St. Augustine, Pt. 2

When I said last time that I'd update "early next week", I obviously meant late the following week!

The rest of the trip to Florida was fantastic, with further visits to the beach, a climb to the top of the lighthouse, a horse and carriage tour of the city, and a great afternoon at the alligator farm.

Two of the highlights for all of us were the day we rented scooters and a visit to NASA's Kennedy Space Center. For those of you who don't know, we used to own a scooter in Barcelona and still miss zipping around on such a fun mode of transport. So, we couldn't pass up the chance to relive the experience and take a look around St. Augustine with the wind in our hair!

Kennedy Space Center (that's how they spell it, rightly or wrongly!) was an amazing day. There was so much to see that if we'd gone earlier in the trip, we'd probably have returned for another visit (the tickets are valid for two entries). We took a flight simulator to experience shuttle take-off on a moon mission; we were able to climb aboard 'Explorer', a full-size replica of the shuttle; we took a tour of cape canaveral, stopping at the Apollo center which houses the last Saturn V rocket built (but never used) for a moon mission. All of this fueled an interest in becoming an astronaut for Rich. Patrick wants to be one of the mission control guys (space travel sounds a bit risky). We also saw an amazing IMAX movie chronicling the discoveries of the Hubble telescope and the spacewalks needed to maintain it. Fascinating stuff.

St. Augustine, Florida

I’m happy to turn this space back into a travel blog for a little while. We’re all in Florida this week and next for a spring break vacation. First, a short medical update...

I should have had the third round of chemotherapy last week but my blood results showed that the platelets hadn’t recovered enough from the last round. Ordinarily the oncologist would have delayed it by a week or so, but as we were coming away for this break she has delayed this round until the day before we come home (Thursday 24th). There is also another issue with the scar from the surgery. It seems to have developed some sort of infection which the surgeon believes could be due to some necrosis of the skull. If that’s the case then he wants to operate and remove the piece of skull and reconstruct it later (sounds like fun!). Our hope is that it’s just an infection that will clear up of its own accord or with the help of the antibiotics I’m already taking. Apart from that, I’m feeling great and gradually looking more like I did pre-September (more hair, less portly!).

So, on to more important stuff... 

I write this from the comfort of a beautiful home in St. Augustine to which our next door neighbours very generously invited us to stay. St. Augustine is a quaint, European-style city on the Atlantic coast of Florida. It’s also the oldest city in the United States, settled by the Spanish in 1565 and still has homes dating back to the early 1800s plus a castle built in the 1600s. One of the things that Anna and I really love about Europe is being able to walk around a town centre - St Augustine and its cobbled streets are perfect for that too!


So far we’ve explored the city, spent an afternoon at the beach, visited the castle, and had lots of reading and relaxation time. In the next few days we’re hoping to get to an alligator farm, Kennedy Space Center, and go for a spin on scooters. I’ll try and update again early next week.

Here’s a shot of the boys enjoying the back yard in shorts and t-shirts.

I’ll sign off with Richard’s take on the trip so far....”this is the awesomest vacation ever!”.

Sydney & Wagga Wagga

Wow. What an amazing trip. Of all the places I’ve been so far, this has gone straight to number one on the list of where I’d love to bring Anna and the boys. This trip wasn’t as much of a cultural shock as Nicaragua or India (although putting beetroot on a burger was certainly different), but it was a rich experience all the same. Sydney pretty much ticks all the boxes in terms of a great city – architecture, bars and restaurants, beaches, shopping. I’m going to stop there as I’m starting to sound like a travel agent.

We arrived in Sydney two weeks ago at around 7am Saturday morning and feeling like 4pm the day before! So, the best way to fight jet-lag is to go for a long walk. Here’s what we saw…

The William Bligh (of Bounty fame) monument.

I love a good people photograph and this guy sitting outside the Irish pub was irresistible.

We jumped on a ferry to Manly (great name for a town) and got this shot of the Opera House. It truly is an amazing building.

Manly is a pleasant beach town about 30 mins across the harbour from Sydney. I foolishly started the day in jeans and boots thinking that it’s autumn so it’ll be cold outside. A quick visit to a surfer dude shop in Manly and I was all set for the beach.

The following weekend we had pretty much a full day at Bondi Beach, which is more of a bohemian surf community than just a beach. The beach itself is gorgeous – a long crescent with cliffs at both ends and fine, golden sand. The highlight for me was the waves – they were between 6 and 8 feet high and I learned how to body surf by watching the locals: swim as fast as possible when a big one approaches and it just picks you up for a ride if you time it right. What a blast. It did flip me over a couple of times, but it’s a fairly soft landing!

Here’s a picture of Flat Stanley hanging out with the very friendly ladies from Bondi Surf Rescue.

Last Sunday morning I walked alone through ‘The Rocks’, an area of rugged cliffs now turned into a marketplace which leads to the Harbour Bridge. After some boomerang hunting (looking for boomerangs for the boys, not hunting kangaroos or anything), I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art and was unexpectedly blown away, especially by the aboriginal art. At first it looks like thousands of randomly placed dots, but a friendly art gallery assistant later explained that each painting has a story behind it, normally related to the Dreaming – the indigenous Australians belief system. Fascinating stuff.

Other memorable moments of this trip…

• Going to see the Sydney Symphony Orchestra last weekend – I couldn’t quite believe that I was sitting inside the Sydney Opera House. What a treat.
• Bumping into a Rubik’s cube pub crawl in Wagga – some newly-graduated local students were out on the town in various items of clothing in primary colours and the idea is that they swapped clothes throughout the evening and had to end the night all in one colour. Sounds like a fun night out to me!
• Wandering around Paddington – an eclectic area of Victorian terraces and offbeat shops.
• Playing rhythm sticks along with the didgeridoo guy on Darling Harbour.

As beautiful as Australia is, it wouldn’t be the same with the Aussies – laid-back, warm, and fun-loving people. They like a beer, they like their sport, and they can give and take the stick as well as anyone I’ve met. A fun couple of weeks – I hope I’ll be back.

I’ll finish with my favourite photograph of Wagga (taken about five minutes after chasing Kangaroos in a 4x4)…

Stanley and the security guard

So, word on the street is that I write a better blog than Mr. Barry – haha! I’ve left him crying in the corner and I have the laptop again. :-)

We drove five hours on Friday night from Delhi to Agra and stayed at the best hotel of my life, the Jaypee Palace (picture of me below in the comfy bed). The drive there was interesting to say the least. Long stretches of the road are two lanes (often with four lanes of traffic!) and you have to pull out into oncoming traffic to pass the tractors and slow-moving trucks – my nerves were shot!

On Saturday morning, we drove out to the Taj Mahal, only a mile or two from the hotel. We had a short walk to reach the entrance to the grounds, with monkeys roaming freely on the path beside us. We bought the tickets and the little white shoe covers that you have to wear inside the mausoleum, and headed for the entrance. As we went through the security scanner, the guard stopped Mr. Barry and said that he couldn’t take me in, as I was a toy.

A TOY?! A TOY?! I have feelings you know! And, more than that, I have a blog following bigger than Mr. Barry’s!

He argued a little to get me in, but the guard had a gun and he didn’t want to push it too far. So, I hung out in a nearby craft shop while the rest of the group went inside. I’ve never seen Mr. Barry so angry.

He told me later that the Taj Mahal was spectacular. It was built by the Mughal Emporer Shah Jahan, as a symbol of love for his wife, Mumtaj, after she died. It's constructed entirely from Marble, which was brought to the site by elephants from the North West of India. It took 22 years and 20,000 workers to build the Taj and the surrounding buildings. The highlight for him was the intricate pattern of gemstones that were set into the marble on the inside of the tomb. The stones (turqoise, jade, sapphire etc.) were brought from all corners of Asia to complete the design. One of them, Carnelian, is translucent and glows like it's on fire when light hits it a certain way.

Mr. Barry, pretending to be happy, but missing me really.

Next was a short rickshaw ride and then on to Agra Fort, which looks across to the Taj...

Here you can see me with the Taj Mahal in the background. Actually, this is an amazing way to see it from a different perspective, as the land around is fairly flat and the majesty of the building stands out on the horizon. (Also, it’s also the only way to see the Taj if you’re a little on the…erm…flat and colourful side!)


Here are some other pictures of people and places in India…

India Gate, Delhi

Buying peanuts on the road to Agra

The doorman of the Jaypee Palace Hotel

 
 











Gemstones inside the Taj Mahal

Until next time
Stanley

Flat Stanley's Indian Adventure

We have a guest blogger this week...Flat Stanley...a happy little character created and coloured in by Patrick at school. The idea is that he is sent to friends/family in different places and returned to Patrick with a photograph of where he's been. Take it away Stan...

Here's me outside Qutb Minar, the oldest monument in Delhi. What you can see is just the minaret, but it was surrounded by Hindu temples and ruins, all built in the 12th and 13th centuries. Very impressive.

Mr. Barry (that's what they call him in the hotel - he thinks he's a big shot now!), his friends and me had a driver for the whole day on Sunday and he took us on a whirlwind tour of Delhi. After Qutb Minar, we made a brief stop at a craft shop, where the guy explained how they make Kashmir rugs (fascinating - it can take up to nine months to make a single rug) and then failed miserably trying to sell them to us (have you ever tried selling stuff to a 10", orange, laminated guy?).

Next stop...Humayun's Tomb, a beautiful, red sandstone building which houses the tomb of, you guessed it, Humayun. He was a Mughal Emperor who ruled India, and what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, in the 16th century. The building and gardens are said to have inspired some elements of the Taj Mahal. (Ooh, get me - I can read wikipedia, just like Mr. Barry!)

Here's me on top of the ruins nearby the tomb. Mr. Barry was trying to look cool, like me, but actually he was a bit scared.

Part of the fun of the drive around Delhi was just watching life on the streets...the rickhaws and auto-rickshaws (which can carry more people than you'd think possible), motorbikes carrying the whole family, cows ambling among the crazy traffic, and my favourite...elephants...

Funniest moment of the trip so far...tonight we went for dinner in a nearby hotel...Mr. Barry asked where the restaurant was and they didn't understand his poor English...they sent him to the restroom. (I laughed my little, purple ass off!)
Namaste
Stan

New Orleans

(or N'awlins as the locals call it. I love that.)

Just had a couple of days in Louisiana, visiting a salt mine, which was very cool. Before my flight home I had a few hours in New Orleans, which has a vibe unlike any other city I've been to. A friend told me that, if I only had a couple of hours, I should head straight for the French Quarter. I did and wasn't disappointed. First stop was Cafe du Monde which is famous for its coffee and beignets, a French doughnut with a liberal covering of powdered sugar. Delicious!

(This is not Cafe du Monde, just a guy enjoying a beer with his dog!)

The first thing I noticed about walking around the French Quarter was the music...it seems to come out of every pore of the city. You can't help but walk along with a spring in your step!
What else makes it great?...the street artists, psychics, funky restaurants, great bookshops and at least one house of voodoo. This is a definite candidate for the 'places to return to with Anna' -list (not because I think she's into voodoo, of course!).

Bourbon Street is a little tacky, but it was still good interesting to walk down it. It was there that I discovered zydeco - a Louisiana music style based on an accordion and washboard. A friend told me I should try and listen to it live and I confess that I wasn't too excited about that combination of instruments. However, I stumbled across a bar with a live band on and the modern, rock/funk take on zydeco was terrific. (It was very amusing watching the guy with the washboard, looking ridiculous, freak out like a lead guitarist.)

I didn't see any evidence of Hurricane Katrina. I guess they made sure that the tourist spots were cleaned up pretty quickly, rightly or wrongly. I would love go back for a weekend though and explore a little further afield.

Nicaragua

So, here are a few notes about Nicaragua that I've just got around to posting. In short, it’s one of the most beautiful, interesting and saddening countries that I’ve been too.

The drive from the airport to the hotel was a feast for the eyes, but not always for all the right reasons. There are too many shanty houses, too many children without shoes and too many people selling all kinds of junk on the roadside just to get by.

I read that 68% of the people in Nicaragua live on less than $1 per day so I found it pretty difficult to drive past many of them every day on the way to our four star hotel. It’s hard to write this stuff without sounding like Bob Geldof, but I do feel like I want to do more to help.

The Sunday after we arrived a couple of us took a tour around Managua and Lake Nicaragua. First stop was the Masaya Volcano, which is dormant but still has a constant cloud of sulphur dioxide over it (very cool). I climbed the steps up to the nearby cross at the top of the crater and I could really feel the smoke on my lungs. Denis, our driver, told us that the cross was put up to commemorate the first Spanish priests who discovered the volcano and thought it was the entrance to hell. Apparently one of them decided to ‘save humanity’ by sacrificing himself to the volcano. That worked!

After the volcano, we drove to Granada, another colonial town on the shore of Lake Nicaragua. The locals told us that, during Spanish rule, it was the most important city in Central America. Isn’t that what they told us about La Antigua Guatemala? Well, I guess it says something about national pride.

We only had a short time in the city but it was enough to see the central square, buzzing with traders and food stalls and surrounded by colourful colonial buildings. The presidential palace and cathedral (below) were particular highlights.

Later, we took a small motor boat trip around Las Isletas de Granada, an archipelago of 365 volcanic islands a few miles from Granada; one for every day of the year. It was a perfectly tranquil hour spent slowly cruising between the islands. Many of them have holiday homes on them (some of which are for sale, for anyone with a spare half a million) and one of them has a small colony of monkeys living on it. As we cruised along, I tested the lake water with my hand and it was the perfect temperature for a swim. I ditched that idea as soon as the boat owner told us that Lake Nicaragua contains the world’s only freshwater sharks!

There was a lot more to see and do but, as it was a work trip, we didn’t have time. I could easily see how you could spend a very pleasant couple of weeks in Nicaragua though. The locals told us that it has more natural beauty than its richer neighbour, Costa Rica, and I could believe it. I guess I’ll just have to find a reason to go to Costa Rica to prove the theory!

An airport security breach

Going through security in Guatemala, my rucksack caused the lady monitoring the x-ray machine to shout for a bag search. I was puzzled. I was pretty sure there were no guns, drugs or illegal immigrants in there. Anyway, to cut a long bag search short, she found a pair of tweezers that must have been at least two inches long, maybe more, and confiscated them.

What was I going to do…threaten to pluck the pilot’s monobrow unless he let me fly the plane? Or perhaps I was going to hold up the passengers… “I want all your purses, wallets and watches or somebody gets nipped!”

Well, it’s all part of the fun of travel I suppose. (There was no need for her to wag her finger though!)

La Antigua, Guatemala

So eventually we did get to La Antigua Guatemala and it was absolutely stunning. A couple of the local team offered to take us to dinner with another colleague from Honduras. After a 40 minute drive from Guatemala City we arrived at the Santo Domingo convent, inaugurated in 1530, and now a unique hotel and restaurant. Before dinner we went for a short walk through the candle-lit grounds of the convent (below) which, although in ruins, were impressive all the same.

The guidebook I bought at the airport tells me that La Antigua Guatemala was the first planned capital on the American continent and remained the most important city in Central America for the next 200 years. In 1773 a series of earthquakes which lasted months left the city in ruins and in 1776 the Spanish Crown decided that Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción (now Guatemala City) would be the new capital. La Antigua is now a tourist destination with lots of cafes and restaurants but still has many of the beautiful colonial buildings. It’s a gorgeous city and has now been added to the ever-growing ‘places to visit with Anna’ list.

The next day flight to Nicaragua was spectacular as the plane wasn’t flying too high and we were able to see some of the volcanoes that form part of the ring of fire.
More on volcanoes later.

Initial impressions - Guatemala

I don't think I'm going to see as much of Guatemala as I'd like to, as we only have one week on this project and on Saturday we'll fly to Nicaragua. It's a hard life, I know!
It's a pity though, as I'd love to see Antigua Guatemala or some of the Mayan ruins around here.
Even though I'm only going from the hotel to the plant and back and out to the local restaurants, I'm still enjoying being somewhere so different. Last night we went for dinner with one of the locals and enjoyed lots of discussion about cultural differences. (I'm on this project with two Brazilians.) I mentioned that I thought the Central Americans were generally very open, friendly and helpful. Our colleague said that this was probably true for most Central Americans except Costa Ricans - the common perception is that they think they're superior. I heard an interesting perspective on the UK too...that average salaries are the highest in Europe but the quality of life is one of the lowest. I'm not sure how true that is. What do you think?
I'm really enjoying the food here - lots of fresh guacamole, refried beans and meat dishes. And, like the Hungarians, they like to start a meal with soup - perfect! Maybe I'll set myself a new goal....to discover the world's best soup!
One thing that has really struck me, as it did in Mexico and Honduras, is the terrible traffic and the subsequent pollution. It seems that these major cities are so over-populated but still many people have cars and many more ride the bus. The trouble is that the cars are generally older and poorly maintained, creating a lot of noxious fumes, and the buses (yellow school buses imported from the US) are 20-30 years old and equally polluting. The roads are completely jammed during rush hours and the government probably doesn't have the funds to improve the infrastructure.

For me, it's a real pity as all three of these countries are really beautiful (as I'm sure are countless more with the same problem). The cities are often surrounded by mountains, rain forests and lakes. I read somewhere that Guatemala has around 15 different eco-systems - swamps, mangrove forests, lagoons, ocean front etc. From just outside the plant we can see the Pacaya Volcano - it's beautiful and dominates the skyline.
I suppose that until these countries are better developed economically (difficult with corrupt governments etc.), protecting the environment isn't too high on the priority list. I think that the people, some of the warmest I've met on my travels, deserve better and I wonder what we can do.
Hmm...heavy stuff...I promise to end the next post on a more upbeat note. Hasta luego!

Berekfürdő and Budapest, Hungary

Wow! What a contrast. From a rural village of 1000 people to the so called ‘Pearl of the Danube’, I couldn’t have found two more extreme views of Hungary.

Berekfürdő seems to be a popular destination for Hungarian tourists, attracted by the series of thermal pools in the area. Apart from that, it’s a quiet village of modest bungalows along with a small store and a couple of bars. I went for a run one evening and couldn’t help noticing that many of the houses were painted in bright colours. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it looked like these fenced-in, uniform bungalows had been built during the communist era and the only way to cheer up this austere village after ’89 was to paint the houses in varying shades of yellow, peach and lime green.

The other thing I noticed was how quiet the place was. There were no neighbours talking across the fences, no youths on the street corners, nobody cutting the grass. It all seemed very bleak. On reflection, I think it was all a front…actually, everyone was inside drinking absinthe and playing strip poker.

As I suspected, the language barrier was pretty big, although it did give me two nights to play Hungarian menu lottery in the hotel restaurant. It’s amazing what great food can appear from stabbing hopefully at the menu and smiling sweetly. I’m now very much a fan of Hungarian food and I’ve promised Anna that I’ll cook something Hungarian when I get home. The soups are fantastic. Every meal starts with soup and in the six or seven meals I had while I was there, I never had the same soup twice.

I flew to Budapest on Friday evening and went straight out for a five hour wander around the city. Although a few people had told me what a great city it was, I was still unprepared for the sheer number of incredible buildings and the quiet beauty of the Danube and it’s bridges.

I started to look for a place to eat and, working on the theory that you have to be at least fifteen minutes walk from the main drag to get decent local food, I headed away from the centre. Going down some side streets that reminded me of the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, I found a suitable-looking restaurant with an interesting menu. Any place that offers gizzard stew has to be worth a try, right? The soup, again, was a highlight – wild boar soup with myrtle. I’ve no idea what myrtle is but it tasted great.

As I walked off dinner, I stumbled across the stunning St. Stephen’s Basilica (below) and decided to come back the next day to see inside. On Saturday I returned and enjoyed fantastic views of the city from the top of the basilica. Probably the strangest sight I’ve seen on this trip was the mummified hand of Stephen, the first King of Hungary (975-1038), which is kept in a special shrine in the chapel and revered by the Hungarian people. Nice!

There’s so much more to say about Budapest but I’ve rambled on long enough and you probably need to sleep. I will just wrap it up with my favourite moment from Saturday’s daytime meander through the city. I came across a five-piece Hungarian folk band playing in one of the streets and a small group of ladies dancing what I presumed to be a typical folk dance. It was all going swimmingly until an American tourist (bum-bag – dead giveaway!) decided he was up to the task and broke into their circle. Top marks to the guy for effort but he couldn’t have got the steps more wrong. The pained expressions on the other dancers’ faces were priceless!

Ps. Hungarian trivia – the Rubik’s cube, invented by a Hungarian professor, has approximately 43 quintillion permutations. If you put each of them on a cube and lined them up end-to-end they would stretch for 261 light years.

Sibiu, Romania

Walking out onto one of the most beautiful plazas in Europe, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of this place. When I arranged to visit one of our facilities, a little north of Bucharest, I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to see the capital and imagined Sibiu as some small, rural town in the middle of nowhere. How wrong I was.

When I finished work on Monday night, I headed towards the centre of town and I could just feel the history as I walked through the city…cobbled streets, gothic doorways and medieval passageways. It was stunning. My first stop was a good book shop so that I could learn a little more about the place.

Sibiu was founded during the Saxon colonisation of Transylvania in the 12th century and became an important German settlement during the next couple of centuries. Massive fortifications and gates were built in the 13th-16th centuries, much of which can still be seen. Viennese Baroque style was added after Transylvania became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1699. Much of the city was given a facelift when Sibiu was selected as European Capital of Culture in 2007.

I loved walking around the imaginatively-named Large Square (below) with its pastel-coloured buildings, street-side cafes and kids playing in the fountain. From Large Square I continued down into Small Square which is broken up by a curving passageway and has the oldest cast iron bridge in Romania, the Bridge of Lies. Legend has it that it will collapse on the spot if you tell a lie. More beautiful buildings surround this square and it was here that I noticed the ‘eyes of the city’: small eye-like windows in the roofs of the tradesmen’s houses, apparently popular with Saxons.

I didn’t have time to explore the lower part of the city, leading down to the river, or to go inside the cathedral or climb the Town Council Tower. I’d like to get back here one day, hopefully with Anna, and soak up this ancient city for a while longer.

Last night I was taken by a Hungarian (so tempting to just leave that sentence hanging) to a traditional Romanian restaurant for a great meal of soup, grilled pork & polenta, doughnuts and plenty of Romanian red wine. It doesn’t sound that special but it tasted great and the restaurant was situated in an arched basement and filled with locals. It was fab. Lesson learned…always go to dinner with someone who knows the town.

Tonight I find myself in the small Hungarian village of Berekfürdő, two hours west of Budapest. The hotel is near Tisza Lake and has a thermal bath which Csaba, my new Hungarian friend, told me I had to try. It just looked like murky water to me, but I gave it a go in the belief that the minerals will do wonders for my…er…condition.

I haven’t found anyone at the hotel who speaks English and my Hungarian only kicks in after three whiskeys so I think it’s going to be a fun few days.