Stuck in a Seinfeld Episode

Walking through Bernini Square looking for dinner, who would have thought it would end up feeling like a Seinfeld episode. We found overselves at the door to the Ristorante La Fontanella. There was a group of people standing outside the door. It appeared it was locked even though people were eating inside. The group said they were waiting for a table. Again, this was strange. Why would they be standing outside a locked restaurant? A few minutes later a lady came to the door and let the group in. Then she proceeded to lock the door behind them. Do we really want to eat here? The prices were reasonable, but what were we getting into?

An English party finished eating and left the restaurant. They recognized our confusion and simple said, "don't worry, it's worth the wait," and walked off. Eventually the lady came to the door and let us in, once again locking the door behind us. We never found out why she kept the door locked, although my theory was to protect the amazing deserts on display right by the front door. The food was really good. I'd definitely recommend the restaurant, but don't be surprised if the door is locked.

How to Shop at the Maasai Market

You'll find the Maasai market in Nairobi, Kenya.

Rule no. 1: If you hear a hissing noise behind you, GET OUT OF THE WAY!!! It's the sound of a "delivery" man bringing items to one of the 'stores'. A store consists of a platform made of dirt about a foot high and maybe 6' x 6'. The walkway between stores is about 2' wide. So when you hear that noise, you typically end up jumping onto one of the store platforms. If you don't he will run you over.

Rule no. 2: Learn the art of haggling. The first day we went shopping I wasn't that good at it and probably did not get really good deals. But the next time, the next time I was prepared. It was actually a lot of fun bargaining with the store keepers. In fact, one time I didn't get the price I wanted so I just left. As we were getting ready to pull away in the van a man popped his head in the van with the items and I got them for the price I wanted.

**Not at this market, but on the side of the road we had a fun moment of "men are the same all over the world." One of the ladies with us had negotiated a price for these sandstone animal figures. Then another salesman went up to the man in our group to see if he would want to buy any. After a few minutes of haggling, he finally told the salesman the price the woman bought the items for and the salesman's response? "Well, we can't have you beaten by a woman, so I'll sell them for that same price." Once again proving, men are the same all over the world :)

Rule no. 3: Items like pens, locks, sunglasses, etc. can be used as currency. These are items that are hard to find for cheap, so buy a lot in the States and use them when haggling in the market. I bought a chess set for $7 and two ink pens. Good deal :)

Rule no. 4: As in all open markets, keep your money in several different places on your body. That's just good practice when traveling.

Be Careful What You Ask For...

It had been a long day of driving in England. We'd had a lovely time in the Lake District, but were all three ready for bed. We had a reservation at a hotel chain in Reading, England. I was going to be leaving the next day back to the States. On our way there we stopped in Stratford-upon-Avon to say hello to Shakespeare's hometown. It was dark and everything was closed, but we were there and that's all we needed. We had a bit of trouble finding our hotel and by the time we got there it was rather late.

My friend went to the front desk and got our keys. She confirmed with the man that we needed a cot in the room because there were three of us. We walked down the hall and opened the door only to find a baby crib in the middle of the room. All three of us, with our heavy packs on our backs, fell over laughing at the sight. Why was there a baby crib in our room? And yes, my friends felt I should take the baby crib since I was the smallest. After composing ourselves, one of my friends went back to the front desk to clear up the matter.

Turns out, in case you ever need to know for your England travels, a cot is a baby crib. What we needed was a "put-up" bed. I'm not sure how the front desk looked at three adults checking into their hotel and not question the fact there were two beds and a crib in the room.

30 Point Turn Around

Cars are small in Ireland. Roads are small in Ireland. Put both of these together and what do you get? Well, you get three Americans deciding halfway up a one way road that they should probably turn around. Sounds easy, right? That's exactly what we thought. How hard could it be to turn a Yaris around?

As we found out, it's a bit more complicated than it seems. Maybe it wasn't exactly a 30 point turn around, but it sure seemed like it at the time. But every moment of brilliance needs to be captured on film. So, in the middle of this little adventure, I made sure to take a photo. As you may see, both occupants of the vehicle are smiling and having a good time. Because as GK Chesterton once said, "An adventure is merely an inconvenience rightly considered."

Cutting the Kayak Trip Short

It was going to be a fun three day kayak trip in NSW Australia. And you would think that by taking two Naval Academy grads (one of which went on a NOLS course) you wouldn't do anything dumb like forget to bring matches, or extra water with you. It probably didn't help that one member of our crew decided she would just not eat for the three days. Yes, we were a bunch of brilliant minds who apparently had all gone on vacation. After a few hours of kayaking in the beautiful Kangaroo Valley, we noticed something, it all looked the same. Did we really want to spend another two days of our vacation looking at the same thing? Especially when we knew there was surfing to be done in Bondi Beach? It was decided that night, while listening to the wild goats yell, that we would head back to the put in spot and try to get a ride back to town.

The next morning we kayaked back to the put in. It was right at the dam, and there was construction going on at the time. We had the phone number to the kayak rental shop written on one person's hand, although it was smearing off. We went up to the construction site and they let us use their phone. After an hour of trying and getting only the answering machine, we decided to find a ride into town. I stayed with the boats and my other two friends got a ride in a cement truck. They said it was really funny because they were the first Americans this guy had ever met. He asked them questions ranging from "Are Americans like they show on Jerry Springer?" to "How do you feel about healthcare in America?"

They finally made it into town and were quickly recognized as those American girls who came in with a taxi. We were famous :) While they were trying to find the kayak outfitter I was back with the boats. Off in the distance I saw a group of canoes coming to shore. This gave me a weird hope that our outfitter would be coming to pick them up. Well, I was almost right. Our outfitter did arrive, but he was dropping a group off. He looked at me and said, "I think I passed your two friends on my drive out here." And yes he did. We put the three kayaks on the trailer and he gave me a ride back into town. We passed my friends and picked them up.

Finally we got back to the outfitters. We got our stuff together and the guy offered to give us a ride back to the train station. On the way we had to stop by his house and pick up his two little daughters. It was a fun morning of trying to change our plans. Of course, we then ended up talking to this guy from the Australian Army on the way back to Sydney...but that's a story for another post.

A Very Long Day Indeed

We woke up at 6am. It was cold and dark, and we had a four hour drive ahead of us to the airport. We had to go from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs. Once we got to Alice Springs we had to hop on a plane to fly back to Sydney. Once we were in Sydney we had to find the train to Nowra. And once we got to Nowra we had to find a way into Kangaroo Valley.

Here's how the day played out:

Ayers Rock to Alice Springs: 4 hrs

Alice Springs to Sydney: 3 hrs

Sydney to Nowra: 2 hrs

Nowra to Kangaroo Valley: 45 min.

Needless to say it was a long day of travel. It did give us a few good stories to share. You see, before we left for Australia we knew this part of the trip would be a bit tricky. There was no public transit between Nowra and Kangaroo Valley. We needed to get there because we were going on a 3 day kayak trip. We decided to take our chances that if we couldn't find a bus, that we could at least find a taxi. We arrived in Nowra about 8pm at night. It's winter there, so it was already dark. One of my friends went up to a taxi driver to ask about pricing to get us into town. He was a little surprised that we were trying to get to Kangaroo Valley, but offered to take us there for $50 since he lived on that side of the hill.

On the way he told us about how the valley had been flooded and that the most dangerous animal we may encounter in the water would be rabid bass. He also told us about how he used to work as part of the road crew and one time he got covered with leaches. His wife had to pour salt all over him to get them off.

He was true to his word about the price and when his meter hit $50 he turned it off. He helped us try and find a place to stay that night in town. Both hotels we checked said they didn't have a vacancy. Our cab driver said they were probably lying (which we agreed since there were hardly any cars in the parking lots) but that they were just being lazy. Eventually he dropped us off at a car park (kinda like an RV park) and we pitched our tent. It was an adventure just sleeping that night. We had brought a junior two man tent for the trip. We had to fit three adults and three full hiking packs in the tent. Somehow it worked. Finally we ended our very long day of travel about 10pm.

Don't yell Bingo!!

A couple friends and I went to Ireland in 2007. We stayed in a lovely cottage in a town called Hollywood. It's in the county Wicklow. It was about 45 minutes south of Dublin. Some might call it a small town: one pub and a church. One day we decided to walk into town and look around. While walking around the church we saw a flyer for Bingo on Thursday night. Now, some people may look at that and ignore such a 'normal' activity that could be done back home. Good thing I'm not that kind of traveler :) We planned our entire Thursday around getting back to town in time for bingo. And for that we were rewarded with a fun evening playing an old game in a whole new way.

We got to church and found it surrounded by old women smoking cigarettes outside. Open entering the church social hall we paid our 10 euro to 'buy' into the game. We all noticed instantly upon looking at the cards that this game was not what we were used to playing. Each sheet represented three games. The first game was covering one row, second game was covering two rows on the same grid, and the third game was covering all three rows on a grid.

Each sheet had six game boards on it. Each table was 3 columns by 9 rows. And over all six game boards would be 1-99. A single table looked liked this:

6 __ 25 __ __ __ 66 76 81

__ 19 26 30 __ 55 __ __ 82

7 __ __ __ 44 __ 68 79 87

We were a little embarrassed to ask for help since we'd never played this form of bingo before. Finally we asked the old ladies in front of us how to play. It was a bit hard understanding the announcer with his thick country Irish accent. Luckily they posted the numbers up too. One of my friends hadn't quite picked up on the game rules completely and had one row covered during the second game of the card. She yelled out, "BINGO!!" First, she needed two rows covered, and second, they yell "cover" not "BINGO!" Well, we quickly became the three odd Americans who didn't really know what they were doing.

On the plus side, two of us ended up winning games that night. I won 20 euro which was great since it was towards the end of the trip and I was running out of money. On top of that I couldn't remember my pin number to get more money from my bank account. It was a fun evening getting to hang out with the locals and get laughed at a little.