BootsnAll Travel Network



We’re home!

October 5th, 2007

Hi everyone who’s been keeping up with our blog. There were even people I didn’t know were keeping up, and we are so sorry that we didn’t keep up with it better. We were just having too much fun I guess. But now we’ve landed in St. Louis and we have a house and 1 block from a great little school that is no bigger than the one they came from, so things are going good. I’ll pull out some more pictures here in a few days, since we have a bit more MB left to fit them in. Also, I’ll post some articles that I started and didn’t finish while on the road. Those last few weeks got a bit hectic, but Paris really is as great as they say it is.

Speaking of Paris: We got there the day before the big football game with Scotland. There were 14,000 Scotsmen there, all in their kilts. Those Scots really know how to drink, and they were trying to drink Paris dry on the day of the game. We saw that a couple of them had lost their shirts, so I said, “One more drink, and we’ll soon find out what they wear under those kilts.” Five minutes later, Erin squeaked, “Mom, I just found out that they don’t wear anything–one just mooned those people across the street!”

Anyway, France was great, and I just want to say that the myth of the rude French is just that. The people were very nice to us, despite our butchering of their language. I thought that maybe Paris would be different, but they were just as nice there. So don’t be afraid to go–we loved it.

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The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly On Our Tents

August 26th, 2007

  Day number 335 of captivity.  It was a dull day.

We had coffee. We drove to Madrid. We walked aroung Madrid. And then, much to our horror, we saw a museum. An art museum.

And then, just to liven things up a bit, I´m sure, God sent us a storm last night!  You know, the kind of storm that broke our tent poles, got us soaking wet, and then made us sleep ( oh, how funny! The word I meant to use: Insomniacs) for the night in the car.

The only thought sustaining me through this never-ending monotony is that Paris, and then home is at the end. Oooooh! Wait a sec……I forgot–School work!  O.K., maybe I will stay in Europe. But just until High School is over. 

Erin

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Navigating Europe

August 26th, 2007

When we got to Europe proper, we decided to lease a car, rather than rent, because we can get a pretty good deal this way, and it is much more economical for our family of four to drive, rather than take trains and buses. Also, for purposes of camping and cooking our own meals, it just makes sense. Or so it would seem. We forgot to take into account the wear and tear on our nerves and our marriage.

Gene, being a typical man, insists on doing the driving, and I am only too glad to let him. So the job of map reading and getting us set off in the right direction falls to me. I’m pretty good at this when we’re walking–I have a really good sense of direction, and as long as I know where the lake, river, or ocean is, I can keep us found. Also, I’m fairly good at navigating highways in the United States, where we number our highways. In the states, we say: head south on Hwy 55, get off at Sikeston, and go west on Hwy 60 for about 20 miles, then turn left on Hwy 114 and go 7 miles to get to Grandma’s.

Well, it’s not that way in Europe. For one thing, even though the highways have numbers, they don’t pay much attention to that. They say: okay, I want to go to Barcelona, and I want to go on this blue highway here, so I will need to go thru Girona, and you point your car in that direction. Then when you have gone thru Girona, you find the next town on the map and head for that. It requires a lot of concentration, and being a good guesser as to which town on the map will have the road signs pointing to it. There are 3 times more towns in reality than there are on the map, and some of them are a pretty good size. In the states, we will put a town of 50 on the map (sometimes), but here I think you need at least 50,000 residents to rate a place on the map. The road always leads straight through downtown. No, I lied. It leads a rather crooked path through twisty wind-y streets, and you cross your fingers and use your intuition to guide you through. Once we wound up at the top of the hill in a dead end alley.

On the way to your destination, you will be going thru multiple round-abouts, and you had better keep your eyes open on those, because sometimes the roads come in from seven different directions. So each time you go around the round-about, you have to watch the road signs to make sure that you get off on the right one. Many times your sign is not there, and those are the times when we cross our fingers and go straight. Our new mantra is: “When in doubt, go straight.”

Sometimes the young rowdies in the vicinity like to entertain themselves by turning the signs around, or otherwise rearranging them. We are not amused.

Then other times the signs point to the same town in two or more different directions. We almost got divorced on the way to Rome one day, because all roads really do lead to Rome, but that doesn’t mean you can’t afford to be picky. We were trying to avoid the toll road, but gave up the effort and paid anyway. It was worth it. Incidently, it costs about $35 to drive from one side of Italy to the other. That’s the short way.

Some of the road features in Europe are amazing. There are 3 mile long tunnels in Switzerland, elevated highways 300 feet in the air, and bridges that span large distances. They are amazing feats of engineering, but when we see them coming, our heart sinks, because we can be pretty sure there will be a toll attached to it. One day we took a bridge from mainland Greece to the Peloponnese Peninsula, and it was a beautiful bridge, but it cost us about $13.00 to cross it. That was one way, and there was no way to turn around and choose another way once we had driven up to it. And no, they didn’t announce the price ahead of time either. We had to bite the bullet and pay it, but we took the ferry from then on. It was easier to admire the bridge from the ferry. It really was a beautiful bridge.

Then there’s Spain. How can I describe it? Same as above only more so. We thought we had this down, but Spain does not post road signs that make sense. We followed a sign for miles the other day that literally led us to a dead end. We just sat there trying really hard not to cuss in front of the girls, then gave up and got on the toll highway. It was 19 euros, but hey, what’s 19 euros to stay on a highway that doesn’t turn into something else?

Well, perhaps I am complaining too much, but really I can understand how things got this way. Europe has more population density than the States, so of course there are more towns. The roads are curvy and go off in every direction, but I’m willing to bet that they are built on top of cart tracks that go back at least 2000 years. And therein lies the charm–we find ourselves winding thru cobblestone streets wide enough for one car, just to get out the other side of town and back onto our highway, but at least we are seeing the town, rather than bypassing it on the super highway. All the better to find the local specialty food shops, so we can stop and sample the local foods. Isn’t that why we’re here?

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Help, no guidebook!

August 26th, 2007

We have been traveling around the world and getting our guidebooks as we go, so we don’t have to carry around a lot of books. This was easy until we got to Europe, and then our supply dried up. We have a general guide by Rick Steves, but he advises you to buy a guidebook.

We knew of course that we wanted to see Barcelona in general and Gaudi’s architecture specifically, which is amazing by the way. But after we left Barcelona, we had a vague idea that we wanted to camp somewhere around Madrid, and I had heard that Segovia is nice. We stopped somewhere off the highway on the way there, as it was getting late. I had an idea that there would be camping grounds nearby, since there was a small lake, and a monastery nearby that you could tour. Sure enough, we found a really nice campground near the lake, and decided to stay for a couple of days since there was stuff to see around here. Then this morning we got up and diddled about what to do, and thought that we may as well go see the monastery as anything, though we knew nothing about it.

As we approached the monastery, we noticed a lot of campers and tour buses heading that way also, as well as a string of hotels and restaurants. Mind you, this is in the “middle of nowhere”. Then we pulled in and had a hard time finding a parking place in the huge parking lot. Apparently we had stumbled into a major tourist attraction. The admission price was 11,50 Euros for an adulto, and we decided to pay it, even though we still had no idea what we were to see.

We entered the park, and the dry scrubby landscape immediately turned green and lush. It was like an oasis in the desert, as I suppose it really is, and we could hear water running. The path took us to a huge waterfall, and it was amazing, and I was wondering if I’d be willing to be a nun to live in a place like that. Hmm, toss up.

The path wound round and round and took us by multiple waterfalls, and lush verdant hillsides and caves and cliff sides and many other features. The trail even took us into a cave that went behind a huge waterfall, so that we could stand on a platform and watch the backside of the cascade and the green moss rising up to the roof of the cavern, and raindrops falling in the cave. There were waterfalls
spread out over hillsides, and tumbling off sheer cliffs and thick green moss was growing everywhere, like a fairy carpet. We even found a waterfall in the shape of a peace sign. I’m not really sure how you would go about counting waterfalls, but there must have been more than a hundred.

We have been traveling around the world for almost a year now, and have seen many beautiful places, but to me this was the most beautiful place in the world. Somehow we had stumbled into heaven without a guidebook. HPIM4205.JPG

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My Ipod’s Sad Life

July 20th, 2007

Me and my sister started this trip off with a shiny, white Ipod, bought second hand off of Ebay.
Well, it doesn’t like traveling.

It’s feeling depressed, and possibly contemplating comitting suicide. It won’t be talked, coaxed, or wired into behaving like a good Ipod.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how to make it feel better? It has a frowning face and the Apple support web address.
~Erin

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Egypt: The land of Temples,Touts and IPODS

June 24th, 2007

What can I say about Egypt? The ancient sites are magnificent but wading through all the touts can be exasperating and exhausting. We were in the Sinai peninsula and climbed Mount Sinai- you know- where Moses received The 10 Commandments and saw the burning bush! We started out at 12 midnight from the Red Sea town of Dahab and took a mini-bus to the mountain. We were informed that we would need a police escort for our family since we were Americans. We had our own personal policeman traveling with us from then until we reached our hotel in Cairo the next day at 4 in the afternoon. At one point I had thoughts of being taken out to the desert and shot at one in the morning but fortunately we arrived at the mountain safely. We started our climb at about 1 in the morning and from our very first step we were hounded by Touts trying to sell us camel rides. There were what seemed like hundreds of them. They kept at our heels for the 3 hours up the mountain and three hours down-like vultures waiting for dinner to collapse in the heat of the day. We really wanted to make it on foot power and were determined to not take a camel. One Tout named Mohammed would not leave Stephanie alone and she finally had to basically yell at him to go away. The climb was strenuous but we did make it at daybreak and I must say the sunrise was a sublime experience. I have just thought of another good use for an IPOD- I could have listened to tunes as I climbed the mountain and could have blissfully ignored the attempts for my money from the Touts. Are you listening Apple?———-GeneMount Sinai at daybreakCamel we didn't ride

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Turkish Women Don’t Stay Thin

May 10th, 2007

Well everybody, here I am again after taking a, let me see, ah! yes, a 4 month break from blog writing. It’s such a stressful job, that sometimes you just have to take a sabbatical.
Today I shall be informing you about speech and food etiquette. Let’s start with the speech part. The absolutely correct way to say “thank you” in Turkish is “Tesekkur ederim” but this example is sadly lacking those little turkish symbols that tell you how to pronounce the s and the u. We must put up with our non-Turkish keyboards. So pretend that the “s” has that little symbol that sometimes goes on the end of a French “c”. It looks like a miniture, backwards “c”. So, if you put all of the little thingys in their correct places, “tesekkur ederim” should be pronounced “tay-shek-er-ay-der-im”, but I’m not expecting you to be able to pronounce it correctly, because I can’t pronounce it. No, the best way to learn to say “thank you” in Turkish, is to go to Turkey.
Now let’s move on to the food etiquette part. In Turkey, the law says that you must not leave the table until you have eaten every, last scrap of food.* People will think you’re still hungery, the cook might think you didn’t like her cooking, the world might end. So the best thing to do is to tuck in, and not think about how much butter is in the pilaf, or about those little pastries that were fried and then dipped in sugar syrup. If you gain 25 pounds, well, it’s Turkey’s fault.
*see Lucy’s article “A More In Depth Analysis Part I”
-Erin

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A more indepth analysis: Part I

May 10th, 2007

Part I

Well, when we got to Istanbul, I really loved it.
The magnificent sight of the great Ayasofya rising from the buildings takes your breath away.
I was immedietly hooked.
After we had spent a couple of days there, we got in contact with some of our relatives here in turkey (my aunt’s cousin).
We talked to them over the phone, and they graciously invited us to and opera that our relative was preforming in.
The opera was great, and they invited us out for some very tradional turkish food. (delicious of course!)

The next day, Aunt Nerman, (as she is called,) cooked us up a great big dinner that she and her daughter Cagnur worked on all day.
Sadly, Cagnur could not eat with us, but Aunt Nerman was plenty of company.
We talked for a few minutes, and then she brought out the food.
I have never seen so much food!
And all of it was absolutely delicious. Aunt N kept trying to get us to eat it all, but it was not humanly possible.
We walked out of there waddling like stuffed ducks.

-Lucy Sappington

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May 10th, 2007

The Blue Lagoon

Well, we’ve been awful about keeping up with our blog, but when we get internet time, we tend to email folks.

We’ve been in Turkey for about 3 weeks now, and just love it. This is a truly beautiful country, and this is where it all began. It has more Roman history than Italy, more Bible history than the Holy Land, and more Greek history than the Greeks. The Silk Road ran through here, and the Crusades went through here too. It is the home of the great Byzantine Empire, as well as the Ottoman Empire. You can still see sheepherders shepherding their sheep, and women cutting hay in the fields, by hand. The food–ah. The food is too good for our own good. There is a road where you can walk in the footsteps of St. Paul, and Ephesus of Ephesians fame from the Bible is here. In short, this is the most romantic place I have ever been.

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We are in Vietnam

April 1st, 2007

Vietnam is a beautiful country, and it is very long and thin, so going east to west is no big deal, but north to south is rather time consuming. We had to take an all night train to get half way down the country. Riding a sleeper train has been a new experience for us, and we have done it twice now. It’s really pretty easy to sleep, because the train just rocks you to sleep. For breakfast in the morning they came around and passed out instant noodle packs, and we went ahead and opened them up so as to be ready when they came around with the hot water. And we waited. And waited. No hot water ever made an appearance, so we went looking for a special tap or something, but there was none. An hour later, they came back around and took our noodles away from us, and looked irritated that we had opened them up. Half an hour after that we were getting off the train and looked over to see the employees eating our noodles! We never did get that one figured out.

Other than the noodle madness though, we have had the best food ever. Spring rolls, fresh or fried, are the national dish, as is any kind of seafood. Rice or noodles come with every meal, including their breakfast, and wonderful broth soups. All kinds of fried wontons in many different shapes and flavors and filled with any kind of meat, vegetables and seafood, and with a big pile of lovely fresh minty greens alongside. Garlic is used in abundance, along with ginger, hot peppers, lemon grass, and other things too subtle to identify. Every dish here is slightly sweet, which adds an interesting new flavor to the food.

Then besides all the great Asian food, there is a strong french influence here as well, because France held Vietnam as a colonial power until 1954, so you can get great french breads and pastries. Also, Vietnamese coffee, which is a cup of very strong coffee with a dollop of condensed milk in the bottom, which you stir in to your taste when you get it. No nescafe here.

We may just go ahead and stay here. Or we may just come home and take up Vietnamese cooking, because it is so good. Thai food was wonderful, but Vietnamese food is sublime. StephanieHPIM2063.JPG

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