Haphazard, light-on-planning style of travel we practice is not for everyone. Before leaving on the summer trip to Europe I haven’t done a lot of research, instead I directed my kid to find and write down everything she wants to see and do, while I would take care of the travel arrangements. So upon arrival, when I asked her what’s on her list for London, she said “Everything!”. That and Nando’s Chicken. And that’s exactly what we did.
Tourists roam Europe with textbook-sized travel guides constantly checking if they are doing it right. Someone on a large travel forum suggested taking a course in French gastronomy before visiting France. That’s in addition to a basic French language course and an overview of the French history. Visitors start their days with detailed and perfectly timed itineraries. A little more planning probably would’ve helped us to see more, save a bit of money and not show up at Versailles on the only day when it’s closed and leave the visit to Louvre for the day when its art gets a day off. People with a plan don’t have to wonder if they will have to sleep at a railway station because their credit card was declined when they tried to buy a train ticket at the last minute using a WIFI they found at a random Starbucks. People who didn’t spend their pre-trip days posting funny photos on Facebook don’t miss their stop on the way to the airport.
And then there are people like us, who get up every morning with just a faint idea where to go, or, sometimes, only a direction. We are the ones wondering around trying to make sense out of a souvenir map. We are the ones taking trams in the wrong direction all the way to the final stop wondering why our hotel is not there. We are the ones eating Mexican food in Amsterdam where the restaurant owner proudly calls it Argentinian, but which turns out to be neither. There is something to be said about spontaneity and sense of adventure, and we are the ones saying it. Loudly.
Don’t try this unless you are sure you won’t be divorced, disowned or dumped.
Face:
When God created London he said to the English people:
I will give you an awe-inspiring mix of the best architecture in the world,
One cannot visit Memphis without making a stop at Graceland. I’ve heard of people visiting Graceland more than once, but beyond checking the visit off your bucket list there isn’t much to do there that would warrant repeat visits. Elvis’s mansion might have looked impressive in the 1960’s but it’s pretty average today and it’s not even fully open “out of respect for Elvis”, so you won’t be able to see the infamous toilet where he met his demise. All the other exhibits across the street including Elvis’s personal planes and cars are of limited interest. And for a dead guy Elvis is charging way too much for the pleasure of strolling by all his jumpsuits and gold records and cassettes. That really doesn’t stop the crowds of people from filing in, and parking lot that would make an average Wal-Mart proud is never empty.
The first thing that struck me was that the mansion is fairly small by today’s standards. I always imagined it to be more grand and lavish. Not so much.
Fellow Citizens (and Permanent Residents) of Kansas City and beyond!
Time has come to stand up against over-saturation of our visual space with penises, breasts and other dirty, dirty genitals. Everywhere we look, everywhere we turn, we cannot avoid being confronted with genitalia and/or breasts. Some may call it art, but we know better – it’s pornography, a mere glimpse of which leads to lust, perversion and, dare I say, fornication.
Accidental breast and penis sightings ruin our children. We all know who else loved art in all of its nakedness – people like Hitler, Charles Manson, and, I assume, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy. One day little Hitler was looking at some shameful works of art and the next thing anyone knew….well, we all know what happened next. On the other hand, George W. Bush didn’t like art, especially the obscene kind, and he grew up to be an American President.
It’s for the well-being of the children that I call upon you to join the new organization – DOur United Citizens Hoping to Eradicate Breast And Genitalia in Sculpture. Let’s prevent the next tyrant or a murdering cannibal from growing up in our communities. Let’s raise our children to be American Presidents like George W. Bush.
Of course, we denounce any censorship, this is not Soviet Russia after all. Everyone is free to express their opinion and artistry on public property as long as it doesn’t harm the children* and/or biblical in nature. You might have heard of a whorish sculpture which every one of our children is forced to walk by on their way to and from school. Thousands of them come home in tears,embarrassed, shocked and even (god forbid) aroused! They want to know why the photos sent to them by their classmates feature a lot smaller breasts. They want to ask questions like where they can see more art like this. They spend a long time alone in their rooms and hide things hastily (probably art) when we come in unannounced.
DOur United Citizens Hoping to Eradicate Breast And Genitalia in Sculpture are here to save your children. When the offending sculpture will be finally removed from our sights and melted into something they could sell at Crate and Barrel (or at least ammo), we will all as one call on the Kansas City Administration to
Remove An Offensive Penis From Its City Hall.
Yes, your children wandering around the City Hall are confronted with a penis and it hurts them now and for the rest of their lives.
Click to enlarge the offending penis
Fellow Citizens (and Permanent Residents) of Kansas City and beyond! DOur United Citizens Hoping to Eradicate Breast And Genitalia in Sculpture have a lot of work ahead of us. This Metro Area is literally stuffed with thousands of penises and boobs.
We need to move fast before it’s too late and we have another Hitler on our hands.
Email all the (sculptural) penis and boob sightings to douchebags@gmail.com
Day tours to Colonia available for purchase in Argentina from a variety of sources such as Buquebus include a round-trip on a ferry, a dinner, a tour and transportation around the city. There is not much of a tour (luckily our guide was fluent in English), dinner is average and the transportation is hardly necessary – the historic part of town is perfectly walkable and is close enough to the port. The big difference is the ferry: a newer ferry can make the trip across the river in one hour and the older one takes 3 hours. Since we bought our trip the night before, the faster, more expensive boat was sold out so we took the three-hour tour. My suggestion would be to get on the faster ferry if possible, forgo the dinner and the tour, and explore the town and find food on your own.
The ferry is nice and comfortable and due to a sell-out we were upgraded to the first class seats automatically and for free. Interestingly, at the passport control in both ports the Argentinian and Uruguayan border officials are sitting side-by-side, stamping your passport with both exit and entry stamps (no visa is required for the US citizens), so you don’t have to go through the procedure again upon arrival.
If you have a free day in your itinerary, I would highly recommend a trip to Colonia. There is something charming (I am pretty sure this is the first and likely the last time the word charming is used on this blog) about this town with old cobblestone streets leading to the river; with brightly painted ancient buildings; with a weird mix of trees lining the streets where palms, cacti, and aloes are just as common as European varieties; with numerous restaurants and souvenir shops; with antique cars parked on the streets just for looks, and even nicely preserved Soviet cars. Colonia beckons you to wonder around, explore, take photos, see the sunset, have a coffee at one of the outdoor tables near a restaurant, or just relax watching the boats on the river. On the day we visited Colonia the weather changed from overcast to rain to sunny and the following photos reflect that. Overall, it was probably the most enjoyable side-trip during our visit to Argentina.
What I miss in the American foreign policy lately is the pizzaz; intricate covert plots; cleverly planned fully deniable coups; propaganda wars; spy-driven assassinations worthy of a Robert Ludlum novel; secret service dirty deals a la Iran Contra; mind-blowing, daring, underhanded activities that we usually expect from our multiple secret operations.
Instead, we see mostly ham-handed, simple-minded, anti-creative, doomed from the start, mindbogglingly expensive, unpopular foreign policies, that, until now, only George W.Bush was capable of producing, approving and implementing. Now, in what can be safely called Bush’s third term, we are bombing Libya while producing the lamest kind of bullshit statements to justify it.
I’d like to point out that I am not a pacifist by any means. I just like our reasons for bombing other countries to be little less obvious. And if you believe that we are “protecting civilians” over there, I have a Red Square for sale.
