Honolulu, no Diamond Head!

Well, due some unfortunate circumstances, we did not make it to Diamond Head. We did see it from a distance. Instead, we had a long, city bus ride through the city when Chuck decided that we could save some money by taking the city transportation system to Diamond Head.

We had a lovely bus ride through Honolulu. I thihnk we saw about every street. It took 1 1/2 hrs. to get to the city transfer station, and then we had to pick up another bus. We waited 30 minutes for our transfer bus, then did the math and decided we did not have time to get to Diamond Head, do the 2 hour hike and get then back in time to comfortably catch our flight.

Instead we strolled around an open air market, took a taxi back to the airport, and here we are.

The picture is of a Nanu tree, which is nearly extinct. It is a type of Gardenia typw tree. The flowers are beautiful. I don't know if they are fragrant, didn't get close enough.





We caught a taxi back to the airport and we saw neighborhood after neighborhood filled with houses, a vast majorit of which has solar pannels on their roof. Looks like they are serious here about renewable resources.



Needless to say, as we sit here awaiting our flight,we are exhausted. I only got 3 hrs. sleep the night before we left and it is now 12:30 a.m. Chicago time. Hopefully we will be able to sleep on the plan, since we arrive ta 6 a.m.

We're off again...

This time to New Zealand. Travel along and let's see what we find (or trip over!)...

The most exciting part will be that I will get to see Lindsay!

We will be staying on the North Island for this trip, and it's suppose to be a relaxing trip, ha ha ha!

Although we leave Chicago under the threat of icy rain and possible light snow (hey, it's November), we will arrive to summer in New Zealand.

What that means is I am wearing shorts to the airport...

Our first stop will be Honolulu where we hope to hike Diamondhead and get some photos with our little point and click, let's see how they turn out.

The hike up is only .7 miles, so we should be able to manage, although after living in the midwest, I'm not use to inclines anymore...

History and more culinary delights in Boston!

One of the best things about Boston (besides the food), is the history that is so accessible. There are tourists everywhere, tours abound for any and every historical site, and self guided walks through the history of the beginning of our nation. Since we all love history, especially revolutionary era history, we LOVE this city.


We walked through the unique cemetaries. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few...

A few interesting tidbits about these gravestones-

• They are mostly puritanical gravestones, all the images are highly symbolic, although there are some early american catholic gravestones here also.
• The skull with wings on many of the gravestones symbolizes the soul leaving the body.
• On many of the gravestones a skeleton, sometimes dancing, can be seen. The skeleton symbolizes death Many times you see this figure extinguishing a candle, showing a snuffing out of life. Often this image is accompanied by another robed figure seeking to stop the skeleton from putting out the candle, this figure often has an hourglass. This robed figure symbolizes time.
• At the Granary Cemetary is the largest grave oblisk in Boston with the name Franklin engraved on each side. We wondered about this, since we know Benjamin Franklin is buried in Philadelphia. Here are the graves of Ben's parent's.
• On many stones, the stone carver would run out of room on a line when carving a word. No problem, they would insert the letters that they had not had room for above the line. No need to waste a good gravestonestone!
• On may gravestones they have 2 consecutive years for a birth year. This does not mean they were unaware of the year of birth, but rather at the time, some places still went by the Juian calendar, which set the beginning of the new year in March, while others adhered to the Grecian calendar, setting the new year start at January 1. Thus, if someone was born in the early part of the year, they placed both years on the gravestone, since it depended on what year you observed, as to what year you may believe the person was born. In 1752, Britain and all it's colonies formally adopted the Grecian calendar, which set the new year start permenantly at January 1st. After that year, there was no longer a question as to birth year.

So, we finished up our walk through the cemetaries and Boston Commons and came back to relax and read for awhile. Soon it is off to dinner in the Italian quarter and some evening strolling along the wharf!

1st Day Boston

We have arrived and spent the whole day in sunny beautiful Boston. We left Chicago cold and snowy, and arrived in Boston where the sun was shinning and the crowds were plentiful. We are staying at Club Quaters hotel in the downtown historic district right along the freedom trail. We checked in and found the hotel to be very nice and comfortable. The staff is quite friendly and helpful also. We walked over to the Green Dragon for lunch-

Clam Chowder, Fish and Chip, pints of beer, yum yum!! It was as good as we remembered.

We walked over to the open farmers market, where they sell fresh fish, vegetables, baked goods, etc., right on the street. It was unbelieveably crowded, and the prices were shockingly low!

After strolling through the open farmers market, we walked over to Feneuil Hall. We picked up a hat and gloves (I forgot mine at home), and they we walked over to the Book Store. After lspent browsing the selections, we returned to the hotel.

Naps were a welcome break after having gotten up at 5 a.m. to catch the flight from O'Hare to Boston. We requested guest services at Club Quarters to make reservations for us at Union Oyster House for dinner. We walked over to the restaurant at 8:15 and we were extremely surprised to see so many people on the streets and at many of the restaurants throughout the historic district. We were glad for the reservations when we arrived at the Union Oyster House, the wait for those without reservations was 90+ minutes. Even we waited 20 minutes, and we had reservations. We ate dinner (Swordfish, clam chowder, lobster raviolis, raw oysters, scrod, it was all great!) -

and have now returned to the hotel. We are now relaxing and have decided to sleep to as late as we want tomorrow. What a treat! We never do that, especially on a trip. Tomorrow, more history and beauty of Boston!

Leaving for Boston

We'll be traveling to Boston next weekend (Feb 16-19). Chuck has another business trip, Lindsay and I have a long weekend due to President's Day (gotta love those presidents!), so off we go... We'll post pictures and commentary. Hopefully the weather will cooperate or there will be lots of hotel room pix!

We're back!

We arrived back in St. Charles at around 2 p.m. today (Sunday). We drove from Madrid to Barcelona on Saturday. The landscape of the Spanish countryside really varies greatly. In many areas there are cactus and the landscape resembles the American west. In other areas there are groves of olive trees and grape vineyards. Everywhere there are castle remains dotting the landscape.

We have seen large fields of wind farms in Spain also. We saw a very large one in southern Spain between Tarifa and our trip to Lisbon. The one below was probably as large. The highway goes right amongst the wind turbines. There are a couple hundred of these turbines in each of the numerous wind farms we passed. We also passed a number of large areas with solar panel power grids.

Also on our trip between Madrid and Barcelona was the Greenwich Meridian. It is well marked with signs and then a huge archway.

Finally, some interesting things we were unaware of before we visited this region-

• Car keys are different, at least the one we had (for our rental) and some other people's that we observed also. Our key was a flat piece of metal with a deeply grooved area in the center. The "head" of the key was the auto-locking and unlocking mechanism. We also saw some keys that were plastic computer chips, not traditional keys, as we know them.

• Drinking is much more accepted in this region of the world than in the U.S. It was typical to see people with port wine or other alcoholic drinks before noon. People also had wine and drinks at lunch, and dinner. Many places, we were the lone diners without alcohol on the table. Drinking age is 16.


• Breakfast is not a full meal, except in Gibraltar. In most areas we visited, people had sweet rolls and "coffee" (espresso) for breakfast.


• The EU has passed new no smoking laws recently, but many of the new laws are just starting to be enforced. Smoking is much more common in the areas we visited.


• In Gibraltar and Morocco meals are eaten at much the same times as we do in the U.S., but in all the other places we visited, breakfast is a small roll at mid-morning, lunch is a baguette (usually cheese or ham) and a glass of wine sometime between 2 and 4 p.m., and dinner is a large meal not earlier than 8 p.m.


• When we spoke with people from different areas, and we told them we were from the U.S., everyone expressed interest and told us that very few people from our country travel to Europe. We were surprised by this assertion, because most people we know have traveled to Europe. We observed no evidence of negativity towards Americans. In fact, people seemed overwhelmingly friendly and interested in talking with us.


• Salad is served with most meals ordered at the evening meal, which means a few leaves of lettuce, a slice or two of tomato, accompanied by vinegar and olive oil.


• Eggs and/or omelettes are eaten in Spain and Portugal (at least in the areas we visited) for the dinner meal, not breakfast.


• Germany's security is TOUGH! Both going into and leaving through Frankfurt airport we were pulled aside, although we had easily passed through security in other areas (O'Hare and Barcelona). Lindsay was pulled aside and had to empty a carry-on bag she was carrying, she had an IPod taken and tested for trace amounts of plastic explosives on our return trip (this happened to me with my computer on the way through Frankfurt to Barcelona).


• We have all heard the stories of people in France being less than friendly, we found no evidence of this whatsoever. We enjoyed France thoroughly and plan on returning.


• Road signs in the cities were terrible. In the countryside, they were quite a bit better. Some regions had English signs, others did not.


• Tolls for the toll roads are unbelievable high! Some tolls were 20+ Euros for a 50 mile stretch of highway. We found not service stations with gas pumps that you could swipe your credit card to pay, you had to go inside the station and pay.


• When you order water, you always get bottled water. If you order coffee, you get espresso-one cup, no free refills.


• Meals are slow and deliberate. Dinner is a minimum of 2 hours, no matter how you try to hurry the servers along, so be patient and enjoy the food.

Well, that's or trip. We had a great time, hope you enjoyed and learned things along with us!!

The Doeblers

Touring Madrid, Spain

Madrid is a very large, and busy city. Traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, dominates the historical center of the city. We have found Madrid to be less modern (architecturally) than Barcelona. The language, while Spanish, is different than in Barcelona. They speak Catalan Spanish in Barcelona, which we found to be easier to understand. That may also be because the people seem to speak more quickly here. We have still been able to get where we were going, but the challenge has been greater here. When we have needed directions, or help, we have had to speak slowly and ask others to also slow down their speech. We visited a number of the big sites today, including the Madrid Museum of Archeology. I found that I am able to read/translate written Spanish much better than I can speak Spanish. This is an important difference you don't think of until you are in a foreign country in which many people do not speak your native language. As far as the city itself is concerned the fountains, public gardens, and squares are exceptionally beautiful. Below are some pictures from today...

So tomorrow we pack up and leave to return to Barcelona. We will catch a flight back home to Frankfurt, and then to Chicago. We will not have the opportunity to update the blog until we return home on Sunday afternoon. We'll wrap things up then and let family and friends know we arrived safely.

Some final information that maybe helpful to anyone interested in making a trip to any of the places we have visited on this trip-

• Driving in this part of Europe is not as difficult as we had thought it might be, but you need to understand what you are getting into and keep a really positive attitude about driving, if you decide to do it. Manual transmission vehicles are 1/2 the price of an automatic when renting here in Europe. If you can drive a manual, save yourself a lot of money, and get the manual transmission. We got all the insurance. We were concerned about theft and vandalism. Unfounded concerns, it turns out. The car was in secure parking facilities at each hotel. But, with traffic and unfamiliar driving conditions, one day in Lisbon (and every moment we drove in Barcelona) made us very glad we got the insurance. We came VERY close to having an accident at one of the circles in Lisbon, totally our fault, so the insurance gave us some lease on peace of mind. Driving, if you enjoy doing so, is a great way to see the countryside in Spain, France, and Portugal. Winding through the one lane narrow streets in Gibraltar was a lot of fun too.
• Pick hotels carefully, but be prepared to accept what you get anyway. We researched the cities and hotels extensively and chose them based on location and price. We paid what we considered quite high prices for all our hotels (especially since the fall of the value of the dollar), some were very nice, some were okay, one was not a place we would recommend to any family or friend. It was the one that we saw featured on a travel show! We specifically chose hotels that had parking at the hotel listed. Only in Barcelona did we have to pay extra for the parking. We had a difficult time also choosing hotels because in Europe a hotel room that will accommodate 3 people is not common. Each hotel we picked stated they had triple rooms. In actuality, what this meant was that there was a cot like bed or a pull out couch in the room.
• We obtained all our currency by using ATMs at banks in the country we were visiting. When we found we were running low on cash, we just located a bank and withdrew Euros. In Morocco we exchanged Euros for their currency on the ferry. We had read to do this from a travel book. Once there, everyone wanted to be paid in Euros, so we almost got stuck with their currency, but we visited a rug merchant and negotiated a deal based on some dhirra and the remainder of payment for a rug by visa.
• We have gone on a number of vacations in which we have shipped items home. One place we did this was China. It was no problem. When we arrived in Portugal, we asked at the hotel desk regarding this issue and they directed us to the local post office. The postal facility could not (read-would not) help us, so we visited the "Ask Me Lisbon" information booth. They directed us to a shipper across town, so we grabbed a taxi and headed across town, only to find they were a business shipping facility over by the airport. Back to the hotel and we begged the hotel staff to find some place we could use for shipping. We had tried the phonebook in our room, but because we can not read Portuguese, we had a problem, obviously. Finally they directed us to a small shop a few blocks away. We visited this merchant, who was unbelievably patient and helpful, but costly. Moral to the story, send, take a lot of pictures and fore go the souvenirs and don't buy a rug in Morocco (no matter how good the deal seems), unless they will ship it for the price you negotiate.
• If driving, get a GPS,and a good map. You will need both. You will also need to stop and ask directions. Just when we thought we'd gotten down the driving, we came to Madrid, here they threw not only the traffic circles at us, but lights at the traffic circles, in the middle of the traffic circles!!! Smile, it makes everyone feel a lot better.
• Language barriers are really not an issue. Only once did we order meals and get something completely unexpected. Every person we met was friendly and willing to help us out, even if they had no idea what we were asking, they were at the very least pleasant and gracious.
• Carry your Passport with you at all times, but keep it handy. Any time we checked into a hotel, they copied information from our passports, and all merchants in Spain and France asked to see our passports whenever we used a charge card.

That's it for now. We'll let everyone know when we arrive back in Chicago!!!