Almost paradise

So, what to do in Slovakia, besides pass through on the way from Hungary to Poland? Bratislava doesn't get fabulous reviews, and we're always on the lookout for great hiking areas, even more so since our Slovenia hiking plans got rained out. So the Spiš region called to us; it tempted us with the Tatra mountains but we settled on Slovensky Raj, or Slovak Paradise -- how can you go wrong with a name like that?

Slovensky Raj is known for gorges and waterfalls, and the gorges with waterfalls rrunning through them -- we spent 2 days of quite adventurous hiking – the kind you find very little of in the fearful, litigious USA. The trails were very well constructed and well-signed, but they didn't bother carving out easy routes, they simply made it possible to get through the terrain: lots of ladders (horizontal and vertical), metal steps affixed to the sides of cliffs with water rushing below, steep slippery rocks with chains to help you pull yourself up or let yourself down, lots of rock-hopping back and forth across creeks...so much fun! With a gorgeous cliff overlook, a place serving great lentil soup in the middle of the trail network, and trailheads easily reachable by bus, it adds up to a highly recommended hiking wonderland.







Of course, Brian doesn't actually consider 6 hours of hiking to be enough of a workout for a day, so he was happy to have another communist-era fitness center about 200 feet from our hotel. I myself consider 6 hours of hiking to mean I deserve a nap. Isn't it nice that we both get what we want?




While Brian concentrated on eating goulash in Eastern Europe, I concentrated on meat with fruit sauces, which I love. The best was a strawberry-and-green-peppercorn sauce on roasted duck, served with mashed potatoes (die-die-must try), at Menza, a fabulous retro-chic restaurant on Liszt Square in Budapest. I also ate my way through cranberry sauce on chicken, pork with prune, and chicken with sour cherry.

I had read about cold fruit soup in Hungary, and am still kicking myself for waiting until our last night there to try it -- a red currant soup, pink dreaminess in a bowl. Another feature of Hungary was the Bull's Blood wine out in the Eger region – deep red, lush, and delicious.

Brian briefly mentioned the Budapest baths with the chess players in his last post, and for some reason I told him he should leave it to me to expound (since I'd forgotten to write about the baths in Turkey, I figured I'd catch up on that at the same time). So: the Hungarian baths are like a very wet playground; many different fun areas to be explored, thermal baths in varying heats and varying levels of minerals causing various shades of yellow-green (nicer than it sounds). We did a little lap swimming exercise for a self-righteous start to the day, then headed for the outdoor pool waterfall jets for a shoulder massage. This pool also had a surprise foot-tickling mechanism, whee! Next was the current pool – super strong jets sweeping us around in a circle, delighting kids and adults alike. Then we headed inside to the thermal/mineral baths, making ourselves tingle by alternating super-hot with super-cold. We then found the sauna, which was even hotter, tremendously hotter -- and the cold pool by it was even colder (I'm not sure whether we added to or subtracted from our lifespans with that part of the experience). All in all, the complex was tremendously impressive – we found even more rooms with more features (such as an aroma sauna) as we tried to find our way out -- it was hard to tear ourselves away, but other activities were calling.

My Turkish bath experience (hamam) was quite different, more spa and less play. I did the bath after a long day of hiking, and felt grubby to start with. I tried to communicate that I wanted to start with a shower, but between the language barrier and the prescribed order of the hamam elements, it didn't work. They slathered a mud mask on my face and put me in the sauna so that the day's dirt could seep deeply into my pores – or maybe the dirt on my legs just meant that the mud mask wasn't only on my face. I moved on to the loofah scrub-down (yowza) and soap massage on a hot marble slab, then cold shower, jacuzzi, and relaxation lounge. Biggest surprise: the jacuzzi was cool rather than hot – it felt great in the steamy room!

Also, back in the Balkans post, I somehow forgot one of the Sarajevo highlights -- the National Museum with the Haggadah from "People of the Book." Has anyone read this one? It's a wonderful novel by Geraldine Brooks, who wrote "Year of Wonders" and won the Pulitzer recently for "March." The book is a fictionalized history of an actual Jewish relic called the Sarajevo Haggadah, which we tried to see. It is in a hermetically sealed case (good, I totally support that) in a separate room behind locked doors (are you kidding me?). You could only sort of see it from a sideways kind of very bad view. They only open the room for special events or visiting dignitaries or something. Bah. They did have a touch-screen console about it which you could actually page through, though, very cool.






This last picture is for Venitha, and everyone else enamored with the hat and its travels. ;-)













Also...is there irony in the fact that Brian calls himself “slackerboy” here, yet the large gaps in blog posts are when it's my turn to write? You can be assured that his Poland post will be up soon!

Fungary

I wish I could claim credit for knighting Magyar/Hungary with the great nickname of "Fungary," but the honor goes to the publishers of the fabulous tourist brochures we were given when we checked in at easyhotel.com. The brochure offered tips on things like "How to get hammered" and other coaching that was somehow omitted from our guidebook(!). Shocking. We avoided the spots suggested in these brochures, which may be why we didn't stumble into any of the "hen" and "stag" parties that Budapest attracts. Nuts.

It was another typical ho-hum week for Andrea and Brian. Kicked off with a bicycling tour of Budapest that included stops at Heroes Square, the castle, City Park, the Chain Bridge, etc.

Our guide was a skilled instructor, and would approach most city sights by saying things like "OK, now ride your bike in this direction, keep your eyes open, look at some of the statues, then come back to me in 5 minutes over under that shady area and tell me what you've learned." Needless to say, there was no slacking on this tour.

Some of the important things we learned are: 1. If you want to be a Hero in Hungary it's helpful to have a bushy mustache, 2. A speedo is a wonderful chess playing costume (especially in the city baths), and 3. By count of the friendly and seemingly successful Kebap dealers downtown, the Hungarians and Turks have resolved any pesky misunderstandings they might have had in the past. I didn't see much goulash in Turkey-- clearly this is a missed market opportunity that should be exploited ASAP.

While sometimes a bit too oily, the Goulash supply was unlimited, and despite many samplings we have not gotten our fill. TV programs were all in Hungarian -- so when the tube was on we turned it to strong man competitions that can be understood with little commentary. "Ugh; Errrrrrrgh!" translates well across dialects. If you haven't realized it by now, Central/Eastern Europe produces a lot of strongmen for these competitions. This makes for many fine fitness centers, which Brian enjoys visiting although he spends an inordinate amount of time taking massive weight plates off the squat and bench press bars.

From Budapest we zipped by train northeast to Eger - a small town famous for producing many of Magyar's Olympic swimming and water polo champions. The massive lap pool is much more fabulous than it has any right to be for such a small town, and as you might expect we enjoyed a fantastic afternoon there. Andrea and I "split" a lane which means we didn't have to keep tapping on people's feet to pass them, and Andrea had the fun and excitement of searching around the building for the woman in charge of the locker keys at the end of her swim. There were three other women waiting along with Andrea; she got many approving nods from the natives.

We arrived in Eger to find that our visit coincided with the annual festival celebrating Dobo's victory over the Turks during the 16th century. This was super timing because we got to enjoy natives in medieval costumes, young burly guys swinging swords at each other, flag twirlers, jesters, people on stilts playing instruments while walking around the "old town," barmaids, historic goulash, and of course *very* authentic 16th century kebab.

Running out of clean clothing at the end of our trip, we checked into university dormotories located on a hill outside Eger to use their free(!) washing machines.

As the gentle reader can appreciate, it is tough to find a reasonably priced way to keep our stylish clothes from smelling *quite* ripe. It's lucky we aren't traveling with a dog, because dog washing machines are even more difficult to find.

Staying in "the dorms" brought back a flood of memories from our undergraduate years - but fortunately without requirements to study any microeconomics, eat the cafeteria's ratatouille, or endure uproarious behavior from current students since they were all gone for the summer.

We tried very hard to get enough Hungarian food, but eventually had to leave anyway -- heading for the hills of yet another country that promises to speak an even more difficult language(!) -- yipe!

Too many consonants in a row

Heading north by bus from the Pleet-veet-che Lakes in Croatia (no idea how to spell this- and the location is a comparatively easy one; pretty much given up trying to spell anything around here... often just too many consonants in a row) we stopped for three hours in Zagreb.

We succeeded at storing our bags after circling the train station twice, and purchased 4 tram tickets (two round trips) to the center. Zagreb town center is pictured on the left with the cute little blue and white trams in the foreground.

The wait for the tram wasn´t bad; about 10 min, but we were heartbroken to discover that the town center was a short stroll from where we started... we didn't need those tram tickets; $2 squandered!  I hope the gentle reader can appreciate how difficult it is for us to cope with the high-stress nature of our existence. We lifted our spirits at a place selling Croatian bean soup, kebap, and local beer.

Two hours later we grabbed seats on the train and zipped up to the capital of Slovenia; Ljubljana (that´s Lube-lee-ahh-na), which is Slackerboy´s favorite town in Central Europe. This low-priced burg is bursting with stylishly dressed locals speaking near-perfect English and a groovy riverside cafe scene.

We bunked in a former communist hotel that had recently undergone an IKEA renovation, located next to (wait for it...) the sweet circa 1950 fitness center! Check out the architectural detail in the four-panel photo of this fine vintage fitness facility. Original wood floors, gobs of space, and lots of natural light.

As expected, it was loaded with very heavy vintage weights and equipment that would make Jack LaLanne proud.  A few ancient "jigglers" and their like also graced the floors of the training facility. Beach Boys songs play on the stereo to make us feel at home, and the television is tuned to exciting episodes of "Xena: Warrior Princess" - what more could you ask for?

To be fair, the place also boasts a large selection of new equipment. If you´re looking for a good workout in Ljubliana, head over to Fitness Tabor and talk with the manager, Zdravko (see photo) -- but think twice before joining him in one of his "lite" workouts.

Three nights at the former communist hotel was delightful, but we promised ourselves at least one farm stay during this trip, so we travelled by bus about an hour southeast of the capital to enjoy the overnight hospitality of a rural Slovenian village and hopefully tuck into some super-premium jota (bean and cabbage soup).

Unsurprisingly, we were confused about what bus stop to get off at, but luckily the bus driver was finishing his shift after we stayed on the bus too long. After a sociable cup of coffee, he took us via his personal car to the door of the farmhouse (!).

The landscape was green, green, green - broken up only by cute little houses and the owner´s stupid dog that followed us everywhere. We fortunately were able to get an up-close view of one of the famous Slovenian hay racks - complete with hay and millet/corn drying on grain racks. It rains a great deal here, so the sheltered hay rack is dominant technology.

Sadly the jota we hoped for was in short supply at the farm we selected, so we spent most of our time navigating through gentle paths that rolled through the neighboring farmlands. It was only through great self-discipline that we were able to resist raiding the bee hives and over-feeding the cute baby goats.

With a memory of the great bowls of cabbage and beans we had in the Slovenian capital, we found the courage to try the bus again, and successfully made it back to Ljubljana and then on to a fast train bound for Vienna.

Vienna; former capital of the Austrian-Hungarian empire and as our guidebook aptly suggests "a head without a body." Palaces, impressive architecture, beautiful pedestrian streets, wienerschnitzel, and of course - Vienna coffee. We searched in vain for the General Foods International brand of "Cafe Vienna" and eventually settled for small cups of unbranded coffee at a local cafe.

Austrians seem to love following rules, so they wait for lights to turn green instead of jaywalking - even at 1 in the morning when there are no cars in sight. Thankfully this habit of following the rules spills over into the trams, subways, and trains running efficiently and on-time. Still, they have a few gum splotches on the streets so when it comes to getting a populace to behave properly I give the nod to Singapore.

If I was living in Vienna, it would be easy for me to get blasé about neoclassical architecture. Neo-roman, neo-greek, neo-versailles... it would all just blend together. Even excellent examples of neo-gothic and art nouveau style abound, not to mention the cute little neolithic artifacts in some of the museums, and photos of Neo from the Matrix hanging in video store windows.

One of the classy highlights of our time in Austria was listening to an impromptu Polish string quartet concert in the courtyard of Hofburg Palace. The musicians were aged 17-18; earning a little traveling money by entertaining strollers on a glorious Sunday afternoon.... fabulous.

Vienna locals encouraged us to attend a press conference with some young, politically minded Europeans. The Austrian gentleman on the left was pumped up with ideas on strengthening US affairs-- see him here outlining his plans for growth and development in the California seaside community of Venice Beach.

Vienna is very civilized, but too expensive for Andrea and her manservant -- so we are heading east now through Bratislava and on to Pest. Or should we stop first in Buda? Another decision to be made?! Mercy... the stress we are under!

Note: Photos not taken by the author or his wife were obtained from simple web searches -- since we receive no compensation for blog posts the images are used via "fair use" policy, so there!

Frolickin´in the Balkans

Traveling in the Balkans -- beauty and sadness side by side. As much as we've been reading about the wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia, I don't think it's possible to really understand. Sarajevo shows off its tolerance with four different places of worship in about one city block that survived through centuries (mosque, synagogue, Catholic cathedral, Orthodox church). So why are there craters in the streets and bullet-pockmarked buildings throughout the city from the 1990s?

Sarajevo in particular went through so much pain -- some people to whom we spoke just wouldn't talk at all about the war. A stirring museum told the stories of survival and resilience and ingenuity through those years, when city dwellers squeezed vegetable gardens into unlikely places and virtually all supplies came via a tunnel from the airport (the tunnel also held the only tele- communication lines out of the city).









But the central city at least has been restored and its cobble- stone streets showcase a lovely cafe-culture atmosphere for walking around.









We made our way to Mostar (in the Herze- govinian south) by an impressive train which cuts straight through the beautiful, very rocky countryside...lots of tunnels! Unfortunately, it was a drizzly day and my dark photos do not show off the green and gorgeous land. (I am sure you are all clamoring to have Marty's mad photo skillz back).







We shared our train compart- ment with a fine young man from Mostar, Ermin, ecstatic about having found a job in Mostar after living in Sarajevo for about a year (the unemployment rate in Bih is somewhere around 40 percent). He was a very young boy during the war years, and his family left Mostar for the relative safety of his father's village. When that seemed just as unsafe, they set off in a group of about 120 people to return to Mostar (through forest, no food, extremely difficult circumstances), but were caught by Serbian forces on the way. Only 8 people out of the group survived, when Ermin's father pushed them into a cave to hide. The suvivors did include Ermin´s nuclear family (parents and sister); a harrowing memory (and story) nonetheless.



Mostar is indeed a sweet little town, most famous for its charming bridge called Stari Most, which was destroyed in 1993 and rebuilt a decade later exactly as before -- same quarry, same design, same building methods (it took longer to build the second time). We saw a heart-tugging video of its history: pre-war, the actual bombing and collapse into the river, rebuilding, grand re-opening (fireworks, symphony, the famous bridge divers). It's also very striking to see Muslim cemetaries where every grave is dated 1993.




And then on to Dubrovnik and Croatian friendliness on the beautiful Dalmatian coast. Our guesthouse host, Pero, poured us two types of grappa to sip as he sketched city highights on a map. One (for Brian) was pure firewater; I got a sweet one, a bit port-like, made by his grandmother out of walnuts. Dubrovnik's city walls are special because you can walk atop them all around the old city, with ever-changing views as you complete your 1.5-mile circuit. The extent of recovery here is really amazing -- the main pedestrian tourist street is paved with marble, and at least in the center, you don't actually see the damage more visible in Sarajevo. But all the orange roofs in this photo are new (sigh); only the few brown ones in the photo escaped destruction.









The next morning, we saw the city walls from a decidedly different vantage point -- a glorious swim in the Adriatic, waving up to the tourists on the walls where we'd been 16 hours before. We got down to the sea via stairs cut into the rocks below the white cafe umbrellas in this photo.











We moved on to the island of Korčula and continued our athletic explor- ations by mountain bike (highest quality bike rentals ever, snazzy red Cannondales with disc brakes!). Our ride was half on-road and half off-road, with a lagoon swimming stop in the middle of the day; just heavenly. And after returning to town, we topped the day off with a Croatian specialty of wine-braised beef with herbs, served on top of gnocchi (Croatia is amazingly close to Italy, really!). And ice cream. ;-)





Despite our biking excursion, we were feeling full of old cities without enough nature, so we linked two of Croatia´s larger cities -- Split and the capital, Zagreb -- with an overnight at Plitvice Lakes National Park. A few hours of hiking among this gorgeous system of terraced lakes set us straight. The 16 lakes range in color from clear to bright blues and greens, formed by natural travertine dams, and feeding each other in cascades via waterfalls or small rushing streams. The park is fabulously organized with boardwalks over the water allowing you to follow the arrangement of lakes, plus shuttle buses and boats going across the large middle lake so you don't have to backtrack. It's really a stunning place, very different from other lake areas I've ever been.




Our few hours in Split included Brian making friends with Gregory of Nin, a 10th-century bishop who introduced Croatian-language services (rather than Latin) into the Catholic church. You can't see it in the photo, but his toe is worn gold and shiny from people rubbing it for good luck. Not Brian's toe, Gregory's.

Turkish delight

Some countries just give you a really good feeling, and for me, Turkey is one of them.

As we drove in to Istanbul from the airport, we marveled at the landscaping and clean road -- Tunisia felt far behind us, although the road wasn’t quite up to Singapore’s standard (but what is?). And then we drew closer to the city center, and the beautiful skyline started unfolding in front of us, with mosque domes and minarets and castles filling our view.

We spent the next few days getting up close and personal with the beautiful sights of Istanbul. The Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia are very close to one another, and look quite similar despite being built about a thousand years apart –- a wide central dome, smaller domes supporting the central one, minarets pointing skyward to the beautiful blue.

The interiors are vastly different, however: the Blue Mosque is all Arabic- style tile and stained glass, beautifully intricate designs, and I was required to borrow a shawl and a wrap to make a longer skirt. Our hotel was very nearby, which meant we passed by the mosque many times during our stay and got to see it at different times of day –- the low late afternoon light was lovely, but the nighttime view was truly enchanting, with upward exterior lighting highlighting the wings of seagulls circling above the domes and its six minarets (six is very rare, only two in all of Turkey).

Hagia Sofia was originally Roman/ Christian, but was converted to a mosque after the conquest in 1453, and the soaring dome is painted rather than tiled. The grand arches have the gray-stone look of European cathedrals, albeit with huge Arabic calligraphy medallions hung up high and Islam designs in much of the decor. Thankfully, Muslim conquerors simply plastered over the Christian mosaics rather than completely destroying them, and they have been restored as much as possible. Restoration is always ongoing, so the central dome has ginormous scaffolding racks as well.

Topkapi Palace, Istanbul's third major sight (in order of when we saw them, not necessarily importance), was also tremendous. I especially liked imagining what could be accomplished with kitchens to match the huge row of smokestacks -- boy, could those folks serve a feast for hundreds (unfortunately, the kitchens were closed to the public the day we were there). The interiors of the palace were gorgeous as well -- you wouldn't expect the rulers of the Ottoman Empire to skimp, would you?

Brian enjoyed pointing out that although Muslims won't drink alcohol, it's perfectly OK to have a harem of 300 concubines and their attendant slaves. I think it's more ironic that some of the women had enormous power (the sultan's mother, his haseki or favorite concubine, etc.) but in fact were never Muslim to begin with -- they came to the Palace as slaves who were taught Islam. I guess they didn't care much about bloodlines in those "royal" families.

Also interesting were the screened areas where conventional wisdom has it that sultans hid from view and listened to business proceedings, or examined the gifts brought to him, before showing his face for the business of the day. Sneaky!

There's an ancient Byzantine cistern that was used for a while, fell out of use for a long long time, and was re-discovered by some researcher when he heard tales of Istanbullers fishing from their basements. The cistern is kind of spooky, but in a quite pretty way. Interestingly, the umpteen columns in the place are of many many different designs (some doric, some corinthian, some ionic for example). They were obviously re-purposed from other already old-enough-to-be-demolished buildings. This one with teardrops is the only one in the place with any sort of intricate design. (This post would probably be better if I could actually remember the dates of anything, or the number of columns, or anything more specific than "old" and "some.")

A true highlight was our cruise up the Bosphorus, alternating docks on the European and Asian side of the strait, up to the Black Sea. The Istanbul suburbs go on for miles, and are quite ritzy -- there's a lot of money in those hills.

And then we went on to Cappadocia, in the interior of Turkey, a land of simply spectacular land formations -- "fairy chimneys," hoodoos, rolling curvy white limestone waves. We took a couple of hikes through the area and amazing formations just kept appearing. Locals lived in the caves and kept pigeons/doves throughout the region, so there are little holes and doors spread throughout as well. And the picture of us is in an underground city, a quite elaborate system of tunnels to which people escaped from persecution over the centuries (although perhaps originally built for protection from only elements and animals).

Our final Turkish destination was the town of Selçuk, near the ruins of Ephesus. We somehow stayed there 4 nights, despite really only doing 2 partial days of "stuff" in the area. But we were staying at a nice chill-out backpacker-style place (Atilla's Getaway) with a pool, hammocks, fairly healthy dinners, and friendly people. And there was a cheap gym in town, so Brian was happy. Ephesus itself was stunning (I'm running out of positive adjectives), a combination of Roman, Greek and Byzantine ruins -- they had quite a civilization built up until the harbor silted up. The resulting marshlands meant they lost their harbor (and access to the Aegean Sea) and they gained a lot of malaria. Neither of these were good for business, people started moving to the hills (the first instance of suburban sprawl?), took building blocks from the old city with them, and ground up some of the marble sculptures to use as plaster. I guess we should be grateful for what there is still left to see.

OK, enough of all that "we saw this and that" stuff.

The food was excellent, although it got a bit repetitive toward the end because we were in budget-eating mode for the most part, which in Turkey means kebap (that would be kebab in American) and pide (Turkish pizza, very thin and not saucy and very very yummy). We had a self-imposed pact not to eat in any restaurant with a tout out front imploring us to come sit down, which nearly ruled out our whole neighborhood in Istanbul -- but we still think it's a handy identifier of a high price/low quality joint. Brian is always looking for healthy and fiberrific foods (and has pretty much converted me), and virtually every restaurant in Turkey had some form of lentil soup, which were universally goooood, with a couple of absolute standouts. We ate a ton of pistachios, the first batch of which were stupendous -- from the Spice Market in Istanbul, and the more expensive of the two bins from which we tasted, which just goes to show that these guys paid attention to product/pricing/placement in their marketing classes. Our pistachio refills were never quite as good, but that didn't slow us down any.

Cherries were in season, and sour cherry juice was plentiful, and after three years in Singapore, let me tell you, I chowed down on these and other stone fruit. I loved Singapore's tropical fruit delights, but did miss cherries and nectarines and such there. Brian drank gallons of a thinned-yogurt drink called ayran, a bit sour for my taste, but he loves it.

Brian is still wearing his hat, and combined with my deep tan, people mistake us for Italians a lot. Except when we're wearing hiking boots, then we get taken for Germans. But people still like Obama, so it's OK when we correct their impressions. It's good to make people realize that not all Americans live in T-shirts and sneakers.

I was interested in seeing a whirling dervish show, but I've found that such cultural evenings have a lot of boring parts for a couple of good ones -- I estimated that I wanted about 7 minutes of dervish, rather than two hours advertised for most events. So I was extremely happy when we passed by an open-air cafe our last night in Istanbul, with a whirler on-stage. Turns out that 3 minutes was quite enough -- I would never call that whirling, it was more like languid turning. I hope this doesn't sound too ugly American -- there are plenty of American events I'd be happy to watch for 3 minutes rather than two hours as well! And supposedly the whole whirling dervish concept is really a personal religious rite which was banned for a while, but reinstated simply because it was viewed as important for tourism. Hmmpph.

Brian might tell you that his Turkey highlight was going to see the new Star Trek movie at a ritzy theater -- top of a skyscraper, cocktail bar in the lobby, high-end executive chairs for seating. Marty went with him but I skipped it, so I can't tell if he's kidding or not.

We just got to Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina, for those whose geography is still stuck in Yugoslavia), heading next to Mostar (also BiH), then Dubrovnik (Dalmatian coast of Croatia), north along the coast and inland through Hungary, Poland, ending our Eastern Europe jaunt in Prague in early August.

Marty was once again responsible for all the great photos above, but he (and his camera, and his laptop, and his fabulous bad puns) went on to Greece when we came north, so the days of high quality/high quantity photos are gone, sadly.

The Island of Doctor Fete

Heading east from the Sahara, we made our way via the ever-efficient Tunisian bus services to Gabes, where we wandered aimlessly searching for an outdoor café touted by the guidebook – to discover that their menu consisted mainly of Fanta and “we’re out of that.” After lunch nearby, we popped into a coffee shop. The owner (see photo) was thrilled to host Americans, and proudly played a video for us – one he had downloaded to his cell phone of a former President of the US. After the screening we exchanged hearty backslaps and uproarious laughter. The video featured a flying shoe. Isn’t great that even while out of office, W helps us get a warm welcome from international brothers? I love what that guy does for me.

Still chuckling from the Bush video, we hopped a southbound bus to the island of Jerba, making our way to Houmt Souk, the largest city on the island, which consists mainly of ancient whitewashed buildings accessible only by tiny cobblestone streets. Our hotel was a converted fondouk, another one of those former lodges for itinerant merchants. Fortunately, they had upgraded long ago to running water in every room, but kept vintage touches to remind us how tough the camel drivers had it back in the day.

Three nights in Houmt Souk allowed time to get friendly with a tailor (embarrassingly cheap), a barber (love that straight razor), and bicycle rental (wow, talk about strong headwinds on a one-gear bike). During one lunch we encountered ~30 Tunisian students on a field trip, so of course we hosted an impromptu math class – the photo is an overhead shot of the kids in mid-lesson. Hopping up and down when you know the answer is charming in any language.

Club Med La Fidele was waiting, and since we had gone almost two weeks without a decent croissant, we were very motivated.

This location has a beautiful beach, definitely the best we’ve seen in Tunisia – not only because the Club’s employees do a good job of regularly screening the sand to remove washed-up trash, nomadic dates, etc. but also because of the cute palm trees and shady palapas that provide refuge from the ever-present Tunisian sun.

The beach makes for lots of volleyball. Like at most clubs, our pal Marty is one of the best players, but I don’t have a photo of Marty playing because most of the time when Marty’s playing volleyball, Andrea and I are napping. You’ll have to settle for this photo of two teams changing sides to get some idea of the volleyball ambiance.

La Fidele is one of Club Med’s oldest villages-- it opened in 1954. Accordingly, the village retains the “old” party atmosphere of the ancient days – which means they have foam parties, lots of spirited beverages, dance-dance-dance, crazy games in and around the pool, and of course people staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning with the disco pounding so loud that even the sand near our room bounces up and down. We carefully store our earplugs in the safe every morning.

Fun special features are included, like Margaux (our aerobics instructor) and six other girls from the show, dressed in can-can girl/cowboy fusion outfits, dancing on the bar and pouring cocktails down the throats of single men. See Marty demonstrating what this fun special feature looks like.

Of course Marty didn’t enjoy any of this craziness, but he didn’t want to hurt Margaux’s feelings or those of any of the other single Eurobabes in the village. Suffice to say that for an old married couple like Andrea and I, napping in this village is the only way we can keep up with the crazy singles. Ahhhh, youth. Hey, hold on a second...he's older than us!

Since so many of the wild animals are nocturnal, there are very few people at tennis lessons each morning. This affords a great opportunity to get focused attention from the instructors to improve our games. Most notably we’ve made progress with serves and backhands, not to mention fine tuning our sliding ability, gliding smoothly across the surface of the clay courts just prior to getting a nearly out-of-reach ball – yeah, right.

To ensure guests avoid over-confidence in their tennis skills, the staff hosts tournaments once per week. Even with crazy handicaps they still crush us like bugs. See in the photo our chief of the Club Med village playing against us in a lifejacket and still nearly beating us (!); man these guys are good.

Of course we don't want the sailing staff to think we love the tennis team any more than them, so we've been spending some time on the sea. The club has 21 catamarans and the sailing stallions provide wonderful lessons, provided you speak French and buy them a Ricard at the end of the lesson. Of course, the obvious advantage of a catamaran for people with our level of sailing expertise is the chance to catch a black eye – but despite repeated attempts none of us are injured.

Most of our intellectual horsepower goes into fine-tuning our planning and execution of practical jokes on the Club Med staff. One of our favorite techniques is to identify a staff member with a high self-admiration index; let’s call that person “Mr. X.” At an opportune moment we shout, “OK, let’s go – everybody wants a big team photo with Mr. X… Mr. X please take position; front and center.”

I’m sure you can guess what happens next… the beauty of this approach is that the higher the self-admiration score, the more likely X is to believe that everybody wants a photo with him. We pull out the camera, the team (fully briefed in advance, of course) gets positioned for the photo, and Andrea or I surprise X by pouring a very large and very coooold bucket of ice water on him. After repeated experimentation, we find that a ratio of about 30% ice to 70% water works best.

It’s amazing how much joy is created from this simple technique. In the 2^nd ice-dumping photo, Mr. X thought it would be super-cool to demonstrate his break-dancing moves in our team photo just before we showed him how much we love him; some staff members can make this all too easy.

Our rooms are bungalows on the sand. Sand is everywhere in this village. Sand, sand, sand; breezes blow through the bungalows since much of the walls are lattice. Along with those Tunisian breezes come a little bit of sand as well as giant cockroaches who casually stroll across our bedroom tiles like they own the place. This was a problem until we agreed on a schedule with them; once this was done we stopped bumping elbows and spent the rest of our time with them living in relative harmony.

Evenings and mornings are absolutely spectacular – it’s the beginning of the Club Med season for this village, so the resort is at about 30% occupancy. All of this means lots of tension-free fun and no waiting for anything. Want to sail a catamaran? Pick one of the 20+ that are waiting for you rigged up on the beach. Want a sailing lesson? Take a private tutorial with one of the staff. Etc., etc…

Of course the standard Club Med delights also abound; massive buffets, body sculpting (this time in a Venice Beach style open-air gymnasium), espresso-addicted guests, open water swimming, cabarets/shows every night, gobs of aerobics/fitness classes, dance lessons, trying to speak French with mixed results, crushing lesser mortals in sporting events, being awarded medals in front of 400 of our fellow guests, beach parties, open air disco afternoons, crazy pool games, etc.

Thanks to Marty for all the photos in the post. We even received a special “love” award from the tennis instructors since we showed up for lessons everyday – or perhaps that award was just an effort to direct our icy love towards others....

Sadly, all of the sports and crazy fun had to eventually come to an end – we left Club Med yesterday; taking an eight-hour louage ride (translation: shared taxi with loud arabic music and no leg room) north to the capital. I’m posting this entry from our $25/night hotel room in Tunis where dumping ice water on the staff is not encouraged. We extended our stay at La Fidele from 10 nights to 12, and then to 13, but shucks, we’ve been in this country now for almost four weeks... and we’ve got a plane to catch!