I can't believe I haven't written a blog post since October. (I vaguely recall people telling me that time would fly as I got older, but living it is so much faster than I ever imagined.) Yet here we are, amazingly, in the middle of August. It's my birthday month, which is simultaneously SO MUCH FUN and so sad because it is the inevitable rush headlong back into another school year. (For the record, I love my job, it's just hard to let go of summer leisure.) This is my long-winded way of getting to the point which is that much has happened since last I wrote, and even then I was behind on my blogging. Let's inventory where we've been since I wrote regularly (known to me as the LIST OF MISSING BLOG POSTS STILL TO BE WRITTEN *cue intimidating music here):
- June 2011 - US: New Orleans, Houma, Memphis
- July-August 2011 - France: Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Narbonne
- February 2012 - Istanbul (the only post I've written!) and Cappadocia
- April 2011 and 2012 - Jamaica (Montego Bay and Ocho Rios)
- August 2012 - Panama: Panama City, Boquete, Bocas del Toro, Chitre, Ocu, Pedasi
- Sept. 2012 - Toronto
- March 2013 - Mexico
- July 2013 - Maine, Canada (Halifax and St. John)
- July - August 2013 - The Netherlands (Amsterdam and Haarlem), Belgium (Bruges and Ghent), Germany Dusseldorf
- August 2013 - Rhode Island (we leave this weekend)
Yikes! Perhaps I should take requests for what to write about first? Maybe someday I'll actually get all of those written in the appropriate level of detail, but for now, I'm going to cluster by topic, and today's topic is our foreign friends. I warn you, this is going to be a doozy of a blog post. There are some pretty cool and funny pictures though, so it's worth reading to the end.
J loves meeting people. It's the impetus for his travel the way food is the impetus for mine. Consequently, he's always open to new experiences and makes friends where ever we go. I'm not nearly as good at it, but I so thoroughly admire him for it and try to learn from him every chance I get.
Blending our two loves, this guy fed us dessert one late night in Istanbul. (I frequently find myself searching for a late night dessert after everyone has closed for the evening, and am always grateful for the kindness of those who understand the needs of people with sweet teeth!)
This guy was excited to show me how he makes his Belgian waffles!
Despite our inability to speak Turkish, this guy figured out that I have a significant fish phobia. (Don't ask.) He thought he was hilarious. J agreed. Too bad nobody caught the look on my face on film!
We took a tour of a working grain windmill in Haarlem. With only one other person on our tour, our guide was more than happy to teach J everything he knows.
This adorable couple in the Jordan neighborhood of Amsterdam introduced us to Taiyaki, Japanese waffles. We tried the original one filled with red bean paste. It was delicious! A must try when you visit! Check them out here.
Sometimes, instead of food, animals are our entry point into conversation. People are always happy to talk about their pets or have them show off for us.
The dog on my lap is Bruce. He's an old boxer who had just had surgery after a stroke and was blind and deaf on his right side. We became fast friends. I didn't catch the owner's name, but we had a lovely round of drinks with him and his friends. This picture is after he invited us to come back the next day to his office. When asked what his business is, he explained (hence the hand-holding) that he's in the business of people relating to people because we're all human and together we can do anything. He promised that if we spent 4 hours (!) at his office, we'd be changed. Sorry to say, we didn't take him up on that offer.
This is Mateo and Beatrice. They live in Gamboa and have built two cabins and an outhouse (cold water only) in their backyard. Mateo loves animals and often gets monkeys to come eat out of his hand. Sadly, we didn't see any "monos" at Mateo's, but we did see this guy:
who I now know is a capybara. We stayed with them for a few nights and in spite of our embarrassingly bad Spanish and their non-existent English, we managed to become friends. Mateo was the one who helped us take a boat ride in the Panama Canal.
Speaking of people with whom we've stayed, one of our US road trip stops was in Houma, LA. We stayed in a B&B owned by a local judge, the Grand Bayou Noir. The judge and his wife weren't home, but Herbert took good care of us.
It's not all sunshine and pancakes though. Sometimes people try to take advantage of us. And sometimes, we let them because the payoff in memory is far more valuable than the money we've spent. In this case, we were walking on the boardwalk in New Orleans when this man stopped J with a trivia challenge. ("Give me some money and I bet I can tell you where and when and how you got those shoes.") It was a sucker's bet, and we knew it, but we played along. Hilariously, it ended with him shining J's shoes, which happened to be flip flops, making it even funnier!
Other times, we need to depend on the kindness of strangers and trust them to help us. I've had many conversations where neither of us can speak the other's language, which are usually hilarious and often, amazingly helpful.
getting directions in Avanos, Turkey
Sometimes we just see people in random moments of life with their pets.
We both love animals and sometimes we make friends with random ones along our journey.
This is a dog who lives in a shoe store in Halifax. He's the biggest golden doodle I've ever met.
Istanbul was filled with stray cats. Incredibly, they were usually really friendly and we couldn't resist the chance to stop and pet every single one. In fact, we stop to love them all EVERYWHERE we go.
Haarlem
Bocas del Toro
Amsterdam
Ghent
We couldn't have planned this if we tried.
In Cappadocia we hiked to the top of the town to watch a beautiful sunset. This little guy picked us up along the way and stayed with us for a couple of hours. He had clearly been beaten and initially had tremendous fear. He was heartbreaking. As you can see, we became buddies. If not for the challenges of bringing a stray on an international flight, we would have adopted him.
As I post these pictures, I am realizing that I stop to befriend every single stray dog I meet too:
Bocas del Toro
Boquete
Cappadocia
Dusseldorf
Panama City
And though we love cats and dogs, we've seen some other amazing animals in all of our travels. Like these two guys:
who were in the park in Toulouse guarded by this guy:
Or these super amazing creatures:
Crabs and birds in Bocas del Toro
These are the original fire-breathing dragons that stood atop the bell tower at St. Bavo's in Ghent.
Turtles in Ghent
Ducklings in Amsterdam
Red Frog Beach, Bastimentos
Sometimes the creatures are made of stone. Seriously, how cool is this? Cappadocia is filled with these amazing rock formations. This part is known as the valley of the animals.
Every once in a while, our friends get shy and don't want to be photographed.
"Berlusconi Tried to Kill Me"
This is a restaurant in Amsterdam. We ate dinner here one night and spotted a cute cat lurking in the corner. Later in our meal, he was lurking on a rafter over my head preparing to pounce (on my plate and not my head, I hope.) J spotted him, which he noticed and was startled by, causing him to lose his footing and nearly land on me anyway. It was almost death from above! We thought it was hilarious when the staff informed us that the cat's name is Berlusconi.
Many of you know that in addition to my love for cats and dogs, I can't resist a monkey. I have specifically planned trips just to get to play with them. (You may remember that I was bitten - and almost groped!- by a macaque in Gibraltar. I remain undeterred.)
You can only imagine how happy I was when I learned that our trip to Panama would include the possibility of seeing monkeys in the canal at a place called Monkey Island (capuchins, tamarins, and howlers). I had no idea I'd find one, a spider monkey, in Boquete as well!
Capuchin Monkey on Monkey Island
It's a little like Where's Waldo--can you find the howler monkey in this picture?
Tangentially...speaking of Where's Waldo:
We loved these statues in St. John, NB.
Back to the monkeys. Tourist guidebooks for Panama are notoriously bad. It's a tough country. At Mateo's, where we had no internet or tv, J used to read a guidebook to me as a bedtime story. The chapter about crossing the Darien Gap included such nightmare inducing images as needing to be hosed down after being sprayed by disintegration-inducing chemicals when entering Columbia. In one book, we found a reference to a natural hot spring near Boquete. This sounded much more relaxing than the Darien Gap! When we asked the girls at our hostel how to get there, we got typical Panamanian directions. ("Take a bus or a taxi to the entrance, then take a short walk up a trail until you get to a farmhouse. There is an old lady who collects two dollars because the springs are on her property. Watch out for the monkey.") WHAT? They went on to tell us that a monkey lives on the property, sometimes comes out to see people, and occasionally steals things like sunglasses and cameras. We followed their directions (the short walk was nearly an hour and the trail was a mostly dried up riverbed) hoping we might have a monkey sighting and possibly even some antics. The springs turned out to be a hole in the ground large enough for three people to sit in, they were hot though. Luckily, an ice cold river also ran through the property, which was nice for cooling down and then drying off before we hiked again. But the star of that excursion was clearly the monkey, Chita, who quickly became our pal.
J and I both like photojournalism. He likes to capture the tone of a place, often created by the people. I like to capture moments of hilarity. Usually, we try to do this paparazzi style:
These are both from Paris. I have no explanation for the top one. The second photo was taken in Notre Dame.
Changing of the guard in Fredericton, Canada, the capital of New Brunswick.
Amsterdam's Gay Pride parade provided lots of great images:
Sometimes, people catch us trying to take their pictures and offer to pose for us. As J keeps reminding me, I so frequently almost miss an opportunity because I'm not bold enough to create it, but someone else is, so I get lucky (and sometimes, so does he!)
Gay Pride in Amsterdam. J got a free drink out of this photo op!
This was taken from out my car window. The kid was walking along the highway on the way to Bar Harbor. He knew I was taking his picture, but played it cool.
We actually stopped the car to catch this guy. We were on our way back from the underground caves in Cappadocia when I spotted him. As soon as I got out with the camera, he offered to pose and assumed this position.
Sometimes, the friends we make do more than just talk to us. Ali made us a special Cappadocian Apricot Dessert (one of the tastiest dishes ever thanks to a long day of poaching apricots in grape molasses) and he played a concert for us. Cafe Safak was a highlight of our visit to Goreme.
Sometimes the friends we see in foreign places are friends we know from home. We surprised J's Aunt R for her birthday by joining them for dinner in Paris. The trip was a surprise birthday gift, and then we met them on their last night. What a great plan his uncle had to keep the surprises coming!
Find the friends, find the fun. This is why we travel.
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