June 16, 2017 Our hotel was apparently built by a former French paratrooper. Legend says he parachuted into this area by accident and decided it’d be a great place to build a resort. Arriving last night after much delay and miscommunication, I was less than enthused and grouchy and scrunched from a long bus […]
June 15, 2017 The ugliest hotel artwork I’ve ever seen? Certainly bottom four. Hotel Colbert, Madagascar, June 15, 2017 *** So much noise. A gaggle of people is always loud; as mom pointed out at dinner last night, the volume tends to get louder as the alcohol flows. But it’s only 11 am here at […]
Roughing it in Madagascar — I have spotty internet connections and attempts at uploading photos have consistently proven Sisyphian. As a result, while I’ve written a couple of posts, they aren’t ready to be published. More is coming but for now we will call this a temporary time out. Off to see the lemurs. -KSH
Our city tour was slated to include the Queen’s Palace in the morning, a buffet lunch, and the Malagasy Academie natural history museum in the afternoon. Along the way, traveling through the streets of Tana, one couldn’t help but feel the first world guilt of plenty and waste, passing by masses hawking wares or begging […]
Having successfully navigated the Kafka bureaucracy of immigration and visas (despite having obtained our visas prior to arrival, the “avec visa” line was cordoned off and we all got funneled through the sans visa line), we walked out into the Madagascarian sunshine and boarded the chartered Marathon Tours bus. Here one of our Cortez USA […]
“So sit back and relax and enjoy the 14 hour 45 minute flight to Johannesburg.” So says the captain. And later the purser onboard South African Airways flight 204 from JFK. Jesus. Vishnu. Tom Cruise. That’s a long time to be up in the air. I’m several mini bottles of wine in and it’s only […]
The concluding lines from monologue “Say Anything” are stuck in my head. Lloyd: So when you hear the smoking sign go ‘ding’, you know everything’s going to be okay. But you know what? The “no smoking” sign always stays on now (and we’ll it should). At the same time, on this flight, the pilot has […]
Nothing like starting a trip with a gate agent saying, “are there two Kevins traveling or did you buy two tickets?” After explaining the clerical error snafu and Priceline’s insistence on my buying another ticket at an inflated price to resolve the matter so they would refund the first ticket, the agent told me both […]
Ok. Down to the final hours before we see if my exorbitant change fee/repurchased tickets actually get us to Madagascar. I’m slowly packing up, trying to minimize the clutter. Per running tradition, I’ve got my running gear and shoes in my carry-on so if the luggage gets re-routed to Timbuktu (which usually is a joke […]
Can I tell you a secret? And by secret, I mean “the secret” like in that best selling self-help book? I haven’t read it, nor do I really know anything about it other than its use as a running gag in Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring (2013). But I gather you verbalize and put your […]