Sri Lanka - Elephants, Crocodiles & Sea Turtles

Beach Elephant

Crocodile

          Our trip to Sri Lanka was a short and semi random decision to travel.  We were not keen to waste an extra day given to us due to a national holiday, but for a we still struggled to find a decent location for a small vacation.  We had heard good things from various co-workers about Sri Lanka and that coupled with the short flight factor made our decision easy.
          After our short overnight flight to Colombo we hired a cab to drive us to our hotel that we had booked for our trip.  The drive was about two hours and sadly we realized we had given incorrect directions so we had to back track about forty five minutes.  When we finally got on the beaten path from the main road we saw our hotel in the distance.  It was a very nice place and it sat right on the ocean, the region we drove down to was called Waddua which is just up the road from the more well known beach area called Hikkadua.  The first think I head while we were still driving up to our hotel was an cow bell that kept ringing slowly down the road.  As the car got closer I realized it was an elephant and his owner walking down the street.  Later on they took a short cut to the beach through a path in our hotel.

Newly Hatched Sea Turtles

Buried Turtle Eggs

          We decided to take it easy on our first day since we were a bit jarred from the overnight flight.  We explored the hotel and the beach area and just walked around.  That night there were thunderstorms which was really cool to experience given the fact that we only see those in Abu Dhabi at best maybe once a year.  
          For our first active day in Sri Lanka, we arranged a trip through a gentleman we had met on the beach outside our hotel which included a marsh tour, a visit to the sea turtle hatchery, a visit to a moon stone factory and some time on Hikkadua beach to relax.

Baby Turtle Pile

           The first stop was to the marsh where we were going to do some animal watching.  To be honest I was unsure what exactly I had signed us up for on this trip.  I was hoping to just hire a driver to go the beach and maybe the turtle hatchery, but our host had other plans.  When we got to the marshy lake area we were immediately brought from the van to a boat and set out.  The first stop was on the other side of the lake to see a man who had a small baby crocodile.  I was a bit apprehensive when I was offered to hold it, but then they demonstrated how you could put your finger in its mouth and it would do no real damage.  It was actually pretty cool to feel its skin and to feel it breathing, it was pretty chill to I have to say as we were just passing it around.
           When we were finished with the crocodile we continued on with our animal sighting, we saw a lot of bats sleeping in the trees and also a water monitor which is kind of like this big salamander type animal.
          Following the marsh trip we made our way to a moon stone mine and factory where they mine moon stones and set them up in the jewelry store.  Apparently there are only a few large veins of moon stone deposits in Sri Lanka and this was one of them.  They also claimed to have a moon stone with a blueish hue that is only native to Sri Lankan moon stones.

Sri Lanka Sunset

Baby Turtle Nursery

          After browsing some moon stones in the shop we went back to the van to visit the sea turtle hatchery.  I have only visited one other hatchery in my lifetime and it was in Guatemala, but I had arrived at a time when it was not very active.  One thing on my bucket list had always been to hold a baby sea turtle that had just hatched (not sure why, but there you go).  I did not have high hopes for this hatchery given my previous experience, but when we arrived, the caretaker walked up to our van with a big smile and said "You're in luck, today is a very special day".  I got this big smile on my face, the turtles were hatching!  He walked us over to the area where they bury all the different turtle eggs and date them for hatching times.  He took us over to an area and started digging in the ground until he came to an area where all the baby turtles were.  It was amazing, honestly one of the coolest things I have done in a long time.  Our guide took out one baby turtle each for us to hold and then bring over to the pool with the hundreds of other baby sea turtles.  The hatchery keeps these turtles for a short period of time before releasing them into the ocean.  They use keep times to do so when birds are not around to scoop them up.  They also kept some females to keep reproduction going as well as turtles that have been injured at sea.

Waddua Beach

          When we finished our amazing experience at the turtle we finished the day relaxing on Hikkadua beach.  We went swimming in the Indian Ocean for a long while and swam next to a huge sea turtle.  We then finished the day having dinner and wine at our hotel before going to bed.
          After our action packed day, we decided to take our final day slow and just relax on the beach and hang around our resort and the pool bar.  We had some fun trying to request some unique cocktails while eating fries.  We walked along the beach at night and watched all the wild dogs play and run down the beach.  Our flight was very early in the morning the next day so we went to bed rather early for our drive back to Colombo.
         We got a great taste of Sri Lanka during our short visit, I would definitely go back again.  We missed a few recommendations which were to drop by a tea plantation and also the elephant orphanage.  Given the short trip from our home, I am sure we will pay a visit again sometime.    

Czech Republic - (Prague) Monks, Sausages, Mission Impossible & Beer

Old Town Square

Astronomical Clock

          It is quite typical in the expat community to assume you will be heading home around Christmas time every year.  For me it always poses a challenge as Michigan is not the most pleasant place to visit at that time of year.  The way I see it I would rather buy a ticket to my home state when its actually nice out.  So with that logic in hand we decided to check of the Czech Republics flavor of Christmas and visit the city of Prague for a long weekend.
          The weather we experienced in Prague was quite nice, most days it was light jacket weather for the temp and mostly sunny.  I'm sure you can guess if you have read a previous blog that the only reason I knew of the city was from a movie: Mission Impossible (I'll get to the scene later).

Tri Ruzi

          When we first arrived we did the usual and searched for an Uber to take us to our hotel.  We booked three night at the Hotel Paris which was a lovely place situated right in the heart of the city.  Prague is a very walk-able city for the parts most tourists actually want to see.  There's an area on one side of the Vltava river where we were staying which contains the majority of the tourist locations and on the other side you have a very steep hill going up to the Prague Castle and the Golden Lane.

Old Square - Our Lady Church

           After checking in to the Paris, we started walking down the street to check out the scenery for the day.  We came through some tight streets until it opened up into the beautiful old town square, which was live with Christmas cheer, music, food & drink.  From the square you can see many of the wonderful sights such as a "Disney Castle" looking church called Our lady before Tyn.  Across from the church you can walk through the square to see the Prague Astronomical Clock, this ornate looking clock embedded on the side of old town hall.  We hung out in the square for a while before continuing on towards the river.  On the way to the river a small brew pub caught my eye by the name of Pivovar U Tří Růží (The Three Roses Bar) which had great Belgian style beer along with amazing Christmas food.  The menu had these sausages that were delectable, along with some amazing salads and other bar type meals.

Charles Bridge

On the Charles Bridge

           After a long beer run at the Tri Ruzi we made our way back on the trail towards the the Vltava river and the iconic Charles Bridge that links the old town to the new town areas.  The bridge is beautiful (and also featured on the 1996 movie Mission Impossible) which many medieval sculptures evenly spread throughout the walk.  We did not make it very far past the bridge into new town as we were rather tired from the Tri Ruzi and the distance we had covered walking.  So we cross back over to old town and took an Uber back to the hotel.

Grosseto Restaurant (left)

          After resting up a bit we took an Uber back to the our Christmas Eve restaurant on the Charles Bridge called Grosseto Marina which had some fantastic food and wine.  We did not last very long after dinner before we decided to retire for the night at the Hotel.

Jewish Cemetery

          After a good night sleep we were recharged and ready for a full day in Prague.  We ate breakfast in the hotel and started walking towards our first site of choice, an old Jewish cemetery which was home to roughly twelve thousand tombstones.  The region is also famous for the story of "The Golem of Prague", which is an old Jewish tale about an clay figure come to life to defend the Jewish people against antisemitic attacks.

Prague Castle

          Following the Cemetery tour we made our way across the Charles Bridge to tour the new town area.  Our first stop was up to the Strahov Monastery, which is still a working Monastery and also had a variety of original monk beer recipes on tap in their beer hall restaurant. It is a very long steep walk up to the Monastery from the Charles Bridge so we took refuge in the beer hall for quite some time before making our way to Prague Castle and the Golden Lane.  

The Golden Lane

           Prague Castle is absolutely beautiful to look at from far away and close up as it sits looking over the entire city.  We also toured St. Vitus Cathedral which sits directly behind Prague Castle.  The Golden Lane, which sits behind the Castle and the Cathedral is an old Medieval street with very close streets representing the infrastructure of hundreds of years ago and was also the home of Franz Kafka a famous writer.       

St. Vitus Cathedral

            After The Golden Lane we walked back down the long set of Castle stairs to visit my movie scene part of the journey.  Mission Impossible was filmed on the Charles Bridge, but one of the main scenes in the beginning was filmed around and in Lichtenstein Palace.  This was a particularly cool moment for me; every movie scene I see in person is such a great experience.  But Mission Impossible was one of my all time favorite childhood movies growing up and it meant a bit more when I was actually able to have a look in person.  If you remember the movie, one of the scenes when they get out of the building it when Tom Cruise takes a route outside under the elevator to track his target down.  If you don't remember, as always here is a little clip to jog your memory.  It is a great scene and of course the film crew chose a great city and location for the film.      

Lichtenstein Palace

Old Square

    After I was finished having my movie moment we took a break at the hotel again before night time.  We visited the old square a couple of times in the evenings which always delivered us to a very festive scene.  Prague is very rich in the arts with daily shows of dance and symphony performances.  We even passed by an outdoor symphony in the square along with some singers one night.  We walked around enjoying the cinnamon flavored almonds and mulled wine.

Cestr (And my glass)

          That night we enjoyed our Christmas dinner at steak restaurant called Cestr that specialized in its carefully sources meat locations.  The highlight of my night was ordering my dessert wine that came in a tri-flute glass that was connected at the bottom.  I thought it was so cool that I bought three of them (two for my good friends back in the UAE) to take back home with me.  
          Prague was a wonderful place to visit for all the reasons we wanted to go.  I think enjoying the seasons in the city was something I could do again and that amount of time given all the options we had was perfect.  The only thing we said we should have done was to pay to see a symphony or some type of show.  

    






   

Italy Returns - Agriturismos, Ocean's Twelve, Casino Royale & The Hunt For Red Super Tuscan

          Welcome to the first official return trip blog in my series of blogs.  Yes we finally chose to go back to a place we once explored in our past, not surprising, we chose for it to be Italy (amusing since I have a business trip in Rome this November).  Thanks to the many holidays offered in the U.A.E we placed our time off on tail end of the second Eid holiday to maximize our time.

          This time we decided to lay low and stay outside the big cities on the countryside.  We avoided
the mass crowds from the city for the most part, but while there were not many people, there was no short supply of good wine.  After landing in Rome we rented a car from the airport and made our way to our first destination which about two and a half hours north just below Florence.  Sarah researched a series of agriturismo's (basically just a fancy Italian way of saying we lived among nature along a vineyard) and found one by the name of Fattoria Cinciano.  It was a smooth drive along a pay by the kilometer highway which changed to narrow one way roads leading up to the agriturismo where you would get to play chicken with the cars coming the other direction.  

View from our Villa window @ Cinciano

          Fattoria Cinciano was a beautiful property site on the top of a long stretch of rolling hills and valleys.  The historical records of the property dates back to 1126 (most likely of Roman origin) when they were donated to a Bishop by a widow in the region.  The age and retained beauty shows through out the establishment and is surrounded by vineyards as it drops into the valley.  We rented out a villa that was separated by three floors, the first floor had the kitchen and bathroom, the second had a small living room and the third was the main bedroom.  

Cinciano

          After we settled in we set out on what would be the most depressing part of the trip.  If you recall from our first Italy blog I came a across a life changing wine during our journey which was classified as a Super Tuscan.  This was located in the town of Greve near Florence.  Well we drove out there straight to the winery to get a not so nice welcome and were also informed they were sold out of my prized wine.  I will admit I was depressed for a while, however this let down began the new hunt for a good red full bodied wine and also led me to learn what the term Super Tuscan actually means and how some Italian wine makers feel about it.  

Cinciano at night

          We decided to have lunch in Greve and try out some wines in local wine stores before driving back to our place.  We found a nice under ground Enoteca (Italian for "wine repository") where they had a sophisticated wine sampling system.  For the Grand Rapids readers, its very much like the wine system at the Reserve wine bar downtown where they use nitrogen in the bottles to preserve the wine for much longer.  This allows for stores to permit tasting of much higher end wines knowing that after de-corking, instead of the standard week or so, the wine will last a month or two.  This minimizes the risk of taking a loss on a good wine by selling by the glass knowing that in a month it will probably get bought up.  It was really great that this system was spreading around Italy because I was able to try a few wines that sold for hundreds of dollars for just a few euros.  I think the challenge with buying an expensive premium wine is that the taste you get when buying is not necessarily what you are paying for, you're paying for what it will taste like after a number of years of aging.  After tasting a number of great wines from the high tech dispensing machines in the humble town of Greve, we drove back to Cinciano villa in the town of Poggibonsi to enjoy a quiet dinner at the restaurant in our agriturismo.

Bolgheri

Breakfast at Cinciano

           We woke up to a beautiful sunrise looking over the valleys of vinyards with the walled hill town of San Gimignano in the distance.  We had a standard European breakfast (or at least what I have run across in our bed & breakfast travels) in the morning at our place which included cured meats, assorted cheeses and fresh bread.  After breakfast we decided to explore a town near the west coast of Italy named Bolgheri.  The entrance to the town is actually through a narrow castle drive up to an area of shops and restaurants.  The history of the town was interesting to look into as it was destroyed and restored several times.  Bolgheri was put on the map back in 1974 when a tasting competition was held and a six year old local "Super Tuscan" known by the name of Sassicaia won out over an assortment of Bordeaux wines.  A 2012 bottle of this wine will run you about $170 and rises in value by about $30-40 each year.  We found a restaurant that was attached to a wine shop so we were able to do a nice series of wine tasting (this place also had a nice high tech sampling system), including the famous Sassicaia among others.  After tasting many of the wines over lunch, we ended up buying a box full of wines before heading out to the beach.  Since we were so close to the water, Sarah wanted to catch a glimpse of the Mediterranean before driving back to our place.

Winey / Vineyard (San Gimignano
in the distance)

             That night when we got back we decided to venture out and try a different restaurant than the one at our villa so we drove into Poggibonsi to a pizza place I found online.  I found Bocca d'Ersa which was clearly a place where mostly locals hung out, it was a great find and the pizza was amazing, the table wine served in a half liter bottle was also quite good.

San Gimignano at night

              On our third day we explore some neighboring towns that were a little closer than the drive to Bolgheri.  Our final destination was the hill town of San Gimignano (which we could see in the distance from the window in the villa we were staying in), but we decided to drop by a few wineries on the way.  It was this day when I learned a little more about the term "Super Tuscan" from some local wineries.  The term was born when many of the local Tuscan wine makers were suffering to adhere to the Italian DOC/G (must contain 70% Sangiovese grape and 10% of local wine grapes) Chianti wine status and thus implying a certain lack of quality (and also due to wines attempting the status that fell short) to the wines.  So a couple of wineries went rogue and started

Torre Grossa

making blends that intentionally fell short of the requirements.  It was not long before many of these "Super Tuscan" wines began to beat out the prices of some of the most well known DOC official Chianti wines.  This attempt was to create a wine brand people recognized on its own merit, this trend spread throughout the region forcing the regulations to be changed allowing more of these these wines to qualify for DOC status.  We tried some of the amazing grapes in the region on the way to San Gimignano that most likely produced some of our favorite Super Tuscans.  I mentioned this in the Cyprus blog, but I am so amazed at how many grape strains actually exist all over the world.

Top of Torre Grossa

San Gimignano at night

              After some great wine tasting (and education), we drove up
the hill to San Gimignano to start off exploring the stone castle city on the hill.  San Gimignano was absolutely beautiful on the inside, the lack of modern signs and store advertisements on the outside is one detail that truly impressed me.  As we walked through the narrow pathway we saw leather shops, hotels, restaurants and Gelato (Italian for ice cream) , but even though we had all these modern shops to our right and left, I still had the feeling of walking through an old medieval town as if I were back in that time.  Sarah and I walked in and out of a few shops all the way up to one of the towers (which of course we climbed, we always climb anything that needs climbing it seems) called Torre Grossa which gave us a great view of the city and surrounding landscape.  After descending the tower we walked back towards the entrance to have some pizza at a table on the cobble stone road before heading back to our villa for a nap before dinner at
another agriturismo named Casa Bandini.
           

Torre Grossa

 As per usual we did not have a solid plan for travel destinations when we chose to come back to Italy.  Like so many other vacations we just drift as we see fit.  On day four it was decided we would take a three hour road trip up to see Lake Como.  This lake was unknown to me until I saw the movie Oceans 12 (all scenes filed at George Clooney's Villa on Lake Como) and of course at that point

Lake Como after the weather calmed

became a must see movie film site destination for me.  Lake Como's stock also went up with it appeared in one of my most favorite movies, Casino Royale, which in my opinion spawned the beginning of the best James Bond series yet.  The drive up was a bit rough with weather and the further north we drove the colder it became.  It was a drastic change from Siena where the temperature was 70 to 80 degrees, by the time we reached Lake Como (through about 15 tunnels carved through mountains) it was around 50 or 60 out with heavy rain and wind.  Putting the weather aside, the scenery of the Lake Como was amazing.  As you come out of the last tunnel to reach the

The good weather day at Lake Como

Bellagio region where we stayed, you enter into this beautiful body of water cut into the surrounding snow cap mountains.  I have layed eyes on many amazing landscapes before in our travels, but this was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.  It combined Sarah and I's most favorite natural combinations, she likes to be in the mountains while I like being near bodies of water.

Bellagio - (Apertivo to my left)

Dock by Hotel Metropole

             We braved the weather after checking into the Hotel Metropole (I had to brag to my brothers that I was staying in legit Bellagio versus Las Vegas of course) and walked around the town to browse some stores and wine shops.  Our room was quite a steal considering we had the only terrace overlooking the lake and the town, although we did not enjoy it as much as we could considering the weather.  We had a small bite to eat on the port in a cute little restaurant before walking around.  It was also here where I found an amazing pair of Italian leather shoes that I instantly fell in love with (that does not happen often) and had to have.  After the shoe frenzy was over we found this amazing wine bar (called Aperitivo et al) set inside a wine cellar design where we spent the next few hours going on virtual wine tours.  The wine bar was set on a

Restaurant on the port

beautiful long stretch of stone stairs coming up from our hotel by the water.  Our host was superb in learning our taste and was spot on with our palate almost the entire night.  We had so much fun trying wines and appetizers that we made a habit out of visiting the place while we stayed there.  We made reservations with the restaurant next to Aperitivo et al early on in the day as we heard it was difficult to get a reservation.  We learned why it was so difficult in the evening as the food and wine were amazing.

Lenno

               Our second night we booked a hotel room at the Hotel du Lac a few buildings down from the Hotel Metropole.  Our second day on Lake Como was absolutely beautiful compared to the weather of the first day.  Our extremely helpful host at du Lac gave us some great ideas about ferry tours around the lake.  There are boats all over the lake that make regular stops to the surrounding small villages.  Like Bellagio, each town along the lake has just a small area of coverage with some nice restaurants, shops and hotels, but each one has its own unique charm and attraction.
 Following my pursuit of visiting all my favorite movie locations, we decided to take a ferry to the town of Lenno where travelers have the opportunity to visit the Villa del Balbianello where they filmed many parts of Casino Royale.  The tour if the villa was beautiful and it was very cool to stand

Casino Royale Scene

on all the locations where they filmed the Casino Royale scenes (as always I have provided

Balbianello

references for your enjoyment).  After touring the villa we walked back towards the boat dock to get some Gelato and lunch.  We had lunch at a nice restaurant / bar along the lake before getting back to our ferry ride.  We walked around Bellagio for the afternoon before dropping by Aperitivo et al again to try some more wines.  For dinner we shared a steak in the restaurant connected to our hotel before heading to bed.
              For our final day we started making our way south towards Rome for our flight.  We made a pit stop in Milan to do some daytime shopping.  It was crazy how much we were affected by large crowds in the big city after spending the entire week in the outskirts and quiet towns

Bellagio at night (Hote du Lac)

of Italy.  I was slightly amused at the fact that Milan had this very large canopy covered high end shopping center containing stores like Gucci & Prada, their original homes before branching out to the world.  The amusing fact was that it was called The Galleria, it wasn't until this trip that we realized that the shopping mall below my place of work in Abu Dhabi was an exact indoor replica of Milan's Galleria, same stores and everything.  We both found some interesting clothing items outside our normal chain of store brands which made the trip worth it.  After a few hours of shopping we took the train back to our parking garage and started the trip back to Rome to catch our flight the next morning.

Duomo di Milano

              From Milan we had about a three hour drive back to Rome.  I forgot to mention I left my hat at our original agriturismo which we had to make a detour to reclaim.  The main highways are interesting in Italy because you have to get a ticket to drive on them and when you exit, you pay a fee for distance traveled, we paid roughly 25 euro for a three hour drive.  After collecting my hat we made the final drive to Rome to stay at the Hilton before our flight.
              Our second visit to Italy was wonderful.  Surprisingly we had virtually no repeats from our first trip and I would say our small town visits and our trip to Lake Como is what really made the trip worth it.  Lake Como was definitely the highlight of the trip, we both fell in love with the scenery and the cozy small town charm, we would love to visit again soon.  I was also impressed at how much I learned about wine on the trip, I will admit I thought I had a good handle on my wine education, but I gathered a lot of insight from this visit about "Super Tuscans" in particular.  Italy is a place I think we will continue to visit (I actually have a business trip in Rome next month) as it is one of those countries that take a number of visits to cover all the desired subject areas.  Anyone could easily make a trip out of staying in agriturismo's or in Lake Como.