Exploring Waikiki

I spent last weekend in Honolulu.  I've been going to Hawaii a lot as of late, but managed to do a few new things this time.

When we arrived at the hotel, I made my way to the Del Sol t-shirt shop.  Some friends of mine's little girl is turning 6 in a few weeks and I thought a T-shirt from that shop would be a good gift idea.  When the shirts are exposed to UV light from the sun, they change color.  They also have nail polish, hair clips, bathing suits, hats.  (the website is http://delsol.com).  Later that afternoon, we all went to Top of Waikiki for dinner and happy hour.  This seems to have become SOP for Honolulu layovers now.  From 4pm to 7pm they have $4 martinis and $7 appetizers.  The food is real glitzy Asian fusion, so the portions are small.  The coolest part of the place is that the restaurant rotates.  In the course of 1 hour, you get a 360 view of Waikiki (http://topofwaikiki.com).  Of course after a few too many $4 martinis, you might be inclined to think the room is spinning, and in reality, it is.  (A word of warning... avoid the $4 Rising Sun Martini.  It's more of a mojito type drink and it tastes like grass).

The next day, my friend Mary Ann and I did a little exploring on our own.  We started early and went to Galaxy Steakhouse for breakfast.  It's not fancy.  Just good cheap food.  I got out of there for under $10 with an omlette, pancakes and juice.

We walked down Kalakaua Avenue, which is the main drag of Waikiki beach.  Mary Ann is a frequent visitor to the island, so she pointed out some of the highlights.  A favorite of her's is the Moana Surfrider, which was the first hotel on Waikiki, built in 1901.  It's a sentimental place for her, because it is where her mom used to stay when she visited the island.

We also visited the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.  It was built in 1927 and earned the nickname Western White House (even though it is pink) because it served as the residence for Franklin Roosevelt during his visits to the island.  The landscaping is elaborate and everything is lush and tropical.  It's also the location where the Shirley Temple was invented.

We made our way down the beach towards the Hilton Hawaiian Village, which is a mega hotel complex with several huge hotel towers, shops and restaurants.  At one point we stopped for some shaved ice and lemonade and we saw the Canadian actress Jill Hennessey from one of my favorite shows, Crossing Jordan (she was also on Law & Order).  She seemed a lot shorter in real life.

After our refreshment break we made our way out to the beach and began our paddling excursion.  We rented a two person paddle boat for an hour and went pedaling around the bay.  It was a lot harder than it looked and you really had to paddle fast in order to get anywhere.  We never did get the steering figured out and we were always afraid we were going to run into surfers, paddleboarders and swimmers. Makes me think we were better suited for life on the land.  Mary Ann brought along a disposable waterproof camera, so once she gets the pictures back and forwards them to me, I will post them.

We finished up the afternoon with a late lunch consisting of gourmet pizzas.  My garlic pizza was a big salad on top of it, which was something I had not seen before.

Our layover ended up being a bit longer than we wanted, as our plane was four hours late arriving into Honolulu, thus we were four hours late leaving.  We did not make it back home til late morning, so it was a long night.  You know it's bad when the sun starts to come up and you are still over the Pacific Ocean.

Portobello Road

My second London trip I decided to visit Portobello Road.  Ladyfriend had given me a box of cards with various London walking tours.  After looking thru the various options, my friend Aida and I decided to visit Portobello Road.

My knowledge of the area, much like everyone else from my generation, stems from the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks, starring Angela Lansbury and the movie Notting Hill, starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.

Portobello Road in actuality is a street in Kensington, a section of west London, near Notting Hill.  It's one of London's notable street markets, known for second-hand goods, vintage clothes and antiques.  Unlike most of London's streets, Portobello Road meanders and curves around.  The buildings, rather than being uniform, are colorful and distinctly different from eachother.

We passed a bunch of shops selling vintage items and handmade crafts.  I stumbled upon a few record stores, now that I have become an avid record collector, but the prices were a bit steep.  Unfortunately we were not there on a Sunday when the street is packed with stalls and vendors, but it was still a beautiful day and fun to just walk around.  We stopped at a local pub for a drink and to rest our feet.

Instead of taking the tube back to the hotel we decided to walk back via Kensington Park and around the swan pond.  You always know when it's a nice day in the UK because the parks and streets are always packed with people out to enjoy the beautiful day.

We enjoyed some pretty good Thai food at a local restaurant and then visited a little gourmet grocer for some provisions for the trip home the next day.

48 hours in London

For the month of August, I held my first choice, mainly because I wanted the layover that was on the last trip of the month.  I was not real happy about the other three trips, so I dropped and or traded them for other trips.  I ended up flying a couple of Honolulu trips, a Buenos Aires trip, and a couple of London trips.  This blog is about my first London trip, which was a 48 hour layover.  Normally, we have 24 hour layovers, but we have a Tuesday trip that lays over until Friday.  I was fortunate enough to pick up one of these for August.  It was a treat because it was on the 777 (we call it the big girl plane) and I don't get to fly it that much.  I was also flying position 6, which is the easiest position on the plane.  All you really have to do it stand there and look pretty and pour wine for people.  The purser and the galley in first class were very nice as well so it made for an enjoyable trip.

We arrived on Wednesday morning, and after a short nap, I took the train from Victoria south to the charming town of Redhill to visit my friends Amanda and Aaron.  I went to college with them back in Jacksonville.  You may remember a previous blog entry about how the Icelandic volcano kept interfering with my plans to visit them this spring (although we did finally connect).  It's a quick train ride south, only taking about a half hour.  The last time I was in London and they came to visit, they took the train into the city, so this time it was my turn to go to them (plus I wanted to see their flat and meet Wolfgang, their adorable dachshund).

They met me at the train station and we stopped at the local Sainsbury to get dessert for dinner that night (we ended up with sticky toffee pudding).  The town of Redhill is very quaint and small enough that you can walk anywhere.

I found a new best friend in "Wolfie".  As long as you throw the ball for him and pet him, you have a friend for life.

  

We picked up our dinner at a local Fish and Chip shop.  Aaron claims it is the best fish and chips in the UK.  It was pretty good, I have to say.

I caught the 9:07pm train back to Victoria and took the tube back to the hotel.  It was nice going to sleep and knowing that I would not have to set an alarm for the morning.

I slept surprisingly well and decided I would spend the next day in the city and do a little exploring.  I wanted to go to the Cabinet War Rooms.  I visited the museum once about 12 years ago, but in 2005 they opened the Winston Churchill Museum as an extension, and I wanted to see the new exhibits.

The War Rooms are one of five parts of the Imperial War Museum.  The structure was engineered as a bunker and became operational in 1939 as Britain started facing attacks and bombings from Germany.  The underground complex is reinforced with a slabs of concrete three meters thick for extra protection.  The bunkers never took a direct hit, so it is unknown if they could have survived a bombing.  After the war, the bunkers were left largely intact and in 1984, were annexed as part of the Imperial War Museum.

example of the three meter thick slab of concrete reinforced by steel girders

The rooms were small and primitive and living below ground was not much fun, but vital to maintain an active government in the uncertainty of war.  People could be assigned duty down in the bunkers for weeks at a time without seeing sunlight or hearing from friends and family.  They had a sign that posted updated info  each day to give those down below an idea of weather conditions above.

chart of air raid signals so those below ground who know of attack on the surface

There was not much in the way of indoor plumbing.  There was just one working toilet that was reserved for the prime minister.  Everyone else was expected to use bed pans.  Even the canteen had a pump to drain the water from the sink back up to the surface.

note the bed pan below the bed

kitchen pump to send the debris from the sink back up above ground

The bunkers had an elaborate communication area known as the Map Room.  This portion of the bunker was staffed 24 hours a day and became the center point for contact during an attack.  There was even a special phone with a built in scrambler that allowed Churchill to talk directly to Roosevelt without fear of being tapped by the Germans.  The wall of the Map Room even had some graffiti that had been drawn of Adolph Hitler.

The Churchill Museum opened in 2005 and sits off one of the hallways of the bunker.

The highlight is a sort of 15 meter long smart board that sits like a table and allows you access to hundreds and hundreds of documents from the Churchill archives.  His early life is also profiled and I was interested to learn that his mother was an American heiress and part of the Roosevelts.  That made Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt cousins.  The only conflicting information I found was on Churchill's policies on British controlled Palestine.  As I learned at Yad Veshem in Israel, most of the world turned their back to the Jewish situation before and after the war.  England was no different, denying thousands of Jews the right to immigrate to the UK and after the war, making it harder for them to emigrate to Palestine.  The Churchill Museum indicated that Winston was a huge Zionist and big supporter of the founding of the Israeli state.  Two differing opinions on one scenario.

As you exit the museum and go above ground there is a memorial built to the victims of the 2002 Bali night club bombings.  I have bittersweet memories of that event, characterized as the Australian 9/11, because I was vacationing in Australia in October 2002 and I remember the day we climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, they were lowering the Australian flags to half staff in memory of those who were killed. 

I stopped at Trafalgar Square for lunch and did a little people watching before making my way to St. Paul's Cathedral for an Evensong service.  I got there a bit too late because the first 25 folks to arrive get to sit under the nave next to the choir, so I had to sit under the dome like everyone else.  On the way to the church I passed an interesting sign announcing free beer with a haircut!  Sounded tempting.  If only my hair was a little longer!

It was raining as I left the church, so I decided to scrap my plans to go see a show and head back to the hotel and call it a night.

Madrid

Now that the Israel blogging is done, I need to rewind to the middle of July.  I was on a couple of days off and I got a call in the morning from the bid service to see if I was interested in picking up a Madrid trip for that evening.  I had nothing going on, so I took the trip.

It was kind of a low key affair.  I got to fly with my friend Juan.  He and his wife Lisa, also a flight attendant, are good friends and live a few miles away.

We arrived into Barajas airport a little late, but still got the hotel by late morning.  Juan was meeting up with some friends and the rest of the flight attendants were going to go out to dinner with the pilots.  I was going to meet up with them, but I decided instead to go to the Thyssen Museum.  It was the one major art museum I had not visited (the other two being the Prado and the Reina Sofia).  Together, the three make up the "Golden Triangle" of art for Madrid.  It fills the gaps where the other two leave off: mainly it has a early Italian, English, Dutch and German works, and more contemporary art from the first part of the 20th century.

Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza was the owner of most of the works, which were part of his private collection in the 1920s.  Where as most European works were winding up in American collections, Baron Thyssen took advantage of the Great Depression and broke former American millionaires who were desperate to unload their collections.  The Baron's son and his trophy wife, a former Miss Spain, turned the collection into a public museum in 1992.

I was most impressed with the Contemporary works.  They had a nice collection of artists including Jackson Pollack, Georgia O'Keefe, Roy Lichtenstein, Dali, Picasso, etc.  Lichtenstein was the artist who's pop culture paintings resembled comic strips (you may recall one of his pieces was on display at the World Trade Center and was destroyed when the buildings were brought down on September 11th.).

I also enjoyed looking at all the religious themed work from the 14th and 15th century.  Having just returned from Israel, it was another perspective on major Christian events.

After spending a couple of hours at the Thyssen, I made my way down Paseo de Prado.  The whole city of Madrid was in the throws of World Cup Fever, with Spain making it to the finals which were to be played the day after we got home.  (Incidentally, my friend Lisa was there the night of the victory and she said it was insane with people in a state of euphoria).  All the statues were draped in the Spanish flags in support of the soccer team.

I decided I wanted a little something to commemorate the World Cup so I headed back to the hotel via Puerto de Alcala, a shopping district.  Everything was so expensive.  I found a jersey at Corte Ingles for about 100 Euros and even a T-shirt at the Hard Rock was 50 Euros.  I'm not that big of a fan so I passed.  I am sure I will go back soon and will have ample opportunity to find something.  Now that they have won the World Cup, I imagine there is probably even more merchandise.

On the flight home we had a rather personable young lad named Michael who took an interest in the cabin crew.  He must have drank about 5 or 6 sodas on the flight home, but I think he was just looking for an excuse to come to the galley to talk to us.  When I woke up from my break in the bunks, he was in the back helping set up for the follow on service and he helped Billy, our coach galley, count and inventory all the liquor. I let him put on my topper and walk thru the aisle picking up garbage.  I told Michael to make sure he smiled and said "thank you" to everyone that gave him trash.  I emailed the picture to his mother later and she wrote back that out of the entire Mediterranean vacation, he told everyone picking up trash on the plane was his favorite part.  Go figure!

Farewell, or Shalom

We left Eilat Tuesday morning and began the long drive back to Tel Aviv.  As we were leaving Eilat, we stopped at the Underwater Observatory for a brief visit.  The Red Sea has pristine waters and is very popular with divers for all the coral reefs, which attract a wide variety of sea life.  The Underwater Observatory is located just offshore and provided us with a view of lots of different types of fish (kind of puts my virtual Fishville tank to shame).

As we made our way north into the Negev, we stopped at the Timna Valley Copper Mines.  The park has pretty incredible natural sandstone formations and the area has been mined for copper almost continuously for the last 6,000 years.  I think I would have appreciated the visit a bit more if it hadn't been so damned blisteringly scorchingly hot.  We still got to see some pretty impressive sights.

I got in trouble for touching the different layovers on this rock formation.  I thought it was pretty firm, but it crumbled to the touch and Joesph yelled at me.  I told him I was sorry, but he told me to apologize to the rock.

From Timna, we drove for several hours north around the Dead Sea where we stopped for lunch.  We saw a neat formation of different colored rocks on the Jordanian side.  Joseph said it was a fox, but we thought it looked for like a wolf, but either way, Kirsten and I got very excited because it made us think of the Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is presently our favorite movie.  Which do you see?  A wolf or a fox?  Canis Lupis or Volpes Volpes?

As we headed west past Jerusalem, we saw a great deal of smoke pillowing past Jerusalem.  Joesph told us that it was the wooded areas in the Palestinian Territories and that militants had taken to lighting forest fires as a form of protest.

We arrived in Tel Aviv just in time for rush hour traffic.  One observation we noticed was that Israeli's have very little patience when it comes to traffic and our guide was having a little meltdown.

We ended up eating at an outdoor restaurant (the same one we ate at the first night we arrived) and enjoyed some pizza and beer while watching the sun set.  We had a couple of hours of sleep before we had to leave for the airport.  The flight left at 5am, so we had to be at the airport by 2am.  The place was a zoo with lots of people.  Everyone gets their luggage scanned and then hand searched.  The whole process is very efficient though and we got checked in with plenty of time to spare.

We stopped in Amsterdam on the way home and had about an hour and a half layover.  Enough time to buy a  magnet, but apparently not enough time for our luggage to make the connection.  When we arrived in Dallas, they were paging us to let us know the bags did not make it.  It ended up being delivered a few days later.

All's well that ends well.  This was an incredible trip.  In a way, kind of  a pilgrimage.  It was amazing to see the Holy sights.  I think we will view our Christian holidays differently now, having seen these places first hand.

Shalom friends! :)

A Day in Jordan

There was no scheduled touring on the Monday we were in Eilat.  We arranged in advance to do a day trip to Petra in Jordan's Rif Valley.  I had spent three days in Petra last October (you can read the blog entries here....http://ronno1976.blogspot.com/2009/11/petra.html, http://ronno1976.blogspot.com/2009/11/jabal-al-najr-arabic-for-biting-off.html).  Since Kirsten did not go on that trip with me, I wanted her to have a chance to see Petra, so we arranged for this abbreviated day tour.

We started very early in the morning in Eilat.  We were picked up and taken to the Itzak Rabin Border Crossing.  Eilat sits right to the west of Aqaba, it's Jordanian counterpart on the Red Sea. Israel only has diplomatic relations with two countries in the Arab world: Jordan and Egypt.  Their was not much activity at the border.  Just a few tour groups waiting to cross.

Once on the Jordanian side, we waited mainly for our visas to be issued before we could begin our drive to Wadi Musa and Petra.  We waited in a gift shop where there was "no charge for looking" surrounded by kitties and flies.

Our guide was a man named Riyadh.  He didn't seem to have a lot of patience for our tour group, which was mostly comprised of American Jews, including a stoner named Danny.  He provided comic relief.

There isn't much going on in the Jordanian desert.  We saw a few Bedouin tents here and there, but for the most part, the scenery was very sparse.

When we arrived at Petra, I was immediately overcome with how incredibly hot it was.  When I was there in October, it was very mild, but it was hot as hell in late June.  I also noticed how few people were visiting the site compared to the October visit when the temperatures were more mild.

We began our 45 minute walk down the Siq into the ruins.  The Siq is the remains of a dried up riverbed.  It provided some shade in various spots, but our tour guide seemed to like to stop directly in the sun when he had important information to share.

We finally made our way down to the Treasury building, which is the main attraction at Petra.  We stopped here for a moment to get some photos, but we were on a tight agenda so our tour guide kept herding us along.

He finally let us free down by the Roman theatre and we had some time to venture off and do a little exploring of our own.

The Street of Facades, adjacent to the theater is also a rather impressive site because there are countless tombs carved out of the mountainside.  

We decided to visit the Byzantine Church ruins.  We had planned to do that last year, but Stu and Marty and I got lost during our visit to the Altar of High Sacrifice and by the time we made it back to civilization, we were spent.  We made our way up the stairs to the ruins, dating back to the 4th century.  Christianity was dominant in Petra from about 400 to 600 AD, before being replaced by Islam.

We had to be back to the bus by 3pm and we were told to plan for about an hour to get out of Petra and back up the Siq.  Once we were in the final stretch, I started to lose Kirsten to the sun and heat.  She insisted on stopping and sitting not in the shade, but right in direct sunlight.  I told her to avoid "the light".  Luckily we made it back to the Visitor Center with our lives intact.

The heat had drained all our energy so most people passed out and slept the whole way back to the border.  Our tour guide was very proud to point out that Aqaba had many international dining establishments like KFC, Mc Donalds, and Burger King.  I was hoping we would have some time to see Aqaba beyond it's fast food establishments, but we headed for the border.

After making our way to Eilat, we were driven back to our hotel.  Whereas Eilat had been rather pleasant the night before, it was hot and windy that evening.  We found a little bar near the ocean and had dinner and beers before turning in for the night.