Author Topic: "Holiday Road" - The Official Vacation Thread  (Read 145083 times)

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Offline imref

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Just saw a guy in a Nats hat at a bullfighting arena in Seville

Offline English Natsie

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  • It's baseball, Jim, but not as we know it...

Offline English Natsie

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  • It's baseball, Jim, but not as we know it...
Bull 'fighting' (ahem..) should have been banned decades ago... :whip:   :asplode:

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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I thought they did ban it?  Or perhaps that was just Catalonia.

My parents went to one of those on their honeymoon and the matador was gored and stomped to death.  "Live by the sword" etc

Offline dracnal

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I thought they did ban it?  Or perhaps that was just Catalonia.

My parents went to one of those on their honeymoon and the matador was gored and stomped to death.  "Live by the sword" etc

I lived in Madrid for a year in the early 90s and thought 'It would be cool to see a bullfight!' -- Then I learned how bullfights actually play out and I noped the hell out of that. Seeing a Cobra/Mongoose fight in Okinawa several years earlier was enough to make me disgusted by any sport where the goal is the death of an animal and the crowd doesn't care which it is as long as one dies.

Offline Count Walewski

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IIRC, in Portuguese bullfighting they do not kill the bull, merely stun it.

Offline imref

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I thought they did ban it?  Or perhaps that was just Catalonia.

My parents went to one of those on their honeymoon and the matador was gored and stomped to death.  "Live by the sword" etc

It’s still legal in Seville and a few other places. We just toured the arena. I have no interest in seeing an actual fight.

Offline English Natsie

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I have no interest in seeing an actual fight.

Didn't think you did... ;)

Offline Natsinpwc

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They used to have Bulfighting from Mexico on TV when I was a kid. But the bull always lost so I grew tired of it.

Offline JCA-CrystalCity

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They used to have Bulfighting from Mexico on TV when I was a kid. But the bill always lost so I grew tired of it.
It's kind of like pro wrestling, or American Idol when there's a budding country star.

Offline Natsinpwc

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It's kind of like pro wrestling, or American Idol when there's a budding country star.
Or like a Nats game.

Offline dracnal

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Offline Count Walewski

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I have been approved for 2 weeks of annual leave in January and I intend to use it to go to Belize.

I am figuring 5 days in San Ignacio (in the jungle part of Belize, close to many Mayan ruins) and 5 days in Caye Caulker (a Caribbean island off the coast of Belize where cars are banned). The San Ignacio portion will involve a day trip to Guatemala to see Tikal, better known as Yavin IV.

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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Sloths!

Offline imref

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Got back from Spain today. No issues with travel, took less than an hour to check in and get to our gate in Madrid.

Weather is really really bad right now in most of Western Europe. Madrid had it's hottest day on record on Thursday. Portugal, central/western Spain, France, the UK are absolutely roasting with forrest fires in many areas. I read earlier that only about 5% of homes in the UK have AC. We learned from our last trip to Italy that AC over there isn't what we think of as AC over here. Most homes/hotels have small wall units that will struggle in high heat conditions.

In Spain, streets were largely empty until about 6-7 PM when it finally started to get bearable. Even then, we ate dinner last night at a small Italian restaurant that didn't have anything more than ceiling fans. Thankfully sangria is cold. :) 

Offline English Natsie

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Oh yes - phew, what a scorcher!!!  Forecast to be 41 Celsius (105.8 F.) tomorrow, and Tuesday, here in the UK... :(

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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I can't recall ever hitting that here in the American Congo
Oh yes - phew, what a scorcher!!!  Forecast to be 41 Celsius (105.8 F.) tomorrow, and Tuesday, here in the UK... :(

Offline imref

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just on a whim I checked today's Madrid-Dulles flight. It left 4 hours late from Madrid, was showing as being diverted to Bangor ME, and then on to Dulles, before they changed the diversion to Newark and cancelled it. So the passengers appear to be stuck in Newark.

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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They might see their luggage before the end of 2023.  The good thing about summer travel is you don't need to pack a whole lot.

Offline imref

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They might see their luggage before the end of 2023.  The good thing about summer travel is you don't need to pack a whole lot.

that's true, I took about 5 days worth of clothing and just washed what I needed in a gallon zip lock each night.

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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I've been in Bangkok for the past week and it has been fantastic.  Foreign tourism is way down since Chinese people really can't travel yet so everything's cheap af.  You could ride a tuk tuk for a year for the cost of a Nats Park beer.

Offline tomterp

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I've been in Bangkok for the past week and it has been fantastic.  Foreign tourism is way down since Chinese people really can't travel yet so everything's cheap af.  You could ride a tuk tuk for a year for the cost of a Nats Park beer.

My son went last year with his GF (who is Thai).  Lots of great street food, very cheap as you noted.

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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If they ever tie the knot and you acquire a Thai DiL, you have won at life  :D   
My son went last year with his GF (who is Thai).  Lots of great street food, very cheap as you noted.

Offline Count Walewski

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I had a great time in Bangkok in December 2019, right before the world turned to crap. As a public transit nerd, I loved that they have public transit boats that go up and down the rivers and canals. There's a big public park in the middle of Bangkok called Lumpini Park that is full of Asian Water Monitor lizards, the second largest lizard species in the world after the Komodo Dragon. Completely surreal to see dozens of these big, predatory lizards hanging out in the middle of a city of millions of people.

Offline Ali the Baseball Cat

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Those monitors are great!  The missus is a bit of a reptile geek (explains why she's with me)...we went to Komodo about 10 years ago to see the dragons.  The whole area around Komodo looks like something out of Jurassic Park.