22 December 2012
It's Saturday morning, and I am at SEATAC, waiting to board my flight to Amman!
This is the beginning of a two week, three country holiday for me: An escorted tour of Jordan and Israel, followed by three nights on my own in Athens on the way back home. I've not been to any of these three countries before, so by the time this trip is done I'll be able to tick them off the "been there" list.
The escorted tour is with Insight Vacations, a company I have used before and I have great respect for, even if it is a tad pricier than its competitors. I start off in Amman with them, and I will be walking around Petra on Christmas Day! A little later we'll cross the border into Israel, so I'll be seeing Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Holy Land during the Christmas Season. The hotel in Athens is just 100 meters from the Acropolis, and I'll have three nights to explore all that Greece has to offer, while also having a chance to see their fiscal crisis first hand.
I've come to accept, without question, the notion that I don't fit any normal demographic. My holidays are most often to places of chaos, places with riots or bombs or rockets, places where history was made in the past and continues to be made to this day. The idea of wasting my holiday sitting under a palm tree while sucking on a Corona is abhorrent to everything I believe, a waste of the time we have on this planet. Perhaps it comes from my young adulthood, a time when I was on planes flying reconnaissance missions against the (former) Soviet Union during the Cold War, while my peers were walking around Southern California shopping malls. There is very little left in the US that I have not seen or want to see, while the rest of the world fascinates me and begs me to explore it, and I can't even remember the last Christmas or New Years that I spent in the States. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, without a doubt I was an explorer in earlier times. Mohammed had it right: "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have travelled."
On more mundane matters, my vacation started yesterday afternoon, shutting down Outlook and Communicator at 2:00 PM before catching a limo to the Seatac Doubletree Hotel. I did an abbreviated pub crawl, first grabbing a taco and chalupa at the venerable Taco Bell before heading off to Sharp's Roaster and Ale House for a drink and some very lousy Sloppy Joe sliders. After that, it was a couple of drinks at Dave's Diner, with an equally terrible pork chop dinner, but a friendly waitress who warranted a hefty tip. A few drinks in the Doubletree bar, followed by a nightcap in my room, then it was off to bed. Breakfast this morning was at Jack in the Box, the mecca of fast food joints. It does seem rather ironic that the best food I have had on the first few hours has been at TB or JITB, but it is what it is!
So that brings me back to the present. I'm in the very familiar Seatac S terminal, three hours from boarding. Security was nearly empty when I brisked through it. It will be a 10 hour flight to Schiphol with a four hour layover, then on to a Royal Jordanian flight into Amman. I'll arrive about 7:30 PM and should, in theory, be met by a tour guide who will provide transportation to the hotel. Christmas Eve day will be spent touring Amman, while as mentioned previously Christmas Day will be spent in Petra.
It's Saturday morning, and I am at SEATAC, waiting to board my flight to Amman!
This is the beginning of a two week, three country holiday for me: An escorted tour of Jordan and Israel, followed by three nights on my own in Athens on the way back home. I've not been to any of these three countries before, so by the time this trip is done I'll be able to tick them off the "been there" list.
The escorted tour is with Insight Vacations, a company I have used before and I have great respect for, even if it is a tad pricier than its competitors. I start off in Amman with them, and I will be walking around Petra on Christmas Day! A little later we'll cross the border into Israel, so I'll be seeing Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Holy Land during the Christmas Season. The hotel in Athens is just 100 meters from the Acropolis, and I'll have three nights to explore all that Greece has to offer, while also having a chance to see their fiscal crisis first hand.
I've come to accept, without question, the notion that I don't fit any normal demographic. My holidays are most often to places of chaos, places with riots or bombs or rockets, places where history was made in the past and continues to be made to this day. The idea of wasting my holiday sitting under a palm tree while sucking on a Corona is abhorrent to everything I believe, a waste of the time we have on this planet. Perhaps it comes from my young adulthood, a time when I was on planes flying reconnaissance missions against the (former) Soviet Union during the Cold War, while my peers were walking around Southern California shopping malls. There is very little left in the US that I have not seen or want to see, while the rest of the world fascinates me and begs me to explore it, and I can't even remember the last Christmas or New Years that I spent in the States. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, without a doubt I was an explorer in earlier times. Mohammed had it right: "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have travelled."
On more mundane matters, my vacation started yesterday afternoon, shutting down Outlook and Communicator at 2:00 PM before catching a limo to the Seatac Doubletree Hotel. I did an abbreviated pub crawl, first grabbing a taco and chalupa at the venerable Taco Bell before heading off to Sharp's Roaster and Ale House for a drink and some very lousy Sloppy Joe sliders. After that, it was a couple of drinks at Dave's Diner, with an equally terrible pork chop dinner, but a friendly waitress who warranted a hefty tip. A few drinks in the Doubletree bar, followed by a nightcap in my room, then it was off to bed. Breakfast this morning was at Jack in the Box, the mecca of fast food joints. It does seem rather ironic that the best food I have had on the first few hours has been at TB or JITB, but it is what it is!
So that brings me back to the present. I'm in the very familiar Seatac S terminal, three hours from boarding. Security was nearly empty when I brisked through it. It will be a 10 hour flight to Schiphol with a four hour layover, then on to a Royal Jordanian flight into Amman. I'll arrive about 7:30 PM and should, in theory, be met by a tour guide who will provide transportation to the hotel. Christmas Eve day will be spent touring Amman, while as mentioned previously Christmas Day will be spent in Petra.
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