Lebanon!!

April 2012

After 3 years of knowing this marvelous person, she is getting married, and I have the chance to witness it.
Malak helped us plan the flights and the hotel.  The visa was very hard to get, her family helped us more than we can thank! After a denial and an appealing we finally got the visa a week before departure.
Since the airline didn't fly from Spain, Sergio decided to fly from Paris, I was flying from Dusseldorf and we were meeting in Istambul, to do a transfer to the next plane to Beirut.
Everything seemed to be going rather well, the dress was ready, the bags were packed, everything done!
So Sergio had a flight with Vueling, that was moved two weeks before the travel date, so it was not longer good for his connection, then he booked one with Ryanair at 6 am, going to Beauvais, and then he had to go to Orly to get the Pegasus flight. At 5.30 am I received a call from Sergio: the flight had been cancelled!, a strike from the air controllers in France had forced the airlines to cancel all flights to Paris!!!!!. Then we had to think what to do, after many questions and many hard decisions,we re-booked the Vueling flight, that arrived at 2 pm at Orly, praying so that the Pegasus flight (that was leaving at 2.05) was late. We payed 250 euros for this booking (the Ryanair flight was 30 euros..., and the original Vueling booking was 50)

At some point I received a call from Pegasus, telling me that the flight from Paris was delayed, and therefore, Sergio could not catch the connection in Istambul (I booked the tickets, so I received all the information on his flight). When I told Sergio about this, he told me that his Vueling flight was also cancelled! So we called Pegasus, and a very helpful man called Jim (We love you Jim!!!!) and he tried to change the whole reservation for next day, thinking that Sergio could arrive to Paris before 2 pm on Wednesday. But before changing it, we decided to book first the flight from Valencia to Paris, and this proved to be hell.  There were no available flights until Friday in the main airlines, no seats anywhere. Finally Sergio found one through Zurich, hat arrived to Paris at 11 pm on Tuesday, so apparently he could travel on Wednesday and only one day was lost. Buuut as much as Jim tried to help us (and all the money we spent in 40 minute phone calls to Turkey) he could not change the flight, because Sergio needed to 'check out' (have you ever heard about that? we haven't) So we realized that it was not possible online, and apparently only possible at the desk, and for obvious reasons, only the passenger can do the check out, so Sergio needed a Pegasus counter, only reachable when he could get to Paris.

I travelled to Beirut, with the friends from work that joined Malak for her wedding. You can imagine how unpleasant the trip was, thinking all the time about Sergio's problems.
We arrived at Beirut at 11 pm, and the Visa issue was fairly simple, thanks to Malak's family (I did have problems leaving Germany since they could not read Arabic, and therefore, could not be sure that I had a visa).
We were taken to the hotel, and checked in, and then went for a beer. Malak changed my booking to a better room, can she spoil me more?, I don't think she knows how much I appreciate her details!
We went for a beer, and back in the hotel I talked to Sergio, he was in Paris, but of course the Pegasus counters were closed, and they will only open at 11 am on Wednesday...


 Next day we went on a city tour, with Malak as out tour guide.  We went to the Promenade, to the Pigeon rocks, and we had an amazing unplanned boat trip, where we went under the rocks and inside dome natural caves.  In the mean time, Sergio was trying to contact the airline and trying to 'check out', the girl in the counter could not check him out, so another phone call to Jim, and he finally managed to change the reservation! Sergio was going to fly on Wednesday!.
My day clearly changed from there. We went walking all over Downtown Beirut, and I believe it looks a lot like Colombia. I was impressed by the fact that an orthodox church was built next to a catholic one, next to a Mosque!, This is a beautiful example of freedom, in believing whatever you want as long as you respect others.
 Many pictures and many steps later, we went back to the Promenade, where our guide left to take care of her wedding. We went for Lebanese lunch, looking in Lorenzo's guide for a clue on where to go, we found a place and followed, but it was closed, so an amazingly helpful and nice Lebanese woman gave us guidance on where to go, and we followed her recommendation.  WE had a nice lunch, being Lorenzo the highlight because he ordered some pork feet, a very weird dish (that he didn't really liked)

In the night Anna and me joined Malak in her bachelorette party. It was a henna party, a lot of fun!, and me being as clumsy as I am, almost ruined my henna tattoo :(
In the middle of the night, Malak drove me to pick Sergio from the airport and we left him in the hotel, and we went back to her party.  She drove us (Anna and me) back to the hotel later that night.
 On the second day, we had a tour prepared! We went to the Harissa Virgen, to the Jeita Grotto and to Byblos. Incredible trip! Byblos is a very old city, actually an old age writer claimed that it was the oldest city, founded by Chronos! Layers and layers of archaeology lie there, telling histories of many invasions and reconstructions.
We found coloured chicks, just like the ones in Chiquinquira, but a very weird attraction to our European friends.



The Virgin is a beautiful monument, and the dressing code is very strict, I had to cover my shoulders and cleavage! (Not that I was showing so much). Finally the Jeitta Grotto, another demonstration of the magnificence of nature! We were not allowed to take pictures there, but it was beautiful and impressive!






Friday was the wedding, Sergio went on his own to see the city (since he missed the first day tour) and I went with Malak for hair and makeup. The wedding was great! We saw traditional dances and a perfect bride dancing and enjoying her wedding day!. She was looking amazing! the groom was great too!. The flowers, the venue, the dancers, everything was amazing!

On Saturday, we went walking around, again to the pigeon rocks, and to the sandy beaches next to them, we had natural juices in the Grand Cafe, which was totally worth it!, later we went for lunch, hamburgers in Roasted, very nice!
At night we went dancing to Buddha-Bar, drinking expensive Vodka and enjoying the music! what a night! a lot of fun!
On Sunday we went to another tour, this time to the Cedars.  It was a long trip, we reached the mountain top and we got to see the cedars covered in snow, but with a very warm environment. We went also to Gibran house/museum and to an artificial lake.  It was a relaxing trip.

Monday morning we flew back, to rest and go to work on the next day!

None of this had been possible without Malak's help, she made this trip perfect for us, and for that, and for her friendship, there are not enough thanking words!

Bruges

(16/4/2011) We already had plans for April, and in order to keep our food money for the month, we avoid doing more than one plan per month.  But this time, Sergio is coming from Thursday 14 until Monday 25, and from the 20 to the 25 we are going to visit Stockholm. Since there was no plans for the weekend, and by chance I found some brochure for Liege, I decided to check on the ticket prices.  They were pretty cheap, so I told Sergio, and he said that he preferred Bruges, so I checked again and found a very nice offer, from Aachen to Liege for 11,90 Euros and from Liege to Bruges for 10,30 Euros.

So we booked the tickets, and started looking for a Hostal -Hotels are not that cheap, the cheapest that we found was 90 euros per night-. I asked around, but at the end we did not book anything, we decided to simply try our luck there (bad idea...)

We started our trip on saturday at 8:30 am. We stopped in Liege at 10.30 and took some pictures, it looked promessing, but we decided to go first to Bruges and then, on the way back, to Liege. We finally reached Bruges at something like 1 pm (after some stops in Brussels, and some food).
We started exploring, by going in to the middle of the town, basically following all the other tourists, and taking pictures in the way.
We reached a very beautiful square, filled with cafés and restaurants, and we found live music, an amazing orchestra playing right there. We went to the river and found out that all the swans belong to the city (and they are all marked), and of course we took more pictures ;)
We visited then the Basilica of the Holly Blood, amazingly beautiful! and as a side story, we found a sign bewaring turists about pickpocketing, we found that interesting, in a place so calm, so organized, so polite, even here one find thieves.
We saw the Burg square, with the city hall and the Markt.
The cherry of the trip was a boat ride in the channels, asking the swans permission to pass by :), discovering the oldest houses around the channel and the beauty of the arquitecture, lightened by the flowers of the spring.
Thinking of our pocket we had a fast food lunch, in the middle of the markt.

Later that day we went to see the Madrid Barcelona game in a samll pub, and after that we looked for a hostal, hotel or anything, but everything was full, so we spent our night walking around and in the Bruges train station. Next day we took the first train back, and needless to say, we were too tired to stop in Liege.

As a day trip, this was much more than anyone can ask.

Bruges

(16/4/2011) We already had plans for April, and in order to keep our food money for the month, we avoid doing more than one plan per month.  But this time, Sergio is coming from Thursday 14 until Monday 25, and from the 20 to the 25 we are going to visit Stockholm. Since there was no plans for the weekend, and by chance I found some brochure for Liege, I decided to check on the ticket prices.  They were pretty cheap, so I told Sergio, and he said that he preferred Bruges, so I checked again and found a very nice offer, from Aachen to Liege for 11,90 Euros and from Liege to Bruges for 10,30 Euros.

So we booked the tickets, and started looking for a Hostel -Hotels are not that cheap, the cheapest that we found was 90 euros per night-. I asked around, but at the end we did not book anything, we decided to simply try our luck there (bad idea...)

We started our trip on Saturday at 8:30 am. We stopped in Liege at 10.30 and took some pictures, it looked promising, but we decided to go first to Bruges and then, on the way back, to Liege.

We finally reached Bruges at something like 1 pm (after some stops in Brussels, and some food).
We started exploring, by going in to the middle of the town, basically following all the other tourists, and taking pictures in the way.

We reached a very beautiful square, filled with cafes and restaurants, and we found live music, an amazing orchestra playing right there. 

We went to the river and found out that all the swans belong to the city (and they are all marked), and of course we took more pictures ;)

We visited then the Basilica of the Holly Blood, amazingly beautiful! and as a side story, we found a sign bewaring tourists about pickpocketing, we found that interesting, in a place so calm, so organized, so polite, even here one find thieves.

We saw the Burg square, with the city hall and the Markt.





The cherry of the trip was a boat ride in the channels, asking the swans permission to pass by :), discovering the oldest houses around the channel and the beauty of the architecture, lightened by the flowers of the spring. All this while eating Belgian chocolate, what else?
Thinking of our pocket we had a fast food lunch, in the middle of the square.

Later that day we went to see the Madrid Barcelona game in a small pub, and after that we looked for a hostel, hotel or anything, but everything was full, so we spent our night walking around and in the Bruges train station. Next day we took the first train back, and needless to say, we were too tired to stop in Liege.

As a day trip, this was much more than anyone can ask.

Iniciando

Bueno pronto actualizaremos mas cosas.....

Hello...

Everyone that knows us, knows that we enjoy making short 'get-aways', short trips to relax and see new places. When we lived in Bogotá, we used to take our car and go to warmer places, just for a weekend, or to small towns. Every 'Holy week' (Easter) was a perfect excuse for a trip with friends, we had many and they were very good, and we even did a long trip along Colombia, with the excuse of getting a diving certificate :P
Now that we live in Europe, we have the perfect excuse to travel: to see each other!, we have tried to see new places and to make the most of our short time.
We decided to start this blog, as a memory of many trips and those to come, to give the tips that we've learned and to tell you about our 'adventures'.
Since Sergio is not a very elocuent writer (or talker for that matter) I will probably write most of the entries.  With time, I hope to collect here all of our trip memories, and to have it as a way to remember friends, places, moments, when our own memory fails us :D

Porto and Finisterra

And every photo we had was stolen!

There is always a catalyst, something that gives you a push, this trip was our catalyst to write this blog.

I had in my wish list (a very long list, I know) to see the end of the earth. So my tour agent, Sergio, got Ryanair tickets to Oporto, and we rented a car in Portugal, just a couple of hours away from Cape Finisterre.
We were smart enough to pay full insurance for the car, and we got a room in a cheap hotel: Hotel Premium Porto - Centro, they offered nice rooms and in house parking, so that was everything we needed. The hotel was in an area of not so nice houses, many of them seemed abandoned, and we got a room in the 1 floor (not the ground-floor, for my non european friends). And I kept thinking how easy it could be to just go in the room and run in to the abandoned houses across the street. And as every self fulfilling prophecy, it was my own fear what got us into trouble.
The first day we strolled around Porto, a very picturesque city, the colors and the old architecture create an amazing environment.
The second day we went to Finisterre, and it was as amazing as one can imagine. It is really beautiful and standing in the edge of the rock, one can really understand why they thought it was the end of the world. At this location, many pilgrims end their Camino de Santiago trip, a spiritual walk to honor the apostle Saint James the Great passing through the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Sergio asked a street vendor, the only person other than us there, where should we eat, and following her recommendation, we ate in a local fisherman restaurant what was probably the best fish I have ever tasted, and Sergio overdosed in fresh clams. We took the rest of the day to visit Santiago de Compostela, with a cathedral as impressive as it can be.  The town is small and very symmetric, it gives a movie feeling.

On our second day we went the other way, towards Fatima. This sanctuary is very well known, and a very nice structure. On this day, I asked Sergio to take his bags with him. It so happens that we bought a new 2 TB external hard drive, thinking that our pictures were only stored in Sergio's laptop and in our small hds,  So, something that should not had happened, that both our external drives were in the same place, plus his laptop, plus the new external drive, happened. And because I was scared of someone entering our room, everything went to the car trunk.  We left our rental car in the official parking lot of the sanctuary, Sergio's bag (with all the electronics) was in the trunk and his laptop was under the driver's seat, not on the open view. Sergio left also his jacket in the car, and he forgot to take his passport out (OUCH). When we came out of the sanctuary, the car electric system was totally kaputt, the thieves had broken in, they took the laptop and Sergio´s bag, gladly, they left the jacket there, so at least we had our documents. And gladly, the car was fully insured, because the key system was not working after that.  We went to the police, and they were very nice, but told us that it was very common for rental cars to be robbed of their contents (so if you rent a car in Portugal, get the full insurance, just in case). He took our data, but told us that very likely we will never see our things again.  And that is how we lost all of our pictures, 11 years of pictures gone. Plus some family pictures.
That was the end of the trip for us, the remaining day and a half we were just walking around Porto,to sad and angry to care about sightseeing.
We are active(annoying) facebook sharers, because our families follow our steps through the pictures we post there. And thanks to facebook, we recovered some of the pictures, and we decided to start this blog and to store out pictures in as many places as possible.

Rome

Mika was the author of this trip theme song: Rain!
Baby, I hate days like this!
Dear reader, I must confess: I am a history junkie, Europe is my dealer and Sergio is helping me overdose...
If you know a bit of history, you will have, like me, some dreams about amazing civilizations, vivid images of what lost times look like, and an amazing need to see it all, to stand where they stood.
Rome is one of those places where sooo many things have happened, one can not stop digging. From pagan Romans, to catholic crusaders, from the Pantheon to St. Peter's Basilica, passing through the amazing food and people.
We used Ryanair, the cheap airline of Europe, to get to Rome. At this time, one could get flights for as low as 20 euros each way!, and that is what we did. We took the Ryanair bus service to get to Rome central station Termini (5 Euros each). If you don't know Ryanair, you will probably not like it, they are not the nicest customer service, they try to get your money for anything extra, and they treat passengers like cattle.  Now try to see it their way: they cut expenses by using as little personnel as possible, so time is reduced, they can not just chat with you. They offer you a very cheap basic service, and any additional commodity is for charge, so if you read carefully and follow the rules (print your ticket!, your bag should fit the space and weight restrictions, if you are not European, you should do a visa check on arrival to the airport, etc.) you will have absolutely no problem, and you will travel incredibly cheap. So we are very happy with Ryanair, and we enjoy paying very little and being able to travel a lot.

Again we took a city sightseeing bus. No, we are not getting money for advertisement :).
This company serves most major cities, and is an amazing way of seeing the city when your time and money are limited.  In Rome there is something called the Rome Pass, it may be interesting if you have more time than we did.

As I said before, Sergio helps me overdose.  He found an amazing audio guide for the coliseum, which meant that we circled the coliseum, following the guide, around 5 times! (maybe I exaggerate, but is my right as a Latin woman).  So, a word of advise... avoid taking new heel shoes for long walks... :(
The coliseum is impressive, not only historically, but also architecturally.  Is a brilliantly constructed space, planned for theatrical spectacles, It has galleys planned for the underground (and out of sight) movement of gladiators and wild beasts, it was even planned so it could be flooded for the recreation of maritime battles . In the ruins you can definitely appreciate the grandeur, is worth the money and the line (And the feet blisters).
It rained the whole day, and at a point, it was raining so hard that i was hard to plainly walk. So there we were, trying to get to the Isola Tiberina, and the rain was hitting us hard. My new shoes were dirty  and damaged beyond repair (suede), and my feet where aching so badly, I could barely give another step.  So I had a tantrum, and started crying, and Sergio did what Sergio does, he was bursting in laughter, and started singing, 'When it rain and rain and rain and rain', I wanted to kill him, and to this day, he is banned from singing that song.
 Gladly, the sun came out again, and we could happily stroll through the beautiful Piazza Navona, walk on the Spanish steps.
You may have heard the story about the The Trevi Fountain, you have to trow a coin using your right hand over your left shoulder in order to come back to Rome. According to wikipedia, around 3000 euros are collected every night from travelers that wish to come back.  Gladly this money is used to help people in need.

There are so many places worth a visit.  You have to plan your trip, and accommodate your schedule so you can see most of it. I think one month in Rome would not be enough to really visit the well known touristic spots, so if you, like us, have only one week, plan ahead, and take comfortable shoes.
 One additional remark I want to make is about the Pantheon, the building is 43.3 meters high (150 roman feet). It is the world largest unreinforced concrete dome. The oculus is 9.1 meters in diameter.The oculus illuminates different altars during the day, like a spot light, besides is the only opening (window) to allow flow of air and light. There are many more mysteries about this building, all of them are worth a read.



 Last on this trip, let's talk about the Vatican city. The smallest county in the world. This was one of the most interesting visits I have ever done. For this visit we booked a tour via viator, and it was a great idea.  There are many guides outside of the vatican trying to sell their tours and are very aggressive (there is even a discovery channel documentary about their aggressive ways). The tour was great, very informative, but it had the disadvantage of forcing us to move fast in places where we could have stayed forever. Sadly, the sixtine chapel is just a stop and go, with or without tour, you are not allowed to take pictures or stay there for long.  The guides will explain the main points about the chapel outside, using pictures, and then you can go in and see the true masterpiece, Our guide was amazing and he helped us find a space so we could appreciate all the details and all the magnificence. One needs to know just a little about Michael Angelo, and the beauty and perfection of his painting to be amazed to only be in there. A few years later I came back with my mom, and I realized that most people are only passing through the chapel, without even looking up, to busy following the tour schedule, very sad. In this room, one should take a deep breath, and imagine it alone as it should be, just the amazing murals, the wonderful ceiling, and the genius behind it.  The basilica is another work of art. And there one can also appreciate The Pieta, a piece of art so perfect it hurts. The architectural magnificence of the Basilica and the richness of its interiors are definitely worth an entire day to admire, we had no time to go up the dome, but in the next opportunity I have, I will go up there and marvel myself with the size of the inscriptions, where each letter is 2 meters high.

Rome is an amazing city to get lost.