I’m presently sitting in the American Airlines Admirals club San Juan, Puerto Rico with Krystyana, awaiting a flight to Miami and then on to San Jose, Costa Rica.

As I had previously noted, we’ll be spending just over two weeks in Costa Rica taking intensive Spanish language classes in an immersion format. We booked our classes via Bridge Abroad, and Krystyana and I each have separate private instruction so that we can each progress at our own pace. Should be interesting.

But perhaps even more interesting is that while the Spanish language work occurs weekdays, we have the weekends to explore a bit of Costa Rica’s amazing nature. Granted - Costa Rica is in the midst of its long rain season, but even then there is supposed to be sun for as least part of the day. So, tomorrow morning, bright and early, we head off in search of quetzal (colorful, long tailed birds) and explore the paramo (grasslands and shrublands) to find exotic critters and plants. We will spend Sunday white-water rafting - one of the best times of the year for that because of the heavier rains.

And the following weekend we do a three day/two night trip to the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica to visit the Tortuguero National Park to try and see if we can find turtles nesting and then spend one of our days in the lagoons and waterways looking for a variety of monkeys, birds, reptiles, and perhaps even tapirs and jaguars. Should be a pleasant, and different, diversion from the language classrooms, as well as an opportunity to practice whatever Spanish we’ve retained by then.

I will try and post pictures during the trip if I can, but probably no travelogues until after our departure so as to not interfere with the immersion process.

We have a couple of days in Miami for rest and pampering and practicing our Spanish after that, before heading home to Bonaire for an 11 day stay before our next journey - this time to the Canadian Maritimes and New England.

But, since today is being spent traveling - mostly waiting in airport clubs, actually - I plan on writing several more posts about specific things we did in New York City, so if you’re subscribed to get notices about new posts, be forwarned that you’ll be getting a number of e-mails from this blog today.

There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that we could not last until October before traveling again, so today we find ourselves getting to The Big Apple - New York City.

We’re planning on about two weeks of vacation, Traveling Richters style. That means lots of eating out and exploring.

On the exploration agenda, we’re taking the kids to their first trade show - the New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF) in order to give them an idea how gift shop retailers find things to sell, as well as how wholesalers and distributors market their wares. We have a business reason in going too as we run our own on-line gift shop at www.BonaireStuff.com - we’re hoping to find some more interesting Bonaire and Caribbean oriented merchandise to carry in our on-line store.

We also have walking tours scheduled through Context Travel (www.ContextTravel.com) to learn about the Cloisters, the history of tea, ethnic cooking in New York City, and making chocolate. There’s also an off-Broadway show (Around the World in Eighty Days) booked. We’re also hoping to catch the Buckminster Fuller exhibition at the Whitney Museum, plus more regular forays to places like the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim.

And then there’s the dining! We have dinner reservations for almost every night we’re in town at restaurants including Tabla, Le Bernardin, Per Se, L’Atelier des Joel Robuchon, Asiate, WD-50 (molecular gastronomy), a table in the cheese cave at Artisanal Bistro, and a few more goodies. We’re also trying to coordinate a cooking class at another top restaurant, and perhaps a demonstration of cooking with liquid nitrogen (see the post on The Fat Duck in England from a couple of months ago about what this is all about) one evening if we get the timing to work out.

I will try and post pictures and reviews here as best I can.

We arrived back on Bonaire, safe and sound, yesterday morning around 3am. The trip home was uneventful, although we had concerns about being able to leave Paris due to a strike which was to have affected Air France as well as lots of other things, but that proved to be a non-issue for us.

My postings to the blog have been, well, missing, since the one below about The Fat Duck, and that’s because once we had control of our own schedule in London and Paris, we abused the schedule, pretty much getting up, going about, getting back to the hotel and going to sleep.

So a very quick summary of what we did (with only a couple of photos because we’ve not had time to process more)

May 14, Wednesday - London
We visited the British Museum, and there visited exhibits about Celts, Romans, Mesopotamia, Assyrian culture, Greek Parthenon, and the Rosetta Stone.

The great courtyard of the British Museum in London

Bas holds some ancient Chinese money, over 3000 years old, at the British Museum

Bas poses, reluctantly, next to a replica of the famed Rosetta Stone at the British Museum

This was followed by excellent dinner at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s. Excellent service, great wine pairings, and a tour of the kitchen included.

May 15, Thursday - London to Paris
We had a late start, enjoyed conveyor belt sushi at Yo! Sushi at St. Pancras station, and took the Eurostar train to Paris’ Gard Nord. Dinner was at an excellent small Auberge recommended by the hotel concierge at the Marriott Rive Gauche.

May 16, Friday - Paris
We took a privately guided tour - just the four of us in a mini-van with our driver/guide Rupert - to Versailles to see the palace there and then Giverny to visit Monet’s home and lily pond. Lunch was at a very scenic restaurant located in a water-wheel driven mill along the way, but sadly we ended up in the “tour” dining room with a fixed menu, so we didn’t get to enjoy the breadth of the restaurant’s real culinary offerings. Dinner was at a nice bistro near our hotel.

May 17, Saturday - Paris
Our Dutch friends Martin & Angela drove down to Paris from Rotterdam in The Netherlands, and we went back to Versailles with them, this time by Metro and train, to see the amazing gardens at Versailles as well as some outbuildings, including Marie Antoinette’s “modest” home.

After a mediocre lunch at a cafe at Versailles’ grand canal, we walked around to visit the musical fountain “performances” near the palace. We discovered this was nothing like the fountain show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Instead, they had merely turned on the fountains for the show (they are normally off except for a few fixed times on the weekends) and piped in music into the area around the fountain. Kind of a let down - an example of where expectations and reality did not intersect.

We then returned back to Paris, visited Notre Dame, and walked around the nearby parts of Paris for a bit before taking shelter from the rain at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant. Not bad, but not great.

May 18, Sunday - Paris
We met up with Martin and Angela again that morning, and headed out to visit the Arc de Triomphe. Krystyana and I were the only ones of our group who braved a tour of the innards of the Arc, which included a large number of stairs to a small museum section upstairs, as well as more stairs to access the open top of the Arc. There we found a great view of Paris, but it started to drizzle, so we headed back down.

We then walked in the drizzle to the Eiffel Tower, where we had a very nice (and very expensive) lunch at Alain Ducasse’s Jules Verne restaurant, half-way up the Eiffel Tower. We learned later that this was the place that Tom Cruise rented out to propose to Katie Holmes (although the restaurant was not under the management of Alain Ducasse at the time).

Great view, and perhaps the best asparagus and best sea bass we have ever had (two separate courses). There was a mashed pea course which could have used a bit more of a salty counter-point (more caviar perhpas) as far as we were all concerned, but the food, and especially the desserts, were great.

Linda also enjoyed (I think) a belated Mother’s Day, as the kids gave her small froggy presents. The only real negative at our meal was that we had to frequently and repeatedly request to get our water glasses refilled, something that should never happen at as fine a restaurant as Jules Verne (it should be done automatically without us needing to ask). And I couldn’t quite tell if the sommelier was being condescending to me or just trying to be funny and not really pulling it off well, although the wines we ended up with were quite nice. We did miss having pairings by the glass for our meal, however - again something different from other high end restaurants we’ve enjoyed. An 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

Martin and Angela then made their way north to Schipol airport in Amsterdam, to eventually arrive back at our house here on Bonaire (where they still are, with us, at this moment).

We proceeded from the Eiffel Tower to Les Invalides, which houses the Musée de l’Armée, a military museum which Bas greatly enjoyed as it contained a panoply of armor, swords, guns, and other battle gear. This was followed by a visit to Napoleon’s Tomb under the great golden dome one can see from any high spot in Paris (also at Les Invalides).

We headed back to the hotel to freshen up, and then took a taxi back to the area of the Eiffel Tower, where we boarded a dinner cruise on the river Seine, which took us through sunset and into the night. Very nice views, but very poor food (Linda and I had never had mealy, mushy duck breast before).

May 19, Monday - Paris
We had another late start, but then finally ended up at the Louvre, where we viewed exhibits about various artists and schools of art, include the Dutch Masters. Part of the exhibit in the Dutch Masters section also included modern works by Dutch artist Jan Fabre - some very odd stuff, such as people made out of thumb tacks, sculptures made out of scarab beetle wings, others made out of slices of bone (crosswise), and yet more made out of other bugs, beetles, and even feathers. We also got to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo first hand.

We walked around a bit and ended up at Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées, where we saw a large police presence, apparently in response to a possible strike.

Dinner was at Les Foundus de la Raclette, a restaurant serving, of course, fondues and raclette cooking (where you get small pans and cook your own meal, with liberal contributions of Raclette cheese). Very enjoyable meal, although our cheese fondue could have used a bit more flavor. A 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

May 20, Tuesday - Paris
We met up with Diane, the friend we had made aboard the National Geographic Endeavour. Diane was also in Paris for the week. Together we went to Montmatre and visited Sacré Coeur, a large cathedral atop the hill that is Montmatre. We planned to go on a tour of the crypts there, and paid admission to something similar to an ATM machine (except it takes money instead of giving it) to get to the “dome & crypt”, not realizing that “dome” meant the top of Sacré Coeur. The stairs up (the only way to go) nearly killed Diane, but the view, once we got there, was phenomenal. I believe it was the highest point in Paris mere mortals could visit, taller than the top of the Eiffel Tower. Going back down, we found the crypts closed for renovation. Sigh.

We wandered about Montmatre for a bit, had a reasonable lunch in the open square where all the artists paint under the open sky, then wandered downhill to the Pigalle area, where we saw the famed Moulin Rouge. From there it was another cafe stop, and then a walkabout which led us to covered shopping galleries featuring unique and interesting shops - antiques, collectible toys, philatelists, galleries, etc.

We had an excellent dinner at a small restaurant we stumbled across, part of which had a retail specialty foods section, although the name eludes me at the moment.

Diane then parted ways with us to go back to her hotel while we made our way to the Eiffel Tower for the last elevator up to the second level (the top level - the third level - was already closed, alas) for a nice night-time view of Paris. Got back to the hotel around midnight.

May 21, Wednesday - Paris
We attempted to visit the Musée Rodin, home to Rodin’s famed Thinker sculpture as well as dozens of his other works, but found instead a massive police barricade around the museum. People were walking past the barricade, so we joined the small flow to discover the museum had been closed for the day. The police presence was there to corral a hundred or so protesting and striking fishermen who were protesting that the combination of high fuel prices and EU restrictions on the types of fish they could catch were hurting their livelihoods.

When we asked one of the policemen in riot gear about this strike, thinking it was the civil servants getting an early start for their announced strike on Thursday, he explained that that strike was scheduled for the following day, and that the fishermen were “today’s strike”. When we asked if there was another strike on Friday, he responded “probably”. Pretty funny and sad at the same time that strikes and protests are so much a part of the Parisian (and perhaps French) culture.

We ended up going to the Picasso Museum instead, where we saw hundreds of his works as well as a film showing him exercising his creative processes.

Dinner was at the Michelin three star restaurant Le Pre Catalan, which had a mind-boggling wine list. We all tried the chef’s menu, which provided a decent sampling of many of the dishes on the menu, but while the food was quite good, nothing really stood out to us. Again, the lack of pre-researched wine pairings was something of a disappointment, and we again had to ask to have our water refilled regularly, although at least here, in contrast to Jules Verne, the refilling was done as soon as we asked instead of having to repeat the request several times. Service otherwise was quite good, but for what the restaurant cost, it could have been better. An 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

May 22, Thursday - Paris
We spent the morning packing, checked out, and then ended up going to the catacombs at Place Denfert-Rochereau. The catacombs are the resting place for the bones of countless people (records indicate it might have been as many as seven million bodies) who ended up there from cemeteries on the Right Bank which had begun to seep into people’s homes in the 1760s. The bones we saw were mostly neatly stacked and organized, a macabre tribute to mostly unknown people, however plaques on the walls in the catacombs indicated that a fair number of those executed by guillotine in the late 1700s during the French Revolution and its bloody aftermath also found their way there. The catacomb tour was self-guided, and one way. After going in at Place Denfert-Rochereau, we came out about a mile south in a small neighborhood.

Lunch was at a very good and busy bistro on a side street, and we then made our way back to the Rodin Museum, which was now once again open (the day’s strikers and protesters were in a different part of town), but the top floor of the main museum building was closed due to a lack of personnel (due to the strike du jour). A number of Rodin’s sculptures were in a large garden, and more inside the ground level of the main building. We finally got to see The Thinker first hand as well. There was also an exhibit of the works of Camille Claudel, one of Rodin’s protégés. Amazing what these artists could do with marble and bronze.

We made our way back to the hotel to hang out in the executive lounge for a while, and then were off to the airport for a smooth check-in and flight to Amsterdam, and then from there back to Bonaire.

And that’s it for The Traveling Richters’ Moroccan and European adventure.

Our next trip is to Texas in about a month to see one of the showings of the True Colors tour (and we’re scheduled to briefly meet Cyndi Lauper as part of our ticket package too). And, as we’ll already be in Texas, we will be visiting The Alamo as part of the children’s American history school work. Best to see history first hand than merely read about it in a book - or at least so we think.

After an excellent night’s rest, we had a late start with breakfast around 11am yesterday, after which we headed to the nearby Parque Marie Luisa. The park had served as the site of the World Expo/Fair in Seville in the early 1900s. It was a beautiful sunny day, and dry as well, as we walked over there.

First stop was the Plaza de España, a magnificent piece of architecture which had started as the Spanish national pavilion at the World Expo. It is a huge, long building with tall ornate towers at each end, curved around a half circle, with an adjacent terrace at the base featuring large niches for each of Spain’s provinces with colorful tile work. From this terrace there are several bridges (see photo above right of the three shorter Richters on one of those bridges) into a central plaza in which a large fountain in centered.

One of the neat facts about the Plaza de España is that it was featured both in the epic movie Lawrence of Arabia, as well as in Star Wars Episodes 1 and 2 (the fourth and fifth Star Wars movies), including the bridge which is pictured above.

We toured the park, visited the Sevilla Archeological Museum to see Roman relics unearthed in the area - some excellent tablets, pottery, and statuary. Bas then forced us to rent a four-person (two by two) cycle to pedal around the park for half an hour. It was then we learned that he could not pedal, steer, and talk all at the same time, much to everyone’s amusement.

We had a late lunch at the hotel, dining off the day menu featuring bull dishes (bull tail for me, ragout for Linda, and entrecote for Krystyana - Bas opted for ham and cheese pizza) in honor of the recent fiesta in Seville (which we missed by days) which also included some bull fighting at the nearby Seville bull fighting stadium. After a couple of hours of playing some card games and resting, we lumbered over to the Triana district for our last dinner in Seville, at the 120+ year old Casa Cuesta.

Our concierge, who grew up in the area, recommended the restaurant as the best source of local Sevillian cuisine, and we suspect he was right. The tripe stew (menudo), veal stew, and “cream of bread with vegetables” (turned out to be an excellent creamy Gazpacho) were all great. However, we were still so full from lunch we passed on dessert, although we did make an obligatory stop for gelato for Bas on the way back to the hotel (at 11pm).

Today we broke our fast at the hotel breakfast buffet (I was still full from yesterday though), packed up, and made our way to the Seville airport, flew to Madrid, waited a bunch of hours, and then finally with a couple hour delay, made it to Marrakesh where Lindblad Expeditions had a driver waiting for us and one other couple on the same flight. We were delivered to our hotel, dumped our luggage and had another late dinner, as Marrakesh is two hours behind Seville, so we’re all messed up again with respect to time zones.

The plan tomorrow is to explore various parts of Marrakesh.

By the way, for those of you only relying on e-mail notifications for new posts on this blog, please be advised that you have missed a whole week’s worth of posts - click on the Traveling Richters logo at the top of this page and then scroll down past this post to see what other wonderful things we’ve had to say so far.

Note also that it appears that my phone data services are not working, so posts for the foreseeable future will need to wait until I get to a live Internet connection (which I do have at our hotel in Marrakesh - it’s not very good, but with patience it ultimately seems to work).

We arrived in Granada Tuesday night, and tried to take a taxi to our hotel, the Hotel Guadalupe. However the taxi driver we spoke to sent us back towards a bus (or so I thought - Linda later suggested he waved us to a different taxi stand).

The bus driver told us the closest stop to our hotel was Cathedral, so there we got off even though our GPS (love that gadget!) told us it was still a bit of a way off. Turns out our hotel was adjacent to the Alhambra, the old Moorish palace we had come to Granada to see. And the Alhambra is on top of a rather tall hill. To us it felt like a mountain. That’s because it was 11pm at night, we each our one piece of luggage and our carry-ons and had to lug all that and our sorry, tired selves up all the way.

It was a very pretty hike, but still unanticipated, and rather tiring. By the time we got to our hotel I had somehow ended up with three of the four pieces of luggage, and it was only thanks to our GPS (a battery-powered Garmin Nuvi 350) that we actually found our hotel, almost 2 miles away, all uphill.

We ultimately collapsed in our beds at 1:30am.

The next day, Wednesday (yesterday) was beautiful. After dining in the hotel restaurant we headed to the Alhambra - the entry gate was only a 5 minute walk away (all downhill), and we had wisely prepurchased/pre-reservered our tickets on-line otherwise we would probably have not gotten in - the line was huge and day-of tickets were in short supply. Next tip, get your physical tickets from your on-line ticket order at the automated kiosks to the far right of the purchase line.

With tickets in hand we spent the next six and a half hours tourings the Alhambra, including the Alcazaba (featured as the backdrop for the above photo), the palace of Emperor Charles V (Carlos V), the Nazarid Palace (your ticket provides a specific time of access and you cannot miss this part of the Alhambra - it is the most stunning and splendid!), and the Generalife.

We also had a late lunch during our visit at the restaurant at Hotel America, where, ironically, they don’t take American Express, but served excellent food included pheasant, hare, and garlic Gaszpacho.

While it involved a lot walking we were all pleased with our visit and found it to be very worthwhile, long uphill walk to our hotel notwithstanding.

After getting a taxi from our hotel to the train station, we picked up our rental vehicle. We had prepaid for a minivan (family vehicle). We got a Mercedes mini-van, which Europecar swore was a family vehicle because it could seat six people even though it was basically a retrofitted delivery van with no back window and bare metal floors. All for about $300/day not including the expensive insurance we declined. Ouch! And the vehicle handles like a donkey in heat (or at least how I imagine that would be).

With our wonderful GPS guiding our way, we drove for about two hours, finally going past the village of Alozaina and ending up at Finca Morelajo, a set of villas and apartments operated by Peter and Nice Lensvelt, old friends of ours from Bonaire who moved here to Andulusia six years ago to start this new business.

We had reserved a small villa for our two nights here and Peter put us into the Vincent villa, named after Vincent van Gogh, whose is (not the originals though) is featured throughout.

We spent the rest of the evening reminiscing and trading stories and rumors over a fine Rioja and food Nice whipped up for us.

After breakfast at the hotel - a reasonable spread - we checked out and made our way via subway and fenicular up to Mont Jouic (I probably have misspelled a bunch of things here) to visit the Fundacion Joan Miro. The Foundation is actually a museum with the world’s largest collection of works by Joan Miro, a surrealist, post-impressionist, modernist sort of artist. I have always personally seen him as an expert doodler (i.e. a person who doodles expertly, with lots of practice).

We had the portable audio tour which has been so popular at museums and exhibits everywhere of late, and got to hear more about Miro, his approach, and how individual pieces of art came to be made, all of which implies a huge amount of though and planning went into his art. But when I heard Miro describe the years of effort that had gone into drawing a solitary line on each of three canvasses I concluded he was really just a famous doodler who had gotten to the point he could sell anything her personally doodled.

Anyhow, after about three hours there - we also visited an exhibit of Chinese pop art - it was time to go. We attempted to take the Teleferique (gondola/cable car) we saw, but ended up going in a big loop (but with great views!). We finally made it back downtown, found a place for lunch, then grabbed our bags and made our way to the airport by taxi to catch a flight to Madrid, and from there to Granada (see picture above).

Tomorrow we have tickets to visit the Alhambra in Granada after which we rent a car and head into the Andalusian mountains.