Atomium and Mini-Europe September 30, 2008

When talking about Brussels everyone says “See the Grand Place!” and of course I will because it just doesn’t make sense not to, and plus, how could you miss it?  It’s just… right there!  But if you take the metro north, there are sights I didn’t discover in the guide books.  Sights so fantastic that I feel they cannot be missed, and I am surprised that I have not heard more about them:  the Atomium and Mini-Europe.  Brilliant!

The Atomium is this atom-looking structure made of shiny see-through silver.  You can not only take pretty pictures of it as it lights up at night, but you can go in it!  It’s the Eiffel Tower of Brussels! (in fact, they were going to build an upside down Eiffel Tower, initially)  The Atomium was built in 1958 for the World’s Fair (aren’t all massive, decorative structures built for the World’s Fair?), and it was restored in 2004, so it is nice and shiny once again.  To top that off, THIS is the 50th anniversary!  I am expecting wild celebration around the Giant Atom as well as to have it lit up better than ever.  This is the year to see it.  And while I’m there, how could I miss Mini Europe?  It’s right next door.

Mini Europe is a “park”, and I picture a theme-park without rides, really, more than a city park-like setup.  It is a collection of miniatures of 350 of the most attractive and “representative” buildings in all of Europe, at a scale of 1:25.  How on earth, I ask, could someone miss this?  Not only is this a completely marvelous idea, and if you look at the pictures, the buildings are really detailed and neat looking, but it also would be massive savings on seeing all of Europe!  Not that this would happen, but just think: if you saw the buildings of Vienna, and they didn’t really strike your fancy, and you never reeeeally thought you wanted to see Vienna, anyway, then you can check it off your list.  Brilliant!  Certainly this is a device that would help with ranking cities you wanted to see.  Or take closeup photos of things as if you were there.  Fool your friends!  So many, clever uses!!

It may be snowing, or worse, raining while I am there, but rain or shine, I have big plans to witness these two, unsung world marvels.

Germany September 26, 2008

In November we’re flying to Frankfurt for a week, which is seemingly the cheapest place you can fly to in Europe.  I guess it’s a big airport! We got our tickets out of Baltimore for under $600, and we’re flying through Chicago (which is a little backward!).  The time we have to change planes in Chicago, about an hour, is somewhat disconcerting because of not only baggage, but also what if our first plane is at all delayed (not that that ever happens in Baltimore).  K thinks it will be fine.  She is playing the optimist to my pessimist!

Frankfurt, from what I understand, is not worth visiting as a tourist for very long, so we are hightailing it out of there!  We had the option to hop on a RyanAir or EasyJet flight out of there to Spain (or wherever) for about $40RT, but we decided it would be fun to see southern Germany since neither of us have been.  So we’re going to do a circle around southern Germany by train.  It will definitely include Munich, Straousburg, and Heidelberg, and we’d like to see some Alps, but that is about as far as the planning has gotten!  It will be cold!  There will be plenty of beer consumed.

Planning should have commenced already, but it hasn’t.  There are schedules to make and hotels to book!  Or maybe we will just play it all by ear, arriving with the Rick Steves book and no reservations, and take it from there.  That might be adventurous!

Brussels and Brugge September 23, 2008

This trip is work-related, and my boss said I could go (without taking him along) because Belgium is boring, and I would find that out for myself soon enough.  I don’t buy that Belgium is boring.  Certainly it is far more interesting than Baltimore and San Jose are.  It has museums and Gothic architecture and history and chocolate and beer and a quaint, European feel to it, unlike anything we have here in the US.  As a neither-here-nor-there tidbit, I did attend a War of 1812 reenactment recently, and we were commenting on how Americana that sort of thing was.  It’s nice to be able to experience all sorts of cultural oddities, and I am sure I will find some in Belgium.

I picked up the Rick Steves book last night and did a lot of reading about Brussels and Brugge.  Well, maybe it wasn’t a lot.  The book was shared with Amsterdam which took up half of the ~400 pages.  In the ~200 Belgian pages, though, there seemed to be plenty to do to accomodate my free time out of work.  I’m working M-F and vacationing S/Su, flying out M.  Also, since my stay in Brussels (actually in Leuven, about 15 miles east of Brussels by metro) is pretty much set, I really only have to worry about accomodation in Brugge.  I was going to go to Ieper to see the WWI museum, but it is kind of out of the way, and I think there won’t be time; I really only have the weekend, and there should be enough in Brugge for a weekend with a very brief pass through Gent if possible.

There is a special ticket on the Belgium train system called a VIA ticket.  VIA tickets will get you from point A to B via C for cheaper than buying two separate tickets.  I may stop over in Gent for the morning on my way to Brugge.  Or I may try to hit Gent on the way back to Brussels depending on how busy Brugge is.  This is not a concern and will be very much played by ear.  In Brugge at this time of year (and all over Belgium and Germany) there are the open air Christmas markets.  In Brugge, in particular, I am told there are also ice sculptures.  All of that combined with the cathedrals, museums, architecture, and walking tour should be plenty to do!

This is one trip that I will probably not overplan; it helps that it is a practically free trip and some of it is already planned, for work.  I am going to play it by ear and hit the main sights, but probably just spend time relaxing and absorbing the culture.  My Germany trip, though, will be a different story: there will be a lot of taking trains, and scheduling will have to happen prior to our November departure date.  There should be more about that here soon.

Fall-Winter trips September 19, 2008

I have so much planning to do!  This weekend I am in Atlantic City, NJ, next weekend is SCUBA lessons (for an upcoming trip to the Florida Keys, probably January 09), and these are my biggies (they should each get their own blog soon):

• Oct 10-13: Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA
• Nov 3-11: Wurzburg, Munich, and Heidelberg, Germany and Straousburg, France
• Dec 1-8: Brussels, Brugge, and Ieper, Belgium

I never blogged about Japan, but it was brilliant!  I will share photos and stories at a later date.

Booking Hotels in Japan February 13, 2008

We booked our hotels last night. I’d say all-in-all, we spent 5-6 hours researching hotels and locations before we could pick. We decided, though, that even before we had figured out what we wanted to see in Japan, we needed to book hotels. Because apparently hotels for April book up very quickly. It’s not just that the weather in April is supposed to be fantastic, but starting 29 April is “Golden Week” where everyone in Japan is on vacation for a week (this happens again in October under a different guise). But just like everywhere else, when you get a week off of work for free, why not take a week of vacation time and make it two weeks off! Or a month! So, anyway, April is part of vacation month, and the crowds abound!

The schedule is that we will arrive at Narita around 4pm and we will have to stay one night in Shinagawa at the Prince Hotel (it doesn’t make sense to go to Kyoto that night). Shinagawa is a Shinkensen stop, so we will take the train to Kyoto early the next morning and stay three nights at a hotel in the center of everything. The morning of Kyoto-departure (probably) we will see Nara and catch the train back to Tokyo where we will stay 4 nights in the Shinjuku district.

We really like to save money, but we’re also realistic about what it costs to stay in hotels overseas, especially given that we wanted to stay places central to the subway and action. (my first choice hotel is the one from “Lost in Translation”, but it worked out to about $650/night… Holy Crap!) Most of the time that we spent “researching hotels” was really spent figuring out what district or area to stay in. Wikitravel.org and tripadvisor.com were both helpful in the quest. In Tokyo, it turned out that there are three fun districts (maybe more) where we would have considered staying: The Ginza district (but it seemed like a place business people being wooed and wooing clients stay), the Shibuya district (seemed to have fewer hotels, and better to visit than stay in), and Shinjuku (like the Times Square of Tokyo). Kyoto is small enough that we felt comfortable picking a hotel right smack in the middle of town (on a subway stop, so we don’t have to carry bags far). It’s about a mile from all of the attractions in either direction. But the bus system there is supposed to be great, so it all works out, anyway. So we picked “Good” locations and “mid-range” hotels.

After comparing and recomparing prices of the hotels we liked best, we booked two of the hotels on travelocity and the third on its own website, where their price was better.  Funnily enough, we got a huge discount for staying long-term (3 nights is apparently long-term) in Kyoto.

With the hotels booked, we can move on to the sight-seeing agenda! I was reminded yesterday that while thinking about temples and shrines, do not forget about just walking around experiencing this culture that is so foreign to me. Stopping in stores to wander around and look at stuff and stopping in restaurants to pick up a foreign snack. And certainly do not forget to pick up kitschy Japanese souvenirs! Oh, I certainly will not forget to do THAT!

Experience Tokyo! February 10, 2008

Sumo.  These guys eat a lot of rice.  They have public tournaments around the country multiple times each year.  Unfortunately there will be no tournaments while we are in the country (boooo!).

Kabuki.  This has become kind of a tourist thing, given that the locals don’t go out to Kabuki every weekend.  But it’s a type of traditional Japanese theater, a theater of the masses, rather than of the kings.  The plays are about history, morality, and love.  Men play women because women were outlawed long ago from performing in the theater.  There are performances in the Ginza district of Toky and they come with English-speaking headsets, to explain what is going on.

Harajuku.  Also the name of Gwen Stefani’s backup dancer group,  this is a place in Tokyo where people dress up like anime characters and the cutesy, all-too-modern, breaking-with-the-norm look that Japanese school-aged kids sometimes take on.  Much like the dog statue (waiting for its dead owner to return home for 15 years) elsewhere in town this seems like a popular meeting place for people to see and be seen.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government office building. On the 45th floor of this buildling (Tochomae subway stop) is a free observation deck with a better view than those you have to pay for, and on the 1st floor is a tourist information booth.

Pachinko.  This gambling game was “invented” by a ball baring company that had over-manufactured barings one year and didn’t know what to do with them.  Brilliant!

Tsukiji Fish Market.  This open air fish market is open every morning starting at something like 3am.  If you get there by 5 or 6, though, you’ll be fine.  It’s closed on Sundays and every other Wednesday (or so).  They have all kinds of fresh fish in their original form, including octopus.  I think this will be REALLY, REALLY fun.  And there are no doubt the most-fresh sushi places around right there at your fingertips.  According to National Geographic: “Tsukiji is a fish market in the sense that the Grand Canyon is a ditch…”  Niiiiiice.

And I haven’t even gotten to the temples, gardens, and shrines yet!

Japan Trains February 9, 2008

The Shinkansen is the super fast, bullet train in Japan.  Superman couldn’t catch this thing.  And what’s more, there are a ton of them.  From Tokyo to Kyoto there’s one leaving every 8-10 minutes.  In order to ride it, you have to buy a ticket (of course) which should be easy, but it’s not.  On top of the base fare to get from here to there, there are all sorts of “extras” to choose from: reserved seat, unreserved seat, fewer stops, more stops.  They all have different fees, and the charts are somewhat confusing to a layperson like myself.  Luckily for me, the American, I have one more option: the Japan Rail Pass.

The Japan Rail Pass (JRP) is a 7 or 9 day pass that you can buy to ride almost any train in Japan unlimitedly for its time period.  The catch is that you must, must, must buy this ticket in a country that is not Japan.  Did you catch that?  You have to buy it before you get there from one of their listed travel agents.  Don’t forget or else you’re out of luck.  Once you get to Japan, you can activate the JRP for its specified number of days.  So that you don’t have to worry about activating the card while you’re stressing over finding a train going to your destination, you can even pre-activate it for days in the future, as in “start this 7 day pass in 3 days”.

The JRP costs ~28.000Y and the exchange rate is about $1=106Y as I write this, so an easy estimate is to just divide by 100Y to get $.  As far as I can tell, the JRP is not good for the city subway, but it is good for the train between Tokyo and Narita, which is usually ~3.100Y each way.   The round trip ticket Tokyo-Kyoto is ~27.000Y, so that extra trip to Narita makes it worthwhile.  It’s even more worthwhile if you take a day trip to Nara or Hiroshima from Kyoto (we plan on going to Nara).  But you can’t take the express train, called the Nozomi, on the JRP, so beware.  I think the Nozomi only accounts for a small fraction of the trains, anyway, though.

The Tokyo subway system seems to work a lot like the DC metro system: at the end of your ride, you find out if you’ve paid enough based on where you got on and off.   So even when you can’t find a ticket machine in English before your ride, you can pay the least fare possible and if you paid too little, just fork over the rest as you leave.  I like that system.  Of course, I also like the Boston way of doing things: flat fare all around!  At least that way there’s no fear of getting trapped in the metro station with too little money…

Finally, when traveling between Tokyo and Kyoto, try to get seats J-H on the train for an excellent view of Mt Fuji.  You can get off at the Mt Fuji stop, but I think it’s another 2.5 hours to the mountain, itself, and then another day to climb.  Most of the climbing is above the tree-line, leaving you with boring old rock, so perhaps seeing the mountain from a distance is really for the best, anyway.  If climbing is your thing, though, they say the sunrise is the best part, so an overnighter would be required.

Learning Japanese Tradition February 8, 2008

I’ve learned a lot in the past four days about Japan and its customs and traditions. These traditions are in place to make society a better place to live, and for the most part I agree with them, though I am certainly not used to them. I will go through some of the ones I find more interesting here, granted they’re only interesting to me because of the strange culture in which *I* live — the US!

Shoes. Of course we all have heard that you do not wear your shoes in a Japanese house or restaurant (or perhaps any establishment?). But what I didn’t know is that they provide communal slippers in many places, restaurants especially, so that you aren’t wandering around sock footed. Part of the reason for not wearing shoes indoors is because if you’re sitting on the floor, you wouldn’t want to sit in a muddy/grassy/wet/dirty footprint, right? So there are communal slippers. And you put them on at the door and leave your shoes. If you do end up sitting on the floor, like in a restaurant, you take off the slippers and place them beside you. Put them back on when you get up! And if you go to the restroom (the toilet!) you will be putting on special toilet slippers, leaving the room slippers outside. Do not wear the toilet slippers out of the toilet. This is a major faux pas, almost as bad as…

Nose blowing in public. Is a no-no. A major no-no. Sniff all you want, but God help the person who blows his nose in public! I actually like this because there are too many people who are just not polite when they blow their nose.

Bath. The toilet is not located in the same room with the bath tub because this would be gross. I can get on board with this; it’s even appearing in more and more American homes. Cool. Taking a bath, however, is very different than I am used to. You sit on the side of the tub, on a chair, perhaps, and soap yourself down and wash all of the soap off. You’re clean (although I don’t see how you’re clean, really, without a full, long shower). Now that you’re clean and have rinsed all the soap, you can get into the warm tub water and soak. It is soothing. You get out and dry off. The next person (usually a family member) will do the same, using the same bath water once he is clean, too. I think this is originally to save money on heat or water, but you were clean when you got into the tub, so it is presumably still clean water. Maybe not quite as warm any more.

Ryokan. A ryokan is like a hotel, except that it’s more like a B&B, and to get into the nicer ones (which aren’t necessarily more expensive) you need an invitation or introduction by a Japanese person familiar with the establishment. When you arrive, the hostess serves you tea. In the morning you are awoken (around 8, I believe) by the hostess, who serves you breakfast. In the evening, after dinner, the hostess rolls out your futon for sleeping. It’s very traditional. And unless you stay in a ryokan with a private bath, your hostess will schedule your bath time (keeping in mind the toilet is separate from the bath). But keeping in mind what I have said about the bath, above, you will be sharing the bath water with other guests (who you do not know and who may not be Japanese or understand Japanese tradition as well as you do). You should rinse all soap before entering the tub, but to me, you’re still sharing bath water with strangers. There’s something weird about that to me, no matter the “cleanliness” of the person preceeding you. It’s like a pool, except it’s not chlorinated, and what if the person failed to get clean… you can construe all sorts of other issues to go along with this, too!

I have learned so many other Japanese facts, a lot of how-to’s, in the past few days, and I will share more soon. They include things like: how to use the train, (re)filling your companion’s drink, eating at a sushi bar, attending sumo and kabuki, seeing Harajuku, buying electronics,… Look forward to these!

Japan February 6, 2008

We took Japanese last Spring at the community college’s night classes.  We took it because I insisted that I needed to know how in the world those characters made any sense and how the heck this language worked.  It really didn’t have a lot to do with Japan at the time, although I did find the culture very interesting and fun to learn, too.  Also, I just adore Japanese food.  Adore it!

Who would have thought, then, that our trip to Europe in 2008 would be replaced by a trip to Japan.  Not I!  Maybe a trip to Brazil, but Japan?  I had not considered it.  But Numero Uno’s job has agreed to send him to Misawa, Japan, on business for a week.  Rather than sit around moping and wondering why my job won’t send me to Japan (although I admittedly did some of this, too), I booked myself a ticket, too.  We are spending a week in Tokyo and Kyoto in April (when the cherry blossoms are out, I hear) before Numero Uno goes north to Misawa and I return stateside.

I did some research into going to Misawa, too, but there were a few drawbacks that would have made it way less than “Lost in Translation”, and I would not hear of that!  The biggest drawback was that I would have had to rent a (probably stick-shift) car (driving on the left, which is a proven skill of mine now) with an international driver’s license to see much of anything, given that the north of Japan is more spread out.  Though I could have taken a train to place X or Y, it would have been hard to get to the sights at place X or Y sans car, and especially as a day trip.  Or maybe it’s not hard, but it looked hard to me, anyway.  So I am bowing out of that.  Numero Uno will hop on a plane at Haneda while I am hopping on one at Narita.  Then he will come home a week later.

Now that we have settled on a destination, we have to brush up our Japanese skills (murasaki sukiyaki = purple noodles) and alphabet (Hiragana is better than nothing!) and decide where we’re staying and what we’re seeing.  Right now I know there are historic things to see, temples, museums, gardens…  but all I can think of is the giant, early morning fish market in Tokyo that Anthony Bourdain talks so much about.  I have big plans to get up early to see it and to then eat my weight in sushi and sashimi by week’s end.

Where the Sidewalk Ends January 27, 2008

If there were an “end of the world”, as in “where the sidewalk ends”, would it be a popular tourist destination? And if so, how popular? Disneyland popular? This was a question posed by a small group of people sitting near us when we were out to dinner the other night. They were arguing adamently about it for a very, very long time: yes it would be a tourist destination, but how could you fit that many people at a point at the end of the world; how much would one charge given that it would probably be popular; what kind of souvenirs could one sell; is there upkeep involved, does the edge of the world erode periodically into nothingness; would one need mega-insurance to handle someone falling over the edge (presumably into abyss)…

While I am sure that the space at the end of the world would be a popular destination among a very large set of people, I’m not sure I would ever travel there unless they assured me it was safe in the same way that, say, Niagara Falls is safe: it’s unlikely that I would tumble over the Falls, but there they are, anyway. I’m also not sure what there would be to “see” at the edge of the world? What *does* abyss look like? Are there trees and “nature”, or is it just dirt? Might there be an actual sidewalk, a la Shel Silverstein? Oh, it’s all so philisophical! (I might say “deeply philosophical”, but then you’d know I was lying.)

“The end of the world as a popular tourist destination” … a topic that I think should be addressed more frequently in highschool and college debate. You have 30 seconds… GO!