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Europe Trip Day 6

Day 6 of the trip brought us to our first port-of-call- Malta. Malta is an island country located south of Italy and north of Tunisia. This country actually has a large strip of good beaches and is thus a popular holiday destination for British package tours. We docked in the capitol city of Valletta, an old medieval fortress city with an excellent protected harbour. Malta has an interesting history involving the famous Knights of Malta and the Crusades but you will have to read about it elsewhere. A favorite memory of mine from this trip comes from Valletta and is seen in the photo above. It's some of the local cats waiting for their dinner to come in! So cute!

We Interrupt This Program

Boy am I pissed! After 19 years of business including the last 5 years with me, the Mouse is closing down Pleasure Island. September 27th is the final night and after that who knows. Disney says guest surveys say more shops and restaurants are needed! No one believes that. Everyone I see out there is in disbelief and everyone is asking where am I going to go on Saturday nights? I'm working on that and hope to have an answer for everyone soon. In the meanwhile there is at least one petition going around that has over 6000 signatures on it, there are Facebook and MySpace entries for "Save Pleasure Island" and there even is an internet radio station devoted to the subject. The masses are organizing!

Europe Trip Day 5

Our first full day on the ship was actually a "day at sea" which meant it was a good opportunity to explore the ship. People always ask me which cruise line is the best and my standard answer is that of the mainstream cruise lines, they're all about the same. In other words, Royal Caribbean = Carnival = Norwegian = Princess. But I'm a growing fan of Norwegian (NCL) and their Freestyle Cruising concept. The ship was awesome and one of my favorite locales was the Bliss Ultra Lounge located on Deck 7 aft. This place is a dance club at night but also serves as a bowling alley both day and night. It proved to be a popular place. And I loved the waitress outfits: by day black flare leg pants with slits at the bottom worn with a black miniskirt over the pants; by night only the miniskirts with tall black boots. :)

Europe Trip Day 3 & 4

Day 3 means Barcelona and what a great city it is. Madrid is the more-famous Spanish city and it is a great city too. But where Madrid is old and stately, Barcelona is hip and happening. The pictures in the article were taken on Barcelona's famous pedestrian street, La Rambla (Catalan) / Las Ramblas (Spanish). There are newsstands and outdoor restaurants to enjoy, but what makes it fun are the numerous people trying to make a buck (actually, a Euro) or two posing as something. My favorite is the guy on the commode. Yes, these are real people, not statutes. So Barcelona was a day of rambling around, shopping along the Passage de Gracia and getting excited about the upcoming cruise.

Day 4 was boarding day. I'm a fan of public transportation and the route from the hotel out by the airport to our ship was as follows: 1) Hotel shuttle from hotel to airport train station. 2) RENFE airport train (shown) from airport to Barcelona Sants Station. 3) Metro from Sants to the Columbus statue. 4) Port bus from Columbus statue to the ship. Quite easy.

Europe Trip - Day 1 & 2

Over the next week or so I'll tell a bit about my latest adventures in Europe. It was a great trip that flew by way too fast. Day 1 was spent riding airplanes while Day 2 was spent in Paris and ended in Barcelona.

During the November trip I flew Virgin Atlantic to London. Virgin is supposed to be the young, hip airline but I wasn't overly impressed. This trip was booked on Delta and I have to give them high marks for their international coach service. Sure it's as cramped as any other economy section but they won me over with the entertainment system. Like most airlines they have "seat back video" installed. The difference is the shear volume of choices that are included for FREE. There were at least 10 television show episodes to watch, at least 20 movie choices in a variety of languages, about 20 airline music channels and dozens of CD's to listen to. (Including a techno channel called Hot Dance that had at least 10 dance/techno albums to choose from!)

We left another beautiful day in Orlando for a rainy connection in Atlanta. Fortunately there were no delays and we were soon on our way to Paris. Avoiding jet lag east bound requires that you get at least 3 hours of sleep and I was able to accomplish that goal on the overnight flight. Morning brought cloudy skies over the eastern Atlantic and western France but about 30 minutes before landing we suddenly went into the clear. There was a great view of the City of Lights as we began the descent into Charles DeGaulle Airport.

Our luggage was checked through to Barcelona and I booked the trip with an all-day layover. This allowed for a trip into the city which we accomplished via the RER train which runs from the basement of the airport directly into Paris. First stop of course was the Tour Eifel (Eifel Tower). The beautiful morning allowed for awesome views in all directions of the city. Then there was the long walk to the Arc de Triomphe, lunch along the Champs Elysses, a bus to the department store Printemps and then the long trek back out to the airport. (BTW, the shopping quality out at the airport was quite poor. No telling how much money is lost by not having better options.) The evening ended with an Air France connecting flight down to Barcelona. The flying time is not much more than an hour and including great view of the still-snowy Pyrenees mountains, the valley that includes the tiny country of Andorra (where I had visited a few years ago by car) and the approach into Barcelona along the Costa Brava sea coast.

Overall we didn't really enjoy Paris but it probably had more to do with being tired from the overnight flight than anything else. But the Weather Channel had predicted a rainy day there before we left Florida so to end up with a nice day made the stopover worthwhile.

My Ship Came In

I forgot to mention that my hotel window faced directly west and gave me a great view of the Hudson River with New Jersey behind it. Norwegian Cruise Line's dock was also directly west and Friday Norwegian Spirit was docked there all day. Well what pulls in to dock on Saturday morning? It's none other than Norwegian Gem, the very ship I am cruising on next month out of Barcelona! What a coincidence.

My review of the NCL Cruise Guide shows the ship just had come in from a 7-night cruise to Florida and the Bahamas and was headed out that night for a 15-night transatlantic cruise to Barcelona. I'll be boarding her on May 18th!

NYC: The City That Never Sleeps

If I can do Europe in half a week, surely I can do New York City in two days, right? Right! Bachelor Party Weekend came and went this past weekend and it was a great trip.

Thursday I flew Continental Airlines up to Newark. Kudos to CO for being the only domestic airline that still serves snacks to coach passengers and for not charging for a 2nd checked bag. Newark is a great entry airport into NYC because you hop on the AirTrain from the terminal to the airport train station and from there a New Jersey Transit train direct into the famous Penn Station. From there it was a quick (and exciting) taxi ride to my hotel in Times Square. Thursday night I met the other 7 partiers and got my first ride on the subway. I tried hard but I kept referring to it as "the tube", "the metro" and "the underground". I'll do better next time.

First venue was a club called Corio on West Broadway. Upstairs is where they put on the vaudeville style burlesque show which consisted of a lame comedian (or comedienne - couldn't tell) named Murray Hill and some crazy girls who put on little dance routines, getting progressively more naked but never quite all the way. Our favorite was a dancer named Saturn who had a thing for rings. (Saturn's rings, get it?) Don't ask. It was here we met a girl that looked like Cyndi Lauper. Se we called her Cyndi. She and two girlfriends were headed in a taxi to Avenue A Karoke. We said we'd meet up with them later. We instead walked at least 20 blocks to some other bar whose name escapes me. After a drink and very little excitement (except for a girl at a table over in the corner who kept lifting her shirt for all to see), we walked another 20 blocks to Avenue A Karoke. Cyndi was there and sang a duet with Groom. We stayed for over an hour before finding one of those subway's that operated during the middle of the night. Good first night. (It was only today that Groom told me Avenue A Karoke is a lesbian bar! How the fuck didn't I notice?)

Friday was my shopping day and included visits to Bloomingdale's, the Diesel flagship store and H&M. There was some sightseeing too; Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedral included. The Pope was in town and would be visiting the church later. Friday evening began with a subway ride out to Harlem to meet Chloe of the Virginity Monologues and Spatch of the Spatch Diaries for dinner. Both ladies are really cute! Questions and answers flew back and forth across the table for nearly 2 hours and the southern food was delicious! Soon it was time to head back to the city to meet up with the boys and our next night out. While waiting outside my hotel I got to experience the night lights that make up Times Square, as shown in the photo. Next we took a cab to the famous Spain-based dance club Pacha where we enjoyed over 5 hours of techno led by DJ Breakfast and the headliner, DJ Ferry Corsten. The lights, lasers and fog were all top notch. We didn't stumble back into our hotel rooms until after 5am!

That basically was the trip. After sleeping in on Saturday it was travel time again. My routing was Amtrak to Philadelphia 30th Street Station, the SEPTA R1 train to Philadelphia International Airport and then Southwest Airlines back to Florida. Europe is next!

No WMC For Me

I was definitely going to Winter Music Conference this year; at least the Ultra Music Fest part. As soon as the dates were announced I booked the Holiday Inn just a few blocks from Bicentennial Park in downtown Miami which is the venue for Ultra Fest. But in April I'm headed to NYC instead for a coworker's bachelor party. While Ultra Fest and the Bachelor party are 3 weeks apart, I simply can't afford both! New York is crazy expensive; I think there's even a charge to sneeze there. But New York has won out; Miami can wait until next year.

For anyone interested, you can vote for this year's best Dance songs and DJ's at www.wintermusicconference.com.

Also for anyone interested, my new CD came out in December and you can request a copy for FREE by writing me at: kingbobofthenorth at g mail dot com (run all that together) The CD is called A NIGHT AT MANNEQUINS (Volume 2) and it has a nice selection of my favorite dance songs from 2007 as played at Mannequins. Hey, it's a homemade CD but I think the cover graphics came out pretty good and the price is right! Order now! Void where prohibited by law.

Frankfurt & Home

Damn....haven't updated this thing in months. I need to finish out my trip story.

Three cities in three days and it was time for our Thursday departure. We took a very early morning taxi to Berlin Tegel Airport. My friend was flying back to the USA via London Heathrow but due to my inability to get anything cheap back to Florida, it was actually cheaper for me to spend one more day in Germany and fly home the next day. So my friend was on British Airways and I was on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. I used it as a shopping day although I can't recommend it...Berlin would have been much better. Thursday night while wandering around the main train station I discovered that Frankfurt also had a red light district. But it was way different than Amsterdam. In Amsterdam the little store fronts were side-by-side with a nice selection of girls in each window or door. In Frankfurt there was one street which I guess could be described as red light hotels. There were numerous 5-6 story buildings that looked like Holiday Inns but above each window were flashing red neon tubes. I presume you go inside and peruse the corridors for something you like. No window shopping here

Friday was a day of frustration. The railroad engineers went on strike and my hotel was downtown and I needed to get to the airport. Most of the trains were cancelled but fortunately a few were operating, although very crowded. I did make it out there only to find out my 12:15pm flight on Condor Airlines was "delayed" to 4:40pm! WTF! So instead of being back in Orlando at 5:30pm it would be closer to 10pm. They did give us a deluxe lunch buffet at a nearby hotel which was nice but what to do with 4 extra hours? Do I hang around the airport or do I go back into the city and chance the situation with the trains. I ended up doing the latter and spent an hour at the Palmengarten (palm gardens). Although this place is famous, it was absolutely horrible; I've got more palms in my back yard than this place had growing in their indoor pavilion. What a dissapointment! Oh well, back to FRA, finally got on the plane and off we were. I even got to experience the distinctive look of beautifully lit-up Paris out my portside window as we climbed out to the ocean.

End of trip; a good time was had by all.