Manambato Channel – Hotel Les Acacias

We say farewell to Vakona and get on the road around 8:00AM. Manambato Channel is about three hours away from Vakona Lodge. We pass through many little villages on our way. They generally look similar – they are pretty small, about 12 ft X 12ft, set pretty close together. Clotheslines hanging between each hut, with colorful clothing and sheets. Women and children sitting in doorways, watching as we drive by. There are people walking around everywhere along the roads. Some ride bicycles, or push wheelbarrows. They are carrying timber, wood, plants, and other things, sometimes balancing precariously on their heads.

You can buy an interesting variety of things on the side of the road in Madagascar. For example, very small bananas. They are about 1/3 of the size of bananas we are used to, but come in bunches of about 18 or so. There is a green spiny fruit about the size of an ostrich egg that I have never seen before. Stools….. baskets…..eels. Yes – that’s right, eels. As we drove along we would see women and children holding up a bunch of eels, maybe 10-15, waving them at us. I guess they catch them in the rivers and eat them.

We stop at one of the larger villages, full of fruit stands to buy some water and so Alin can buy some soap. We get out of the car and immediately several children, perhaps about 5-8 years old swoop down to us selling what appears to be overripe bananas in plastic packaging. My French is limited and I use that as the excuse to buy them, but one persistent girl keeps coming up, trying to sell them to me. I walk away, feeling guilty, but truly, I don’t think I could have eaten them. A well-dressed Malagasy man walks up to us, speaking in near perfect English. He another of Ben’s guides, driving another couple around. We chat for a little bit, he tells us that the Malagasy government rarely issues VISAs to their citizens who wish to travel outside of Madagascar. He has never been able to leave, even when a former client of his offered to pay for the flight and his expenses in Europe. Its sad. James and I discuss later the possible reasons around this. On the whole, while desperately poor, the Malagasy seem to be a very happy people. There are always smiles and waves as we pass by. There is little to no violent crime. The government, on the whole, seems relatively stable. Their connection to the outside world is very limited, and perhaps the government keeps it that way, if you don’t know what you are missing, then how can you get upset about it?? If too many Malagasy left and saw how much of the world lived, they would realize the implications of their current situation…….

We finally pull off the main road for the next harrowing 6 km to Hotel Les Acacias, our next set of accommodations. This road was even more harrowing than the bumpy ride into Vakona. These roads weren’t just bumpy but also muddy and slippery. Alin tells us that if it has rained recently, you can’t get to the hotel. James and I look at each other with wide eyes, and hold on. The car slides through the mud, narrowly missing the embankment on either side of the road at times. We travel over a wooden bridge that is essentially 3 narrow pieces of wood, laid across the riverbed, on either side for your tires, and covered in narrow reeds. There is a rough illustration below. There are no guardrails or any sort of protection on either side. As we carefully cross, Alin looks back at us with a smile on his face and says, “CRACK!!” gleefully. James and I laugh appreciatively but nervously. We knew Madagascar would be an adventure, and every day it seems to be a bigger and bigger one!! After carefully navigating more mug and a huge puddle that spans the entire road, we finally pull up to our hotel.





Hotel Les Acacias is a common vacation spot for the Malagasy, according to our guidebook. In some ways, it is perhaps a bit reminiscent of the Caribbean, we have our own little hut/bungalow that reminds me a bit of girl scout camp. It is built with traditional Malagasy construction…basically a wooden structure with thin reeds as the walls and dried leaves of the “umbrella plant” for the roof. We have a double bed and single bed, both covered by mosquito nets, and a private bathroom with a cold water shower, which consequently never was used. It’s cold and drizzly so we spend the afternoon hanging out in the open air meal/ hang out/ business conference area. We waited a pretty long time for lunch…..well, we always waited a long time for lunch, but here it was even longer than usual. We invited Alin to have lunch with us and finally got him to loosen up a bit and talk, the rum with vanilla actually did the loosening, we did the talking. We asked what he did in the evenings and he raised his glass to us. He said “ I can get a girl or I can have rum….because of the aids and my wife….I have rum”. Alin’s a smart man. We have a nice conversation about culture, economics, music, and family. Our lunch arrives in the form of the strangest calamari I have ever seen, it’s conical and spiny, and quite tasty actually. We spend the majority of the next 8 hours with poker, THB, rum, gin (game not drink), and zebu. Later in the evening the guides of the various tourists get together, break out the guitar, and do the Malagasy version of “Sweet Caroline”.



The electricity went out around 10PM (this is normal in Madagascar) and so we lit a candle as we were getting in bed. We must have dozed off, but all of a sudden I started to smell something burning. I looked over and the plastic top of our 100% DEET bug spray was on fire – an aerosol can!!!!! Thank goodness we saw it before it exploded, in a hut made plants, that would have been a disaster. That night was a rough one for me, since I’m a light sleeper. You can hear just about everything through the paper thin walls, so I woke up frequently that evening with every gust of wind or slight noise. The roosters starting crowing around 4AM, followed soon after by the sounds of people building a n new bungalow about 20 feet away from us. I am a bit out of sorts this morning, but find my ear plugs and go back to sleep for another hour, while James takes his book and goes out to the beach to read. Eventually I join him. We are both a bit grumpy at this point – new hotels every night, bad weather, and little to do. It’s a shame because it is beautiful where we are, but the weather is too rainy/chilly to enjoy the paradise around us. We also discover, much to our dismay, that we are nearly out of Ariary (local currency) and we have another 2 days before we reach Tamatave where we can get to an ATM, and you can’t use credit or debit cards anywhere. Embarrassingly, we have to short people on tips, to ensure we have enough money to pay for our meals at our next stop, Palmarium.

Andasibe National Park - July 3

Breakfast is, not surprisingly, bread, jam, coffee and tea, with the addition of honey. We eat quickly and jump into the car for the bumpy ride back up the trail back up to the park entrance. Its rainy and a bit chilly outside. There is a constant mist in the air. From reading the guides and past experiences in Africa, I was expecting to see a hundred men near the entrance, ready to mob the car, competing to be chosen to be our tour guide. For me, there is nothing more uncomfortable than that situation, and yet again, Madagascar defied my expectations and we walk into the park entrance, completely unharassed. One guide walks up while we pay for our tickets. She asks where we are from, in French. We say, “Je suis American.” She breaks into a little English and introduces herself – Monica.

I was certainly a bit surprised to have a woman guide. Like most third world countries, Madagascar seemed like a place where the woman rules the home and the man made the money. However, the difference here is that it isn’t that way because of machoism, but more out of functionality. I learn later, through discussions with Merrill, that there is little discrimination based on gender or race here. There is some towards people in South Madagascar, but that’s about it. We start our walk up the wet trail into the rainforest….

Monica’s English is pretty limited. James seems to understand her accent much better than I. As we walk along, she points out a kingfisher (bird), some chameleons, orchids, and tells us some little facts about each. We travel deeper into the forest. I see her start to scan the treetops and I do the same. Its hard to see much though, the forest is dense, visibility is limited because of the rain and mist. She seems to walk so quickly and I wonder how she can see any of them at all.

We walk……and walk…..and walk……I know its supposed to be a 4 hour tour and we are perhaps 45 minutes into it, but I start to wonder if we’ll be the unlucky tourists who won’t see the “Indri Indri” aka “the ghosts of the forest.” The Indri are the largest lemurs, and also the rarest. They are only found in the eastern part of Madagascar, the vast majority being in the forest through which we are walking. They don’t ever come down out of the trees, so they can be difficult to observe.


However, after walking for awhile we finally start to hear some voices and noises in the jungle ahead. Monica takes a sharp turn off the trail and starts walking faster than before, pushing through the brush. We push through branches and bushes, trying not to let anything swipe our faces and suddenly she stops, and points upwards. Up in the trees, we can see what looks like a skinny panda bear, sitting in the branches above us, quietly gnawing on some leaves. It doesn’t seem disturbed by the people below. Monica starts making a funny kissing/groaning sound, and tells us its their “call of love” trying to get the Indri to come down. The Indri seems unimpressed, but soon she points again and we see two more coming slowly to join the first. It’s a family. According to Monica there are 54 families of Indri in the park. They have one baby every two to three years, and are polygamous. Soon, through some guide ESP, several other guides and their tourists have joined us. Cameras snap, camcorders roll….. the Indri eat in peace and seem undisturbed by the excitement below them. We take lots of pictures and some good video, and finally move on to the next area.




We continue to walk deeper into the forest. Monica points some nocturnal lemurs well hidden in the trees – how does she see them!! Two fluffy furry balls with a pair of red eyes look out at us – if they weren’t so cute, I would think they were vampires, but one just looked at us while we took pictures and then we moved on. We hear voices and what sounds like branches hitting trees a-ways off. Monica moves off the trail and back into the jungle and we follow. We traipse down a steep hill, through the brush, stepping over branches, navigating around trees, pushing vines out of our path. The voices and banging gets louder. It sounds like a bunch of men yelling while they chop down a tree. We hear intermittent dog barking. Monica tells us to wait, and she vanishes into the jungle.

We listen to the sounds coming from below us. Five minutes pass, and another. The sounds below us don’t change. We wait……the cynical American in me wonders if we have been left in the jungle, but James and I smile at each other…. “It’s an adventure……” and wait patiently…..all of a sudden, about 30 feet to our right, we hear “Yoo-hoo!!!!” We call back, and hear a crashing back through the jungle, we sight Monica, moving towards us, and she beckons for us to follow. She carefully guides us down the rest of the hill and points upwards…. Another family of 3 Indris are above. She makes her “call of love” again, and this time it works – they start jumping from tree to tree, and fast!!! We run through the jungle as quickly as we can, jumping over logs, dodging branches, trying to keep them in our sights, 30 feet above. Other guides hear us running through the forest and soon there is a group of 10 people pushing through the bush, trying to keep the family in sight. They finally stop, and so do we. We all clamor to get a good angle to take pictures…. And watch. They jump from treetop to treetop, stopping occasionally to eat some leaves or peer around. I let another tourist have my place to take a picture.

All of a sudden, Monica appears to my right, and starts picking at James raincoat. I look over to see what she’s doing and she looks at my hand and grabs it. She lifts it up so I can see it. I see what looks like a small worm on my hand. Not understand, I look at her, and she says, “leech…” She pulls it off quickly, and I immediately look down at my clothes, I see several on my anorak and grab them off quickly. There are very few things in this world that legitimately freak me out, but anything that sucks my blood qualifies. I check James and pull a few off his clothes as well. From then on I can’t shake the feeling that I’m covered in leeches, though we don’t see anymore the rest of the trip. We finish taking pictures of the Indri and head out from the forest, as more tourists arrive to that spot to view the Indri.



We find the trail again, and continue down it. We see some Sifaka high in the trees, and another nocturnal species. It is amazing how well she can spot them, and it is amazing to see these beautiful creatures in their natural habitat. We finally emerge from the rainforest, feeling wet, a bit creeped out by leeches, but elated. Alin greets us with his usual smile and we get back into the car. He drives us to the restaurant at Feon’ly’ala, “the best place to have lunch” according to Alin. I have fish with Malagasy sauce. The fish is lightly friend with head, bones, eyes, and BIG teeth intact. The Malagasy sauce is delicious. We enjoy a THB and recollect our jungle experience. Alin brings us back towards Vakona Lodge and we decide to stop at the Lemur Island before heading back to the hotel. The Lemur Island is a refuge owned by Vakona, that has taken in injured or previously owned lemurs who can no longer survive on their own in the wild. We pay our entrance fee and get in a small pirogue and are brought 10 feet across the channel where we are greeted immediately by 3 black and white tufted lemurs. They enthusiastically jump all over us, looking for the carrots the guide brought with him. We feed and pet them and watch them as they jump from my shoulder to James’ and back. After we get our fill of them, we walk down a short path and four brown lemurs emerge, the size of small cats. We also see a Diademed Sifaka, “Caramel,” who hangs upside down from a branch for his carrots. Our guide tells us that this breed of lemur is known as the “dancing lemur.” We soon learn why…. Our guide crouches down about 15 ft away and calls to Caramel. He stands up on his hind legs and sort of jumps/shuffles over to him to grab the carrot. We look around and at any given time there are five lemurs of three different species on trees 2 feet away from us, sometimes jumping on our shoulders. As we continue down the path, one of the brown lemurs follows along behind us, just like a dog.




We finally come to the end of the trail, and our guide asks how many species of lemurs we have seen. We tell him that we think we have seen four species. He says, “have you seen the ring tail??” We say no. For 10,000AR he says he will bring us to see the ring tail lemurs “as long as you don’t tell the hotel.” We shrug and say ok. We get back on the boat and he paddles around the back of the island and down another channel to another island. We pass a slightly menacing sign that says, in French, “Be careful, we bite….” James and I exchange glances and keep our eyes peeled in the treetops. We pull up to the shore and our guide starts calling out. We see movement in the trees about 100 ft away. All of a sudden there are several lemurs jumping out of the trees onto the ground towards us… .the ring tails!!!!!! They are very small, very slightly built. They come close to our boat and our guide throws carrots. They grab them and nibble, almost like rabbits. We take pictures and watch. They are shivering!!!! I suppose it is the dead of winter. Six come out and we feed them. One jumps on the side of the boat, but we can’t pet them, these are too wild. We watch with fascination as they eat and watch us. Eventually our guide says, “OK??” and we paddle away. I look back to see them leaping back towards the forest. We dock and Alin comes out to greet us, again, grinning. We hop in the car and head back to the hotel around 3pm. We immediately fall asleep for a long nap, waking just in time for a delicious and satisfying dinner and then back to sleep to awake early for our trip tomorrow to Manambato.

Tana to Andasibe – July 2

We wake up around 9:30AM, feeling relatively refreshed and ready for our adventure to truly begin. We shower – quickly – the hot water tank is small and doesn’t last very long (though we learn soon that a hot water tank is a luxury in Madagascar!!). We re-pack our bags and go downstairs for breakfast. Breakfast is coffee (for James) and Malagasy tea (for me), bread and jam. We soon learn that this is the typical Malagasy breakfast. The coffee is excellent. The tea – well, I was a bit confused whether it was water or tea. It looked fairly clear and didn’t have much taste, but I later learned it was just too weak. The bread and jam were delicious though. Colin came down to talk to us, and we ask him about Madagascar, his business, tipping practices and other subjects. He advises us that, in general, tip small (around 2000 AR) for something small like carrying bags, and perhaps 5000-10000AR for something like driving you around all day. He said, if you tip too much, they start to expect the larger amounts, and get upset if you don’t tip enough. We see a car pull up and Ben comes inside. We sit with him and he reviews our trip with us, giving us our plane tickets, vouchers for our hotels, boat rides, and so on. We meet our driver Alin and see our transportation for the next several days, a white Audi. We bid farewell to Colin and Ben and head off to Andasibe National Park.

We drive through Tana, heading towards the countryside. Tana turns out to be a very large city. Alin tells us it has a population of around 4 million people. As we drive around, we see people walking – everywhere. The public transportation is vans (known as taxi-brousses) – not buses. This is because the roads are narrow and rocky, and a bus wouldn’t really be able to navigate very well or even fit on the street. Its interesting because the taxi-brousses go from place to place on the side of the road and people get in from the back, rather than the side. The cars driving down the road are probably from the 70s and 80s. Alin is partial to listening to 80s soft rock, Celine Dion, Richard Marx, and Lionel Richie. We decide we are going to send him some new tapes when we get home. We slowly make our way out of the city and buses and buildings give way to rolling hills and rice fields. It’s a stark difference. The air quality is obviously drastically improved. There are still people walking around everywhere, but the biggest thing we notice is all of a sudden its ALL children. Where are the adults? Children carrying baskets in their arms or on their head. 8 year olds carrying 2 year olds on their back or infants in their arms. Children selling things in stalls. We drive through the crowds and see curious but kind faces. You can see both the African and Asian influences in their faces. Madagascar was first settled by the Polynesians, and you can see many people who look completely Asian, or others with dark skin but almond shaped eyes and high cheekbones. We continue through the countryside – its funny, the roads outside of the city are paved - perfectly, and are easily traveled.

We eventually arrive at Peyrieras Nature farm – La Mandraka. We had thought it was a butterfly farm, but we learn we have made the wrong assumption. This stop was a perfect introduction to our trip to Madagascar. We order our lunch before we start our tour (advice from Ben, and we learn that this is what you have to do in Madagascar, order your meals at least 2-3 hours in advance). We didn’t know what to expect, but Michael, our guide, starts to lead us up a path. We pass by many huge netted enclosures that we imagine contain butterflies and other wildlife. However, we bypass all the enclosures and head up a slightly steep incline along the trail into the forest. We quickly realize we aren’t here to see butterflies. We reach a trail that wraps around a small hill. Michael is carrying a bunch of small bananas – they are about 1/3 of the size of the bananas we are used to, with at least double the number of fruit on the stem. He starts to call out for the lemurs. We peer into the forest, looking for them. We see…. Nothing. He calls and calls, perhaps for about 10 minutes. We start to wonder if they will come. The forest is silent, no noises of anything crashing through the trees. He tells us to stay where we are and goes off to another part, calling loudly. Lo and behold, there they are – a pair of orange eyes surrounded by black fur and a long snout – a lemur. He’s sitting on a branch, about 20 feet away, staring at us. Michael comes back and holds out a banana. That’s all the temptation the lemur needs, and he comes jumping from branch to branch, until he’s right next to us. It’s a brown lemur, Michael tells us. We hear a grunting noise – almost like a pig (or, if you know me, the weird noise I make to scratch my throat.) The lemur takes the banana from Michael’s hands and eats it noisily. Michael entices the lemur onto his shoulder and then onto mine. I’m mesmerized. The brown lemur is about the size of a small dog. He’s sitting on my shoulder, eating from my hand. I’m in heaven. James says, “Look!” and we see that two other lemurs have come through the forest for bananas. They are soon joined by a third. We have four lemurs now, clinging to the branches around us, eating bananas and jumping on our shoulders. We feed each of them and take some pictures and videos of them jumping around us. I think this was my favorite experience in Madagascar. These animals were wild, they lived in the forest, but they were friendly enough to let you get very close and feed and pet them. Eventually Michael says to move on, so we say goodbye to the brown lemurs and move to a different part of the forest.



Another person is there waiting, and he has already coaxed the next species out of the forest – the Coquerel Sifaka. There are four in the branches around us. These aren’t quite as willing to jump on our shoulders, but will eat from our hands. They look very different from the brown lemurs. They are very beautiful. We enjoyed watching them eat and climb from branch to branch. Eventually we have gotten our fill of watching and taking pictures, and descend back to the main part of the reserve. We then enter the net enclosures which are full of trees, plants, and wildlife, as well as smaller enclosures. Michael opens up cage after cage and brings our all different species of chameleons, geckos, frogs, insects, giant doodlebugs/roly polys for us to observe and handle. He puts up a grasshopper so we can watch the chameleon grab it with his long sticky tongue. They also have a crocodile pit, with 4-5 medium sized crocodiles. We see butterflies, bats, and a small rodent-like creature that looks a bit like a opossum or a hedgehog without spines. We finally finish seeing all their creatures and go up to their lodge for our late lunch. Its delicious – curry chicken, green beans and THB – or Three Horses Beer Pilsener – the only beer in Madagascar. All is delicious. We tell our waiter “Ma-chi-roh” or “delicious” in Malagasy. He seems tickled by this and he runs back to tell his family. We hear them saying something like “they said machiroh!!” in French and laughing. We aren’t sure if they are laughing at our pronunciation or pleased, but we’re proud of our mastery of the Malagasy language . We take a few pictures outside of the lodge, it’s a beautiful view, buy a neat chameleon wall hanging and get back into the car with Alin and head to Andasibe and Vakona Lodge.



The drive to Vakona is uneventful until the end. I doze in the car until we turn off the main road for the last 7 km to Vakona. The road is again unpaved. We bump along, weaving back and forth to avoid the potholes. I wonder if Vakona is accessible after a heavy rain. We finally pull up to the lodge. We go inside and check in. The lodge is octagonal shaped with very high ceilings, windows all around, and opera music playing, giving it a very elegant feeling. We are led to our bungalow. It has a porch, a nice double bed, a room with an seating area that could be another bed, and a large bathroom. We shower and head down to dinner. Vakona is certainly a beautiful lodge in the middle of the forest. In retrospect it was definitely the nicest place we stayed. There is an actual menu (as opposed to “choose one, chicken or fish…”) with French food and wine with a slight Malagasy flare (for example, Zebu Carpaccio. Zebu is the cattle of Madagascar). We have the carpaccio and a bottle of white Malagasy wine, which turns out to be pretty good. We have foie gras, which is even better than the foie gras we had in Paris – its spicy. The food is delicious and we eventually return to our bungalow, complete with electricity and hot water, and settle in for the night. After all, we have to get up early for our excursion into the jungle.

Madagascar – July 1

The flight to Tana is about 10 hours long. We land in Antananarivo around 10:30PM (called Tana from here on…) and walk across the tarmac to the airport. Getting a Visa (something we were all a bit concerned about) turns out to be as easy as standing in line and paying about $13. It takes a bit of time, but its really not too bad, and soon we find the sign bearing our names and meet Ben Ravelo, the person I have been emailing with for over 6 months. He owns Visit Mada Tours – http://www.madagascar-information.com and has arranged the first half of our Madagascar adventure. He greets us warmly and is as nice as I had expected from our email communications. He and his helpers take our bags and wait while we pull out money from the ATM. One of the many challenges of traveling in Madagascar is money. You see, you can’t use your debit or credit cards anywhere. So you have to use cash. And, you can only get cash in the major cities, so you have to get enough to last you until you make it to the next ATM. When you get money from the ATM, the largest bill is equivalent to about $5 (10,000 ariary, AR). So, if you get out about $300 you feel like you are carrying around a TON of money. Considering the monthly salary for a driver in Madagascar is around 60 Euro a month, you really are carrying quite a bit. It seemed a bit nerve wracking at first, but we packed it all away in our super secret under the clothes pouches and walked out to our car to be brought to our hotel in Tana – Hotel Fischerhaus. http:///www.fischerhaus.net

The drive through Tana is fairly unremarkable, mostly because its dark and we can’t see anything. We see many wooden stands on the side of the road, somewhat rundown buildings, people walking around. It looks like a big city in a third world country – which it is. The roads aren’t paved and full of potholes. We drove down roads that you truly thought you wouldn’t be able to return from. We turned off the main road down this rocky potholed road that you could barely travel through, due to the cars parked and the big holes. I think both James and I had a small moment of panic – what in the world were we doing? Where were they taking us? Was this where they pulled over, took all our money, and dropped us off in the middle of a foreign city on the other side of the world?? However – I knew it wouldn’t happen and 2 minutes later we pull up to Hotel Fischerhaus. The owner, Colin, and a two of his employees greet us and take our bags. We walk into the reception area and say goodbye to Ben, who says he will return to talk to us tomorrow at 11AM and give us information on the rest of our trip. Colin speaks perfect English and we talk with him for a little while. In the middle of our conversation, the electricity goes out and one of his employees goes to find some candles. This is apparently very common in Tana. They have many factories that produce fabric and apparently they run at night and use a lot of electricity, so there are brown-outs that often last for 5-20 minutes. We are given a couple of candles and lanterns and led to our room. Its simple and sparsely furnished, with a big mosquito net over the bed. The room is easily double the size of our room in Paris. The furniture looks handcrafted. There are high ceilings and nice arched ceilings. Electricity returns within a few minutes of us checking into our room. We change into our PJs and crash into bed for a good night’s sleep after 2 solid days of traveling.

Paris - June 30

We almost missed our flight to Paris!!! We got to our boarding area and promptly fell asleep - both of us!! I wake up to an attendant standing over us saying, "You must board now! Your flight is leaving!!" I wake James and we look around, the entire room is empty, we are the last people left. We quickly gather our things and run down the tarmac. Another passenger, a portly British man, looks back at us, smiling and laughing - he had obviously seen us completely zonked out in the waiting area. He said, "I couldn't wake you, you both looked too peaceful." Luckily he told the attendant to wake us up!!

Our flight was uneventful and quick. We gathered our things and caught a train into Paris and easily found our hotel. We walk up and through the window we see all our friends, playing Asshole. Ha - you can take the people out of Ga Tech, but you can't take the Tech out of the people. However - surprise - they were so loud they were asked to leave the common area of the hostel, Mary's Hotel. Everyone, exhausted after a long day of traveling, decided to go to bed. Except Alix. She comes up to our room to chat while we shower and change. Our room is small, cozy and clean, perfectly adequate for our needs - simply a place to shower and sleep before leaving for Antananarivo (Tanarive) in the morning. We want to get a quick dinner before going to bed. Its 10:30 at night, but Paris never sleeps. We walk down the street and duck into a small cafe for dinner. The owner greeted us kindly (you never know what kind of reception you'll get as non-french speaking Americans in France...). Luckily he spoke English and helped us with the menu. We ordered Caprese, Foie Gras (mmmmmmmm), entrecote and Alix wanted a special meal, bread and fromage. He makes her a delicious meal with chevre cheese and selects a heavy bordeaux for us.

It was funny, I definitely had to remember to begin to SLOW DOWN and get on vacation time. I was so eager to eat and expecting a quick meal. But the service was slow - however it was all worth it when our food arrived - completely worth the wait. We chatted with Alix and heard about their travails on their flights from the US - flight being moved from gate to gate, lost luggage, and so on. She talked about a little of everything and I soon realized she was completely delirious from exhaustion and travel stress. But, she was funny and I was grateful that she decided to stay up and spend some time with us, since we wouldn't see her or the group again until we met up at the port to leave for Sainte Marie. All in all, it was a perfect evening in Paris - great company, great food, great wine, great cafe. We got home around midnight and set our alarm for 6AM to ensure we caught our flight in time. After all, if we missed it, we'd have to wait 2 days for the next one!!

The adventure begins - Copenhagen, June 30

Today we're in Copenhagen, Denmark. We landed around 9AM and after a long wait for our bags we were able to re-check them and wander off into the city. We walked past the finish line for the Jr. European Triathalon tournament. We saw many young men from all over Europe running their hearts out, while their coaches and family members cheered them on in Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, and British English. We also saw a military parade pass by. It was a busy Saturday in Copenhagen!! We wandered around the city, through the shopping district, through several gardens, and past many fountains. Eventually we ended up at Tivoli Gardens. We were expecting it to be some sort of palace gardens, but it was actually an amusement park with lots of restaurants and pretty scenery. We found a restaurant that served traditional Danish food - meatballs, fried fish, prawns and caviar, and a weird mayonnaise sauce, along with several beers. We sat on the water and watched the ducks swim past and admired a replica pirate ship. WE finally finished our lunch and walked past the finish line of the triathalon right as the winner finished. We finally settled at a Sports Bar next to Central station - drank some more and played cards. I whupped James - as usual :) The Sports bar was pretty funny, because they had all this 80s American football memorabilia - like Patriots pictures and a lot of Boston stuff. Finally, we get back on the train and head back to the airport for our flight to Paris.