Our concierge had informed us of Waikoloa Village Market, where the locals buy groceries, so yesterday we picked up a few supplies, such as SPF50 sunscreen, a pineapple, a knife with which to cut the pineapple, and breakfast materials. It was nice not to pay resort prices, but overall it must be admitted that Hawaii makes Swiss price tags seem reasonable. Lower-48 Americans can stop complaining about the cost of a fill-up now: gasoline is about a dollar more per gallon in Hawaii. We even paid more for the pineapple than we do at home in Florida.
We began our day with breakfast on the balcony: Raspberry Ginger Clusters & Flakes. It was good stuff, although the ginger overwhelmed the raspberry. Obliterated, really. Think of it as Blenheim-in-a-box.
The Hilton Waikoloa Village is a super resort. You could have a bank-breaking fabulous vacation without ever leaving the property. So, having spent but one night there, we left. We kept the room, for we intended to return the next day. (And we did.) But what care we for super resorts? We can have those for a lot less money without leaving Florida. Beaches, swimming, and snorkeling? Ditto. But volcanoes? Florida is remarkably short of that particular natural beauty. So we hopped in our rental car, and hit the road. (More)
We slept well until 4:30 a.m. That sounds early, but it’s not unusual for us to start the day ony an hour later. Not bad at all, considering Hawaiian clocks—in the summertime—are six hours skewed from Florida’s.
(My current approach to combatting jet lag is to sleep as much as possible on the plane, but not to make an effort to sleep. Once upon a time I acted as if I could get a full night’s sleep on an overnight flight: brushing my teeth, wearing eye covers, and settling down as much as is possible in a coach-class set, with a pillow and a blanket. After several flights with marginal success at best, I decided to ignore my watch altogether. After boarding, I settle down to enjoy myself, usually with a book or my World of Puzzles magazine. I’m at the stage of life where it’s easy to doze—actually, I’ve been at that stage for at least 40 years—so when I feel sleepy, I set the book down and allow myself to snooze. I rarely even bother to take off my glasses; I just lean back and sleep. When I wake, I pick up where I left off and begin the cycle again. I find this much more satisfactory, because I’m no longer annoyed by announcements, food carts, or neighbors who must get out of their seats. If they wake me up, they’ve only disturbed a short nap, not my “night’s rest.” I no longer worry that I’m “supposed” to be sleeping. I enjoy the flight more, and adjustment to the new time schedule comes more easily.)
We would have liked to make a faster start to the day, but had a morning appointment with our “personal concierge,” who would help us plan our week, including the mandatory timeshare presentation. She was actually very helpful, with useful suggestions for places to stop on our around-the-island tour. She was also able to reschedule our presentation, which had originally been placed in the middle of the day, a most annoying and wasteful time.
The first meeting accomplished, we headed out of the Hilton property to the shopping/restaurant area at the entrance to the resort. (The resort is more than the Hilton sites, although they constitute a large part of it.) There we made a breakfast of “Japanese Tempura Style Fish and Chips” (and shrimp). Delicious!
Unless you consider fish & chips for breakfast a bit odd, there was nothing about its onset to indicate how incredible this day would be. (More)
I'm still working on Hawaii, Day 2, so today you get to see the souvenir we brought home—for the worms.
It's billed as a compostable cup, and was of excellent quailty for drinking. According the the manufacturer,
Please note that composting is required for biodegradation. These cups will biodegrade within 180 days in a commercial composting facility but can take up to a year or more to biodegrade in a home composting system.
We will see what the worms make of it. I suspect it will take quite a while for them to have an impact on the cup: they prefer their food in small pieces, preferably soft. They will eat the mushier parts first, leaving harder pieces until bugs and microbes have degraded them somewhat—see the piece of corn cob to the right of the cup.
If a good neighbor is one who watches out for your home while you are gone, and a great neighbor takes care of your mail and pets (even if there are 10,000 of them), what can you say about a neighbor who will take you to the airport at 4:30 in the morning? That was the first leg of our trip to Hawaii. (Technically, “Hawai‘i,” with the left single quote, but I’m going with the simplified spelling.)
Hawaii? What were we doing there? That’s what I asked myself. (More)
Stephan's thoughtful parents gave Porter a jar of Speculoos à Tartiner for Christmas, and I can't wait to try it. It's made by Lotus, the same folks who make the incredibly delicious Biscoff cookies Porter occasionally brings home from a plane flight.
I don't have as much quarrel with the TSA as many people do, but I am tired of having my luggage singled out for hand inspection nearly every time I fly. On my most recent trip to Switzerland, I wasn't particularly surprised to find the tell-tale TSA notice in my checked bag when it and I were finally reunited (that's another story), because I was carrying a large, metal cylinder filled with dangerous ... candy canes. The can did a great job of protecting the fragile candy, but must have looked intimidating on the x-ray. There is no packing job so good that the TSA can't make a hash of it, but the only victim of their efforts was one crushed chocolate truffle. We promptly destroyed the evidence.
On the way home I thought I had a chance of escaping. I had a few bizarre encounters with airport security—none of which involved pat-downs, I'm glad to say—but it wasn't until I landed in Charlotte that my checked bag became a problem.
First, I was singled out for special treatment at Customs, because I'd answered honestly the question, "Are you bringing any food into the country?" That always gets me into trouble, although normally as soon as I explain that the food is chocolate, cookies, and similar items, they lose interest.
Not this time. Everything, including my purse, went through a scanner. "What's in the jar?" I was asked. "It's kind of like peanut butter," was the best I could do, but it was sufficient. The pleasant Customs officials released me, and I thought I was home free. (More)
It is fitting to end my November Thanksgivings with gratitude for a wonderful visit with family and a safe journey home. Despite Heather’s prediction that I would post more about our activities than she would, you’re not likely to hear much about them. I was too busy living the adventure to write about it.1 Of yesterday’s voyage from Pittsburgh to Orlando I have much to say, and the illusion of time to say it.
It was a long day—nearly 16 hours door-to-door—but I can’t complain as Porter still had some 13 more hours to travel after I was safe in our own house. If it weren’t for the final blow from JetBlue, I wouldn’t have minded at all. (More)
This is a short post, because I don't have a lot to say about electricity in Switzerland, but I like their home outlets. I'd rather the world adopt our 110 volt system, for safety reasons, but if I could I'd change our plugs to the Swiss type. See how sturdy the prongs are? No worries about accidentally bending them when you stretch the cord too much, straining to get the vacuum cleaner to reach to the far corner. Some outlets are combined with light switches, and many are recessed—a neat safety device that makes it impossible for the prongs to be connected to the electricity and touching your fingers at the same time.
Maybe this post should be "readjustments," since I'm now home and experiencing reverse culture shock, but it's still worth talking about transportation.
Basel is a city, albeit one of the nicest cities I know. It's the third largest in Switzerland, a little smaller in population than Providence, Rhode Island or Tallahassee, Florida, but a lot more dense. I'm not fond of cities, in general, but if you wanted to design a situation that is perfect for public transit, walking, and biking, you could hardly do better—and Basel made a conscious choice, back in the 1970's, to encourage those modes of transport. (More)
One of the fun things about spending foreign money is that it doesn't feel like real spending. It feels like play money, Monopoly money. I don't know at what point I crossed the line, but I'm definitely past that. Swiss francs are now real money, and I look at the green American paper in my wallet and think, "What is this? Do people actually accept this as payment?" No doubt that will not last long, once I am home, but it's a weird feeling.
I've long been in favor of following the lead of the many countries that have replaced their lower-denomination bills with coins. Now that I've worked with such a system for over a month, here are some observations: (More)
While Joseph was undergoing a secular baptism of sorts at the American Embassy in Bern, Grandma had no official business other than to receive the diaper bag when it was rejected at the door for possible terrorist connections.* (More)
Living with other people for several weeks is a good way to experience new foods and new food combinations. If those other people happen to live in another country, the opportunities multiply. And if they also subscribe to a local organic farm's weekly vegetable delivery, well...you get to try Swiss chard. Verdict? Not bad, though I think I'll like it better mixed with other things, such as in an omelet or on a pizza. It's related to beets, but I find the taste more like spinach. As it was with Heather and Jon's Community-Supported Agriculture farm in Pittsburgh, the weekly vegetable lottery is fun to play, and Stephan (like Jon) is particularly good at figuring out how to make good use of fennel, fresh tarragon, and eggplant as well as potatoes, lettuce, and zucchini.
What's a visit to Switzerland without trying a new variety of chocolate? When Stephan brought home a bar of dark Ovomaltine, I was at first skeptical. (More)
We interrupt the writing of my review of Ender's Game to alert you to the fact that Janet has now posted Joseph's birth story. I'll add some comments later.
I like the trash collection system here in Basel: You buy special blue garbage bags, each 35 liters in size (about 9 gallons), which is considerably smaller than an American "large kitchen trash bag." They are, however, much tougher, and can be well-stuffed without ripping. You pack your trash as efficiently as possible into as many bags as you need, and put them out in the street at the appropriate time for collection.
That's it. The cost of trash collection is included in the cost of the bags, and thus you pay proportionately for the amount of trash you produce. There is significant incentive to minimize your waste, yet the capacity to dispose of more is there if you need it. Ideally, you would pay by weight rather than volume, but the system is so easy, it is a worthwhile compromise. I think of a friend's complaint that she can't help feeling annoyed at seeing her neighbor's routine weekly pile of 10 or more large bags as she makes her own family's one-small-bag contribution to the landfill collection; she would welcome such a system in her town. As would I.
Recycling is different here, too, though I haven't decided if it's better or worse. Plastics and metals must be taken to a recycling station instead of being picked up at the curb as I'm accustomed to, but such stations are only an easy walk away. Only one type of plastic is recycled ("PET," known in the U.S. as PETE or #1); our county recycles any type of plastic as long as it has a number code. On the other hand, paper is picked up at the curb, and they recycle all sorts of paper, including office paper, which our county excludes. Not worse, not better, just different—and not any more different than the variability from community to community in the U.S., as we discovered in moving among New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Florida.
Temperatures in the mid-90's do not surprise me in July: I live in Florida. I'll confess I was hoping for something more reasonable in Switzerland, however. Somehow calling the temperatures "mid-30's" doesn't improve the situation as much as I would hope. I miss air conditioning; I miss ceiling fans. Even when we lived without air conditioning in Boston I could find relief at the grocery store. Not so, here.
But there are compensations. The apartment is wonderfully designed for cross-ventilation, and the lack of screens means we make the most of every breeze. We have two fans, and the temperatures cool off enough at night to make sleeping reasonable. Still, there's not much incentive to be very ambitious, and Janet is really wishing she could take advantage of her membership in the pool that's only a five-minute walk away.
How about you? I gather it's been hot for a lot of folks.
Baby update: Doing fine, eating lots, filling out, doesn't like the heat but still likes to be held. Has perfected the knack of filling a clean diaper within 15 seconds of the change.
