Travel131
The cab driver Abu Ali drove us to Tyre (Tyr, Sur, Sour) yesterday, from whose beaches you can see Israel (according to the preamble of the guy on the beach trying to sell me fake artifacts after pointing towards Egypt across the sea and at Palestine as the middle of the visible land mass jutting distantly to the left), and we saw more archeology (Tyre dates back to 2750BC), wound our way through clean narrow streets or alleyways where open doors gave view into small tidy homes, briefly through a souk (outdoor yet often covered market) which for me exuded more exotic visual flavor than anything previously seen on this trip. When at the marina it began raining we were called over to the small corner shop/living room of a Christian fisherman and told to sit down. I saw bottles of whisky on his shelf and ordered a neat Dewars (back in Beirut in the hotel room we are drinking at the end of each day duty free Johnnie Walker Green Label). Bernadette ordered an espresso but the fisherman's espresso machine, such as it was, did not cooperate so she had a tea. The fisherman laid out olives and some packaged pita bread on the table. When it was time to go he charged us 10,000LBP (about $6.50) but I did not have a 10,000 note so he took my 20,000 note and offered no change. I was ok with it. The olives were very good.
Abu Ali was waiting for us in his red 75 Mercedes near the Al-Mina site. Today we are in a mid 70s Chevrolet Caprice Classic, driver's name unknown, veering around and in between cars on the mountain road 40 minutes east of Beirut, snow coming down, visibility a liitle better than zero. We just made a pit stop at a roadside store. The driver bought us espressos and introduced us to a money changer. We traded forty American into Syrian Pounds just to have some get started money.
We are headed into Damascus. The driver is making his fourth stop. At a bakery this time. We just stay in the car. The driver comes back and gives to Bernadette a handful of baked crunchy bread nuggets with sesame seeds and a hint of cinnamon sugar. Now he is smoking, the window barely cracked. There is a lot of smoking in Lebanon.
In Beirut you need not look for cabs because they look for you. As obvious as we are as tourists we get honked at a lot, just a short beep, not really too obnoxious. And at corners the drivers solicit you but also not in annoying fashion. Unlike the brazen touting in Turkey, especially at Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, where the hey look at my rugs, what I'm selling etc. can seem until calluses form hurtful and punishing.
But the Tyre day we had a plan which was to catch a cab to the Cola transport hub and then a bus to Tyre for maybe thirty bucks round trip. So we headed right out the hotel door and to the first guy waiting at the corner hailing us for his cab we said yes and got in. Our hotel had told us maybe 120 round trip by private taxi so when Abu Ali hearing of our bus plan quoted us 80 and said--good deal, good deal, we knew he wasn't just whistling something a Muslim might whistle. So that is how he became our driver and somewhat tour guide.
We did not ask him to take us to the Al-Bass archaeological site, he just took us there, and then to the Al-Mina, and then he parked and waited while we toured the old part of town for a long hour and then to a fish house across the street from the Sea Castle (Crusaders) in Sidon on the way back to Beirut, about a six hour commitment to us altogether.
We had Al-Bass mostly to ourselves. It is a quite expansive site. It is bordered on one side by a Palestinian refugee camp. At some point not ten minutes in to roaming around these three young boys, Palestinian, about ten to twelve years old sneak up on us all frieidly like so I just sort of motioned at my camera and they jumped right to posing. They asked Bernadette her name and she told them and the ask her my name and she told them, so I became Jeem, their English most rudimentary yet far exceeding our Arabic. In all there were maybe ten boys and I took a few shots of them climbing on the ruins ( or maybe I pointed to the ruins I wanted them to climb on until they quickly took to my suggestions. The boys were under the tutelage of some Muslim scholars, one of whom spoke English and let us know they were doing the Lord Allahs work by trying to teach the boys the lessons of the Koran. The boys were just having fun which I am sure Allah does not object to. We got back to Abu Ali without taking a proper look at the world class hippodrome but got a gander of it on the distance as the Palestinian boys raced off towards it.
...more recent posts
Travel129
We are the two American tourists in Beirut traversing the city on foot. There is a building boom here on a scale I have seen in few American cities. Everywhere we walk the most noticeable activity is the moving crane. It would appear at this point that no one here will accept less than forward progress. Sunni, Shia, Christian, also now apparently Syria as an entity distinct if not separate from their known platform as Hezbollah supporters, and the non-believers alike all have enough mortar pockmarked ruins to gaze upon to last them a lifetime and certainly enough to last them more than 15 years if you are clocking from the end of the Civil War, please don't even mention the last Israeli trespass in 2006.
From nightclub to restaurant to corner store the focus seems to be business as usual, let us know when you get that government thing straightened out. If there is some sort of domino thing going on in Northern Africa it would appear not exactly pertinent to life in Beirut, isolated minor riotous acts notwithstanding.
A local artist tells us "well maybe a few more tanks" (than usual) but the mood of the army men on the street here seems one of slightly lessened alert, almost as if the turmoil in Egypt is decreasing the intensity of the crisis here rather than exacerbating it. The army men seem curious about us, not that we as American tourists are so rare, yet at the same time I'm not seeing so many of us. We are off season. Did I mention the weather here in Beirut January is perfect. And they have Cheetoes. Oh I could winter in Beirut. Thank God, peace be upon Him, for Lebanon.
Bernadette and I hope to get down to Tyre tomorrow.
We are the two American tourists in Beirut traversing the city on foot. There is a building boom here on a scale I have seen in few American cities. Everywhere we walk the most noticeable activity is the moving crane. It would appear at this point that no one here will accept less than forward progress. Sunni, Shia, Christian, also now apparently Syria as an entity distinct if not separate from their known platform as Hezbollah supporters, and the non-believers alike all have enough mortar pockmarked ruins to gaze upon to last them a lifetime and certainly enough to last them more than 15 years if you are clocking from the end of the Civil War, please don't even mention the last Israeli trespass in 2006.
From nightclub to restaurant to corner store the focus seems to be business as usual, let us know when you get that government thing straightened out. If there is some sort of domino thing going on in Northern Africa it would appear not exactly pertinent to life in Beirut, isolated minor riotous acts notwithstanding.
A local artist tells us "well maybe a few more tanks" (than usual) but the mood of the army men on the street here seems one of slightly lessened alert, almost as if the turmoil in Egypt is decreasing the intensity of the crisis here rather than exacerbating it. The army men seem curious about us, not that we as American tourists are so rare, yet at the same time I'm not seeing so many of us. We are off season. Did I mention the weather here in Beirut January is perfect. And they have Cheetoes. Oh I could winter in Beirut. Thank God, peace be upon Him, for Lebanon.
Bernadette and I hope to get down to Tyre tomorrow.
Travel127
You would think considering we do nothing all day but sleep late and walk around looking at stuff and eat followed shortly after by planning what next to eat that I would have time to write something but no. We like this Babel cafe for Internet and friendly host and groovy music and that is where we are now waiting for a small mezze plate whle drinking the local beer, Efes. Demon took off for Paris this morning and Bernadette and I are a couple of hours away from catching the airport bus and then off to Beirut. I am happy being here in Istanbul and I am happy to finally be getting to Lebanon.
You would think considering we do nothing all day but sleep late and walk around looking at stuff and eat followed shortly after by planning what next to eat that I would have time to write something but no. We like this Babel cafe for Internet and friendly host and groovy music and that is where we are now waiting for a small mezze plate whle drinking the local beer, Efes. Demon took off for Paris this morning and Bernadette and I are a couple of hours away from catching the airport bus and then off to Beirut. I am happy being here in Istanbul and I am happy to finally be getting to Lebanon.
Travel118
The numbers after Travel mean dates but are now not literal only reflective of a faineant or qparsimonious nature.
The Demon and I had one last raki after another meal not topping any charts yet pleasant enough despite brief moments of hyper-criticism. Benadette has retired to get a fire started in our room in one of the cave hotels of Cappadoccia. I'm not a travel guide, read one of many or three reputable sources of travel guiding for Turkey if you are curious for detail. We are currently in Goerme, a town in the region of Cappadoccia. I have framed a number of nice photos, unfortunately many of them requiring a time of day (and thus lighting scheme) at odds with the one in which I exist.
There have been some nice photos also taken on the last two generations of iPhone and at least a few of these I will forward by email to our webmaster, unless we have exhausted the outrageously priced data plans for foreign travel that only one of us carries and then you who have asked will just have to wait but thank you for your enthusiasm, interest, and impatience. All the stuff I have mentioned like that mosque and bazzar and topkapi which I missed while dying of flu and some other things I haven't mentioned because while not dying was stilll fairly well delirious and not that well cognizant of anything that happened more than twenty minutes ago are highly available on the Internet done professionly in tripduplicate.
But no, only one rainy day so far. A pretty fair amount of sun, highs in the forties. Some frost/snow in Cappodocia but it's not black. All in all you know this is no Midnight Express experience, which for any missing the reference is a good thing.
The numbers after Travel mean dates but are now not literal only reflective of a faineant or qparsimonious nature.
The Demon and I had one last raki after another meal not topping any charts yet pleasant enough despite brief moments of hyper-criticism. Benadette has retired to get a fire started in our room in one of the cave hotels of Cappadoccia. I'm not a travel guide, read one of many or three reputable sources of travel guiding for Turkey if you are curious for detail. We are currently in Goerme, a town in the region of Cappadoccia. I have framed a number of nice photos, unfortunately many of them requiring a time of day (and thus lighting scheme) at odds with the one in which I exist.
There have been some nice photos also taken on the last two generations of iPhone and at least a few of these I will forward by email to our webmaster, unless we have exhausted the outrageously priced data plans for foreign travel that only one of us carries and then you who have asked will just have to wait but thank you for your enthusiasm, interest, and impatience. All the stuff I have mentioned like that mosque and bazzar and topkapi which I missed while dying of flu and some other things I haven't mentioned because while not dying was stilll fairly well delirious and not that well cognizant of anything that happened more than twenty minutes ago are highly available on the Internet done professionly in tripduplicate.
But no, only one rainy day so far. A pretty fair amount of sun, highs in the forties. Some frost/snow in Cappodocia but it's not black. All in all you know this is no Midnight Express experience, which for any missing the reference is a good thing.
Travel117
Sultanhamet in the rain on Sunday, light weight hooded jacket and waterproof Australian boots nearly if not quite broken in but keeping me dry the three of us are walking through the shuttered empty Grand Bazzar talking to cats, so many street cats in Istanbul and a lesser amount of dogs, some of which have ear tags signifying their caught neutered and released status (this we learned much later in the day or actually early 2a.m. the next morning from the young molecular biologist bar back at the Pera Palace, we were its only customers), some or all of this out of sequence.
There is a flu moving around, all three of us may be having it. After that night at the Metal bar we lost a whole day, no one waking up before three in the afternoon, the snub by the Muslim guard at the Blue Mosque and subsequent admittance only to be fleeced by the tour guiding rug salesman's cousin a fading memory.
Sultanhamet in the rain on Sunday, light weight hooded jacket and waterproof Australian boots nearly if not quite broken in but keeping me dry the three of us are walking through the shuttered empty Grand Bazzar talking to cats, so many street cats in Istanbul and a lesser amount of dogs, some of which have ear tags signifying their caught neutered and released status (this we learned much later in the day or actually early 2a.m. the next morning from the young molecular biologist bar back at the Pera Palace, we were its only customers), some or all of this out of sequence.
There is a flu moving around, all three of us may be having it. After that night at the Metal bar we lost a whole day, no one waking up before three in the afternoon, the snub by the Muslim guard at the Blue Mosque and subsequent admittance only to be fleeced by the tour guiding rug salesman's cousin a fading memory.
Travel
The suitcase sits before me bulging, it's zippered teeth clenched laughably tight as if it might purposefully prevent the regurgitation of sweaters and socks. I feel like taking a break now and napping. I was up early collecting news stories on Lebanon in the hope that by the time we get there, if we get there, I will understand it. I'm not sure I am going to need the xanax to get to sleep on the 9.5 hour flight to Istanbul. At the same time I'm pretty sure I won't be able to resist popping a pill if I have one to pop. Bernadette is down in the basement perhaps making final arrangements with her employer. Her employer loves her and just yesterday said the day Bernadette quits is the day she the employer would retire. I said that is a fine vote of confidence to have the day before you go off galavanting for a month. We are about ready to leave for JFK. Traffic was slow and the ride to JFK was bordered with black snow. We are traveling the first part of the trip with a Costa Rican guy who is known by some as the Demon. Bernadette has breezed through the first part of the security check point and I am waiting to be gleaned worthy of forward progress by an ex middle linebacker...I'm sorry to be abrupt but I must post now because I am In a free wifi zone. Let me just assure you though, Istanbul is off the hook.
The suitcase sits before me bulging, it's zippered teeth clenched laughably tight as if it might purposefully prevent the regurgitation of sweaters and socks. I feel like taking a break now and napping. I was up early collecting news stories on Lebanon in the hope that by the time we get there, if we get there, I will understand it. I'm not sure I am going to need the xanax to get to sleep on the 9.5 hour flight to Istanbul. At the same time I'm pretty sure I won't be able to resist popping a pill if I have one to pop. Bernadette is down in the basement perhaps making final arrangements with her employer. Her employer loves her and just yesterday said the day Bernadette quits is the day she the employer would retire. I said that is a fine vote of confidence to have the day before you go off galavanting for a month. We are about ready to leave for JFK. Traffic was slow and the ride to JFK was bordered with black snow. We are traveling the first part of the trip with a Costa Rican guy who is known by some as the Demon. Bernadette has breezed through the first part of the security check point and I am waiting to be gleaned worthy of forward progress by an ex middle linebacker...I'm sorry to be abrupt but I must post now because I am In a free wifi zone. Let me just assure you though, Istanbul is off the hook.
2010 Snow
The Plowing
There was a considerable amount of snow that fell. A friend found a semi-naked semi-conscious woman half buried in a snow bank. He saved her. Plowing did not occur rapidly enough in some neighborhoods. People died. Lack of plowing was added to the list of why people die. Political ramifications were explored. Some people believe heads will roll. More death. Following the great snowfall there were a number of sunsets and sunrises, the snow turned black, and melted, and a number of other things happened which pushed the talk of snow to the side, as if the talk of snow was snow, and the other things happening were a plow.
There was a considerable amount of snow that fell. A friend found a semi-naked semi-conscious woman half buried in a snow bank. He saved her. Plowing did not occur rapidly enough in some neighborhoods. People died. Lack of plowing was added to the list of why people die. Political ramifications were explored. Some people believe heads will roll. More death. Following the great snowfall there were a number of sunsets and sunrises, the snow turned black, and melted, and a number of other things happened which pushed the talk of snow to the side, as if the talk of snow was snow, and the other things happening were a plow.
A Young Hawk
This Land Is My Land
He's writing a book about which subway trains not to take.
Chapter 1 goes on about how to distinguish between good and evil.
It is a book about the experiences of a novice rail rider with hints of philosophical meandering.
Chapter 2 is flashback wherein the author gives window into his or her sordid past in graveyards or on freight trains. There is no mention of transvestites or necrophilia in this chapter, so that at its end the reader is questioning what was all that his or her in the graveyards about?
He, the author (herein the rider), addresses the wavering sexuality issue somewhat defensively in chapter 3 by describing how the posture of the person just now getting on the train, seen in the rider's nine o'clock periphery as but a shadow, is tempting him to look up and take a proper gander. When he does so however he finds that the sexy thing he imagined in glancing to be a woman, was in fact a white middle aged businessman in full suited business attire. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the rider makes note to not invite anymore odd dreams or daytime miscalculations by falling asleep watching Almodovar's more sexual identity adventurous movies, as he had the previous night.
Chapter 4 goes on at some length about how it is possible for a rider to get off a B train at 42nd street Port Authority, intending to go back one stop uptown to hear that amazing violinist, and realize a B somehow became a C or maybe even an A. Was he ever on a B he beseeches to his inner self. A rider thus confused can then start thinking about Far Rockaway and perhaps a communing with the Atlantic Ocean. For those who are able and only those who are able there is a sing a long at the end of this chapter to the tune of, and hopefully too, the words of, This Land is Your Land.
Chapter 5 is a flashback to earlier in the day and is a discourse on the dining options for wayward travelers. The rider after walking Central Park from the seventies to the north end continues on up to one caddy-cornered block from the 125th street station and, lacking temerity, goes in, and then out of Manna, because he can't figure it out, he doesn't know if he should just queue up to the buffet or should he pay first. Even after he intuits that queueing up is probably safe he can't decide if he wants to take out like everyone else seems to be doing or...hell, he can't see any seats so other than take out may not be an option. He then goes back through the door and out into the drizzling rain. Soul food. When I or rather he, the rider, was growing up he called pork chops and mashed potatoes supper, and then sometime later without a lot of fanfare, just going with the flow of the evolving middle class mid sixties sophistication revolution, he started calling it dinner.
Chapter 6 is a continuation of his failed dining experience and we find the rider speaking in an almost grunting fashion to the server at Popeyes Fried Chicken on 125th. One section of the menu is designated for Louisianaists, or something like that. The rider ordered from that section and squinting asked the server what kind of sides they had, afraid that Popeye's in Harlem would be completely different from Popeye's south of Mason-Dixon, with which he was more familiar. But no. So the rider sits down with his fried strips and red beans and rice and biscuit. The calories for this meal were listed on the big main menu as either 980 or 1450 but he did not pursue further what might account for that range.
In this chapter you would also learn about waiting too long to use the bathroom, if indeed you needed to. In this case the bathroom gets highjacked by a woman and her child and then about 4 other people lining up for it and complaining rather aggressively about the wait time. Prior to this the rider had been profiling the various people and had mistakenly categorized them as nice friendly people. He had needed to go and it was free for a long time but he was too casual about it so lost out because he could not see himself waiting with these sore sports, and did not get to relieve himself until miles later, behind some scrubby looking shrubs near the Atlantic Ocean in Far Rockaway, while the gentle cold rain embraced him, moistly.
In the Popeye's there was a disturbance. The chapter seems to be meandering all over the place, the rider begins boring us with tales of near death in Louisiana chicken joints and then almost too coincidentally a young man starts using the F word to one of the servers and also calling her B. He is very loud and acting almost as if the world really is a stage, but one where the audience only listens, too shy all of them to make eye contact. The rider begins musing about how did the B word get changed to B while the F word was still fuck. Would we, he pondered, in this version of the book not written, have to start referring to the B word as—the second letter of the alphabet word? Such philosophical soliloquy’s might could find themselves edited out in the final version because the audience for this work already seemed limited or narrow or thin as a thread.
Lost in thought with thumbs clicking before him, the rider takes that A train all the way back, way back, too far back, 14th street is wrong but he stays on until 23rd where he gets off and reverses to W 4th, and from there catches the F home.
Early reviews--similar in reality (if somewhat more likely) to the rider's handling of the rude Popeye's boy (rider jumps up, punches index finger in the boy's chest, then soccer kicks him across the lower calf, taking him down, knee in the back, bending of the bad boys arm backwards until it pops at the shoulder blade, and for good measure treats thumb of same limb with equal sincerity, but that pop is more of a crack)--question the gratuitous violence and wonder just how wayward would a wayward traveler have to be to consider Wayward Traveler (as the book finally written was to be called) anything but a slightly musical if misguided attempt at subway humor, arriving late and clamorous to the station, a travel guide only if it finds a place on the definitive what not to read this summer list and thus guides the careful reader away from itself.
He's writing a book about which subway trains not to take.
Chapter 1 goes on about how to distinguish between good and evil.
It is a book about the experiences of a novice rail rider with hints of philosophical meandering.
Chapter 2 is flashback wherein the author gives window into his or her sordid past in graveyards or on freight trains. There is no mention of transvestites or necrophilia in this chapter, so that at its end the reader is questioning what was all that his or her in the graveyards about?
He, the author (herein the rider), addresses the wavering sexuality issue somewhat defensively in chapter 3 by describing how the posture of the person just now getting on the train, seen in the rider's nine o'clock periphery as but a shadow, is tempting him to look up and take a proper gander. When he does so however he finds that the sexy thing he imagined in glancing to be a woman, was in fact a white middle aged businessman in full suited business attire. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the rider makes note to not invite anymore odd dreams or daytime miscalculations by falling asleep watching Almodovar's more sexual identity adventurous movies, as he had the previous night.
Chapter 4 goes on at some length about how it is possible for a rider to get off a B train at 42nd street Port Authority, intending to go back one stop uptown to hear that amazing violinist, and realize a B somehow became a C or maybe even an A. Was he ever on a B he beseeches to his inner self. A rider thus confused can then start thinking about Far Rockaway and perhaps a communing with the Atlantic Ocean. For those who are able and only those who are able there is a sing a long at the end of this chapter to the tune of, and hopefully too, the words of, This Land is Your Land.
Chapter 5 is a flashback to earlier in the day and is a discourse on the dining options for wayward travelers. The rider after walking Central Park from the seventies to the north end continues on up to one caddy-cornered block from the 125th street station and, lacking temerity, goes in, and then out of Manna, because he can't figure it out, he doesn't know if he should just queue up to the buffet or should he pay first. Even after he intuits that queueing up is probably safe he can't decide if he wants to take out like everyone else seems to be doing or...hell, he can't see any seats so other than take out may not be an option. He then goes back through the door and out into the drizzling rain. Soul food. When I or rather he, the rider, was growing up he called pork chops and mashed potatoes supper, and then sometime later without a lot of fanfare, just going with the flow of the evolving middle class mid sixties sophistication revolution, he started calling it dinner.
Chapter 6 is a continuation of his failed dining experience and we find the rider speaking in an almost grunting fashion to the server at Popeyes Fried Chicken on 125th. One section of the menu is designated for Louisianaists, or something like that. The rider ordered from that section and squinting asked the server what kind of sides they had, afraid that Popeye's in Harlem would be completely different from Popeye's south of Mason-Dixon, with which he was more familiar. But no. So the rider sits down with his fried strips and red beans and rice and biscuit. The calories for this meal were listed on the big main menu as either 980 or 1450 but he did not pursue further what might account for that range.
In this chapter you would also learn about waiting too long to use the bathroom, if indeed you needed to. In this case the bathroom gets highjacked by a woman and her child and then about 4 other people lining up for it and complaining rather aggressively about the wait time. Prior to this the rider had been profiling the various people and had mistakenly categorized them as nice friendly people. He had needed to go and it was free for a long time but he was too casual about it so lost out because he could not see himself waiting with these sore sports, and did not get to relieve himself until miles later, behind some scrubby looking shrubs near the Atlantic Ocean in Far Rockaway, while the gentle cold rain embraced him, moistly.
In the Popeye's there was a disturbance. The chapter seems to be meandering all over the place, the rider begins boring us with tales of near death in Louisiana chicken joints and then almost too coincidentally a young man starts using the F word to one of the servers and also calling her B. He is very loud and acting almost as if the world really is a stage, but one where the audience only listens, too shy all of them to make eye contact. The rider begins musing about how did the B word get changed to B while the F word was still fuck. Would we, he pondered, in this version of the book not written, have to start referring to the B word as—the second letter of the alphabet word? Such philosophical soliloquy’s might could find themselves edited out in the final version because the audience for this work already seemed limited or narrow or thin as a thread.
Lost in thought with thumbs clicking before him, the rider takes that A train all the way back, way back, too far back, 14th street is wrong but he stays on until 23rd where he gets off and reverses to W 4th, and from there catches the F home.
Early reviews--similar in reality (if somewhat more likely) to the rider's handling of the rude Popeye's boy (rider jumps up, punches index finger in the boy's chest, then soccer kicks him across the lower calf, taking him down, knee in the back, bending of the bad boys arm backwards until it pops at the shoulder blade, and for good measure treats thumb of same limb with equal sincerity, but that pop is more of a crack)--question the gratuitous violence and wonder just how wayward would a wayward traveler have to be to consider Wayward Traveler (as the book finally written was to be called) anything but a slightly musical if misguided attempt at subway humor, arriving late and clamorous to the station, a travel guide only if it finds a place on the definitive what not to read this summer list and thus guides the careful reader away from itself.