Change In Plans

This post is about Zola’s first-ever adventure in snorkeling.

Yesterday afternoon, we drove out of Port de Soller to the northwest; through the village of Soller itself (about 5km inland), and onto the spectacular road through the mountains of Mallorca’s north coast. About 25 km from Soller, we came to a narrow road, leading down the side of a mountain and into the tiny port village of Port de Valldemossa.

The five-kilometer drive down to the village was very dramatic: ten switchbacks, lots of single-lane stretches, and a several hundred foot drop if we somehow went over the edge.

The tiny port had a boat ramp, a small and seaweed-choked rock beach, and a 100-foot jetty which created the harbor. As we walked out on the jetty, we saw a few jellyfish floating on the harbor side.

We sat on the beach for a while, and then Zola and I decided to go for a swim in the open water. He really wanted to try out the new mask and snorkel he had bought on the previous day.

I swam across the harbor, and, with great reluctance, Zola walked across the boat ramp and out the jetty. His reluctance was caused by shyness, borne of the presence of a group of kids his age (mostly girls), playing on the boat ramp.

Once we were both on the rocks at the end of the jetty, we saw that there were really a lot of jellyfish. We counted more than 50 that we could see. A young woman who got out of the water while we were standing there had a big welt on her leg from a sting.

It took a little persuading, but Zola eventually joined me for the swim out into the open water, and back across to the beach. Wearing a mask for the first time, and seeing the fish and marine life on the rocks was very exciting for him. When we got out of the water (fortunately we did not get stung), he was amazed at what he had seen.

Later, when I told him how brave he was, and how proud his mother and I were, I joked that he would rather risk a jellyfish sting than walk back past those girls. He looked at me in all seriousness, and said, “You found me out, Dad.”

Regardless of his motivation, we were proud. We are looking forward to many other snorkeling adventures on the trip.

This post is about yesterday’s plane crash in Madrid. We were not on the plane (thank goodness), but we had departed from the same airport a few hours earlier.

Yesterday morning we got up early (still dark in Madrid at 6:30am), and went to the airport. Our flight left, without incident, for Mallorca at 9am. A few hours after we landed, we started hearing reports about the Spanair crash, and getting concerned calls from friends and family.

It is strange to have such a disaster in a place that we had just left. If we had taken an afternoon flight, and been at the airport during the crash, this would have been a huge and much scarier event in our lives. I don’t know if we would have been brave enough to get on our plane, even after the airport reopened.

As it is, we are grateful that we are safe, and in Mallorca.

The island is ruggedly beautiful (particularly where we are staying, up in Port de Soller), and is overrun with German and British vacationers. It is like a more elegant version of Daytona Beach or Cabo, with tapas. In late August, what did we expect?

The house we are staying in (courtesy of our dear friends, Rudi and Christiane) is perched high above the madding crowds, on a steep hillside overlooking the harbor. The kids have been in the pool more or less continuously since we arrived, and we watched a magnificent sunset from the terrace of a nearby restaurant last night. Mallorca is very nice.

We will write more later. In the meantime, we are glad to be OK, and glad to be in Mallorca.

After narrowly averting another comic error (”Sorry, sir, the 7:30pm train is sold out, you will need to stay on the 9:30pm train”) because other passengers didn’t show up, we made it back to Madrid in time for dinner. We ate at an amazing outdoor restaurant on the roof of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. It was impossibly elegant, and India and I were certain that at any moment the maitre’d would come over and say “There has been some mistake, we do not allow in Americans and their grubby, travel-weary children.” But no one seemed to mind (much), the kids behaved miraculously well, and we had a lovely dinner. The moon even rose over Madrid while we ate.

Capping the comedy of errors: as we walked home, Zola was playing a game he had invented called “kick my Croc shoe high in the air and chase it down the sidewalk.” He was good about being safe near cross streets, but could not otherwise be deterred. 50 yards from the hotel, he fell behind us for several seconds. When I walked back to check on him, he pointed to a balcony about 20 feet off the ground, and explained that his Croc had landed there, and was probably gone forever.

He limped the rest of the way to the hotel, and we all went to bed. We leave for Mallorca early tomorrow morning. I hope we have another pair of shoes for him.

This short post is about our first full day in Madrid, which is a remarkably grand city.

We managed to get everyone out the door just before the crack of noon. Travelling with family is very different from travelling on business. Since we had no fixed appointments or anywhere in particular to be, we didn’t feel the need to hurry.

After breakfast (which apparently was not terribly late by Madrid standards) we walked through the old city to the Palacio. The royal armory and the “salones officiales” were (you guessed it) remarkably grand. Consensus favorite was the porcelain room at the palace, where the walls and ceiling are all made of elaborate. interlocking porcelain pieces.

Zola and I started his official home schooling with a “language arts” lesson in the Parquede Retiro. He read the first several Greek myths, which he enjoyed, and answered comprehension questions. He also worked on converting kilograms to pounds, which he also seemed to like. Sitting in the sunshine, talking about Titans and heroes with my son, and watching the visual extravaganza of Madrid is what travel should be about.

Today we are taking the train to Toledo, which sounds remarkably grand as well. I am about halfway through an abridged history of Spain, which has been very helpful. Main takeaway at this point is that the Spanish (or whoever has been controlling Spain) have always been very good at fighting, but not so great at the administration and economics.

This post is about the trip over from New York, and our first day in Madrid. I am writing in the hotel lobby at 2:45 in the morning, because Zola has been unable to sleep, and was driving the rest of us crazy. He is reading Lemony Snicket on the sofa next to me, and shows no signs of getting tired.

The trip over was easy. India had us all well organized, we left on time, and got to JFK several hours before the flight. We even had time for me to stop and trade my phone for a new BlackBerry at the Verizon store. For some reason, the family was split up on the plane, and Zola and I sat together in the back. He only slept for about an hour, which may be part of the problem now. We both thought “What Happens in Vegas” was pretty good for an in-flight movie.

Madrid is an remarkably grand city.

On the taxi ride in from the (remarkably grand) airport, through the nearly deserted August weekend streets, all four of us marveled at the beauty of the buildings and the public spaces. Our hotel (situated on the remarkably grand Plaza de la Independencia) graciously let us check in at 8am, and we all slept for about six hours. This may be another contributor to the current jet lag situation.

We left the hotel at about 3pm, and went for a long walk. Although we expected brutal heat, instead it was a gloriously sunny and dry 80 degrees. We walked through the enormous Parque del Retiro - where Lu loved the orange fish in the square boating lake in front of the Alfonso XII statue. We played in the playgrounds, and then walked southwest toward the Plaze de Santa Ana. Late on a Sunday afternoon in August, the residential streets in the old part of the city were so deserted that we felt like Will Smith in “I am Legend.”

Sitting in an outdoor cafe in the Plaza de Santa Ana, we ate tapas and had drinks. The sun was setting behind us, and the square looked beautiful and ancient. From there we walked to the Plaza Mayor, which is just spectacular. The kids were most impressed with the street performer dressed as Yoda, and standing motionless on a milk crate. When someone gave him (her?) money, the Yoda would swipe at the air with the light saber a little.

After another rest, we went out for dinner at about 10:30pm. We walked up the Paseo del Recoletos, which is a remarkably grand boulevard, and sat outside at a cafe in the median. A piano player was louder than the sound of the traffic. After dinner, we walked further up the road to admire a huge fountain. The kids ran back on the banks of the landscaped median, laughing and shrieking with the freedom.

Zola is finally ready to sleep. We are hoping to adjust to the time zones more quickly than we did in Ireland (where the morning rain and the 11:30pm sunsets worked against us), but it does not look promising at the moment. We are excited to really look around tomorrow, and go to Toledo on Wednesday. I am trying to read as much about Spain as possible before opining on it.

This post is the last one before we depart for Spain later today. From here on out, the “travel blog” should be a lot more about travel.

We are ready to depart. There is a little last-minute packing to do, and we need to close up the house, but it feels manageable. The next eight weeks look like:

• Spain (Madrid, Mallorca, Barcelona, Tarifa)
• Morocco (Fes, Sahara camping, Marrakech)
• Tunisia (Tunis)
• Turkey (Istanbul, gulet sailing, Cappadoccia)
• Italy (Naples and Positano)

Then we will be back for a few weeks.

India has done an incredible job in conceiving, planning, and confirming a very detailed itinerary, not only for the next eight weeks, but for the longer trip which we will start in late October. A blinding glimpse of the obvious: the Internet is an amazing tool for planning this kind of trip. Between exchanging e-mail with people on the ground in whatever country, and being able to look at and reserve accommodations quickly, the Internet has made the planning feasible. I think India has enjoyed this process, although I am sure she wishes I had been more helpful.

We are working hard on the home-schooling curriculum for Zola. August and September will be organized around Greek myths and stories (most of which are set in Turkey, so we will visit the sites). It has been fun to try and create a structured program which is both interesting and rigorous. Let’s hope he learns something in the process.

Morale is high: the tension and pre-trip anxieties of the last week have given way to real excitement for everyone. We are embarking on a great adventure, and will be in Madrid by this time tomorrow.

This post is about how we are feeling on the eve of our departure for the first long leg of our trip.

We are all feeling a little tense, kids included. We will be fine, but tempers are short, and no one is feeling light or carefree. Maybe this is to be expected, but there seem to be several contributing reasons to the family’s mood:

• We have a lot of organizing and packing to do before our flight takes off tomorrow evening. We will be gone a moderately long time. India has done an amazing job of organizing the trip, but there is still a long punch list, and not much time
• I have been having a lot of “are we crazy?” feelings. I made the mistake of thinking too much about what we are “investing,” in the broad sense of that word, in this trip: the scarce resources of non-working time and limited money, the disruption to our kids’ educations and lives, some level of physical discomfort and risk for us all. I weighed those “costs” against what the expected “benefits” from this travel, and I am still struggling to have it make sense. We have assumed that travel is inherently good/valuable/interesting, and left it at that. This is probably the wisest course, and I can re-evaluate later.
• We are stepping into an unknown phase of our lives. The places will benew, but more importantly, the experience of not having a home to go back to, and not really having an end date in mind. It feels a little like looking into an abyss, although that is overly dramatic. It surprises me to write it, but there are elements of being settled that I really like.

Fortunately, some of the more significant issues that have been creating stress in our lives have gone away in the last 48 hours. Both parties finally signed the agreement which governs my departure from my job, and basically funds this entire adventure. I don’t think there was any problem, it was just not a high priority for anyone. If there had been a problem, it would have been a huge disruption to the plan. Also, we have finally gotten our air travel sorted out (at least the first piece). That took a lot longer than we hoped. We have gotten our passports back, just in time, from getting visas. Lastly, we have all been troubled by minor health issues, which seem to be resolving. None of these were individually earth shattering or critical, but collectively they were weighing us down.

So, we will get through the next day, and try to do it with grace and good behavior. We will all be glad to get going tomorrow.

This post is about Portland, Maine, where we have spent the last few days. Portland is officially the first stop on our world tour, so (as a family) we wanted to share some observations.

• Portland is a really terrific small city. It offers great lifestyle, a sophisticated but laid-back ethos, and a lot of natural beauty. The nightlife and culture are surprisingly robust. Overall, it seems like a wonderful place to live.
• Portlanders are crazy for the Red Sox, more so, it seems, even than in Boston itself. By observation, at least 30% of people on the streets had at least one Red Sox garment, and probably 10% had more than one. We felt undercommitted to the cause, and insufficiently supportive, with only one Red Sox hat amongst the four of us. We did have a lot of fun, playing baseball with Zola and his two cousins, in the park and on the beach. Maybe next time we can go see the Sea Dogs (the Sox minor-league franchise) play.
• There appears to be a “new” Portland of Prius-driving, Obama-voting locavores, and two “old” Portlands, one of rich, liberal Yankees and one of crusty old fishing/lobstering/maritime types. They all seem to like the Red Sox, and seem to co-exist peacefully. There is also (surprisingly) a huge community of Somali refugees. Portland is probably quite different from Mogadishu.
• The Whole Foods Market seems to be the white-hot epicenter of the “new” Portland. I had never really been in a WFM, so that was a big thrill. The shoppers seemed almost blissfully happy as they walked the aisles. As conventional wisdom posits, the meat and produce were great, and the processed foods were limited and off-brand. And it was breathtakingly expensive.
• The water seems like a central part of Portland culture. This may be a blinding glimpse of the obvious. At least during the summer, it seems that everyone we spoke to was fishing, or lobstering, or sailing, or taking a ferry to an island in Casco Bay, or just going to the beach. My9-year-old nephew, Andrew, is completely comfortable piloting a dinghy, baiting a lobster trap, crabbing, trolling for fish. It is a nice way to grow up.
• The whole old port, and parts of the waterfront up and down the coast, are built on acres of old wooden pilings, which are dark and cool and mysterious looking from the water. I wonder how long they last. I wonder if they are usually replaced with wood or with concrete, when the time comes.

Overall, everyone in the family gave Portland a big thumbs up. We had a great time with my sister and her family, and we felt well launched on the round-the-world venture. This morning, we are driving across the White Mountains to Lyme, New Hampshire, to see my Mom. Onward!

This short post is about being in Maine, and catching lobster. This was a completely new experience for Zola and for me.

We are staying with my sister and brother-in-law in Falmouth, Maine, just north of Portland. Su and Dave have a classic, 100-year-old New England house, right on Casco Bay. From their front porch, you look out at the bay, dozens of moored boats, and the off-shore islands beyond.

Yesterday, we took Dave’s boat down to Portland for lunch. Because of a boating incident two years ago in Captiva, with me at the wheel (opinions vary as to how much danger we were actually in), India was in a state of constant agitation while we motored down. Her agitation level went up many fold when Zola took the wheel, even though we were going only about 15 knots. Even Tallulah kept yelling “slow down!” from the foredeck.

On the way back, India and Tallulah rode in the car with my sister, leaving Zola and me on the boat with Dave and his two young sons. First, Dave felt free to open up the motor, and to zoom back at about 30 knots. As we crashed through some chop, the bow rising and slamming the water, Zola yelled “This is frickin’ AWESOME!” Little boy fun for all ages.

On the way back, we checked Dave’s lobster traps. Until we did it, I had no idea how lobster were actually caught. Each box trap has multiple entry points. The lobster swim into the trap (backwards) to eat the bait, which is rotting herring, placed in a mesh bag. I filled the bait bags as we checked the traps, which was pretty nasty. My hands still smell like herring. The lobster can crawl out once they finish eating, so I guess the key is to pull the traps before the lobster finish eating. Dave’s traps had been sitting for a few days, so the lobster had pretty much cleared out.

One by one, we pulled the traps up (heavy work), pulled them into the boat, and checked for lobster. Ofthe five traps, two were empty. One had a little tiny lobster which we threw back. Between the last two, there were three big lobster. Dave checked them for eggs (if present, lobster goes back in, which seems like a good rule). We took the three we caught home, and ate them last night for dinner.

It was great to see Zola so engaged in a new activity. He thought it was great.