July 14th in "Le Havre" / 14 de Julio en "Le Havre"
Although a bit late, here's the start of the story of our July's holidays. We started getting to the city of "Le Havre" on the French Normandy Coast, there we enjoyed this architectural jewel defined by the UNESCO as part of the World Heritage, after being almost completely rebuilt between 1945 and 1964, after being severly damaged during the war. We also had the chance to see the fireworks in celebration of France's Independence on the bay, it was just the right start to the trip.
Español: Aquí les traigo la historia del comienzo de nuestras vacaciones de Julio. Comenzamos con ir a la ciudad de "Le Havre" en la costa Normanda de Francia. Allí disfrutamos de esta joya arquitectónica que fue definida por la UNESCO como patrimonio de la humanidad, luego de ser casi completamente reconstruida entre 1945 y 1964, luego de ser dañada severamente durante la guerra. También tuvimos la oportunidad de disfrutar de los fuegos artificiales en celebración del día de la Independencia Francesa, la manera correcta de comenzar nuestro viaje.
Algunas fotos mas de los campos floreados de Holanda
Aquí algunas fotos más para complementar las puestas anteriormente del campo de flores en Holanda.
Tuvimos un excelente día con un clima cálido y soleado increible para esta época del año que por supuesto aprovechamos para tomar muchísimas fotos.
De verdad una zona que vale la pena visitar especialmente en esta época del año cuando todo está floreado y colorido. Este campo en especial estaba cerca de la ciudad de Sasenheim entre Roterdam y Amsterdam.
So following the suggestions from family and friends we went to the Netherlands to check their famous Flower Fields now that Spring is fully here. We drove off the highways to go through the small streets in the Netherlands and passed by the towns of Leiden, Katwijk, Nordwijk, Sasseheim to end up in Keukenhof, a floral park that deserves a posting on his own. You can check the area in Google Maps. We enjoyed the beautiful landscapes, small towns, windmills in the roads and people just cycling around, and close to Sasenheim found some fields full of flowers were most of these pictures were taken (with the exception of the Rose and last tulips)
It's definitely worth it to go to the Netherlands at this time to enjoy the scenery!!
Starting the update on places visited in the last 2 months I'll start with Namur (Or Namen in Dutch). Namur it's a town in the southern part of Belgium (you can check it's location in Google Maps), it started as a celtic trading settlement, then was an important Roman post, then it developed as it's own county. It was cut in half as the northern part of the River Meuse belonged to the Counts of Namur and the other side belonged to the Bishops of Liege. It felt to the hands of the Count of Flanders in 1262 and was purchased by Burgundy in 1421. It was part of the Spanish-Netherlands in the 1640s, and was invaded by the French in 1692. After that it was owned by the Dutch, Austrians, France once again and finally what is now Belgium. Each of these changes left its marks on the city and it's definitely worth a while to go and pay a visit to it if you are in town. Here are some pictures of the citadel and city.
While in Kenya you have to try the Carnivore restaurant, originally you could get all types of game meat (antelope, gazelle, zebra, etc.) and normal meat; but since the government has put a ban on game meat you can only get 2 "exotic" meats: Alligator and Ostrich. Anyways where else would you try that? From the alligator they cook only the tail and it tastes similar to fish, and the Ostrich was made in meatballs with quite nice seasoning and really good I must say. The rest of the meats were very good, well cooked and it was quite nice environment, it reminded me a lot of AIESEC's ICs with all the restaurant's staff singing "Jambo" to the ones celebrating their birthdays, just like the Kenyan delegations always!!
Definitely worth a visit, although I was told that "Pampas" restaurant has better meat, but no "exotic" ones
So my trip to Kenya has ended and I came back with an interesting mix of different views, facts, pictures, etc. from there which I will try to share as much as possible.
Fist some General information of Kenya taken from CIA World Fact Book: Location: East Africa bordering Indian Ocean and between Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia and Tanzania Area: 582,650 sq km (about 64% of Venezuela's size and 19 times Belgium's size) Population: Approx. 35 Million (Compared to 26 Mill. in VE and 10 Mill. in BE) Life Expectancy at birth: 48.93 Years (compared to 74.54 at Venezuela and 78.77 in BE) Languages: Kiswahili and English as official
Currency: Kenyan Shilling - KES (Exchange Rate 1 EUR = 91.5 KES) GDP per Capita: USD 1200 (USD 6900 in VE and USD 31.800 in Belgium)
Capital: Nairobi (Population Approx. 4 Millions)
Some Other interesting facts about Kenya:
Was a British Colony up to 1963 when it was declared independent, the independence movement was led by Jomo Kenyatta who became Kenya's first president until his death in 1978
After that president MOI took power and ruled for 24 years until he stepped down in 2002 ( 24 YEARS!!! That's Chavez dream). From that time most of the people I talked to said that money was taken from the Country into his and his close people's pockets
Since then president Mwai Kibaki has been ruling, most of the impressions I heard of him are positive, although there's still a long road ahead of Kenya for development
They will have elections this year, and the impressions I received was that the current president will not be reelected as results have not been as quick as expected in the Country's economy
There are about 24 different Ethnic groups in the country
It's famous for it's wildlife, Mt. Kenya (with its 5199 mts), it's tribes and the Masai Mara Natural reserve
From a personal perspective of the short time I was there I can say that:
The people are very friendly, outgoing, like to party a lot, enjoy going out and having fun. They are very proud of Kenya and being Kenyan, although they realize the challenges they face.
Even if the impression I had initially is that it is really dangerous and unsafe, there was a lot of people walking on the street up to 10-11pm. So my impression is that you should be careful not to go out with expensive clothes, watch, camera, etc. and not to enter certain areas, for the rest it's OK.
There's a big gap between rich and poor (as on the street you can still see BMW MIII, Toyota Prado, etc. and people without even shoes)
Their Handcrafts are amazing, specially the sculptures made out of ebony, soapstone and other types of wood
Public transport is heavily used and semi organized. I could see very long lines of people waiting for the buses next to the hotel at the bus stop, but they were queuing in an organized manner (something you don't see that much in Venezuela)
They could benefit a lot more from Tourism but insecurity is the major concern for travellers
There's a big Indian Population in Nairobi (but more of that in next posting)
Dentro de pocos minutos abordare mi avion hacia Nairobi y por primera vez visitare Africa o "Sub Saharan Africa", ya que estoy seguro que Marruecos y Egipto a pesar de estar en el mismo continente tienen realidades muy, muy distintas. Esa aventura de descubrir un nuevo país y cultura me provoca incertidumbre y a la vez ese entusiasmo que se siente al lanzarte al agua, al vivir una nueva experiencia, pero como toda experiencia nueva trae consigo ese poquito de miedo y preocupacion. Sin importar lo que pase en Kenya, estoy seguro de que este viaje me traera retos que no imagino todavia, pero ver de cerca una parte de la realidad de otro pais en "Vias de Desarrollo" me acercara de nuevo a mis raices Latino Americanas; y a pesar de los retos regresare con una sonrisa en la cara, mas pasión y energia por mi trabajo y este continente que conocere mas y mas durante este año. Que viva la aventura y el descubrir, porque ellas te mantienen vivo y energizado!!
So how do you cover over 3,000 Kilometers of road in two weeks in a trip that involves 6 adults and 1 child? My word of advice would be, you go online as early as possible to look for the biggest car available for a good price, agree long time in advance what you want to do and where you want to go, get at least 2 responsible but crazy enough persons with a driver's license to drive the car, and gather as much patience as possible.
In our case my oldest sister and me were the drivers, I got a great price for a "Mini Bus" (Mercedes Van for 9 persons) and a tom tom GPS, and trust me on that one the 12 Euros a day ARE WORTH IT!!!
Well it is hard to get all the holidays into the blog, specially when it requires reviewing over 3,000 pictures; but I will do so in the next postings.
It all started here in Brussels so I decided to post some pictures of us enjoying the light show in the center, my sister investing her first Euros in Godiva's Hot Chocolate in the Grand Place, a toast in our place and us opening the Christmas presents.
Now the tradition is that you do so in Christmas Eve, but as we were starting to travel on the 18th, we had to move everything forward, and of course Daniela started enjoying hers as soon as it was "ON", now we are having concerts at home every now and then ;-D
Finally things are starting to settle down and now I can start blogging about the last amazing holidays which ended one week ago.
It all started on December 9th when both my parents arrived for a 1 month and a week stay in Europe, I had to work for one more week and then both my sisters arrived on the 16th and 17th. On the 18th we rented a "Mini-Bus" and started the 2 weeks long trip that took us through: Nuremberg, Prague, Munich, Zurich, Geneve, Lyon, Dijon, Auxerre, Paris and back to Brussels just in time for New Year's eve.
I will be blogging about it in the next weeks with pics, stories and much more from each location, but for the time being I will leave you here with a map of the little over 3.000 Km trip and a special thanks to each of the travelers for making it as special as it was.
For the second time in my life I have been forced to stay overnight in an airport due to visa related issues, now the location has changed and "improved" from the last time but, it is anyways a painful experience.
The first time was in El Salvador while traveling to attend the international AIESEC conference ALDS 2003, back then I trusted an OC member that assured me Venezuelans did not require a Visa to enter de country, which was confirmed by the AA lady that let me board in Puerto Rico. But that mistake lead to a one night stay in the airport in a police small room with only 1 desk and 2 chairs, sleep on the floor (on some couches pillows borrowed from the immigration coaches while immigration was closed) with 2 policemen sleeping in the same room with me, wait until next day to fly back to Miami, get my Visa and then fly back to El Salvador.
Even though the damage was not major I was delayed by 3 days, as I was a facilitator I was arriving 3 days in advance so it was manageable, but It was a very uncomfortable experience, it put me off-balance, wasted my time, damaged my conference preparation and team-bonding with other facilitators and did not allow me to be at my best for the rest of the conference. At that time I had sworn not to let it happen again.
Yet, here I am writing from Dubai airport waiting for news from my DHL colleagues about when my Visa will be ready.
You might ask "how is it that after that experience I got stuck here again?" Well as usual I had checked my visa requirements online, I had mentioned to my colleagues that I needed a Visa and if it was not to be ready on time it would be better either to postpone the meeting or to change the location, I had suggested to change it to Bahrain as the G-Tech is also going on right now in Dubai and getting a hotel is quite difficult, ... , but I was assured that my visa was going to be ready and worse come worse they can always issue me a 96 hours transit Visa at arrival. Know what? It wasn't ready and I couldn't receive the 96 hours visa!
Some pointers for those of you traveling to Dubai who need a Visa and are planning on getting the 96h visa, here are some pointers:
You can be issued a 96h visa on arrival only if you are transiting from one location to another one. Meaning for me coming from Europe, I should be going to Asia or another location in Middle East in order to get it.
Even if you are issued a transit Visa it will cost you some money.
If you have a hotel reservation they can work out the visa for you, but in my case the hotel's night manager was not willing to come at midnight to sort it out, even after talking to the immigration officer and he confirmed they just needed my visa application form from the hotel. So I had to wait till next day
Some nationalities can be issued a tourist visa on arrival, just check before traveling.
So for the time being: I couldn't stay in the airport hotel as it was full (so I am not the only one that has this problem), I had 5 hours sleep (not bad for an airport chair), I just had some hot breakfast (because the air conditioning in this place is extremely cold even in the middle of the desert) and I will be waiting for a call on my Visa in order to get out, gather my luggage, get changed, get ready and start my meeting.
I just hope there are no more surprises like this one in the rest of the trip.
I was just looking at old posting which I never posted and found this interesting things of crazy stuff that happened to us before the wedding trip. It was definitely worth posting it:
I cut my hand 1 day before leaving to Venezuela, a deep long cut in my left hand while chopping some fruit for Daniela, which translated into me having a bandage over my hand for 3 days(now there's almost not even a scar).
The Flower shop did not arrange for the calla lilies to be delivered before the wedding, so 3 days before they had to run and find them; we almost didn't have any flowers nor bouquet.
The van in which we picked up my wife's family had no air conditioner but only a hole on the roof. I take my hat off for them as they made the best out of that situation, but we were really afraid on what to do if it rained.
Money Exchange: It was truly a challenge, because if you change dollars in an exchange office they would pay you about Bs 2000 per dollar, if you do it in the black market about Bs 2300 per dollar, and my family wanted some dollars and they were buying them at Bs 2500, but they ran out of cash on the 3rd day.
We did not have much time to go to the church before the wedding, so we did not rehearse the ceremony or had any idea what to answer during it, it was truly an adventurous experience with the priest telling us softly exactly what to respond during it.
The priest had written in his agenda that the baptism was at 9:00am but told us at 9:30, so he left after 9:15 as nobody arrived and we had to wait until 11:00 for some friends to pick him from his residency and return to do the ceremony.
Due to several intercultural misunderstandings, my wife's family ended up not even wanting to enter our house for the celebration of the baptism, which resulted with everyone being uncomfortable and not feeling welcome. But hey at the end it worked out.
The road to go down to La Guaira Airport was closed several minutes before us leaving Caracas, so we had to take the old 2 way street through the mountains, but thanks to god for that extra toast in my sister's apartment, otherwise we would have been stuck in the traffic without making it to the airport on time.
On the flight back a crazy Portuguese guy that was sitting next to us read the newspaper for 7 HOURS straight, thus not letting Daniela or anyone else in the part of the plane sleep properly. You never know where you will meet the next asshole with insomnia.
Last Thursday was a holiday in Belgium, so we decided to take Friday off, rent a car and go to Alsace, a very well known region of the Southeast France. This Region is well known for it's Wine Route, Castles, Black Forest and good gourmet. So after 4 amazing days of Wine tasting, 1200 Km of road, tasting typical food of the Region, almost going crazy due to the works on the road to Luxembourg I am now back in Brussels with a ton of pictures to finish to upload, so more from Alsace and Venezuela soon.
By the way, I am also celebrating as I have just finished putting together our new desk, so from now on blogging from my desk at home. Pictures of the apartment and a little inauguration dinner to come.
