Common Sense and Whiskey

Tonight: Back to Africa

Time to top up our Sheba Miles accounts with Ethiopian Airlines. Ethiopian flew us from Stockholm to Kampala, and from Kigali to Dubai a couple years ago, and this time we'll enjoy their service from Roma FCO to Addis Ababa to JNB. Getting closer to the main event, embarkation on 2 January on the RMS St. Helena, and nine days in the south Atlantic Ocean.

(Photo from the Ethiopia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Milan HDR

Duomo, Milan HDR.

Low Season, Minor Destinations

There's patchy show in the fields as our train brings us down from Lecco, on the less famous branch of the lake called Como on the other side, north of Milan. We've been poking around in tourist towns in the midst of their very slow season. Farther up in the Alps, ski resorts will be busy now, but here in these pre-Alps south of the Dolomites, villages still put on the remnants of their Christmas markets to dwindling crowds, as people returned home to get back to work this week.

The other night as darkness fell, just off a ferry and chilled through, we hustled into the second bar past the dock in the little village of Varenna. The left of the building was an albergo with rooms for E70. The right half housed a bar/community center/news stand/kiosk, run by husband and wife, he serving campari and sodas and complimentary tiny squares of anchovy pizza, she furiously vending lottery tickets and cigarettes behind the cash register. Four men played cards (one of them eyeing me suspiciously) while one of their wives watched. A cadre of rough dock worker types smoked and drank beer around a table, some of them seated, the less cool dudes having to stand. Valerie Bertinelli starred in something on Rai Uno TV.

It was family night, community center and happy hour all in one, and it was fabulous.

(Top photo, Varenna, Italy, and bottom, the card game, from EarthPhotos.com.)

Was Our Hero an Air Marshall?

It seems from here that the man who subdued the underwear bomber was trained in law enforcement. Purely speculation, obviously. We can't see domestic U.S. TV, so for now, CNNI, BBC World and the International Herald Tribune are our media, and not one has done the inevitable glowing feature story about our hero as ordinary guy/hero with a fawning family, nice lawn and obedient dog. Maybe he's made the morning show rounds and every American knows him by name, but we haven't heard another thing about him.

From the initial news stories, we understood that he had been seated near the suspect, leapt across the aisle, put the fire out, disabled and restrained the suspect. Sounds like a pro. If we're right, then the guy on the watch list was being watched, wasn't he? Wonder why they don't say so? If we're missing the valedictory morning show interviews with an ordinary  hero guy, can anybody in the U.S. fill me in?

Amsterdam Schiphol, No problem on Same Day as that Trouble Flight

We flew through Amsterdam Schiphol airport yesterday, the same day as our latest hero from Nigeria did, except we were on our way to Milan. We found nothing amiss. Perhaps the suspect flight hadn't even landed in Detroit yet. Guess we may have to disrobe entirely when we eventually come home. More on that in a few weeks. In the meantime, flying over the Alps never gets old.

Friday Photo Quiz #53 - Christmas Edition

Do these Roman ruins give a clue to the identity of this ancient Middle Eastern city? Clue #2: During his rule, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Hellenic ruler of Egypt, named it after himself, and so for a time it was known as Philadelphia.

Can you name the city? The country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

The Journey Ahead

We're battening down the farm now to head toward Walvis Bay, Namibia, which is the point of African land on the map.

En route we'll stop in Switzerland and Italy, then on 1 January, 2010 we'll fly JNB - Walvis Bay to board the RMS St. Helena and sail to the islands of St. Helena and Ascension.

We'll be posting our thoughts here on CS&W and our photos here on EarthPhotos.com. Please come along with us.

In the meantime, you can read up on the local news in:

- Coastal Namibia: The Namib Times

- St. Helena: The Independent

- Ascension Island: The Islander

And here's "The Pierhead Webcam" live from Ascension, updating every five minutes. Looks tropical.

Snapshot: The World As It Is

Inside a bamboo lean-to, a blacksmith works outside Siem Reap, Cambodia.

See more in the Cambodia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Defenestration, et al.

The opportunity to use the term "defenestration" in a headline? Can't pass it up.

More frightening things - from Hong Kong.

Life these days. In the Multiverse. (subscription required)

Can't we all just get along? No.

Another one of those stories about dying languages. Except this one's got a neat map.

Fabulous Destinations When Money Doesn't Matter #7

Fabulous transportation, in this case. Money clearly isn't the first concern to the person, apparently from New Zealand, who writes the blog Musings of the Global Traveller. Or perhaps to whomever pays his/her expense account.

Check out this post, "A380 first class suites comparison - Emirates, Qantas and Singapore," which compares flights in the first class suites on Emirates - Sydney to Auckland, Qantas - Sydney to Singapore and Singapore - Singapore to Melbourne. 

For the record, I checked prices for first class flights at each of the airlines' sites for an arbitrary 1 February one-way flight on these routes. Converted to USD, the rates came back: SYD - AKL $1122, SYD - SIN $5655 and SIN - MEL $5080. That's $11,860 of first class suites.

We can enjoy the reviews, anyway. And the Global Traveller has some tips on the cheapest way to book these flights at the end of his/her post.

Fifty Photos #43

For more photos like this, explore the Animals and Wildlife Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Get top-notch professional 8x12 Glossy & Matte prints of this and any of these Top Fifty Prints for just $11.50, 16x24 Glossy, Matte & Lustre for $35.00 at EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

South Atlantic Ocean Reading List

In a little over two weeks time, we'll walk aboard the world's last working Royal Mail Ship, the RMS St. Helena, for a trip to two of the world's most inaccessible spots: The islands of St. Helena (the place of Napoleon's final exile) and Ascension.

Should you ever find yourself sailing the south Atlantic Ocean, you will of course want to read up on it ahead of time. Please help yourself to our reading list. As we get ready to hit the road, here's the best we've found:

Napoleon by Paul Johnson - a tight, 187 page summary by an acclaimed historian.
Waterloo by Andrew Roberts - same kind of summary, in 132 pages.
The Osprey military histories - numerous volumes.
Rites of Peace by Adam Zamoyski - dry, academic history, including more about philandering early 19th century royals than anybody should know. Still, more than you knew.
Napoleon & St. Helena by Johannes Willms - niche thing you'd only seek out if you were going to St. Helena,  or if you just had to read everything in the world about Napoleon.
The Emporer's Last Island by Julia Blackburn - quirky story of the author's own journey to St. Helena - on the same ship we're traveling on.
Turtle Island by Sergio Ghione - nicely written tale of a month on Ascension Island.
Island Base by Captain Bob McQueen - how Ascension was transformed into a staging place for the Falklands War.
The Sun Never Sets by Simon Winchester - Winchester travels to the remaining outposts of the British empire. Simon Winchester's great.
Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum - scant coverage of St. Helena, which Slocum visited on his 1895 - 98 voyage.

We like the Bradt Guides, because they dare to go where other tour book publishers don't. And in this case it's a good thing, because The Bradt Guide to Ascension, St. Helena and Tristan de Cunha is about your only guide.

News sources on the web:

The St. Helena Independent - a newsweekly, new every Friday.
South Atlantic News - from the South Atlantic Remote Territories Media Association. You know them. Don't you?

I've been stymied in my search for a really god map. Maybe out there on the road....

Bookmark this page and check for photo coverage on EarthPhotos.com.

The Arrival at Casablanca

Excerpted from the eventual book, Common Sense and Whiskey:

7:48 a.m., Saturday Nov. 20, Casablanca: I’d have never believed we’d have left on time. At 7:40 there wasn’t a train in sight along quai deux. At 7:45 we were underway from Casablanca Gare de Voyageurs, right on time, on the express to Marrakesh.

Gare de Voyageurs was dark but not foreboding at 7 a.m., friendly and do-able, with a short queue for billets and hot café available. Pictures of the new, young King Mohammad hadn’t yet replaced his father in the magasin.

At least at first, we were alone in our premiere classe compartment for six, the sun playing cat and mouse with clouds in a tropical-style rain, big drops but cool, a torrent that looked to occur only here just onshore. The low eastern sun made the clouds in the western sky foreboding blue.

Premiere classe cost 100 dirhams, ten bucks, for the three hour ride into Marrakech, and the Sheraton Casablanca wanted seven dollars per LaBatts. We drank two and a half round trips on the Marrakech Express in an hour last night.

*****

Royal Air Maroc’s 747 had delivered us right on time, six hours forty minutes flying time from New York Kennedy to Casablanca Mohammed V International. A twenty dollar grande taxi would surely be the most expensive in Morocco but it was a long ride, more than 45 minutes, at first through the Oulad Salah Zone Industrielle and alternately, fallow brown land. Just after dawn, with the sun so low, the fair weather clouds were lit orange from below in a definite November chill.

Horse-drawn buggy drivers in distinctive Moroccan pointy-top hooded djelaba robes and pedestrians alike stamped their feet and blew into their hands. Scooters and funny French transports. Kids with backpacks surprised us on their way to school on Friday, the Muslim holy day (they go a half day).

People stood in ones or twos on the roadside, it seemed like at random, and since we saw no buses or bus stop signs, we couldn’t tell why.  Most of the women wore head cover. Given that you see people standing absently at the roadside all across the developing world we didn’t take their loitering as indolence - it just looked that way.

Important New Hairstyle Guidelines for North Koreans

In an effort to tame those pesky foreign influences, according to the Christian Science Monitor, "Men, keep your hair short. Women -- pull it back or suffer the consequences."

Dear Leader sez.

Friday Photo Quiz #52

This city was founded just over a century ago under German colonial rule, and is now the one million strong, and rapidly expanding capital city of what developing country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Awful Funny Library Books

Pretty funny stuff at a site called Awful Library Books. Learn all about our Canadian friends! Our friends in England! Our exotic friends in South America (including Mexico and Central America)! 

Snapshot: The World As It Is

Workers labor to clear a rock slide on a rural road east of Thimpu, in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.

See the Bhutan Gallery at EarthPhotos.com for more.

Flight Attendant Flies Off the Handle?

Unsettling story here: "Asking For Orange Juice On American Airlines May Violate Federal Law."

Road Trip Starts Next Week. First Stop: Switzerland

It's almost time to leave the farm and head back out on the road. We'll be underway at the end of next week. First stop, Lake Geneva, Switzerland, where we'll arrive on Boxing Day. During the weeks that follow we'll cover some 13,000 miles, from the Alps to southern Africa, back up the middle of the south Atlantic Ocean via Royal Mail Ship, and on to the U.K. aboard an RAF jet.

Come with us as we write about it here on Common Sense and Whiskey, and see photos as we go, as we visit Switzerland, Italy, Namibia, and St. Helena and Ascension islands. We'll post them (bookmark here) on our photo site, EarthPhotos.com, starting around the end of next week.

(photo from the Switzerland Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Your Holiday in Grozny Just Got Easier

RFERL's Caucasus Report tells us that "Russia, Georgia Move To Restore Transport Links" at the Verkhny Lars/Zemo Larsi border crossing and via direct flights. Zemo Larsi, on the Georgia side, is in the beautiful Kazbegi region of Georgia, a few hours drive up the Georgian Military Highway from the capitol, Tbilisi.

Across the border in Russia lies North Ossetia, whose capital Vladikavkaz is maybe twenty five miles (40 k) on down a road that will get you to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya in about another fifty miles (80 k). Or take a left after Vladikavkaz and it's a short drive to Beslan, home of the September 2004 schoolhouse siege that killed over 300.

It's a daunting neighborhood. And it's all less than 300 miles (482 k) from the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, Sochi. Get your tickets early. (We're keeping an eye on Sochi in our Sochi Olympics Watch.)

At least until the summer war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008, the Georgia side of the border was lovely and peaceful, and I imagine it is again. If you ever visit Georgia, a drive up from Tbilisi to the community of Kazbegi, near the border, will make you feel like a real adventurer.

The border crossing that's reopening is spectacularly located, too, along a narrow pass in the high Caucasus through which the River Terek rushes as if out of control. On our trip to Kazbegi in 2006 we visited the border as guests of an Army Corps of Engineers contractor who was then on the job of constructing the Georgian side of the border crossing. Here's what it looked like in June, 2006:

Note the sheer vertical canyon walls and the tiny gap where the road continues, up ahead in the photo past the buildings under construction.

It really is dramatic scenery. Have a look at the spectacular mountain scenery in our Georgia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com, and read more about our visit to Kazbegi town.