As Far As You Know

The sections of the world map above that are in red indicate the countries that I have been to at some point in my life. A lot of "uncharted" territory still out there for me!

Make your own map of your travels by clicking here. You can make a map of states in the U.S. that you've visited, as well.

A few weeks back, I did the world map. Here is the "states visited" map. The sections of the U.S. map above that are in red indicate the states that I have been to at some point in my life.

Make your own map of your travels by clicking here. You can make a map of countries in the world that you've visited, as well.

Okay, I may or may not be posting for the next two weeks. It all depends on access to Internet cafes. I'll be on holiday in Paris, Scotland, western Ireland, and London. I'll try to snap some pics for the site.

I'm outta here!

Beautiful weather and lingering daylight in the evenings have marked my time in Paris thus far. A few quick observations:

• It's amazing how much better public transport is in Europe than back Stateside. The Metro system here in Paris is fast, cheap, and convenient.
• Walking around with an iPod basically provides a soundtrack for exploring the world's great cities. I had The Streets in my ears while (whilst, as they would say) on the Tube in London the other day and was listening to Berlioz as I walked by Notre Dame yesterday.
• Dvorak keyboards are damned frustrating.
• Paris may be a movable feast, but it's expensive as hell to eat here.

On to Scotland . . .

I've returned after two weeks abroad. Good to travel, good to be home. Regular posting will resume in the next few days.

In an effort to catch up on my lapsed blogging, what follows is an assortment of quick takes on a variety of topical subjects.

John Edwards: Kerry made what was probably the safest choice for a vice-presidential nominee, but one that I think ultimately will help him in November. Yes, the pollsters will tell us that Edwards may not move any of the swing states into the Kerry column--not even North Carolina, probably--but he represents an articulate, charismatic presence on the ticket that could be reassuring to swing voters in various demographic categories that will be crucial in what should prove to be a close general election. The Tar Heel senator has a fascinating life story, coming from humble origins and facing genuine adversity along the way. Of course the GOP immediately attacked Edwards this morning as lacking the experience for the vice-presidency, what with only six years in the United States Senate. This is laughable, given that the man at the head of the Republican ticket boasted exactly six years experience as governor in a state in which that office held little real political power. Moreover, Bush was more or less a failure at everything he attempted in his life before his political career, in spite of all the advantages conferred by Poppy and his friends. In contrast, Edwards was a self-made millionaire who fought corporate wrong-doing and then distinguished himself in Congress by co-sponsoring sweeping reforms such as the Patients' Bill of Rights.

John McEnroe's talk show: Tomorrow night CNBC debuts a new talk show featuring former "Super-Brat" John McEnroe. As an adolescent tennis fan, I always rooted for Mac's greatest rivals: Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors. (Though I never warmed up to Ivan Lendl, so McEnroe occasionally enjoyed my support!) I must admit that I've come around on McEnroe over the years. Maybe he's mellowed; maybe I have. When he started as an announcer on tennis telecasts I found him occasionally amusing but fairly undisciplined as an analyst. Nowadays he's refreshingly insightful, more open-minded (while still refreshingly honest and opinionated), and is capable of substantial slef-deprecating humor. So I am looking forward to seeing what he'll bring to the table as a talk show host. Mac seems to have become something of a polymath, with genuine interests in art, music, politics, sports, etc. He can do no worse in this new role than Dennis Miller, whose show is in the adjoining slot on the cable network; Miller is someone I used to enjoy immensely before his gradual transformation into a right-wing crank (which corresponded fairly precisely with his becoming more or less unfunny).

Spider-Man 2: This film deserves the box office success it has enjoyed the past week. It won't change the world and it not quite perfect, but it's a pretty spiffy summer popcorn flick. Have fun with this one.

Farenheit 9/11: On the other hand, this movie--also a relative box office champ--might, in fact, change the world. Michael Moore's documentary skewers "W" and company pretty effectively. For the most part Moore avoids the heavy-handedness that made me feel sorry for Charlton Heston in Bowling For Columbine. That's not to say there is no point of view here; quite the opposite, the director has conceded. He wears his politics on his sleeve and is unabashed about presenting his opinions on the Bush Administration, the war on terror, the Patriot Act, and the current Iraq misadventure. But for the most part, Moore himself maintains a lower profile in this picture, instead letting the objects of his derision condemn themselves on camera.

Wimbledon 2004: In spite of the seemingly endless rain (that kept me from getting out to the All-England Club while in London during the opening days of the fortnight) this was one of the best Wimbledons in recent memory. Finals weekend was particularly satisfying, with the coming of age of the charming and talented Maria Sharapova in the ladies' championship and the enjoyable and highly competitive Federer/Roddick tilt on Sunday. The sport needs a few more majors with the excitement we saw in SW19 the past two weeks.

Sting in concert: I caught the former Police front man in an outdoor show at Jones Beach last week. He was in exceptionally good voice, sharing the bill with Annie Lennox. I knew it would be a good show when the second song played was one of my Police faves, "Synchronicity II."

Whither Euro 2004? While I was ambling around Paris, Scotland, Ireland, and London in June, I could not escape the football frenzy surrounding the European Cup soccer championship. Every day, there was wall-to-wall coverage in the newspapers and on television. Upon returning to the States, I was struck that highlights of the tournament merited hardly a mention in our papers.

Watching golfer Todd Hamilton survive a playoff to claim the claret jug trophy for winning the British Open at Royal Troon earlier today brought back memories of my time in Scotland last month and two years ago. I flew in and out of Prestwick International in June; the airport is just a couple of miles away from the golf course and planes were visible flying over the tournament all weekend. I also took a ferry from Troon to Belfast in 2002.

On my last trip a few weeks back I met recent Choate grad Jack Fennebresque and his father Kim for an enjoyable evening of conversation and dinner at the scenic Loch Lomond Golf Club north of Glasgow (the club hosted the Scottish Open in 2004). I continued on north to the Isle of Skye where I reconnected with Dan Otto--a friend since the third grade whom I hadn't seen in over twenty years. We had a great time getting reacquainted, though I almost got swallowed whole by a Scottish bog while hiking back from kicking the soccer ball around in the hills.

I snapped the picture above while driving through the Highlands. The scene of a bagpiper doing his thing in front of a spectacular waterfall overlooking a picturesque valley would have been thoroughly charming had it not been for the hat left out to collect the odd quid and the handful of tour buses that had stopped on the roadside with me.

Last thought on Scotland: while rushing back through Glasgow to catch a flight to Ireland last month, I passed a liquor store with what may be the all-time best name for a retail establishment I've ever seen: Ministry of Booze.

Every July, I drive about a dozen students from Connecticut to D.C. as part of the John F. Kennedy Institute program. As we approach Washington, there is a sight that never fails to thrill me. The view of the above structure--a Mormon temple, actually--looming over the highway as we approach it in the early evening each summer is pretty striking, as it's lighted such that it glows an iridescent greenish hue. I'm not the first to think it's a pretty fair substitute for the Emerald City from The Wizard Of Oz. In fact, for years an overpass near the temple displayed a pretty clever spraypaint job: SURRENDER DOROTHY. As we reach the crest of a hill and the spires of the temple appear over the Beltway, the kids on the trip finally realize why I kept referring to "lions and tigers and bears" for the last couple of hours.

The New Jersey Turnpike has made a major improvement to the EZPass system of paying tolls. The EZPass Express lanes make it possible to cruise through the gates without really slowing down. Since the machinery has been upgraded to collect information from the EZPass transponders as traffic passes through at 55 miles per hour, my trip up the Turnpike earlier today was just a bit more pleasant.

My new InMotion speakers, made by Altec Lansing, arrived in this morning's mail. These are designed for the iPod and provide superb sound for such a modestly sized package (the contraption folds neatly into the size of a paperback book, making it ideal for travel). Moreover, the speakers recharge the iPod as it sits in the cradle and also provide a port for an auxiliary audio line (for a CD player or anything else you want to plug in). Power is supplied either by plugging into a wall socket or inserting four AA batteries.

The InMotion speakers retail for $149 but I got a set for $99, including free shipping, from Buy.com; that's a steal for such a well-made iPod accessory.

The wonders of e-ticketing allowed me to print my own boarding pass 24 hours before my flight for Tokyo leaves New York City. Hopefully this will mean a line-free experience at Kennedy Airport tomorrow!

Well I arrived in Japan after 13+ hours on a plane. My experience at JFK Airport was as painless as I had hoped, what with Internet check-in in advance; it was virtually line-free!

A few quick first impressions before my jet-lagged body crashes:

Arriving in August, it strikes me that it's 59 years almost to the date that Japan surrendered to the U.S. to end the Pacific War. The Japanese remain perfectly friendly toward their one-time American conquerers, however.

Good ol' American cultural imperialism was certainly in evidence on the train ride from Narita Airport: along the way into the city, amidst the rice paddies I saw The Sports Authority, am/pm, Toys "R" Us, and of course the ubiquitous Starbucks.

Watching baseball and the Olympics on Japanese television is fun, even if I have no idea what is going on in the commentary. Sport really is a universal language, though. Last time I was here in 1998, I saw the Nagano Winter Games--both in person and on TV--so I guess that makes me a veteran of such spectating.

Wandering through the streets of Tokyo, I felt like I was in a cross between Times Square and the set of Blade Runner. One notable change since I was last here six years ago: apparently you can no longer buy beer from vending machines on the street. Perhaps it's the high school teacher in me, but I always found such easy availability of alcohol to be asking for trouble.

Spent the day poking aroud Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Kamakura, a seaside village not far from Tokyo that was an ancient capital of Japan. I did a LOT of walking today and treated myself to dinner at an Outback Steakhouse in Shibuya before collapsing in a tub back at my hotel.

Some nice features in my hotel room here in Tokyo:

There is a speaker in the bathroom that carries the audio feed from the television. So I can listen to CNN while enjoying a bath or brushing my teeth.

As is the case in many hotel bathrooms, there is a wall-to-wall mirror above the vanity sink, across from the bathtub. What I noticed here is that after a shower, when the mirror is all fogged up, there is a rectangle just above the sink that is somehow fog-free, just where you would want to look for shaving and such. Very cool.

Broadband Internet access in every room. Hence my being able to post this.

While exploring Kyoto today, I found the restaurant I had stumbled on in 1998, Musashi. This place is basically a horseshoe-shaped counter with a conveyer belt running around above, which ferries all manner of sushi, so it was easy to pick off just the things I wanted as they came by. And it's about as cheap as you can find for good sushi; the bill is tabulated by totaling the number of plates at the end of the meal; my lunch cost about 1,300 yen--around twelve bucks--and I had my fill of sushi.

I visited Nara, one of Japan's earliest capitals, and site of Kasuga Taisha--a beautiful Shinto shrine--and Todai-ji, a Buddhist temple housing the Daibatsu (a very famous 53-feet-high bronze statue of Buddha). At the Shinto site, I had my fortune told via omikuji, based on the stick I drew out of a canister, only to find the slip of paper with my fortune on it was labeled "Misfortune." Figuring I'd have better luck with the Buddhists, I tried again later in the day at Todai-ji, but the second slip of paper was headlined (even more harshly) "Bad Luck." Good thing I don't put much stock in that sort of thing, or it might have ruined my day.

I am struck by how good public transportation is in other countries. I have been using a a rail pass in Japan this week, which enables me to travel anywhere in the country via shinksansen, the bullet trains, as well as around Tokyo. As I observed while touring in France and the U.K. in June, in countries that care about public transport, trains are punctual, efficient, clean, and convenient. And unlike my stay in Paris, my hotels in both Tokyo and Kyoto have been mere steps away from the train station, which has minimized the need to lug my luggage through the city--a factor that contributed to my missing my Eurostar train back to Paris (though it was easy enough to take the next departure, it turned out).

I've been given a deluxe insider's view of Tokyo the past day and a half, courtesy of 1992 Choate grad Yasuo Hinoki and his fiancee Aki. Had my first samplng of shabu shabu at lunch today (it's what I would call beef fondue!).

As Frank Sinatra once sang, "It's very nice to go trav'ling/But it's oh so nice to come home." Especially after a 12-hour flight!

My room at The American Club resort hotel out here in Wisconsin may have the best bed I have ever slept on. It's a king-sized bed with a mattress that has the perfect balance between firmness and softness, tons of pillows, and really comfortable sheets.

. . . was the title of an old Police song, one that captures my mood pretty well right now. After my Japan adventure, I spent the last couple of nights in the Midwest and have a pair of nights in the Grand Hyatt in New York ahead of me. The good news is, I think I have gotten over my jet lag.

There's a buzz in the air in the Big Apple. The GOP National Convention is descending on the city just as U.S. Open tennis is getting underway.

I walked through Times Square tonight. Protestors were out in force all over the place, as were New York's finest. (I haven't seen so many police in Times Square since I last spent New Year's Eve there.)

Just a few hours away from a flight to Puerto Rico. I am looking forward to escaping from the sub-freezing temperatures of the Northeast!

I have arrived in Puerto Rico. It's warm but rainier than I had hoped. But I'll be here through Sunday, so ideally I'll have some time to craft a tan that will make everyone at home envious!

For those too young to remember, the picture above is from a TV show called "The Flying Nun" (I couldn't make this up!) that aired from 1967 until 1970. The premise was a novice nun--played by Sally Field--found that her light weight, the shape of her nun's habit, and the winds of San Juan combined to allow her to soar over the city. Really. For three seasons on network television. (Who thought this one up?)

I visted the Bacardi factory across the bay from Old San Juan this afternoon. Getting there reminded me of my time in Sydney in 1998: the ferry and the pier were reminiscent of the ferries from Circular Quay down under. And the Bacardi tour was better than the one I had in the Bahamas in 1989 (I remember riding a scooter all the way to the south side of Nassau just to get there).

Spent much of the day exploring El Yunque, the only rain forest in the U.S. Forest system. It's less than an hour's drive from San Juan and a site with striking waterfalls and amazing biodiversity.

JetBlue was voted the best domestic airline the last three years. Having traveled round trip to Puerto Rico on JetBlue--my first time with the carrier--I can see why. It was a pleasure.

The days are getting longer. The weather is getting warmer. Even though I (reluctantly) left beautiful Florida sunshine this afternoon to endure a miserable Delta flight back to Connecticut (no wonder the airline is flirting with bankruptcy!), the promise of the new spring is upon us.

Whew! I just found my passport after a sudden realization that it wasn't where I usually keep it.

Tonight I fly out of JFK Airport for Rome (via London). From the Eternal City, I head to the west coast of Ireland (again, via London) and then finish with a few days in London.

I'll do my best to find an Internet cafe and update the blog when I can.

I ought to have plenty of pics, too, what with my spiffy camera and my new lenses, though they may not get posted before I return stateside.

Some observations on the trip from New York to Rome:

American Airlines' Terminal 8 at J.F.K. Airport looks like a bus station circa 1962 rather than a modern terminal for a major carrier.

While waiting for my flight, I tried a Diet Coke made with Splenda (rather than NutraSweet). I guess it's a test-marketing thing. I like Splenda (a.k.a. sucralose) in the DietRite sodas, but it didn't do much for me in the Diet Coke.

While on the flight, I sat in front of a mother and son. The latter was probably about 11 years old and spoke with an English accent (his mother seemed to be American). About an hour into the flight he asked his mother if she thought it was a good idae that we were building all of these robots. She seemed non-committal in her reply. Then the boy said: "It's only a matter of time before the robots rise up and enslave mankind." Creepy.

Why are European airports much more civilized in providing luggage carts for free, as opposed to charging three bucks for them as they do in New York?

At Stansted Airport in London, I witnessed a trio of Italian men basically confirming all the worst stereotypes as they repeatedly cut the line while boarding a flight to Rome.

My RyanAir flight gave me a bird's eye view of the eternal city in the afternoon sun. I had clear views of recognizable landmarks such as St. Peter's Basilica and the Colosseum, as well as crumbling ancient aqueducts south of the city.

It sure is convenient to be able to use the Euro in many different countries while traveling in Europe, but it didn't do me much good when the only ATM in Rome's Ciampino airport wasn't working when I needed local currency.

There seem to be a LOT of Americans here in Rome. No doubt they are exploring the Angels and Demons tour of the city!

Conclusion of the day: if you know a reasonable amount of high school Spanish, you can get by in Italy.

After having brunch in an Italian cafe while being serenaded by Bob Dylan, I embarked on a three-hour walking tour of the city, focusing on the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and Piazza Navona. A group of nearly thirty of us were led around by an English-speaking Roman archaeologist/tour guide named Valentina (I recommend Enjoy Rome for English-speaking visitors; the company runs a handful of such tours around the city). In the evening, I got thoroughly lost and ended up walking miles out of the way before finally getting back to my hotel at around 11 p.m. I am now BONE-TIRED and have blisters as a result of seeing most of Rome on foot!

My legs and feet are SO sore from yesterday's adventures that I am putting off my plans to see the Vatican until tomorrow. I can hardly put any weight on my left foot. Instead I'll spend more time recuperating in my hotel room today than I care to. Ugh! Well, I brought some books I've been waiting to dive into, so here goes.

Earlier in the day I was getting worried that I might have somewhow broken my foot. I mean it HURT and I could barely walk on it. I was contemplating the hassles that would entail: dealing with a doctor abroad and all the insurance nightmares that go with that. Not to mention the prospect of being a gimp in rural Ireland and in London over the next week plus! Well I was not content to lie about and convalesce in my hotel room while in one of the world's great capitals for just a few days. So around 5 p.m. I gingerly made my way across the street to the Metro to set out and explore the city some more. I was limping around one of Rome's neighborhoods and no sooner did I stop thinking about the soreness of my left foot than it stopped hurting altogether and I could walk normally. Go figure! Maybe this former altar boy benefitted from the proximity of so many churches? There must have been something misaligned in my foot, a kink which worked its way out with a bit of exercise. Whatever the reason, my mood has picked up considerably!

I did something horribly touristy last night in Rome. I had a craving for a burger, so I went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Huge mistake: had to wait too long for a table, the food was mediocre at best, and it all was horribly overpriced.

I spent the afternoon fighting the crowds in Vatican City. Wednesdays are tough in general, given that the papal audiences in the morning tend to attract pilgrims in the middle of the week. But beyond that, my tour guide said the crowds outside St. Peter's Basilica were the toughest she's seen in five years.

In a few minutes I am off to the airport for a flight back to London. Then first thing in the morning I fly to Shannon and then drive like mad in an attempt to make the 1 p.m. ferry to Inishmore.

Back in Ireland. Actually I am posting this from an Internet cafe in Galway City. I spent most of yesterday on the Aran Islands (Inishmore, actually) with the Choate Irish Literature group and we will spend a night in Doolin before heading down to Kerry to the town of Dingle.

Galway is booming. Ireland arguably has been the greatest beneficary of the European Union. The cities here are more European than ever. Jobs are abundant. The Irish are richer than ever. Shops and industrial parks are being built all over. And the diversity of the population is more evident than before: not just Eastern Europeans anymore, but many more African and Asian faces as well.

After a lovely evening in Doolin, I have arrived in County Kerry for three days in the harbor village of Dingle, allegedly home to Fungi the dolphin. The Kerry peninsula is the westernmost extent of the European continent. What's terrific about this place in June--apart from the exquisite scenery in abundance--is the mild weather and the daylight that lingers well past 10 p.m. In part, it's because we are so far north and in part because this is the most westerly part of the time zone.

After a visit to the Blasket Islands yesterday, my last day in Ireland will be one of leisure. I went to the 10 a.m. Mass in Irish at St. Mary's Church in Dingle this morning. This evening the entire Choate group--31 strong--will have dinner at our favorite Global Village restaurant (hosted by Nuala and Martin, whom we befriended last year) and we'll have the treat of a private concert by the noted whistle and uilleann pipe player Eoin Duignan, something of a local celebrity. The rest of the day I'll poke around the town, shop a bit, and relax with a book or two. I am off at daybreak tomorrow for the Kerry Airport to catch my morning flight to London.

Samuel Johnson wrote "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."

I woke up and had breakfast over three newspapers: The Daily Telegraph, the slimmed-down foreign version of USA Today, and the indispensable International Herald Tribune.

I spent the late morning doing some shopping--mostly music I can't get back home--but I also got custom fitted for some tennis shoes at Harrod's.

After getting lucky picking up a primo theater ticket at the box office, I had lunch near Victoria Station at ASK--which I learned on the squash tour in March is pronunced "A-S-K" rather than "ask."

In the afternoon I made my way out to Wimbledon to take in some grass court tennis action.

The evening activity du jour was Billy Elliot: The Musical, a new offering on the West End. The show was spectacularly good--a very pleasant surprise, as it was my second choice (I got shut out of the Guys and Dolls revival starring Obi-Wan, er . . . Ewan McGregor). On my way home after the performance, I passed by the stage door and who whould walk right by me into a fancy black Rolls-Royce but ELTON FRIGGIN' JOHN! (He wrote the music for this show, as he did for The Lion King.) Sir Elton has had many incarnations over the years, but for someone like me who grew up in the 1970s, he was for a while quite simply the biggest rock star in the world, so it was a thrill to see him up close and personal. I am reminded of my last night in London two years ago, walking home from the theatre on a lovely June evening and meeting Patrick Stewart on the street.

Tomorrow afternoon I fly back to New York and Friday morning I will begin drifting through a series of meetings to mark the beginning of summer school.

I am in the Apple Store on Regent Street in London right now, enjoying my last few hours before heading to Heathrow Airport. It's been HOT in London, so I'm well prepared for the likely muggy weather waiting for me back home.

As I have done the third week in July most years since 1988, I am enduring the combination of heat (90 degress plus!) and humidity unique to the swamp now known as Washington, DC. In my capacity as Director of the John F. Kennedy Institute in Government, I spent today shepherding a dozen students around Capitol Hill (we'll visit the White House and the Supreme Court, as well as other governmental and political sites of interest, later this week).

It's always somewhat exciting to experience life "inside the Beltway" for at least a few days every year. Politics absolutely dominates the culture of the city in a way it does nowhere else I've been. Only in this place do folks talk about the day's lead story in Roll Call with passion.

It was a treat to connect with some familiar faces now working in various capacities in Congress: current Choate student Jeff Berry, an intern in Rosa DeLauro's office; JFK Institute alum Hayden Brockett, now a full-time DeLauro staffer; and recent CRH grad Will Howerton, spending some time in John Kerry's office this summer over on the Senate side.

The evening hours in Georgetown are, in contrast to the days during this excursion, relatively leisurely in pace. This part of town offers a nice range of shops and restaurants as well as air-conditioned accommodations on the Georgetown University campus.

Off this morning to Montreal for a couple of days. I plan to catch some of the Masters Series tennis while up there.

If you have one of the color screen iPods that can display photos, you would be foolish not to download subway maps for New York, London, Boston, Montreal, Hong Kong (and plenty more to come, no doubt) by accessing this nifty site. Well, assuming you plan to be in any of therse cities, anyway!

Off to Boston tonight, then on a plane at Logan in the morning to head for five days of vacation in Bermuda. I'll be there by lunchtime. I should be able to post while I am there, but if this space seems out-of-date, you'll know why.

A few quick hits:

I am spending the night in Boston, right in Logan Airport at the Embassy Suites. It's a great hotel: all the rooms are actual suites, you get a full cooked breakfast included with the room, and each room has high-speed wireless Internet access without a surcharge. And I found a deal on the Web for all of this for about $125.

This is my second trip to Boston in the last few weeks, and both visits have been nostalgic for me. I used to live 20 minutes north of the city and would come in at least once a week. I'd typically park in Cambridge, right on the Harvard campus, and take the "T" all over. Even after moving to Connecticut in 1987 I visited Boston regularly through the mid-1990s--at least a few times a year--but I haven't spent a lot of time up here in recent years. So it's been fun to reconnect.

I finally broke down and picked up the "stick of gum" iPod, to be used while working out. Gotta have every toy, I guess!

I am happy Bill Maher's show is back on HBO after his hiatus, too. Best line of the night: teaching "intelligent design" on the same footing as evolution in public schools is like medical schools treating the stork delivery explanation of childbirth as a viable alternate theory.

I arrived in Bermuda a short while ago. The island is beautiful: the first thing a visitor sees is sparkling clear bright blue water next to the airport. It's quite hot here, without being stifling.

The flight down was a breeze. We were in the air not much more than 90 minutes, I think. I had a row of seats to myself, so there was plenty of space to stretch out a bit. The journey was made easier by my recent acquisition of the Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones, which effectively cancel the background rumble of the jet. While they are pricey, the sound quality is excellent.

The other new toy I put through its paces on the plane was my portable DVD player: the Panasonic LS-55. It boasts 10+ hours of play on a single battery charge, which is enough to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on a long intercontinental flight!

I am about to head out to rent a scooter for the length of my stay here, as it's the most practical way to get around. More about Bermuda later.

• The first thing I saw on the television in Bermuda when I settled into my place was a James Bond movie: Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice, to be specific. A little later yesterday afternoon, Thunderball was playing. Apparently AMC is running a Bond marathon all weekend, which I've been sampling on and off, as the exotic setting here does conjure up a certain Ian Fleming feel!

• The scooter is the way to go in terms of getting around down here. Non-natives can't rent cars and while you can do pretty well via bus and ferry service, with the scooter you can make your own schedule. I've thought of getting one of these back home since I was in college. Maybe the gasoline prices of 2005 will make it easier to rationalize such a purchase!

• Sundays seem to be very quiet here. Most shops are closed and when I drove (scooted?) to the St. George's end of the island in the morning to do some exploring, there were very few vehicles on the road.

• Roger Federer was impressive coming off a six-week layoff after Wimbledon to beat Andy Roddick today. The Swiss player may just be too good for the American to beat with any consistency. (I got to watch this match on the CBS feed, though it was on ESPN Deportes as well.) Anyone willing to bet against Federer in Flushing Meadows next week?

• Since the place I am staying has a full kitchen--it's more like a small apartment than a hotel room--I picked up some salmon burgers to cook. I don't know if these are available back home, but they certainly are good!

Today was literally a day at the beach. The above picture is of Horseshoe Bay Beach, one of a string of beaches on Bermuda's south shore that I checked out today. As one who frequented the white sands of Long Island's south shore while growing up, I am very picky about my beaches and these are first rate: ample white sand, crystal clear blue water at a perfect temperature, the protection of coral reefs just offshore, and and spectacular scenery all around.

Aside from basking in the solar radiation today, I went into Hamilton for the papers and a haircut in the morning and explored the western half of Bermuda and took a ferry back to the center of the island before hitting the beaches.

I am staying in Paget, which is perfectly situated for my needs. A scooter ride into the "city" of Hamilton is less than ten minutes (it's really just a town: the tallest buildings are the huge pair of cruise ships docked on Front Street each day) and the beaches are even closer.

Tomorrow afternoon I head back to "the real world," but not before a last session on the beach in the morning.

I might get used to Logan Airport. My flight back up from Bermuda was great: again, I had a three-seat row to myself. The Delta terminal was clean and comfortable and relatively uncrowded. I suppose flying in and out of Boston could cut the better part of an hour out of a transatlantic flight. And it's really not that much farther from Wallingford than the N.Y.C. airports (and the traffic is rarely a problem, especially now that the central artery takes you right from the Mass Pike to Logan).

I am writing this entry from Buenos Aires.

I arrived yesterday morning after a nine-hour flight from Miami. (I spent the preceding week with my family in South Florida.) Upon arriving in the city, I promptly crashed before heading out to explore. The city is very European in feel. Things are relatively cheap here, the country having seen its economy tank about five years ago; the Argentinean peso used to be pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar, but now a buck gets you about three pesos.

One interesting thought: the southern reaches of South America represent the farthest places that human beings walked to from their prehistoric origins.

Five continents down, two (Africa and Antarctica) to go.

More later.

I am staying in room 1321 of my hotel in B.A. That's on the 13th floor. I thought most buildings didn't have a 13th floor, as it has traditionally been considered bad luck. I guess it's okay here because it's really the 14th floor, since the Argentines count the European way, with the first floor one story up from the ground.

I am fumbling through my Spanish this week, despite six years of formal instruction in the language in junior high and high school. That was a while ago, I guess, and not counting a few days in Puerto Rico a year ago, this is really the first time I've been in an entirely Spanish-speaking environment. I find myself slipping into French (which is odd, as it's a language I did NOT study!) when attempting to communicate with shop clerks and waiters. Last night, I nearly paid a news vendor 29 pesos when he asked me for 19. I am a bit envious of the students at my school who receive really good foreign language instruction and then often are sent to countries where they have to use it.

As I've mentioned before in these cyber-pages, I'm generally a proponent of globalization. I teach a unit on the topic using Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree in one of my courses. The rapid development of computer technology is a major piece of globalization. As one who travels a fair bit, I have benefited greatly in recent years from globalization. Not only has it become easier to get around the globe, I can stay in touch with home with an Internet connection in a cybercafé (or, even better, if I have high speed wireless in your hotel, as I do now!). I book my own flights and hotel reservations after shopping around online. It's easier to feel like a citizen of the world, at least in major cities.

There is a down side to all this, though.

On the day the Choate squash team arrived in England for its U.K. tour last March, I listened to the BBC while driving to our first stop in the country (everyone else was asleep due to jet lag, but of course I was behind the wheel and needed something to keep me from dozing off). There was an interesting report aired about how backpackers from Britain on their gap year--a year off between high school and university--could travel the world without ever really cutting their ties to home. Young Brits could easily stay in touch via e-mail and cell phones, watch Manchester United games virtually anywhere in the world, consume the food they were accustomed to in familiar eateries, and consequently rarely ever have the need to leave the "tourist bubble." That is, they infrequently had to interact with non-English speakers or immerse themselves into truly foreign situations.

Looking at my own travel habits, I can see the trap all too well. I rely on the International Herald Tribune to give me my fix of the New York Times each day, whether I am in London, Rome, Tokyo, or Buenos Aires. CNN is ubiquitous in hotels everywhere. I find myself surfing to familiar sites and even shopping on Amazon while half a world away. I cruise around world capitals with white earbuds playing me a comfortable soundtrack. In my hotel, I can fire up movies from home on my portable DVD player. I am routinely in touch with my work, communicating regularly with colleagues via e-mail even while "on vacation."

I wonder sometimes if it would be far better to cut myself off from the familiar and leave the laptop, the iPod, and the rest of the digital paraphernalia back home. But, then of course, how could I update this blog?

After a late lunch on the waterfront in the Puerto Madera section of town, I saw the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a gathering of protestors who meet weekly on Thursday afternoons in the center of the capital. All of these women had children who disappeared--presumably at the hands of the military juntas--during the Dirty War period of Argentine history. It was pretty moving. The scene wqas evocative of the Sting song, "They Dance Alone (Gueca Solo)," though the lyrics of that piece focus on a similar group in neighboring Chile, rather than Argentina.

Off to Brazil this morning . . .

I checked into my hotel, the Orla, which is right on Copacabana Beach. (The picture above shows the rooftop pool overlooking the beach.)

Brazil has a more Latin feel than did Buenos Aires, which struck me as European in many ways. This city is clearly a beach town, too, or at least the Copacabana and Ipanema sections I explored upon arrival.

I activated the Weather widgets on Dashboard to check the temperatures here and at home. At just after 4 o'clock in the afternoon, it was 97 degrees Farenheit in Rio and 27 in Wallingford--a differential of 70 degrees! I'll confess there is a certain perverse pleasure one experiences in a warm place knowing how cold those he left behind must be!

Apparently New Year's Eve is a BIG deal down here in Rio de Janiero. There will be about 2 million people gathered on the beach right in front of my hotel. There has been a heavy police presence in the area all day long and Avenida Atlantica--the main drag abutting the beach--has been closed to all traffic since late last night. A number of barges just off Copacabana Beach are poised to launch a humongous fireworks display. There are already four enormous cruise ships anchored not far offshore to watch the evening's festivities. There are bands playing music and groups of families and friends with their spots on the beach staked out all day. I am planning on taking a "Polar Bear" dip once midnight strikes, but with the evening air temperature over 80 degrees tonight, it shouldn't be a hardship!

The beach was packed for the countdown and the fireworks display (supposedly 24 tons worth) over the water was spectacular. It is traditional to wear entirely white on New Year's Eve here in Rio. At midnight, the locals throw flowers into the Atlantic as offerings to Yemanja, the Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea and fertility.

I find that when I spend time in cities, I do a LOT of walking. I have blisters on my feet to prove it this week. And I nearly turned my ankle twice two days ago. I remember thinking I had broken a bone in my foot after one long trek in Rome last June. And in Melbourne in 1998, I really did my ankle in after a misstep getting off a tram. But I guess it's a healthier way to get around.

I finally have figured out how to deal with differences in voltage, electrical plugs, and the like when traveling internationally. That said, I tend to carry far too many redundant cables and rechargers with me. I need to look into finding one solution that takes care of my Palm, my portable speakers, my cell phone, etc.

Arrived in Miami from South America at dawn's light this morning. Got to spend some time in Florida today: visiting my folks, soaking up the sun in the 80+ degrees weather, napping, and generally recharging the batteries. I am now marooned in West Palm Beach Airport--thankfully hooked up with free Wi-Fi!--waiting for a 10:00 (!) flight to Kennedy Airport . . . which should get me home somewhere around 3:00 a.m., if I am lucky! And the weather in the Northeast is supposed to be cold, snowy, and miserable, so it won't be a fun drive home.

Left the Long Term Parking lot at Kennedy Airport at 3:20 this morning and arrived back in Wallingford a little after 5:00. I crashed until about 9:30, when I had to get up and get some work done. Fortunately, I didn't have to teach today. Even without jet lag, it will probably take me a couple more days to get back to normal.

It's Winter Long Weekend at school, so I am heading south the Florida for what I hope will be a few days of sunshine!

I drove down to Fort Lauderdale this morning to check out the exhibition at the city's art museum, "Tutanhkamen and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs." Maybe it was seeing Steve Martin host Saturday Night Live last night, but the whole time I was in the museum, I couldn't get his "King Tut" song (from a late 1970s SNL) out of my head as I meandered around all the antiquities.

I was pleasantly surprise to learn I could find the song as a download on iTunes.

I rented a car from Enterprise on this visit to Florida. The clerk offered me a free upgrade to a two-seater convertible. Unfortunately, the weather has been alternately overcast, rainy, or cool since I arrived. It has been fun to lower the top, though, and two different women commented on the vehicle Friday and today while I was driving it. It would be totally impractical for me to own a car like this, but it's been fun to tool around in for a few days.

Off to the airport soon.

I received an email alert about special fares to London Heathrow right through peak season, so I was able to book a round trip flight from Newark for $401 for June--about half of what I paid the same time last year! This was a steal.

The Choate tennis tour of China begins three weeks from today!

I got my new U.S. passport in the mail last week and sent it off to get a visa for my trip to China next week. Passport pictures are inevitably unfortunate, of course. With my sabbatical coming up next year and an around-the-world journey planned, I asked for a 48-page version rather than the standard 24-page issue. I was a few months too early to get the new high tech passports, which have an embedded chip that supposedly will make it even easier to get through immigration lines at airports and such.

This spring I ought to be able to finish the process of obtaining my Irish citizenship, which will enable me to travel through the European Union on an Irish passport. (My grandparents were born in Ireland, which makes me eligible for a Foreign Births citizenship.)

I am heading off to Kennedy Airport for the long flight to Beijing. My flight departs at 3:30 and arrives at 6pm tomorrow. Of course, most of that time differential is crossing the International Date Line. Actual flying time is 13.5 hours.

After 13 hours in the air, the Choate Tennis group arrived in China. After clearing immigration and customs and meeting the rest of our party and our guide, we were taken straight to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. The traditional food turned out to be better than I had expected. Our accommodations are at Capital Normal University; our rooms are sort of a cross between dorm rooms and hotel rooms, but comfortable enough. There's television here, but no channels in English.

Today was a sight-seeing extravaganza: the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and an acrobatic show in the evening. Interspersed between these sights were traditional Chinese meals and some shopping stops.

Overall impressions: Beijing is a BIG city--one that sprawls outward rather than upward. And Mao must be rolling over in his mausoleum now that everyone in the country seems determined to make a buck (or a yuan), especially from Western tourists like us. The street vendors are relentless, offering knock-off watches and Chinese army hats.

We headed north to Badaling to check out the Great Wall this morning. The conditions were windy and frigid, but it was a pretty cool spectacle nonetheless. Back in the city, we visited the Temple of Heaven and had a Peking duck dinner (overrated!) and then watched/slept through a kung fu show that was pretty cheesy.

We left Beijing this morning and arrived in Shanghai in the early afternoon. We settled into our pretty plush accommodations at the Shanghai Racquet Club, an expat community on the outskirts of the city and had some on-court time. This place has all the comforts of home: Western-style food (we had a late dinner at a nearby Papa John's Pizza!), Internet access, and satellite television with a slate of English-speaking options.

After a morning routine of tennis training, the boys and I were taken by our hosts, the Jia family, downtown in the late afternoon. We all got measured for bespoke suits at a tailor shop (about $75 apiece--a tremendous bargain), took some group pictures on the Bund, had a great jiaozi meal, and shopped for cheap (a.k.a. pirated) DVDs in the Gubei district. I picked up the recent releases Elizabethtown and Pride and Prejudice, which I missed in the theaters, as well as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom--all for less than $2 per disc. (I already own the latter, of course; I got another copy just so I could watch the Shanghai scenes again while I am here.) I also bought seasons 1 through 3 of Nip/Tuck, which I have never seen, but understand is quite good. That set me back about $15.

While the boys were training, I went into Shanghai for a while this afternoon. The SRC, where we are staying, runs a free shuttle service into the city. It takes about an hour to get to the heart of town. I spent a few hours cruising around Huaihai Road--a major shopping district. Though I bought nothing, it was good to hit the pavement and get a better feel for the city. In many ways, Shanghai feels like a perfectly modern, economically prosperous city. The language difference obviously gives the place a different vibe than one would find in America or Europe, but I easily could have imagined I was in a Japanese city without much trouble.

I've been able to see far more of the Indian Wells tennis tournament on television here in Shanghai--halfway around the world--than I would have back in the States. Live coverage of the event plays throughout the morning on one of the satellite sports channels. The age of globalization is here!

I used the new features in the updated iLife '06 suite--specifically Garage Band and iWeb--to create a pair of podcasts and a new site for the Choate tennis team. Check it out here.

About to head to Shanghai Hongqiao Airport for a two-hour flight to Beijing, and then a 13+ hour ride to New York. Including time in three different airports and the ride back to Wallingford, I figure I'll be traveling the next 24 hours.

I locked down my (rather expensive) reservations for a room in downtown Sydney for December 31, 2006. I was surprised just how hard it was to nail something down this far in advance, but I suppose this is one of the most desirable places in the world to ring in the New Year.

I spent much of yesterday in New York City, catching the Rangers game at Madison Square Garden--in which the Devils completed their sweep to advance to the semis of the Stanley Cup playoffs--and then watching the hot new Broadway show, The History Boys, in the evening.

The production was one of the best I've seen. As a teacher--and a history and English teacher in particular--I found the play wonderfully provocative. The work is a thoughtful meditation on competing philosophies of education, the role of a teacher, and the very nature of history itself. While there is lot that's uniquely British about the play, there are universal themes here too. It's more than just serious "thee-a-tah," though, as the play is entertaining on many levels, with loads of biting humor on hand. The acting was first-rate and the staging wonderfully effective. The production was a critically acclaimed hit on the West End when it opened in London in 2004 and seems destined to a similar fate in its New York run.

It the mark of a great place that one can move seamlessly through the worlds of sport and art so easily. New York City is such a place. So is Choate.

As the school year at Choate is now winding up, I am able to spend more time preparing for my trip to Africa this summer. I'll be spending the last three weeks of July teaching in Cape Town, and then a few days in the Johannesburg area, which will include some time in a game park. In putting together the readings and syllabus for my course--"Modern Africa and Global Relations"--I've been thinking about the continent more broadly, particularly how Africa figures in the globalization movement. I am looking forward to checking things out for myself.

I checked in online from home--which ideally will save me a wait at the terminal--and I am heading off to Newark Airport for twelve days in Europe.

The photo above is the Parthenon--one of the most famous bulldings (or what's left of it!) in the world. Of course, much of what one wants to see now resides in the British Museum, much to the chagrin of the Greek people! I visited the Acropolis this morning and then strolled through the Ancient Agora on my way to lunch. Pretty heady stuff: walking where Socrates walked!

By the way, my tip for a meal in Athens: O Thanasis near the Monastiraki metro stop: best souvlaki I have ever had!

While in Greece, I figured it would be good thing to get out on the water, taking a page from Odysseus. I don't think Homer's epic involved a high-speed catamaran painted to promote a European wireless company, though!

At any rate, I made it out to Santorini (a.k.a. Thira), one of the Cyclades in the middle of the Aegean Sea. Most of the island disappeared in a volcanic eruption and there is some evidence that Greeks of the classic era may have been referring to Santorini when they described lost Atlantis.

Out here in the middle of the Aegean--or is it the Mediterranean?--I watched one of the most beautiful sunsets from the balcony outside my hotel room tonight. My room overlooks the caldera (a volcanic crater) toward the west of the island of Santorini, which gave me a terrific vantage point from which to see the sun melt into the horizon.

The picture above I snapped at dinner; you can see how the village of Thira is perched on cliffs over the water.

The combination of the architecture at the hotel I am staying at on Santorini (the Majestic, if you make it here--I recommend it) and the cool weather at the end of a warm day gives me a strong sense of deja vu: particularly of spring break in the Califiornia desert or Florida. It dawned on me that I didn't get my annual fix of warm weather in March this year, as I was in China with the tennis team instead. Of course, I don't regret that trip at all, but I did miss the gentle climate I have gotten accustomed to at the end of the winter term. Even in the three years I have taken the Choate squash team on a U.K. tour, it was always followed by a trip south. So I guess I am getting my spring break in the Greek isles this year in June!

I arrived in Delphi tonight (pronounced "del-fee" if you want to sound authentic) after renting a car and driving for a few hours along what the ancient Greeks called "the sacred way." The path was revered because Delphi was considered the omphalos--the navel of the earth, literally, or what we might call the center of the world. Of course nowadays much of the "sacred path" is a motorway!

My first sight of the archaeological site at Delphi was reminiscent of driving to Stonehenge on the Salisbury plain: you know where you are heading, and you have a rough idea of what it will look like, but it's still rather breathtaking how it just appears on the side of the road unexpectedly all of a sudden.

Flying into Amsterdam this morning, it was amazing just how different this land is from Greece. The latter is characterized by a hard terrain: uniformly mountainous, with a dry, arid climate. Holland, on the other hand is wet and lush. And it's clear from the air that it is also as flat as a pancake.

I didn't notice this coming from Paris on the Eurostar two summers ago, but on my trip from Brussels yesterday, just before the train's arrival in London's Waterloo Station, there appeared this huge factory with four smokestacks in the corners--the exact building (and from the train, viewed from pretty much the same angle) pictured on the cover the Pink Floyd's Animals album from the 1970s.

While most of England was watching the final first round World Cup game between the national squad and Sweden, I went our for a late bite to eat in the Picadilly Circus area, near my hotel. I ended up a Yo! Sushi, a chain based on the kaiten approach: each dish is placed on different color-coded plates, indicating different prices, and all the empties are counted up at the end of the meal for the bill. Customers choose their dishes as it passes by on a conveyer belt around the sushi bar. I've eaten at such places in Japan in the past. One has the advantage of selecting just what he wants as it chugs on by.

I'm about to head to Heathrow Airport for the flight back to the States after nearly two weeks in Europe. It's always nice to go home!

After less then twelve hours back home, I left again for Martha's Vineyard, where I am spending the weekend attending the wedding of two Choaties from the Class of 1993: Sylvia Winter and Aaron Baggish--the latter a cross country runner and one-time coaching colleague. I am staying up-island--my favorite part of the Vineyard--at the Menemsha Inn, which has a great view of the harbor and the sunset.

While on Martha's Vineyard, I make a habit of having breakfast each morning at The Black Dog--famous for those ubiquitous T-shirts with the mascot on the front. Hard to beat the Eggs Benedict/Rasputin's Revenge (pancakes with chocolate chips and fresh strawberries) combination!

I'm in Kennedy Airport today, getting ready for a night flight to London and then--after a hellacious nine-hour layover--on to Cape Town for three weeks. After that I'll fly to Johannesburg for a few days, including a bit of a safari, and then back home.

I arrived in South Africa this morning after a lot of sitting on airplanes and in airport languages since midday Monday. It breaks down roughly as follows: eight hours in and around JFK Airport in New York, six hours flying to London, nine hours in Heathrow, and a bit more than eleven hours in the air en route to Cape Town.

First impressions of South Africa have been colored by continuing wet weather. It's winter here, of course, and while the temperatures have been cool but mild, we've seen a lot of precipitation. It has felt more like Ireland than Africa thus far!

I spent the morning visiting potential community service sites for the SACT program in the black and colored townships of Cape Flats: a soup kitchen, a day care centers for AIDS-infected and -affected children, a shelter for homeless teenagers, and a shelter for single women and their children. The poverty in these townships was ovewhelming. In the black townships, typical dwellings were shacks assembled from crates and metal and wood scraps. In the early afternoon, our small group of teachers had lunch in Cape Town at a restaurant that might well have been in New York, London, or Sydney--perfectly modern, comfortable, and upscale. The effect of the day, of course, was the odd juxtaposition of poverty and affluence within a few miles of each other. I suppose one could find similar examples of economic dissonance so close to each other in the States, too. But it's quite jarring.

Our group took the ferry from Cape Town to Robbens Island, which served as the prison for Nelson Mandela from some thirty years until his release in 1990. Pretty moving to see where so many political prisoners were incarcerated simply for opposing apartheid.

The afternoon brought a leisurely exploration of the V&A Waterfront--a touristy shopping area in Cape Town--and the Greenpoint market--what we would call a flea market, with dozens and dozens of vendors set up in a parking lot outside a stadium. I didn't have the energy or desire to engage in haggling, though.

After some 20+ hours sitting on airplanes over three flights, I arrived home this afternoon after a month in Africa.

Internet connection time was elusive the past few weeks, so the blog has suffered, but I'll try to post some trip highlights in the coming days.

I am writing this on my first visit to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The entrance to the underground retail floor is a striking glass cube in the middle of a plaza just off Central Park. One enters either down the spiral stairs or via the cylindrical elevator in the middle of the stairway. A pretty cool place!

What follows is an overdue glimpse at my spectacular visit to Kruger National Park, South Africa, at the beginning of the month. Among the animals we ran into were:

buffalo
bush baby
elephant
giraffe
genet
hare
hippopotamus
impala
kudu
lion
rhino (white)
serval
tortoise
warthog
waterbuck
wildebeest
zebra

Just got back from Times Square, where I saw the flick The Illusionist. (It was reasonably entertaining, if awfully predictable.) You really feel the place is the axis mundi--there's such an energetic vibe to the place. It's like Piccadilly Circus on steroids.

. . . oi, oi, oi!

I ordered tickets for Rod Laver Arena so I can attend the first two days of the Australian Open in Melbourne in January, as part of my round-the-world trip during my sabbatical leave this winter. If I can swing a weekend getaway to Paris over Memorial Day weekend, I may try to complete a tennis Grand Slam of my own by attending all four majors in 2007.

I dropped just over $5000 this morning on a round-the-world fare for airline tickets for my upcoming sabbatical trip. I'll be traveling via United and its Star Alliance partners. Here are the segments:

Hartford to Chicago
Chicago to Tokyo
Tokyo to Hong Kong
Hong Kong to Seoul
Seoul to Sydney
Sydney to Melbourne
Melbourne to Perth
Perth to Singapore
Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok
Bangkok to Kolkata (Calcutta)
Mumbai (Bombay) to Cairo
Cairo to Frankfurt
Frankfurt to Barcelona
Madrid to Munich
Munich to London
London to Toronto
Toronto to Hartford

I am using a cool little application called Indy Jr. to chart my travels online in anticipation of creating a mini-site for my upcoming round-the-world trip. I've mapped my whereabouts in 2005 and 2006 here.

After getting home at about 10:30 p.m. last night, having spent most of the day up in Exeter, New Hampshire with the squash team, I had to get packed for a two-week swing through California and Miami. As my flight is scheduled for the ungodly hour of 6:05 this morning, I figured I could take my time, as going to bed would be pointless (and possibly a costly error if I were to sleep through my alarm). While driving up Interstate 91 at 3:30 in the morning, I noticed how unusually free of traffic the highway was. I was reminded of driving through the night on other trips I've taken: down the Pacific Coast Highway in California, from Sydney to Melbourne, and from Heathrow Airport to the northernmost tip of Scotland. I sorta like staying up late to drive, then crashing for a couple of hours on the side of the road.

Anyway, I am heading to San Francisco via Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles. Hopefully the warmer weather will knock out this cough that has been lingering in my system the last week or so.

After three flights, I have arrived in the Bay Area. I am staying near the airport, south of San Francisco proper, but close enough that I can drive up the 101 and be in the city in less than fifteen minutes. I paid homage to the local In-N-Out Burger and drove along the Embarcadero and around the North Beach section of town. The city is bigger than I remember it, but beautiful at night. It's a bit colder than I expected, but then again, this is not Southern California.

I spent most of the day on the go, ambling around downtown (had to check out the Apple Store, of course!), driving through the Presidio, and then checking out Berkeley (first time there) and Palo Alto (I drove around the Stanford campus). I haven't been in the area since 1992, and even then was just here for a quick stop. Highways are a big deal here, but the traffic is nowhere near as overwhelming as it is in the L.A. vicinity.

Slept in this morning, which did wonders for getting rid of the last of this cough I've had since before Thanksgiving. I drove downtown around 11:30 a.m. I tried to visit my sister, who works in the Ferry Terminal, but we did not connect. I did visit with three old friends, however: one over lunch, one mid-afternoon, and a third over dinner down in Palo Alto. It's nice to have the time to do stuff like this without the constant pressure to be somewhere.

Note to self: when heading into San Francisco during a weekday, take the BART rather than paying nearly $30 for just a couple of hours in a parking garage!

Just got back to my hotel after parking by the beach and watching the sun slowly sink into the Pacific Ocean (at 4:51 p.m.--ugh!--but with the winter solstice not far away, the days soon will be getting longer!). After a leisurely morning, I spent most of the afternoon exploring the neighborhoods of San Francisco. It's a special city. I was once told by one who had been all over the world that the three most beautiful cities are Cape Town, Sydney, and San Francisco. Nothing I've experienced the past few days would convince me otherwise (and I've spend some enjoyable time in the other two cities, too). The proximity of the hills and the water, the spectacularly scenic views all over the city, the energy and diversity of the people, the tolerant atmosphere, the tremendous range of cultural offerings, and the mild climate are all assets.

I was thinking of spending today at Yosemite Park, but a bit of research online suggested this was not the best time of year for such a trip (some of the main park roads are already closed for the winter).

I head back into the city tonight to meet 1993 Choate Tennis captain Jason Hancock for dinner. Then I am off early in the morning across the Golden Gate Bridge and up to the Napa Valley for a 10 a.m. winery tour and tasting session at Shafer Vineyards. Tomorrow night I fly to Los Angeles, where I'll spend a couple of days before going to Anaheim for the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association annual conference for athletic directors.

Just got in from a meal at Burma Superstar Restaurant (on Clement Street near Fourth Street in San Francisco). The food was delicious. Given Burma's shared borders with India, China, and Thailand and its proximity to Vietnam, it's not surprising that those countries' influences were strong in the cuisine, but Burma clearly has its own distinct twist on food. This restaurant is highly recommended, though it's likely you'll have to wait for a table.

. . . in which the blogger goes through a Sideways phase--at least for a few hours.

I visited Shafer Vineyard in Napa Valley for a tasting session, which was fun, but probably mostly lost on me. The other five visitors seemed much more attuned to the nuances of wine than I, though it was a good exercise to compare merlot with cabernet and syrah. I liked the wines I sampled, though not enough to drop $190 for the top-of-the-range bottle.

The weather was wonderful--atypical for what I'm told is usually the rainy season in wine country. I gather it's off-season for the tourist crowd, too, which made my visit more enjoyable.

Got the to San Francisco Airport pretty early and thought I might be able to catch an earlier flight to L.A. Turned out my flight, scheduled for 6:50 p.m., was going to be delayed by two hours. The American agent managed to switch me to a United flight leaving at 5:08, which got me in long before I'd have left on my original schedule!

Well, that title is pretty hyperbolic, but I felt like one of the guys on Entourage today, in that I spent my morning and afternoon in Los Angeles with very little to do and all day to do it. I drove over to Santa Monica and spent a few hours strolling around the Third Street Promenade and then checked out Hollywood for a bit in the afternoon. The thing about life in L.A. is that it seems you spend half your day in traffic. The places one wants to go are pretty spread out and there is no decent public transportation to speak of. At least it's pretty warm: I spent the day in shorts and a T-shirt.

Drove down the road this morning and checked into the Anaheim Marriott, adjacent to the convention center hosting the 37th Annual Conference of High School Athletic Directors. I am about to head into a four-hour workshop (the first of four I'll attend over the next three days) in preparation for a certification exam I'll take Tuesday morning.

Up and at 'em today to get the early jump on Disneyland, my first visit to the park since 1970!

After spending the heart of the day exploring Disneyland, I drove through Newport Beach and Laguna Beach before heading back to Los Angeles for my early morning flight to Miami.

Just arrived in Miami and the first thing that hit me when I left the airport was HUMIDITY. It's reasonably warm here, but humid in a way California was not.

Anyway I am staying at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa, which is pretty plush. I effectively checked in without using valet parking or the bell staff. I am here for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Coaches Convention (I am an Auxiliary Member) through Saturday night.

I suppose that, as a pretty seasoned world traveler, this really shouldn't impress me anymore, but I am amazed that I can eat dinner in Miami and be back in Connecticut three hours later. The jet age still boggles my mind!

Tomorrow I begin my round-the-world trip. I'll head west, and so will lose a day crossing the Pacific, but will gain it back in pieces over the next two months. The idea is to visit places I haven't been before (other than Australia, where I spent much of my last sabbatical in 1998; I'll be there in early January for a few weeks) such as Southeast Asia, India, Egypt, and Spain. I'll finish up with a couple of days in London, which means I'll have spent time in my five favorite cities during my four-month sabbatical: London, New York, San Francisco, Sydney, and Tokyo (the latter only on a brief layover, unfortunately).

The world tour begins.

I am in Bradley Airport, getting ready to head to Hong Kong via Chicago and Tokyo. I'll update when I arrive.

Until then, Merry Christmas everybody!

I have arrived in Hong Kong, having spent most of Christmas Day in the air and having lost most of the 26th to the International Date Line. No Boxing Day for me this year!

On the first leg of my journey--from Hartford to Chicago--I thought it would be good to come up with a ranking system for the various air segments I’ll be flying in the weeks ahead. At first I figured there should be three categories: good, mediocre, and abysmal. Then I concluded I should add another rating at the high end for those times when you a get a row to yourself or similar such good luck. Little did I expect what happened to me in O’Hare Airport: I was summoned to the desk at the gate and bumped up to Business Class for my United flight from Chicago to Tokyo! And then the same thing happened again in Narita, for the final segment to Hong Kong! I had been bumped up to First Class once before--around 1991, I believe--on a Savannah to Hartford flight after spring break with the tennis team. That was nice for a relatively short trip, but these flights became worlds better because of the upgrades. I mean, if you are going to get a free upgrade, there’s no better time than a transcontinental flight! Here are a few of the advantages: significantly more room (in the seat itself, in the space between you and your neighbor, and in front and behind the seat), a much more comfortable chair--one that reclines to an acute angle for better sleeping, far better food and service, no charge for alcoholic beverages, a choice of free newspapers, less competition for the onboard lavatories, and first exiting privileges upon arrival. I concede I did adopt a certain air about the “great unwashed masses” behind me in the plane while sitting in the lap of luxury up front. I hope I have such good luck again on this round-the-world trip.

Anyway, after clearing immigration and customs and arranging transport to my hotel in the city, it’s now early in the morning on the 27th and I am going to crash.

I am staying in a great boutique hotel, the Lanson Place, in Causeway Bay. There is complimentary wireless access in all the rooms, but apparently the Internet is down--it worked last night when I arrived--due to an offshore earthquake that damaged some of the undersea cables. (I thought the Internet was designed to deal with this sort of disruption, but access is down all over Asia. Go figure.) So I’ll have to wait to post this blog entry.

I spent much of the late morning and early afternoon poking around Causeway Bay, which is a vibrant neighborhood. The architectural juxtapositions in the city are stark: gleaming glass and steel skyscrapers sit next to run-down old buildings with unit air conditioners and drying laundry everywhere you look.

Public transportation is varied (subway, buses, trams, and ferries), cheap, and efficient in Hong Kong. Taxis are a reliable and cheap way to get around, too.

I met up with my advisee Greg Van in the late afternoon; he showed me the sights in the central business district, and then we headed uphill to his home for an enjoyable dinner with the extended Van family.

Much of today was spent on a boat with the Van clan, heading out of the Aberdeen harbor for an enjoyable day on the water and visits to a pair of fishing villages. Greg was playing in a golf tournament, so Geoff '10 and his mom--not to mention the aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends on board!--played host to me. The day was a great chance to see a different side of Hong Kong, one most tourists probably never see.

I met up with Charles Depman ’06, who is spending a gap year in China and popped down to Hong Kong for the holidays; we took the Star Ferry across the harbor to Kowloon and explored the Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district and enjoyed a good sushi lunch on Nathan Road. Charles and I agreed that Hong Kong feels like a cross between Shanghai and Tokyo in some ways.

After Charles connected with one of his Choate classmates, I took the tram up to the Peak to check out sunset over the city from an incredible vantage point (higher than the skyscrapers filling the skyline in the picture above). Hong Kong at night is an absolutely incredible light show and the view from the Peak is not to be missed as day turns to night.

Departing via the Hong Kong Airport was a dream. I checked in with my airline and dropped off my bags at Central Station in the city, and then had a leisurely ride out to the airport on an express train. The Hong Kong Airport still feels new and looks like a dream. It’s sensibly laid out and easy to navigate. I wish all airports were as good. By the way, I am blogging now from the Seoul Incheon Airport en route to Sydney and this seems like a pretty nifty airport as well!

I am now in Sydney, Australia, having arrived just after 8 a.m. on New Year's Eve. I've now visited six continents in 2006 (and will do the same in the first three months of 2007, by the way). I don't know if I'll ever make it to Antarctica, though.

I love this country and this city: everything feels entirely comfortable. I checked in at my hotel early and my room wasn't quite ready, so I had a couple of hours to wander around downtown before settling in. The Westin, where I am staying the next three nights, is an upscale hotel in the center of the business district, just a few blocks up from Circular Quay (which is the main ferry terminal in Sydney, located right in between the city's two most famous landmarks: the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House). In fact, I can see a slice of the Harbour Bridge from my room!

The modernity of a city like Sydney can lead one to forget just how remote this continent is from the rest of the world. For example, I have yet to be able to find an International Herald Tribune anywhere in Sydney, even though it's widely available throughout Europe and Asia, for instance. I had no luck finding American newspapers in South Africa six months ago, either, so maybe it's a south of the equator thing?

I took the overnight train to Brisbane, the city lodged between the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast north of Sydney. When I booked a berth in the sleeper car yesterday morning, it looked like I'd have the place to myself. Instead I would up with a bit of a crazy old Australian guy to share the space with. I knew things were a bit off when I found two garbage bags on the floor of the compartment when I boarded; as I went to move this trash into the hallway, a grizzled fellow banged on the window, indicating I should leave the bags in place. I first thought he was a train worker, whose job it was to clear the trash. When he came on board, though, it was clear that these garbage bags were his luggage! Anyway, the guy talked non-stop about all sorts of details of his life history until I got my iPod headphones in place an hour into the journey. I survived the trip, even though we were awakened at 2:30 a.m. to change trains because there was something wrong with a screen on the engine, whatever that means. No worries, as they say down here.

Here is a map of where I've been and where I am going on this four-month sabbatical:

Here is a bigger version of the map.

I am renting a car and heading out with no specific plans before my train leaves Brisbane for the ride back to Sydney on Sunday afternoon. I'll either head north to the Sunshine Coast or south to the Gold Coast or both or perhaps just head west into the bush. We'll see.

After some automotive bushwacking through the Glass House Mountains and some beautiful scenery around Maleny, I arrived at the Sunshine Coast in southeast Queensland. I am staying in Mudjimba, just north of Maroochydore and Mooloolaba, just east of Bli Bli, and just south of Eumundi and Noosa. (Aboriginal names are pretty common here, as you can see, much as Native American place names are all over New England.)

The entire area is focused on beach culture. Surfers, swimmers, and sunbathers dot the Pacific coast, especially this time of year, as Australian schools are closed for summer vacation and many families are traveling on holiday.

When I got up this morning and checked my e-mail, there was a message from the iTunes Music Store alerting me that the latest episode of The Office was available for download. Staying in touch with favorite shows back home like this is a relatively recent treat; certainly I couldn't do it during my last sabbatical trip in 1998.

Earlier in the week, I downloaded from iTMS an episode from the Discovery Atlas series on the Discovery Channel, one called "Australia Revealed." The overview of the country is nearly two hours long--but still only $1.99!--beautifully photographed in high definition, and narrated by Russell Crowe. I was turned on to the series by another Discovery Atlas episode ("China Revealed") on DVD that I was given for Christmas by a cousin; I watched this documentary on my portable Panasonic player on one of my flights. It's a great series. You can see it in all its splendor on the Discovery HD network, if you get it. Or you can order the DVDs for about $20 or download episodes from iTunes Music Store for $2. Here's the link to "Australia Revealed":

The Australian newspapers reported with glee that the local currency had tied its record strength relative to the American dollar. It's bad enough I get whacked on the exchange rate every time I go to western Europe, but now it's happening here, too!

I'll be driving back to Brisbane shortly to catch the train to Sydney, which will arrive early Monday morning. Let's hope I don't share the compartment with the same guy I did on the way up!

Arrived in Sydney on the overnight train just after 7 this morning and checked into my hotel, which is adjacent to the rail station.

This trip was much better than the one a few days before, as I had the compartment to myself. I watched Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on my portable DVD player and slept well in spite of all the creaking and croaking of the train car as it made its way south.

I picked up my passport today at the Indian Consulate downtown and then brought it over to the Vietnamese Consulate in Darling Harbor. (I am getting tourist visas to both countries.) The Vietnamese office was a far more pleasant experience: a shorter wait for service, a shorter interval for processing my visa, and it's less expensive, too. In fact, I'd have paid $70 in either the U.S. or Australia for the visa, but that turns out to be at least 20% cheaper here due to the exchange rate. Plus because I handled it myself, I avoided doubling the cost by using an expediter, which I would have had to do back home.

This morning, I walked over to Darling Harbor's IMAX theater to see The Mystery Of The Nile. As I am scheduled to be spend some time on the Nile myself just a few weeks from now, I thought this would be a good preparation for my visit to Egypt. The ads for the film are a bit misleading, as the film is much less about the historical aspects of Egyptian culture along the river (pyramids, tombs, etc.) than it is about an adventure-filled modern-day rafting trip from the source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia down to the river's mouth in Alexandria. Still, the photography was stunning in the big film format.

I picked up my visa at the Vietnamese consulate this afternoon, so I am now all set with clearances for the remainder of my trip. The rest of the countries I am visiting either don't require Americans to obtain a visa or will issue one upon entry.

According to my Dashboard widget, these are the temperatures for today here and at home (in Farenheit, of course):

Sydney, New South Wales:
low: 75°
high: 90°

Wallingford, Connecticut:
low: 24°
high: 36°

That's why I'm here!

After the film, I headed over to Bondi Beach to take in the sights and have a quick dip in the Pacific Ocean. This beach is iconic in Australian culture.

If you remember the very first version of the iMac, introduced in 1998--the breakthrough machine that Steve Jobs used to turn Apple around, the one with the "hockey puck" mouse--its color was labeled "Bondi Blue" after the Sydney beach.

In my last night in the city, I took the "harbor lights cruise" which left Circular Quay at 8 p.m., just before the sun set to the west of the city. The 75-minute ride around the harbor showed off many of the neighborhoods all around the harbor and provided great views of the Opera House and Harbor Bridge, both of which were wonderfully illuminated. Mother Nature coöperated by providing an electrical storm to the west, which provided some atmospheric lightning that looked pretty cool above the lights of the city.

Off to the airport and Melbourne!

After a short--one hour--flight, I arrived at the Melbourne airport. This was my first time there, as in 1998 I drove to the city from Sydney (through Canberra) and I left on a train bound for Adelaide. My driver from the airport to my hotel spent the trip telling me just how much better in every possible way Melbourne was than Sydney.

I am now off to the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club for the finals of the AAMI Classic featuring Roger Federer and Andy Roddick.

Having spent time in Australia on both my sabbatical trips, in 1998 and 2007, I was reflecting today on the differences between the experiences that have resulted from technology.

Certainly the Web and e-mail had become common by '98, but my access to them while abroad was pretty rare. Basically, I was dependent on Internet cafés to touch base with folks at home and catch up with sports scores and such back at school. I was able to connect perhaps twice a week, if lucky. This time around I am traveling with my laptop and have been able to get in-room broadband access at each of my hotels thus far.

Communications programs like Skype and iChat have made it practically free to stay in touch with people back in the States in real time conversations. This was unheard of nine years ago.

I've been able to entertain myself on this trip, both with with my portable DVD player and with television shows I downloaded to my iBook from my DVR before I left home. Even better, I've been able to keep up with recent shows that have aired while I've been abroad, such as episodes of The Office and 30 Rock, by downloading them via the iTunes Music Store. I am looking foward to staying up-to-date with 24 and Battlestar Galactica and Heroes and Lost when they resume new episodes, too. And I admit one of the benefits of being out from under the firewall of an academic community is unimpeded access to BitTorrent sites and other file sharing networks to get media.

Also, the iPod phenomenon has changed my interaction with my environment. I am able to wander city streets or cruise through stores to the beat of my own private soundtrack. I try not to use the iPod too much in this manner so I don't miss out on the local soundscape, but there are times it's nice to retreat into a familiar, comfortable song in a strange place.

I didn't attend the tournament today, but the coverage is extensive on both Channel Seven and one of the Fox sports channels here in Australia. Today was overcast and MUCH cooler than yesterday's sauna-like conditions. I explored the downtown area leisurely and generally took it easy. Tomorrow morning I fly to Perth.

I am now on the western coast of Australia, on the Indian Ocean. My hotel is in the city center. It's a smallish city--especially compared to Melbourne and Sydney, with just a few skyscrapers and an extensive outdoor pedestrian mall (like the one I remember in Adelaide).

I rearranged my Egypt plans, visiting a travel agent here in Perth and booking a tour that will cover Cairo and the sights around Luxor and Aswan for the week I will be in the country. This way all of my hotel, transport, and sight-seeing will be arranged for me. I'm usually skeptical of these set-ups, but I concluded this approach will be a lot easier, especially after working my way through India on my own itinerary.

I got my hair cut this afternoon, so it will be maintenance free for the rest of the trip. The barber was a friendly guy who explained to me that western Australia is in boom times right now, largely because of the Chinese demand for raw materials. It's a huge mining area around here and the locals are benefitting from the construction boom in the Middle Kingdom.

I called the airport shuttle service to arrange my trip back to the airport tomorrow morning for my flight to Singapore. It's an 8:15 departure, so conventional wisdom would have me at the airport (about 20 minutes away from the city center) a bit after 6 a.m. Unfortunately, the 5 a.m. shuttle doesn't go to the international terminal, so I've been asked to take the 4 a.m. trip--UGH! The woman on the phone was unhelpful; when I asked how far apart the domestic and international terminals were (thinking I could sleep a little later and just walk to the other terminal) she said she had never been to the airport. This is someone whose job it is to arrange airport transportation! So I've got my bags all packed already and two alarms set for 3:40 a.m.

I am back in the northern hemisphere (just barely)!

Aside from the absurd 4:00 a.m. shuttle pick-up (compounded by the fact that my 8:15 flight was listed as a 9:15 departure when I got to the airport, supposedly on account of daylight savings time--which meant I easily could have slept in and taken a later shuttle) the trip from Perth to Singapore was quite pleasant. The woman at the check-in counter not only got me an aisle seat, but put me in an otherwise empty row so I could stretch out and be comfortable. The Singapore Airlines service was excellent, with good food and a choice of periodicals on board the plane (a rarity nowadays); I digested the latest issues of The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Time, National Geographic, and Conde Nast Traveler.

Upon arriving in Singapore, I cleared immigration and customs quickly and took the train into the city to Orchard Road, the shopping district and the location of my hotel. The walk from the station to my hotel gave me the impression the whole city was one big shopping mall, but I think that's a function of this particular neighborhood. Still, there were a range of shopping options, from the "flea market" feel of electronics vendors to upscale department stores.

One other thing: it's incredibly humid here. Australia was warm, but never got as humid as today in Singapore is. It just started pouring, so maybe things will get more comfortable once the rain breaks.

I met up with former student and tennis captain Ming Ong '05, who took me to his house for dinner (we stopped for ice cream on the way and I picked up the last two issues of Entertainment Weekly--one of my favorite guilty pleasures back home--in a shop). After dinner we polished off half a bottle of scotch (!) and then went out clubbing--not a typical night in Wallingford for me. One of Ming's friends was celebrating a birthday at the fashionable Ministry Of Sound, and I lasted until about 1 a.m. when my sleep-deprived state led me back to my hotel via a taxi to crash.

I connected with a current applicant to Choate--a tennis player--who had contacted me via e-mail in the fall. He met me at my hotel this afternoon and he and his mother drove me around the city a bit to see the sights and then treated me to high tea at the Ritz-Carlton, a very Anglophile experience in an enjoyable setting with all sorts of sweet treats for consumption. It was a pleasant meeting.

Earlier in the day, I explored the shopping on Orchard Road. Lots of what's there is typical of what you'd find in a good U.S. mall: a Borders bookstore, an Apple store, a Nike store, etc.

Singapore seems as though it would be an easy place for an expatriate to live.

. . . or good afternoon, actually, since it took me an hour to get through the immigration line at the airport here in Saigon!

It was a short flight here from Singapore. It looks like they are building a new terminal complex at the airport, but the one I went through surely wasn't it. After picking up my luggage--which had been removed from the carousel during my interminable wait in the arrivals hall--I took out 1,000,000 dong from the ATM (a bit over $60), arranged a taxi, and left the building to find hordes of people waiting outside, as if the Beatles had arrived in New York City for the first time. (Interestingly, this is the first country on my trip to use a currency other than the dollar.)

The ride across town to my hotel was an adventure in itself. The streets were choked with cars, trucks, bicycle-driven carts, and more motor scooters and light cycles than I thought existed on the planet. I saw literally thousands of them. And not one helmet! It was pretty common for folks to cover their mouths and noses with a bandana of sorts, which made it look like we were driving through groups of bandits. The rules of the road here must be more like suggestions. It felt like Mr. Toad's wild ride, in that more than once I looked ahead to see a couple of cycle riders heading straight toward us in our lane, only to veer off at the last second. There were precious few traffic lights, meaning negotiating intersections, plazas, and roundabouts had an "every man for himself" feel to it. But people seemed used to it and I got to my destination in one piece.

The hotel is very comfortable, clearly a place that caters to Western business travelers. Things are dirt cheap in this country: the taxi, meals, Internet access in the hotel.

When I settled into my room, I tuned the television to Star Sports (an international ESPN network) to catch the tail end of Roddick's one-sided win over Mardy Fish. This advances Roddick to the semifinals, where he'll likely face Roger Federer.

I am about to head out to check out the local sights.

My hotel runs a free shuttle twice an hour down to the central business district in town, which makes it convenient to check out the city. Unlike the more developed Asian cities like Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, or Singapore, there are very few skyscrapers here. My hotel is the tallest building in its district (Saigon is divided into a number of districts) and even in the center of the city, there are only a handful of ] hotels and office buildings with more than, say, 6-8 floors.

I still can't believe the traffic. Moving through town in a van is like a shark moving through the ocean, surrounded by schools of fish (scooters) heading in seemingly all directions. It would be madness to rent a vehicle here; I can't imagine crossing the street, let alone driving on one! Vehicles go wherever they want, cutting across the road with impunity. Of course, might makes right, so the bigger vehicles wind up getting the right of way. And there are SO many motorbikes; they are what bicycles were in Beijing 25 years ago (or what cars are on the Southern California freeways today!).

You can still detect the French influence in the city, with its broad, tree-lined avenues and older buildings reminiscent of the French Quarter in New Orleans.

I arrived in Bangkok at the impressive new airport. My experience getting to the hotel was a bit difficult due to the language barrier with the driver. After some confusion as to which part of town the hotel actually was in--I had to boot up the iBook in the taxi to look up the address--once we got to the right road he kept insisting we were at my hotel every few buildings, but I knew the name was wrong. Luckily I spotted the President Solitaire around a bend as we backtracked and am now settled into pretty plush digs.

The dominant feature of my room is a huge flat-screen television and I got to the room just in time to catch the start of the Federer-Roddick semifinal from Melbourne. I guess this will delay my getting out and about to see Bangkok.

The part of the city in which I am staying--Sukhumvit Road--has a large population of expats, and hence good shopping, restaurants, and hotels. The streets are full of vendors and this is most apparent in the range of aromas that assaults you as you pass the various options for street food. All kinds of knock-off T-shirts, bags, CDs, and DVDs are on offer. As I walked into the city center--which is dominated by a few huge, modern shopping malls--the presence of vendors seemed to drop off and Bangkok looked much more similar to big cities back home.

The BTS Skyway is a cheap and convenient form of public transportation. It only covers limited territory, but it happens to serve my needs well, given where I am situated.

Yes, admittedly, it's a touristy thing to do, but I enjoyed a good dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Siam Square. Sometime you just need some good ol' American food. This restaurant happened to feature far more reasonable prices than its counterparts.

I'm all packed up and about to say goodbye to the City of Angels in the Land of Smiles. Next stop: India.

I left the shiny new airport in Bangkok and arrived in Calcutta at the dumpiest airport I've ever seen in a major city. The small international terminal was state of the art . . . for about 1961. No jetway, so we had to deplane out on the tarmac and walk in. Clearing immigration took about two minutes, so the law of averages meant, of course, that I had to wait at least half an hour to get my checked baggage off the barely-functioning carousel. Then it turned out there was no ATM in the international terminal and a hellacious line to change money at the one place still open for business at that hour on a Satuday night. So I hoofed it over to the domestic terminal and found an ATM and booked a taxi to my hotel.

On my way out of the the terminal I was besieged by men wanting to carry my bags and children begging for a handout. The taxi cab itself must have been fifty years old--no joke. And driving into the city I began to wonder if I should head back to the airport and leave this place. All I can say is that Calcutta at night looked like a post-apocalyptic nightmare: what a city might look like in a Mad Max movie. Traffic was chaos; apparently you can do whatever you want on the roads in India so long as you honk your horn repeatedly. Thus I was serenaded by a cacophony of horns throughout the 25-minute trip. The infrastructure of the city appeared to be falling apart. What was once the seat of the British raj seemed to be in shambles. Linguistic difficulties with the driver--who allegedly was speaking English--meant it took us a while to get to the destination, even though I had written down the address for him. My hotel turned out to be an oasis of peace in the center of a strangely disconcerting city.

I'll concede the hotel here in Calcutta is quite pleasant: great service, Star Sports on the television to keep up with the final weekend of the Aussie Open, decent food. But honestly I feel trapped in my hotel, because there's really not much worth seeing in the neighborhood, other than lots of people looking to separate me from my cash by selling rides or wares, or just by begging.

My ride to the airport is ready, so I have to leave the men's final in Melbourne at 4-all in the first set. Gonzalez has been able to stay with Federer thus far, but Gonzo doesn't look as fearsome as he did in his last few matches and I am sure Federer has another gear (or two) that he can tap when things get tight. We'll see.

Well, by light of day, Calcutta was not quite the Dantean vision I had seen the night before. The city was still pretty unimpressive, but not quite a circle of hell. And there was a bit of striking rural scenery to be had en route to the airport.

The domestic terminal at Calcutta was so crowded there was no place to sit once I checked in and cleared security. My flight was late and was slowed by strong head winds, so I arrived in Delhi about two hours behind scheduled. Fortunately, my hotel had someone there to meet me and transport me into the city. My initial view of the place was that while it's not quite modern by Western standards, it's much better than what I saw on a similar drive into Calcutta.

Upon arrival at my hotel in the Karol Bagh section of New Delhi, I was told it was overbooked but that they could accommodate me at another property just around the corner. The manager threw in a free dinner and breakfast, and at that point I was happy just to have a place to crash, so I told him it would be no problem. He told me to move back to the main hotel in the morning.

I had breakfast on the rooftop of my hotel, which provided a fine vantage point to observe just how horrible the air quality is here. The nonstop blaring of horns--which would have bothered me all night if I were a light sleeper--is something one gets used to, I guess. I got to read all about Federer's 10th Slam title victory--most of which I missed while travelling--in the local papers over breakfast.

I finally got an adapter from the hotel so I could recharge the iBook and my iPod. None of the plugs I brought with me fit the sockets here--not even the one from South Africa, which I thought would do the trick. After a few false starts, I got the wireless Internet connection working as well, so I am back in business on the technical side of things.

I took the Metro down to Connaught Place late this afternoon to check out the city center. It's nice enough--certainly cleaner and more presentable than Karol Bagh, where I am staying--but not really anywhere close to a place like Singapore or even Bangkok. Hard to believe India is being touted as the next big economic power along with China; from my vantage point, it seems there is still a long way to go here.

I actually have booked two hotel rooms tonight in two different cities. I am keeping most of my stuff--including the iBook--here in New Delhi, but I am taking a late afternoon train to Agra (almost a four-hour trip) and will stay at the Trident Hilton there. It's too much of a hassle to pack up all my gear and schlep it on the train, only to come back to the same hotel tomorrow night. So I am taking only what will fit in my knapsack. The object is a sunrise viewing of the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately, my return train doesn't leave Agra until 6:50 p.m., so I'll have time to kill after the Taj.

Got up early this morning to get to the Taj Mahal before sunrise. Though there was a bit of fog, as it burned off, I managed to take some photos in the morning light. No doubt the highlight of my time in India thus far.

Agra is where I spent last night and most of today. "Agro," on the other hand, is British slang for aggravation.

The city--town, really--of Agra was a pleasant excursion and seeing the Taj Mahal bright and early really made the trip worthwhile. My hotel was modern and comfortable and I spent most of the afternoon there reading and watching episodes of The Wire before I had to catch the train back to New Delhi.

Where the agro kicks in is the feeling that foreigners here are regarded an easy mark for unscrupulous taxi drivers and their associates. Case in point: when I got back to Delhi tonight--at another station in town than the main one I left from yesterday (which conveniently was on the Metro system)--coming off the platform an aggressive young man was pushing his taxi on me for a fare of 750 rupees. Sensing a rip-off, I was smart enough to fend him off (though he was relentless). He lowered his price nearly by half, to 400, as I walked toward the competition. Sure enough, when I found the pre-paid taxi stand, where rates in the city are standardized, the fare turned out to be 125 rupees (about $1.50)! Even in Agra, where the taxi and tuk-tuk drivers were unusually pleasant, they were always angling for more business with sight-seeing tours during the day. On the way to the train station, I had to endure the hard sell at two shops, mostly so my driver could pick up his modest commission for delivering a tourist; I came close to missing my train as a result (which would have been a disaster). It's a little hard to enjoy the travel when you have the sense you're thought of as a target. (Of course add to this the beggars--many of whom are little children--who gravitate toward lighter-skinned visitors whenver a taxi stops in traffic.)

I've tried to be generous with tips, recognizing what I earn in a day may be more than some people here earn in a month. But it can be wearying to have everyone seemingly looking to part one from his money.

About to head off to Mumbai (a.k.a. Bombay) for my last two days in India. My Monday night TV shows are only half downloaded, so hopefully I'll have Internet access there to finish that off. (Three of these shows are serial dramas--24, Heroes, and Prison Break--so I really want to get caught up on them.) Goodbye, Delhi!

The guide books suggest that the authentic way to travel from city to city in this country is by train. Doesn't make much sense to me. Especially since my time here is limited, going by air is relatively cheap and much more efficient in terms of time. The flights are cheap by Western standards (especially on Jet Airways, which I strongly recommend) though the trains are really dirt cheap! The problem with trains is that they take forever and present another level of hassles, especially travelling on overnight journeys.

After a pleasant flight, I arrived in Mumbai, dealt with some more taxi agro, and settled into a nice hotel complex that doesn't seem near anything--in fact, though it's technically in the city, it's surrounded by milk-producing farms. Anyway, it's quite comfortable here and I've got the Internet up and running (though it's a rip-off here).

Getting ready to head to Cairo in just a few minutes. I'll update when I can from across the Arabian Sea.

To my surprise, I was met at the gate by a representative of Top-Deck Travel and escorted through Immingration and Customs and whisked across the city (through hellacious traffic) to the Indiana Hotel on the west bank of the Nile. The hotel is "old school" but comfortable enough (with an little Internet cafe on the first floor).

On my way over to the ATM at the nearby Sheraton, I "made friends" with an Egyptian on the street who, not surprisingly, had something to sell. I wound up in his papyrus shop and wasted about 45 minutes listening to him and his brother give me all sorts of deals on Egyptian art and touring opportunities, before I begged off and went about my business. The fellow who struck up the conversation was certainly friendly and pleasant, but it really is a hassle to be thought of as prey by every enterprising Indian or Egyptian I walk by on the street.

I have a free day in Cairo before I join my tour group tonight, so I'll be doing some solo exploring. Tomorrow we go to the Antiquities Museum and then to the Giza Pyramids.

As I only get one English language channel--Star Movies--in my hotel, watching the Super Bowl tonight is not in the cards. Not a huge loss, really, though the commercials are probably more than half of the attraction of the event. (By the way, there's a rumored Apple ad on tap, one that announces the availability of The Beatles catalogue on iTunes Music Store, following the settlement of lots of litigation between Apple Computer and Apple Records over the use of the "Apple" name associated with selling music. We'll see. Or rather, you will see and I'll read about it tomorrow.)

It's clear that security concerns are a big deal around the city. I noticed that all of the big hotels--especially the American names (Hilton, Hyatt, Sheraton)--have vehicle checkpoints and even metal detectors to clear before one gets into the building. Police armed with rifles or machine guns are on many street corners, as well. Egypt is a moderate Arab state with historically close ties to the U.S. and has enjoyed a peaceful relationship with Israel since 1977--all factors that could potentially fuel the flames of Islamic radicals in this country. Since tourism is so integral to the economy of Egypt, one can understand why such a huge investment has been made in securing the city and all of the tourist sites throughout the country, especially after a bloody terrorist machine gun attack on tourists about a decade ago.

Here is the updated map of my sabbatical globe-trotting:

Here is a bigger version of the map.

Today was a sight-seeing day, as the photo above suggests. Pretty surreal to be hanging out in view of something you've seen pictures of your whole life.

Tonight my group--six others: four Aussies and two Kiwis--and I are on the overnight train to Luxor.

The overnight train from Cairo got us in to Luxor a couple of hours late, but the experience was better than I had expected. We traveled in a first class car with recliner seats that were actually quite comfortable. Other than the train stations not having escalators nor elevators (which meant having to schlep heavy luggage when moving between platforms) this was an enjoyable trip.

After checking in, we had lunch on the rooftop of our hotel, with a spectacular view overlooking the town and the Nile, with the Valley of Kings in the distance across the river.

This afternoon we are off to explore the Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple complexes in town here on the east side of the river. (The ancient Egyptians built their temples on the east side of the river and their tombs on the west, mirroring the path of the sun during the day, as they assumed the sun died each night, to be reborn the following dawn.)

The Karnak temple was a huge complex with some well preserved structures to explore. Sam, pictured above, is the local Egyptologist who served as our guide at Karnak and at the Luxor temple afterward (he'll take us across the river for the tombs tomorrow, too).

After our temple tours and before dinner, our group wandered through the Luxor bazaar, wherein the vendors routinely called out to us, recognizing the Aussies among our number and directing the occasional unwelcome compliment to our female contingent. I was repeatedly called “Rambo” by these people trying to get my attention; go figure! At one point, as three of the women in our group were walking behind me, a passing local called out: “Very lucky man! Three wives!”

We have an early 7 a.m. departure to the Valley of Kings in the morning; not so lucky, perhaps!

We had a great morning exploring three tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and then stopping at the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut before a relaxed lunch back in Luxor and then an afternoon bus trip of three hours to Aswan. By government decree, we had to go in a police-escorted convoy. All foreigners on the roads must travel between cities this way--which seems to a move the government developed in a response to the act of terrorism in November 1997 in which dozens of tourists were killed at the aforementioned Queen Hatshepsut Temple. This approach seems a bit stupid to me: since the foreigners have to register for the convoy in advance and leave at a predetermined time, a simple security lapse would give potential evildoers a list of nationalities represented in the convoy as well as a multiple targets conveniently assembled in one place at a predictable time.

As if today's 7am departure wasn't bad enough, tomorrow we get 3am wake-up calls to head to Abu Simbel in another convoy!

Just returned from Abu Simbel where we saw the impressive temples of Ramses II and his wife Nefertari. These temples, which were hewn out of a mountainside overlooking the Nile, were moved several hundred meters into an artificial mountain in the 1970s when Lake Nasser was created by the flooding due to the High Dam. They are striking nonetheless. just a few weeks from now, there is one day a year when the Ramses temple's inner sanctuary is illuminated by the sun in the morning.

Our group enjoyed a late afternoon Nile cruise on a felucca, one that took us upriver to a Nubian village that had been relocated from the south as a result of the High Dam constuction. We had a terrific dinner there and took the boat back to our hotel. A high point of the trip.

Tomorrow we get to sleep until 9:00!

After a leisurely morning, we visited the Aswan High Dam, a modern engineering marvel constructed with the help of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. Then we took a boat to the island where the Philae Temple--constucted by Alexander the Great--is situated. (The photo above shows some bas-relief carvings on one of the interior walls of the temple.) This temple was also relocated from a nearby island due to the flooding arising from the dam project.

Soon we head to the train station for the overnight rail journey back to Cairo.

Back in Cairo, after the overnight train ride from Aswan. While my group heads out for some sight-seeing, I have the morning to nap, get cleaned up, pop on the Internet, and then head to the airport.

I've enjoyed the Egypt segment of my trip. It's been educational and fun.

Had a good flight, with the center row to myself, en route to Frankfurt from Cairo. I'm on a layover now, waiting for my connecting flight to Barcelona. It's refreshing to have access to Western food and periodicals after a couple weeks without.

I actually was saying far worse things in the car until a few minutes ago.

I took the tram/metro/train combo back out to the airport this morning to pick up my rental car. Took a while, mostly because the train was late. Then I couldn't find the Alamo desk in the terminal at first. Once I got the car, I couldn't start it. After I worked that out, I fumbled around trying to figure out just how the unfamiliar manual/automatic hybrid transmission worked.

And then things got complicated. Let me say at the outset that I should have gotten a map before leaving the airport. I thought I'd be able to get back to the hotel, but I ended up driving in circles for far too long, passing familiar landmarks, but then being led off course by an apparent maze of Barcelona streets. When I finally stopped to ask directions, I got on the highway, only to realize it was going the wrong way. Each of two moves I made to turn around only took me miles out of my way without a turnaround opportunity in sight. I was screaming in frustration!

Once I settled down, I figured out how to get back to the hotel, though I had missed the check-out deadline by over an hour.

No worries now, I am heading out of Barcelona.

I am settled into a comfortable little hotel in the town of Figueres on the Costa Brava in the Catalan section, north of Barcelona and south of the French border and the Pyrenees. It's artist country (Dali, Goya) here. I am just north of Girona, the attractive medieval town that served as a base for Lance Armstrong and other Tour de France riders during their pre-race training.

What is both fascinating and a bit confusing to me are the linguistic differences between Catalan and Castilian Spanish. It's clear there's a strong sense of cultural identity wrapped around this variation of the language, with its diverse spellings on signs everywhere. Of course, with limited high school Spanish at my disposal, it's a bit more work to make myself understood without knowing the nuances of Catalan speech.

The Internet speed is faster here than it was in Barcelona (yay!) even if the free hotel WiFi doesn't quite reach my 4th floor room in the back of the hotel. This I am online in the lobby, which is comfortable enough, even is spite of the elderly German tourists playing cards and yammering loudly nearby.

The only problem is that four of the episodes I've just downloaded seem to have disappeared from iTunes and my hard drive, so I've contacted Apple to resolve the situation so I can get caught up on my shows.

I saw my first snow of the winter this morning, at least from a distance, on the peaks of the Pyrenees. Of course, it was summer while I was Down Under, and my other destinations on this trip more or less stay warm year-round.

I left just before 10 this morning and drove north from Figueres--the town just north of Girona where I spent the night--to cross the Spain/France border, and then I headed west, pulling into Pau around 3:30 in the afternoon. Most of the drive was back roads, though I opted for the autoroute (i.e., motorway/autobahn/highway) for the final hour of the trip. I did see lots of vineyards along the way, as well as some impressive châteaux.

After driving around the city for half an hour, I located my hotel, settled in, and headed out to explore the town. The next day or so should be pretty relaxing: a chance to read, get caught up on downloaded TV shows, and enjoy this French city at my leisure.

There's a different sensation waking up in a European hotel. The light from the window overlooking the narrow streets and the different sounds percolating up from those streets and immediately give the sense that I am far from home.

It's a treat to head out and pick up The International Herald Tribune and digest it over a continental breakfast.

It's a bit chilly, windy, and rainy here in Pau, which suits my purposes just fine. No grand sight-seeing agenda today. I am just kicking back a bit before visiting Chuck Timlin in Zaragoza tomorrow through Saturday and then spending a couple of busy days in Madrid and London before heading home.

That title sounds like something out of The Lord Of The Rings. In fact, it's the location of Zaragoza--a city that derives its Spanish name from a corruption of "Caesar Augustus," its name in the Roman Empire. (On the signs is France it was "Sarragosse.")

I drove due south from Pau, departing a little after 9:00 a.m., through some gorgeous Pyrenees scenery and through a tunnel that was many miles long unde the peaks and back into Spain. I arrived in Zaragoza before 1:00 and met my friend Chuck Timlin in Plaza de España at 2:30. We moved my stuff into his nearby apartment and then went to the School Year Abroad base for his late afternoon English class. Afterward, Andover faculty member Bill Scott joined us for a couple of pints and then we went back to the apartment to relax a bit and watch some soccer before heading out later to check out some tapas bars.

Classes finish early in the SYA program on Fridays, so I am now heading off to join the faculty for some tapas and drinks next to the school. Tonight we'll head out late--in the Spanish fashion--for food and socialization.

Tomorrow I go to Madrid.

After a late night--getting in at 3:30--of dinner and dancing, I enjoyed a great American-style breakfast in Zaragoza with Chuck and Bill before taking off for Madrid. The drive on the autovia was smooth, with landscapes that reminded me of the southwestern U.S. (only greener). I found my hotel easily; this time I remembered to bring a map for a change!

Having been in hotels literally all over the world, I have a pretty firm sense of what makes for a good lodging experience. Generally, I am perfectly happy in two- and three-star hotels; for the most part, a clean room, a comfortable bed, and a functioning shower is all I need, as I don't usually spend a lot of time hanging out in my hotel room when I am traveling. But here is a quick checklist of what I appreciate when on the road:

• a queen- or king-size bed with multiple pillow
• a shower with dependable temperature control and suitable water pressure
• a good-sized bathtub to recline in after a long day on my feet
• a free in-room broadband Internet connection; WiFi is a bonus
• a television with cable/satellite offerings that include a couple of English language news channels
• a mini-fridge with space for what I want to put in it (not filled with overpriced mini-bar offerings I won't use)

I am happy to report that my current location--the Hesperia Getafe Hotel, outside Madrid--has all of these features

I spent much of today exploring two major art museums: the Queen Sofia and the Prado. The former specializes in modern works and is the home of "Guernica," Pablo Picasso's masterpiece, and lots of cubism and surrealism (e.g., Salvador Dali). The latter is the Spanish equivalent of the Metropolitan Museum, with a range of Spanish and international masters represented (it's heavy on Velázquez and Goya). The early Dali work above, "Mujer en una ventana," was my favorite of the day.

Off to the Madrid Airport for my 7:25 flight to Madrid and the connection to London Heathrow.

I am now settled in at my London office (a.k.a. the Regent Street Apple store, with its free WiFi).

The flights this morning were uneventful and, for a change, my Heathrow arrival gate was actually CLOSE to the arrivals hall. (Usually my gate there is a four-mile hike from the center of the terminal.) I did get grilled by a woman at Passport Control. I thought the U.S. and the U.K. enjoyed a "special relationship," but you'd have thought I presented an Iraqi passport. I had to explain my whole trip, why I stopped in England, how long I was staying, and whether I had a hotel reservation. Once I showed a ticket for my Wednesday flight, I was allowed into Britain.

I took the Piccadilly line to the Gloucester Road exit; my hotel is just a block away.

Met up with two Class of 2004 alums: Alejandro Lloreda and Mauricio Osorio, both from Colombia and both studying at the London School of Economics (Mauricio is on an exchange year from Middlebury). We ate at Bodeans, an American-style barbeque joint in Soho. If you go on Monday night, you can get the "burnt ends" of the brisket, which I heartily recommend.

Heading to Heathrow Airport for my trip home via Toronto.

Had a painless flight from London to Toronto; the plane was half full, so there was plenty of room to stretch out. The new airport here is comfortable and attractive. I had a bit of bad luck, in that it took a while to get my baggage to the part of the airport designated for U.S. connections (so I could pre-clear U.S. immigration and customs formalities on this end of my next flight). When I arrived, it looked as though I could make a much earlier flight at 12:45, rather than 5:15, but I had to wait too long at the baggage carousel and barely missed my window. So I've got a few hours to kill in Canada. At least there is wireless access, so I can finish downloading my Monday shows and watch them.

Got to Bradley Airport, retrieved my car from my parents' house (and needed AAA to jump start the battery), and cruised down to Wallingford. I am home.

I stayed up all night, figuring I'd deny myself the chance to oversleep my early morning trip to Bradley Airport. After the frenetic tournament weekend and a day full of meetings on Monday, this gave me the chance to sort the mail, do the laundry, pack and tackle a few other projects with no interruption before heading off again for another three weeks on the road. I fly to see my folks in south Florida before a week in Aruba and a week with the Choate tennis team back at Saddlebrook.

I've spent most of this winter in warmer climes--in fact, it was the height of summer for three weeks in Australia!--and so it was a treat to step off the plane here in Florida, where the temperature is consistently above 70 degrees every day. It was quite cold up in Exeter over the weekend and it snowed as I drove up to the airport in the wee hours of the morning.

An easy three-hour flight from Miami to Aruba (whole row to myself--sweet!) deposited me at the Oranjestad Airport. Aruba is a little less than twenty miles long and six miles wide--a pretty small island just off the northern coast of Venezuela. Having left Perth, Australia on January 22 and traveled through Asia, Africa, Europe, and back home to North America, my arrival in South America this afternoon means I've logged time on six continents in just under six weeks! (I also visited six continents in 2006, but it took me almost exactly twelve months to do so.)

Here is the latest update to where I've been, where I am now, and where I am going before my sabbatical officially ends on March 20:

Here is a bigger version of the map.

I had dinner at the sushi bar by the casino here in the Marriott complex. Afterward, I took a walk along the beach under the full moon and it was windy, but the breezes were pleasantly WARM!

I caught back-to-back episodes of Digging For The Truth on The History Channel this afternoon. Both shows brought me back to my time in Egypt a few weeks back, with their backdrops at the Giza Pyramids, the Egyptian Museum, the Valley of Kings, the Karnak temple in Luxor, and Abu Simbel. One episode was about Tutankhamun and the other about Rameses II.

Indiana Jones wanna-be Josh Bernstein, who hosts the program, recently announced he is jumping over to The Discovery Network, which may mean the end of Digging For The Truth, at least as we know it. Bad news for The History Channel, as this has been its highest-rated show.

The Marriott Surf Club here in Aruba sure is a swell place. Because it's set up as a time-share property, the units are fully furnished with complete kitchens, full living and dining rooms spaces, laundry facilities, etc. There's a marketplace right downstairs to stock the kitchen. The beach is beautiful and the multiple pools are clearly the centerpiece of the resort (although the poolside bar is an interesting concept, in that I've always thought that alcohol and swimming were not the best things to mix together). One of the pools is essentially a river, with a strong current that pulls you around an artificial island as you float your troubles away. The only critique I have is the resort's incessant soundtrack. This place pipes what I'd call "elevator music" all over the grounds, except that all the familiar radio-friendly tunes are performed exclusively by steel drum bands. It was cute at first, but after three days of this tropical treacle, I am about ready to go postal.

The local language here in Aruba is Papiamento, which is a curious patiche of Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and a smattering of West African tongues and English words. It's also spoken in Bonaire and Curaçao. But virtually everyone speaks English fluently, too, so tourists have no problem here.

Apparently, Aruba's primary agricultural export over time has been aloe--which is a pretty handy thing to grow locally, given all the sunburned bodies I see around these parts.

. . . is the tag line on the license plates here. I'll miss the warm weather, the tropical breezes, and the friendly people. I won't miss hearing "Stand By Me" on the steel drums multiple times a day!

The flight back to Miami was uneventful (though actor Mickey Rooney was sitting up in first class, but no one else seemed to recognize him). The traffic on I-95 up to Boynton Beach was no picnic, but the Alamo office in Miami had an automatic check-in kiosk where, after scanning your credit card and driver's license, you could basically zip through the usual car rental rigamarole quickly and without a wait.

Off to the Fort Lauderdale airport this morning for a brief flight over to Tampa to meet members of the Choate tennis team for a week of training at Saddlebrook resort.

Back at the Saddlebrook resort for the first time in two years (last year, Choate Tennis went to China over spring break). I've been coming here most years since 1990, aside from about a five year period beginning in the late 1990s when the team went out to Indian Wells, California. The resort itself is more or less unchanged (though wireless Internet access has been a welcome recent addition). What has changed is that Tampa has continued to spread out. Wesley Chapel used to be pretty remote from the city itself, but one doesn't have to travel very far to find the usual Florida-type sprawl of shopping centers and malls.

I drove all over the area for about thirty minutes, trying in vain to locate a copy of today's The New York Times. Now that I am back in the States for good, I am trying to re-establish my daily newspaper habits (I subscribe to the Times and USA Today at home.) While I did have USA Today waiting at my doorstep this morning here in the resort, you would think the nation's pre-eminent newspaper might be available for purchase somewhere in this county!

I am sitting in the Tampa airport (thanks for the free wireless Internet access!) about to board my flight to Hartford. Today was a spectacular day: a cloudless blue sky and a perfect temperature. I am steeling myself for the ice and cold that awaits me.

I returned to a Connecticut that is under a blanket of snow. (Note to self: though Crocs are convenient to wear through airports and on planes, they are really bad in a foot of snow when retrieving one's car.) The temperature tonight is below freezing, too. The winter I have been trying to avoid since December is still here.

This morning I had to drive up to Northfield, Massachusetts--due north from Wallingford, just below the Vermont border--to meet with the Eight Schools heads. The drive up was through mild sleet, but things were a bit more treacherous on the way home. I hydroplaned a bit on I-91, which quickly convinced me to take it a bit more slowly. Made it back to campus for an indoor practice this afternoon.

The Monte Carlo Country Club is hosting one of the ATP's Masters Series tournaments this week. This event is over a century old and has long been considered one of the premier stops on the European spring clay court circuit. Supposedly the club is a spectacularly beautiful setting, with scenic views overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

So far, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal remain on course for a final-round rematch of the 2006 championship. Nadal is gunning for a third straight Monte Carlo title.

Spent most of the day in Marlborough, Massachusetts--between Boston and Worcester--at a meeting of the NEPSAC Executive Board. Generally this group meets in the most central location in New England, but the venue seems to be gravitating eastward, from Sturbridge to Worcester and now to Marlborough. It means I am spending more time in the car than I want to.

I've been pricing round-trip flights to London in June at $800 and up online the past few weeks. This weekend the fare dropped to $600 and I grabbed it. Of course $200 hardly gets one through a day in London anymore, given the current exchange rate! But I'll take the savings nonetheless.

I've pretty much become my own travel agent the last few years, thanks to the Internet. I do recommend signing up for alert emails from airlines and especially from Airfarewatchdog.com. It was such an alert notice from Expedia that alerted me of a $27 airfare savings (which turned out to be almost ten times that!) this weekend.

My plan in June is to use London as a launching point on the low-cost European carriers to see Scandanavia, come back for a bit of Wimbledon, and then head right home for summer school.

I am spending the afternoon and early evening with my parents in South Windsor and was able to concentrate on my travel agent routine online while up here. I've booked flights to and accommodation in Tromso, Norway for later this month. Tromso is north of the Artic Circle and when I arrive there in mid-June, I am not going to be experiencing much darkness in the middle of the night!

Come August, I will be heading to Russia for an eight-day visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg. I booked my tickets today by redeeming points I've been building on my credit card, so the travel there--on a non-stop Delta flight from Kennedy Airport--is basically free! I do recommend paying all your bills on one credit card so that you accrue points for stuff like this. Since my card is not linked to any particular airline, I can redeem points any way I choose.

I've added my projected summer travel to the 2007 "where is he now?"map here on the website:

Here is a bigger version of the map.

As in today's song of the day, my bags are packed and I'm off to the airport.

. . . he is tired of life. So said Samuel Johnson, and I do believe he is correct. I am enjoying my time in this capital city once again (though I do feel like a pauper, as the already expensive cost of living here is exacerbated by a brutally weak dollar relative to sterling.)

Tonight, it's off to the opera.

I left my Bayswater hotel around 8:30 this morning, took the Tube to Liverpool Street Station and then the Stansted Express train to the airport. From there I flew to Haugesend, Norway. (RyanAir is an Irish carrier that caters to the budget airfare segment of the market; as long as one is willing to use out-of-the-way airports--like Stansted and Haugesend, for instance!--the fares can be incredibly cheap.) From Haugesend I traveled by bus and ferry through the fjords on the west Norway coast up to Bergen, the nation's second biggest city. It feels more like a town to me, albeit a charming one built around a harbor. The landscape here is spectacular. The last time I saw fjords like these was when I was on the south island of New Zealand in 1998.

David Pogue had a piece in today's International Herald Tribune about noise-canceling headphones. He reviewed the Bose Quiet Comfort 2--which I was wearing as I read the article--and its competitors. I picked up the QC2s on a whim (admittedly, an expensive one!) in Logan Airport in Boston before heading to Bermuda for a week in August 2005 and have worn them on nearly every flight since. As I've been on at least a half dozen 12+ hour flights in the last two years, they have been a godsend. The noise-cancelling properties really do make flying easier: less headache, less jet lag, an overall easier transition.

I wish I had headphones like this when I was in college: not because I flew much then (I took a 30-minute flight twice between Albany and Islip--my first and second times in an airplane) but because I routinely took the long bus ride between Williamstown and New York City, stopping in virtually every town along the way. The ongoing low rumble of the bus for hours invariably put me out of sorts and gave me a headache and a touch of nausea.

Nailing down accommodation in Bergen online a few weeks ago was tough. I ended up staying in a very expensive room here for the night in a Raddison hotel right in the heart of town, overlooking the harbor. My room is comfortable (if overpriced). Its best feature is clear: a bathroom with a gently heated tile floor. Why doesn't every bathroom in the world have this?

These shops are on the "bryggen," or waterfront, in the heart of Bergen. My hotel is behind these buildings at the far end, overlooking the harbor. The city is, like Rome, surrounded by seven hills (small mountains, really) on three sides; the fjord is on the fourth.

This is a quaint place. There was a free concert in the downtown shopping area this morning--mostly children's groups performing.

It does feel a bit cut off from the rest of the world. As in Buenos Aires, one can't get the day's edition of the International Herald Tribune from any of the local vendors until the afternoon.

Took a seven-plus hour train ride from Bergen to Oslo. Supposedly this is the highest train route in Northern Europe (I guess that means other than the Alps). We certainly were above the snow line for part of the trip--kind of freaky to see a winter landscape in mid-June! But I am settled into my hotel in Oslo now (having missed dinner tonight) and will explore the city tomorrow.

Before this trip, most of what I knew about Scandanavia was based on stuff like this:

and this:

I've gotten pretty good at deciphering some of Norwegian. It's similar to German in many ways, but with some different-looking letters: "å" and "ø" primarily.

Most people here seem pretty fluent in English. Bookstores routinely carry English-language books and familiar pop songs from back home are ubiquitous.

In late May, Norway topped the list of 121 countries as "the most peaceful country" in a study called The Global Peace Index, which was compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The survey looked at 24 factors to determine how peaceful each country was. The United States finished 96th on the list, while Iraq was last. The top five: Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland, and Japan. (Interesting that the latter two each had a particularly un-peaceful 20th century--Japan as a militarist power in the 1930s and 1940s, and Ireland with civil warfare and "The Troubles" over the course of many decades--so there is hope for all, it seems!)

Today I head to Tromsø, which is north of the Artic Circle. It's near the top of the map above.

As I wandered around the town of Tromsø this evening--it was pretty quiet, as it was a Sunday--I came across this store:

As I peered in the window, it became apparent that it was a shop dedicated entirely to videogames. Why it is named after Spider-Man, I cannot fathom.

What is weirded yet is the depiction of the wall-crawler:

Maybe this is what Mickey Mouse would look like were he bitten by a radioactive spider?

I guess it's one of those things that you intellectually understand, but you can't really get it untl you see it. Here is the midnight sun--this is downtown Tromsø at 12:45 a.m.:

The two-month-long daylight phenomenon is pretty cool here, but "midnight sun"? I have yet to see the sun here at ANY time of day. Thus far it's been perpetual overcast skies and on-and-off drizzle.

Before leaving Connecticut, I was asked why I was heading to this Viking village at the north end of the continent. No doubt I wanted to see this 24-hour daylight thing first hand, which now I have (and it makes it harder to get to sleep at night, for sure). But the remoteness of Tromsø appealed to me because these June vacations are just as much about decompression as they are about seeking out the unfamiliar. That is, at the end of the school year, I feel I need some time alone to relax, reflect, and review life. I am at my most thoughtful in these periods, generating lots of ideas, creating lists, and making plans. Now the trick is finding the time to implement them once I get back in "the real world."

Dinner this evening at a pretty low-key pizza place ran me over $50, as did a lunch I had in Oslo the other day. Neither meal was in a fancy restaurant, but I am realizing just how expensive Norway is (again, the weak U.S. dollar is doing me no favors).

I discovered online that Oslo is one of the ten most expensive cities in the world. And Moscow, where I am headed in August, is at the top of the list! Ugh.

I am back in the Oslo airport, experiencing sunshine for the first time in days. Tromsø was charming, but a pretty gray place overall; I never saw the sun once in my time there. I can only imagine the wintertime in Tromsø would be absolutely depressing, what with lots of snow and two full months of polar night--the place gets just a couple of hours of dusky light each day. (You can see exactly how much light the town gets at various times of year on this site.)

At any rate, I am killing time on a layover until my flight to Stockholm. I got caught up with the International Herald Tribune and USA Today as well as the latest Time magazine. I also am catching up on some podcasts. I have a handful that I listen to at least weekly, as well as a bunch I check out more sporadically. For those of you who might care, here is my current subscription list:

More Or Less Weekly Listens:

KCRW’s Left, Right and Center - a weekly political roundtable
SModcast - filmmakers Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier sally forth with great (if often twisted) humor
The News From Lake Wobegon - Garrison Keillor's monologues from A Prarie Home Companion radio show
The Ricky Gervais Show - not currently in production, but hilarious interaction between the British comedian, his co-creator Stephen Merchant, and their bone-headed sidekick Karl Pilkington
Wild Boars Tennis Podcast - my own handiwork, updated only in the spring

Sporadic Listens:

David Pogue - the technology columnist for the New York Times
In Our Time - in-depth consideration of eclectic topics, from BBC Radio Four
Car Talk - the NPR show featuring the brothers Magliozzi
The Onion Radio News - 60 seconds of humor you'd expect, given the source
Slate Magazine Daily Podcast - articles from the online magazine

I arrived in Stockholm, took the airport express to the central train station, and made it to my hotel on the outskirts of the city (the neigborhood of Bromma, actually) by skillfully navigating the subway system. At first glimpse, this capital city is far more expansive than Oslo. Tomorrow I will explore it.

A laid-back day for me, mindful that in a week's time, I'll be back at work: teaching in the morning, handling office chores in the afternoon, and covering dorm duty in the evening.

I explored the city a bit via the subway system (T-bana) and ended up having lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe.

I always feel a little guilty going to a place like this, as it seems like such a typically touristy thing to do. The fact is, it's comforting to have a little taste of home once in a while when abroad, even if it is overpriced. I do enjoy checking out the rock memorabilia, too. (I've been to Hard Rock Cafes in Amsterdam, Bangkok, Barcelona, Cairo, London, Melbourne, Oslo, Rome, Stockholm, and Sydney, as I recall.)

I took care of a couple of other tasks, too, namely getting my watch battery replaced and mailing some postcards.

Had a lovely day exploring the Gamla Stan (the Old Town in Stockholm), with narrow cobble-stoned streets winding past attractive shops.

As someone who tends to spend a fair amount of travel time in some of the world's major cities, I am following with fascination a recent survey by the International Herald Tribune (in conjunction with a magazine I have never heard of called Monocle) that rates cities for their quality of life. You can check out the list youself online. For what it's worth, I have been to fifteen of the top twenty cities listed and while I would quibble a bit with the order, this is not a bad list.

As an American, I am continually amazed at the facility with languages most Europeans seem to have. I have yet to deal with a single person in Norway or Sweden who did not speak fluent English!

This is my first trip to Europe in years in which I did not use the Euro as currency at some point. Two of the three countries I am visiting--the U.K. and Sweden--are E.U. members that have rejected the Euro and the third--Norway--is not an E.U. member.

When I first arrived at the Stockholm Central Station, the signs over the escalators indicated that apparently I was expected. Nice of them to let me know exactly which way I am supposed to go.

I arrived in London and made my way to my hotel on The Strand, just around the corner from Covent Garden. As I leave the hotel and look to right, I see Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square at the end of the street. Pretty good location.

The shops in London are open between noon and 6 p.m. on Sundays, so I had a limited window to stop by my London office (a.k.a. the Regent Street Apple Store) for Internet connectivity, get some lunch, and run a few errands.

I opted not to see a West End show this trip, in part because there is nothing here I am particularly dying to see, and in part because it would cost me a fortune with the current exchange rate and I've already spent enough on this vacation. I am sorry I missed Sir Ian McKellen as Lear up in Stratford by just a day; I'd have headed north for that if the timing worked out. But instead I booked tickets today to two Broadway shows for this Wednesday: a matinee of Inherit The Wind (which I starred in as a high school senior, though not on Broadway!) and an evening production of Spring Awakening, which did so well at the Tony Awards a couple weeks back.

I am preparing to swap my suitcase for a briefcase. Time to get back to work! I actually missed the first day of Choate summer school today and will need to hit the ground running for my 8:15 class tomorrow morning.

I have an evening flight that leaves from Heathrow at 8:05 and arrives at J.F.K. at 10:50. Assuming the flight is on schedule, that should get me to Wallingford by around 1:30 a.m. It still amazes me that I can have dinner in London and breakfast in my own house the very next morning!

Thus was a neatly named shop I saw when I was in Tromsø, Norway a couple weeks ago. Turns out the shop even has a website: www.arctictattoo.com.

Off to Washington, DC for the rest of the week with the J.F.K. Institute program.

I peppered the drive down to DC with Wizard of Oz references in antipation of showing the K.I. kids the Mormon temple looming over the Washington beltway illuminated in an eerie green, as in past years. The temple appeared right on schedule, bathed in light, but it wasn't as green as it was in the past, which made it a tougher sell as "the Emerald City." In fact, it looked much whiter, as it would in daylight (see the photo above).

I spent most of the day squiring the ten Kennedy Institute students around Capitol Hill.

Security concerns have made navigating around the Capitol complex pretty frustrating. I remember the days when I could take a group from a House office building through the Capitol basement, onto the Senate Subway, and into the Senate office buildings without being stopped. No more. Without an official escort much of the time, we had to keep heading outside to move from one building to another. And of course, the temperatures in July in D.C. tend to be soaring--making every such trip a brutal hike.

That said, there is always an excitement about being in the midst of the wheels of government when Congress is in session. We are meeting lawmakers and staffers as part of our official schedule, of course, but there are also chance sightings of (and sometimes meetings with) political celebrities. Today we saw U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Senator (and presidential candidate and former First Lady) Hilary Clinton. More importantly, even in these cynical times, people in and around government often exhibit an admirable sense of idealism about their work; this feeling is somewhat infectious.

I took the kids around to the monuments tonight. Evening is the best time to do this: it's a lot cooler, there are fewer crowds, and the venues are lighted for dramatic effect. The Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial--one of my favorites--was a huge disappointment, in that most of its fountain/waterfall features were dry and the lighting was not fully implemented through the site. But the Jefferson Memorial (pictured above), the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial all looked great.

For the most part, the drive from Washington back to Connecticut went quite smoothly. We managed to beat rush hour in New York and arrived in Wallingford around 4:30.

Although my trip to Russia next month will be cheaper than it might have been--largely because the airfare is entirely covered by the "mileage points" I've built up on my credit card--I am paying dearly to get my tourist visa processed. It will cost me almost $200 when all is said and done. Living in a major city would be a huge advantage, as one could avoid using an expediter by going to an embassy or consulate to process the visa request in person (I actually did this in Sydney to get my India and Vietnam visas in January). But two separate trips into New York City to drop off and pick up my passports wouldn't be very economical, so I am resorting to an expediter in Houston, who supposedly will have my passport and a brand new tourist visa back to me within five business days.

Getting a Russian visa is a little more complicated than most, in that I needed to get documentation from the hotels I booked in advance (which in turn requires another set of deposits). Of course, the documents that were faxed back to me from the hotels were written mostly in the Cyrillic alphabet, so I hope it is what the consular officials want.

My passport, with a newly affixed visa for my trip to Russia next week, arrived back from the expediter today. So I am good to go!

Time to head out once more. I am about to drive to Kennedy Airport and then fly Delta to Moscow for a week there and in St. Petersburg.

Sitting in the airport, waiting to board my flight, I realized what I forgot to pack: a belt (no real problem there); my portable iPod speakers (I can live without those, too); in the absence of the speakers, a USB cord to re-charge my iPod (I just bought a replacement cord here in Kennedy Airport for $18). But I've got my passport and my wallet, and I am traveling light, so hopefully there will be no snags.

The flight to Russia was uneventful. It was a fairly full plane, but I was comfortable in an aisle seat for the nine-hour trip. The airport was similarly painless: no problems getting through customs and in the baggage claim.

I took the adventurous way to my hotel, via public transportation, specifically a bus and the Metro subway system. Though I was a bit unsure of where I would end up--NOTHING is written in English!--I managed to make it my hotel, the Novotel Moscow Centre, which is a business-oriented hotel with an English-speaking staff. My 12th floor room is spacious.

The 30-40 minutes on the bus gave me a good eyeful of the outskirts of Moscow. My first reaction was that my surroundings looked like a cross between Beijing and Madrid. Beijing for the foreign non-Roman alphabet writing everywhere as well as the functional-but-ugly Stalinist architecture on display. Madrid for the landscape and the endless advertisements for Western multinational companies everywhere: Toyota and Ford dealerships, Coca-Cola drink stands, McDonald's restaurants (of course all of these were in Beijing as well). I guess capitalism has arrived in full force here!

I am going to nap a bit before heading out to explore the city this evening.

Slept more than I had intended to and took the Metro into the city for some dinner at about 9pm, as I was famished. I ended up around Pushkin Square, where I settled on a T.G.I. Friday's as the safest alternative (shoot me for choosing the toursity least path of resistance!). The meal was fine, if unremarkable. I walked down the Tverskaya thoroughfare to the Kremlin and Red Square--beautifully illuminated at night--before heading back to the hotel.

After a great hotel breakfast, I set off to one of the train stations to secure a ticket for my overnight trip to St. Petersburg on Monday. Nowhere in the entire train station was there a word written in English. And not one person who worked there that I approached spoke the language, either. I suppose I've been spoiled in much of my traveling, in that I've almost always been able to find someone who could speak my native tongue.

The trick with Russian is that the alphabet is different. The other places I've been that don't use the Roman alphabet (e.g., Japan, China, Thailand, India, Greece) have consistently posted signs with English translations when it comes to public transportation, sight-seeing venues, etc. Not so here. Thus I find myself comparing "word pictures" of the names of subway stations to the listings on my map to be sure I am in the right place. It's like a big game of Concentration.

Anyway, I had zero luck at the train station trying to get a ticket, and the Intourist travel agent across town was no help either. At the end of a day exploring Red Square and the Arbat district (and a decent sushi lunch), I finally resolved my problem at the Guest Relations desk at my hotel. So I have my ticket in hand now. I'd have saved myself a lot of time and frustration if I had started here!

Here is the world map with the color red indicating the countries I had been to when I wrote a blog entry on April 30, 2004:

Here is that map updated with country visits from the past three years:

There's far more red on the current map--it helps to have visited some BIG countries such as Russia, China, India, and Brazil--but there is still a lot left to see!

Make a map of your own travels by clicking here.

Today I visited the parts of the Kremlin open to the public (a portion of the complex functions as the official headquarters of the President of the Russian Federation). Most of what you can see are ornate Orthodox chapels in the typical architectural style.

I've been traveling through the city on the excellent Metro system: it's fast, reliable, convenient, and cheap. There is a stop right outside my hotel that can take me pretty much anywhere in the city.

The Metro system was constructed starting in the 1930s and was intended to reflect the glory of the socialist state, and thus the oldest stations boast ornate and extravagant architectural designs, often with murals and sculpture in the official artictic style of Russian communism: Socialist Realism.

The escalators are among the longest I've ever been on--rivaling those at the Dupont Circle stop on the D.C. Metro or at Leicester Square station on the London Underground. They also move faster than others I've been on, though one gets used to this quickly.

I headed back to Red Square tonight to snap a few pics of the iconic St. Basil's illuminated at night.

I boarded the 11:55 p.m. train in Moscow last night for the eight-hour overnight trip to St. Petersburg, scheduled to arrive around 8:00 this morning. (I almost missed the train, as I was inadvertantly in an adjoining train station in Moscow--which explains the difficulty I had in trying to buy a ticket there two days earlier!--but was pointed in the right direction and found the Leningradsky Station to be much friendlier to foreigners, with English-language signage and announcements.)

I was assigned to a four-berth sleeper coupe, which I shared with two Russian businessmen, and settled into an upper bunk for some shut-eye. As I drifted in and out of sleep through the night, I was aware we were not moving for long stretches of time. When I arose in the morning, one of my companions in the compartment, who spoke some English, explained to me that there had been a terrorist attack on an earlier train on this route, and thus we would be delayed and rerouted. Apparently some Chechen separatists had blown up the tracks under an express train from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

The upshot of all of this was a 12-hour delay in getting to St. Petersburg. To make matters worse, the switch from an electrical engine to a diesel one meant we had no air conditioning throughout the day. So it was a pretty brutal experience, particularly as the two gents with whom I shared the compartment wanted to talk all day (one of them kept rambling on in Russian, as if I understood anything he said!). The one who did speak English at one point confided in me that he did some work for the KGB, but asked that I not tell anyone else! I found this doubtful, if amusing.

I was relieved to finally arrive in St. Petersburg. I am staying in a hotel just off the main thoroughfare of the city, Nevsky Prospect, which was just one Metro stop away from the train station.

St. Petersburg was established by Peter the Great as part of his efforts to Westernize Russia, connecting the country to the rest of Europe in a way that remote Moscow never could be. The city today has a more cosmopolitan feel than does the capital. Like Sydney and Melbourne, there is clearly a competitive aspect to the reltionship between these two cities, both of which have served as the seat of political power in Russian history.

The photo above is the Church On Spilled Blood, the city's answer to St. Basil's Cathedral, and marks the spot where reformist Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881.

I spent the day on my feet in a 90+ degree day here in St. Petersburg, came back to my hotel for a refreshing cold shower, and collapsed.

The first half of the day was spent poking around The Hermitage, truly one of the great museums of the world. There were sections of the museum I skipped outright, and yet I had my fill of artifacts from antiquity (Egypt, Greece, Rome) right on through the history of Western art (Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Rodin, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, and Matisse, to name a few!). Of course, the architectural setting, which includes the opulent Winter Palace, is worth the admission price on its own.

In the afternoon, I crossed the Neva River to explore the Peter and Paul Fortress, the place where the city was founded by Peter the Great just over 300 years ago. The fortress features the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the plain aspect of which hides an impressive Baroque inerior. All the Russian czars from Peter I to Alexander III were buried within and nearly a decade ago the remains of the Romanovs murdered in the 1917 revolution were also interred there, in a controversial move.

A long day, but well worth it.

Tomorrow I fly back to Moscow and then home.

I left my St. Petersburg hotel at 5:30 for the airport. I overpaid for the taxi--the driver charged me close to $50!--but since public transportation was not yet up and running and I had a 6:50 flight and the airport was entirely unfamiliar to me, I held my breath and paid up.

The Aeroflot flight wasn't bad, but the plane evoked all the horror stories I used to hear about Soviet aviation. The airplane had to be over 20 years old and I've seen better interiors in Greyhound buses. The rumbling sounds we were subjected to on the tarmac did not inspire confidence. But the short (1 hour, 20 minute) flight was uneventful.

At 12:15 I fly to New