Travel, Before Bed
Posted 12.03.11 at 09:25 AM UTC
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Mentioning travel made me think of one more thing.

Looking back on all the trips, I most miss walking in Vienna and Madrid, driving in Ireland, relaxing in Antalya on the Turkish coast, and looking for animals in South Africa. I miss the people in the Philippines, and I will only return to Russia when somebody else begs me to go with them for some reason. I miss pretending I live in London.

With the Lira-to-USD rate hovering around 1.85, it would be a good time to be chilling out in Antalya, especially over the off-season. You can probably go all-inclusive for less than $100/night right now.

The Camera Subtracts Dust
Posted 12.03.11 at 09:17 AM UTC
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Cairo is a truly awful city. Whatever nastiness you see on TV, double it.

Not too miserable to get around and see stuff (pre-Arab Spring), but just a horrible feel. Dirty, no places to eat outside of American hotels, and shady taxi drivers. Nice airport, though.

We will eventually get our Vienna and Egypt pictures up, but it may be after school is over.

Borscht, Anyone?
Posted 08.05.10 at 08:57 PM UTC
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Well, it was way too expensive and a lot of trouble, but we finally have our Russian visas! Instead of having to appear at the consulate in person ... twice, we hired a guy who did it somehow without us being involved at all. This is the standard practice among people who actually get their visas.

Since I don't make a habit out of photographing and displaying my passport, here is an example of what it looks like (it's a sticker that takes up a whole sheet):

Russia is a very difficult place to get into, and then to tour, but I expect it to be well worth the trouble.

Coinkydink
Posted 07.10.10 at 03:43 PM UTC
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We're actually here right now, strangely enough.

[Insert Dutch Reference Here]
Posted 06.19.09 at 06:47 AM UTC
Tagged me, travel | # | Comment [1]

I don't know a good joke for going to the Netherlands. Wooden shoes? Maybe I'll pick something up while I'm there.

We leave today for Amsterdam, to spend the weekend in the city center. We then take a train and bus out to Noordwijk (your guess is as good as mine: I'm saying Nord-why-k for now) for a week-long training/development thing that I'm about one month away from being technically barred from attending because of my longer tenure with the company.

My prior attempt to attend (in the Woodlands - not nearly as interesting) was foiled by that pesky hurricane.

We'll see a few museums, probably ride some bikes, and get rained on a bit. Kristin will have a full week of shopping, windmill watching, and whatever else she can figure out to do.

I think I'll save The Hague for a future trip, as I will likely be there at some point on more substantial business. It would probably be a train ride to get there from Amsterdam or Noordwijk... I really don't know how it would best be done.

That will be fun, but I'm even more excited about our trip to southern Turkey and the Greek island of Mykonos, which will occur in mid-July.

Turkey follows the European model of crazily-long vacations in July and August. We're going to take a few smaller ones and keep everything diversified a bit.

Work is much better now. Things have been really crazy with the government. I suppose the decisions will be finalized over the weekend and I might be able to talk directly with facts, but I would summarize that the Turkish market is seeing some drastic changes in atmosphere right now.

Feeds in Efendi are on a break right now so that I can actually have some waking free time at home. The AKP (ruling party in Turkey) is creating long working hours for me!