Category: Travels

SDG here (not Jimmy) with a follow-up to the SDG Mystery Photo post.

As many readers correctly guessed/stated, the picture shows the Greydanus family standing in the White House Rose Garden, on the West Wing side.

Some readers may remember my mentioning in a combox awhile back that Suz and I are sort of related to someone who works on the President’s staff. A few months back we took off for a week for a four-day trip to DC, and we got a super-cool White House tour that included the West Wing.

I hope to post something on the White House visit next week — though it wasn’t the best story to come out of our DC trip, and that’s what this post is about.

I think I can safely say that what our four older kids will probably most remember of our DC trip is our dramatic escape from a stalled elevator at the Smithsonian Institution Air & Space Museum, which involved an access panel in the roof of the elevator, two ladders, and a climb through the elevator shaft.

Here’s how it happened. (Note: Photos below the fold! Click to see larger version!)

Continue reading “SDG IN DC #1: The Great Elevator Escape”

Well, I’m back from the pilgrimage/cruise now and am semi-recovered. (It was very rewarding but also very exhausting!)

I thought I’d pass along something that I discovered during my preparations for the trip in case it would benefit others.

It turns out that there is a web site that forecasts airplane turbulence. It’s name, unsurprisingly, is TurbulenceForecast.Com.

On our flights back we encountered enough turbulence that they kept the Fasten Seatbelts sign lit for most of the two flights, making it really hard to sit in the airline seat for hour after hour–which was frankly more annoying than the turbulence was!

In any event, you might want to check out the turbulence forecast site if you have an upcoming plane trip and would like to know what kind of turbulence you may encounter on your flight.

Above is a screencap of a forecast from last night (when I was blogging) that shows color gradations on where the most intense turbulence is likely to be.

THAT PAGE IS HERE.

They also have a bunch of other turblence maps, including international ones and live pilot reports of where they’re hitting the turbulence, as well as information about the phenomenon in general.

CHECK IT OUT.

So you know how they say Italian pizza is really different from American pizza?

It is.

Well, it can be.

Some actually isn’t that different, but some is.

It’s all pretty thin crust, which is fine by me. (I did decide to go off my diet during this trip, but thin crust ain’t as far off as pan pizza would be.) Some of it also doesn’t have tomato sauce, though a lot does.

Here we see a selection of pizzas from a pizzeria just a few blocks from our hotel in Rome, and also just a couple blocks from St. Mary Major.

Some of these have toppings that are pretty obvious (or at least normal for American pizza), but a few don’t. The one with white stuff on it is slices of fresh mozarella chese on tomato sauce. The one with green is fresh arugala (a sour, peppery-tasting leafy vegetable . . . which they oddly call "rocket" in English translations over there) with feta cheese crumbles. And on the lower shelf there is actually a french fry pizza.

Now, I’ve read that they do unusual things with french fries in other countries (like serving them with mayonnaise, for example), but I’d never heard of a french fry pizza before.

And that’s not the only unusual use of french fries I encountered. At the same pizzeria they offered hot dogs for sale that had the french fries built in . . .

 

Nor was creative french frying confined it Italy. In the Greek port town of Katakolon (pronounced ka-TAK-o-lon), I ordered an gyros sandwich and got this . . .

Eat up!

And the hucksters were really shouting "Fake watches! . . . Fake watches!"

(Meaning, I gather, imitations of name brand watches–not things that look like watches but do not tell time.)

This one may be a little harder (or maybe not).

Where am I now?

CHT to Steve Ray for assistance with this one!

Where am I now?

(NOTE: These photos have been exposure adjusted to correct–as much as possible–for dim lighting conditions.)

Need another hint?

BTW, CHT to the person who took the second photo!

Where am I now?

Need an extra hint?

BTW, just for the record, it’s a bit of an unusual feeling when you’re walking down a sidewalk where I am now and a young seminarian in his clericals passes you and says, "Howdy, Mr. Akin!"