A List of Places March 5, 2008

Because I think about travel every day and I believe I will be traveling more and more in the near future, I have listed places that I would really, really like to go. Besides Japan, we will hopefully be going to at least two of the places on this list this year (and probably just two):

1. Russia (St Pete, Moscow; this is likely, Aug/Sep timeframe)
2. Egypt (Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simel; this is my place-of-the-day, all the ancient things!)
3. Athens/Delos/more of Greece (Ruins! Ancient things!)
4. Spain (all of it, every last inch)
5. Costa Rica (Monteverde, especially)
6. Paris/Brussels (I have listed duos in a single trip sometimes)
7. South Africa (will hold off until we can do an entire safari)
8. Hawaii (this is a more recent fascination for me)
9. Turkey/Romania (do these even go together?)
10. Germany/Switzerland (maybe I shouldn’t be lumping things together)
11. Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paolo (Samantha Brown has me interested in lots of South America, tho)
12. Crater Lake, Oregon (GJ suggested this as an outing)
13. Lisbon
14. Morocco

A few of these are what you might call “big ticket items”, because the expense is such that you have to not only pay for the ticket but take a bunch of time off of work to make that ticket “worthwhile”. Russia is one of those places. Most likely we will hit numbers 1 and 12 on the list with a hopeful (fingers crossed) 4 or 10 additionally. Then next year I hope my big trip is to 2, and by the following year we’ll hopefully be ready for 7. I will continue to save my nickels, dimes, and vacation days in eager anticipation!

Traveling without Reggie February 29, 2008

Those of you who have pets (and even some of you without) understand that finding someone to take care of your pet while you’re away can be (a) challenging (b) difficult (c) a pain (d) expensive (e) a nightmare.  If you have a dog or cat, it may be as easy as boarding them at an overnight kennel club, but again see: (d) expensive.  I associate the cost of pet care most closely with the cost of parking my car at the airport: it’s something that I have to pay for locally (rather than while I am vacationing), and can sometimes be avoided.  But avoided at what cost?

I have an African Grey, Reggie.  He’s smart and fun and clever and a real treat to have around (most of the time).  He laughs when I laugh, he plays with me, and he’s a real joker.  As an example, when I bought him his first kladder, a wooden toy that is a bunch of ladder rungs strung together that hangs from the top of his cage, he took a month to chew the rungs to bits from the bottom up, leaving the top rung only on which he began to swing upside down from.  So I bought him another kladder and replaced the one remaining rung.  He immediately chewed the second rung from the top and let the whole thing fall to the floor so that he could swing upside down as he had been before.  I hadn’t yet learned, so I bought him another, and he did the same thing.  He clearly wanted his upsidedown swing, and I was not going to foil his efforts.  Clever bird.

Aside from many, many other advantages I attribute to Reggie, having a parrot has a clear advantage over having a dog or a cat: I can leave him alone for up to 5 days.  “Five days!  That is cruel!”, you say.  “I am a vet,” you say, “and I do not endorse that!”.  Well, given that I don’t do it but maybe once a year and that two of those days are usually half-day-travel-days and that I can leave him enough food for three weeks, easily, that he won’t eat all of, and that this has been successful with every parrot we’ve ever had, I don’t feel so bad.  But five is my threshold.  Give me a six day trip, and suddenly I have images of poor Reggie being friendless, lonely, and probably initiating some bad habits while I’m away (i.e. feather plucking).  So I have to find him a friend.

In finding Reggie a friend, I have to consider that most people don’t know anything about birds.  And that most people don’t board birds the way they board cats and dogs.  Most importantly, though, I also have to consider the old saying “people don’t like taking care of other people’s pets while they’re on vacation”.  Well, okay, it may not be an old saying, but it’s a true statement nevertheless.  Luckily, I don’t have to do this very often (see: the controversial “leaving for up to 5 days”, above).  Since I don’t want to transport all of Reggie’s belongings to someone else’s house, I have to find someone who is willing to visit him daily, to feed and water him, and maybe talk on their phone for a while because he likes people talking on the phone.

I try to find friends within a few miles, but I quickly run out of friends that way.  So then, since I live close to work, I try to find work friends to stop by on their way home.  But they hate that, too.  It’s never convenient to break your daily routine to take care of someone else’s pet (see: “old saying”, above), no matter how many goodies you bring back for them.  I have been lucky enough to find a Reggie-sitter in the past, but I am looking to this Japan trip and wondering “who can I get a favor from this time?”  Poor Reg probably won’t get his tickles or head scritches for a week, but at least he might get some cellphone action.  Stay tuned to find out who accepts the favor!

Tomorrow I will talk about traveling with Reggie, a totally different experience, painful and interesting in many ways.

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!

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.

Beyond… to Switzerland January 3, 2008

I think we might go to Switzerland in lieu of Russia this year. Numero Uno likes the outdoors, and while I am an indoors-person to the bitter-end, I figure there must be something special about walking in the Alps. It’s like an outdoor museum, I think, and I like museums! The compromise is that hikes won’t be ridiculous uphill battles (I hear there are trams to take you up a lot of the way where you can then just walk up and down over meandering peaks) and that there will be no day-long or overnight hikes — I want to be back in “civilization” long before dark.

I’ve never thought much before about wanting to see Switzerland, but now that I think about it, it has been placed on the list of places I would like to see (luckily for this trip, I think). However, since it has never been in the Top Ten, I think we will fly open jawed into another city prior to visiting Switzerland and then out of Zurich. It looks like it might be a ten day trip, which means four days in one place, six in the other (or something similar). I was thinking of six days in Switzerland, specifically and four in one of Paris, Milan, Venice, or Frankfurt (Frankfurt because it’s a really cheap flight from the US right now). Each are between 3 and 5 hours by train from Zurich, closer and further from other places in Switzerland. There are a few places in Switzerland that have been recommended to me, besides the larger cities of Bern, Zurich, etc. Oeschinensee, Murren, and Kandersteg come to mind first; Kandersteg is in Interloken which is where my friend Boris used to vacation, so it can’t be all bad! Boris is not outdoorsy. Lakes, mountains, trams… everything one could ask for in Switzerland.

I have also heard that the train/bus system around Switzerland is quite excellent and complete, so there would be no need to rent a car: a plus! And even though Switzerland is rumoured to be one of the more expensive European nations to visit, it can’t be more expensive than a trip to Russia would end up! (Or can it!?) Tonight should begin the planning phase, although surely real planning won’t begin for at least two weeks. We’re like that.

Russia? Or beyond? January 2, 2008

I have for a while been considering a trip to Russia for the springtime.  I was going to go in the winter, when tickets and lodging are cheap, to experience the “true” Russia — freezing cold temperatures of 17degF below, snow all over the ground and buildlings, warm fur outerwear, people huddling together as they walk… but then I was reminded of what a wimp I am in the cold.  I would love to see it and experience it, but when I want to get out of it… well, it would probably still be there hampering my “tourist” experience.  So, the springtime, it is!

The flight would go into Moscow where we would stay for probably 3 days to see the museums, cathedrals, subway, and get a short handle on the culture.  Then we would travel to St Petersburg where we would stay about 6 days.  There are all kinds of historic museums, palaces, cathedrals, and shiny, gold things to see, from my understanding.  And there’s vodka.  I was told that, not knowing the language, it would be best to get a driver/escort to show us around, translate for us, and keep us from overpaying due to the language barrier.  An escort makes the trip seem less spontaneous somehow, and a Visa is kind of a pain, but I can handle that.  I just really, really want to see a part of Russia.

But then I keep thinking of how I haven’t really seen much even of Europe.  And maybe it would be an easier (and cheaper) trip to go to Hungary or Germany or Belgium or Switzerland this year.  Maybe then I could see Swiss watch makers in action or go walking through the Alps or drink German or Belgian beer or eat real crepes or see Budapest.  And then I wouldn’t have to hassle with the visa to Russia or the cultural barrier.  But I also wouldn’t see the shiny things or be a part of the culture that I kind of can’t comprehend without seeing it first person.

So which will it be?  Because this is supposed to be a spring trip, decisions have to be made soon, and maybe because it’s a spring trip, I’ll take the easy way out.  Stay tuned to find out what happens while I ponder over the next destination!  Or if maybe I win a contest!