July

Remember when this was a travel blog?  What travel?  We canceled our next plan to attend a race.  It just wasn't worth it.

The ice maker only cost an arm to repair.  The leg was, at least, spared.

The washing machine did its final jig across the laundry room floor, with Gordon in hot pursuit.  There came a string of artful profanity, followed by "get dressed, we're going to Home Depot!!".

The basil finally started to come into its own, but then the container had to be moved in preparation for the roofing people.  Our pet chipmunk promptly dug up half of it. The basil's recovering well at this point, as is the chipmunk.

Speaking of the roofing project, it began a week late.  During the first few days, it rained when a portion of our roof was not shingled.  An employee of the company came out at 9:30 at night and put a ladder up to check.  Someone called the police.  The work then proceeded at a glacial pace due to short staffing.  Result:  over three weeks of banging, hammering, and mariachi rap.

The Illinois State Department of Revinooers has returned to work, and the annual notice has indeed arrived.  We're leaving the plumbing alone for right now.

Ruminations

Well, so, here we are.  It's June of 2020.  Don't know what to think about the Coronavirus pandemic...the whole thing seems just a little over the top.  Too many opinions.  There are protests against the police in many cities that have turned into riots with hundreds of people looting businesses, but we can't go to an automobile race because there would be more than 10 people there.  Wait, what?

So far, June's not been so good to us.  Our trip to Road America for an Indycar race is canceled.  The icemaker in the fridge has gone kaput, the cable and internet went down, and we're worried about the washing machine.  Pati's drivers license has expired...the DMV just reopened and the line goes around the building twice.

Seems everyone decided to start a garden this year (nothing else to do) so we struggled to just find some basil seeds and they're not growing well.  There is a plan to put a new roof on our building at the end of the month.  Rate things are going, maybe that would be better done in July, along with some necessary plumbing repair, in hope of avoiding floods and shit storms.

It's probably good that we already had the heating and air conditioning replaced in April.  We need to have our insulation beefed up, but the insulation people aren't allowed to work.  Maybe we saw them on the news, carrying 85-inch flat screen TV's out of Target.

We had, at least, a cruise from Barcelona to Montreal in September to look forward to, beginning with a side trip to Milan for a race.  Just finished up the cruise prep and were looking at plane tickets for Milan when there came greetings from the cruise line.  So sorry, your cruise is canceled.

What really chaps us is that last February, we spent a whole morning scouting out laundromats in Barcelona so we could wash our damn underwear between adventures.

On the bright side, the federal and state income tax people must not be working.  We haven't gotten the annual notice that we did something wrong and owe more money.  Amazon Prime is running like clockwork.  Good thing, we need ice cube trays before 5 p.m.  Period.

Not So "Nice"

Saturday, March 21...With Nice completely shut down, one couldn't even take a walk down the promenade.  We took the long way to the grocery store, just to breathe the air and move around.  We stocked up on essentials, like wine, and holed up waiting for our departure on March 29, which still looked good.  The news was wall-to-wall coronavirus coverage.  No wonder everyone was freaked out.

Mozart upstairs was cutting us a break, and Stradavarius across the street was actually sounding pretty good by now, having caught up on his practice.  Every evening at eight, lots of the people on the block came out onto their balconies and we all gave each other a round of applause.  We felt like chipmunks, crawling out of our den to celebrate surviving another day.

At this point, the Wiener Dog Contest, like most other major sporting events, was canceled (by the sore loser) due to virus concerns.

Sunday, March 22...The airline canceled our flight from Nice to Copenhagen, offering no suggestions about reaching that city to catch the connection to Chicago.  Start looking online for a connection.  Can't reach the airline, it's Sunday.  Have some wine, applaud on the balcony.

Monday, March 23...Gordon sits on hold for an hour only to learn from the airline that there is no way to get to Copenhagen.  Skandinavian Airlines can't getcha to Skandinavia.  We decided that we'd better get the heck out of town before airports started shutting down and we became seriously stuck.  There were planes running from Europe to the US, just not so many and getting to their departure point (say, Frankfurt, Paris, London) was looking more and more difficult.

Pati searches frantically, finds a way out of the maze with a departure in less than two days.  We book it, Danno.  We start packing and applaud on the balcony.

Thursday, March 26...What was supposed to be one airline, two airports, and home in 15 hours became hours spent online, two airlines, four airports, a hotel night, several different ground transports, a grand or so, and home in about two days.

We flew through Madrid, and the number of idle aircraft at that airport was not to be believed.  Many had their engines covered up like they were ready to be mothballed, and were still sitting at the gate.  Here is the International terminal:

LaGuardia was like a ghost town.  In New York, there seemed to be little enthusiasm about working...but maybe that's not necessarily virus-related behavior.

Finally home, Pati said she felt like she'd been rudely uprooted like a mandrake.  Naperville is shut down just like Nice was.  But we were both still healthy...although we would have  probably tested positive.  Everyone else seemed to be.  Had a martini and remembered the balcony.

We want to acknowledge some people for their levity:  Declan, who didn't take the toilet paper crisis too seriously; Julie, who just wanted to go to Lidl; the Iberia agent at the Nice airport...with only a dozen passengers, she knew us all.  And the reservations agent at Flag Limo, who couldn't have really been having a real good day but was laughing anyway, and especially Christa, the flight attendant who "got the party started" with warm mixed nuts in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.

Coronavirus Lockdown. March 19, 2020

And we complained about the strikes.  Here we sit, confined to quarters.  Can't get out of the country for 10 more days.  No one allowed out and about unless on the way to or from work (and that's not many) or the grocery store.  All shops and restaurants closed.  The street is eerily quiet, except for the violinist across the way.  Thank heaven "Mozart" upstairs is leaving the piano alone, but why is anyone's guess.

At the store, only a few people are allowed in at one time.  The dried pasta shelf is almost empty along with the pasta sauce shelf, and the canned goods department.  Toilet paper?  Nope.  None.

People are cleaning house to keep themselves busy...we can hear the vacuums and mops going.  Ah!  He's playing a Viennese waltz!  Others are wandering about on their balconies.  After all, it's 68 degrees and sunny.  What a day for the beach.

All went well until the Italians locked down Milan.  Nice countered by canceling the rest of Carnaval.    Then, a pause before the rapid changes.  EU borders closed, airline and train schedules disrupted, restaurants closed (every one that could go into the carryout business, did), the mall closed, Terminal 1 at the airport shut down, and finally the announcement that we're all grounded.

Oh, good God, there goes Mozart.

We've gotten into some pretty interesting situations on our travels.  This is one of them.  Best we can do is hope that the airline keeps flying cargo from Copenhagen to Chicago, with a few passengers on board, until we can get back to the States.  But, then, what awaits us there?  Fisticuffs at the Costco, a tanked stock market, elections on the horizon, the income taxes are still due, and we'd bet that there's no toilet paper.

Sorry, no pictures...

Nice 2020, Part 1

First, let us say that French strikes stink.  One of the first words you learn upon visiting France is "greve", which means "strike".  It's almost as important as "bonjour".  At the beginning of this trip, the unions were all up at arms about pension reform in France and had been since November.  This translated into one or two strikes each week, consisting of complete shutdowns of the transport systems.  No tram, no bus, no train, no get anywhere.  Plenty of traffic jams, though.  This went on until the proposed law went to the assembly.  In American terms, the bill went to the house for debate.  At that point, mid-February, all the strikes stopped, supposedly until March 31.  Good.  We could use a break.

So, on a non-strike day, we went over to Monaco to see the circus animals.  This year was Monaco's year of the horse, and there were plenty of them.

We skipped Rally this year.  We don't get enough coverage either here or in the states to know who's who anymore.  Don't worry, F1's coming up.  And speaking of which, off to Barcelona we went to watch the annual testing, with excellent weather.  Formula 1 has shortened the number of testing days, so there was plenty of track action.

And somehow, the new management has persuaded the teams that hiding behind the blinds in the garages was no longer to their liking, so the garages were open and visible most of the time.  One could even see the occasional driver!  Big improvement for the fans.

Back to Nice and it was Carnaval time.  This year's theme was "King of Fashion".  Lots and lots of Karl Lagerfeld.

We were excited when one news source stated that the burning of the King was moving back to the sea, to be accompanied by fireworks, like it was before the tragedy of July 2016.  Other sources did not support that, and the official program said nothing about any of it.  We were wondering whether to walk down to the water on March 1 to see what, if anything, was going to happen.  Our fine Mayor Estrosi (I mean that literally.  No joking.  This guy is great.) made up our minds for us by cancelling the rest of the festivities due to the Coronavirus fears.  Guess he wanted to keep any infected Italians on their side of the border.  In the end, the king was burned at Place Massena in an unusual situation, because the grandstands had already been taken down.  So what do you do with all the flowers when you have cancelled not one, but two Bataille des Fleurs (flower parades)?  Some went to the war memorials, some to the cemeteries, some to the hospitals, and the rest to the people on the street:

The city employees were having a blast distributing the mimosas.  We hear that next year's theme is King of Animals.  Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my.

Iguazu Falls!

After disembarking the ship, we headed to the domestic airport for the flight to Cataratas del Iguazu International.  Arriving there, it was off to the Iguazu National Park on the Argentine side.  The falls are actually located right on the border between Argentina and Brazil, so there's a National Park and an airport in Brazil as well.  This is the largest waterfall in the world.  Its name comes from the native Guarani language and means "big water".  No kidding!

Our first day's afternoon at the falls started with a Parilla (BBQ...yum!) lunch followed by a ride on the water.  The tour description said "you will get wet".  OK.

 They issue you a life jacket, and then a big rubber bag to put your belongings in.  Then they show you how to carefully seal up the bag.  So, just how wet are we gonna get?  Well, it turns out that "wet" doesn't exactly describe it.  The description should say "you will get absolutely soaked to the bone".  The boat drivers joyously drive right under the falls, and that water's coming down hard.  The ride back to shore offers some really rough rapids that had everyone squealing.  The rest of the afternoon was comfortably cool, though, as we all slowly dried out, while walking some of the pathways around the falls.

We spent the night at the Loi Suites Hotel (www.loisuites.com.ar)  What a neat place!  The several buildings are joined to the lobby by hanging bridges and everyone gets either a nice balcony or a room with a soaring ceiling.  Having had both breakfast and lunch, we drank our dinner:  martinis by the pool followed by a small bottle of local wine from the minibar.

Up the next morning and fed, we were off to our second day at the falls.  First, we took a train ride to visit the Devil's Throat.

While we were there, Gordon did some bird watching.  A flock of Grey Dusky Swifts.  They live behind the various falls and are the logo for the park;

And a Plush Crested Jay:

Later, we walked more of the pathways to enjoy the breathtaking views.  Look how tall some of these falls are!

More local wildlife...it's a Coati, he's got an ice cream wrapper and not one bit was going to get away from him!

Lunch was served at the Grand Melia Hotel.  Parilla, of course, along with other gourmet goodies, and then we did some more birdwatching.  This one's a Three Striped Flycatcher...he was looking for flies around the pool.

Soon we were off to the airport for the flight back to Buenos Aires.  The city was in high form, because the following day was inauguration day for their new president and Comicon was at the convention center.

So, overall, we'd say this:  go to Machu Picchu.  Go to Iguazu Falls, it's one of the most impressive sights we've ever seen.  Take a cruise.  Drink Argentine wine.  Eat Parilla.  You won't regret it.

Uruguay and Buenos Aires

We anchored at Punta Del Este, Uruguay and went ashore to have a look around.  This was a pretty nice place with lots of high rise condos, restaurants, museums, and some very nice residential areas.  Our tour took us around the peninsula...there is actually one intersection in town where you can see water in all directions!  We stopped for photos at the Hanging Bridge:

Then we drove over it, twice.  The second time, our bus driver went about as fast as he dared, laughing.  You want to hear a bunch of geezers giggle?  We visited some excellent viewpoints and passed the famous La Mano, on the beach.

Finally, a stop at a quaint little automobile museum that was installed in the basement garage of a former gas station.  Nothing fancy here, but hey, we're car guys so we had to go.

And then onward to Montevideo, Uruguay.  This is an upcoming urban area, again, condos, restaurants...reminded us of Florida.

We visited the local agricultural market and then the new Ferrando market, which is located in a former furniture factory on a residential back street, and given over to mostly gourmet goodies.  We were hosted by the manager and treated to churros and fresh orange juice.  Delicious.  But then, our guide introduced us to the Uruguay/Argentina national tea, or rather, national habit.  This is the famous "mate" or "yerba mate".  What you do is put a whole bunch of this crushed up herb in a special, leather-covered cup, then add warm water to fill.  A very special straw that resembles a perferated spoon is then inserted and handed, if to welcome someone, with the straw facing the individual who is to sip.  The sipper, if uninitiated, then takes a small sip and says:  "Yuck!  This stuff is terrible!".  And indeed it is.  But it's like coffee to them, and they carry their mate setup around with them just like we drag our thermos of Starbucks all over the place.

Montevideo, for some reason, is home to a whole lot of shipwrecks.  All sitting in the bay...

The final destination for this segment was Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Here, we took the good old "highlights" tour to get the overview.  A famous area of town is La Boca, originally settled by Italians.  El Caminito Street is especially colorful.

Finally, no trip to Argentina could be complete without a visit to the Recoleta Cemetery.  All above ground, although many of the tombs have basements where the caskets or urns are actually stored.

Here, we visit Evita Peron's grave.  Our guide warned us not to be disappointed.  You'd expect some fabulous gravesite, but in fact, she's entombed with the rest of her family Duarte.  Still, the people love her and leave flowers and gifts, and there is always a line to pass by.

After disembarking the ship, we were headed to the next great adventure, Iguazu Falls.  We were unsure of what we were about to see...