Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Day 9

Once again we had a long day of driving with just a few short stops. Our itinerary had said that we could visit a yogurt factory, but they don’t allow visitors because of flies. If too many people go into the yogurt factory, it let’s in too many flies. (Un)fortunately fly on the bottom yogurt has never taken off like fruit on the bottom yogurt.

So we stopped at a roadside stand instead to try curds and treacle. Sri Lankan curds are not like fried Wisconsin cheese curds or even Little Miss Muffet’s curds and whey. It’s basically a sour plain yogurt made from buffalo milk that they make in flat clay pots and apparently doesn’t need refrigeration for up to a week. In order to take away the plain yogurt taste, you top it with coconut treacle. It’s a syrup made from coconut that has twice the fructose of high fructose corn syrup. Hence, the reason why it is so delicious. Of course, most of our group was too chicken to try this local delight, but thetwinsontour jumped right in! We love to try local food so long as it’s not spicy, fish, seafood, rodent, still has eyeballs, wierd cuts of chicken bones, rare meat, ugly, or otherwise unacceptable.

We also made a super quick photo op stop of local stilt fishermen. Sri Lanka is the only place in the world where they fish like this. They dig a hole and put a big pole in the ground. Then they climb the pole and fish. I’m probably missing something in the description, but that’s ok. These fishermen do not make a living from fishing anymore. They make a living from posing for tourist photos. We gladly contributed to their current livelihood.

We also went to our last UNESCO world heritage site, the old Dutch fort in the city of Galle. We didn’t do much, just walked down a couple of streets and went to the old Dutch church there. It was too hot to do anything else. Even though we didn’t do much, I was glad to get back on the air conditioned bus.

That’s all I got for day 9.

Love,
thetwinsontour

Yala National Park, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Day 8

Finally! The day the twinsontour have been waiting for forever–a full day of safari in Yala National Park. If you know anything about thetwinsontour, you know how much we adore safari. We love it even more than shopping at Michael’s and Kohl’s combined. Well, actually let’s call it an even tie because we do love a great sale! I mean, who doesn’t love a 60% off all scrapbook embellishments sale? The exhilaration is incomparable. Know what else is incomparable? The thrill of spying an elephant through the brush! Now, this is not a great photo opp by any stretch of the imagination. A picture of some overgrown vegetation with a hint of an elephant leg in the clearing. But there is that moment of anticipation– what if the elephant decides to cross the road?! How exciting would that be?! Alas, they did not. Due to the forest and vegetation, elephants roam in much smaller family groups in this park, about 15-20 compared to the last park where they were in groups of 50-100. Even though the elephant we were oohing and ahhing over did not cross the road or even stick her head out the bushes, there was a lone male elephant up ahead, munching on a bush on the side of the road. Now, we didn’t realize it until later, but this male elephant was in musk, and musk glands were dripping down the side of his face. If my sinuses weren’t always so clogged, I should have noticed his musky smell as we passed by him. But I didn’t. Male elephants in musk go crazy and are very, very dangerous. We were sitting in our safari jeep snapping away and taking selfies oblivious to his mental state.

We went on about our safari and saw plenty of peacocks and peahens– none of whom spread there plummage, some bee eaters– very colorful little birds, spotted deer– they look like an adult Bambi, mongoose– sitting on the side of the road hoping for some irresponsible Chinese tourists to throw him a treat, and of course more monkeys. What we did not see were any leopards. This park is famous for its leopards; it has one of the highest concentration of wild leopards in the world. Our guides heard a rumor that a glimpse of a leopard had been seen, and they were hoping that the leopard would meander into the clearing. So we sat with some other jeeps and waited with eager anticipation. Gradually the other jeeps left, and it was just our 2 jeeps remaining. And we sat there, waiting, wishing, hoping for a great leopard find. We waited forever, probably 30 minutes or more. Alas, it was not meant to be. We had so much time invested that it was hard to leave, but there was also so much more to see. Unfortunately, there were no leopard sightings for us that morning. Even with that disappointment, it was still a great drive. Truly, we do love the unlimited possibilities of game drives.

We left for our morning game drive at 5:30 as the sun was just coming up, but it took a while to get our tickets to enter the park because it doesn’t open until 6 and there were a gazillion other jeeps full of people also waiting to get tickets. By the time we made it back to the lodge at 9:45 for late breakfast, the sun was blazing. It was so hot, it would make a dragon want to retire. (I’ve been waiting forever to use that line! Literally, the first time I heard that song, I mentally filed it away for future use.)

Our hotel was located right on the beach (not visible from our room, but we were fairly close to a watering hole full of crocodiles and water buffalo) so we decided to go check it out. It’s not suitable for swimming because of the strong current and powerful waves. Also, it is not safe to go there early in the morning or at dusk because of wild animals (elephants and wild boar). We weren’t even allowed to walk to and from dinner in the dark because of the potential of wild animals. The wild boar are the most common, and most dangerous. There’s a little guard hut on the trail to the beach, and he asks your room number before he lets you proceed. I guess this is in case you ignore all of the warnings and get in the water. That way if you are swept away to Antarctica they can let your mother know. So basically we just took a bunch of selfies from every angle, except from the top of the really high rocks, while sweating off 5 pounds under the intense rays of the sun.

Before we knew it, it was 2:45 and time to leave for our afternoon safari. For some crazy reason nearly half our group decided to skip the afternoon game drive. Absolutely crazy I say! And boy did they regret it! As we were driving out of the hotel grounds a motorcycle stopped and told our driver something. Then our very slow and cautious driver (he drives slower than Abraham Lincoln) was transformed into a NASCAR driver. What caused this immediate and drastic change? A LEOPARD! In a tree! On the access road to the hotel. We were one of the first jeeps on the scene, but it was already crowded and difficult to get a good view. The viewing was also hampered by the dense foliage of the chosen tree as well as the other brush in front of it that kept blowing in the breeze. We were able to clearly see a tail and it’s 2 front legs, and that was about it. I got one picture where I can see an eye. But it was still super exciting to see a half a leopard before we had even made it out of the gate. Of course, word of the leopard spread like wildfire and there was quickly a huge traffic jam of jeeps angling for the best position. Its quite rare to see a leopard in this area. In the past 15 years, this is only the 2nd time our guide Su has seen a leopard so close to the lodge.

So on that leopard euphoria we headed back to Yala National Park to continue our game drive. We saw more water buffalo, deer, and wild boars. Actually, there’s a good chance they were the same ones we saw in the morning because they were still in the same spots.

We saw a few more elephants hiding amongst the trees, and then came the moment that strikes fear in the hearts of tour guides and safari drivers. There was a large male elephant pacing back and forth across the road and a couple of jeeps near him. We didn’t get too close because he was clearly agitated. His tail was sticking up. I didn’t notice if his ears were flared or not because Asian elephants have much smaller ears than African elephants. So we sat there a few seconds waiting for him to move on so that we could safely continue down the road. Then he noticed us. With a roar of his trunk, an angry stampeding elephant started towards us at an incredible speed. Our NASCAR safari driver returned with a vengeance! I didn’t know it was possible to go that fast in reverse–about 25-30mph. Luckily, there was no one behind us. It seemed to last forever, like time had switched to slow motion, but we caught it on video and it was only 11 seconds (the stampede not the anxious pacing). This time we were able to smell the musk in the air quite clearly. Being around an elephant in musk can be risky and dangerous. Now I understand even more why our safari drivers in Africa gave them such a wide berth, especially since African elephants are much larger. And in case you are keeping track, this is one of the 93% of male elephants in Sri Lanka without tusks.

Perhaps the biggest coup of the drive was spotting the rarest bird in all of Sri Lanka! Ok, so it wasn’t that exciting, but it did happen. There are only 10-12 pairs of black necked stork in all of Sri Lanka and we saw a pair of them! With luck like that, I am sure to win the next Powerball! It’s destiny! Soon my dreams of quitting my job and following Bon Jovi around the world will come to fruition! I can feel it. The black necked stork is found in other countries, but it’s rare in Sri Lanka. It may be rare in other countries too, but I don’t know. Or it could be as prolific as the Canadian goose– like my own personnal nemesis — Francine and Edgar– are back outside my office again this year and will soon start nesting and attacking parked cars. I really don’t care about birds, rare or not.

The rest of the game drive was uneventful, but we had enough excitement for the day. We tried to find a bear, but no luck. Who knew that they had bear in Sri Lanka? We sure didn’t. It would have been so amazing to see one. I guess that gives us a reason to come back some day.

So that is our day in a nutshell. The world’s largest walnut shell, but still a nutshell.

Love,
Thetwinsontour

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Day 6 Having no opportunity to ride the train yesterday, we made last ditch effort to ride any train at all. There’s a very scenic 45 minutes of train ride, so our guide decided we would try that. However, he just blindly bought the tickets hoping that we would fit on the train. Fit is the key word there. He knew that some people would not want to go though. We got to the train and it was already jam packed of Sri Lankans heading home from the New Year holiday and French tourists trying to do the same thing as us. There was literally no room just like you see in the movies except there was no one riding on the roof. Apparently they don’t do that in Sri Lanka. They do however sit in the open doors of the train and let their legs hang out. Anyways, I jumped on the train along with two other people from our group. Everyone else, including my sister who was laid low with a headache, went back to the bus to drive to meet us at the end of our train ride. Anyways, the seats were full of snoozing Sri Lankans, and the train aisles were full of French tourists, and a Hindu woman who just plopped down on the floor next to me. As I clutched the handrail, we were off, chugging through the verdant countryside. It was a beautiful view, but all of my pictures have the train window frame and a sleeping lady in them because I had to take them with one hand while standing in the aisle of a moving train. That is until the ticket control people came through and made the guys sitting in the door with their dangling feet and the Hindu woman at my feet go back to the third class cars. Finally, I had a little room to move and didn’t feel so precarious, like I was going to fall over if the train hit a bump or came to an abrupt stop for an elephant on the tracks. And I was able to hold my phone high enough that I could get some pictures out the open door, which by the way still had quite a few people in it. I don’t think there are any elephants left there in the tea plantation area though because the evil British colonial tea plantation owners viewed them as pests and paid people to kill them. One evil British judge (actually he was a good judge, just a bad man) killed over 1,400 elephants in a 3 year period. Damn tea! No wonder I don’t like it. After that, along with the rest of Sri Lanka who wasn’t on the train, we also visited the Botanical garden. Seriously, there were more people here than at Kaufman stadium on free bobble head night. I’ve never been on free bobble head night, but I assume that there’s a lot of people there because everyone loves bobble heads just like everyone loves a beautiful rose garden. Once again, thetwinsontour were a star attraction as people ran up to us asking for selfies. Ahh, the universal power of selfies. They were so excited to get a selfie that they tried to take them in any direction regardless of the background, but have no fear! Thetwinsontour made sure to get the roses in the background. Proper picture composition is a must! Now the best part was when thetwinsontour spotted the most adorable twins in Sri Lanka. We asked their mother if we could take a twin twin picture, and of course she was delighted. However, much like 2 and a half year olds around the world, Misha & Miha did not wish to cooperate. We tried everything, even taking a picture with mom, but one of them has his face hidden in her skirt. But when dealing with twins that age, that’s still considered a win. We gave their mother our business card. (Did you know that thetwinsontour have business cards? It lists our email, blog, and Facebook. Oh, you should know what’s coming next. Everyone repeat after me, be sure to like our Facebook page.) Much to our delight, the mom sent us an email asking for me to email the twin twin pictures to her and even included a few pictures of the twins. I think she wants to print our twin twin pictured poster size and hang them in the living room. And also print them into magnets to hang on her beautiful flower patterned refrigerator, which I am sure she has because when faced with purchasing a refrigerator who in their right minds would purchase a plain white one when there is a patterned option available? Who I ask? No sane rational being, that’s who! (We should have mentioned the beautiful refrigerator we saw for sale at the Colombo airport. There was a navy one with red flowers, and several other beautiful refrigerator patterns. I wish I had taken a picture, but I was too tired. But who goes to the airport to buy a refrigerator? A neck pillow, KC Royals t-shirt, a keychain, sure, but a refrigerator?) I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, the lovely email from the twins’ mum. She even warmly welcomed us to visit her home if we were still in the area! How nice is that? Alas, we have already moved on, but seriously, what an amazingly kind offer that bridges language, nationality, and religion. Despite what the news says, the world is full of amazing and kind people. What a wonderful world we live in! I wish that we could have gone to visit. And on that happy note I will end day 6. Love, thetwinsontour

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Day 2 Today we spent a lot of hours on the bus. We probably passed some beautiful scenery, but I am not sure because I slept most of the 5 and a half hour trip. That’s what I do best in buses (and don’t worry, I think my sister slept 6 or 7 hours of the 5 and a half hour trip). What was our goal? The holy grail for thetwinsontour! Elephants! Sri Lankan Elephants! We got to go on an afternoon game drive. Of course we loved it! Everyone knows that thetwinsontour love safari game drives. The park just has elephants and birds, but we did also see a large heard of buffalo that we thought were elephants when we first glimpsed them on the horizon. We also saw an eagle and a peacock, but enough about that. Let’s get to the amazing elephants! They were just standing around in this big field waiting to get their pictures taken. Lots of them. Our guide said that there were about 180 of them. I’ll have to take his word for it. I was too busy taking millions of pictures from every angle to stop and count the elephants. It was the most amazing thing ever, and our first safari experience outside of Africa. There are about 500 elephants in the park, so we didn’t get to see all of them which is disappointing. There are several parks here in the area, and the elephants move around following the water. They are in this park very early due to a light monsoon season. Sri Lankan Elephants only like clean water (Can you blame them?) and do not appreciate when the buffalo stomp through the smaller pools of water and get it all muddy. So when the water gets muddy in the other parks they come to this adjacent park because it has a giant reservoir of clean water. Do not worry! There is no poaching in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, only the male elephants have tusks. And only 7% of the male elephants have tusks. Now I am going to do some crazy math calculations here, just for the fun of it. Assuming equal birth and death rates of male and female elephants, that means 50% or 250 elephants in the park are male. Now if I break out my calculator, that means 17.5 elephants in this particular park have tusks. I have no idea how long it takes to grow a decent set of tusks, but for the sake of argument, I am going to say 20 years. We did see a young adolescent in the group with tusks, but they were very short and only visible when he raised his trunk to eat. So they do take a while to grow. There were a lot of young elephants, so it is safe to say that 30-40% of those tuskers are still growing the tusks out. So 10-12 are still growing their tusks. Which means that of the 500 elephants in the park, 5-7 of them have tusks. So poaching for ivory to sell to the Chinese is just not feasible. Hence, the Sri Lankan Elephants are safe from the evil poachers that are wreaking havoc on the African elephant populations. Thetwinsontour hate poachers! Anyways, as can be expected, we took a lot of pictures. I took 750, and I do not know how many my sister took, but it’s safe to assume that it is a lot. And guess what! We get to go on Safari again in just a few days! Get ready for more elephant pictures! Love, Thetwinsontour

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Day 1 So we arrived in Sri Lanka on Tuesday Night so we are not going to count that as a day. Hence, we start with Wednesday. I’m trying this voice to text thing and it’s not really working so if you notice something crazy that I missed in my edits, that’s why. Anyways that’s the story we are going with. So our first day in Sri Lanka was a city tour of the Capital city Colombo. We drove around and saw a lot of old buildings from the colonial time. We did not get out of the bus much. The main highlight was a Buddhist temple that we did stop and see (shoes off). Our main takeaway from this temple is that Buddhists, at least Buddhists in Sri Lanka have a lot of rules governing selfies. You are not allowed to take a picture with a Buddah, but they are literally every where, ergo it’s impossible to take a selfie in the temple. Now you know why there have been shockingly few Facebook pictures so far (or you would if you were a fan of thetwinsontour on Facebook like you are supposed to be.) Later we stopped at an outdoor monument surrounded by lion statues. And what do you know, there are even more selfie rules about the Lion statues. You can take a picture with the lions but you cannot sit on the lions for your picture or strike a funny pose with the lions. These Sri Lankan people sure do have a lot of selfie rules. We did discover a grocery store in the basement of the shopping mall adjacent to our hotel. There were some real treasures in the candy aisle! Apple flavored milk candy (like a green apple Hershey bar) for 20 rupees! That is like 13 cents! And these little packs of m&m type candies, but in strawberry or orange flavor for 10 rupees. How can you go wrong for 6 cents? Can you say cheap souvenir?! Ha ha, I can! You get a candy bar! And you get a candy bar! And you get Sri Lankan m&m’s! I will be stocking up on these tasty Sri Lankan delights! We enjoyed the grocery store so much that we went twice. In one afternoon. That’s how we roll. Ok, that’s enough for now because as usual we are way behind. Love, Thetwinsontour

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Day 4 On day 4 in Sri Lanka our fair heroines visited a fabulous cave temple, another UNESCO world heritage site. The monks started living there 2,200 years ago, but it was remodeled in the middle of the 18th century (mid-1700s, so before American Independence). There’s several different caverns all full of Buddahs, sometimes of declining sizes because they were built to fit in the space of the cave. The cool part is that the ceiling of the caves are painted similar to the way Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, but they didn’t try to carve out the ceiling to make it even. They just painted along with the natural undulations of the cave. Needless to say, we got plenty of pictures despite the crowds of people. These aren’t underground caves formed by millions of years of dripping water and underground rivers. These are natural caves on the side of the mountains, like what cavemen, or outlaws, or sabertooth tigers, or monks would have taken refuge in. They are about 300 steps up from the foreigners parking lot, or a combination of steps and ramps depending on preference. We opted for the mix because we had enough stairs yesterday at Lion Rock. We learned a valuable lesson as well, so take note. If you are a faithful Buddhist taking a bowl of rice as an offering at the temple, beware of monkeys! Or at least put it in a Tupperware and not a ceramic bowl. Seriously, there was a family walking past a tree of monkeys and the mother was carrying a large bowl of rice that was loosely covered. All of a sudden two monkeys leaped on her knocking the bowl out of her hands and sending it crashing to the ground shattering it in half. The startled children were screaming, and the monkeys were screeching as they ran off with their spoils–a broken ceramic bowl full of rice. Those poor children will probably have nightmares for weeks of swooping, screeching, rice stealing monkeys. Plus the shattered ceramic is very dangerous when everyone is walkung around barefoot. That’s why you should use shatter proof Tupperware, plus if it has a lid on it the monkeys might not be able to smell it. We also saw a monkey eating a beautiful pink lotus flower that made a great picture. We figured out later that he probably swooped in and stole that flower from the hand of an unsuspecting Buddhist. (Flowers, especially Lotus flowers, are the most common offering.) Perhaps the most exciting part of our day was when our guide Su told us that we could take pictures with the giant gold Buddha statue outside on top of a Buddhist museum there. Finally! A Buddha selfie! I don’t know what makes this one different. Perhaps because it is outside and not in a temple, but we didn’t take time to ask because we were too excited by the prospect of a Buddha selfie after having long been denied this opportunity. The excitement level of a Buddha selfie is very similar to a 70% off scrapbook paper at Michael’s. Yes, that exciting! After that we drove to our hotel in the city of Kandy. Interestingly enough, the whole city of Kandy is a UNESCO world heritage site. I’m not really sure why. From the bus it didn’t look special or different from any other town here. All we did was drive through town on our way to the cultural dance show. We don’t like cultural dance shows. After about 5 minutes we are fighting the zzzzzzz’s. The second dance, they started spinning plates on their fingers and putting them on candelabras the way Chinese acrobats do. Do you know who was not impressed? The Chinese people in front of us. They snorted and started playing on their phones. This place was jam packed full of tourists, and there was no air conditioning. It was hot, crowded and miserable. But thanks to Sri Lankan coffee, coca cola, and candy thetwinsontour stayed awake! Woo hoo!! I think that is it for the day! Well, even if it isn’t, I am going to say that it is. Ta ta for now. Love, Thetwinsontour

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Day 3 There are 8 UNESCO world heritage sites in Sri Lanka. Today we saw 2 of them! That’s right! We saw 25% of Sri Lanka’s UNESCO world heritage sites (look at me throwing that math in there in the first paragraph! Keeping it educational!) in one super hot, sticky, sweaty, exhausting day. We started out the day at 7:30 am (so early! ) and headed to Lion Rock which is “the” place to go in Sri Lanka. For some reason, even though there are no Lions in Sri Lanka, and never were, their mascot is the Lion and their original name means The Lion People. So, some Prince who was not the rightful heir because he was the son of a concubine overthrew his brother to become King and decided to build his palace on top of this mountain. And he built a giant lion near the top, but all that is left are the feet because it was built from plaster, not granite. Wasn’t very forward thinking of him, was it? I mean, we could have gotten much better selfies if there was a whole lion there, but oh well. C’est la vie. (Didn’t know we spoke French, huh? Well I can also count to 10!) At the bottom are the oldest continuously maintained gardens in the world, not the oldest, but the oldest still around. That’s the kind of superlatives they have here in Sri Lanka. Then there’s lots of steps. (No superlatives come with these steps except from thetwinsontour.) Lots of steps. Luckily, they are broken up into small manageable sections, and even though they are not equitable in size, none of them are tall steps. They are old and a little worn, but still in pretty good condition. The only problem is that there are no handrails, but there are usually walls. The top of Lion Rock is not really as high as it looks from the ground. I mean, we made it all the way to the top fairly easily, and I am not even sore the following day. It’s about 1200 steps to the top. When you see our photos, you may say that looks really familiar, just like something out of a Duran Duran video, and you would be correct! They filmed their Save a Prayer video all around Sri Lanka. If you look it up on the YouTube, you will see Simon Lebond dancing around atop Lion Rock. We love the 80’s even if we’ve never heard of that particular Duran Duran song. It’s not as popular as Hungry Like a Wolf. Then we went to some ancient temple ruins (insert name here). Like the Angkor Way of Sri Lanka, but smaller. To go inside the temples, you have to take off your shoes and hat. It was just way too hot and sticky to take off our tennis shoes (socks are allowed. Sri Lankans may be strict about Buddah selfies, but they are not strict about bare feet. I think it has to do with the ground being too hot to walk on) and go in them when you can stand outside and see nearly everything. The coolest thing was the monkeys running amok amongst the ruins. We spent a lot of time taking pictures of them. They ran from one temple to another, and then they were just all sitting in a row on the wall in front of a big stuppa begging us to take their pictures. Needless to say, you don’t have to tell thetwinsontour twice when it comes to picture time. Even our guide Su was taking pictures. That’s how you know when you are photographing something special–when the guide starts taking pictures. Do you know how many times he has been to these temples in the past 18 years? And how many monkeys he has seen in that time? So this was a good thing, a really good thing. Until they started chasing each other and swinging through the trees over our heads because that’s terrifying. But when they sit still on a wall, that’s amazing. Sri Lanka has more national holidays than any other country — there are 25 of them. So it only makes sense that we would be here to celebrate one of them. We got to experience the New Year! Sri Lanka celebrates the New Year when Pisces changes to Aries, so the date can fluctuate. And to celebrate, you shoot off fire works at the auspicious time. When is the time auspicious you ask? They don’t make it easy and just use midnight. You must check with the astrologers to find out the exact moment that Pisces changes to Aries. This year it started at 8:40 pm. But, not only is there an auspicious time, but there is also an auspicious period! This is the time it takes for the transition to be complete– kind of like an eclipse– the time from when the transition starts to when it is complete. It could take 8-9 hours depending on the year. This year it was 4 hours. During the auspicious period, it is bad luck to start anything– work, eating, imbibing spirits– which would seem to put a damper on the celebrations because it basically sounds like nap time. But, what may be most curious of all, is that even though it is New Year, nothing changes. It is still 2017. They don’t celebrate like the Chinese with the year of the rabbit or goat. There is some astrological calendar out there that tracks the difference in the years, but they don’t use it. After getting their independence from the British in the 50’s, Sri Lanka tried out using this calendar, but quickly abandoned it after a few months because suddenly they were 4 months behind the rest of the world. Basically for us, the New Year means less traffic because everyone has left town to go to their villages. Less traffic means less Dramamine for thetwinsontour. This is a very good thing. That’s about it for day 3 in Sri Lanka, and for the year. Love, thetwinsontour Ps. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook! You won’t be disappointed.

New York, United States

A few quick days in New York Our fair heroines leave New York for Sri Lanka Monday morning. Faced with at least one night in NYC, we made the logical decision and decided to spend 3 nights for a little vacation before the vacation. The first moments in New York were a little harrowing, even for experienced travellers like thetwinsontour who let nothing phase them. What? How can that be? Well, let me tell you. As I was climbing into the taxi cab, it started to move! That’s right! Sayed, the taxi driver, didn’t care if I was in the car or not, he was ready to go! Seriously, I had one leg in the car. Got the other one in, and he just kept on going! There we are, driving down the airport with the back door open. Fortunately, the airport was gridlocked and we were only going 2 miles per hour, which is not at all. I walk 3.7 mph on the treadmill without breaking a sweat. I could have walked circles around this fool. But it was midnight. And I was tired. And I nearly lost a limb. This may have given us a competitive advantage in the 3 legged race, but that is a small consolation. Anyways, our goal was to see a Broadway musical while we were in NYC. So we saw two in one day. Which is kind of a lot of musical for one day. We started out early (like we left the hotel about 10 kind of early, let’s not get too crazy here) and headed down to the TKTS office in Times Square. That’s a place with a really long line that you can buy discounted tickets for that day. Our original plan was to buy tickets for the 8pm show, but they only sell the matinee tickets in the morning. We couldn’t decide if we really wanted a matinee, and then we thought our preferred show was sold out. So we got out of line and went into a store to plan our next move in the warmth. Since it was cold and windy out, we decided that we would go to a museum where it’s temperature controlled and no wind. Thetwinsontour are always thinking! But then as we were walking past the ticket place we saw that our show did have tickets! So we were back in line for tickets to The Great Comet of 1812 starring Josh Groban. We still went to the MOMA because it was cold out and we had a couple of hours to kill. You know, it costs $25 to get in there now? I guess it’s worth it to see Van Gough’s Starry Night alone, and add to that Picasso’s first Cubist painting (the title is in French so I don’t know how to spell it), some Monet water lillies and you are in Masterpiece heaven. I did experience a near heart attack while admiring the Frida Kahlo, a debacle on the scale of the “fruit snacks in the Louvre caper of 2001.” A mother carrying a two year old came to show the baby the monkey in the painting, and she came harrowingly close to the masterpiece herself, and then kept inching the baby’s outstretched, slobbery, snotty fingers closer and closer to Frida. I held my breath in panic and fear about to witness a tragedy, and then it happened. The baby touched the frame! Who the hell thinks it is acceptable to touch the artwork? I was in shock. Stupefied really. It gives me heart palpitations just thinking about it. It was more than i could handle. Then we were off to see The Great Comet of 1812. It’s based on about a 20 page section of Tolstoy’s War and Peace (which is about a million pages). And the official thetwinsontour rating is Absolutely AhhhMaaaazing! It was so good and would have been worth a full price ticket. They actually have tables up on the stage that people can sit in (those are over $300 regular price, but you would be close enough to see Josh Groban’ s nose hairs, not that anyone wants to see nose hairs), but we did not sit there. We sat in the 8th row of the orchestra section. There were little platform aisles where the actors would walk amongst us and sing and dance. It was quite the spectacle, and you never knew where to look. Do you look at the dancers on the platform next to you, or do you look at the stage, or do you just rotate your head like an owl and try to take it all in? Needless to say, Josh Groban was also AhhhMaaaazing! It was a pretty long show too, 2 hours 45 minutes including intermission. Speaking of which, we went a little crazy during intermission. We were not excited by the merch booth because most of it just had the show logo. The only 2 things with Josh Groban on it were a poster (not putting that in my suitcase to lug around Sri Lanka) and a tote bag. The CD was $30 and had the original cast, not Josh Groban, and it’s only $17 on Amazon. Feeling a little depressed we noticed someone drinking from a nice souvenir reusable cup, so we decided to stop at the bar for a drink. We ordered a vodka and cranberry juice, and the bartender reached for a small glass, and I said I wanted a big glass. She said, ok I can do that, but no extra vodka. So we paid $15 each for a lot of cranberry juice with a splash of vodka. But, we were happy because we got a nice souvenir cup with a lid on it. I hate to think how much they charge for that if you order the proper drink for the cup. We had such a great time, we decided to go see what tickets were available for the evening shows. We settled on Ámelie because it sounded lighthearted and amusing. Luckily, we picked another good one. This one started Phillippa Soo, who evidently starred in Hamilton. Unbelievably talented. It was so good that I didn’t even mind getting a crook in my neck from trying to see around the big hair in front of me. It was also much shorter because it was only an hour and 40 minutes with no intermission (so we weren’t tempted to buy another souvenir cup…) Two Broadway plays and a museum pretty much take up the whole day, so that was our Saturday. Sunday we decided to go to the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, we didn’t plan enough ahead on this one. I did look a few days before we left to see if we could get tickets to The Crown, but those were sold out until July 26. I didn’t pay attention to the fact that you also need reservations to the pedestal which is only booked out for a few days. So all we got to do was walk around the base and take selfies at every angle, which is still a good thing. We love the Statue of Liberty! The last thing on our To Do list for NYC was to visit Dô (that’s supposed to be a straight line over the O) as in Cookie Dough Confectionary that specializes in, you guessed it, yummy, delicious cookie dough! I found them on Instagram a few months ago, and as soon as I saw the first picture of deliciousness, I knew that we had to go. It’s located in Greenwich Village just a short walk from the subway station. Now, the line part is the tricky part because it starts across the street. There’s a large mob of gawkers in front of the store taking pictures and just generally being in the way, but that is not the line. The line starts across the street. And it’s long! It starts across the street because that is just apartment buildings (what a great place to live!) and an itty bitty park, that way the line isn’t blocking any other businesses. So once you join that line at the end of the street, you wait, and you wait, and you wait so long that you leave your sister in line while you go to the grocery store on the corner to buy pop for you both. Then when you come back, you find your sister has moved approximately 3 feet and 8 inches, so you wait some more. In total, we waited about an hour and a half (we got in line at 3:02pm on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon). When you make it to the front of the line on the other side of the street, they give you a ticket that will allow you entre to the cookie dough mecca of NYC. They let a few people go per green light. Then you just have to dodge the people that think they got there at the perfect time and are trying to walk in in front of you. Hand your ticket to the lady at the door, and squeeze in the door to wait in line a little longer (but don’t worry, the time goes really fast as you take in all of the sights and take pictures of everything). And don’t try to be too sneaky. There’s a per person order limit of 4 items, so you can’t send one person to order for the whole soccer team. So after waiting in line forever, we rightfully decided that we deserved the biggest helping of cookie dough on the menu: 3 scoops! Go big or go home! That’s thetwinsontour motto! At least when it comes to dessert! Why would you wait that long and get a single scoop? The prices are not outlandish, it was $9 for a triple scoop. After taking a million pictures of my cookie dough, me and my cookie dough, and more of my cookie dough, it was time to sample my cookie dough. Oh. So. Good. It was like a party in my mouth. Like, my stomach gave my mouth a high five. I savoured each delectable mouthful. Savoured with an extra British U because that is so much more than just savoring it. And after spoonful after delicious spoonful, I looked down at my cookie dough and realized that I had eaten about half a scoop. And I could eat no more. I had 2 1/2 scoops left. I tried to keep eating, but I couldn’t do it. I am a cookie dough failure. Luckily, they give you lids, so I was able to take it back to my hotel and and store it in my mini fridge for dessert! And breakfast! Hip-hip-hooray for mini fridges!! Did I mention that our hotel had a tiny dish washer, too? These will be great in my tiny house! That is New York in a nutshell. The highlights for thetwinsontour and therefore the highlights for you our dear reader. Love, thetwinsontour

San Juan, Puerto Rico

As you may have guessed from the title, today was our last day in Puerto Rico. We had hoped to win our fortune on the penny slots in the hotel casino and never have to work again. My mom hit a $70 jackpot on the penny slots, my sister won $40 and I came out a meager $18 ahead. Well at least we can pay for dinner, but we’ve got to go to work tomorrow.

Now, I don’t want you to think we spent our entire Puerto Rican sojourn in the hotel casino. We just made a quick pit stop each night before retiring to our room. We were far too busy to spend time in the casino.

Perhaps I shall just take up where we last left off…. Thanks to Facebook we discovered on the morning of our departure that we were in Puerto Rico at the exact same time as our friend Javier. What a coincidence! It couldn’t have worked out better if we tried. Our own local guide for the evening. Normally I would try to go into detail about what we ate so that my mom will not worry about us not eating enough, but she is here with us so she knows exactly what we ate. Out of habit I will tell you that I ate some delicious Puerto Rican pork chop and I will extol the virtues of the plantain. What a versatile fruit! It can be a side dish or transformed into a main dish. And this relative of the banana is always delicious! One of my favorite ways to partake of this glorious fruit is “amarillos” or sweet plantains. They look like cooked baby bananas, and very similar to the fried bananas I had for breakfast a few mornings in Myanmar. Obviously, dinner was great but the company was even better.

Sunday was our day to walk around the Old Town. And that is pretty much what we did. Walk and walk and walk. We started out at cafe Mallorca where I ate a Mallorca with ham and cheese. Apparently this is a Spanish sweet bread that I should have eaten in Spain. I’ve never heard of it or tasted it before. Anyone?? Anyone?? Anyways it was delicious. Sorry enough about food, my mom is here with us.

There is a free trolley that drives tourists around the old town. There were a lot of locals on the trolley when we got on at stop number 7. After taking the full loop of the trolley to get a lay of the land we decided to get off at stop number 9. And you know what? Those locals were still on the bus. I don’t know if it was because of the A/C, if they like the view or if they just enjoy riding around in circles all day.

I did learn one very important thing about the Internet. While on the trolley ride, I spied a restaurant that I had read about on tripadvisor as one of the top rated and most popular restaurants in San Juan. With such glorious recommendations it seemed like a good dinner plan. The service was fast and courteous, but the food was only so so. As we were sitting there sipping on our watered down piña coladas it dawned on me why it had such high ratings on tripadvisor: it is directly across the street from the Carnival cruise line dock. Millions of tripadvisor reading people come into San Juan and plop down at the first restaurant they see and write a review about it. So what I am trying to say here is don’t base your dinner selection off Internet recommendations if you are in a popular cruise destination. Important life lessons brought to you by thetwinsontour. You are welcome.

Now for the devastingly disappointing part of our story. You might want to get your kleenex ready. We were in Puerto Rico for 5 days and did not bump into Ricky Martin. Not even a glimpse. Truly sad and disappointing. I know he is in NY working on Broadway and we’ve got tickets to see him next month, but it still would have been nice for him to come to Puerto Rico to see us. Javier came all the way to Puerto Rico to have dinner with us. Ricky Martin could have easily done the same. I am sure there are direct flights from NY to Puerto Rico.

See I told you we were too busy doing stuff to spend too much time in the hotel casino. Yesterday was our busy adventure day. A private tour of the rain forest and a trip to the bio-bays with glowing microscopic plankton. Our tour guide however was a good trip advisor find. No one else booked the tour for that day, so it was a private tour for the three of us. After making a few quick photographic stops in the rainforest, we put on our swimsuits, left mom at the top of the hill, and worked our way to the waterfall. Rainforest is an ancient aboriginal word meaning slick paved trails. Our guide warned us that there was a new section that could be quite slick and to walk beside the path in that section. You can probably guess what happened next. I believe we have previously established I am quite graceful and steady on my feet, so of course I landed on my buttocks long before we made it to the aforementioned slick area. Luckily, no injuries just a kind of sore knee. Needless to say, I waddled a lot more slowly to our destination after that. Slick spots aside, the rain forest and waterfall were amazing. We got to go swimming in the pool at the base of the waterfall. Definitely a unique experience (made even better by our new waterproof camera).

Sorry, I’ve got to start bringing this to a close. It is really long and our plane is about to land in Kansas City so I guess that is enough.

Love,
Thetwinsontourwithmom

Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico

Thetwinsontour are in Puerto Rico with momma, so this is the first official installment of thetwinsontourwithmom.

Ooh what fun it is to travel with mom. At all of the restaurants they hand her the check. Yes! But she just stares at it and hands it to me. No! Where is the justice in this world? Like right now I am laying on the beach, lathered up in sunscreen, wearing my big hat, and it is raining on me. The sun is shining, the clouds look harmless, and I am getting wet. What is with that? If this continues too much longer, I might have to seek shelter. In a bar. And drown my sorrows in a piña colada or two. But I paid $4 to rent my lawn chair. It is going to take a monsoon to get me out of here! Unless they are really good piña coladas. Then it might not take much rain.

Fortunately the rain has subsided now and the sun is shining, so I have the chance to work on my farmers tan and turn red as a lobster. Oh, what good times. And, in case you are wondering, we did get mom into a swimsuit. She actually took off her johnson county old settlers shirt and is lounging around in her swimsuit. I don’t think I have seen my mother in a swimsuit since 1983. I may have gotten her into a swimsuit, but there is no way I am getting her into the water.

I just got dive bombed by a flock of blood thirsty pigeons. Luckily for all of you, I survived unscathed and am able to continue writing this missive. I didn’t get pooped on and I still have both of my eyeballs. In my head. You are very lucky indeed. Because I have nothing else to write but am going to continue rambling on about pure nonsensical madness until my brain runs dry.

Okay. That is about it for my rambling. If I knew the words I would quote a few Ricky Nelson song lyrics from rambling man. You are just going to have to google those yourself. Maybe watch a YouTube video or something. Once you finish reading this literary masterpiece of course. Can you believe I haven’t had a single piña colada all day? I had 3 last night, but none yet today. I have a lot of catching up to do.

My mother and sister left me guarding the lawn chairs while they went out in search of sustenance. They were either going for Gatorade or coconut milk. It has been a while. Maybe they have to climb the palm tree and pick the coconut themselves. I haven’t seen any monkeys here to do it for them. Just pigeons. And I don’t think pigeons pick coconuts from trees. And my sister never did manage to climb that rope in elementary pe class. Of course, neither did I. We are not climbers. It goes without saying that my mother isn’t either, even if she is wearing a really awesome hat.

So, if you really want to know the story behind the really awesome hats, I will tell you. Since you asked. Where does everything awesome come from? Right. Kohls! Speaking of which, I heard there is a sale there today. And I am missing it. Shucky darn! Oh well. Guess I will have to wait until next week. But I was really talking about the awesome big hats. Mostly they are awesome because we got them for 90% off. Quite the deal! A really awesome hat for less than 4 bucks? That I can wear on the beach and not feel guilty about leaving it behind even if hoarding is in my veins?! Or if it blows off in a gust of wind and nearly washes out to sea. What an awesome hat!

We did talk my mother into getting her feet in the ocean. It was a near tragedy. She stood there with her feet in the sand and the water gently lapping at her feet. In comes one wave, and as she is watching it recede, she starts to stumble and nearly topple over from the dizziness. Of one wave. Not 3 or 4, but one. My mother would have been washed out to sea and she wasn’t even wearing her really awesome hat to use as a flotation device. I sent her back to her chair after that. Her swim suit didn’t even get wet, except for a few raindrops. She now has her johnson county old settlers tshirt back on and seems very content.

That is our day so far. Time to shower and get all of this sand off me.

Tonight: fun with Javier. My own former farmers employee tour guide. I hope Javier is ready for thetwinsontourwithmom. It is gonna be great!

That is all for now,
Thetwinsontouraretryingtokeepm omalive