Left Coast Leener

Аргентинская Патагония. Район Ушуайи.


By alex_v_shmarin

У меня, как я уже наверно говорила, хорошая память. Многое из того что я помню из детства не помнят мои родители. Но недавно я задумалась о наших семейных отпусках и что-то в моей памяти не состыковывается. Поговорила с мамой, она и тем более не помнит. Все затрудняется тем что я помню сколько мне было лет когда я была в том или ином месте, но мой день рождения 27 июля и я не помню, были ли мы там до или после него (то есть в каком году). ( Но все же напишу по порядку: )

Stupid Facebook and their new picture viewing mode has made it difficult to link to picture location sources, so these are smaller.

( Part 1, Joshua Tree )

( Part 1a, Noah Purefoy Art )

( Part 2, Salton Sea )

As you know, I don't do hallmark holidays. This year, the only thing that marks them for me is the 20% off coupon that spurred me to get these for me:



And these for Andy in black:



We're also taking our little trip, but although it's romantic it's more related to Presidents' Day than that other February thing.

Хочу съездить с мужем на машине по пустыням и заброшеным местам Ю. Калифорнии. Предположительно на длинные выходные в феврале, плюс пару дней. Муж желает ползать с фотоаппаратом и снимать заброшенные городки и неординарные растения, а я - расслабляться в походном кресле и глазеть на прекрасное. Сильные нагрузки типа походов отпадают в силу моего состояния здоровья, то есть нужно что бы было не далеко от машины. Собираемся в одну сторону ехать по первой дороге до Санта Барбары, в другую по пятой, так что принимаются предложения подобных достопримечательностей по дороге. Лос Анжелес и Сан Диего не интересуют. Предложите по вашему опыту и вкусу конкретные точки в списке ниже, что добавить или убрать, и сколько времени там проводить:

Salton Sea
Joshua Tree
Searles Lake
Death Valley

Также, посоветуйте пожалуйста гостиницу где можно недорого остановиться около пустынь с благами цивилизации типа чистой ванны и интернета. Может Palm Springs?

Несколько лет назад мы обсуждали с друзьями желание проехаться по Транссибу - мы это четверо пар, каждая наполовину русскоязычная. Ничего с этим не получилось - кто-то развелся, кто-то родил. Нам с Андрюшей, например, хватило сполна поездки на поезде из Питера в Минск и обратно - одни туалеты чего стоят! Но романтическая таки это идея, и хорошо что с современной технологией это можно воплотить не вставая с постели, да еще и с таким хорошим озвучиванием!

You DC people are total pussies - there's barely a snowflake on the ground! Andy's friends and dad cancelled, but at least my friends aren't afraid to merely leave the house. I hear things are going to clear up by the time we get to fly to Boston, because apparently all the airports are wussies as well! But at least we're not at Domodedovo.

I can't quite bring myself to sit down and write about Minsk yet, but a few other things need to be mentioned before that.

1. "Investigatory Isolator" - I'm sure the Russian speakers know what the fuck that is, but I'm sure it's one for sadtranslations.

2. The question Andy kept asking me in both St. Pete and Minsk the whole time was "what did this look like during the Soviet times?" I think that if you take away the gaudy ads, all new construction (also very gaudy), newer windows and paint everything a slightly drabber color, you'll have a good approximation. He also asked what were all the religious buildings during the USSR, and was amused at the answer he received the most - museums to atheism. But the question I couldn't answer for the life of me was what font were the signs in? Serif or sans serif?

3. That Georgian restaurant in St. Pete (on Ligovsky) had the awesomest khachapuri ever. It's none of the kinds pictured in Wiki - it looked like a cocoon wrapped around a skewer and grilled. Went to Moscow-Tbilisi bakery the other day - got their gigantic pirozhki (very greasy), some awesome churchkhela, but their khachapuri was so inferior that I couldn't even look at it. I've been spoiled by Sofiko.

My mother finds a way to blame me for everything in France - long lines at passport control, lack of airport lockers and cost of luggage storage, train ticket machine malfunction (or actually just bad design), the amount of documentation required to exchange currency, the length of the city blocks and the price of food. Yet, when we make it to the airport with no trouble whatsoever and time to spare, think I get the credit?

Paris was a bit rainy and lacked galettes (or any street food, for that matter), but beautiful as ever. Did a crazy loup and not nearly as much as I could have had I not had slowpoke mom.

At least the flight to St. Pete and the airport was uneventful. We were picked up by my uncle and his driver and went to stay in their apartment, on the same Ikea futon as we have at home. Jumping forward, I'll add that we stayed on another one of those in Amsterdam.

In the city over the next two days, we had the joy of purchasing train tickets from a building dedicated solely to this purpose. We saw the outside of the Hermitage, walked around Nevsky, did a walking circle around the islands and ate at an awesome Georgian restaurant. We met up with my friend Ira and saw a former bread factory converted to an awesome arts space called "Этажи", saw some cool cartoons at their exemplary communal apartment (inserted below the cut) and also got an awesome book with all of the content hand-printed.

Finally, we got on a train to Minsk. More on that later.

( Meanwhile, here are some awesome cartoons. )
P.S. Anybody know WTF is up with the embed code for the first video? My HTML foo is not strong enough.

Things I realized I missed while traveling:

The cats
Good face scrub in the big container
Reach flosser and electric toothbrush
Giant blanket
The ability to go outside the bedroom naked
My own damn computer!