Adventure of the month

...some creativity may be required.  There is no automatic "Oh, I'm going to Paris? I can't wait to see the Louvre" kind of reaction that takes place when one is informed that they will have a full day to kill in Alabama.  There is only a quiet dread and visions of wandering aimlessly through a Cracker Barrel.  Perhaps this is only me, but the problem is I hate Cracker Barrel and am much too restless to sit in a hotel room watching reality tv, so obviously something had to give. That something was a fortuitous combination of an article on one of my favorite websites,  Roadside America , and some suggestions from my uber-cool friend, Julie.  They both pointed me in the direction of Vulcan, the largest cast iron sculpture in the world, which is perfect as the promise of the largest anything is usually enough to get my attention.  His story is also pretty great.

As enjoyable as it was to soar over Cappadocia in a hot air balloon, the limited amount of fuel (not to mention the lack of a bathroom, kitchen or bar on board) dictated that we had to return to terra firma, sooner or later. This left me with nearly four days to explore the tiny town of Goreme and its surroundings. I was on my own and the daytime temperatures hovered in the 105 degree range, so I was not very motivated to do the public bus shuffle all over this very scenic desert. Instead, I opted to join the two ubiquitous tours offered by every hotel, hostel, tour agency and/ or street-side carnival barker. I set mine up at what has to be one of the coolest hostels I have ever stayed in. As with most of the accommodations in the area, Yasin's Backpackers Cave Hotel is located inside one of the rock formations. This means that some of the rooms, mine included, are actually natural caves. Uh huh, that's right, I spent my vacation sleeping in a cave. That alone would have thi...

I'd watched videos, I'd scrolled through a bazillion photos, I'd made half a dozen attempts to get here, but finally on August 15th, 2010, I was on my way to board a hot air balloon and soar over the surrealist landscape of Cappadocia, Turkey.  It was something I had been wanting to do for so long, and it was so disturbingly early (5am!), that I remained in a perpetual haze as a Spanish couple and I made our way to the Voyager Balloons office. I assumed I had an idea as to what would take place next. We would be served coffee and hopefully pastries (the presence of pastries was, for me, to be the determining factor into whether the hostel had steered me towards a legitimate or a Mickey Mouse balloon company), asked to sign some releases and be given a safety briefing that most of us would snooze through. I was joyfully right on  the one count that mattered.  There were pastries, some kind of cheese rolls, Turkish breads... Yasin's Backpackers Cave  had done me rig...

It's another summer in Amsterdam, another opportunity to drink good beer, eat excellent cheese and hop/skip around Europe visiting places yet unseen and/or possibly revisit old favorites. Yet, here I am 3 weeks into the summer and I have only partaken of 2 out of 3. I have yet to leave Holland.  The reason for this unimaginable lapse: La Copa Mundial aka the World Cup aka that big ass game that took place in South Africa and permanently embedded Waka Waka into my brain. By the time we arrived in the Netherlands, the men in orange had already qualified for the Quarter Finals against Brazil. My Dutch friends and acquaintances were justly proud and were near universal in their resigned acceptance that they was going to get crushed by Brazil. No other outcomes were seriously entertained. As a result, I got my first lesson in football. Apparently, Brazil ees berry, berry good.

Like every other sentient being on this planet, I have a long list of things I want to do/ places I want to see that I never seem to get around to. It is only when I find myself with a lot of time on my hands and feeling restless (the two do generally go hand in hand) that I started mentally reviewing this list, eager to go into planning mode. This is what happened to me last month, when crap weather had me stuck in a hotel room in Leipzig (or soggy and looking for Hefeweisens, but that's another story). While surfing the internet, I stumbled upon a saved link about kayaking with Orcas in the San Juan Islands, something that has always been high on the afore-mentioned list. I sent said link to my friend, Diana. Diana was enthused. I was enthused. We were going kayaking. I called and set up the tour with the helpful people at SeaQuest. They responded by e-mailing me a comprehensive list of what to bring, what to expect, even a helpful suggestion that I might want to consider ...

Last Friday, I got on a plane bound for Leipzig. But since I was still on a month-long journey of the unexpected, of course, I ended up in Shannon, Ireland instead. At this point, there were only two viable options: lament the cancelled plans in Leipzig or get busy making news plans in Shannon. OK, scratch that. There was only one viable option. With the help of the hotel staff, we quickly lined up a driver and guide to take us to the ever elusive Cliffs of Moher. I should stop here to acknowledge that it is a bit odd to describe Ireland’s most visited attraction, which has existed for 300 million years or so as ‘elusive’, but I have been trying to get to this place for ages and something (usually a combination of not enough time and/ or Guinness on tap) has always intervened. These Cliffs have eluded the hell out of me.

Ulaanbaatar is an ugly city.  I say this with full awareness of the subjectivity of beauty.  I appreciate the cultural norms and probably biased expectations that I possess.  I take into account the effect that my mood, at any given moment,  can have on my perceptions. Yet, even factoring all of this together, I return to the same conclusion ‘Tis an ugly city Or as my niece would say “U-G-L-Y! You ain’t got no alibi! You’re ugly!..”, but she is a bit of a bully like that. The prevailing architectural trend is standard Communist-era block buildings.  The main road, Peace Avenue, is beset with the Asian equivalent of strip malls. The use of bright colors appears to be frowned upon.  And this may have been specific to the time I was there, but a persistent dust storm had everyone and everything finely coated in a layer of gritty sand.