around, so when we saw them next (at the observatory) they had only had a Coke for lunch.  :o\  Still, worth it to avoid the craptastic-ness of El Taino, I think. But the Observatory!  Or in the Spanish, Observatorio del Aricebo!  Was extremely awesome.  As expected, we saw a majority of the people who had been on our tour at the caverns at the Observatory.  This site is actually one of those sinkholes that's part of the Karst topography, a huge bowl naturally formed in the earth.  At some point in the 60's someone said, hey, this would be a great place to build a giant reflector dish for a radio telescope!  And the rest is history. The reflector dish and it's receiver are engineering marvels and very impressive to behold.  The reflector is made of aluminum mesh panels and weighs 300 tons.  The receiever weighs 900 tons and is *suspended above the reflector dish on nearly horizontal cables* (omg, so cool).  The receiver platform is steerable in azimuth and zenith angles to "point" the antenna, and it carries several different types of receivers for different applications.  Here, they research everything from the birth and death of stars, to the composition of the ionosphere, to the search for extraterrestrial life and life-sustainable planets, to monitoring solar and asteroid activity in our own solar system, to *taking radar imagery of the moon, mars, and venus*.  This last part blows my mind so much, I can't even tell you.  So awesome. We had read some reviews that you should have low expectations when going to see the telescope -- "it's just a big dish" and also they said that the small museum was poor.  Nothing could be further!  First of all, the dish and *especially* the receiver assembly are fascinating (see above).  But secondly, the museum is so information rich on all topics from the construction and maintenance of the facility to how it works to the research that has been conducted with it.  It also has material and hands-on exhibits appropriate for all ages and levels of scientific knowledge.  It even taught us geeks a bunch and got us debating on the relative merits of different methodologies for observing large and small scale phenomena.  I, for one, totally geeked out.  One couple who we met at the caverns ran into us at the observatory and asked me to explain what Einstein's theory of relativity did for the field of astronomy.  Ah!  It was fun. After leaving the observatory, we drove even further inland to the island's backbone of central mountains.  To get there we wound and unwound our way around hairpin-curvy one-and-a-half lane roads, hugging the sides of limestone canyons and sinkholes, up river valleys.  And when we finally reached the mountain road, what did we find?  More windy, hairpin-curvy, one-and-a-half-lane roads of course!  Travis drove like a super pro, cleverly avoiding head-on collisions like nobody's business, and Amy only got a little carsick.  We proceeded to the Puerto Rico highpoint (Cerro Punta, at 1338m), taking the trusy Kia up a crazy steep summit push.  At the top there were a bunch of radio and cell towers, a staircase up the summit pile, and an official looking concrete marker with... nothing official written on it.  So we're pretty confident it was the high point, it looked and smelled like the high point...  Anyway, if and when PR ever becomes a state, we'll have already bagged the high point.  :o)  We then wound our way down the southern slope of the central range to the town of Salinas on the south coast for a rather tired and non-descript, though yummy supper of Churrasco, "beef parmesan," baked potato, and more fried plantains at El Balcon del Capitan, a great place overlooking the Caribbean, and we were treated to a peaceful, beautiful sunset. I CAN'T WAIT to sleep in tomorrow!
]]> Forts, Forest, and Flan — El Yunque National Forest, PR.PR, Puerto Rico http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250044046/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250044046/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1250044046/tpod.html Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:33:16 -0400 Honeymoon in Barbados

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El Yunque National Forest, PR.PR, Puerto Rico

It was an action packed day of action!  This morning, we went so far as to *gasp* set an alarm to ensure that we were up and at 'em in good time.  Partially we wanted to beat the heat of the day while strolling around the city streets; partially we just had a lot that we wanted to do. We hopped a bus (a less straightforward experience here than in Barbados) over to Old Town San Juan to see the historic sites.  I knew relatively little (okay, pretty much nothing) about this before I went, so I learned a lot today!  San Juan was founded on Columbus's second expedition to the New World.  He actually named the island 'San Juan [the Baptist]' and the port city "Puerto Rico" and the names got switched... at some point Ponce de Leon was involved and had a lot to do with Spain deciding to make this city the focus of their Caribbean fortifications, due to the location of the place as a "gateway to the Caribbean" from Europe.  Old Town San Juan was a walled city for most of 400 years, and it boasts two fortresses: El Murro (The Headland) to defend primarily against sea attacks and San Cristobal, to defend primarily against land attacks.  We toured both of these impressive strongholds today, which are both managed by the National Park Service.  There are many other museums in Old Town, but none of them particularly jumped out, and our brains were full from learning so much at the forts, so after our post-lunch stroll through the charming streets of this historic district, we jumped on the bus to stop back at our hotel for provisions and a car to head off to El Yunque. Ahhh, El Yunque.  The rainforest!!  Actually managed by the National Forest Service, El Yunque is the only rainforest affiliated with that organization (Travis guesses that the rainforests in Washington State are technically under NPS control?).  First step: figure out how to get out of San Juan.  This is always a hairy one for the navigator, aka yours truly.  But it went easier than expected.   There's a brand new toll road that extends the expressway significantly east of town.  The toll is $1.50, and there are signs (in Spanish only - agh) indicating that if you have exact change (coins) you should go in lanes marked A, but if you need change, go in the lanes marked C.  Okay, fair enough -- that seems all normal.  Until you get up to the toll plaza.  At the "exact change" stations, there were people standing there.  Instead of throwing your coins in the basket, you hand your coins to the person and they <i>throw your coins in the basket for you!  Even more hilariously, there are two people working in the "C" booths.  One person makes change for your $5 bill (as in our case).  The second person then counts out six quarters and hands them to the first person so that he can <i>reach outside his window and throw them into an exact-change-style basket and open the gate for you.  I am so not kidding you.  This is how it works.   To be fair, this was during rush hour, and they seemed very intent on keeping traffic moving as fast and as smoothly as possible.  They clearly wanted to prevent out-of-basket spillage, and were trying to keep the counting pressure off of the change-makers.  On our way back through this evening, there was no one manning the exact-change baskets, and there was only one person in the booth, even though she still had to throw coins in the basket outside her window after changing our dollar bill to quarters.  We figured out that the manned booths have baskets so that they can be easily converted from manned to unmanned booths and back again as time of day and traffic necessitate.  But you would think they could have built a switch or manual override or something to allow them to open the gate without throwing coins in!!   Anyway, in to El Yunque we drove.  We knew things would be closing before too long, but we figured we'd be able to drive around and scope out the available hiking trails and rumored camping situation.  We stopped at the visitor's center, which cost $3 a piece.  I wouldn't really complain about that, but the displays and educational materials were entirely geared toward kids (extremely simplistic), and contained very little useful Yunque-specific content.  But it did yield some maps of the trail heads off of the forest road, which was nice.   We drove up to an observation tower, passing a gate with a sign that announced that the gate would be closed and locked at 6pm -- if you were in after that, you were in for the night.  Okay, noted.  We arrived at the observation tower at 4:33, apparently three minutes after the last admission was allowed in.  The ranger there recommended we do the short "Big Tree" hike instead, which ends at a lovely little waterfall.  Great!  How long does that take?  25 minutes down and 40 minutes back.  Well considering we weren't likely to get to the trailhead until just before 5pm, and that time estimate was over an hour... my math says that we'll miss our strictly pointed out 6pm gate deadline.  We decided to head up to the trailhead there, just to see what we could see, maybe walk a short way, then turn around and come back. We arrived at the Big Tree parking lot at 4:45.  As we drove there, ideas (and my ego) started to form in my head.  "We're climbers.  We're from Colorado.  25 minutes down probably means 15 minutes for us.  40 minutes back is probably 30 for us.  4:45 plus 40 minutes is 5:30... which leave an entire half hour to drive the 1km back to the gate.  I was excitedly describing this math to Travis on the way to the trailhead, and just as I got to the part about "25 minutes down is 15 for us," I was passing by a lady sitting on a rock next to the trailhead.  She sort of glared at me and said, "uhhh... it takes *25 minutes*..."  And even though I was already gone, off like a shot into the woods, out of her earshot (or maybe *because* I was out of earshot), I snapped off with, "Lady, I'm from Colorado!  I eat 14,000 foot peaks for breakfast!  I'll be to those falls and back here before you get in your car!"   And man did we haul down the trail.  I set a turnaround time and away we went.  I led off, totally exhilarated, for once dragging my man down a trail behind me that he wasn't sure he'd be taking otherwise.  I sang a made-up song called "I've got a car that has air-conditioning" and also the theme from Rawhide.  We made it to the falls where there were, improbably, 30-40 people swimming, playing, and otherwise enjoying the water.  None of them seemed too concerned about the alleged 6pm cutoff.  We snapped some pics and hauled back up with no less speed than on the way down.  I am very proud to report to you that we made it down to the falls in 15 minutes (as predicted), spent 5 minutes shooting pictures, and then made it back to the car in a *blistering* 15 minutes.  I RULE!!  Unfortunately the lady *had* already gotten to her car and was nowhere to be found, which is probably good because I would have said something snotty. Anyway, getting back to the car by 5:20 allowed us time to keep driving to the END OF THE ROAD, Travis's big goal for the day, and to scope out previously mentioned trails and camping opportunities.  We zoomed back past the gate of doom at 5:50, with plenty of time to spare.  My only regret is that we didn't hang around by the gate to see if it actually got closed and to see what happened to the 100 or so (or more!) people that we had seen in various areas behind that gate, lollygagging about. We were very hungry at this point, so we consulted our trusty friend, the Lonely Planet guide book.  The LP came through as it always does and pointed us to the very off-the-beaten-path, but very delicious Rosa's Seafood in Fajardo, over on PR's east coast.  I had an amazing, hearty paella with all sorts of fresh ocean goodness (lobster, conch, fish, octopus, mussels...) accompanied by fried plantains (YUM).  Travis had pork chops in creole sauce with fries.  We shared some johnnycakes (mmmmm... fried dough) to start and some caramel flan to end. Then we zoomed back to the hotel for some preparations for tomorrow's expedition: caves, radio telesopes, and more high-pointing.  Stay tuned!
]]> Stateside... well, sort of — San Juan, Puerto Rico http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1249955173/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1249955173/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dyer0930/5/1249955173/tpod.html Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:59:39 -0400 Honeymoon in Barbados

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San Juan, Puerto Rico

So here we are in Puerto Rico, which is, weirdly, a part of the United States.  More on that later, but we're definitely still adjusting to that.  But let's go back to this morning.We woke before dawn, and were packing up when we heard this massive racket outside -- "Is that RAIN?"  These Bajan houses have sheet metal roofs, you see, and so any rain sounds very dramatic from inside.  Still, this wasn't just sheet metal drama, it really was pouring down.  This squelched plans of taking the airport bus, and even of walking down to the taxi stand at the bottom of the hill -- we called down and had them come pick us up at our doorstep.  Little did we know that the weather would shape the rest of the day...   and Travis will tell the rest of the story for once!It turned out that taking the cab was really fortuitous, because, well, let’s just say that the Pepperpot from last night’s dinner was still working its way through the system.  So a stop at the gas station was in order…..   after the pit stop, we continued to the airport while it continued to rain.  Shortly after arriving, it started to absolutely pour.  And it kept at it for the next couple of hours.  Apparently it’s hurricane season, and even if Barbados doesn’t get many hurricanes, they do get plenty of heavy rain.As you might recall, we are flying American on this trip because Star Alliance (i.e. United et al) have pretty poor service to Barbados.  So we traded for some AA miles to make this happen, and as a result are flying an airline in coach without status for the first time in a long time.  Like good boys and girls, we arrived at the airport exactly 2 hours  before departure, since this is an international flight.  Now, AA flies 3 routes from BGI, namely to MIA, JFK, and SJU (Miami, New York, and San Juan), but they stagger them enough it seems that they only have to deal with one flight at a time.  So when we arrived, the line was just for SJU.  And moreover, the SJU flight is on a regional jet, er, I mean regional prop, which seats about 70, as compared to a 757 seating maybe 180.  Hence, with only 70 people on the plane, one would expect a short line.  Well, the line was short, but it absolutely didn’t move.  We waited 1 hour for about 15 people in front of us to check-in!  Absolutely ridiculous!  The best justification the agent gave was that ‘when flying the “Eagle” [hilariously meaning the American Eagle regional service], they have to weigh every checked bag.’  Uh, ok, that makes sense because weight and balance definitely matter on these, but then again, doesn’t AA weigh every bag anyway so that they can be sure to nickel-and-dime passengers who exceed the 50 lb limit?  I attribute the slowness to ‘island time.’  CW warned me that nothing gets done in a hurry in Barbados, and he ought to know!  But seriously, in the previous week, we really hadn’t experienced this phenomenon.  The dive boat left on time, the public transit was very punctual, the restaurant service was fine, etc.   But not the airport.  At any rate, Amy and I got checked-in quickly when it was our turn.  Maybe 3 minutes, tops, which made us wonder what takes everyone else so long.  Security and immigration was a breeze, and then we made it to the gate area.  BGI has a feel a bit like DEN in that it’s sort of a permanent tent-like structure.  The odd thing is that the gates don’t have departure monitors though, so when flights get delayed, you don’t really notice.  (This might be by design!)   Our departure time, 815AM, came and went without an announcement, so I walked up to ask.  The gate agent said that the pilot had said to ‘hold-off’ for a while due to the deluge still coming down……   ok, that makes sense, but how about an announcement?  Strangely to us, nobody in the gate area seemed to care, or even notice!  In the US, you’d have at least 15 people crowding the podium, worrying about missing connections, etc, but here nobody even noticed that their flight was delayed!  Welcome to the island!  Eventually we did board, which is fun at BGI because they have no jetbridges.  You just walk out to the plane.  This worried me a bit because it was still raining cats and dogs.  Surprisingly, they had giant golf umbrellas, though, and the AA staff was escorting people to the plane!  Wow!  But I wanted to wait back to minimize the time spent on the RJ, er, RP (regional prop?), and it had quit pouring by then.  The only other drama was that security didn’t like me taking a picture of the plane from the tarmac.  In fact, I had to delete it before they would let me board!  Holy cow!  So I can take a picture (which I did!) from inside the gate area, but not from the tarmac?  What’s the difference?  Ah well.  The flight itself was rough.  Lots of moderate chop, maybe light turbulence.  And being in an RJ, I mean RP, didn’t help.  (Ed note: Amy’s tummy = not happy!)  I would bet that a lot of the locals don’t fly much as there were several gasps as we hit air pockets that made it feel like a roller coaster!  The service was pretty poor, in my opinion, especially when they swapped my request for a Sprite into a Diet Sprite without telling me.  United would NEVER do that.  OK, they probably would.   The oddity of this aircraft was that it boarded from the back – so I purposely selected seats in the back to get us off of it quickly.  But that also meant flying in the seriously back of the bus.  Which is near the lav.  Which was good.  (See previous comment about Pepperpots.  Right.)  But strangely, this plane had no sink in the lav!  Just can of handiwipes!  How weird is that?  We then arrived into San Juan.  Upon landing we had the obligatory applause from about a fourth of the cabin, just as we did into Barbados last week.  This never ceases to amaze me.  Was a successful landing *really* in doubt here?  Immigration was easy as most of the plane was foreigners, and although it felt strange, we were Americans entering, uh, the USA.  Never mind the fact that we don’t speak the prevailing language, can’t read the signs, and feel rather out of place.  The fact is that this is OUR Department of Homeland Security, and OUR TSA!  Yea, we felt right at home.  Well, we felt right at home until we left customs and immigration, and then it was back to Latin America……..We elected to rent a car for these few days, mostly because the public transit in San Juan and Puerto Rico isn’t very good (ah yes, back in the USA!) So we picked up the car from ACE rental car, off-airport.  It worked out OK, though it was busy, and hence slow.  Then we drove to the hotel.  I had Pricelined us the Marriott Courtyard in Miramar, as cheap rooms in San Juan are few and far between.  Although the property isn’t in the best part of town, it’s a very nice place.  The put us on the 7th floor with a decent view which was nice.  The downside is that the only parking is valet for $15 per day, but at least it has free internet.Once unpacked, we had a late lunch at Los Pinos down the street, which is a simple Puerto Rican diner / café.  We gathered a few groceries for breakfast (we have a mini-fridge), and then came back for a nap.  A quick walk around the neighborhood and a sub from Subway and we called it a night.  [Ed: A round of applause please for "guest columnist" Travis, who is, um... guest blogging in his... own... blog.  Right.]In summary, we were thoroughly enchanted by our stay in Barbados, especially the warm, friendly, wonderful people, and we were sad to leave this morning.  It's always nice to be back in the grand old US of A, but seeing as how we left an English speaking country this morning and have now arrived in a Spanish-speaking commonwealth, we're feeling the loss of the "comforts of home," no matter which flag is on the Border Protection Agents' shoulders.Tomorrow: Spanish armaments in Old Town!
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