Mountains, Cedars and Arak

Last weekend was awesome not only for all the time spent hanging out in cafes and playing backgammon, but for a great overnight trip Laine and I took with Josh and Zeina up to the mountains in Northern Lebanon.

We ended up staying in a guesthouse overlooking a small mountain village tucked among the hills.  We enjoyed an awesome breakfast, with homemade yogurt, olives, preserves and fresh vegetables from the owner's garden.  We also got to try his Arak, the traditional liquor.  Pretty good, despite trying it at 10am...  

Afterwards we went up and checked out the famous Lebanese cedars, then drove back down to the coast and had an awesome dinner at a cool little seafood restaurant overlooking the sea.  Not a bad weekend trip... 

 

Welcome to Lebanon: Land of cafes, mezze and nargile

Not a bad life

Well, Laine and I totally failed to keep up the blog while in Turkey, and now she's back home in Seattle and getting ready to make her big move back to the East Coast.  But, we had a great week in Beirut before she left, due in no small part to Josh and Zeina, our unofficial tour guides while we were here.

Best tour guides ever

They not only took us out to a bunch of amazing lunches, walked us around the city on numerous occasions and broke down a lot of the incredibly complex historical and political challenges the country continues to face, but they ALSO got us into the groove of hanging out in cafes, smoking hookah (called nargile here) and playing backgammon for hours.

Hanging out on the Corniche

We had a great week exploring the city, checking out the American University of Beirut campus (totally gorgeous) and even took an overnight trip up to the mountains, which I'll post about later.  I also managed to start my Arabic language program and learn most of the 28 letter alphabet (though some of the "H" sounds continue to mystify me).

I'll write more later about my living situation (which is by turns awesome and totally frustrating, like many things in this city), our trip to see the cedars, and what the heck we've been up to over the past few weeks.  Stay tuned!

Hi From Turkey!

We're back, after two months of inactivity!  The last time we blogged Laine and I were wrapping up our road trip across the USA and I was on my way to Southeast Asia.  Since then I've spent a month backpacking around Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos; a month working for NBC at the London Olympics; and two weeks back in the States in Washington State and Washington DC.  Laine was back in Seattle for most of that time, with a couple of trips down the coast to Oregon and California.

Laine and I are back on the road now, this time traveling around Turkey and Lebanon for a few weeks before I settle into my language program in Beirut.  So far we've done a little more than a week in Turkey and have seen a TON, including a few days in Istanbul, a couple of days in Cappadoccia and visits to Konya (home of the Whirling Dervishes) and Pamukkale, an old Roman spa town.

We're currently in Selcuk, a cute little town just outside of the old Roman ruins of Ephesus.  We've got one more full day here before we head back to Istanbul for a day and then fly to Beirut.

That's all for now, but I'll post a few more times in the next few days to try to catch up on all the things we've missed!

Catching up...

Ok,it's been a while, but I'd still like to tell you all a few more road trip stories. After hanging out with some of our incredible HKS friends in Moab, Jaime and I took off on our own Southwest adventure. We thought we had seen some rural areas in Kansas and Colorado, but nothing compared to the emptiness we saw in Utah, northern Arizona and Nevada. Long stretches of land without people, but marked by deep canyons, crazy rock formations, and the occasional sprawling military base.

The communities that live on the Colorado Plateau are pretty interesting. Jaime and I really enjoyed driving through the Navajo Nation, and were totally fascinated by our brief glimpse into the world of fundamentalist Mormons. I wish we had taken a photo of a small FLDS church we saw in southern Utah. The church building, which couldn't have supported a congregation larger than 40 or 50 people, was completely locked down. Gates, padlocks, the whole bit. We left town pretty quickly.

In other news, I am proud to report that Jaime and I managed to visit three national parks, complete a couple of beautiful hikes, and stay out all night on the Las Vegas Strip within 48 hours. Here's how you do it.

Step 1: Wake up at the Grand Canyon. Ooh and aah for a bit before heading the road. Gawk at the tourists, if you'd like.

Step 2: Drive north into Utah in time for a sunset hike at Bryce.

 Step 3: Drive to Zion after dark to camp. Wake up early to hike Angel's Landing. It's preferable to do this before coffee so you don't think too hard about how high how up you are, how certain death might be if you fall, etc. 

Step 4: Drive to Vegas. Stay up all night and watch the sun rise. Take a blurry photo. Fall asleep happy (and in a real bed).

We made it!!

Unfortunately Laine and I are still a little backed up on blog posts, but we've finished up what turned out to be an epic road trip and are now back in Seattle!

In the end we ended up driving just under 6000 miles between the two of us, or roughly the distance from Boston to Seattle and back.  Over the last 21 days we've visited 14 states, 6 National Parks, a handful of diners in the middle of nowhere and at least five toy stores (the best two of which were in Chicago).

Now I'm off on the next phase of my trip, a month of backpacking through Southeast Asia before heading to London for the 2012 Olympics.  I've added Laine as an administrator so she can jump in and do more posts from the road trip in the meantime.

Until then, thanks for reading and we'll post more updates soon!

-Jaime

UTAAAHHH

After a week straight on the road we finally got a chance to rest, recuperate and relax in Southern Utah with a bunch of our HKS friends.  Thanks to David Dodge, we all got to hang out at David's family house outside of Moab and we spent about five days hiking around Arches National Park, driving ATVs, rafting on the Colorado river and mountain biking around Dead Horse Valley (featured in the final scene of Thelma and Louise, in case you were wondering).  

There was way too much activity to recount here, but the week was a total blast and it was hard to say goodbye to everyone at the end.  Here are some pics, there are tons more where they came from. 

Mountains, Canyons and Mesas...

So we only got to spend one night in RMNP, Colorado, and Laine came down with altitude sickness so pretty much had to just lay low in the tent, but the views were spectacular and the drive down from the Rockies into Southern Utah was absolutely gorgeous as we followed the Colorado River.  Here are some pics from the drive!