World travel

[infection]

Went to the Alps last September. A couple years before, I had planned out a rough itinerary for my parents when they flew to Zurich. I gave them a loop that would start in the Berner Oberland area, go down through the Italian Dolomites, over to western Austria, through southern German and back into Zurich. I built a rough sketch of our trip based on that.

A week or two before, we started to see that there was going to be bad weather. It's usually drier that time of year and when my parents had gone two years ago, it was mid-to-late October and they had great weather and everything was still green. My wife started to get concerned and I just waited it out to see what would happen, as there's nothing I could do to change it and would cross that bridge if/when we got there. We ended up having to pack some winter coats to prepare for what the weather was saying.

We had something like a 5 hour layover at JFK and I was able to talk my wife into leaving the airport to go grab something to eat. She was a bit nervous because she didn't want to miss a flight. I don't blame her and most people are quite cautious, but I've done some pretty crazy things on layovers before and feel more comfortable to know how much time I'd really have. I looked up a place outside the airport in Queens called Don Peppe. We were able to take the sky train (free) to a stop that it was just a little ways up the road and took an Uber the rest of the way. It was kind of strange because it was in this building that almost looked abandoned, and from the outside you wouldn't even think anything was in there. You walk in to a lobby that was dark with nothing in there indicating that you're actually entering a business. Then when you open the door at the end of that hallway, it opens up into a restaurant. It was pretty bizarre. First, I had known that you had to bring cash because they didn't accept any card. Who does that in 2024 and especially at a nice restaurant? Somewhere around this moment, I'm realizing that this must be a front for money laundering. We ended up getting seated, but the even more bizarre thing was this strong feeling like we weren't welcome or weren't supposed to be there. Not that there was anything overt. More like the feeling of showing up at a party that you're not invited to, that they don't want you there, but that they're overly cordial putting up a front being nice, knowing that you know they're being nice as a front. Somewhat similar to the scene from Major League where he follows his ex-girlfriend home and ends up going in to his ex's new BF's condo and everyone is real welcoming superficially but it's incredibly awkward. Anyway, everyone else in there seemed to know each other. Really couldn't shake the feeling of like we were imposing on something.

We ended up making it back with plenty of time. It also didn't really matter because our flight was pretty significantly delayed. They were having trouble getting planes to take off and you could see a traffic jam where planes couldn't even pull back from the jetway because other panes behind them. I went to my Flight Radar app and saw they only were running two runways. Not sure why this was as I would have thought JFK would be one of the biggest/busiest airports in the world and for them to only be running two runways was pretty incredible. Since we were going to be moving all over the place, part of our itinerary included doing stuff that day since we were going to arrive at 10:35 am. We ended up getting in perhaps 3 hours later than that so it really cut into our plans.

Anyway, we spent our first three nights up on the hill just outside of Interlaken, which we were using for a base for the Berner Oberland area. That afternoon we drove around Lake Thun and went to a bridge with a good view, but there was fog covering the tops of the mountains. We then drove into Lauterbrunnen and went up to Staubbach Falls. The forecast for the next day looked terrible. We started our day going up to Wengen, which is a town up on the hill above the Lauterbrunnen valley. There was fog covering everything up higher but we could see the valley floor. From Wengen, we took another cable car to the top of the mountain (where you could then go down toward Grindelwald) but by the time we got to the top, there was too much fog and you couldn't see anything.

This is from the top:



So... we kinda struck out. We ended up deciding to go back to Interlaken because there may have been a bit better weather but it was still overcast.



Ended up seeing this in Interlaken, which I thought was a pretty tall promise for a samosa. We then went to check out this castle in Oberhofen:



The next day we ended up having good weather. There were still some clouds high up, but we got a lot of sunshine and you could actually see everything. We started in Grindelwald and it was a pretty impressive valley with the mountains in the background. There was still fog coming in and out and we struck out when we took the cable car higher on the mountain so we came back down. We then rolled over to Lauterbrunnen and as you pass that and go farther into the valley, you can take a very steep cable car up on top of the mountain to Murren. The pictures don't really do it justice so I'm going to use a picture here from Google images:

Because that other mountain is there, it doesn't capture how high up on the mountain you already are.



Above is off to the right of where you're walking down that street in the town and you're looking into the valley in the opposite direction as Lauterbrunnen.



This was the view of Lauterbrunnen from Wengen, which we went back to. The previous picture is from on the right side of the valley way in the back of the picture. You can sort of see some of the homes in Lauterbrunnen but this image obstructs seeing the town of Lauterbrunnen.



This is a view of Lauterbrunnen from the train.

So we ended up time in Switzerland and the next day we started driving to the Dolomites in northern Italy. There was good weather on the way. Before we dropped into Italy, we went to Liechtenstein, a small country right in between Switzerland and Austria. On the road there, this picture doesn't do it justice, but this may have been one of the most scenic highways I've ever seen.



This picture and the lighting is garbage but this view is incredible. We past into Liechtenstein and then into Austria.



Random church is Austria. However, it is possible that this could have actually been Italy.



This was in Italy at Santa Maddalena, and you can see the clouds that totally ruined the view. This is what it looks like without clouds:

Up against my image limit so the rest is coming in probably two more posts...

 

[infection]

The next day we were supposed to go up to the Seceda Ridgeline. This is what it looks like normally:

When we got up there, nothing. Total fog. Couldn't see more than 40 feet. We had bought our tickets up there then just had to come back down. We had planned to spend the day in that area before moving on to the eastern end of the Dolomites. We almost bagged the whole thing. Weather looked awful everywhere on our trip. I started looking all across Europe of places we could drive and get good weather. We almost drove down farther south into Italy. Ultimately, we decided to head over to the other part of the Dolomites a little early. On the way we did a hike around Cinque Torri, which was visible, but you couldn't see beyond it and we ended up getting snowed on. We then drove to our next destination at Lake Missurina, and the view of the mountain was not possible because of the fog. Before the trip, I considered taking a swimming suit but figured there'd be no reason to do so. Well, we were pretty much snowed in that evening and the hotel had a pool. I went down to see it and it was honestly the best pool atmosphere that I had ever seen at a hotel. No stores nearby, no shorts.... just hung out in the hotel room and ate dinner at the hotel. The next morning, the fog lifted enough to be able to see the mountain across the lake.



There was a hike we were going to do at Tre Cime that wasn't too far from here. We were going to get an early start because the parking can fill up. When we got to the gate, we found out that it was closed, though you could still hike it. This meant that we could hike up to where we originally going to park. I forget how far this was, but it was numerous miles, and we did it in the cold.




When we made it to the refugio at the top.



This is the view from the refugio, looking down into another valley that we hadn't been in. We decided the route we would take getting to our next stop (Austria) but we were going to stop through Slovenia first. We were going to stop in that town down at the bottom of that valley on the way.



This is from that valley. If you look up at those mountains in the distance, you can see the refugio by zooming in really far.



This was a random amazing view I stopped to take a picture of in the Dolomites as we were passing through.

We made it to Slovenia and our first stop was Lake Bled. Not pictured here but there's an island on this lake with a church on it. Didn't get any great shots of that but if you google Lake Bled, you'll see those shots. This is a shot of the castle on the hill with the mountains in the background and lake in the foreground.



On the way back, we hit Lake Jasna, which we almost didn't do. This was by far better than Lake Bled and very, very underrated with nearly no tourists in this area. It was insane.



We drove up to Austria where we were scheduled to spend two nights. We were going to hit Hallstatt, Austria, as well as go see the Eagle's Nest, which is at the top of the mountain in Germany where the Nazis had some kind of a building/hangout. Our weather sucked. We looked at the forecast and the weather was going to continue to suck... except it was now scheduled to be sunny over in Lauterbrunnen in a couple of days. All the things we were going to see required visibility and so we ended up making the decision to forego the second night in Austria, and go ahead and cut back through Germany and go back into Switzerland, something like a 7 or 8 hour drive, to catch a good day in Lauterbrunnen. The next morning we went into Hallstatt, which was an hour (in the wrong direction) from where we were staying. It was nice, but it was raining the whole time and you couldn't see the tops of the mountains.



At some point on the drive back, the navigation screen on the rental vehicle went out. Not a huge deal, but then we realized the USB ports wouldn't charge, either. We needed to power our phones to navigate. This went on for numerous hours and I wondered if it wasn't a fuse issue. We were in Germany somewhere outside Munich... originally we were going to go see some of the Willy Wonka film locations there but since we were in a time crunch, had to skip that. We went to a gas station and found this in the bathroom:



Not sure what all is involved in that, but it was 4 Euros. Anyway, when I got back into the car, the screen and charging randomly worked.

More to come...

 

[infection]

As we passed through southern Germany, we went by the Neuschwanstein Castle, the inspiration for the Disney castle. You have to buy tickets weeks in advance to go through. I had purchased tickets and inopportune times weeks before and ended up buying a different time when it became available (all non-refundable) and since we originally were scheduled to come through here the following day, we were left ticketless here. Oh well.

We made it to Lauterbrunnen and I was able to grab an AirBnb that was more like a hostel that we got for the night right in the center of town. The next day had fabulous weather.



We went back over to Grindelwald and went back up to Grindelwald First (the stop on the tram) and started some hiking. We did the Skywalk.



We ended up impulsively deciding that we'd do paragliding and booked a slot for a couple hours later. Something had happened where it actually booked the following day, when we wouldn't be there, which was a bummer, but we eventually got our money back. We then went back over to Lauterbrunnen and we took the train back up to Wengen and hiked down to Lauterbrunnen.







Had a great day with great weather. We ended up eating dinner with a view of the valley. We then got back in the car and headed to Zurich for the night before our flight in the early afternoon. When we woke up, we went to the Lindt Chocolate factory in Zurich. We were in a crunch so we really only had time to see the big chocolate fountain in the entrance and went into the store to buy all kinds of Lindt chocolate that I've never seen available anywhere else. We made it to the airport and our flight got delayed, then delayed again, then delayed again. I believe the flight ended up going out 4-5 hours late, which meant we missed our connection in JFK. They put us up in a hotel until our early morning flight to SLC, but it was really only a couple hours at the hotel and it was clear over on Long Beach. But, we did eventually make it back home, though I missed an additional day of work.

 

[infection]

I have a friend visiting and he really wanted to scuba dive in the red sea and I refuse to ever go back to Egypt. So it came down to Saudi or Djibouti. We chose Saudi. It was a pretty boring place to visit actually. It's the driest place (alcohol) I have ever been. But beyond that it was just a lot of shopping and not much else. We did find a cool cultural center and had an awesome art exhibit. They also had a great fish market where you could buy live fish, crabs, shrimp, and whatever and then take it to someone to clean it, then to someone to cook it how you like. The scuba was kinda meh. Mostly that area looks like the coral isn't doing so we but it was still cool.

I have some videos but they aren't working probably not worth messing with them to upload.

Where in Saudi Arabia were you? Lots of things I’d like to see there like Hegra, Al Ula, Tabuk, etc. I’d love to see Mecca but obviously as a non-Muslim that’s not possible, so I’ll settle for going to Medina. The history of Bedouin culture interests me, but would see more of that in Southern Jordan (which we’d combine with a Saudi trip). Old world Book of Mormon geography and the spice trade is interesting to me. Historically, the spice trade is rather fascinating with all these things we take for granted and you have all these people braving not only the physical climate but also safety from others with how remote you are all for seasoning food. The ancient economics of it really blows my mind.

And what’s the reason you wouldn’t go back to Egypt?

 

[Ron Mexico]

Where in Saudi Arabia were you? Lots of things I’d like to see there like Hegra, Al Ula, Tabuk, etc. I’d love to see Mecca but obviously as a non-Muslim that’s not possible, so I’ll settle for going to Medina. The history of Bedouin culture interests me, but would see more of that in Southern Jordan (which we’d combine with a Saudi trip). Old world Book of Mormon geography and the spice trade is interesting to me. Historically, the spice trade is rather fascinating with all these things we take for granted and you have all these people braving not only the physical climate but also safety from others with how remote you are all for seasoning food. The ancient economics of it really blows my mind.

And what’s the reason you wouldn’t go back to Egypt?

I was in Jeddah. We tried to get as close to Mecca add possible at outsiders. There is interesting history in that area, but still there just wasn't much to actually see and do there. The city is completely being torn down and rebuilt with new buildings.

Egypt is the most aggressive place I've been. People were pretty rude and trying way too hard to take advantage of outsiders. Even the airport staff tried to shake people down. The second time I went was with Chinese friends and almost everyone was beyond rude towards them. The sites were very cool to see but the rest was awful. It's a place to go once and I went twice.

 

[latin jazz]

Went to the Alps last September. A couple years before, I had planned out a rough itinerary for my parents when they flew to Zurich. I gave them a loop that would start in the Berner Oberland area, go down through the Italian Dolomites, over to western Austria, through southern German and back into Zurich. I built a rough sketch of our trip based on that.

A week or two before, we started to see that there was going to be bad weather. It's usually drier that time of year and when my parents had gone two years ago, it was mid-to-late October and they had great weather and everything was still green. My wife started to get concerned and I just waited it out to see what would happen, as there's nothing I could do to change it and would cross that bridge if/when we got there. We ended up having to pack some winter coats to prepare for what the weather was saying.

We had something like a 5 hour layover at JFK and I was able to talk my wife into leaving the airport to go grab something to eat. She was a bit nervous because she didn't want to miss a flight. I don't blame her and most people are quite cautious, but I've done some pretty crazy things on layovers before and feel more comfortable to know how much time I'd really have. I looked up a place outside the airport in Queens called Don Peppe. We were able to take the sky train (free) to a stop that it was just a little ways up the road and took an Uber the rest of the way. It was kind of strange because it was in this building that almost looked abandoned, and from the outside you wouldn't even think anything was in there. You walk in to a lobby that was dark with nothing in there indicating that you're actually entering a business. Then when you open the door at the end of that hallway, it opens up into a restaurant. It was pretty bizarre. First, I had known that you had to bring cash because they didn't accept any card. Who does that in 2024 and especially at a nice restaurant? Somewhere around this moment, I'm realizing that this must be a front for money laundering. We ended up getting seated, but the even more bizarre thing was this strong feeling like we weren't welcome or weren't supposed to be there. Not that there was anything overt. More like the feeling of showing up at a party that you're not invited to, that they don't want you there, but that they're overly cordial putting up a front being nice, knowing that you know they're being nice as a front. Somewhat similar to the scene from Major League where he follows his ex-girlfriend home and ends up going in to his ex's new BF's condo and everyone is real welcoming superficially but it's incredibly awkward. Anyway, everyone else in there seemed to know each other. Really couldn't shake the feeling of like we were imposing on something.

We ended up making it back with plenty of time. It also didn't really matter because our flight was pretty significantly delayed. They were having trouble getting planes to take off and you could see a traffic jam where planes couldn't even pull back from the jetway because other panes behind them. I went to my Flight Radar app and saw they only were running two runways. Not sure why this was as I would have thought JFK would be one of the biggest/busiest airports in the world and for them to only be running two runways was pretty incredible. Since we were going to be moving all over the place, part of our itinerary included doing stuff that day since we were going to arrive at 10:35 am. We ended up getting in perhaps 3 hours later than that so it really cut into our plans.

Anyway, we spent our first three nights up on the hill just outside of Interlaken, which we were using for a base for the Berner Oberland area. That afternoon we drove around Lake Thun and went to a bridge with a good view, but there was fog covering the tops of the mountains. We then drove into Lauterbrunnen and went up to Staubbach Falls. The forecast for the next day looked terrible. We started our day going up to Wengen, which is a town up on the hill above the Lauterbrunnen valley. There was fog covering everything up higher but we could see the valley floor. From Wengen, we took another cable car to the top of the mountain (where you could then go down toward Grindelwald) but by the time we got to the top, there was too much fog and you couldn't see anything.

This is from the top:

View attachment 18172

So... we kinda struck out. We ended up deciding to go back to Interlaken because there may have been a bit better weather but it was still overcast.

View attachment 18175

Ended up seeing this in Interlaken, which I thought was a pretty tall promise for a samosa. We then went to check out this castle in Oberhofen:

View attachment 18176

The next day we ended up having good weather. There were still some clouds high up, but we got a lot of sunshine and you could actually see everything. We started in Grindelwald and it was a pretty impressive valley with the mountains in the background. There was still fog coming in and out and we struck out when we took the cable car higher on the mountain so we came back down. We then rolled over to Lauterbrunnen and as you pass that and go farther into the valley, you can take a very steep cable car up on top of the mountain to Murren. The pictures don't really do it justice so I'm going to use a picture here from Google images:

Because that other mountain is there, it doesn't capture how high up on the mountain you already are.

View attachment 18180

Above is off to the right of where you're walking down that street in the town and you're looking into the valley in the opposite direction as Lauterbrunnen.

View attachment 18181

This was the view of Lauterbrunnen from Wengen, which we went back to. The previous picture is from on the right side of the valley way in the back of the picture. You can sort of see some of the homes in Lauterbrunnen but this image obstructs seeing the town of Lauterbrunnen.

View attachment 18182

This is a view of Lauterbrunnen from the train.

So we ended up time in Switzerland and the next day we started driving to the Dolomites in northern Italy. There was good weather on the way. Before we dropped into Italy, we went to Liechtenstein, a small country right in between Switzerland and Austria. On the road there, this picture doesn't do it justice, but this may have been one of the most scenic highways I've ever seen.

View attachment 18183

This picture and the lighting is garbage but this view is incredible. We past into Liechtenstein and then into Austria.

View attachment 18184

Random church is Austria. However, it is possible that this could have actually been Italy.

View attachment 18185

This was in Italy at Santa Maddalena, and you can see the clouds that totally ruined the view. This is what it looks like without clouds:

Up against my image limit so the rest is coming in probably two more posts...

I went to all those places in Switzerland last year (June). No fog. They were stunning.

 

[latin jazz]

Where in Saudi Arabia were you? Lots of things I’d like to see there like Hegra, Al Ula, Tabuk, etc. I’d love to see Mecca but obviously as a non-Muslim that’s not possible, so I’ll settle for going to Medina. The history of Bedouin culture interests me, but would see more of that in Southern Jordan (which we’d combine with a Saudi trip). Old world Book of Mormon geography and the spice trade is interesting to me. Historically, the spice trade is rather fascinating with all these things we take for granted and you have all these people braving not only the physical climate but also safety from others with how remote you are all for seasoning food. The ancient economics of it really blows my mind.

And what’s the reason you wouldn’t go back to Egypt?

No to Saudi Arabia. I go there at least once a month for business trips. There are far more interesting places in the Middle East or near by (Lebanon, Iran, Yemen when safe, etc). Agree with Ron about Egypt. One of my worst travel experiences with people always trying to rip me off. Felt like a bag of money with legs

 

[Ron Mexico]

No to Saudi Arabia. I go there at least once a month for business trips. There are far more interesting places in the Middle East or near by (Lebanon, Iran, Yemen when safe, etc). Agree with Ron about Egypt. One of my worst travel experiences with people always trying to rip me off. Felt like a bag of money with legs

I really liked Jordan and Oman. Both are very interesting and great places to visit.

 

[latin jazz]

I really liked Jordan and Oman. Both are very interesting and great places to visit.

Never been to Oman but I've heard great things about it. Jordan is nice and people is very friendly.

 

[Step-Back Lauri]

I hereby welcome you all to Finland, happiest nation on the planet for the 8th time in a row.

I'd suggest come in the summertime and find some most peculiar events like table drumming world champs, swamp football world champs, wife carrying world champs, and my personal favorite:

Phartman, Mr Methane and the 2018 World Fart Championships in Finland

My chum Mr Methane, the world’s only professional performing flatulist, flew off to Bratislava this morning to spread the fame of British farting. But, in July, an even more important trip beckons.…

thejohnfleming.wordpress.com

 

[fishonjazz]

I have a friend visiting and he really wanted to scuba dive in the red sea and I refuse to ever go back to Egypt. So it came down to Saudi or Djibouti. We chose Saudi. It was a pretty boring place to visit actually. It's the driest place (alcohol) I have ever been. But beyond that it was just a lot of shopping and not much else. We did find a cool cultural center and had an awesome art exhibit. They also had a great fish market where you could buy live fish, crabs, shrimp, and whatever and then take it to someone to clean it, then to someone to cook it how you like. The scuba was kinda meh. Mostly that area looks like the coral isn't doing so we but it was still cool.

I have some videos but they aren't working probably not worth messing with them to upload.

Why so against going back to Egypt?

Sent from my OPD2203 using Tapatalk

 

[fishonjazz]

I was able to travel inside Ethiopia for the first time. I took a trip to Harar it was pretty cool place. It's supposed to be the birthplace of coffee and khat. It's a old Muslim city and very pretty. Probably the most cool thing and they well known for is the feeding of wild hyenas. It has a lot of religious and cultural meaning. It's a very pretty area. We also got to feed wild falcons, which was fun.


Tomorrow I'm going to lalibela in Ethiopia. It's not completely safe, but I'm going for it. It has some of the oldest Christian churches that are cut straight into the rock.

View attachment 18165 View attachment 18164View attachment 18166

That's amazing. I'm very jealous of the feeding of the wildlife

Sent from my OPD2203 using Tapatalk

 

[Ron Mexico]

Why so against going back to Egypt?

Sent from my OPD2203 using Tapatalk

I posted before butt it's a very aggressive country. Any remotely touristy area you'll be harassed non stop and people don't take no for an answer. People are constantly trying to scam you. Many people are trying to shake you down, even the security guys at the airport. Many people there look down on other people. My Chinese friends were treated like garbage by lots of people. I caught the hotel staff making fun of them and ignoring their request to help get pick up a food delivery at the security gate after they tipped $50. I rarely get upset but I was already at the end of my rope when they happened. I chewed them out and took the money back. 4 times at the airport the one friend who speaks very little English got "randomly" pulled aside and searched. They tried to confiscate things from him for no reason and asking for money not to. They pulled my phone out of my bag and said they have never heard of Google and needed me to unlock my phone and let them look through it. They time I had to aggressively tell them to **** off. Security at the most important sites were asking for bribes to go into protected places and touch things and climb on things that should be actually protected. Every tour guide regardless of what you say will take you to some ****** art or artifact place while thru aggressively try to overcharge you for their crap. I could go on.

That said the sites are very cool to see. And the resorts can be pretty nice. The only city I went to of the maybe 10 cities I went to that was okay was hurgada. People were fairly chill there. Watching fireworks at New years at a nice club above the Nile was pretty awesome and we made a few friends who since have visited us twice. I have a few friends from Egypt and they are pretty cool so I know it's not everyone, it's just hard to escape the bad ones. I'm pretty used to be hassled since I live in a developing country and travel a lot, but this one was much worse.

 

[str8line]

I posted before butt it's a very aggressive country. Any remotely touristy area you'll be harassed non stop and people don't take no for an answer. People are constantly trying to scam you. Many people are trying to shake you down, even the security guys at the airport. Many people there look down on other people. My Chinese friends were treated like garbage by lots of people. I caught the hotel staff making fun of them and ignoring their request to help get pick up a food delivery at the security gate after they tipped $50. I rarely get upset but I was already at the end of my rope when they happened. I chewed them out and took the money back. 4 times at the airport the one friend who speaks very little English got "randomly" pulled aside and searched. They tried to confiscate things from him for no reason and asking for money not to. They pulled my phone out of my bag and said they have never heard of Google and needed me to unlock my phone and let them look through it. They time I had to aggressively tell them to **** off. Security at the most important sites were asking for bribes to go into protected places and touch things and climb on things that should be actually protected. Every tour guide regardless of what you say will take you to some ****** art or artifact place while thru aggressively try to overcharge you for their crap. I could go on.

That said the sites are very cool to see. And the resorts can be pretty nice. The only city I went to of the maybe 10 cities I went to that was okay was hurgada. People were fairly chill there. Watching fireworks at New years at a nice club above the Nile was pretty awesome and we made a few friends who since have visited us twice. I have a few friends from Egypt and they are pretty cool so I know it's not everyone, it's just hard to escape the bad ones. I'm pretty used to be hassled since I live in a developing country and travel a lot, but this one was much worse.

My experiences there were the exact same including airport security attempted coercion. Horrific country and the only one I've been to that I would never step foot in again.

 

[Sardines]

I haven't been to Saudi Arabia but I've been to Bahrain and it wasn't quite that bad for me but sounds similar.

 

[Rubashov]

I posted before butt it's a very aggressive country. Any remotely touristy area you'll be harassed non stop and people don't take no for an answer. People are constantly trying to scam you. Many people are trying to shake you down, even the security guys at the airport. Many people there look down on other people. My Chinese friends were treated like garbage by lots of people. I caught the hotel staff making fun of them and ignoring their request to help get pick up a food delivery at the security gate after they tipped $50. I rarely get upset but I was already at the end of my rope when they happened. I chewed them out and took the money back. 4 times at the airport the one friend who speaks very little English got "randomly" pulled aside and searched. They tried to confiscate things from him for no reason and asking for money not to. They pulled my phone out of my bag and said they have never heard of Google and needed me to unlock my phone and let them look through it. They time I had to aggressively tell them to **** off. Security at the most important sites were asking for bribes to go into protected places and touch things and climb on things that should be actually protected. Every tour guide regardless of what you say will take you to some ****** art or artifact place while thru aggressively try to overcharge you for their crap. I could go on.

That said the sites are very cool to see. And the resorts can be pretty nice. The only city I went to of the maybe 10 cities I went to that was okay was hurgada. People were fairly chill there. Watching fireworks at New years at a nice club above the Nile was pretty awesome and we made a few friends who since have visited us twice. I have a few friends from Egypt and they are pretty cool so I know it's not everyone, it's just hard to escape the bad ones. I'm pretty used to be hassled since I live in a developing country and travel a lot, but this one was much worse.

I had a similar experience in Cusco, it was after the mud slides and taken the train line out to Machu Picchu, so there were all these shady operators offering tours to the site and back packages included shuttle bus to and from an improvised train station, train tickets and a site pass for the day. Prices would fluctuate rapidly, I was initially quoted 600 USD which i refused, within 20 minutes there was a knock on the door and the new price was 250. I agreed to that and the next morning left at 7am, it was a 3 or 4 hour bus ride followed by an hour on the train from memory. Everything thing went well until the return trip, when I got to the improvised train station in the middle of nowhere at about 9pm there was no shuttle bus to pick me up or for that matter a lot of other travellers, from there it was the wild west trying to organise a ride back to town. Id met a Canadian girl on the train and we were both in the same situation when we got to the train station, middle of nowhere, dodgy as hell, she attached herself to me and we managed to haggle a ride back to town. Not a fun experience considering I had a morning flight out of Cusco for Lima in the morning, not getting back to town was really not an option.

 

[Rubashov]

Went to the Alps last September. A couple years before, I had planned out a rough itinerary for my parents when they flew to Zurich. I gave them a loop that would start in the Berner Oberland area, go down through the Italian Dolomites, over to western Austria, through southern German and back into Zurich. I built a rough sketch of our trip based on that.

A week or two before, we started to see that there was going to be bad weather. It's usually drier that time of year and when my parents had gone two years ago, it was mid-to-late October and they had great weather and everything was still green. My wife started to get concerned and I just waited it out to see what would happen, as there's nothing I could do to change it and would cross that bridge if/when we got there. We ended up having to pack some winter coats to prepare for what the weather was saying.

We had something like a 5 hour layover at JFK and I was able to talk my wife into leaving the airport to go grab something to eat. She was a bit nervous because she didn't want to miss a flight. I don't blame her and most people are quite cautious, but I've done some pretty crazy things on layovers before and feel more comfortable to know how much time I'd really have. I looked up a place outside the airport in Queens called Don Peppe. We were able to take the sky train (free) to a stop that it was just a little ways up the road and took an Uber the rest of the way. It was kind of strange because it was in this building that almost looked abandoned, and from the outside you wouldn't even think anything was in there. You walk in to a lobby that was dark with nothing in there indicating that you're actually entering a business. Then when you open the door at the end of that hallway, it opens up into a restaurant. It was pretty bizarre. First, I had known that you had to bring cash because they didn't accept any card. Who does that in 2024 and especially at a nice restaurant? Somewhere around this moment, I'm realizing that this must be a front for money laundering. We ended up getting seated, but the even more bizarre thing was this strong feeling like we weren't welcome or weren't supposed to be there. Not that there was anything overt. More like the feeling of showing up at a party that you're not invited to, that they don't want you there, but that they're overly cordial putting up a front being nice, knowing that you know they're being nice as a front. Somewhat similar to the scene from Major League where he follows his ex-girlfriend home and ends up going in to his ex's new BF's condo and everyone is real welcoming superficially but it's incredibly awkward. Anyway, everyone else in there seemed to know each other. Really couldn't shake the feeling of like we were imposing on something.

We ended up making it back with plenty of time. It also didn't really matter because our flight was pretty significantly delayed. They were having trouble getting planes to take off and you could see a traffic jam where planes couldn't even pull back from the jetway because other panes behind them. I went to my Flight Radar app and saw they only were running two runways. Not sure why this was as I would have thought JFK would be one of the biggest/busiest airports in the world and for them to only be running two runways was pretty incredible. Since we were going to be moving all over the place, part of our itinerary included doing stuff that day since we were going to arrive at 10:35 am. We ended up getting in perhaps 3 hours later than that so it really cut into our plans.

Anyway, we spent our first three nights up on the hill just outside of Interlaken, which we were using for a base for the Berner Oberland area. That afternoon we drove around Lake Thun and went to a bridge with a good view, but there was fog covering the tops of the mountains. We then drove into Lauterbrunnen and went up to Staubbach Falls. The forecast for the next day looked terrible. We started our day going up to Wengen, which is a town up on the hill above the Lauterbrunnen valley. There was fog covering everything up higher but we could see the valley floor. From Wengen, we took another cable car to the top of the mountain (where you could then go down toward Grindelwald) but by the time we got to the top, there was too much fog and you couldn't see anything.

This is from the top:

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So... we kinda struck out. We ended up deciding to go back to Interlaken because there may have been a bit better weather but it was still overcast.

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Ended up seeing this in Interlaken, which I thought was a pretty tall promise for a samosa. We then went to check out this castle in Oberhofen:

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The next day we ended up having good weather. There were still some clouds high up, but we got a lot of sunshine and you could actually see everything. We started in Grindelwald and it was a pretty impressive valley with the mountains in the background. There was still fog coming in and out and we struck out when we took the cable car higher on the mountain so we came back down. We then rolled over to Lauterbrunnen and as you pass that and go farther into the valley, you can take a very steep cable car up on top of the mountain to Murren. The pictures don't really do it justice so I'm going to use a picture here from Google images:

Because that other mountain is there, it doesn't capture how high up on the mountain you already are.

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Above is off to the right of where you're walking down that street in the town and you're looking into the valley in the opposite direction as Lauterbrunnen.

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This was the view of Lauterbrunnen from Wengen, which we went back to. The previous picture is from on the right side of the valley way in the back of the picture. You can sort of see some of the homes in Lauterbrunnen but this image obstructs seeing the town of Lauterbrunnen.

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This is a view of Lauterbrunnen from the train.

So we ended up time in Switzerland and the next day we started driving to the Dolomites in northern Italy. There was good weather on the way. Before we dropped into Italy, we went to Liechtenstein, a small country right in between Switzerland and Austria. On the road there, this picture doesn't do it justice, but this may have been one of the most scenic highways I've ever seen.

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This picture and the lighting is garbage but this view is incredible. We past into Liechtenstein and then into Austria.

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Random church is Austria. However, it is possible that this could have actually been Italy.

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This was in Italy at Santa Maddalena, and you can see the clouds that totally ruined the view. This is what it looks like without clouds:

Up against my image limit so the rest is coming in probably two more posts...

My family are from Friuli which is the neighbouring region in the dolomites, absolutely stunning part of the world. I've been there a couple of times and stayed at our family farmhouse which is on the step below the alps, loved it.

 

[fishonjazz]

Not world travel but I'm going fishing next week for the first time in over 6 months. That's the longest I have went without fishing in about 20 years. I'm chomping at the bit. Gonna be low 70's in the valley next week and low 60's in the mountains. Perfect weather.

I had such a long stretch with no fishing due to plantar fasciitis but I finally went to the DR a few weeks ago and got an injection in my heel and it's been feeling great for like 10 days straight so I'm going to risk it. Hoping I don't have a setback and reinjure it.

 

[infection]

Not world travel but I'm going fishing next week for the first time in over 6 months. That's the longest I have went without fishing in about 20 years. I'm chomping at the bit. Gonna be low 70's in the valley next week and low 60's in the mountains. Perfect weather.

I had such a long stretch with no fishing due to plantar fasciitis but I finally went to the DR a few weeks ago and got an injection in my heel and it's been feeling great for like 10 days straight so I'm going to risk it. Hoping I don't have a setback and reinjure it.

Where at?

 

[fishonjazz]

Where at?

Can't say.
It's one of the few spots that has amazing volume and size of fish in a river and no people.