You know what they say...

  

big feet... 

big shoes

Midnight at the Oasis

Throughout the south of Tunisia we saw signs warning us about crossing camels – I guess they get spitting mad or something if you cross them... just imagine if you double-cross them! Wow. For awhile we thought the collective Tunisian camel population had ditched us – or maybe they had gotten fed up with the grind, left town, and went to Club Med for some R&R. Anyway, it wasn't until we approached the border of where the stony desert meets the rolling dunes that we started seeing camels – lots of camels.

None of the camels seemed angry to me. Well, except Andrea's camel got a little cranky after I kept calling her "Whisker Lips," and Marty's camel was a tad sensitive about his adorable nickname of "Fatty" – but the truth can hurt sometimes. Whisker Lips spent most of her time making Chewbacca sounds or belching – boy, let me tell you camels get severe halitosis. World-class halitosis… the bad breath makes it clear to me why evolution helped them develop that enviable trait of nostrils which close on demand.

I guess camels can close their nostrils during sandstorms, which is nice... but come on, clearly the camels who can close their nostrils are more likely to be getting busy than ones who can't, because they are less likely to be off-put by the foul stench of their mate's French-Arabian kisses. Imagine a likely she-camel thought process upon seeing a hunky male: “Hmmmm – bad breath, but he’s funny and he’s got a good looking hump; I’ll just close my nostrils.” That camel's genes are going to make it.

My camel was, unsurprisingly, a delight to be around: ripped, agile, a natural athlete, and a great conversationalist. He's also not a slave to fashion – and like Aldo Cella, he knows what women like: women like Cella Lambrusco on ice.

Sadly, Aldo Cella (spokesman of the ‘70s Cella Lambrusco ad campaigns; please do a YouTube search – it’ll do your heart good. Remember: before there was white zin there was… Cellabrate!) has not been with us during this trip throughout Tunisia. We could use not only his uncanny sense of style but the crates of chilled Cella he would no doubt have sent ahead to meet him at every stop. It is very difficult to get a wine or beer with your meal in Tunisia – it’s almost like the majority of the citizens don't drink alcohol! You can get a brew at one of those big hotels in a city that has a Zone Touristique, but we aren't allowed to visit these places because our guidebook implies that you're much cooler and an all-around better and more hep person if you look down your nose at those hotels; instead staying in small independent places in the center of town. The only acceptable reason for visiting these hotels is so Andrea can kick my butt with "ladder workouts," which loosely translates to "swim intervals until you almost throw up, rest for 10-seconds, repeat."

Baby goats are in abundance at the oases – their cuteness reigns supreme over all living things, especially when they’re doing vertical hops over small streams; on all four hooves at once. The nighttime stars in the oasis were absolutely unbelievable, out of this world – unfortunately we couldn’t capture them on film. Nothing like a complete absence of man-made light combined with zero clouds and a view to the horizon in all directions for stargazing.

Early morning (05h15) was similarly breathtaking in the oases of Tunisia; birds waking up, light slowly bleeding into the night sky, lizards rustling in the bushes, the smell of last night’s leftover couscous in the air…totally fabulous.

Despite high winds for a few hours of the night that whipped sand around outside our Bendouin tent, and the early-morning Gauloise smoke blown in large clouds by our French tent-neighbors, we made it out of the Sahara alive. Heading east, we were amped for one of the highlights of our time in the south; an overnight stay in a groovy troglodyte (pit dwelling) hotel near Tatooine. The limestone keeps the rooms cool and comfortable, and is also a great sound insulator to cut down on the pitter-patter from the feet of our hosts and the numerous scorpions scampering down hallways.

Continental breakfast and a wonderful couscous dinner (hmmmm – were those leftovers from the oasis?) were included in our $15usd/person room rate. As you can see from the photo, the room was simply furnished but still very groovy. The only downside of this place is the owner’s nephew, who skulks about, saying how he was hoping to get his application off to the academy this year but that Uncle Owen needs him another year to help with the harvest, that there’s absolutely nothing fun to do since his friends Biggs and Tank left, and ending every conversation with the sentence “It looks like I’m going nowhere.”

The owners have some pretty advanced equipment at the pit dwelling, considering the remote location and low rates. Marty and I tried to help them with some equipment problems, but neither of us knows enough of the binary language of moisture vaporators, so we recommended they get someone out here that does. We’ve also heard that local tribes in this area travel single-file to hide their numbers. All of this is just a little too weird, so we’re heading back as fast as we can to civilization on the coast.

Rock the Kasbah in the Funky Old Medina

(For those over or under certain ages: Rock the Kasbah and Funky Cold Medina are two pop songs from the 80s.)

Tunisia has been great fun at times, and generally quite interesting, but there’s a lot of waiting and less-than-easy travel and hot weather...it’s like we’re in the Sahara or something!

There is great architecture and beautiful examples of tile and sculpted décor –- Arabic, Ottoman, Roman, nomadic/bedouin -– but in general the sights are marred by trash, graffiti, decay, or progress (like satellite dishes in the view). But there are not many tourists around, and preservation takes money, and so it goes.

Medinas are the oldest section of each town, the original walled cities with mazes of small streets, and still the primary market areas of the cities as they now exist (enlarged outside of the medinas).

Parts of the Tunis medina are now very tourist-oriented, but if you keep wandering you get to the real thing, where the daily life of a city’s commerce is done, with tailors at work, shoe repair underway, and goat heads and sheep intestines on display.

But the tourist-oriented parts aren’t all bad, as that’s where you find the freshly baked waffles, whole wheat bread, ice cream, and other goodies. And thankfully there's not much hard-sell of the souvenirs anyway.

The kasbah is the citadel of a walled city, the highest fortress-type corner of the walls, if it’s still standing. In the city of Sfax (where Brian claims fax technology was developed, heee), the Kasbah is open to roam around and upon as a museum of traditional architecture, with interesting exhibits on how the medina walls were built and materials used for walls, flooring, and ceilings over the years. Who needs steel for rebar when you’ve got olive branches? Our roaming included climbing up the bastions and walking on the battlements; one tower’s route up was a ladder with rungs made of tree branches imbedded in the walls in a corner.

The Bardo museum in Tunis is fabulous, mostly for its roman mosaics (quite similar to the Villa Romana mosaics we saw in Sicily. The museum entrance is a boring cement block outside, but actually incorporates a former palace which has been built up and expanded over centuries, with gorgeous ceilings and marble columns.

After the Bardo, we scooted out to the ritzy suburb of Sidi Bou Said, where regulations require all buildings to be painted white and blue -- gorgeous effect!

And also to the Roman baths at the ruins of Carthage -- so little remains of a city which had such great importance -- Brian of course liked to pretend that he was a Roman senator out for a workout, massage, and dip in the Olympic-sized pool.

We’ve been doing a lot of swimming, either in the sea or at the zone touistique hotels, which will let you in for a small fee.

For some odd reason we can’t seem to find Brian any decent fitness centers –- or any at all, for that matter –- trust me, he doesn't let us forget that the best part of vacation is in extremely scarce supply. He sometimes improvises with push-ups and squats by the pool, to the befuddlement of tourists and the delight of the hotel staff, who give him a thumbs-up and call him “tres sportif.” And once when I was swimming without Brian, the pool guy asked if I was a professional. I may have OK form, but trust me, I am a very slow swimmer -- It's just that no other tourists seem to do more than splash around a bit.

And now, as always, the food report: our guidebook talks of great-sounding lamb dishes and chickpea stews, but we’ve found that most menus are heavy on couscous, roasted chicken and “sorry, we’re out of that.” (“Finished,” as they say both here and in Singapore.) We’re looking forward to Club Med to get a greater variety of local fare -– which may sound incongruous, but CM truly is good at showing off local dishes. Also, you can count on CM to have great food safety practices, which is good for seafood items and the not-fully-cooked egg-in-pastry dish called brik that I can’t wait to try (Brian swears one of these made him violently ill in Morocco a few years back).

Also, baby goats and camels are really cute –- Brian will cover that soon.

(All photos courtesy of Marty, as always! We love traveling with our personal professional photographer!)

Mount Etna, Taormina, and the Aeolian Islands

While Marty and Andrea climbed Mount Etna (the largest active volcano in Europe) I stayed in the B&B to focus on the Slackerboy vacation trinity; icing shin splints, eating Italian pastry, and watching movies on Marty’s PC. Snow is still on parts of the volcanic cone, but somehow my travelling companions were able to avoid getting blown off the craters despite high winds and flying obsidian chips.

Soon after this, we zipped up north to the Greek theatre at Taormina. After circling the town for 45 min while simultaneously praying (unsuccessfully) to Zeus for a miracle parking space, we knuckled under and left the car at the designated tourist garage with the rest of the cattle. Taormina’s views over the sea are impressive – matinee players of antiquity no doubt had trouble directing patron’s views to the stage and away from the coastline.

2 hours later we were on a hydrofoil and heading to the Aeolian Islands, and fortunate to make a quick stop at the Mecca of all things geek; Vulcano – the birthplace of Spock. After exchanging the time-honored “live long and prosper” hand signs with the natives, we motioned to the captain of our vessel to continue island hopping, ending with an overnight stop in Lipari. Sleepy villages, rocky beaches (ouch!), fabulous views from our balcony, and chilly swims in the sea… that cold water is almost as good as ice for treating shin splints.

Shin splints were a natural outcome of bringing old shoes on vacation and overtraining – but they’re less interesting than my other current injury; a black eye! No, Andrea has not been slugging it out with me; here’s the backstory: During our last day at Club Med Kamarina, I walked down to the beach at 14h30 aiming to win the week’s catamaran regatta with my pal Fawn. Strong and gusty winds led management to cancel the regatta for “safety reasons” (wimps), which of course only encouraged Fawn (born at the helm and former chief of sailing for years at a number of Club Med villages) and I (who taught sailing in itty bitty Lasers during 3 wind-free weeks on the Sea of Cortez) to take a boat out; nobody sails a Catsy like my homie!

With a security boat on our tail, Fawn on the tiller, and myself yelping in a harness on the trapeze – it was fast and verrry bumpy on the way out. About 4K from shore we tried to tack, with both rudders conveniently popping out of the water at every try. After half-a-dozen attempts with the loose trap swinging, I caught one of the trap handles near my eye. This didn’t hurt a bit so we kept sailing – great conditions to practice our jibe skills.

Two days later, my eye has turned a lovely shade of purple. On the plus side, it still doesn’t hurt and I’m getting a lot more respect from the Sicilian locals since it looks like I’m some sort of Thai kick boxer on vacation (too bad I didn’t pack those sweet silk shorts Apiruk gave me – note my name embroidered in Thai letters on the front). injury like this also makes it easy to get ice from the natives; point to the eye and say “ghiaccio.” Ice is

good for making cocktails back at the room and also great treatment for shin splints – unlike the black eye, my left shin looks fine but feels awful. This delightful combination of injuries has created an opportunity for us to appear even weirder to the locals. In the evening, we select a restaurant, sit down for dinner, I take off my sunglasses, point to the eye and say “ghiaccio.” Then when the ice comes, I start rubbing it on my shin… is it any wonder Europeans find Americans so hard to understand?

Ok, just one more -- but 13 cappuccinos is my limit.

Yea baby, Club Med Kamarina! No, I don’t know why Andrea keeps insisting that we spend our holidays at these places. We’ve been here ten nights and we have four more to go. Aside from swimming (that’s me in the photo – as you can see the pool is quite tiny and very crowded), sailing catamarans in the Med, aerobics, ping pong, tennis, trapeze (see Andrea in the photo on the right about to get caught by a hunky French 18-year-old), basketball, archery, massive buffets, fancy coffee drinks, local wine and cocktail tasting (try a Campari Americano, with soda), fitness/weight lifting, pool games, crazy signs, coffee games, walking to nearby ruins (this is Italy, after all), laughing uproariously, and planning practical jokes to play on the GOs,and winning medals by crushing lesser mortals in sport tournaments, we haven’t found anything to do.

This place really sucks – I can’t wait to get back to those cobblestone streets where we can look at a few more old churches. We hooked up with Marty (our pal from California - pictured here with our salsa dance instructor), and he’ll be traveling with us for 6-8 weeks.

The only break in our day-to-day hedonism at Club Med has been our quick visit out to Villa Romana (see previous post). We rented a car that Marty drove very fast (imagine Racer X from the hit animated show “Speed Racer”) and used his GPS which encouraged us to take exciting unpaved roads – “strada deformata.” If you’re ever in Sicily looking for paths created for ox carts, we can give you some great pointers…

After we exit this Sicilian Club Med paradise (um, yea - kidding before about not liking Club Med – we’re having so much fun here is why we haven’t been checking email) we head to Siracusa. The burg was once the most important city in the western world (described by Cicero as the most beautiful Greek city and greatest of them all) and home of Archimedes and his war machines like "The Claw" that grabbed attacking ships and turned them over, and "The Heat Ray;" mirrors that supposedly magnified the rays of the sun to set Roman ships on fire, etc. Man, that guy was a regular Dr. Evil...

I'm guessing it was something like 20 years before the Romans passed legislation permitting them to siege Siracusa at night -- probably fast-tracked through by the young up-and-coming senator who landed that swanky villa near Piazza Armerina.

Soon after Siracusa we’ll climb Mount Etna, and then zip through Palermo before catching an overnight ferry to Tunis (Carthage!).

Yipe – our time in Sicily is running out! This reminds me; I better get a few extra helpings of sardine pasta while I still can, panini, hmmmm.... I wonder if the Carthaginians are into teh tarik …

Viva Panini, Viva Sicilia!

After touring Catalan’s architectural marvels, dodging fireworks at Spanish medieval faires, admiring old churches, and freeloading off our pals in Barcelona for a week, it was time to head south – to Sicily. Sweet Sicily – cappuccino, sardines, mafia, and crumbling infrastructure.

We landed in Trapani on the northwest corner of the island, and then caught a bus from the airport into the oldest part of town. Our hotel was in a great neighborhood just off the main pedestrian zone – an area filled with charming cobblestone streets, old churches, and tasty panini dealers. Well, the panini were tasty, I don’t know about the dealers – they looked a little oily.

During the evening we threw caution to the wind and strolled around the old city, along the sea walls and out to an ancient Spanish fort. We looked all over but couldn’t find any Cosa Nostra – they must be in a convention or something. Either that or they’ve moved somewhere where they can get a decent internet connection. 5.4kbs!? Now that’s a reason to break someone’s kneecaps. We also got reacquainted with this time honored European equation: cobblestone streets + dark nights = break an ankle. Ok, ok – we didn’t really break any ankles, but it was touch and go there for awhile – especially when racing for the gelato stand before it closed.

The next morning we were up early for our cable car ride to the gorgeous town of Erice. It’s a walled medieval burg overlooking Trapani – often used as a landmark by ancient sailors that plied the North Africa - Sicily - Rome trade routes. This city-fortress is on top of a high hill that dominates the northwest portion of Sicily and was considered impregnable for hundreds of years. That must be why Erice was conquered by Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, and Normans – everybody loves someone who plays hard to get.

Luckily our guide book gave a lot of attention to the features of Erice, because when we arrived the fog was so thick we had trouble finding street signs, let alone the key sites of Erice like an espresso or panini dealer – we nearly fell off one side of the city. After admiring the medieval lanes and the charm of the freeeeeezing cold streets we spent the obligatory five minutes looking at the oldest church in town (the church was similar to the one pictured on the left which had a great “Light of God falling on Jake Blues” vibe) then high-tailed it back to the cable car for our ride back down to the sun, sand, and surf of Trapani.

Soon after tumbling off the cable car we packed up and caught a train (or more accurately, trains) to the interior of the island – aiming for a town called Caltanissetta. I was shocked to find the trains leaving on time – wow, is this Italy? There was gorgeous scenery from the train of which I failed to take any good pictures. Indeed, we arrived in Caltanissetta just when the timetable said we would, and got a room in a sweet B&B down a nice pedestrian street that was not far from some lovely old churches.

Dinner that night was at a very small restaurant run by a husband and wife team. The husband was loaded (did I mention there are grapes in Sicily?), so he focused on making sure all wine glasses of the patrons were full and little else – other than side-stepping the disapproving glares from his wife of course.

Since the trains had worked perfectly we decided it was time to switch to the bus, and caught one to Piazza Armerina for the sightseeing destination I had been looking forward to ever since my background research started on Sicily; Villa Romana. This site is the ruins of a Roman senator’s hunting lodge/villa, with what many people believe are the best Roman mosaics “in situ” left in the world. Almost all of it was submerged under a mud slide, and since excavations began fairly recently (around 1950), much of the place is well preserved.

It’s a sprawling villa with the walls either 50% intact or reformed, sumptuous mosaics oozing the imperial wealth of Rome, and the surrounding lands are still rolling agriculture – it’s not hard to get the feel of what it might have been like to spend the summer with Maximus where every room in his sprawling vacation home had a gorgeous mosaic for a floor that you tromped over on your way to the lap pool, vineyards, olive gardens, etc. – while well looked after of course by the valets, cooks, bakers, maids, masseuses, stable boys, aerobics instructors, 50-50 “general purpose” slaves, you get the idea...

Yes, it was gorgeous. Too bad we didn’t get there on our first attempt when we initially arrived in Piazza Armerina. Between waiting for our “agriturismo” hosts to come and pick us up, and finding out that busses were not going to run down to Vittoria (our next destination) on the following day (um, yea… remind me why did we switch from the train?), we had to scuttle our culture plans. No worries, later in the trip we caught up with Villa Romana – saw all the mosaics (hence my extensive knowledge of the site – see above), along with a stop in the charming town of Ragusa Ibla – somehow we snuck away in the middle of our 14 nights at the next mystery destination… We brought along our new pal Fawn (on the left in the last photo) who finally hooked us up with a decent internet connection, although I'm a little worried about these pop-up windows that keep asking me to pay "protection" money...

Ah, Barcelona!

To sum up: Barcelona has great architecture, I love tapas, Joanne is a fabulous Barcelona tour guide, Joanne & Brian together are incredibly fun hosts, Gaudi was a genius, Spanish wine is good and really cheap, festivals are fun, and two in one day even more so.

Our first full day in Barcelona Joanne took us running in the morning and then for a long walk around the city. Every year on April 23 there are two things going on: a) festival of Sant Jordi (Saint George, as in "…and the dragon") and b) Dia del Libros (day of books, for the anniversary of the deaths of Cervantes and Shakespeare). For the Sant Jordi festival, there are a jillion rose sellers all over the streets, as that's the traditional gift, and for Dia del Libros, there are lots of bookseller stalls all along the streets as well. Many people on the streets are carrying roses, and it’s fun to speculate whether they’ve received them or are on their way to give them. The confluence also leads to sights such as a big kinetic dragon-head sculpture wearing reading glasses and holding a book (and guys on small stilts dressed as roses). And very crowded streets as well, although it's not actually a public holiday.

We also swung by the market and bought a few things for dinner, admired the marvelous displays of produce and

sweets, and marveled at the pigs.

We took an excursion on the weekend to Montblanc (no, not the French one), a village with an ancient walled part of town, which had a medieval festival with a Sant Jordi focus (a bit like a renaissance faire).

They did a play of the George/dragon tale, but it was in Catalan and so we really only understood the end. Which we already knew, but so it goes. Then there was a parade of drumming and guys running around with fireworks, including showers of fireworks from the aforementioned dragon –- we got really up close and personal to the festivities, as they wandered through the cobblestone streets repeating the firework showers (you’d never see this sort of thing in the US due to liability issues).

The next morning we went back for a continuation of the festival, which was "market day" -- more food to drool over. We bought cheese and bread and empanadas and some meats and had a fine picnic at a beautiful monestary in the countryside. Then back to the hotel for 2.5 hours of tennis -- exquisite exhaustion. Joanne and Brian can plan my excursions any time! (Brian Schlottmann, not Cargille -- well, either one, actually!)

The food in Spain was fabulous – another key benefit of visiting friends somewhere is that you don’t make tour-guide restaurant mistakes. We of course had a great paella, and many meals of tapas (I love eating little bits of lots of things). And hot chocolate (ultra rich and thick, almost like pudding) many days. With churros...yum. The best one was chili-spicy.

Our best food experience was calçots, sort of a cross between a leek and a green onion, local to Catalonia, and only available for a short season – we were so lucky to be there at the right time. This was out on our weekend adventure, and we actually stayed in Valls, the epicenter of the dish. You get a bib and plastic gloves, they bring you a pile of fire-roasted calçots, you strip off the outside blackened layer, dip it in romesco sauce, tilt your head back, and eat...yum! (Sorry, no camera with us that day.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calçot

We did the requisite Gaudi tour of Barcelona, including Parc Guell, the Casa Milà apartments (aka La Pedrera (Catalan for 'The Quarry') (we toured the interior as well), and of course the Sagrada Familia church. I’d been here 20 years ago (ahem), and it’s absolutely amazing how much additional construction they’ve completed on Sagrada Familia. They may actually finish this baby some day! (It’s scheduled for 2026.) One can stand looking at this building for a long time and not notice everything there is to see -- it’s just fantastic, in the true “fantasy” sense of the word. (Sorry, no camera with us that day either.)

And we get to go back to Barcelona in August, as our flight back to California is from there – yay!