December 2007 Archives
No. 153: The Pickled Meats of New York City
There are so many authentic Jewish
delis in New York that descriptors like "institution" and "perfection"
are applied almost too generously, albeit always with fierce loyalty.
Shortly after we arrived in New York, local news outlets began running
a story on the relocation of Manhattan's 2nd Avenue Deli, from its old
location in the East Village to a cheaper, name-defying outlet at 33rd
and 3rd. If you're asking directions, that's pronounced toity toid and toid.
Stories
of the 2nd Avenue Deli's grand reopening heaped on words like
"institution," "famous," and "cholesterol," leaving little doubt that
we would visit this place. Applying small town logic, we tried to avoid
the afternoon rush by going for lunch at 2:30 and were rewarded with a
chilly forty five minute wait for a table. The 2nd Avenue Deli is a
"famous ""institution" of "cholesterol" that is open twenty four hours
a day in a city that is awake and hungry for twenty four hours a day.
There's always a line.
My Favourite Souvenir
Upon my recent return from Trinidad, I flew on an Air Canada flight that went to Toronto from Port of Spain, Trinidad via Caracas, Venezuela. We spent a total of 45 minutes on the ground in Caracas, and they didn’t even let us off the plane, so unlike Danny Glover, I didn’t get an opportunity to visit with Hugo Chavez.
After spending the night flying over the Caribbean Ocean and the United States of America, the plane landed in Toronto at 6 in the morning. I sleepily approached the Canadian customs booth with my completed Canadian Customs Form.
After pursuing the form, the pretty, blonde customs agent asked, “Where are you coming from?”
Lima Loca
The sudden orgy of explosions echoing off the concrete homes in the Peruvian capital signaled that it was midnight—Christmas Day.
After five or ten minutes of hugs and well wishes between family members, all now standing from the dinner table, I led the way out to the street.
It sounded like I was in the middle of a very bad day Baghdad. Explosions had been rocking the house for several days leading up to the event, but it was nothing like the deafening sound of an entire city simultaneously letting off munitions.
Temples, Tombs and Hot Air Balloons
Pyramids aside, Luxor is probably the next most common stop on Egypt’s tourist trek. With two simply amazing temples within a stone’s throw of any hotel in town, and numerous valleys filled with the hundreds of tombs many thousands years of age, it’s easy to see why we were anxious to squeeze in as much as we could in our day and a half in town.
We started at Karnak, a short caleshe (horse-driven carriage) ride out of town. You can quickly get lost wandering around Karnak’s multitude of carved columns, admiring the hieroglyphics and images, some of which still display scraps of the original blues and yellows and reds. With its bold, primary colours, the temple must have looked quite garish in its youth, but I prefer it now with the limestone exposed and faded colours, leaving more to the imagination.
Turtle Beach & The Road to Nizwa
Sur to Nizwa, Oman
Before leaving the region of Sur, I paid a visit to Ras al-Jinz, a tiny beach which belies its immense importance to several endangered turtle species; loggerhead, green, Olive Ridley and Hawksbill. On a small stretch of sand under honey-colored cliffs, female turtles come up on to the beach at night to lay upwards of 100 eggs deep in the sand.
After about 50 days the eggs hatch all at once, and guided instinctively by the moonlight the tiny black creatures, about two inches long, set off determinedly for the sea. Only a few meters separate their birthplace from the ocean but they are treacherous – birds, crabs and foxes catch them on the sand, and if they reach the ocean alive, fish and sea birds await them. For this reason they swim far out to sea for hours after hitting the water. It is not surprising that only about 1 of every 50 survives.
The Shrines and Temples of Japan: Part 2, Horyuji and Nara
If you’ve been following along for a while, or if you at least take a look at the left column of my website, you’ll notice that I have an affinity for UNESCO World Heritage sites. I’m not trying to visit every one of them, for that would be impossible. I passed up four in Japan and one in the Philippines. I use them as sort of a proxy for a guide book. (and I never use guidebooks). If you know nothing about a country and you wanted to know what “the” things to see while you were there, odds are most of them would be on the UNESCO list. Certainly if they are of historic, cultural, or natural significance. This rule doesn’t hold all the time. Some really amazing things are not on the UNESCO list. Nan Modal in Micronesia and the rock islands of Palau come to mind. I also got a bit of a mini-education from the head of the World Heritage committee in Rennell in the Solomon islands about how the process works for getting on the list. Lets just say it isn’t an accident that rich countries have more than poor ones or that something as significant as Nan Modal is off the list while the Sydney Opera House (built in 1972) is on the list.
I will leave my UNESCO rant to a later day…
El Sol de Durango...
After our ‘Sleepless in Los Mochis’ experience we caught the famous ‘Copper Canyon’ train to Creel. It was an eleven hour journey over 37 bridges and through 86 tunnels, the astonishing track winding its way up and through a seemingly impossible landscape of narrow dead-end valleys, pointed pinnacles and up onto a cool, piny mountain plateau. We stood between the carriages sticking our heads out of the window and playing ‘chicken’ with the approaching tunnel walls. Mindless, but thankfully not headless, fun.
It was so cold in Creel we were glad of the carbon monoxide spewing ‘Death Machine’ gas heater in the corner of our room. A slow, lingering gaseous demise seemed preferable to being frozen into unconsciousness. As the heater warmed up it performed a passable impression of Rolf Harris on a wobble-board, it’s casing buckling and boinging with the heat.
Sitting with the Masters
I was picked up in the morning by the master wood carver, Umesh Singh, and we rode off on his motorcycle through the busy Jaipur streets to his home in a little neighborhood near the public commodities market. Umesh is a traditional Indian wood carver and makes his living from carving and selling little statuettes and motifs of idealized Asian spiritual figures as well as the animals that once roamed the region freely. He is a very stoic, proud man and he carries himself with that particular authority of a man who has perfected his craft. I had met him the day before at his little stand of sandalwood carvings in the art district of the city palace and he invited me to come to his home so that I could watch him as he went about his work. I was very curious to learn if the contemporary Indian craftsman continues to utilize the riches of ancient tradition and folk-knowledge or if his art has also been gentrified by the impervious weight of “modernization.” I hoped that this meeting with Umesh would resolve some of my questions.
Guide Book Glitches
Travelling on my own in Argentina a few years back, I read about ruins of San Jose de Lules, a Jesuit mission outside of the small city of Tucuman. There wasn’t much to do in Tucuman. I barely spoke Spanish and I’d already seen the sights of the town, so of course I decided to go. It seemed easy enough. Climb on the bus, get out at the chapel, wave down a bus going back when I wanted to return home. There was a museum there, my guidebook said, which in my mind meant people, especially since it was summer holidays. Mid-January; hot as blazes.
Let out on the dusty side of the road, I followed a quiet dirt path to the chapel. Nobody was there. This was okay by me, as it meant I could actually be alone for the first time in ages without having to hide away in my hotel room, buried in Dracula, the only English novel I’d been able to find.
Flightless Round the World: Interview with Ed Gillespie
Ed and Fiona are a couple from the United Kingdom on a year-long trip around the world, with one major twist: they're doing it flightless. Passing up the convenience of flying, they're travelling by bus, train, cargo ship, bicycle, or any other flightless mode of transport.
They're avoiding air travel to keep their environmental footprint to a minimum, but also because they relish the journey. Rather than jetting miles above the earth's crust, they prefer travelling slower, savouring the cultures and landscapes they encounter along the way.
Why I Don't Read Guide Books
This week, as I sat in a hospital waiting room while a friend had surgery, I got caught up on some long overdue, totally banal magazine reading. I fantasized about crafty projects that look great but for which I have neither the skills nor the penchant to do myself. I flipped through People, and US Weekly, and OK!, and wondered for the umpteenth time why people buy and become engrossed in those magazines. I learned what's hot and realized (again) that I'm not. And I read list after list of the next "IT" places around the world, with Miami elbowing a place on more than one must-see roster. "Calle Ocho is more polished than ever!" gushed one writer, and I wondered whether I needed an eye exam because we were just on Calle Ocho last month and it looked to me like it could use a good polish. In fact, after navigating south on the one-way Calle Ocho for more than 30 minutes, we finally gave in and ate at one run down restaurant that served nothing it advertised on the menu. The next day we grabbed lunch at a cafe where the waitress had no qualms telling us the croquetas were Goya-brand frozen confections heated up in some bubbling used oil by a tank-topped fry cook who seemed to be more adept at transacting deals--given the number of people coming off the street and into the kitchen--than flipping crisp croquetas onto greasy plates. Miami's art scene may draw crowds from all over the world, but it also attracts a homeless man who washes his clothes in the fountain in front of the contemporary art museum. I wondered what Miami the writer had seen and why our visions were so different.
Loud in Los Mochis...
We left La Paz on a ferry across the Sea of Cortez to the Mexican mainland. True to form the lounge on the ship continued the trend of Mexican buses for showing hideously inappropriate films, treating us to a helping of tasteless splattergore involving reality TV show contestants being hunted down in grisly fashion by inbred cannibalistic hill-billies. Fun for all the family. The ship was also patrolled by a phalanx of armed security guards causing me to nervously ponder exactly what sort of trouble they might be expecting at sea. Passengers rioting in disgust at the choice of films perhaps?
In Los Mochis we made the unfortunate choice of the Hotel Los Arcos as our place to stay. Our room was clean enough but the window had been taped and boarded up so there was no natural light and it reeked of cheap Brut-like aftershave so was a bit like sleeping in Henry Cooper’s armpit. The shower head had a built in heating element to warm the water which was wired to the mains in suitably quirky Mexican fashion. What safety-paranoid idiot said electricity and water shouldn’t mix anyway?
Backpacking SE Asia With A Pregnant Peruvian
Tatiana didn't merely break my expectations of a woman traveling as a backpacker while pregnant—she shattered them.
Stereotypes
As a North American male without sisters or female friends that have been pregnant, I, like so many men with the same background, had this particular preconceived notion of what it's like to be the boyfriend or spouse to a pregnant woman. That she would be some demanding, emotional whirlwind of cravings, vomit, and crying that needed constant attention and pampering.
The Island of Birds; a mystery not solved
Arabian Sea coast, Oman
“We continued our journey from the roadstead of Hasik for four days, and came to the Hill of Lum’an, in the midst of the sea. On top of it is a hermitage built of stone, with a roofing of fish bones, and with a pool of collected rainwater outside it.”
The accepted opinion about this – nobody has ever identified the Hill of Lum’an - is that it is Hallaniya, one of the Kuria Muria islands. The only major drawback about this explanation is that Ibn B said he had taken 4 days to get there and it is only 20 miles from Hasik. But after speaking with Salem who explained that his parents had once undertaken a boat journey to Sur when the wind dropped and they did not move an inch for days, it became a possible explanation for the puzzle, although I still did not like it – when Ibn B got stuck in the doldrums in the Sea of China he mentioned it, so if it had taken him 4 days to travel to an island 20 miles away, why had he not explained why?
Logs and salty sea dogs...
We arrived in La Paz in the rain. La Paz, Baja California that is, NOT Bolivia as one of our travelling mates thought. They accused us of flying in the process as they’d (probably correctly!) concluded there’s no way we could have got there overland in a week from northern Baja. Me? On a plane? On this trip? With my reputation?
To enhance the damp ambience La Paz’s main street was being resurfaced creating an obstacle course of wet cement, open man-holes and drains, piles of new metal street furniture and the odd dangling electrical cable to add to the excitement. Ravenous we ate a spicy ‘sopas mariscos’ in a very local cantina, complete with obligatory blind guitar player strumming away in the corner. The soup later repeated slightly on us and our Spanish travelling companions but it wasn’t as odd as the meal the following night - ‘Pollo Perchuga’. Which consisted of half a deboned chicken, stuffed with spinach and goats cheese then liberally smeared with what looked and tasted like half a jar of apricot jam. Just plain weird.
Throwing it all out the window
As I’ve noted before, the school that I work at is intense. Where most hagwons sing songs in English and watch old episodes of Friends as part of their 45-minute classes, our kids sit through three-hour sessions twice a week, taking home piles of homework that they complete on paper, online and on the telephone. They read, write, memorize and regurgitate pages upon pages; while I can barely get it together to study my Korean in the eighteen hours a day I’m not working, my kids manage to complete not only the mounds of homework for our academy, but also their regular school’s requirements as well as the work for the five or six other academies most attend. Six days a week. So while I’m disappointed I caught one of my kid’s tossing his classmate’s pencil case out our seven-story window tonight, I can’t say that I’m surprised.
Drinking in Lisbon- Barrio Alto
I walked out of my hotel in Barrio Alto on a Sunday morning and could only wonder about what had happened the night before. There were bars, beer, wine, a funny Russian, funnier Portuguese, a foosball table, Mira being really drunk, and thousands of people in the ancient stone streets just partying. I smiled to myself as I realized that everybody who stumbles out of into these streets after a good long Barrio Alto night wonders the same thing- “what happened?”
I suppose I was not that drunk, as I somehow managed to drag the stumbling and drooling Mira through the graffiti mazes of the old neighborhood back to our room in the hotel. It was a night. We had fun.
East Coast Australia with Kid, Part 6
Unbelievable. The pool in the backyard is out of bounds! Broken filter; broken dreams! For my wife, it represents one of life’s most crushing moments. I’m slightly disappointed. Seamus, who isn’t yet two years old, doesn’t seem to mind at all.
Still, the weather in Brisbane is great; on the border of spring and summer this really is one of the most perfect places to be. And the local Newmarket Pool is absolutely fabulous (and makes the missus a bit happier too!). It’s like an aquatic version of Mr Wonka’s chocolate factory with lots of water slides, giant colourful mushroom-shaped fountains, shaded wading pools and clear, cool water.
The Slave Castles of Ghana
When we traveled in Europe, the word "castle" was invariably preceded by the words "Rennaissance" or "medieval". In Africa it is preceded by the word "slave" This changes the nature of one of Ghana's most fascinating attractions in a dramatic way.
There is no escaping the legacy of slavery in Africa. This was one of the first things that surprised me when we first moved to Benin. It shouldn't have been surprising, but back home slavery was always presented as an important element of history. In Africa, slavery and its effects are very much a part of the present. In Benin this is dramatically evident in the Route of Slaves in Ouidah culminating in the Gate of No Return and the Monument of Reconciliation in Cotonou. In Ghana, where from 1600-1700 between 10,000 and 15,000 slaves were exported per year, the ghastly slave castles remain horrific monuments that bear silent tribute to a horrific practice.
Witnessing the Ultimate New Zealand Experience
New Zealand is the infamous home of bungy jumping and outside
Queenstown is the bungy operation that claims to have started it all –
AJ Hackett’s at Kawarau Bridge. We decided to stop and watch some brave
folks leap off the 142 foot high bridge, which overlooks a particularly
picturesque river ravine. With bungy elastic strapped firmly around
their ankles, and loud heavy rock music pumping from the jump station,
individuals nervously hobbled to the edge of the platform and plunged
to the river below. A few were ‘helped’ with a gentle nudge if they
were taking too long.
Even watching people jump leaves a lump
in your throat. As perfect strangers stand on the platform, you feel
nervous for them: everyone can imagine the all-encompassing and
uncontrollable terror they’d feel standing in the jumper’s shoes. You’d
have to be crazy, right? I mean, of all the adventurous pursuits, bungy
is the one I said I’d never do.
I guess I lied.
Fearless Independent Travel: Interview with Travel Betty
Travel Betty is a San Francisco-based copywriter with a desire to encourage women to tackle the world of independent travel with boldness.
Her most recent trip was to Bali, a trip she won't soon forget. Besides enjoying a pampering at the local Balinese spas, she also married her boyfriend, aptly nicknamed Travel Boyfriend
Now back in the United States with her newlywed husband, she was happy to talk with TravelBlogs about independent travel and, of course, getting married in Bali.
The Disillusioned Dubliner: Saved by a Culchie Woman
Last Saturday — a cold, dark, late-autumn afternoon here in Dublin — Katie Lincoln (who doesn’t have enough interest in Premier League soccer to actually hate it) suddenly nudged me on the sofa. Mid-game of course.
“Lets go for a walk.”
Five words usually guaranteed to bring out the childish bugbear in old Disillusioned. But I suddenly remembered that when it comes to worthwhile adventures, Katie Lincoln has this unfathomable habit of always being right. Anyway, I had a blog to write and needed something else to complain about in dear, dirty Dublin.
Wrestling gimps...
Long Mexican bus journeys are at least partially leavened by movie screenings of the often highly inappropriately violent or horrific variety (it’s good to toughen up the kids from a tender age). Boarding one bus we were tantalised by a Mexican wrestling DVD flickering on the screen. Paused at a critical moment in the bout one gimp-masked meathead held another in a complicated, enfolding embrace that wouldn’t look out of place in the Karma Sutra. We never did find out what happened next, though I’ll assume it wasn’t penetrative.
Military checkpoints are also a regular feature of travel down the Baja. Bored recruits in sandy desert fatigues hunch disinterestedly over sand-bagged machine gun nests, long, live cartridge belts hanging menacingly beneath. Strangely, despite being stopped around half a dozen times they never shook down the bus for drugs – Mexican ‘narcos’ clearly travel in classier fashion.
Hitch-Hiking in Japan with Mr. Fuji
So I was standing on the side of the road in the mountains of Japan’s Shikoku Island in the middle of spring 2004. I was hitch-hiking the 88 temple Kabo Daishi pilgrimage, and a mini-van nearly ran me over as it quickly stopped to offer me a lift. I was not in any position to be overly critical about a particular driver’s navigational ability, as I needed a ride on to the next temple. So I jumped into the van and introduced myself to the driver.
His name was Mr. Fuji, and was a middle aged Japanese man with long bushy eyebrows that stuck up out of his forehead like butterfly antennae. He was a really short man and could not have been 5 ft tall, as he has to really stretch to push on the pedals- and this he could only do with the tips of his toes. But Mr. Fuji seemed friendly enough, even though my attempts at conversation fell a little fallow. So I remained silent as we tore back onto the highway and through the beautiful mountains of Shikoku.
The Land of Frankincense
One cannot speak about Dhofar without mentioning frankincense. Along with gold and myrrh, it was one of the gifts given by the magi at the birth of Christ. Frankincense is the milky-white resin of the boswellia sacra tree, an unprepossessing scarred and gnarly old thing which nonetheless was the source of the vast wealth of various South Arabian kingdoms for millennia. There are several species of boswellia, but boswellia sacra gives the best resin and it is grown in very few places. Dhofar produces the finest resin of all.
“…they possess incense trees; these have thin leaves, and when a leaf is slashed there drips from it a sap like milk, which then turns into a gum. This gum is the incense, and it is very plentiful there.”
Rub a dub. With half the city.
Anyone who knows me can attest to my love for showers and baths. I’m sure it’s closely related to my love for singing extremely loudly in a tiled room, but wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always set up some sort of stereo system in or around the bathroom and generally rocked out.
However, bathrooms in Korea are of a different breed than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if it’s a size issue or a plumbing issue or what, but most Korean bathrooms see no reason to separate the shower from the rest of the room. No wall, no curtain, and normally no fixed showerhead, which forces the tenant to hold the nozzle over them as they try to squeeze between the toilet and sink (and sometimes a washer machine) that are all jammed in a room most Westerners would use as a shoe closet. In fact, I’m lucky with the size and layout of my bathroom – my shower area, while lacking a curtain or wall, employs a fixed showerhead and is far enough from the toilet that I can almost forget its there. And true to form, shortly after I moved in I bought a pair of speakers for my iPod that are now perched on the cabinet and allow me to continue rocking out in Asia. A fact I’m sure my neighbors appreciate.
Guide Books, Nicaragua and Benin: Interview with Randall Wood
If you've spent time travelling around Nicaragua in the past few years, you may already know of Randall Wood.
Randy co-authored the Moon Handbook Nicaragua after living there for several years, part of which was spent working with the Peace Corps. He also wrote a companion guide for expats living in Nicaragua.
TravelBlogs got in touch with him to find out about more about his experiences with the Peace Corps, Nicaragua and his current home, Benin.
Twenty-five things India teaches you
These are the things we've learned while travelling in India:
1. The food here is spectacular. Navrattan curry, Rajasthani thalis, Goan seafood...you really can't do better.
2. The Don't-Lucknow Delhi-Belly, however, isn't. Nor is it confined to either of its two namesake cities. Don't we wish...
3. Hello is pronounced with an accent on the first syllable, and is immediately followed by a loud, staccato, Sa! This is prelude to any number of come-ons: Rickshaw? or Hash? or Where did you lose your hair? Often, it is also accompanied by a rickshaw-wallah planting himself directly in your path and tugging on your arm. This is a great way to attract customers.
From Dawn till Dusk
As we chugged into the port of Ensenada, Mexico the Pacific was oily calm and the first rays of dawn were breaking over the dark craggy hills of northern Baja California. Our Mexican naval escort had failed to materialise (we had some radioactive cargo onboard) and the harbour seemed a microcosm of Mexico itself, extensive development of new facilities on one side, rusting hulls of half-sunk ships protruding grimly from the water on the other.
In town we checked into the ‘Ritz’ hotel, which was trading libellously on the reputation of it’s, ahem, ever so slightly more prestigious London namesake. Eager to get our lips around some Mexican nosh after the dire meat and mash monotony of the cargo ship we ate dirt cheap Quesedillas from a cheap, dirty and hygienically challenged food stall. As a result I enjoyed an almost instant bout of ‘Las Turistas’ within hours of making landfall, the first time my bum has exploded in nine months of travel (this is probably too much information).
Hiroshima
I’m guessing the moment you read the header for this post, certain images and thoughts popped into your head. In fact, for most people in the world, Hiroshima means one and only one thing. If you asked someone to name something else about Hiroshima, they probably couldn’t. The word Hiroshima has become so intertwined with the events of 1945 that the word has developed a meaning of its own. If you told someone “I’m going to go Hiroshima on your ass”, there would be no doubt as to the meaning.
Hiroshima, however, isn’t a city that dwells on its past. I didn’t see a single souvenir in Hiroshima that dealt with its 20th Century history. No black humor items. In fact, outside of the Peace Park, I really couldn’t find a single reference to what had happened. Nothing.
Hiroshima has moved on.
El Cojincito de Fela & Gente Fina
The movers came Monday morning and in one astonishingly quick hour, the two men quietly hauled 20 or so boxes down the stairs and hoisted them onto the truck, wrapped furniture into brown paper and corrugated cardboard sleeves, and signed the delivery papers, leaving me with a living room full of the remainders, the things we'd decided to sell and give away. A friend came by in the afternoon to buy all the big furniture--two benches, a bed, the dining room table and chairs, a rocker, and assorted items like the espresso maker that he probably has no real use for and that required me explaining how they worked with quick instructions and a saleswoman-like demonstration. The items he claimed halved what remained, but I still had to find a home--and fast--for what was left. Twenty or so gallery picture frames went to a photographer friend. Envelopes, spices, the bedside table, a painting, and all of the plates and cups to our neighbors. I'd planned to take the kitchen stuff, but I'm not as good at packing as Francisco is, and the thought of taking hours to wrap plates in paper and then find them a month from now, broken into pieces only good for a mosaic, made me think I could find a better home for the plates and a better use of my time. I'd sorted everything into neat piles and designated their respective recipients; all that was left was the stack of things I'd take with me on the plane and some of Penelope's dog stuff for which we had no need.
