The Froggin Alps

Last Friday I flew into Frankfurt-Hahn airport on ol' RyanAir (who did me another solid by the way!!) from Birmingham to go and visit some family and friends. As I believe I have said before Hahn airport is an old American airbase that they gave back to the Germans after downsizing sometime in the 1990's and it is very remote as most American military bases in Europe tend to be.

I landed and raced to be first through customs of course to call my ride and find out that they were still 20 minutes out. As it was coming up to 8PM when we arrived in the Kaiserslautern area and we had a long day ahead of us tomorrow my friend and I grabbed a quick bite to eat from the absolute best Turkish restaurant in Germany and took the food back to his place.

Early the next morning we woke-up and threw our bags into the car and headed out down the autobahn in the direction of Basel Switzerland. For my money Switzerland is the most beautiful country in all of Europe but it actually was not our destination on this occasion. From Basel we turned southwest in the direction of Geneva only to cross the border into France and continue on our way to our Saturday afternoon destination of Grenoble.

I first visited Grenoble back in 2000 or 2001 with my friend Angel and discovered it to be a very cool city indeed. It is said that it is the Silicon Valley of France and has a world-class university all set in some of the most dramatic scenery in France. To understand the grandness of it you need to imagine a capital letter 'Y'. The letter 'Y' is the plain or basin that the city is set across while along the perimeter of the letter 'Y' is all very large mountains.

My friend Tory and I checked into my usual hotel when I visit Grenoble and after picking up my son we were off racing around the hairpin turns heading up into the mountains in the silver Audi A4 that Tory had rented. The elevation on this particular mountain gets up to about 6000 feet (1900 meters) and the views of the city and the river that runs through it are really quite amazing.

We stopped off on the winding road a few more times that we had planned because my 6 year old son didn't really take to the ride too much and felt a little car-sick. After some fresh air and photographs in the much cooler weather (than below in the city) we were on our way through the mountain before reaching the little village of Saint-Nizer-du-Mouncherotte and turning around to head back down towards the city.

After that short trip up the mountain and because of the lack of sleep from the night before we had to crash at the hotel for a couple hours and grab a siesta while my son watched some weird French cartoons. Upon awaking we drove towards the areas largest shopping centre 'The Grande Place' and walked around before dropping my son of back to his mother at sunset and heading with Tory into the city centre so give him a little tour.

The gem in the crown of Grenoble is what they call 'The Bastille'. It is a fortified structure (that some might call a castle in the nontraditional way) on the side of a mountain just outside the city centre and has bubble like cable-cars taking you up to it unless you choose to take the long walk on the marked pathways. The signs say that this is where the French 'resistance' attacked from but I can't help but imagine it is where they hid form the Germans.

As you can see from the weather it was not so nice on Sunday in the Frog Alps. The mountain range you see here is where we had drove the previous day and taken the previous photo of the city from.

We didn't spend long up on The Bastille as we were hungry for breakfast/lunch and the restaurant up on The Bastille didn't have anything I wanted to try so we came back down the bubble like cable-car and found a nice Lebanese restaurant in the city centre.

We had lunch and then dropped my son back off to his mom before hitting the road again. A seven hour one-way ride to stay 24 hours in Grenoble would have been worth it but the most beautiful and charming town in all of Europe is on the way back towards Geneva so we had to stop.

Annecy is about 40 km southwest of Geneva and boasts the largest Bastille day celebration in all of France, or so I have heard from a frog. Nevertheless, I absolutely adore this town although I must admit on this trip it was the most crowded I had ever seen it. And that was with the weather smelling worse than the formage aisle at Carrefour.

We walked around periodically stopping for coffee when the rain would start to come down especially hard and made our way through the throngs of people for about an hour before stopping off to have simply the best pizza I have had on the entire time I have lived on this continent.

We departed Annecy around 6PM and began our journey back towards Kaiserlsautern. It seemed like there was one gigantic storm cloud over the entire country you and I call Switzerland and that cloud even was generous enough to share itself with southern Germany. We arrived at Tory's house at midnight and went straight to sleep as he had work in the AM and I had a bus to catch back to Hahn.

And here is my (Top Gear) top tip. It took me 6 and a half hours from the time I left my friend's house to when I stepped through my door. It only takes 8 hours to drive from my house in Birmingham to Tory's house in Germany... Airports suck...

My Apprentices

I dropped off my younger brother and sister to the Birmingham airport this morning so they could catch their flight to Boston via Amsterdam. They arrived about 12 days ago and boy, if ever there were 'house cats' these 2 are them. They are not the type to travel outside of their element for too long. It is funny how siblings can be raised in the same environment but be so different than each other.

I am not hating on them for not liking the food in the UK as the pickings are definitely slim when it comes to locating great food but these 2 had issues almost everywhere we went even while on the continent. If it wasn't McDonald's or pizza they were looking at it as if it was meant to eat them and not the other way around.


We were able to acquire cheap flights to Frankfurt Hahn and then make our way across to Paris before flying out of Charles de Gaulle airport on this past Wednesday night. As well I took them to Stonehenge and briefly stopped through Salisbury and Bath since we drove all that way to see rocks in the middle of an English field.

I have previously written about my experiences with Ryanair and this one-way flight to Frankfurt Hahn was probably the worst flight experience I have had with Ryanair. It seems we were fortunate to be in the midst of a stag party en route to somewhere and they were just plain out of control on board and the flight crew did nothing but facilitate them in getting even drunker on an 11AM flight.

We landed at Hahn and caught a bus to Luxembourg city where my firstborn son lives with his mother and stayed there in a hostel for 3 nights. I had never stayed in a hostel before as I believe they would disagree with me. In fact unlike my sister and brother I have never even been inclined to see a scary movie that involved a hostel so my expectations were pretty low.

They should have been lower. Really. Much lower.

I do not ask for much from a hotel when I stay in one. I mean clean linen/towels, an electrical outlet to charge my phone and laptop and decent shower. I can deal without TV/cable, a refrigerator or a nice view. This hostel had none of these things except clean sheets. And we had to go fetch those from reception. I had to borrow some towels from my son's mother because the hostel charged for them. They also charged for soap and I am really surprised they didn't charge for toilet paper although I am sure they tried but realized it was to the benefit of their cleaning staff to not do so.


The 'shower' was especially noteworthy for its terribleness. I have been in rain storms that got me wetter than this little spout coming out of the wall in the bathroom. And even better was the squeegee you had to use afterwards to steer the water on the floor towards the drain. Or maybe the the best part was that the bathroom lights worked on a motion detector and when you closed the cloth curtain to enclose you in the corner the lights would magically go off making you wave your hand outside the curtain trying to get the lights to switch on. You decide.


Anyway Luxembourg is a really cool city to explore and in my view maybe the most underrated capital city in all of western Europe. I wore them out with a lot of walking up gorges and down valleys and my brother got really cool blisters because he thought it would be gangsta to wear some heavy Timberland boots.


We took a short train ride to the nearby German city of Trier as my brother felt like he was missing something from the last time he was there and I stopped by there. Apparently he was. The crowd of people was especially strong for some reason on this particular Saturday and all the Germans seemed to be competing in an event to see who could irritate us the most by stopping in front of us or creating a wall of humans walking at a snail's pace.


They succeeded fairly quickly as my brother takes to people about as well as British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith takes to answering questions about her husband's taste in pornos.

We left Luxembourg train station on a TGV train heading to Paris on Monday afternoon and made it to Gare de l'Est in slightly more than 2 hours. I had booked a hotel in the area near Jardin Luxembourg on the south side of the river Seine and after staying in a hostel it seemed like a chateau.


My brother seems to have this notable ability to act as a magnet for weirdos. He was approached by one particular nutter who seemed to admire his aggression and made some gorilla motions while using both his hands to indicate on himself that my brother had huge nuts. And the guy who was in the middle of the subway train with a bag full of the type of stuffed dolls you win at carnivals. He had characters ranging from Superman to Homer Simpson and was performing a play with them. Unfortunately my French is too poor to understand the storyline between Homer and Pokemon.

We walked around and hit the normal tourist areas for a couple days and I even (for some reason) took them to the one tourist area I have always avoided. The area between Sacre Coeur and Montmarte is particularly seedy. I never get used to seeing sex shops next to the post office.

On a positive note I did have the best pizza I have ever had outside of America. I highly recommend Cafe di Roma on the Champs-Elysees although to eat on that road one must apparently be prepared to part with €14.20 for a 1 liter bottle of Pepsi. On a plus note they did give us some ice for free.


We eventually got tired of the bad weather and headed to the airport early for the 2100 flight to Birmingham on FlyBe.

And then I had to deal with the fish incident... Seems there are as many nutters in Birmingham as there is in Paris.

Dad's 1st Visit

It is said that most Americans do not have a passport and an even greater amount never leave America's borders. With recent legislation in America making the old past-time of traveling to Canada, Mexico and certain Caribbean Island nations with a driving license or birth certificate now extinct more passports are being issued than ever before to American citizens. Yet it is unknown how many actually utilize them to travel outside of North America.


Whether most Americans not leaving their continent is an admirable or detestable situation is indeed debatable on many levels. It is understandable to believe that North America has so many different cultural treasures and great vacation spots that a person could spend a week vacation every year for 20 years easily exploring the continent and not going to the same place twice.

At the same time there are so many other cultures and environments on 6 other continents that have so much to offer and explore that it seems a shame to limit oneself to one continent.

In late February 2006 my father made his first trip outside of North America to come and visit my family and I in Birmingham for about 9 days. My dad is a typical American man in his 50's with a slight resemblance to Liverpool Football Club manager Rafa Benítez and getting him to actually apply for a passport was a huge step. At this point I had actually been living in Europe for almost 7 years and it amazes me that it took this long for my dad to get a passport and get on a plane. In fact, that more of my family has not taken advantage of me living in Europe to come and visit me leaves me incredulous. If I was in their shoes I would have been over at every opportunity. But I digress.


My Dad flew on KLM from Boston to Amsterdam and then after a small layover a short leg of Amsterdam to Birmingham. He didn't much take to Birmingham in those first few days. He wasn't too thrilled with the food nor the trash that people around here seem to religiously throw wherever they please in Birmingham. The only food he actually liked while he was here was Nando's.


I had booked us a flight from London Luton airport to to Grenoble airport in the French Alps on Easyjet while he was here in Europe so that we could go visit my son in France. The flight wasn't until late morning but we were catching a coach from Birmingham to London Luton at 6.45AM leaving us plenty of time to get stuck in traffic on the M1. As I only lived about maximum 10 minutes from the coach station we went outside to the car at around 6.15-6.20ish to have my wife drive us to the station.

Unfortunately the car decided that it didn't want to start. It was actually a very cold night out but I never had the problem with the car prior to that. We tried push-starting the car for about 5 minutes before we gave up and I called a friend to drive us to the station but of course we had missed our coach by then.

The next best option was a 7.30AM bus heading to central London. Luton airport is not actually in London. I would estimate it to be around 40 minutes drive north on the M1 from central London with decent traffic. I was actually hoping that the coach driver would drop us near the airport but I didn't have the nerve to ask.

By the time we got to London it was around 10.30AM and now we had to find a way to back track through the city and up the M1. It wasn't looking good. If we missed this flight my dad wouldn't have another chance to fly to France to see my son. I asked a black cab how much it would cost me to get to Luton and he quoted me "around £120". I found a private taxi and he told me he could get me there in time for £75 and we were off. He drove like a mad man through the city in his Ford Galaxy minivan and even stopped on the way for some gas before dropping us off at the airport with literally only a few minutes to spare.


We checked in and hurried to the gate to board the aircraft. After landing at St George airport we passed through immigration and boarded a bus for centre of Grenoble. I had booked a hotel nearby to where my son was staying and we had an excellent time having fun with my oldest son.

My dad loved France. He found the atmosphere and the environment of Grenoble to be extraordinary not to mention the great food. I think while he obviously wanted to spend time with his granddaughter in Birmingham he really hated to fly back to the UK.

The morning of his flight to Amsterdam continental Europe was having some terrible weather. His flight to Amsterdam was delayed a day and then when he did make it out to Amsterdam the next morning he got stuck there for another day before getting flown to Newark airport and then on to Boston.

I guess he didn't have that bad of time here in Birmingham though because he did end up returning about 2 years later. He still insisted on flying to France though.

Ryanair to Charge for Toilet Usage?

Perhaps my bestest buddy Abu Thaar aka Craig can confirm in the comments section that I called this one about 6 years ago after a trip from Frankfurt Hahn to London Stansted on Ryanair.

Here is the link for the following article.

Irish budget airline Ryanair has said it is considering charging passengers for using the toilet while flying.

Chief executive Michael O'Leary told the BBC that the Dublin-based carrier was looking at maybe installing a "coin slot on the toilet door".

Consumer group Which? said the airline was putting "profit before passengers".

Last week Ryanair confirmed it planned to close all of its airport check-in desks by the end of the year in a bid to reduce the cost of its flights.

'Fast buck'

Ryanair aims to offer low basic ticket prices, and then charge extra for items such as checking in at the airport or for additional luggage.

"One thing we have looked at in the past, and are looking at again, is the possibility of maybe putting a coin slot on the toilet door, so that people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny in future," he told the BBC.

He added: "I don't think there is anybody in history that has got on board a Ryanair aircraft with less than a pound."

But Rochelle Turner, head of research at Which? Holiday, said: "It seems Ryanair is prepared to plumb any depth to make a fast buck and, once again, is putting profit before the comfort of its customers.

"Charging people to go to the toilet might result in fewer people buying overpriced drinks on board, though - that would serve Ryanair right."

I agree with the last paragraph in the article. I think overall this will hurt Ryanair's profits as it charges £3 or about $4.50 for a very average cup of coffee that I think a many a people will fore go so that they do not have to risk another £1 fee to use the toilet. And I believe that they charge an even higher price for alcohol.

BUT, and yes it is a big but, the CEO of Ryanair, a gentleman by the name of Michael O'Leary is renowned for crazy PR 'stunts' and press conferences. Check this Times of London article with the 40 best Ryanair headlines over the past decade.

I have never personally had a bad experience with Ryanair in the 15 or so times I have flown with them in the past 6 years. In fact I have had 2 very good experiences, one with a check-in person when my luggage was overweight and the other after I was late to the airport for my flight to Jerez, Spain and was rebooked on a flight to nearby Seville, Spain for a minimal cost.


But I have seen on a flight where a man was having some sort of problems breathing and the flight crew told him he could use a bottle of oxygen but that they would have to charge him £10.

Yes, you heard that right. Ryaiair charge to use oxygen... And you expect toilets to remain gratis???

Rockin Like a Moroccan Part I

In May of 2006 a British friend of mine and I somehow came to the decision that we were going to go to Morocco for around 10 days at the earliest and cheapest opportunity. I wanted to visit because I had two good friends living there and my traveling companion, DBH wanted to go because he was on the search for a wife and Morocco is known for having ample single women looking for husbands.

DBH was all of 18 years old and actually looked more like 16 at the time. He is of mixed race (as they call it here in the UK) and originally from the south of England but had moved to Birmingham not to long after I had. DBH had received his full UK driving licence just recently and purchased a used Nissan Micra that he drove us to his hometown in, the afternoon prior to the day of our flight. We took the M40 south towards London where we eventually changed to another motorway that brought us to his mom's house. We visited his mother and brother for a short time before heading over to another area named Slough that is not to far west of London where DBH had arranged a place for us to stay the night.

The next day a mutual friend drove us to London Gatwick airport (one of London's 5 airports) which was where we had booked our departing flight that would take us to Marrakesh, Morocco. Atlas Blue airline is one of the many low-cost airlines operating out of London and their website had quoted me a roundtrip price of about £85 each. We were dropped off curbside and proceeded to check in our luggage inside the terminal. The line through security was pretty long but moved fairly quickly and before we knew it we were sitting at the gate waiting to board the plane. Unfortunately the flight ended up being delayed for about an hour and we didn't have much to do except look around for the person with the most outrageously over-weight and/or over-sized piece of carry-on luggage.

I do not remember much about the actual flight itself although it would have taken about three and a half hours to fly over the English Channel, France, Spain and most of Morocco. Upon arrival we were met by a bus at the foot of the aircraft stairs that brought us to immigration where our passports were stamped. I had arranged a place to stay for the night in Marrakesh for DBH and I with a friend who is married to a woman from Marrakesh. Unfortunately I did not know that I would be asked for his address and it held us up for a little bit longer than normal at immigration.

Once cleared to enter the country as tourists we went to the luggage belt and awaited our bags. After a short time they showed up and now we had to stand in a line for custom's inspection. Our turn came and we had to load our bags onto a conveyor belt that led into an X-ray machine. DBH's bags where deemed to be ok but I was asked to open my bag up because of odd shapes on the official's screen.

I had been asked by my ex-wife to bring some diapers from the UK to Morocco for my son as apparently they are much more expensive there. Her family is originally Moroccan although her and most of her siblings were born in France. Her parents had had the fortune and foresight to build a house close to the capital city (named Rabat) as a vacation home.

Upon complying with the customs officer's request to open my bag up for his viewing pleasure he saw 4 large packs (84 diapers in a pack I believe.) of diapers and asked why I was bring diapers when I had to child with us. In his mind I was bringing these diapers into Morocco to sell and make a profit. I explained to him the situation and he reluctantly allowed me to pass without paying any duty tax.

Once on the other side of customs my friend, Karim, who has lived in the UK for most of his life was there to greet us. We caught a taxi back to his place and sat in his in living room catching up on things for the majority of the night. The next day we went to visit Marrakesh's main tourist attraction known as Jamaa' al Fna, a market and square that I imagine has had the same vibe today as it did 500 years ago. In fact this main square has a history going back over a thousand years!

The market behind the main square was a maze of alleyways with hundreds of shops selling everything from clothing and refreshments to cheap Chinese made toys and authentic hand carved Moroccan household items.

But after the sun set the main square became a regular old 5-ring circus! I am talking about monkeys, belly dancers, fortunetellers, and much more. It was a feast for the eyes! You almost wouldn't believe that the same square you saw during the day was the same one you witnessed at night.

At the center of this circus were perhaps 50 open-air restaurants that were setup directly after sunset in the center of the main square. Each restaurant was like a stall with benches around the grills and men yelling things out in probably 5 different languages trying to convince you to eat at their particular stall.

We did and the food was amazing.

Upon returning back to Karim's house we began to prepare for our planned train ride to Oujda (On the Moroccan/Algerian border) with a few hours stop at my former mother-in-law's house near the capital. After packing our bags I decided to jump in the 'shower', which consisted of a closet with a drain on the floor and a tap with a showerhead attached to it, when all of a sudden I heard a continuous loud banging sound.

I had never experienced even a small earthquake at this point in my life but this sound was so loud that this is exactly what I thought it was, so I froze. The extremely loud banging sound continued in what seemed like a steady evenly timed manner. I changed my mind and thought to myself, "Someone must be dragging something extremely heavy down the stairs of the building. Perhaps a grand piano."

Finally the sound stopped and I was about to complete removing the soap from my body when Karim knocks on the door and calls my name loudly. I answer him "Yes" in an inquisitive manner and he then asks if I am okay. I am slightly baffled at his question and tell that I am fine.

Not a few seconds later he is banging on my door again yelling frantically that something is wrong with DBH and he needs me to come out and help him. I am standing naked in this closet with a 'shower' in it with my friend on the other side of the door telling me to hurry and help him. Not knowing what is going on I continue to dry myself off with my towel not wanting to put my clothes on while I still have a wet body. He frantically bangs on the door again yelling my name and telling me to hurry and come help him.

I break and just throw the towel around my waste and come out of the shower. Karim tells me that DBH is in the toilet, which is directly next to the shower closet but that he is not answering. And then the cause of the banging noise clicks inside of my head.

While trying to hold the towel around my waist I push on the bottom of the door that opens into the toilet room but it is no use. It does not budge. After both Karim and I put a lot of equal pressure on the lower part of the door and the middle part we manage to create a gap of about 4 or 5 inches and I manage to squeeze my still wet head, shoulder and left arm into the bathroom and see DBH sitting with his back against the door having a seizure.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Lisbon, Me and my Mom...

Around this time last year my family and I had the pleasure to host my mom on her trip to visit us in Birmingham, England. I believe it was her 3rd time flying across the pond and she absolutely loves being able to visit her grandchildren AND having the privilege of utilizing her son's knowledge of traveling throughout Europe.

The problem that I have when my mom (or anybody from America for that matter) comes to visit is that they always do it on short notice. This usually doesn't make it easy to find low cost flights around Europe as typically you need at least 2 weeks notice in order to find the cheapest seats on Ryanair or Easyjet and the like.

I wanted to surprise my mom with the trip somewhere and after much searching I managed to purchase 2 seats on BMI Baby from BHX to Lisbon for about £95 roundtrip (Yes, 2 seats for £95!)

The flight to Lisbon was not until the evening so I didn't tell her that we were going anywhere until the morning of the flight. And even then I didn't tell her WHERE we were going. I told her to pack 3 days worth of clothing and other items she would need and we made off for the 15-minute drive to the airport.

The surprise was made even cooler because I had managed to check-in online the night before and we had no check-in baggage to drop off at the desk. So when we arrived at Birmingham International Airport we immediately walked upstairs and proceeded through security.

Now we are waiting in terminal 1 lounge and she still has no idea where she is going. I finally see out flight details change on the monitor in the lounge and we start to proceed to the airplane.

She finally figured it out after they closed the door of the airplane and the stewardess announces the information regarding the flight. She was going to Lisbon, Portugal!

This meant a lot to her because ethnically she is Portuguese and it is someplace I think she had always wanted to visit. Secretly I think she thought she was going to Morocco though...

When we arrived at Lisbon airport we proceeded to immigration and found 2 very long lines to choose from. The problem was that neither option fit us. One was for European Union nationals and the other was for nationals whose are part of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries so we just stayed in the CPLC line for about an hour, got stamped and walked outside of the airport.

I had booked at the cheap chain hotel I always stay at when I travel around Europe. I like Ibis hotels because I know what I am getting no matter which country or city I am in. By the time the taxi arrived at the hotel it was close to 10 or 11PM and we took a short walk around the hotel to find some snacks and drinks and then called it a night. The hotel was a little further away from the city centre than I would have desired but on the plus side it gave us the opportunity to explore typical Lisbon residential areas that we never would have if we stayed closer to the city centre.

The next day we walked towards the city centre and got a feel for the layout of Lisbon. The best parts of the city were the Castle of São Jorge, The Al Fama quarter of the city, the San Francisco style cable cars running everywhere, and the food.

São Jorge's castle was definitely the highlight of the trip though. You get a really amazing view of the city from it as it is on the highest point of the city. It has a real feel to it and they have done an excellent job preserving it in its original form.

The Al Fama quarter is too much to explore in one day. It is the old Arab quarter of the city and has very narrow roads and alleys with old cobble stone brickwork. As well you have the San Francisco style trolleys running about the narrow roads and tight bends. One more than one occasion you sit and watch it just because you cannot believe the car will make around a near hairpin bend without hitting the wall.

Portugal is renowned for its seafood and it did not disappoint either of us. On the climb up to the castle we find a nice looking restaurant and as mom was a little tired we decided to stop and sit. I had what appeared to be some sort of omelette with pieces of fish, potato and some cheese. A little bit of hot sauce and I would have ordered more to take away!

Close to the President's palace there is a bakery that has been making Portugal's national dessert since 1837. This is the one place to get the original Pastel de Belém in the whole of the country. And it is true! I tried one from a cafe we sat at and it did not have the same texture nor taste to the ones I bought straight from the source.

Overall I was very surprised with Lisbon. I would say that behind Venice it is probably the coolest and most unique city in all of Europe. I hope to return again to explore the city further with my wife and kids in the near future...