tbaroundtheworld

Did well until I took the wrong exit out of the next to last roundabout and had to do a return to get back on track. Followed that up with a good, strong encounter between the curb and the passenger side in the roundabout I should've taken in the first place. Couple of words about my hotel. It reminds me of the one used in "The Shining". The corridors go on forever. It's about a 3 kilometer walk from the elevator to my room. Space and time are somehow being stretched and then compressed into this regular city block. One very cool feature is the shower control. It's separate from the bath control and it consists of two parts. A dial to set flow and a lever to set temperature. You can set the temperature wherever you want it, and it stays there forever, or until you change it. Very neat, no fiddling with settings ever again. And here's a shot of the food, in keeping with my blogging tradition. No frogs or waving lobster antennae here.

Here's a shot of a row house across the street from my hotel. I like the pink doors, especially the personal touch of having one pink door be just the slighest shade darker. More on Georgian architecture later when I have some time to wander about.

Not much really. Commute home last night was clear sailing aside from a couple of missed gear changes and a tricky right turn near my memorized landmark that was not as simple as I had anticipated. A little improvised bumper car action allowed me to head the way I needed to head. Had a great dinner in the City Center last night at a small Indian restaurant. I was pretty amazed that the food service ritual (presentation, wiping of the plates, etc.) was precisely the same as our little Indian place in the strip mall down the street. My dish - Chilli (it kills me to spell it that way) Masala was very tasty. I was once again in nodding eyelid mode when I returned to the hotel so I decided lights out was in order. The Demons of Jet Lag though had different ideas for me. I forgot to follow my ritual and failed to take my nightly dose of melatonin. Not sure if that contributed, but I was raring to go after a nice night's sleep of 1 hour. Finally I cashed in my chips at 2:30 and took the p...

Google finally got their act together and fixed picture uploads, so here are the shots from the other day reorganized. Typical cottege in the countryside, north of Dublin. Below is a chuch and rectory alongside the road. Views across the River Boyne towards the Newgrange Neolithic tomb. You can see it in the center on the top of the rise. My hotel and my little Yaris. The ubiquitous double-decker bus. Georgian row houses and a couple of shots from St. Stephen's Green. Halfpenny Bridge and the Grand Canal as the sun winds down. .

East heading jet lag continues to be my nemesis, but this time it was pretty mild. 6 mg of meltonin and bedtime of 8 PM has set me up to be feeling pretty good today. Essentially normal in fact. I crawled out of bed dreading my first foray into the Dublin morning rush hour. Not prone to genuine anxiety attacks, I have to say this trip has stretched my normal sangfroid. I hate the car, I hate driving on the wrong side and I'd just rather walk. But 12 kilometers is more than a morning stroll, so motorized traffic is it. Gathering my goods, I headed down the elevator, retrieved a validated card from the desk and went outside. The car was covered in dew, and naturally I had no roll of paper towels with me, so I improvised with a wad of Kleenix. Once again I tried to enter the vehicle on the normal side, again realizing I was now the designated passenger-driver. Straightening that out I got in sort of sideways, my car having been squeezed tight by the next spot and with only 30 or 40 sm...

Well the sad news is I cannot post any photos. Apparently it's a genuine problem because I noticed another user in the help group with the same error. Hopefully they'll shake it out soon. After a brief nap yesterday I headed out for walk around center city Dublin. Reminds me a lot of Boston in the layout and busyness. Went across the main canal and walked up Leeson to Saint Stephen's Green, a large city park. It's spring here, so the magnolias were in bloom and spring bulbs were lining all the walkways. Crossed over the park and headed into Grafton Street, the main shopping district. Quincy Market, Nanjing Lu, Fisherman's Wharf - they all share the same shopping intensity, along with Dublin's version. Essentially a warren of streets converted to pedestrian thoroughfares, every thing you can imagine was for sale here. From Rolexes to knit rasta caps. Dozens and dozens of restaurants were all opening up for their dinnertime clientele. I wandered around there for a...

The flight out of Atlanta was on time and uneventful. Best thing I can say was that the food was enjoyable; the worst is that the Boeing 767 is designed for someone with 12 inch femurs. Nice that the seating is 2-4-2, but there is no way for someone of my not terribly challenging stature to fit in the thing without grinding one’s knees into the extruded aluminum panels they use to frame the seat backs. Slouching helps a bit, but then you’re supporting your entire body mass with the nails on your big toes. This was not a sleep friendly hop. Which was good, because it’s best to experience the truly frightening when running on 23 hours of adrenaline and Diet Coke. Customs and passport control was a breeze and although I did wait a bit for my bag, it did show up. From there it was out the door for a brisk walk around the airport looking for my rental car. I noticed that all the cars have a little sheet with the keys with drawings of all 4 elevations. Dents and scrapes are marked so the dam...

I was dying for a slice of pizza after my Sunday morning bike ride so we rushed through the lunchtime chores and headed to the mall. Sunday Brunch at the Cottonwood Food Court - some things in life just defy description. The pizza selections at Sbarro were limited and mostly of the mega-crust variety so I settled on a piece of Hawaiian figuring it offered the highest probability of culinary return. While checking out, I noticed the cashier was wearing a hat emblazoned with "Villa" on the brow. I figured it was commemorating some gangster who died in a driveby until my lovely wife pointed out that Sbarro is now Villa. And with the change in ownership, so exited the quality. To make it edible, one really had to perform major surgery, excising the bottom 3 inches of mantle from the crust of cheese and ham. Sort of like slicing through California on the bias and allowing it to float out to sea. Today I find myself at Atlanta Hartsfield foraging for lunch. The food court - mobbed ...

Vacations are supposed to contrast your real life against your imaginary life and thus make you appreciate how lucky you are to get "away from it all." Sometimes the contrast is staggering, like our trip home. Our last night on the beach was wonderful. We finally had a passable sunset, the weather was still pleasant (albeit cooling off) and the Christmas hordes had not yet arrived. We capped it with a nice dinner at our favorite place (Blackie's) and steeled ourselves for the long return to civilization. Not much to say about the packing and the trip through Mexico. The sky became cloudy as we traveled into northern Sonora, agreeing with our understanding of the weather that was coming - a storm from the Pacific that was supposed to haunt us as we headed north. No weather along the road though, and no impediments either. Including a lucky avoidance of the 5 mile traffic jam at the Hermosillo military checkpoint that we had witnessed on the trip down. The border was the bo...

It’s amazing how little can happen when you genuinely vacate your regular life in a place like this. The days simply blend together in a never ending filmstrip of sleep, carne machaca, birds, sleep, chitchat, sun, surf, dead squid, sunsets, breezes, bossy cats and sleep. Yesterday we visited Guelaquetza our favorite little curio shop here in town. In the olden days it was a great place to find those colorful Oaxacan carvings of whimsical animals and we slowly built a decent collection based on their stock. They’re still there, but the prices have gone through the roof. I’m glad we have the ones we have, because starting a collection now would indeed be a costly undertaking. Using my best Spanish I told the proprietress how the rear view mirror in my car still sports a small carved jaguar’s head that I had bought in her store more than 10 years ago. She was pleased and responded in a most grave and sincere tone that I was entitled to a 10% discount on everything in the store. I tried to...

There are two things we always do when visiting at Christmas – count birds and feed cats. The cats here at Pilar are the remnants of vast herds of them that once roamed the desert in this vicinity. For a time, Pilar was the local dumping ground for unwanted kittens and there were dozens of them, both tame and completely feral. Over time, the flock thinned and the remaining cats were treated and neutered by a local vet. These days were down to about 5 cats, and all of them are hanging out on our patio waiting for a soft touch to provide them with dinner. Judging from the amount of fat they’re carrying around their backbones, they seem to be able to consistently judge which condos are occupied by suckers and to park themselves there, looking desperate. We always bring a couple of cans of the cheap food with us and I try to feed them once a day. This reliable meal results in cats hanging about languidly dripping over the edges of our camp chairs and regaling us with a chorus of “feed me, ...

Well here we are again, happy hour at the Marina Cantina in sunny San Carlos. This time we're not skulking in the parking lot stealing the wireless signal, rather sitting in a booth enjoying a couple of margaritas and some appetizers - a quesadilla and a hollowed out loaf of french bread filled with artichoke dip. My Lovely Wife is scanning the joint and I am relating to you. The trip down just gets easier and easier. Five minutes tops at the visa station and then the long haul across the desert. We made it in before sunset, unpacked and surveyed the place. And this is where the title comment comes in - recall last time and the hordes of Americans enjoying the Columbus Day break. This time - 4 condos with 10 or so people and nearly complete isolation. The perfect vacation conditions. Enjoying the 70 something air, the sea breeze and the QUIET, we headed out to our traditional dinner at Rosa's. Our friend Martin was there behind the counter and we had a nice chat in broken Spani...

Well the trip home was only memorable for its lack of memorableness. The connections were made, the flights were on time and once again there's no place like home. Thought I'd close this adventure with some pictures from my last day in the park. Hope you enjoy them. .

Thursday was kind of an average day, nothing very exciting happened but there were lots of little things worth mentioning. Lunch was Papa John’s pizza, worth mentioning just for the fact that it exists here. The pies were precisely what you would expect from PJ’s – not extraordinary but tasty. We had some time so we headed out for a walk around the big block. Found a bakery by the name of Croissant le France that was loaded with very attractive breads and pastries. Saw a bicyclist politely arguing with a motorist who had apparently hit them with their car. The driver was complaining that the bike had scratched his bumper and the rider was bemoaning the facts that his wheel was bent and that his foot hurt. An argument in the middle of a busy intersection that you would never see anywhere but here. After a non-descript afternoon and a short stop at Starbucks we went out to the Hong Mei Leisure Pedestrian Street for dinner. It’s basically a narrow thoroughfare connecting two boulevards th...

Went out to lunch with the other IT guys – both local residents – yesterday and had quite a nice experience. Among other things, it was my first time driving with a resident in their personal car – all my other rides have been with personal drivers or taxis. We started by heading to Pizza Hut. This chain and KFC are very popular among the Shanghaiese because they love chicken and both restaurants are chicken specialists. I found this to be pretty interesting, because while Americans frequent both chains, I wouldn’t say that they patronize them because of a reputation for doing any type of cuisine well. For us it’s more about speed and uniformity. We had a short discussion and decided instead to have Shanghai food so we went around the Pizza Hut building and down a long driveway to a Chinese restaurant tucked into the back corner. The first thing that struck me was the plethora of cardboard Santa faces on every pane of glass. The host brought us into the back room which was very modern ...

Went out just after dawn this morning to explore another park up the street from the hotel. Each time I’ve been to this hotel, I have expanded the radius of my morning walks to the point now where the out and back distance is beginning to challenge the amount of time I have to spend on them. But with each expansion, has come another park to visit and each one has been more interesting and beautiful than the last. In this part of the city some land seems to be set aside at every major intersection. Sometimes it’s just a small amount with a few trees and perhaps a sculpture. Others are far more elaborate. This morning’s desitination – Tianshan Park - was certainly in the latter case. Not only braided with paths, it had many types of tree “gardens” a big lake and a lot of buildings. As the city has developed, these little oases have become hemmed in with tall buildings, creating sort of an artificial canyon amid towering spires. Like all the others, this park was full of people doing all ...

Not really too much to say about today, it was spent working. Started the day out right with a grande Hot Chocolate from Starbucks (the world being flat and all) and had the normal commute in the normal morning traffic. Perhaps the highlight was an opportunity to tell the taxi driver to turn left when he wasn't sure which way to go. My response came naturally, perhaps a decent indicator that I'm making some progress with my language. Had lunch on a nice little side street blocked to cars and dedicated to restaurants. Our place had a Santa Fe club sandwich on the menu, an interesting name considering there wasn't much Santa Fe about it. I had a spicy Thai beef wrap which was all those things. Dinner once again at the 1221 restaurant, a western style chinese food establishment that is quite popular with expats and known for its excellent food. They even called a cab for us which we managed to walk past when we left. Didn't matter because we ended up sitting in it for 5 mi...

I’m not sure how to feel about my impressions from this latest trip across the sea. It’s now closing on 6 weeks spent in China over the course of the year and oddly it’s starting to feel like just any old trip. Like going to Phoenix. This struck me last night as I was waiting for my friends out in front of the Renaissance, maybe it was the cold air or the giant Christmas tree or maybe the twinkle lights in the potted plants or Santa’s sled and reindeer. I don’t know, it just didn’t feel special any more. I remember that first morning back in February when I bravely headed out to wander through New Century Park across Ya’an Xilu. It was like I was walking out on another planet. Now it’s just another home base. This trip over was about as routine as one could possibly imagine. On the Albuquerque to San Francisco leg the most exciting thing was the guy who plopped down into the window seat next to me only to discover he should have been one row up. How you can get confused in the first 4 ...

We decided to head out on the early side to avoid the crunch at the border, early for us being on the 10 AM side given all the packing we had to do. Finished off the last of the 3 gallon can of cat food on the one condo cat that came around. Years ago, the place was overrun with abandoned kitties and their offspring. One day a resident (friend of ours) enlisted the help of a local vet and together they came out and neutered the whole tribe of them. Each cat received a notched ear to mark its transition into being a useful animal. These days there are perhaps 10 or so and we always bring a couple of casks of wet food with us to feed them. This results in us having 4 or 5 friends for our time there, and so it's a nice tradition. Amazingly the car started right up so I backed over and loaded all our supplies. Fun in the 90 degree heat. Finished up, showered and got ready to go. Dead car. Of course I now had the option of installing the Mexican Autozone Battery which I did. So much for...

Here are the pictures you would've been seeing had the wifi pipe in the Marina Cantina been big enough to upload them. Enjoy! .