Canary Islands Part II: The Hotel Buffet and the Naked People

So the hotel we stayed at in the Canary Islands had a daily breakfast and dinner buffet, and so for a modest 80 euros we got breakfast and dinner for each of us for a whole week - we couldn't turn that deal down...

Well, it turns out, our children were OBSESSED with the buffet. It became the focus of their life - what could be better than their own control over what they eat and how much they eat - I am sure it is hard to remember what it was like to have someone decide for you what you eat and if you don't like it having them tell you that you can eat it or go hungry...

So every morning it was the same routine: do they get a pot of hot chocolate or tea?; Bennett would get cereal, followed by eggs (either made to order omelet or standard fried egg) where Karl would go straight to the crepes with chocolate sauce - I swear he ate at least 4 if not 8 every morning - and usually with a course of vanilla yogurt thrown in the middle. They loved to make a ceremony out of the tea or chocolate (I imagine it made them feel quite adult) and if we were lucky we snuck in a piece of fruit.

Toward the end of the trip, when I finally read the travel book, I tried a thing at the cereal buffet called Gofio - it is toasted grains ground into a flour: corn, wheat, barley, etc. - you mix it with milk to make a paste, and then add dried fruits for an incredibly filling breakfast. Bennett starting eating it too, as it kind of tasted like Wheatabix that we eat every morning at home - if you put it in the blender. So enamoroued that I had found a food I had never seen before, we bought up 4 kilos to take back with us to keep remembering the "vacation" experience. Apparently, the wonderful web has a bunch of different recipes to try, so we will be busy with Gofio for a while (caution if you come over to our house to eat, guinea pig...).

So that was breakfast. Dinnner was a bigger deal. First, Karl would whine incessantly all day if we could not go to the buffet at exactly 7 pm when it opened. I don't know if he had visions of food shortages and hoards of people eating everything up - I think most of it was just an excitement of all the possibilities... When we finally got there, the waiter would take drink orders, then the excitement would begin. Each night some of the selections changed, so each boy would stroll around looking at all the options: salad choices, pasta choices, grilled meats, hot dishes, vegetables, and of course a review of the dessert buffet to see how much room to keep. Bennett actually got quite organized and starting bringing down a note pad and pen, and would write down his "order" which upon returning to the table became my job to go get for him. Karl liked the system as well, and so by the last few nights I was doing it for both of them. As much as it sounds like I was their maid-servant, it actually was fun, and made me eat slower, so all was good. Karl was a straight pasta guy - Bennett, on the other hand, would get so creative: beets, cucumbers, pasta with butter, cheese with the orange rind, bread with butter, and a sliced apple...the boy knows what his body needs...

So one night, after serving the boys and having them finish well before me, Eric took them over to the disco to catch the daily awards show, and I sat with my red wine and slowly finished my dinner.

Watching the people that night was probably one of the highlights of my trip. The hotel guests ranged from honeymooning couples to young families to a lot of older middle age couples who left the kids at home, and then a fair showing of senior citizens. The nationalities were mostly English and Spanish, with some Italian and German thrown in - I am sure there were a few Dutch and Scandanavian as well, but probably too few to really count. What made this people-watching so fun was the diversity: I am sitting there in a old wrap skirt, Gap t-shirt, and flip-flops - probably normal fare for a Fairfax cafe; others had obviously packed their "resort wear" and were decked out in formal dresses complete with rhinestones and high heels. It is not that I was out of place - there was everyone on the continuum between me and them. I found the two inch stacked orthopedic flip flops with the rhinestone bling a fascinating choice; and of course all the women who have grown larger than their short skirts and low cut blouses...the tables ranged from couples sitting formally, virtually not talking (even the kids found it strange how many people just sat there and did not talk to each other) to loud boisterous parties of families traveling together. I just loved soaking up all the people and imagining what all their stories were...

One of the nights, two funny things happened:

We sat at a table next to the dessert buffet, and we saw a girl probably no older than three toddle up to the bar. Now, it was pretty clear that she should not have come there alone, but each family has different limits - and hence as it was past our limit, Eric and I could not take our eyes off of her, fearing something here may go wrong. So she takes the serving spoon to serve herself some of the strawberry mousse, and inadvertently puts a scoop the size of a bocce ball into her bowl. After evaluating the situation for a few seconds, she did what logically made sense to her: she took that bocce ball scoop of stawberry mousse in her hand and threw it back into the mousse bowl. Eric, horrified, jumped up and started to help her by taking the bocce ball scoop back out of the mousse bowl and back into her bowl, and then gently pushed her on her way.

Then, if that wasn't enough action at the dessert bar, Bennett went up to get some ice cream. He was very proud that he could scoop it himself, but unfortunately the toppings and sauces were a bit out of his reach. So before we could catch him, he had climbed up onto the dessert bar to serve himself to some chocolate sauce. What made it funnier was that before we could get up an older lady walked between us and the dessert bar, saw him up there, and then turned back toward us and said something in Spanish that I could interpret to be something like :"don't parent's have any limits anymore??"

Speaking of limits, the other funny thing about the vacation was the "naturalists" on all the beaches. Eric and I have both traveled a lot before, so running into topless sunbathers in Europe was no surprise. But we were a bit taken aback our first day at the beach to find so many TOTALLY naked people - and, as my friend Randy pointed out, it is not the people you want naked who have their clothes off. I would say easily 20-30% of the people were in their birthday suits, with most of them being over 50 and most being as brown and leathery as shoe leather. They played paddle ball naked, they went down to the tide pools to feed the fish naked - it was really not a pleasant site at all. Karl and Bennett noticed, but were mostly oblivious - definitely strange, but nothing to get goofy about (thank god). What was funny on our second day at the beach is that we were walking down trying to find a good spot to lay our towels, and every time we thought we found a good spot, there was a naked person next to us. Whoops - keep going, only to find the next spot with yet again a naked person there, too. Finally on about the 4th try we found a nice spot with only harmless topless people...

Alas, the vacation is over. Fall is full swing in Basel, and the leaves are rapidly falling off the trees - winter here we come...

Canary Islands: Land of Volcanos and Sand

So the kids had a week and a half break from school in October, so this summer we started talking about where we should go on vacation - something rich in culture and learning? Somewhere warm to get out of the oncoming Switzerland cold? Something with fantastic natural beauty? We wanted to pick a place that we normally wouldn't go from the US due to distance, taking advantage of our central Europe location. On the list, but didn't make the cut:

1. Ireland - after consultations with others, it was deemed to risky to be cold and wet the whole time
2. Kenya / African Safari - upon review (and again advice of others) it seems most tours with kids might not let them out of the jeep due to their "snack" size - which we thought might be frustrating for them and would be better off waiting until they are older
3. Egypt - now this seemed to fit the whole bill: a bit of history, a bit of sun and relaxation, some amazing natural and manmade beauty. However, due to our late planning, the plane tickets alone were going to cost something close to $8000 - ouch! So Egypt is still high on the list, but just postponed until we plan ahead next time.
4. Greece - we had just been there
5. Istanbul - heard it is better without the kids
6. Southern Italy - no guarantee it would be warm enough

So we began to be paralyzed by all the choices in the world - truly pathetic. I think in retrospect our attempt at making everything "perfect" was in turn narrowing us to such a small space that nothing could meet the requirements.

So we thought a little harder, and came up with the Canary Islands.

Now the Canary Islands is one of those places both Eric and I had heard about before, but if you had asked us to point to them on a map we would have been hard pressed. It is one of those places that we never thought we would ever go in our life. After a bit of research, and great prices due to a multitude of tour operators that send British people here for sun burns, we knew we had a great choice for a vacation.

Now a bit of geography and history for the often world-knowledge challenged Americans (no offense to any individual - but when eductated friends confused Switzerland and Sweden before we left the US, we knew we had trouble): Canary Islands are actually owned by Spain, and were a stopping off point for a lot of explorers on their way to the Americas (Columbus stopped here on his way). The name has nothing to do with birds, but actually is translated to be "Islands of the Dogs" - which was probably a reference to monk seals that no longer exist here due to overkilling from early settlers. They are 7 main islands, with the furthest east located about 100 km off of Africa, right at the Morrocco / Western Sahara border.

Eric, after much research, picked a resort in Fuerteventura, the most easterly island, for us to stay for the week. The mix of reviews and family friendly hotel advertisement made it seem suitable for us. All the islands are volcanic, but Fuerteventura, and its neighbor Lanzarote, are virtually void of all plant life - it looks like Mars. Eric and I have been loving the green of Switzerland, but we have to say that the remote, rugged landscape was really cool - gave us a whole new appreciation for the Southwest US and why people have such an attraction to the desert.

The resort has been quite comfortable, with nice rooms, pleasant pools, mini club for the kids, tennis and ping pong, swim lessons, and a nightly disco that proved to be the coolest thing ever for the kids. They got swimming certificates, Eric won the ping pong contest, and Sue just sat around the pool and did nothing - just like vacation should be.

We did journey out on occasion - we spent a whole day driving around Lanzarote - visiting a spectacular cactus garden as well as a cave with the best optical illusion Eric and I have ever seen (sworn to secrecy by the tour operator - you have to go there yourself to see it...). We even tucked in a very touristy camel ride - and for those of you who want to complain about animal cruetly hold your anger - these camels had muzzles and halters, where the camels we rode in India years ago were led around by piercings in their nose - ouch. So torture and cruelty are all relative...



We also got a chance to explore Fuerteventura (though getting the bum off the pool lounge chair wasn't easy). There is a whole set of big sand dunes just south of the town we were in that were just amazing. The story goes that the sand blows in from the Sahara due East, but there are differing opinions on the internet. Believe what you will, they were incredibly picturesque. The beach was equally beautiful, with enourmous sand dunes in the background of clean turquoise waters. Paradise found...

For next time: the great hotel buffet and all the naked people....

something bad finally happened (well, almost)

So when Eric and I traveled through Asia we sent email to our frends (1999 - this was in the days before blogs even existed) and our motto at the time was "the worse the situation, the better the story". So here in Switzerland I have been waiting for something "bad" to happen so I could tell a good story. And I have been waiting, and waiting... and life here has been, well - normal. We are making new friends (thanks to Eric, the social king), having people over for dinner, Sue goes to work, the kids play with kids in the neighborhood, the take piano lessons, and blah blah blah... So it has been hard to muster up a good story to tell without boring myself, much less someone else who would care even less (except the grandparents - they want to know everything).

Well last week I finally had my chance. Eric calls me on Tuesday to let me know that he can't find Bennett's passport. This would be OK, except for the fact that we are leaving on Saturday for vacation in the Canary Islands - and we can't go anywhere without that passport. So I tell him to remain calm, we will find it - a motto in our family is that "we always find everything" - which we do, though I think we are in contention for the "Most Lost Things" award. I swear we could get so much done if we just stopped having to always look for everything...

Now the fact that the passport was missing was not so strange in itself. Bennett, destined for life as a spy or a CIA agent, has been caught previously playing with it - making photo copies and crafting fake passports (that is along with photo copying money, which we explained is a federal offense). So he played with it, and we just have to ask him where he put it...

So with Bennett still at school, Eric, who always gets a bit anxious before we travel due to all the logistics, starts to really panic. He sends me emails during the day that he has looked everywhere; he called the consulate and found out we would have to go to Bern the next day to get a replacement with no guarantee of timing - and it would have to be all of us so I would have to skip work; and then he finds out that we would need to have a police report to file for a replacment which means we need the police to come over on Tuesday night... so I, who really believe that we find everything, start to panic myself a bit. I send him a list of places to look for the passport: in the kitchen drawer, under Bennett's bed, in the kid's safe, under the carpet in their room - I am coming up with anything I can think of, because I know if Eric can't find it quickly he will just explode with stress.

No luck, no passport found by early afternoon. So Eric is off to school to pick up the kids, and I reassure him that Bennett will know where he put it. I sit at my desk at work and start speed dialing Eric at 3:20 so I can hear that all is well and Bennett knows exactly where it is... I finally get through, only to find out that Bennett does not know where it is.

So now I start to panic.

I have been looking forward to this vacation for months - a warm beach break from increasingly cold Basel. I am starting to mentally rearrange my meetings for the next morning so we can go to Bern - and then there is figuring out how we find the police department that is open late so we can file the police report - all the time knowing if we just look further we will find it. But what if we don't??

I had a pretty intense work meeting from 4 to 6 pm - but the whole time I am distractetd on what we are going to do if we don't find this passport. I want to get home so I can help look and get this behind us. And all during the meeting I keep checking my email in the event that Eric's luck turns.

And the email comes: "Found it. I am a loser."

Relief floods my whole body - vacation is on! It turns out it was exactly where it should be: in the desk drawer. It turns out in his haste, Eric did not see the passport as it was separate from the others and tucked between two pieces of paper.

Moral of the story: We always find everything...

Next stop: Canary Islands....

Zahnfee

So we just finished a great visit from Eric's friend Larry. He stayed for two weeks and got to experience some of the great European lifestyle (we packed him home with reusable shopping bags and he was eyeing our electric water kettle...) and got in a lot of bike riding.

We actually took part in two Slo-Up bike events - one in Basel and one in Zurich, where they shut down sets of streets for the day and you can bike with the kids with the freedom of no cars going by. We did 41 km in Basel in perfect weather - kudos to Bennett who has the highest bike weight to body weight ratio!

Zurich the next week was a bit wet, but had a lot more swag - couldn't go more than a few kilometers without hitting free drinks, granola bars, or water bottles - the kids were besides themselves, as nothing in life is better than free stuff - and despite the distractions got in a good 35 km as well. We snacked on wurst with mustard and bread mid ride (note the big wurst in the picture)- nothing better. Bennett always complains to get out of the house for a ride, but then on his bike actually sings to himself the whole way - and really never gets tired. I LOVE biking with the kids and am thrilled that we all have so much fun getting out in the fresh air...


Related, Eric and Larry took a overnight trip to France to bike up the Alpe d'Huez - an apparently infamous climb in the Tour de France. On that night I had the kids to myself, and low and behold Bennett comes home with a tooth gone. Luckily the tooth was found and carefully packaged by the teacher - so now the question was, does the tooth fairy come to Switzerland?

A little Wikipedia search shows that yes, the Zahnfee as he/she is called in these parts does make an appearance at night. So Karl and Bennett were finishing their go-to-bed activities, and when I asked for lights out Bennett jumped up and stopped me, saying he had to write the Zahnfee a note. He, clever little guy, then proceeded to write a note in broken German(because heaven forbid the Zahnfee can't read English and screws up the whole process). I have looked high and low for the note - when I find it I will post it because it was so funny - but to paraphrase: please leave me 1000 CHF (about $1000) and can I please keep my tooth?

The kid is bold. Remind me to tell you about how he finally got in trouble at school by locking all the the boy bathroom stalls with a paperclip...

So low and behold, the Zahnfee did come. He/she left a 5 franc coin, so not quite 1000 CHF but nothing to sneeze at - and the tooth was left as well. Nice to know some things work all over the world.