Christmas and New Year

Merry Christmas to you all from Santa (Jim in the suit) and Alonda!
Jim was asked to be one of the Santas at the American Women's Club Christmas Bazaar at a local hotel. He has already been asked to come back for next year.
We will be visiting relatives in Texas for the holidays and are flying out tomorrow night.
Happy Holidays!

Switzerland

In October, we went to Switzerland. We decided the best way to see it was by train. Jim didn't want to drive and we didn't want to ride a bus tour. They have panoramic cars on the tourist trains and even if you are on a regular train, it is still wonderful. You can relax, walk around, have coffee, nap, read or look at the beautiful scenery.

Neat, clean, comfortable and colorful.

We took this picture of the train you see from the same train. It was going around some very sharp turns and then went down the middle of the street like a streetcar. There was a small river, a road and steep alps on both sides so there just wasn't any room for train tracks.

When people think of Switzerland, they think of beautiful, small villages with church steeples. Yes, it looks exactly like that!

An it looks exactly like this, too. There were clocks everywhere. We were told that John Locke (or was it Calvin?) told the newly converted Protestants in Geneva that making jewelry was bad, but that it was OK to have a nice looking watch. The Swiss watch industry was born!

If you don't think of villages in Switzerland, you think of the snow-capped Alps.

Or maybe you think of the beautiful green forests on the lower slopes. We were there in the fall, so got to see some of the changing colors.

We were surprised to see so many fields of grapes. Swiss wine may not be famous, but they seem to actually make a lot of it.

We spent the entire trip trying to get a decent picture of a cow with a cowbell. This was the best we could do! The train was moving all the time and when it was stopped, there were no cows. Almost all the cattle and a lot of the other stock had bells.

This was Saas-Fee. You may have never heard of it. Everyone has heard of Zermatt, but this was quieter and had a lot fewer tourists. In fact, half the place was shut down for holiday for the staffs of the hotels and restaurants. When the new winter starts, they get busy and it doesn't stop until about October.

This is the view from our hotel room.

And this is what the hotels look like. No real high-rise places.

We went up the local cable car. An amazing number of Swiss towns and villages have one (or more!) cable cars leading up to their local skiing areas.

This is the view back down from the top. The busses go inside the barn to let you out. The winters are quite harsh and they don't shove you out in the snow. It is also common for the busses to have back racks and trailers for all the ski gear.

People were still going up and skiing and snow-boarding! It probably hadn't snowed here in at least four months.

Here is one of the results of all that snow. These are avalanche barriers and the Swiss government has a looooong term project to prevent avalanches.

This is a close-up of the barriers.

There are a lot of hikers and bikers. They are up high and they are down low. The yellow signs were at the top of the cable car and gave directions and distances for all those hikers and bikers.

Jim playing tourist in Interlaken.

Jim playing tourist in Italy. We always stop for gelatto when we go to Italy. Part of our trip went through a small part of Italy (Tirano). Notice how narrow the road is and how wide our bus was. We have the little Tuk-Tuk cars here in Karachi, but they don't have white-wall tires.

Our "train" for part of the trip was a boat. You buy a train ticket, but you still ride the paddle-wheeler.

This is what we will most remember about Switzerland: clean and green!

Touring in Pakistan

We finally got to go to a new city! Earlier this May, we visited friends we worked with in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We flew up in the morning, did Sunday Brunch at the Islamabaad Club and did a tour around the city. Islamabaad is the capital of Pakistan and has the third largest mosque in the world. Faisal Mosque was a gift to Pakistan from King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Unlike the number one and two largest mosques in the world (Mecca and Medina), we got to go inside and visit.

This shows part of the open area of the mosque. The white paths are white marble and are very nice. Since you have to walk around in socks or barefooted, knowing where the cool, white marble walkways are is important.

This is part of the interior domed area. It is basically just a large, open area for prayer and was nicely decorated.

Here we are at a local lake / National Park. Alonda was wearing the traditional Pakistani shawaal kamiz (spelling varies!).

This is the seat of government for the country. There is a large lake behind it (we visited it, too) and the row of white buildings are the two houses of Congress, the President's House and the Supreme Court building. They are all next to each other along Constitution Avenue.

Here is another view looking down at Faisal Mosque from the hill. The mosque is quite unusual in that it has so many corners. The vast majority of mosques are built in a domed / rounded form.

At the large lake behind the government building, we saw lots of people out for a ride on the lake.

In March, we had a couple of visitors from the US and we showed them a few things here in Karachi. We took them to the local Pakistani Air Force Museum. Jim was the only person who had to pay the RS 25 fee (about $.30). Everyone else was over 60 and got in for free.

You can see from this general view that there was a lot to see. The museum has been recently renovated and was very green and clean.

This is one of the old "eggbeater" choppers. It was unique in that it has no tail rotor. The two rotors go in opposite directions!

This is an old Starfighter. They had a lot of problems with these in the 1970's. The tail was too small and the plane would have directional stability problems and crash.

We rode the simulator ride. These are getting more popular with the kids.

This is the inside of the hanger. Air Force Museums always have lots of planes.

Another place we visited was the Chaukhandi Tombs. They are several hundred years old, but not all the graves are ancient. There were some very recent burials.

Some of the tombs have quite intricate carvings on them.

Not all the tombs are pretty.

Here is more detail of the carvings.

We hope you enjoyed our travels and we plan on seeing some more of Pakistan when we come back for next school year. School starts in August!

Sri Lanka for Spring Break

We went on a ten-day trip to the island of Sri Lanka. You may remember the place as the former island of Ceylon where they grew all that tea. Or, you may have seen it on the news where they finally ended their 30-year civil war! We were very happy with our guide, Ranga. He speaks English and German and can arrange tours/hotels/etc. [email: sydstours@gmail.com].

One of the first things we saw was a Buddhist temple on a lake in Colombo, the capital city.

This is the Galle Face Hotel, and it was pretty grand. It is on the beach in Colombo, the capital, and is one of those fine old hotels in the British tradition.

The Galle Face Hotel is very popular for weddings. It is now surrounded by newer and taller buildings, but this is still THE place to get married. It is not unusual for the hotel to host two or three weddings a day. These are the traditional dancers who were here for one of the weddings. We saw this group do two weddings in one day. Other tourists were not as shy as we were about walking up and taking pictures of the bride and groom!

This is a Hindu temple. All of the Hindu places we saw were lavishly decorated and they seemed to all be well used.

This is the hotel in Kandi. Kandi is well known since it is a little cooler than other places and was the earlier seat of government.

The cultural show was fun with a lot of drumming and dancing.

The golden roof stands over the Temple of the Tooth. This is very famous in Buddhist tradition. It is supposed to house an actual tooth that was picked up after the cremation of the Buddha.

This is one of the many, many images of the Buddha in the Temple of the Tooth. The Buddha has many forms, since each statue is simply a representation of an idealized being. It doesn't have to actually look like him.

This is part of the Peradeniya botanical garden. It was started some time before 1800. Very nice and very clean. Sri Lankans seem to appreciate their natural spaces.

The sign pretty much says it all. Be sure to notice how long it took them to find out where they came from! (Click on the picture and it will be bigger.)

This is the Grand Hotel up north. It really WAS a grand hotel. Very British. We sat on the lawn and drank tea.

Hakgala botanical garden. Started by King Ravana and expanded under the British. The little pond is in the shape of the country.

This elephant is supposed to have the largest tusks of any living elephant. Indian elephants have solid tusks; African elephants have hollow ones. This "tusker" cannot have larger tusks unless he grows some longer legs!

This one is cuter!

The local cricket team won!

The rickshaws (Tuk-tuk) were fun and we thought the sign was cute.

This is how they grow tea. They grow a LOT of it. The "pluckers" will carry a stick and the overseer will show them how low they are allowed to pick. If they didn't do that, they would just strip the bush since they are paid by the pound. If they strip the bush, their will be no more tea to harvest!

Alonda was sorry she didn't stop and see this guy. She assumed he was just painting as a hobby. She realized too late that he was a professional and was selling his paintings.

This bridge is the only access to a small village on the other side of the river. This is the same river they used when they filmed The Bridge Over the River Kwai.

This is the Bentota Beach Hotel. Very relaxing and the beaches were spotless. We didn't see anyone cleaning them, they just don't throw any trash on them!

We are at the Brief Gardens. Locally famous for the guy who designed and owned the place. He was a renowned architect and garden designer in Sri Lanka.

This is the largest Buddha statue in the world. It is down near the tsunami area. You can only go up the first two stories on the inside. Be sure to notice the people standing down in front of it!

The interiors of many of the Buddhist temples would have VERY extensive displays of scenes from the life of the Buddha. This one was about 25-30 feet high.

This is the lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor at Galle on the southern coast. It is in a corner of the old fort which controlled the entrance.

There was a whole flock of Buddhist monks touring the fort. They had some children (monks in training) with them and the entire thing was a school trip!

There is a world famous, private turtle hatchery on the edge of the ocean. The place has been in "National Geographic" and "Reader's Digest". It was completely washed away in the tsunami and has had to rebuild from scratch.

We went to dinner in a Tuk-tuk. The name comes from the sound of the old two-stroke motors.

We really enjoyed our trip and would gladly recommend Sri Lanka for a vacation. Of course, from the US it is a loooooooooong trip!