Tag: family

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Copenhagen and back – via Paris

Everybody made it back safe from their travels, and it was quickly back to reality for most. That includes Duke, who had to give up his roasted chicken diet in lieu of the raw food his mommy seems to prefer feeding him.

For the last few days, John’s been off on one of his whirlwind trips to Denmark. Mostly to pick up a long-sought-after lens. He had been on a waitlist for this particular lens model for two years before getting kicked off, citing unavailability and uncertainty. The lens was, however, in stock at a dealer in Copenhagen, and by saving the VAT, he even saved a few dollars.

It was also a welcome chance to see his mom and later catch up with an old friend. As it happened, Eli’s Danish citizenship papers came through and were waiting in Copenhagen, so those were also picked up. Great to have that behind us, and Eli is a Danish citizen for the rest of her life.

The return was through Paris, where John was lucky to see the final stage of the Tour de France. With a Dane winning for the second year in a row, it’s extra special, although it doesn’t quite hit last year’s highs with the tour starting in Denmark and an unexpected win over Pogacar. Overall, it brought back memories of a 1996 trip to Paris to celebrate another Dane winning “the tour” (Bjarne Riis). Back then, John was joined by two friends – Hans and Lars – and his dad. Fun memories all around, even though we never really got to see much of the fast-moving riders

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Weekend in London

John spent the last few days of last week at the Fastly office in London. Hoping to escape the Bay Area rain, he quickly realized it had followed him to Europe. There were even hints of snow on the first day.

Thursday evening, John met with Penny’s sister Olivia, her husband George, their daughter Alice and Alice’s husband Dickie. Alice and Dickie had just opened a cocktail bar – Maremmano – in London in addition to their restaurant. A super lovely place built on the tapas concept but for Italian food. After drinks, John, Alice, and Dickie went to the restaurant – Maremma – and enjoyed Tuscan food until only one server was left in the whole restaurant. Lovely food – even better to catch up!

Friday afternoon was spent visiting Shackleton to discuss gear for John’s upcoming trip to Antarctica. It was followed up with afternoon tea at the Mandarin Oriental – an absolute must when in London. The evening entertainment was delivered by The 1975 at the 02 arena. Fantastic band and show provided by a band celebrating their 20th year together. 

John spent Saturday in Paris after a quick train ride across the channel. It felt good to revisit the riverside where John and Isabella spread Lyne’s ashes. But other than that, Paris was a cold and wet affaire this time, and John returned to London once his clothes were soaked, although not until he made it to the Eiffel Tower.

After packing Sunday morning, John went to see the “Slough House” building featured in Apple TV’s Slow Horses. Fun to see and great to be out on what turned out to be the only day with a blue sky and sun.

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City Tour of Dubai

Despite having left San Francisco a little later than planned, we landed in Dubai on time and enjoyed being at the gate almost as soon as we turned off the runway. We were booked at our complimentary hotel room at Le Meridien only 30 min. later and moved our scheduled 9:00 Dubai City tour to 8:30.

Dubai was hot and humid with temperatures around 95° (35° Celcius). The heat felt a lot warmer and we all changed into something a lot lighter before setting out to see the city.

We started the tour at the Gold Souk (Souk = market or bazaar) – one of the largest gold markets in the world. From there to the Spice Sou; which is almost exclusively run by Iranians as most spices are brought from Iran to Dubai via boat. 

A short Abra ride followed on the Dubai Creek before we were reunited with our tour bus on the shore of the other side. All enjoyed the slightly cooler temperatures on the water!

We left the open markets behind and headed to Dubai Mall. As with many other things in Dubai, this (also) is the world’s largest. We came mostly to see the world’s tallest building – Burj Khalifa – but got to see Pottery Barn, the Dubai Aquarium, and Shake Shack on the way.  The (almost) magical fountains in front of Burj Khalifa performed for us twice. 

Afterward, we stopped at Jumeirah Madinat, where John & Olivia had previously stayed. We tried to get access to the private beach but no such luck. The security is pretty strict there, and it didn’t help that we showed up with a group of 16 people. 

Instead, we opted for a view of the iconic Burj al Arab hotel from the Jumeirah public beach., located to the right of the hotel. Not quite as good a view, but we got to dip our feet in the water and capture a couple of snapshots with the hotel in the background. 

At this point, most had started to fade as it was past midnight, and we decided to head back to the hotel. Several of the children asked if we could please drive by the Royal Palace; which ended up being the last sight of the evening not counting the inside of our eyelids approximately 30 min. later. 

We had planned the tour from home via Dubai Private Tours, and after spending four hours with them we found them professional, safe and knowable. Our guide – Sha – talked almost non-stop from pickup to drop-off and entertained us all with facts and some fiction… His story about a previous girlfriend and the unveiling of her face after a few months of dating will be remembered by all for years to come.

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Family Summer Trip ’17 – Leaving Home

We’re writing this having just crossed over the border between Yemen to Somalia. Emirates is taking good care of us, and some of the family members are enjoying the possibility to spread out in a place that isn’t full.

A total of 16 of us left San Francisco airport yesterday and landed in Dubai Tuesday evening. The 15 hours of planned flight time seemed very long prior to taking off, but once underway none of us found the flight excessively long. That’s likely to change on the way back…
 
The final four family members – completing the list of the 20 of us going this time around – Chris, Kara, Chloe, and Colton are leaving Los Angeles Wednesday evening and will join us in Cape Town Friday at dinner time.  As always it’s exciting to see how much trouble we run into with the weight of our luggage and size of our suitcases. Three weeks is a long time to pack for, and there’s heavy camera gear onboard as well. This obviously is more of an issue on the smaller planes that will take us to the three camps we’re visiting. 

For now, we’re onboard a Boeing 777 after we enjoyed the quietness of the Airbus 380 yesterday.  Emirates has been great and just celebrated Robert who got to celebrate this birthday in the air.  Just this last week Emirates changed their policy on free wi-fi, but nobody seems to mind too much and might even be enjoying a bit of time disconnected from the grid. 

We’ll be back with updates underway and post as wireless coverage permits.

Our 2017 Schedule
June 19 – Depart SFO
June 20 – Dubai
June 21 – Arrival in Cape Town
June 22 – Cape Town
June 23- Cape Town
June 24 – Depart Cape Town / Arrival at Sossusvlei, Namibia
June 25 – Sossusvlei, Namibia
June 26 – Sossusvlei, Namibia
June 27 – Depart for Matetse, Zimbabwe
June 28 – Matetse, Zimbabwe
June 29 – Matetse, Zimbabwe
June 30 – Matetse, Zimbabwe
July 1 — Matetse, Zimbabwe
July 2 — Matetse, Zimbabwe
July 3 – Depart for Singita, South Africa
July 4 – Singita, South Africa
July 5 – Singita, South Africa
July 6 – Depart Singita for Johannesburg and California
July 7 – Back home

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Africa 2015

22 family members arrived in Johannesburg on June 26 early morning – some straight from San Francisco while most had enjoyed some days in Amsterdam. Olivia, John and the girls flew in from Athens, Greece – more on that in a different post. 

From Johannesburg the family flew to Maun in Botswana where they connected to smaller planes able to land on the airstrip near the first of two camps – Xigera. The property, located in the Okavango Delta, is owned by Wilderness Safari and overall this was the first Africa trip in a while where the family didn’t stay at AndBeyond properties. 

The transfer process and security procedures in Maun were rather chaotic but all made it out of there in time in three separate planes and arrived at Xigera Camp mid-afternoon just in time for a quick game drive which at the end brought a head-to-head with a (luckily) friendly elephant bull – close enough that the trunk came inches away from a couple of faces. Nature at its best.

The following four days were spent around the delta and in it. Part of the time were in traditional open safari vehicles but the water was the main attraction and the family came to spend a fair amount of time in makoros and in the fast boats through what seemed like an endless maze of little water ways that somehow all found their way back to the main waterway that will let you reach Maun in approximately eight hours. 

The camp itself it built on stilts above the wetlands below. The animals are free to roam throughout the camp and sand traps revealed the presence of nightly visitors every morning at sunrise. Some were spotted “in person” – elephant and hippo. Hard to hide. Even at night… The camp was beautiful and built in a nice tent style. The staff was wonderful and took very good care of all. 

John’s birthday was celebrated on the last evening at Xigera and the staff not only celebrated him with song and dance but had also left him a couple of presents in the room; which was a very nice touch.

It was time to pack up and continue the journey June 30 and three planes picked the family up mid-morning before making the two-stop journey back to South Africa. The first stop to go through customs and immigration while the second stop was for refueling. After almost five hours the planes arrived at Londolozi airstrip where the last two family members – Andrew and Lucy – joined for the remainder of the trip.

Londolozi – a Zulu word that roughly translates into “protector of all things” is an icon amongst all the African safari camps. It has been around for years and has been instrumental when it comes to wildlife preservation and rehabilitation. Their leopards are known world-wide although they did prove quite hard to find. The resort as stunning and and the whole camp is very professionally run. 

The first game drive brought a pack of nine sleeping lions just about a mile from camp. The looked undisturbed but the crocodiles that they shared the water hole with. Three unrelated young lion brothers had killed a water buffalo kill – something that was revisited on several occasions reminding all the the smell doesn’t improve as the days go by. 

There were many other sightings over the five days. Lots of giraffe, wildebeests, birds incl. fish eagles and Penny’s beloved lilac-breasted roller, elephants and water buffalo. There’s supposedly a lone ostrich that no one spotted, and rumor has it there’s a petition to get her a male ostrich to keep her company.

The leopards were hard to find but patience and some luck brought the good first sighting just as the light was disappearing on the third day. Good excuse to stop for a sundowner once the leopard had had enough of our company. The second good sighting actually happened on the way back from a morning drive with a leopard chomping on a fresh kill. Wonderful to see these precious cats in their natural environment. 

After a great 4th of July celebration on the riverbed, it was time to start packing. The following morning it was off to Johannesburg with evening flight waiting to take most back to the US. Olivia left her wedding ring in the room but luckily she was staying behind in Johannesburg for a few days to see old friends so the ring and its rightful owner got reunited after a couple of days of separation. 

As written before there is no place like Africa and it’s safe to say that all are looking forward to go back sometime in the near future.

For a more visual story there are some select photos from the trip here.

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Summer camp 2015

John and Isabella drove to Lake Tahoe on July 1 to drop of Isabella at Walton’s Grizzly Camp in Portola, CA. They left early in the morning and stopped at Emerald Lake and hiked four hours before making it all the way to the hotel in Truckee. 

They were lucky to have a Ferrari California to their disposal and the roof was down most of the way. As “luck” would have it, last year’s incident repeated itself: a fast-flying rock cracked the wind shield. No big deal – it was covered by insurance but the chances of that happening with exactly one year apart can’t be that high.

Lake Tahoe was blue and beautiful – it’s such a beautiful part of the world. It is very crowded though and John and Isabella stayed around the hotel the rest of the day. The people at the ski resort all spoke about the small amount of snow they have had the last two years, and they were worried about this coming seaon as well. 

Camp was reached Sunday mid-morning and John turned the nose towards Burlingame. It took little more than five hours to make it back. Isabella is flying back via Reno airport.