Singapore and Munich

We broke the long flight from Oz to Germany with three days in Singapore. We've been to Singapore before (a long time ago) so we decided to just chill out for a couple of days and try the local cuisines. We looked at "Little India" and had an excellent dinner there, and we had a great (and very cheap) lunch at the current version of the food hawkers market. We also went on a river cruise which gave us an opportunity to look at some of the new large and impressive public buildings.

A highlight for Judith was a visit to Arab Street where there are myriad shops selling a wide range of fabrics, braids, trim, and scarves

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We then flew to Frankfurt and took a train to Munich where we stayed with our friends Erica and George. Here, we had a lovely three days rediscovering the sights and museums of Munich, catching up with our friends, and helping to celebrate their daughter Ingrid's birthday.

Munich is a beautiful city about the same size as Adelaide but with a lot more art galleries and a much larger airport. Milton visited the Museum Brandhorst which has a very good collection of Andy Wharhol's work, along with a very extensive representation of Cy Twombly. All of the works in this art gallery were donated by one couple.

While Milton was doing this, Judith went on a guided walking tour of central Munich, where she walked four kilometers with a very informative guide. There were only three people in the group, so it was like having a private tour.






During our stay we enjoyed traditional Bavarian fare, but the last night we went out with our hosts to an excellent Vietnamese restaurant! The next morning we flew to Istanbul, arriving at about five in the afternoon

The only unfortunate aspect of this part of the trip was that Milton came down with a nasty cold and is still recovering three days later.

Off Again - Turkey and Spain

Well we are off again! This time we are going away for two months, three weeks of which will be in Turkey, three weeks in Spain and a week in Paris for our 40th wedding anniversary. Friends have commented that we must be getting excited in anticipation, but the reality is there is a great deal to do before we fly out and so we are focussing on that right now. We will both give a sigh of relief when the plane finally takes off.

In the meantime Milton is trying to get better acquainted with the new iPad and all it can do - which is the main reason for this preliminary blog entry! So far it is going well (including the touch typing). We are also finalizing arrangements with our house sitter who will look after our cat Emmy and the house while we are away.

Our first stop is Singapore for about three days to break the journey and so that Milton does not spend his birthday on an all-day flight. We then fly to Frankfurt and take a train to Munich to stay with friends for a couple of days. After that we fly to Istanbul.

House building in Cambodia

After two years of house hunting and now starting a house extension we are off for three weeks in Cambodia as part of Euroa Rotary Club Community Project (no we are not in Rotary and we are not from Euroa but part of the group nonetheless).
The house building is auspiced by the Tabitha Foundation.
http://http://www.tabitha.org.au/cms/programs/house-building.html

Milton is one of the house builders and Judith will do more leisurely activities.

We then have a couple of days in Sihanoukville and Kampot leaving Cambodia on the 23rd. We have a stopover in Singapore for about 6 days.

Next post will be from Phnom Penh!

Homeward Bound

Well, today is the last day of our holiday. It has been a fantastic trip with such a variety of aspects to it including catching up with old friends and friends of the family, seeing iconic parts of the US such as New York, Miami, New Orleans, the Mississippi, and the deep South, getting a really good look at life in the US and finally relaxing in the lap of luxury in a resort in Fiji.

We haven’t done a lot in Fiji. We have relaxed by the pool and spa, done a little sight seeing which included a Hindi temple, had big breakfasts, had a massage, and completed quite a few cryptic crosswords.

It is a beautiful setting here, both in the resort itself and on Denerau Island. The only downside is that, being a designated tourist precinct, everything is expensive.

Still, we’ve had a very relaxing time in Fiji and fly out for Melbourne at 6.30 this evening to be welcomed by the cat at about midnight tonight.

On the road again, jest cain’t wait to get on the road again

Y’all will be innerested to hear that the last leg of our US tour has been a road trip through the deep south, including Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. And y’all might be innerested to hear that they do say y’all down here. And y’all might be innerested to hear that they do proudly serve and eat grits down here.

Grits is a type of porridge made out of coarsely ground corn which you have on scone-like biscuits or eggs. Butter is often added to give it flavour. They’re very proud of their grits down here, and in fact the state of Georgia declared grits to be its official prepared food in 2002! Now, why anyone would do this – let alone eat the unappetising sludge – is beyond our understanding. I guess every culture has to have its own dish that the locals love and which offends the taste buds of the rest of the world – like vegemite.

This has been a very civil tour – civil rights and the civil war. In fact it has been most enjoyable and interesting. The countryside down here is beautiful, lush and green. We have managed to negotiate the traffic in the cities and on the interstate highways pretty well thanks to Judith’s (mostly) brilliant navigation and Milton’s (mostly) brilliant driving.

One thing we notice about the speed limits down here is that the authorities may think they are THE LAW but the citizens treat them as ADVISORY. Much of the time on the interstate highways we thought we were back in Europe on the autobahn. We would be travelling at the speed limit (70 MPH – which, translated is 120 KPH) and would be consistently passed on the left hand side by cars travelling between 90 and a 100 MPH. I guess it’s just another quaint custom – like the road toll.

Anyway, back to the tour. We stopped off at Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama to see the memorials to the civil rights movement and to Martin Luther King. It is not very comfortable stuff to be reminded of the attitudes of many white Americans towards black Americans and the accompanying actions taken by state governments, police, organisations (KKK) and individuals.

The positives to take out of the whole experience, though, are the courage and determination of black Americans to strive for their common civil rights and the fact that many white Americans supported them in their struggle.

We drove right across Mississippi state from Alabama to a town on the Mississippi River called Vicksburg where we stayed at a B&B situated in a stately Antebellum house (“Antebellum” is the fancy word for pre civil war). This house was very impressive and one of its claims to fame is that a Union cannonball which was fired through the front door and hallway wall still protrudes from the sitting room wall. While in Vicksburg we visited the Vicksburg National Military Park which is a preserved battlefield of the Civil War with individual and state memorials to the Confederate and Union soldiers and officers killed there. It is very large, very well kept and very accurate – the latter because it was set up about 30 years after the war and surviving eyewitnesses were able to indicate the details of the various skirmishes.

We then drove 80 miles south to a small town called Natchez also situated on the river. We stayed on the third floor of a hotel situated right on the Mississippi and had a magnificent view of that mighty river. The word “mighty” in this instance is entirely appropriate. Where we were, the river measured 800 metres across, and its current is very strong and very fast. Natchez is a beautiful old town with many magnificent antebellum houses, one of which we toured called Magnolia Hall.

Our final visit before returning to New Orleans was to an old estate plantation and stately home called Houmas on the Mississippi (about 50 miles north of New Orleans). This was again very impressive and informative. The original estate was a sugar plantation which grew to 300,000 acres. An Irishman bought it in 1857 for $1 million so I guess that gives the most telling idea of how large the plantation was and how grand the house. One of its big features is the spiral staircase which does look great. They have filmed quite a few movies here - but no, not Gone With the Wind.

New Orleans

There is, in fact, a house in New Orleans they call The Rising Sun. Whether this particular house has been the ruin of many a poor boy is open to question. I guess we have to be thankful we only saw one house named thusly.

The effects of Hurricane Katrina are still very obvious with many, many buildings derelict and boarded up. It looks like the owners have just boarded up six floor buildings and left town – which in fact could be true because estimates of people who have left New Orleans range between 300,000 and 400,000. One of the freeway bridges close in to town still has people living in tents beneath it. Notwithstanding this, there is a real spirit of regeneration and the city is starting to get back to normal.

The French quarter is still very lively and full of art and antique galleries, restaurants, bars and buskers. We heard a number of buskers but the highlight was a Dixieland band called the Loose Marbles who were absolutely great. They had a resident couple of dancers as well. The band is made up of 15 musicians who turn up on a casual basis so that at least 8 to 12 of them are playing at one time. This means that you may hear different songs and different arrangements each time depending on which musicians turn up. Apparently the group does not do formal gigs but prefer to be street musicians.

We spent much of our time walking around the French quarter and eating out. However, we did find time to take a trip down the Mississippi River on a Paddlesteamer called the Natchez and we did take the ferry across the river to walk around a beautiful and old part of New Orleans called Algiers.

While we were walking around New Orleans we noticed an inordinate number of pirates, both men and women all dressed up in elaborate costumes. We finally found out that the very weekend we were there was a "pirate convention" and they had come from all over. The photo below finally answers the question: What does a buxom wench look like?

MIAMI NICE

Miami means warm weather, money, people with money, Spring Break college kids on holiday, lots of restaurants, wealthy people, party people, myriad bars (for the myriad party people), waterside mansions (for the myriad wealthy people), and art deco architecture (plus, some more art deco architecture).
We flew into Miami with a minor mishap – Milton left his leather jacket in the taxi. After many phone calls to taxi companies and the filing of a police report... nothing happened.

Our hotel was fine, except that our room was on the outside looking over Espanola Way – wall to wall bars and restaurants for the party people to party into the night until 3.00 or 4.00. Anyway, we decided to make the best of it.

If you can get past the Gold Coast, touristy side of Miami Beach, it really is a beautiful place. In 1976, a woman by the name of Barbara Baer Capitman set about arresting the decline of the buildings of Miami Beach and turning the area into a vibrant Art Deco historic district. And she succeeded. Now, I’ve got to ask, didn’t anyone notice anything about the architecture in this place before 1976?! Apparently not.

The guide on the tour I took referred to the style as Resort Art Deco (although the young guide on the Duck Tour - see below - referred to it as Tropical Art Deco) and it really is great. There are many restored apartment blocks and commercial buildings, but especially lots of magnificent restored old Art Deco hotels on the beachfront. This was a real highlight for me.

Miami is of course close to the Everglades and, unlike some national parks where you can go and walk to see the sights , this one is more problematic, as any walking on the high ground could find you face to face with an alligator. So we took a guided tour involving a bus tour via downtown Miami and then an airboat tour of the the Everglades. The airboat looks a bit like a barge with two huge fans up the back and it skims along the water, making a very loud noise. The noise levels are high, however the tour operators have this one covered as they give out toilet paper at the begining and suggest that people stuff it in their ears. Now why hasn't Worksafe thought of that one as a simple solution for hearing protection? OH&S issues aside, we did see several alligators, and lots of birds and water plants.

Another interesting boat ride was the Miami Duck Tour. This amphibious vehicle drives through the streets of Miami Beach, over the bridge and off the road into the water for a sea-going tour of the beachfront houses of the rich and famous. Judith managed to win a plastic "quacker" for knowing the population of Miami (5 million people in Greater Miami).