The OuterBelt's Podcast
The OuterBelt's Podcast
Summer Recap Episode 1
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We are excited to be back and what a better way to start things off than a summer recap of our adventures! Join us as we talk about our recent travels and the amazing things we got to experience.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Outer Belt Season 3. We have made it to Season 3. I am Patrick, I'm one of the hosts and you all know my friends. I'm Vince.
Speaker 1Melissa.
Speaker 2Eric and Jerry, and we're here to Rock your world, to speak truth into your life, to bring you into the presence of greatness greatness and uh, kill some time going down the road and uh, yeah, so I'm excited to be back for season three, season three. Can you imagine we made it this far?
Speaker 1barely do you know people are waiting. They're on pins and needles. Pins and needles, y'all been coming out harassing us like this is some bull.
Speaker 2Y'all should not. Who takes the summer off? Besides, you know, like, what have y'all been doing? And I'm like, well, lots of people take summers off. They got you know students and uh, things to do, other people, teachers and people, right, and it's not like we weren't working. We were working.
Speaker 1Well.
Speaker 2Most of us were working Touchy subject Anyways. So maybe we peaches that part out. I don't know.
Speaker 5I don't think we do peaches that part out. I think that I'm going to let the bitterness shine through. All right, oh good grief.
Speaker 2I can see it, I can see it, I can see it's all over the facial hair, all over the facial hair.
Speaker 5Hang on, that's a little bitters from my cocktail.
Speaker 2Okay, I knew it was bitter, so, no, it's been a fun couple months, very relaxing, got a lot of work done, got a lot of relaxation done as well. And we thought, you know what? If we're going to kick this off, since y'all have been asking where have y'all been? Well, by George, let's tell you where we've been. Yeah, so we are going to give you a quick synopsis of what we've been doing over the past couple months. Shouldn't take longer than four or five hours.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's it At least, yeah, between the five of us.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think it's an hour and a half per person, right? What is that?
Speaker 1real quick.
Speaker 2That's like seven and a half hours and Jerry's going to edit down to 15 minutes, I thought we agreed to make this a YouTube short.
Speaker 5in less than a minute A YouTube short.
Speaker 2Yeah, we've already blown it, we've already gotten over.
Speaker 5We've already messed up. You can speed it up in certain spots, slow it down in other spots, that's true, it's going to be like 50x the end Old school.
Speaker 2So a third of our audience will understand this. The other two thirds won't. But back in the day you used to have these round things called records. You put them on the record player and they had a little switch. They could go between 33 RPM or 78 RPM, right? So you ever take a 33 and then you speed it up to 78 and listen to it. It's like the most ridiculous chipmunks Christmas song you've ever heard in your life.
Speaker 1That's what this will be like you can do it the other way too, though you can slow it way down.
Speaker 5It's like Christmas. Christmas time is near. You can actually hear the actual voices of the chipmunks, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2That's funny, that's great.
Speaker 1That's good times.
Speaker 2So where do we begin?
Speaker 1Where do we leave off?
Speaker 2We left off in May.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2Mid-May, I believe. Is that correct? Anyone want to fact check Mid to May? Okay, mid-may, I believe. Is that correct? Anyone want to fact check? Mid to end? Okay, mid to end May. And it's now August.
Speaker 1Already I know, Can you believe it?
Speaker 2I just can't. Well, I can, because when you step outside right now, it's very clearly August.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 2Today was the day I went down to the lot and was working with y'all for not long 30 minutes, like a pretty quick little trip. I got back in my car and started heading back up to the office and I'm like it is so hot out there, like it's funny, because it didn't hit me until I actually got in my car and started driving away and then I was like wow, it's really hot. Yeah, like it's really hot. And then, with that AC blowing on full blast, you're just coming off the windshield. It's just, it's the heat.
Speaker 5There's nothing you can do about it. It was crazy, it was a hot day. It's days like today that I wish I was going through FedEx trucks and not Panther trucks, because if they were FedEx trucks I'd just turn the reefer box just cool it down. A little cooling. There you go, and the panther trucks it's just a oven you know, I just bakes me.
Speaker 2I've tried that, have you? Have you been successful at that?
Speaker 5yeah, and the panther trucks, yeah, oh yeah, I have to.
Speaker 2I remember doing it in the past and, for those who don't know, I used to do what vince does now. So when he came on board, um, I got demoted to the office, but he uh. So when I was working on the trucks I tried that a few times and I found that all it did was just blow the air right out of the back of the box. So I never could like you do get some cooling effect you do, it's better than nothing.
Speaker 5It's better than just being in there with no moving air? What about a?
Speaker 2giant fan. They're up on the lift gate and turn on for when you're working in there.
Speaker 5Would that be, yeah, the problem then is all the crap on the floor is going to stand.
Speaker 2Oh, it's going to blow everywhere.
Speaker 5Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean I get in there and sweep them out, but all the crap on the floor is going to stand, but even still. Can you imagine?
Speaker 2you're like sweeping, because sometimes you know you'll get a truck and it'll have like or you'll, because those pallets aren't the cleanest and so it's inevitable. You get mud, dried mud, you get all that stuff dirt in there. So when you're sweeping out you can get a little bit of a cloud, but we're doing it smaller. Can you imagine having a big fan blowing right on you while you're doing that? It's just a mushroom cloud. You can't breathe. You got to full respiratory gear.
Speaker 2That's a good idea though In the back of a truck in a hazmat uniform. Yeah, what if we just start buying reefers for all the trucks?
Speaker 5That'd be great. It'd cost a lot of money, probably put us out of business. You know what we could do.
Speaker 2We might could do what might could we do, we're not gonna, but we might. Could we just take a window unit? Yes and we just bolt that in front of, in the very front of all the boxes that don't have reefer units.
Speaker 3That'd be great.
Speaker 2You know, turn it on, take six, seven days, finally cool it off.
Speaker 5Yeah, I'm glad you decided not to do that already.
Speaker 2I do remember, like when we were it's funny, I just had this conversation when we were running freight, eric and I ran both dry van and reefer it intermixed running, uh, freight eric and I ran both dry van and reefer it intermixed. I mean like we would be in a reefer and then we would jump to a dry van and back because we always took whatever truck was available and the nicer trucks. We always put the better teams in and we would just take what's over left over, right you?
Speaker 2know, being in yuma, arizona, in a dry van in the middle of august. You open up those doors oh yeah and you could bake cookies like instantly.
Speaker 5it's just so hot in there. You wouldn't bake them instantly, you'd burn them. Yes, you'd burn them instantly.
Speaker 2On a reefer truck. Even with that insulation, even if you're not running the reefer box, it still doesn't really get that hot, or it will, but it takes a very long time to get that hot.
Speaker 5I was going to say that I looked at one today. We actually picked one up from a shop today and I turned the reefer on, because I always run the reefer, make sure they're working properly. Uh, it was 34 degrees celsius inside that box. That's toasty, granted. Yes, it had been sitting outside in the sun for the weekend at least. So yeah, but that. But I understand what you mean.
Speaker 2It takes a few days, yes, to get that cold, but we had, uh, the other thing, so that was one thing. The second thing I noticed was um, so, on those boxes, the the roof of the box, some are a sheet of aluminum on the dry vans. And some of them are translucent fiberglass.
Speaker 5I don't know what that is, yeah something like that, something stronger than just plastic.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's not plastic, but it looks like translucent plastic. Basically, those are dramatically cooler they are than the metal roofed ones. Um, unfortunately we've pretty much only started doing the metal roof ones for a couple years now, so our translucent ones are starting to make their way out of the fleet. But, um, yeah, they're that, that little thin piece of fiberglass plastic. It does not radiate heat like that metal. Does that metal man? It man, it'll burn you If you touch it, if you have to go up there and change a bulb or something. It's way over 100 degrees. It's crazy hot, wow, anyways. But it's beautiful outside. Not a lot of clouds in the sky, no, I mean, if it wasn't so hot, it is actually quite lovely outside.
Speaker 2It's a gorgeous day outside it, if it wasn't so hot, it is actually quite lovely outside. It's a gorgeous day outside, it really is. So I appreciated that. Last night y'all came over and we called up, since Eric and I had been gone for a bit. We'll talk about that in a minute. It was nice just being able to sit outside hang out with y'all.
Speaker 1We actually had a cool breeze for a little bit. Last night we got really lucky.
Speaker 2And what's really funny is, right before that happened, eric was like maybe we should cancel and you know, because it is so hot, he was in the front yard working on um. I was playing around my plants yeah, you were staking up a plant right like so it wouldn't fall over yeah, one of those tall ridiculous things eventually gets too tall, it starts to fall over. You're gonna stake it. And he was doing that and he came inside just completely head-to-toe drenched wet, just like it is so humid, so hot, just sitting there.
Speaker 2There was no wind flow in that front corner of the house as soon as we walked in and I was like, oh no, because that's not got sun on it. Our back, where we hung out, does have sun. I was like, oh, this might be a crap show. But I said, no, let's keep doing it. If it's too hot we'll just sit inside. But I hadn't seen y'all so I wanted to catch up and it was just perfect. It was just a nice breeze. It never got too hot. No, really got lucky.
Speaker 5We had the breeze coming down the river, yes, and then also the fan out there.
Speaker 2Yeah, we did. We had a big fan going too, so it kept the air moving nicely. Yeah, so it's that time of the year where the nights are lovely and the daytime is just brutal. But just think about it. You're going to hear this recording here in a few months and it's going to be negative 10 outside.
Speaker 5Complaints will go the other way. Yeah, it'll swing the other side. The nice thing about the reefer is I can turn them up a little bit you get that heat go too, I went grocery shopping yesterday and I already bought pumpkin spice. Too soon, too soon we were at Costco like two months ago, maybe a month ago, and they had Halloween costumes on the shelf already.
Speaker 2Just insane. Yes, I agree.
Speaker 5I'm looking forward to next week going Easter shopping.
Speaker 1Hobby Lobby had Christmas out already.
Speaker 2Hobby Lobby had Christmas out in February.
Speaker 1They just don't put it away.
Speaker 2They just don't put it away. No kidding, you'll hear about this in a minute. But we're savannah and the other day, and in savannah, georgia, they had a store with all the christmas stuff inside of it yeah and I was like really, yeah, yeah, it was a christmas store, but still like seems early.
Speaker 1That's all I'm saying yeah, but if that's your business 24-7-365, you're a Christmas store.
Speaker 2Agreed yeah.
Speaker 1Which I respect, that I can avoid you, but just going to like Joanne's or Hobby Lobby or Kroger and they're like Christmas and I'm like it's August.
Flight Cancellation and Rescheduling Chaos
Speaker 2Anyways. Well, I'm glad y'all stayed with us to hear this ramble about the weather, but, and Christmas and seasons and whatever else, but so we left it. You left in May and I think Eric and I were the first ones to leave the city, right, yes, yes, you were. So Eric and I left and had quite a fun trip. It was actually our first time going to Paris.
Speaker 5Wow, your first time in Paris.
Speaker 2First time in Paris, so I've been in France before. We've both been in France before we did Normandy and Le Havre a few years ago on a transatlantic cruise had a lot of fun in Le Havre. I mean, like the piano player on the cruise had to be escorted back to the cruise ship with two people holding her up. Wow, because there was too much wine consumed at one of the British pub in. France.
Speaker 3Yes, as you do.
Speaker 2It was crazy, the Beatles were there.
Speaker 1Really.
Speaker 2It was nuts. It was yes, yeah. I do remember you telling that story it was. It was a lot of fun, um, and everybody took care of each other, which I thought was really cool. You know, when that kind of thing happens, everybody just you know the people that you know enjoy themselves too much.
Speaker 2They get helped that kind of thing, but it was, uh, it was a lot of fun. Um, those of us that stayed adult in that situation, uh, which we did, uh, I don't know. I just really enjoyed our time there. So I was anxious to see okay, what's paris like, right? So eric and I set out to go to paris, and it begins badly oh no so we had planned that. If I gotta remember how this works out, melissa, if I'm not mistaken, you were taking us to the airport.
Speaker 1Yes, I had.
Speaker 2I heard that story.
Speaker 1I volunteered to do it.
Speaker 2You volunteered to take us to the airport. Yes and so, but we were going to take my vehicle right. Your vehicle, okay, and then, and I was, going to.
Speaker 1You were going to pick me up. And then, yes, we got it all worked out. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2And so I think we were supposed to be at the airport for like 5 pm. We were going to leave around 3, right, Correct. And I knew there was a bad storm going over New York City, but it was going to clear out by then. So who cared? Well, around 1230 in the afternoon, get a notification from Delta your flight's been canceled. And I'm like, well, that's not good, Because the very next morning at 7 am we were flying to France, to Paris. So I'm like, oh, this is not good at all. So I jump online. I'm like, looking, trying to find a reschedule. They rescheduled this for the next day. That wasn't going to work. So I'm like, let me find, look through Delta's website, see if I can find another flight or whatever. I couldn't find anything. So I'm really freaked out. So I called Delta and talked to a lady at the Diamond Medallion desk. Go, Diamond Medallion Was able to get us on a flight Columbus to Atlanta, Atlanta to Charlotte, Charlotte to New York.
Travel Chaos and Quick Fixes
Speaker 2And it wouldn't even go to JFK. It was going to LaGuardia and I'm like that's fine. We can take a taxi when we get to New York and get back to JFK Because our hotel is at JFK. So I'm like I can make that work. That's fine and they made it happen. And she's like the only thing is your flight leaves in like 50 minutes and, for those of you who don't know, we live 20, 25 minutes away from the airport. That's not a lot of room for error. I'm sorry it didn't take off. It started boarding in 50 minutes.
Speaker 2Okay. So Eric and I I mean like madhouse, crazy, start like turning things off and throwing things into the car. And just as fast I called you and I'm like run away, I don't care what you're doing, stop doing it, run away. Yeah. And you were like um, okay, and I'm like I'll explain to the car so I met you in the cul-de-sac you met me in the cul-de-sac and we did like you know, when you want.
Speaker 2Have you ever seen the uh secret service driving academy stuff where they take the limousine and they do a U-turn in six feet? I did that. We scooped Melissa up. Eric popped the passenger door. We scooped Melissa up. We didn't even stop moving. She shut the door and we were on our way.
Speaker 1It was crazy.
Speaker 2She clicked the seatbelt in and we were gone. It was fast. And then it was just however legally fast I could get to the airport is what I did and I pulled straight up to the gate or not to the gate to the entrance and we hugged her and grabbed her stuff and we ran like praying they would take our luggage, because within so many minutes of a flight, they won't take your luggage anymore. Luckily, we barely made the cutoff and then, uh, everything at the tsa went good and we walked straight onto the airplane. Um, it was awesome, and so we're.
Speaker 2We took off and you know we're flying to atlanta and now it's like you're relaxing, we're, you know, trying to calm down, and I was so wired I'm like I had the tv in the screen, but I'm like I couldn't even watch TV. I just had to think for a little bit and I played my game and listened to a podcast. And while I'm playing my game, get a little bloop your flight's been canceled, your flight from Charlotte to LaGuardia has been canceled, and I'm like you got to be kidding me. I'm like, does God not want us to go to new york? Like what's happening here, what don't I know? And, uh, flying in the air. Uh, thankfully with free text messaging with delta. Um, actually now it's free internet like you get. Yeah, full-on free internet. Delta's really made some good improvements. I know they had a meltdown while you know we'll talk and we'll talk about we'll get to that, but um.
Speaker 2But no, I was texting with the lady, um, because delta actually has this feature where you can text them. If you are a delta flyer and you don't know about this, under contact us in the app there's a place to text them. It is amazing yeah there's time.
Speaker 2Most of the time there's almost never a reason to call it is really it's slick, um, so I'm texting with the lady at delta and I'm like my flight just canceled. And, uh, I told her the situation and she was like all right, let me work on it. And I said, look, we need to be in new york tonight. I don't care if we can fly together, I don't care if we have to take separate airplanes, I don't care if we fly to different airports. Like we both have credit cards and uber, we can, like you fly me to laguardia, fly him to jfk, fly me to newark, like I don't care, we just have to get there.
Speaker 2That's not, that's the only thing, because if not, then I'm changing my international flight, which is a much bigger deal, right. And then the whole thing with the air, with the hotel. A lot of those hotels if you don't check in when you're supposed to, they don't, they just cancel your room and you're just out the money. So I'm like, and and especially with paris and the olympics and all, they're being very tight on that stuff. So I'm like I've got to get on this flight. And so, sure enough, she found one seat on each flight going from atlanta to um jfk an hour apart from each other. But I'm like we'll take it. So she booked us both of those flights. I got the first one out, so I'm like, okay, well, when I get to jfk I just got to wait for an hour and then eric will join me. Um our, my flight got delayed on the runway, on the taxiway for, for whatever reason, we had like a 30, 40-minute wait, and so when I landed at JFK, eric was only like 20 minutes behind me.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2So I got my luggage. Like, while I was getting my luggage off the conveyor belt, he was literally landing at JFK. So we just it was hardly any inconvenience on that end Made it there, walked over to the hotel, sp it there, walked over to the hotel, spent a whole two hours at the hotel.
Speaker 1That's it.
Speaker 2That's one of those things that you look at and you're like that was a waste of money.
Speaker 4Wow, Two hours it was a waste of a lot of money.
Speaker 2It was a waste of a lot of money. We actually got to stay at the TWA Hotel, which I don't know if y'all have stayed at yet. We actually got to stay at the TWA Hotel, which I don't know if y'all have stayed at yet. It's a really cool hotel in New York City. It is actually at the—if you haven't heard of it, look it up. So it's the TWA Terminal, the old Transwest—is it? Transwest Airlines, twa, whatever it means. They're the ones that went up against Pan Am, you know Eastern, yeah, all the Howard Hughes'' airline. So they were a big deal. They had a really cool terminal at JFK and it's actually, if you ever watch, catch Me If you Can.
Speaker 5Yeah, great movie.
Speaker 2His stuff happens inside that terminal and it's like the long red carpeted tunnels that lead to the runway. That's at the, that's TWA. So what they, what they did, is tw went out of business in the 90s and nobody used the terminal. So, um, people are freaking out because, like paname had a beautiful terminal there, they tore to the ground and there's just been a lot of these older terminals of these airports don't really make sense anymore. They're not, they're not best anymore.
Speaker 2So there was a big thing to save TW Terminal and they did and they're trying to figure out what to do with it. And a hotelier was like I'll take it, like let me lease it from y'all and I'll make it work. And he built two towers on either side of the terminal that are very nice, very like 1960s outside architecture really fits in quite well with the design of the building. The terminal serves the hotel's lobby, which is huge but super nice, and you take the two red carpeted hallways, one to each terminal, and then in the middle of the two towers there is a Connie, an old Lucky Constellation airplane from the 1930s or whatever it would have been, and they converted that into a bar slash meeting area.
Speaker 2So they've done a lot to really make it a very cool place. It's got that old huge scoreboard thing, you know where. It would say like all your flight terminals and then all your flights and what gates they're at, and then it does like the thing like a.
Speaker 2Rolodex-looking thing with the numbers and then it updates and everything. It's really, it's very cool. It's very like to renovate. That was like $2 million just that one thing, wow. Very like to renovate. That was like two million dollars just that one thing, wow. Um, so they've done a really great job with it. So it's. It's a hotel I really really like.
Speaker 2If you're an airplane nut like I am, on top of one of the towers is a swimming pool and a restaurant bar area and you can just sit there and just watch all these planes come and go from jfk outdoors. Uh, it's really nice. I've had some really great memories there. That being said, it is kind of expensive and also for two hours. I mean, I feel like you know, a nice chair at the airport would have been fine. It was such a waste of money. I was so angry. I almost always get non uh, cancelable you know, non-refundable rooms because you just I travel so much, we travel so much and we cancel rooms so rarely that I'd be losing money hand over fist if I always got refundable rooms. It was, you know, we went, but it was. It was really. I mean, literally get in, take an hour, hour and a half nap and then get up and leave.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2And from that point on it was pretty uneventful, right? I mean no problems, eric.
Speaker 1How was Paris?
Speaker 2Keep going?
Speaker 4How was Paris? Very French, it was very.
Speaker 5We want to hear somebody else's voice besides Patrick's voice. Yes, so you get to Paris. First thing you see is so long ago.
Speaker 4I do know our room had perfect view of the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 2Well, I wouldn't say perfect.
Speaker 4Perfect for me.
Speaker 2Close enough. Yeah, we did Good food. Yeah, we, we did the whole whole like, don't get a car, take the train in from Charles to Gall. That was a situation, not knowing which ticket to get and everything, and we ended up getting a five day pass or whatever. It was for the trains and it was for the trains and it was ridiculous because the five-day pass is on like what?
Speaker 4an inch and a half by two-inch piece of paper. Yeah, it's like whenever you go check luggage in somewhere and the bottom half an inch, you pull it off and keep that with you. Yeah, that's the size of their transit tickets.
Speaker 2For five days.
Speaker 4Boy, be careful, don't lose that. Yeah, no kidding yeah you can see them thrown all over the floor like cigarette butts.
Speaker 2Yes, because it's exact. It looks identical to like just a single trip ticket, so people use the same for the single trip ticket and then not throw them in the trash or throw them in the trash or whatever, like it's ridiculous. Um, but yeah, that was weird, I mean because we got, you know, two bags each and and we're taking up room and it. It was just super, super stinking awkward um getting there. But we got there and we stayed at the pullman next to the aft tower, like he said. Um, how do we get a little balcony?
Speaker 4um, yeah, about about three feet wide.
Speaker 2Yeah, enough to step out there.
Speaker 4Ten feet long.
Speaker 2But not big enough that we could cross each other Like whoever's in the far side. You'd have to get up and move to let them pass, or whatever. I was not expecting much out of Paris, right? I think y'all know me by now. I like the unusual places. I don't really care for the really popular places. I don't really like tourist traps Some I do, but most I don't. I like to be where people are and not where tourism takes place, where tourism is the overwhelming dynamic, absolutely.
Speaker 2And Paris is so famous and it's so the city of love, and it's so blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So I'm like it's not going to live up to its hype. It's going to be very mainstream. I don't know that I'm going to like it that much, but hey, let's go. I at least get to go see the Eiffel Tower. Do some things I've wanted is unwarranted, right, this is going to come as a surprise to y'all, but Paris is awesome, like it is so nice, I liked it so much. I was genuinely surprised. I mean, really, it was like on day three or four. I'm like, wow, this is actually a really cool city. And it's like, well, no, kidding, like you know what I mean. Oh, you mean the place that's literally known as, like, the city of love is a cool place. What a shocker.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2But I had so much fun. The food there is amazing. I mean it's amazing. We went to like some bad places and it was great.
Speaker 1You know what I mean. It's all the better.
Speaker 2Maybe it was fantastic.
Speaker 4I really uh man I loved it.
Speaker 2Um went to a couple went to our first uh michelin star restaurant. Went to two different michelin star restaurants while we were there very nice that was cool. Uh, the first michelin star restaurant had the most unusual um item on the menu.
Speaker 1Which was.
Speaker 4I don't remember Pigeon.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Oh.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Isn't that squab? Same thing.
Speaker 5That's what they call. Yeah, squab, squab. I asked, pigeon is also called squab, like cows are called beef. Oh, okay. So I actually asked that question of you. When you sent that picture. I asked, oh, is it pigeon on the menu? And you said, yeah, it's called pigeon on the menu.
Speaker 2It's called pigeon on the menu Because there's several restaurants that was always called pigeon. I never saw squab. We have that in America. I gotta find these restaurants. It was so good, it was juicy, it was like a really dark meat, like a duck or like a dark, really dark piece of chicken.
Speaker 1Feature being like a Cornish game hand.
Speaker 2Kind of yeah, very similar, because I had one of those at one point too, but a little bit better. I really enjoyed it. I was really shocked. I'm like man, this is the rat of the sky. How does it taste so good?
Speaker 5We had neighbors growing up. Just as an aside, there was a huge palm tree. I grew up in Southern California, huge palm tree in our next door neighbor's yard and there were neighbors I don't know six, seven houses down the street that were from America, samoa, and they would come down every now and again with a BB gun and take pigeons out of the tree and go home and eat them.
Speaker 5Wow, it was a thing I should have. I was young. I was probably I don't know six, seven years old, so I didn't know, man it was stinking delicious, I believe you. I believe, you.
Speaker 2I love those. I didn't know this either, but a lot of those Michelin star restaurants are tasting menus, which means you sit down, you order the menu. Some of them will actually tell you what's on it, some won't. There was one place we went and they were like what won't you eat? And then you tell them, like Eric has a sesame allergy, he can't have sesame. So we told them that. But if you don't eat fish, they would have made note of that too. But we eat everything. So we didn't even know it was on the menu. We were just on for the ride. But the first place we went to we did know it was on the menu. We didn't get to look at it. I think there were a couple different choices, right, eric? I think there was a couple choices.
Speaker 4Yeah, but not many.
Speaker 2Not many, but a couple, and so we decided which one we were going to go with. You could do water, you could do soft drinks, or you could buy a glass of wine or whatever, but what I really liked was they had the wine tasting menu as well. Yeah, pairing with the menu yes and so every course, they pair it with a new wine. That's not dangerous. It does, yeah, it's dangerous-ish. But I will say this they're only giving you a couple ounces.
Speaker 5Yeah, they're not pouring you a full pour of wine, correct?
Speaker 2You're not getting a nine-ounce cup every time they. Can you imagine You'd never be able to walk out of that place.
Speaker 5You couldn't, eric wouldn't get through his first glass of wine. I know It'd take forever. Listen, listen on both.
Speaker 2We did the wine pairings on both and on both times they were serving us our next wine pairing before either one of us got done with it.
Speaker 4It was like chug Halfway through.
Speaker 2I'm like going back to my college years of like chug, chug, chug, but it's wine, not beer, so it's a little different.
Speaker 2No, it was great. I really enjoyed it. I had so much fun. I do want to find more tasting menus here in America. So if you're out there and you're like, oh, if you like tasting menus, if you like multi-course deals, you need to check out this restaurant. Please let me know, because I would love to experience more of them. It's a lot of fun. You might get one you don't like, but if you're getting seven courses, you know. And again, the courses aren't big, they're fairly small courses, but you have so many.
Speaker 4When you leave there you're like I'm not eating forever again.
Speaker 2They're like appetizers yeah, appetizers. It reminds me a lot of Barcelona we were in Barcelona last year and a lot of the food there you can get a tapas. They invented it. I mean, it's their thing, right.
Speaker 2Small plates, yeah, small plates, which is awesome because you're like I'll take the shrimp, garlic shrimp, which is usually like five bucks and you get like four or five shrimp, but they're prawns, they're big size prawns, and then you get this and that and that and ultimately you've spent 20 bucks and you've eaten like a king and it's awesome. You know, like in America you go to McDonald's you get a double cheeseburger and a Coke and they're like $25. And it's like well, okay. So I do appreciate that aspect, a lot about places that have the multi-course options. But no, it was a lot of fun, really enjoyed it, had a great time, like I said, went to the second restaurant. We told them. They asked us you know, what can't you eat Sesame allergy, what Can't you Eat? Sesame Allergy?
Speaker 2And that was really cool because that night was actually sponsored by a winery. So everybody got the wine pairing because that's their deal, and everybody got a special menu that was not the normal menu. They were, and that was a two Michelin star restaurant and that was the weirdest experience I've ever had in my life. We, literally we knocked on the door and they let us in and they were like Mr Lee, mr Highfield, yes, they took our coats and then sat us down and brought the first course. There was no discussion of would you like this or that or none? Zero, here's what we're serving tonight, exactly no talk about money, nothing, nothing. Just like you just came to my house and it's like all right, well, here let's eat. It was crazy. It was so cool. That was 10 courses or so. It was a lot of food wow it was so much food, it was so good.
Speaker 2Eric discovered a new fish monk fish. Was that what it was? Monk fish I don't remember I think it was monk fish. Is that meaty fish you really liked? Ifish, was that what it was? Monkfish, I don't remember. I think it was monkfish. Is that meaty fish you really liked?
Paris Dining and Eiffel Tower Experience
Speaker 2I think so I think, yeah, it was quite good. We had it a couple times on that trip. You know, at the very end of the meal get ready to leave, you step into the lobby, then they give you your bill and a credit card and machine and you just greatly, really quick, do it and then you're on your way. It was awesome wow freaking awesome delicious food.
Speaker 2I mean they, you know they they age all their own stage, like everything is, um, their own stuff. It was kind of weird, though they had, um, these they look like refrigerators, but I know they're not and like inside of one, you see, like a bunny hanging upside down, uh, from the neck down skin, but from the neck up it still had like the fur. It's just like little weird things like that. Several fish hanging smoking, you know, things like that it was. It was very cool to see some of that stuff and that wasn't really like for the public to see. It's just a small place and that just is where that that section has to be.
Speaker 2Sure, sure it's just a small place and that just is where that section has to be Sure, sure. So yeah, had a great time there. So, again, those were the nice restaurants. But I mean, just pop into a cafe or whatever. The crepes we got were great. I got my crème monsieur. If you go to Paris, you have to get a crème monsieur. It's a ham and cheese sandwich, but they're using different cheese and ham. I don't know how to describe it.
Speaker 5It's um, maybe it's not Probably different bread too.
Speaker 2Maybe. Yeah, I guess it's that non GMO stuff, um, and that Iberian ham is to die for and that isn't my favorite. I actually. I discovered the cramp once here we were in Dubai years ago. Um, the, the French pavilion actually had that and it was a lot of fun. Did the Eiffel Tower, as you do.
Speaker 4Do you remember how expensive the champagne was? All I know is we had two servings.
Speaker 2We did have two servings, so we were joking about it. The higher you got in the Eiffel Tower, the more expensive the champagne got. So if you're at the very top of the Eiffel Tower, that little bitty platform- oh yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 4now, what the heck with that.
Speaker 2It was like $65 a glass. Wow, I mean it was.
Speaker 4Ridiculous.
Speaker 2It was Moet or whoever the nice one is. It was nice champagne, but it's like I could buy a bottle for that. Like that's insanely expensive, wow.
Speaker 4And then For the extremely romantic people.
Speaker 2Yes, I guess, so I'm like this is solely so you can get your Instagram with your champagne.
Speaker 3Like there's no other reason.
Speaker 2It's complete ridiculous. And it was in a fancy flute and all this stuff right and then and you could also get caviar. Oh yes, oh oh. Are the French known for their caviar? I always thought of, like Serbia and Russia and that area right.
Speaker 5Well, I think, when you're talking somewhere like Paris, where everything is-.
Speaker 2They're getting it. The upper echelon, yeah, decadent, thank you. Okay, then you're doing caviar.
Speaker 1Okay, if I said butter decadent, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5And they get that good Amish butter over there too, they import it from America.
Speaker 3They do, that's funny.
Speaker 2You go down a level on level two and the prices get a little more affordable. You're looking at like $20, $30 for a glass of champagne. You're not in Moet anymore, You're with a different one, but whatever, it's still decent. And then finally, on the first floor, which is not the ground In Europe. First floor is actually above ground.
Speaker 1Oh, not ground floor, but one up. Yes, the ground is zero floor but one up yes.
Speaker 2The ground is zero, usually in most of Europe.
Speaker 4I call it the commoners, yeah.
Speaker 2So on the first floor, if you're looking at the Eiffel Tower, it's where that giant arch comes together and it's a huge floor and they have a couple big restaurants on it and stuff. But they also have a little cafe outside Super cool, and the champagne is two for $20.
Speaker 1Oh, there you go that was ours.
Speaker 5There you go.
Speaker 2So we got that and I mean you're still at that point. You know, 300 feet off the ground I mean you're still a pretty high visibility area Found a couple chairs Kicked back and relaxed and we were just going to be there for like one glass of champagne. But you know, after you're there and you drink a glass of champagne and you're looking out over uh, beautiful paris, or whatever it was like you're not in a hurry either you're not in a hurry, it was like we weren't.
Speaker 2Yeah, what's another glass, right? So eric runs up and he goes and grabs them. Um, really cool. Those are in a more of a traditional looking plastic champagne glass, but nice, like hard plastic, and they were souvenir glasses. You can take them with us. So we have four of those now. You know that we're going to put under the counter and in six to eight years we'll throw them away Nice, Like you do as you do as you do, but yeah, that was that elevator or stairs?
Speaker 2uh, so it is all elevator but between levels, uh, two, three and the ground, you can stare it, and eric and I did stare it down, not up. No, to heck with that. We elevated up and then we stared down. Okay, uh, but they won't let you from the second floor to the third floor of the summit. They won't let you walk that and it's it's far, it that like by far, like it's probably 500 feet straight up so it's elevator yeah, it was.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, and is it? A glass elevator it is, um, it's kind of in the middle of the tower, but, uh, you do see all around and they have a mirror. Not a mirror, a window above you, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2So you are looking out the whole time and checking out the scenery as you go up and then, yeah, once you get up there, at the very top, there's a Gustav Eiffel, the guy that built the thing. He had an office up there and so we got to see the office and his little apartment up there and stuff and they've got it staged with him and Thomas Edison Like mannequins. Yeah, with him and Edison and it was very I didn't know all that was there.
Speaker 2I heard rumor it was there but I didn't know. But when we got up there and you look in there you're like I'll be darned, it's just a public park. Um, you can go walk underneath the eiffel tower, doesn't cost you a dime, but to go up it cost. And then how high you want to go determines how much you pay. But it's not crazy. Like our tickets to the very top summit were like 30 euros, uh a person, so it's not insane. You know they could charge 100 people pay it um.
Speaker 1Does that allow you access to all the floors?
Speaker 2yes but you get to go all the way to the top at least, correct, yep, so pretty cool yeah and then, um, if you didn't want to go all the way to the top, but you just wanted to go to that second or third floor, or first or second floor rather then, the tickets were a little bit cheaper, maybe 15 euros something like that Sure which? The Eiffel Tower? I mean not the Eiffel Tower, the New York City, it's very Empire-ish.
Speaker 4The.
Speaker 2Empire State Building they do the same thing. If you go up to the Observatory Observation Lounge, you have to pay additional money to go up to the very top part of it.
Speaker 1I see.
Speaker 2It's not crazy and hard of. It was really cool to see it. One thing that kind of surprised me I knew Gustav Eiffel was a very successful engineer and and and did a lot. Um, if you look at the statue of liberty inside of the statue of liberty, all the framework that holds all that together, his firm designed. So he and his people actually designed that. So we in america we have a eiffel-built structure. It's the Statue of Liberty. When we were in Portugal, you remember this, jerry? In Porto there's a huge bridge and it's like two levels and a big arch going over the river and the bottom level is for cars, the top level is for pedestrians and trains. Right, Yep.
Speaker 2And it's a huge bridge, it's massive. Eiffel built that and he did several others as well. So when it came time to build the Eiffel Tower, they wanted to build this thing and his scope was so large and so expensive they didn't have the money to pay for it. So he financed the project himself. He went out and got the lenders. So when you see on the wikipedia they talk about like this bank financed the thing, well, they actually financed eiffel. They didn't finance the city of paris. Um, so he, he financed it with the agreement that he would run it for 20 years. He would have 20 years to sell tickets and recoup his investment.
Speaker 2And they he said that they thought it would take something like 12 years to recoup it and then the rest of it would just be profit. Um, and he did it in like 42 days. Wow, the paris exposition which is why it was built, which is a world's fair, was his. His thing was so much more um visited than they expected. People went nuts over it and he was able to recruit his investment that fast.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2Crazy.
Speaker 1So then the rest was just profit.
Speaker 2The rest was just profit, and he's able to pay his bank loans back, and that's why he was doing all the experiments. That's why Edison spent so much time over there. It's really cool For me. I really like it because, like, not only is he famous, but he's a good businessman, right, you know? Like tesla not the car company, nicola tesla right, a genius man, horrible business person. And so it's kind of like I like that you're able to do both. You're able to be an excellent engineer and really hone in at that point, iron bridges and iron work, and then you're also able to figure out a way to make money at it and then be a successful business person.
Speaker 2I mean, edison did the same thing, right, he, he did consolidated edison up in new york with electricity and and he was wealthy. But um, yeah, I just all that. I thought it was great, really, really enjoyed it.
Speaker 4I was gonna mention um the field that was next to the eiffel tower yes they were doing construction, so it was completely vacant. Yeah, as opposed to any normal time of year non-Olympic year it's normally packed with people. So not only did we enjoy champagne twice on that level, we also got a perfect view of the grass and the architecture they had just started building.
Speaker 2I don't even know what that's for.
Speaker 5Do y'all know what they used it for in the Olympics Beach volleyball was right in front of the Eiffel Tower. Okay, so they built a stadium right in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 2Kind of like an intersection of two.
Speaker 5I don't know, I've only seen a picture of the stadium and the tower behind it. I couldn't see anything else around it.
Speaker 2That's got to be it, because on the other side of it is a big government building.
Speaker 5Yeah, I'd imagine that probably was it Okay, because this was early June, so I could see them building that then.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, you were there just prior to the Olympics.
Speaker 2So we were there.
Speaker 1Starting ramping up for the building.
Speaker 2Correct. Yeah, yeah, so like we still went to the Cathedral of Notre Dame, they're still rebuilding from the fire, so we obviously couldn't get it. But we could at least see it pretty easily. And then we, and it was actually nice, they had the grandstands built in front of the tower.
Speaker 4Yeah, they had an open space directly in front of it. I'd say 100 feet.
Speaker 2We did go to the Louvre. So Eric and I can say we've been to the Louvre and I gotta say they make a really good Havana Club rum and coke, because Outside the Louvre, that's all we did. They have a little cafe right next to the pyramids, the big glass pyramids, which I always thought it was a glass pyramid, but it's multiple. Yeah, the things you learned, uh, and all that's actually free to go inside. You can go inside that area and see a lot of this, like where films have been made. But if you want to go see the artwork you got to pay more money. But we didn't go down there, uh, we just hung out the cafe. Um had a, we had a burrata. What do we have there? We had some food I don't know what it was and then kept on walking, but it's, it's massive, like when people talk about online that it could take. You could spend a whole week at just the Louvre and not see everything. They're not lying. It's massive. I mean, it's ridiculously massive, it's crazy. So I I totally understand why. It's like you could be there forever. I'd be over it's. I can't even imagine walking that whole thing. I would be so done like I'd have to have a highlights tour I. It made the vatican thing look tiny. It is ridiculous.
Speaker 2And then the, then the Arc de Triomphe, which is the most confusing thing on Earth to get to. Do you remember that? Like walking back? You get out, you go from the subway and you're in a tunnel and then you end up on the outskirts of the Arc de Triomphe because you know there's a road that goes around it, right? So you're on the outsides of it and it's like okay, so we got to go all the way over here to get our good photo op.
Speaker 2And so then it was like, well, how do we get to it? And there's a tunnel to get to it. So we get, take the tunnel down there, we get to where they allow you to go up there and walk. There's two places. One is for you to go buy tickets to actually go up into the art of triumph, and there's a viewing platform up there which I didn't know was there.
London Adventures and Afternoon Tea
Speaker 2I didn't realize that, um, and I'm like I'm not doing that, I don't, I was just in the eiffel tower, like why would I want to get nothing? So we, uh, we're like we just want to do the free thing and they had it completely blocked off, you couldn't get to it. So we were like, all right, well, let's take the tunnel as far as we can and see it from that angle. And I mean it kind of looks the same. You know it's pretty two-dimensional. So if you see from the back, you've also seen it from the front. But we got our pictures in and then started our walk down the Champs de what's it called Champs de l'Elysée.
Speaker 2That's the one, yeah, that's the one. I know these things from watching the Tour de France. Well, we got to walk down and see all of our best friends. We got to see Christian Douar. We got to see who else Louis Vuitton was there.
Speaker 4Louis Vuitton is a that was a very unique building.
Speaker 2They are not messing around. They are not messing around. They are not messing around. The building was literally one of their louis vuitton trunks. Wow, just massive. I mean like probably what eight floors high maybe something like
Speaker 2that eight or ten floors high, maybe something like that Eight or ten floors high, the whole city block, just massive, no windows, no windows, beautiful, even had the wood grain around it where they bind it all together and had all the LV diamonds or logos and everything. It had the huge rivets, the handle, the little knob thing, the knob thing or like the little clasp. It had to be at least 20 feet tall, right, wow, huge.
Speaker 1So is this road like Rodeo Drive?
Speaker 2Yes, but only, but more like Fifth.
Speaker 1Avenue, Fifth Avenue. Thank you.
Speaker 2Yeah, but cleaner, wider sidewalks a little bit easier. I remember that time you and I went down Fifth Avenue, it was a little bit of a cluster. This is way more open and really nice More trees. More trees Started raining on us, so we had to tuck into an arcade, which is not where you play games. In Paris, an arcade is just a mall.
Speaker 4Enclosed mall.
Speaker 2It's so sad I was going to get my Ms Pac-Man on Air hockey. I know right.
Speaker 1So what happened after Paris?
Speaker 2Got to mark another thing off my bucket list that I've always wanted to do Took a train ride through the Channel, wow, yeah, so we actually took the train from paris to, um, london, london, and, uh, those of you that know, eric and I, we love london.
Speaker 2We've been there a lot, uh, many, many times. And, um, if you are interested in going to london, let us know. We'll be happy to give you some tips. Love london and we, uh, did the train there, then we did a train to our hotel and, uh, all that went pretty smoothly and we were sitting in our hotel having a aperitif I think it's our no digestive, so that's a drink after your meal and, uh, would you believe the surprise when we had two people walk in that we were not expecting, really? Yes, do you know who that was?
Speaker 1Jerry the queen and queen. I know right. It was like was it London, england.
Speaker 2Take a wild guess, jerry guess.
Speaker 4Well, it was a queen that walked in.
Speaker 2Two.
Speaker 3I was going to say it was the queen and queen Nice.
Speaker 5So who was it? Yeah, I was going to say it was the queen and queen nice so who was it?
Speaker 2yeah, it was me and Don what yeah surprise that's a big surprise, and had we not planned it, it would have been really shocking.
Speaker 5It would have been crazy had you not planned it some explanation how exciting yeah oh my gosh, it was great.
Speaker 2I remember I was following their whole flight over from America and everything.
Speaker 1You're like did they have the troubles we had?
Speaker 2No, no, oh, everything they did went splendidly. I'll let you explain.
Speaker 3Oh, it was fun. I mean because I learned. I learned when we went to Portugal. We did the very, very close flyover, then catch the international flight from JFK and that was a debacle.
Speaker 2Diamond Desk got to save us for that one too, yeah that was a whole big old mess.
Speaker 3So I learned from that trip. So this one we booked a whole 24 hours in advance. We went over at like 6 am to New York and stayed in a hotel all day and then the next day caught out of.
Speaker 1JFK, nice, that's a good travel tip.
Speaker 5That makes sense. Now why when we went to London before Christmas, we got to JFK at like 9 in the morning and we didn't fly out to London until 8 o'clock that night or something.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 5So we spent the day in New York gallivanting.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was a fun gallivant.
Speaker 2Yeah, yes, yeah, I enjoyed that because you get into New York City and they have a luggage check.
Speaker 3Bag. Check there Luggage hotel.
Speaker 2Luggage hotel. Leave your luggage there. It's not cheap, but it's not too expensive.
Speaker 5It wasn't expensive. No, it was worth it.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was worth it. And then you know the city's your playground, you know, go and have fun. And I also like that because the first flight of the day is the least likely to get canceled and you know we leave at 7 am. Well, if that flight gets canceled, there's six more going to JFK before our flight. So you've got lots of backups.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3And I knew better and I screwed up, but anyways, I you were saying sorry so you arrive in london yeah, and luckily patrick and eric were there and and they were uh, that'd be awkward if we wouldn't have right what it made you we would have, but I knew beforehand that Patrick had everything planned out, so it was great having our London tour guide as Patrick.
Speaker 1Wasn't he fabulous.
Speaker 3Because he took us to all the tour spots. It was a lot of fun. I mean, we did everything from the Eye of London, which was awesome.
Speaker 5Did you ride the Eye?
Speaker 3Yeah, we did. I think we gave you the keychain and everything. We got a group picture of all of us. Fun, that was really really neat. Walked me all over London like crazy Right.
Speaker 4All 12,000 to 15,000 steps per day.
Speaker 3That first day I looked at my Apple Watch and it was 12 miles. I clocked that 12 miles. I clocked that 12 miles.
Speaker 1It was probably smoking. It's like I've never done this before.
Speaker 3No, I did more in Italy. We did 14 in one day Because he kept saying, oh, we've got to be Italy, We've got to be Italy, and I'm like no we don't, we couldn't do it, we couldn't do it, we couldn't do it.
Speaker 2I tried, big Ben was nice.
Speaker 1I'm sorry, did you Big Ben.
Speaker 3Yes, got to see that yeah.
Speaker 1I saw that you did the Uber boat.
Speaker 3Did you?
Speaker 1have to run for years.
Speaker 3Nope, we were there plenty of time. We actually sat there and took pictures.
Speaker 2No, but I did get yelled at.
Speaker 3Yeah, you did. I got yelled at by the lady so apparently, um, you're supposed to.
Speaker 2So you get on the uber boats you know there's the little post there you swipe your card and then you go and wait in line not anymore now. You wait in line and then before you get on the boat they have you swipe, right. When you get on the boat and oh, she was like. She was like did I tell you to swipe the card? And I'm like no, well then, maybe don't swipe the card. And I'm like okay, sorry.
Speaker 4Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2She was mean and then, immediately after that, she was the nicest person in the world. Did you notice that Immediately afterwards she was a sweetheart? It was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 3Yeah, noticed that immediately afterwards she was a sweetheart. It was the craziest thing ever seen in my life. Yeah, london was a lot of fun. We got to see a lot of stuff. It's an amazing city that I would love to go back to like I cannot to this day. I still talk about it with don like one of the highlights was patrick and eric treated us to afternoon tea oh my gosh, which was amazing you wouldn't know it.
Speaker 2You wouldn't know it when we walk in and they're like we don't belong here, what are we doing here?
Speaker 3I felt a little out of place at first, but it was an experience to behold, for sure, afternoon tea is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1Do it here. Wouldn't that be fun on a sunday?
Speaker 2it would be. There's a tea house here, really. Yeah, I looked it up for with eric one time. There's one here, but we've never pursued it.
Speaker 1Only one I can only find one, I see if we find it ourselves.
Speaker 2Well, it's so. Do you know how to make a cucumber sandwich? Sure, why not?
Speaker 4Salmon sandwich. Salmon sandwich, why not? I can Google it.
Speaker 1I know. Recipes Maybe we all bring something different different.
Speaker 2Yeah, can you. If we do clotted cream, I'm on board.
Speaker 1Uh, that was good you could probably buy that from a store somewhere well, you know, it was funny, right, they obviously were not expecting us.
Speaker 2I think I had a reservation, but they didn't have a clue, because we showed up and they put us at the mommy and me uh out for tea. Uh, I mean, like the table was shorter than this table this day, if you're listening, yeah if you're listening and you're not watching. This table is what? 22 inches tall? 21 inches tall, it's a coffee table.
Speaker 1It's not tall. Yeah, it's a coffee table.
Speaker 2It's not tall at all. I'm telling you like a little bitty Fisher-Price table. I mean solid marble top. It was nice. There's four of us and we're in these little bitty low-to-the-ground seats low to the ground seats and, like you said, you're chewing on your knee because it's right there at your face and they're like give us a moment, we'll get you some water and we'll find you a better table.
Speaker 3It didn't take long at all.
Speaker 2It didn't take long at all. It was only a few minutes.
Speaker 3It was an amazing experience.
Speaker 1What was your favorite part of tea, other than the whole ambiance of?
Speaker 3it that and just the different amount of flavor teas that you, I mean I had no clue oh okay.
Speaker 2So I gotta say real quick, when you do tea, a lot of times you do them at hotels like the fancier hotels. Have them and, um, they'll have half a dozen to ten tea options, something like that A lot of them have like you can do champagne if you would rather instead of tea, or you can do like a cocktail instead of tea if you want. So they do have some options. Some even do like coffee, which I don't know why you would, but anyways, this place was an actual tea house. Oh wow. So they had literally like what, 24, 30 options.
Tea and Scones Abroad
Speaker 3It was more like 30 or 40 it was pages and pages of tea.
Speaker 2I've never seen that much options for tea wow in my life, it was bananas, it was a lot.
Speaker 3Yeah, so I had like a some kind of cherry something, but it had cherries in it.
Speaker 1It was really, really, really good yeah, and I know you like your tea.
Speaker 4Yeah it was good. What did they bring it out in?
Speaker 2Little teapots Ceramic.
Speaker 4A whole pot just for you.
Speaker 2A whole ceramic teapot. It was the cutest little thing. It really did have the whole. You know, when you see I've never had this happen in real life. But when you see like I've never had this happen in real life, but when you see like TV shows or movies where like the mom and the daughter are, you know the funny thing is the dad and the daughter having a tea party or whatever right, and they had the little ceramic teapot. It's like it was that Everybody got one of those.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And they seeped it right there in front of you and they. It was all loose, so you had to use the little filter every time you poured it um, it was, it was nice, that's cool it was really nice it was.
Speaker 3It was based on a time limit, so you had as much as you want to eat drink for three hours yep yeah it was great it was.
Speaker 2Uh, we all left there in pain, right yeah, yeah, we all consumed a little too much. It was like oof, I was not on plan for that day.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2But you're right, the clotted cream and the scone.
Speaker 3Oh, it was so good. I think that was actually the first time I've ever had a scone.
Speaker 1Those are good.
Speaker 5It's amazing the difference between the scone in London and the scone in America. Yes, they're not serving you rocks.
Speaker 1No, they're almost like fluffy biscuit.
Speaker 2Yeah, I was going to say English muffin, but they look and they are the size of an English muffin, but they are, that's where they end.
Speaker 1They remind me of a good biscuit, though If you do biscuits and gravies or anytime bread is option for breakfast, I always do a biscuit and there are some very misses, but occasionally I get a really good hit where it's that flaky and it's the buttery.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And it's not dense and it's not airy, it's like the perfect. Somebody knew what they were doing.
Speaker 5Like a sheep's head over at Skillet.
Speaker 1Yes, and so that's what. When I remember going last Christmas time, that's what I remember the scones were like Were just kind of just small dainty and just hitting all the markers of a good biscuit. It's not the scones here. The scones here are a little. They're dry, they're cakey. Yes, they're fruit, and this and that and another, so we've, we fancified them well, that's an interesting thing too.
Speaker 2The scones are so good over there. I hate raisin, I don't like them. If you give me a cinnamon roll with raisins in it, if I can pick the raisins out I'll eat it, but if you can't, I'm out. Um, I don't like raisins. The scones over there were so good that they give you a raisin scone and a regular scone and I ate the raisin scone and didn't say a word. Wow, I'm like.
Speaker 1Well, by the time you had all the goodies on it, are you really going to taste it? Oh man, the accoutrement really help.
Speaker 2They really do.
Speaker 3And we had the wonderful fish and chips.
Speaker 1Nice, which was really really good.
Speaker 2Where did y'all get that at?
Speaker 3The first place was all the first place.
Speaker 2It's literally all they ate the whole time they were there.
Speaker 3The pub that you guys had been to. Yeah, buddy.
Speaker 4Is that?
Speaker 2the shepherd's pie one. I can see them doing amazing fish and chips. Well, it's more of a meat pie, not so much shepherd's, but I told them to get that and they were like I'll take the fish and chips and I'm like okay.
Speaker 1Did you try the meat pie?
Speaker 5No, you know, patrick's not going to sample.
Speaker 2Don had none of the meat, none of the gravy. Well, no, sorry, none of the meat, but he did, because I don't eat the bread bowl part of it too much, so he cut a piece of that off with the gravy and he tried that and he was like, oh my gosh, but I could see them doing good fish and chips.
Speaker 5Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2Was this before or after Harrods After? After yeah, we'd already walked and gotten her. Actually it was right there next to Har to Harris, I figured it was one or the other.
Speaker 5That place is crazy too.
Speaker 2It's just so big, you just get so overwhelmed.
Speaker 1So you had a good time.
Speaker 3It was amazing. I would love to go back.
Speaker 1How many days were you there?
Speaker 3Five.
Speaker 5So five days and you came home.
Speaker 3Nope, nope. Patrick said hey, let's continue the adventure.
Speaker 5Really.
Speaker 2Yeah, so I looked up last minute deals, right as you do, and I saw it going out of Dover, maryland, no, dover, england, which is only like what? An hour and a half hour, and 15 minutes, I thought it was Delaware.
Speaker 5Delaware, you're right, is Dover Delaware, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2We took the train down to Dover. It's where they have the white chalky hills, or not hills, bluffs that go into the ocean.
Speaker 5Okay, I've seen pictures.
Speaker 2So, it's like you've got the green grass, the white chalky cliffs, yeah, and then blue water.
Speaker 4It's one of the nicest ports I've been to.
Speaker 2It was super nice and we got on a Carnival Cruise Line, Because when you're in Europe, you definitely want to take an American. Cruise Line it's the only way to go and we went sailing.
Speaker 1How exciting A 14-day cruise. Oof 14 days. That long it was that long. It was yeah.
Speaker 4Oof.
Iceland Adventures and Super Jeep Tour
Speaker 5Long cruise. It was a good time, so where'd the cruise take you?
Speaker 3uh, our first, uh, couple days was at sea, and then we ended up in iceland, yes, which was amazing amazing.
Speaker 2It was so fun. I I've been wanting to go to iceland for so long and I knew y'all kind of wanted to go as well. We had mutual friends that went a couple years ago yeah and so we saw the pictures, everything. It's like we gotta make this happen.
Speaker 5I gotta ask the question iceland in summertime was it cold?
Speaker 3when we got there it was like 35 degrees fahrenheit well, you ruined my joke.
Speaker 2I was gonna say when we got there it was beautiful sunshine and warm and just gorgeous. In reality it was 35. Rainy, rainy, windy, windy, very cold, very cold. And to make things just a little better, it was a tender port, which means we actually had to take a boat, a little boat, from the cruise ship to the port. So when you're on the cruise ship, not that big of a deal, but when you go to get back on the cruise ship, you're just standing in line just getting rained on, cold, wet, agitated.
Speaker 1They don't have any coverage for you. Huh, Nope.
Speaker 2A 10-foot by 10-foot canopy, but that's hard to put a thousand people under. A 10 foot by 10 foot canopy.
Speaker 3It definitely wasn't like the higher end cruise lines Carnival, just kind of didn't care, just deal with it.
Speaker 2But we got to see the cool stuff there. Man, Do you remember the church?
Speaker 4Yep With the rainbow painted stone Yep Path in front of it.
Speaker 2This huge rainbow must have gone on for a half mile of stone pathway to it, made some really cool pictures and then where did we end up?
Speaker 4Where would Patrick and Eric end up anywhere?
Speaker 2Don brought us into a souvenir shop. I don't even know what that place was. They sold some crafts and some wool and some I don't know.
Speaker 2it was interesting okay it was warm and dry, so it so it had some very, very, uh, very winning uh options. But um, yeah, as eric alluded to, we went to the next building, which was a pub, and, um, they were. They had some really good coffee, right, that's what y'all got, um. And then we did this first time in iceland, I don't order, right, what's iceland known for? Not certainly not alcohol. Um, so they had a local beer, so we got a local beer and, uh, it was good. It was crowded, man. We walked in that place. It was like a happy hour at a hopping pub. I mean, it was like packed, two-story. Yes, I don't even know if we realized it was two-story when we walked in. It was just like how do we get out of this cold rain weather? It was miserable. We would have all happily stood there to warm up, dry off and get some caffeine. It was.
Speaker 1They have food, or just beverage, they have food.
Speaker 2But we started late so we'd already had lunch on the boat. So this is like 1 o'clock 1.30 in the afternoon.
Speaker 1Did you eat any local food other than your local beer?
Speaker 2Not there.
Speaker 1Not there.
Speaker 2Not there. We saw Lots of people did. We saw quite a few people eat and I felt vindicated Because there was a couple of excursions you could do there but none of them really appealed to me. And we were sitting at that table and a couple of people came over and they had a little sticker that you wear when you're on a tour, and so we knew they were carnival people. So we just asked how it was or whatever. And they were likeival people. So we just asked how was it, whatever? And they were like not good.
Speaker 2And I was like do it um so so their excursion didn't pan out, it wasn't great um, so I'm like you know I hate that for you, but at the same time I'm glad to know I made the right decision and yeah and didn't bother doing anything. But um no, we were there for like an hour, weren't we?
Speaker 3a little well, a couple hours probably, but it was a little small town tiny town, yeah, tiny town not much to see not much, but breathtakingly beautiful.
Speaker 2I will say this the weather sucked, but it was in a fjord, so you're surrounded in a valley, surrounded by mountains. There's I don't know 50 waterfalls. You could just turn around and see 50 waterfalls, oh wow. Now there were a couple that were big, but tons of waterfalls. We walked over and actually got some pictures of one of the waterfalls.
Speaker 4Lupine's growing all over the place. They grow like weeds over there.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2If you don't know what a lupine is, it's this thing right here.
Speaker 1Did you see the volcano that day they have lavender flowers.
Speaker 4They stand up about nine inches tall. Yeah, grow in bundles or bushels.
Speaker 2Yep, we left there and the next part we went to chilly but no rain.
Speaker 1Oh, that's good.
Speaker 2So yeah, once you get out of the rain, and it wasn't as cold.
Speaker 4Not as windy that one.
Speaker 2We did the super jeep tour I thought we were going to die y'all there's not many times in my life where I've been like we might have made a mistake. Yeah, that was one of them. Oh, the super jeep was a converted, you know, 1998, 1998 Ford 15-passenger van where they put a lift kit on it and four-wheel drive modifications. It looked cool. It looked cool. It looked cool. It had the suspension of nothing, whatever cushion those tires gave you, that was the suspension.
Speaker 3It was brutal. The whole time she's driving that thing, she's just constantly back and forth oh my gosh, back and forth, and then she'd get faster and faster. Back and forth, back and forth. The whole thing is just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Speaker 2I thought we were going to flip, like when you're a kid and you're learning how to drive and you think that driving is just turning the steering wheel left to right, left to right. That's what she was doing. Wow, it was brutal.
Speaker 5That's how I feel in the green van on 270 between Fida and the yard.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 5That's where it's just crazy rutted.
Speaker 2But the roads, oh yeah, the roads, yeah, the roads are terrible yeah.
Speaker 4And it was an extremely long drive.
Speaker 2Where were you going to? It was only a seven hour tour, right yeah?
Speaker 1Seven hours in that thing.
Speaker 3It was all over the countryside, all over that section of.
Speaker 2Ireland, yeah.
Speaker 1No paved roads.
Speaker 2Some oh okay, and we also did some off-roading. We did off-road around a dormant volcano, but still a volcano. We went and saw these huge crevasses of where the magma settled and everything, and that part was really pretty. And then we went to a gorge. That was massive and beautiful, but my golly, the midges. Do you remember that? Yeah, I mean, you couldn't breathe without having a bug going up your nose. It was. I was starting, could you tell there at the end, I was starting to lose my mind. I was really breaking down into the child fetal position, losing my mind.
Speaker 1I had regressed Driving bugs.
Speaker 2I could deal with the driving, the bugs. They were just everywhere. It was like you ever been inside of a swarm of gnats and you just can't get rid of them. You just got to walk out of it.
Speaker 3Imagine that if you couldn't- walk out of it, yeah it was brutal.
Speaker 2They didn't bite, they didn't sting.
Speaker 4But still the annoyance of having them fly right in front of your face and not being able to get rid of them.
Speaker 2It's terrible.
Speaker 1Needed a beekeeper hat Absolutely.
Speaker 4I literally took my jacket out, put the hood on top of me and wrapped myself around it and walking around the whole time.
Speaker 2Yeah. So the only thing I like this, the only thing exposed, and the next next day my arms were so sore Because of just doing this for a couple hours, just you know, that was brutal.
Speaker 4And that's when Patrick went on the Amazon and bought some Hat nets To cover her face.
Speaker 2It was rough the next day.
Speaker 3The next little town was the one that had the hearts and the red lights. Oh, I forget the name.
Speaker 2That was a big bus tour.
Speaker 3We were on like a, a, a charter bus thing they had went through economic hard times at one point and the mayor of the town thought it would be uplifting to put hearts and all the red lights for the townspeople and oh so the traffic light.
Speaker 5Red lights were hearts. Yes, interesting, the red lights for the townspeople.
Speaker 3Oh so the traffic lights were hearts yes, interesting. And then later, whenever the town got better and they rebounded from everything, everybody loved it so much they left it. That's cool. Yep, that was neat.
Speaker 2Yep, and that was really cool. We went down the coastline and popped in and just the terrain I mean that's what you go to Iceland for is that's what you go to Iceland for is the nature of the terrain. It was just unbelievably gorgeous. We went around the entire what do you call that? The peninsula? There's a huge volcano there. We got to see Alstendormit. It was just spectacularly beautiful. All the birds and stuff.
Black Pebble Beach and Dining Drama
Speaker 4Never saw any freaking puffins, but the rest of it was beautiful. Which one did we go to the Black Pebble Beach? The bus tour.
Speaker 3Yes, I think it was that one.
Speaker 4I really like that. Normally I don't like beaches because of sand getting between your toes and feet. It's hard to get it off whenever you're getting back in your vehicle. But to walk along a beach with black pebbles Unique I liked it a lot.
Speaker 2It was very cool. It was weird too, because they had random metal pieces all over the Rusting metal pieces.
Speaker 4Rusting metal pieces? No, we're talking like three-foot long pieces of steel. Yeah, big pieces.
Speaker 2And apparently they had a boat wreck, a boat explosion several years ago, like 50, 80 years ago, and those parts and pieces washed up on the shore and they left them, they just left them for whatever reason.
Speaker 2I don't really get it because I'm just thinking does everybody just get a side of tetanus when they come here? Seems dangerous. But it was beautiful and the water was crashing in and doing the big puff up and everything. It was really cool. I really enjoyed that part quite a bit. And then we went to that hotel the fish in that weird dining room. It was really cool. I really enjoyed that part quite a bit. And then we went to that hotel the fish in that weird dining room.
Speaker 3Poor Eric couldn't eat anything because they never could determine no that place he ate.
Speaker 2Oh, did he so the previous day on the Super Jeep?
Speaker 3Yeah, the Super Jeep lunch, that one.
Speaker 2Again, sesame allergy. You can't have sesame. The top of this fish has it looks like sesame black pepper.
Speaker 4Whenever you get a bagel, and it's got everything bagel.
Speaker 2Yes, it looked like everything.
Speaker 4You don't know what all is in it.
Speaker 2Yes, and they could not. That particular place could not care less about his allergy. They were just like, eh, it's fine, and it's like, well, we're not doing, eh, it's fine, you know what I mean. So we went to the next place. They didn't have any of that on there. It looked more like just a regular grilled piece of fish, and they were very cared about it, went back and actually checked with the chef and everything. So that one we actually got to eat at, but that was frustrating. So we found a table Like that one we actually got to eat at, but that was frustrating. So we found a table. There weren't a lot of places for four people, but we actually found one. And so we get the chairs and we set it all up and Eric and I sit on one side and Don and Jerry are starting to work their way to the other side. They're like long tables. You have to squeeze between people to get to them.
Speaker 2Because they're like long tables, you have to like squeeze between people to get to them, and these two people, bless their hearts, push jerry out of the way and they grab those two chairs and sit down across from us what yes they didn't see that he was gonna take the seat they didn't care, and the reason we know they didn't care is because they were actually on the previous day's excursion with us flying drones in places where they weren't allowed to fly drones. We actually talked to him about it at one point and he was like, eh, you know, whatever I've got a license, I can do it I can do it and he's like there's no place that says no drones.
Speaker 2Anyways, like Jerry and I pointed out five different places where it said no drones and he was flying it different places where it said no drones and he was flying it and like just a real bad attitude towards us and all the stuff. So it was like when they did that, it was like there's no point in this, this is going to be a fight. There's no reason to fight. So they got to sit with these people who were charming the whole time. Eric and I are eating there. We're not talking to people across from us, we're listening to their conversation. At the other table they're just laughing and and every now and then, and then that guy over there and that you know, and it's like how awkward.
Speaker 2Like it was super strange, yeah. And then the people in front of us, the ones that cut them off, they set through the soup, which is the first course they got. We got soup and they ate that. And then they were like, well, we don't want to do this. And so they got up and they left and they went to, um, the grocery store next door to buy other food and then came back and ate that in the lobby. But by that point they'd already made friends. They're not gonna like turn around and move. So it's like, wow, you did all that for like 10 minutes of just a screw. It was very strange. So, but I did it at making friends with the family next to us so we were able to talk with them. It was weird.
Speaker 2That cruise is was 99 percent, um, I'm gonna say, 30 year olds and up, right, no kids, none on the boat, um. So the family next to me had kids and I'm like there's not many of you on here. What made you, you think, to bring your kids to Iceland, like I don't know, for going here. There's a lot of places you could have gone. So it was kind of cool to get to know them and meet them for a little bit, but it still. It was just like wow, what a weird move. And then you're sitting across from nobody and I don't know how weird.
Mountain Climbing and Blue Lagoon Experience
Speaker 2Very odd, but the rest of that was cool. We climbed a mountain.
Speaker 3I was about to say the mountain. Yeah, I still haven't got my wish.
Speaker 2My wish is a little more long term. You want to explain the rules?
Speaker 3So you evidently had to climb. I don't remember 100% detail, but you had to climb this mountain and you could not Going up the whole entire time, you could not talk and you could not look behind you. If you, before you started up it, you made a wish, and if you did those two things and made it all the way to the top, then your wish is supposed to come true.
Speaker 2So very close, there's an arch. You go under a pergola.
Speaker 4It's an obvious start. It's an obvious start.
Speaker 2It's an obvious start. So at that point you can't talk anymore. Like I said, you can't look backwards. You do have to walk all the way to the mountain. In the very center is the ruins of a temple that used to be there. And you get there, look to the east and they actually have it marked off for you and that's where you make your wishes. So I mean, I guess you could have already had your wish in your mind when you went up there, but that's actually where the wish-making took place.
Speaker 1And yeah, how long is this mountain? I?
Speaker 4noticed one of the ladies when we got to the top. It's where the steps stop and it flattens out, and one lady thought she was already at the top and, oh my gosh, she was complaining. Oh, and then when you realize you're up there, that's not the end of it. It flattens out and you still have to go to the middle of the plateau area, and that's where the end is and you're supposed to get your wish.
Speaker 2And it's still. It's not flat, flat, it's still uphill. So like when you get to the top of the steps it's like, okay, well, I still have to walk uphill to get there.
Speaker 4It's just the steps. Stop, but you're still climbing up.
Speaker 2She was not having it and she was going to make sure everyone knew it was ridiculous.
Speaker 2The lady on the tour bus said you are climbing a mountain, a hill. I mean really it's a hill. You are climbing this thing and it's a clear path and there are steps. We're not blay on. No one's putting mountaineering gear on. We did it in our tennis shoes and other people are in sandals. It's not crazy. She says it's a pretty easy walk. I've done it a ton of times, but if you do have any kind of mobility issues, you may not want to do it. And this lady's, like you, said it was going to be easy. It is not easy. I mean just full Karen, just hmm, was it flat.
Speaker 3By no means Was it straight up.
Speaker 2No, I mean, it was a gradual Lots of places to step off if you needed to take a break, but don't look behind you. Don't look behind you, yeah, but they didn't say anything about just stepping aside and taking a breather. That's fully allowed.
Speaker 4You just can't look behind you.
Speaker 2Oh man. You can't talk yeah.
Speaker 1So when she went full, karen, did anybody talk to her or you just walked right by her? No, everybody ignored her, true Yep.
Speaker 2And then when the tour guide finally got up there, she really let her have it and she was like, well, I did say you know what I mean, like it was, yeah, it was interesting and it really honestly it was not that bad of a walk, like it really wasn't.
Speaker 4I was a little embarrassed for her.
Speaker 2Yes, I felt the same way. It was super odd. What was really funny we made a joke about it is, once people got up there and made your wish, then you're free to talk. You're no longer under the spell, we're talking and people are looking at us. It's like they're not sure if they should talk or not. It was very funny on the way down. Then they had some dogs. People were playing with the dogs. It was great. It was really. That was really fun. Port um that was another one.
Speaker 3That was like a long, seven, eight hour trip wow and then we went to the last place in iceland, which was, uh, rickovic yeah which was the first city that we've seen, and, yeah, went to the blue lagoons that'd be we're five days.
Speaker 2This is the first city we've seen you know what I mean.
Speaker 3Like it's been a while everything else was all country yeah, uh went to the blue lagoon that was an amazing experience are those, the hot springs yes not natural.
Speaker 2No, I did not know that. I thought the blue lagoon was a natural phenomenon. It is not. It is actually, um, they have a hydroelectric not hydroelectric a thermoelectric plant. So thermoelectric is they take these giant pipes, run them deep into the earth and connect them, and so cold water goes in one side and when it goes down there, it gets superheated. So it comes back up the other side of the pipe as high pressure steam, right, and then that turns a turbine and then it goes into an evaporator coil so it turns back into water, goes back down, and it just keeps repeating itself. Right, this is the runoff.
Speaker 2So when they have too much water, it runs off into these pools, and people started going to them because they're full of minerals, because they were just so deep in the earth. By the time they get to the pool, they're not scalding hot by any means. Um, and so the companies got smart and they're like, well, if people keep coming to these pools for free, what if we closed it off and made it an attraction? And so that's what they did and, uh, put a really nice resort there. Um, and so they have a day use area, which is where we're at, and they also had private rooms, uh, but as our um hotel rooms on the other side great.
Speaker 3I mean had two service bar areas that you could go up. They give you a in the back in the water, yeah, and the package that we had, we uh gave us part of the tour. You get one drink and then the rest of them you can purchase if you want. They give you like this little waterproof watch band that you can, you know, and then the rest of them you can purchase if you want. They give you like this little waterproof watch band that you can, you know, and then you pay whenever you leave.
Speaker 2That was super cool. It's super cool because it's like a little like just a bracelet. It just looks like a bracelet. There's nothing on it. It just looks like a bracelet and it's got a little RFID in it. You use it as your credit card because you're in this hot and and you use it as your credit card because you're in this hot and they tell you like, don't bring anything with you, it will ruin your cameras, it will ruin your credit cards.
Speaker 4It will ruin your hair too.
Speaker 2It will ruin your hair. Yeah, literally it will ruin your hair.
Speaker 3They have special conditioner for your hair that you have to use. And they say leave in your hair while you're in the pool and then rinse it off when you get out.
Speaker 2It's very volatile, much mineral. It's great for your skin, it's not good for anything else. Um, so yeah, these little, these little rubber wristband things. And so when you go to the, the, the thing, like I said, it was pre-let it with one free drink and then and it anything alcohol. Uh, wine, they had wine beer. They didn't have any like hard liquor, but they had wine beer. They had, um, they had cocktails no, it was just normal.
Speaker 4It was just normal.
Speaker 2Yeah, alcohol a couple, couple different beer options, couple wine options or a couple reds, couple whites, and like a sweet, like a prosecco kind of thing, and then they had um full soft drink menu option selection. And then they had um water and you could buy however many drinks you wanted, but you could only get three alcoholic beverages.
Speaker 1They did limit you that that's because you're in that hot.
Speaker 2That's because you're in that hot water. They don't want you getting wasted. Could you? Can you imagine how crazy it'd be if someone got drunk in that water? So and then not happen till you step out of the water I know, or or just floating around and you're like, whoa, I need a bench. We get, of course. Now that's crazy. There's a line right like you get over there because everybody gets one free drink and so this pool's huge. I mean, like, how big would you say it is?
Speaker 2it's the most olympic size it's. I think it's bigger than olympic yeah it's bigger than olympic and it's not. It's not rectangular, it's very like there's these curves, these little sections. There's an island like. It's really neat.
Speaker 3And it's all centered in the middle of a lava pit. I guess you would say that's pretty cool. All kinds of ash and lava all around. It's literally down to the center of it. It was crazy Like to get there.
Speaker 2So this is where the active volcano comes in. On the way from Reykjavik to here, it's about a hour long drive. It was an hour and 45 minutes for us and they actually they didn't take away our time, uh, from the time in the pool, but they actually didn't extend the time of the tour. And we knew this ahead of time because, as you all saw in the news, iceland was having an active volcano yeah and it's right by this, and so the lava fields were coming down.
Speaker 2They cut off the quicker route, so we had to go like way around this ridiculous route to get there which I kind of appreciated because we saw a lot more stuff by doing this and then we literally had to drive over cooled brand-new fresh hot lava Steam is coming off the road, like if you've ever been down in the South and it rains on a hot day, the steam comes off the asphalt yeah.
Speaker 2It was kind of like that. It was a trip. Only it's cold outside, so why is there steam coming off the asphalt? You know it's fresh lava and you literally got to see like this is what fresh cooled lava looks like against old, you know thousand year old lava and uh, you know, is it. That was sad, because I mean, there's a whole town there that's completely cut off. If you live there, they're allowing you to go back, get your stuff so you can leave, like, but you're not allowed to go there and like, state your house, anything, and it's and it's a big town that's completely cut off and they don't know if that town will be rehabilitated or if it's just going to get leveled and everybody's going to get relocated.
Speaker 1Wow, that's sad.
Speaker 2It's very sad and I heard that and we've been to these other Icelandic towns where it's like real small and it's like, okay, well, you're displacing not many people. This is a pretty good-sized area. It was a lot. It was a way bigger area than I thought it was going to be, a way bigger town and it was just. I mean not that that makes a difference, it's still a tragedy, but it's just more like holy cow. It's just more like holy cow. Getting there was a crazy trip. And then they did say like if you hear a siren that goes off, immediately go to the bus. We don't care what bus. All the bus drivers know they will rendezvous and they will sort the people out once they get out of the danger area. But if the siren goes off, they were like just get to the first available bus and leave.
Speaker 5Wow, I remember, before you guys left, there was concern of being able to do this because you had heard they cut the roads off and then, like a couple days prior, they talked about the reroute, kind of thing, I'm glad you got to see that.
Speaker 2The news I saw said it was reopened. Well, the Blue Lagoon was reopened. The road was not, but yeah, it was great. The road was not right, so, but yeah, no, it was, it was great. I uh, the water was the perfect temperature it was, and it was kind of cool because there were areas that were a little hotter than others. So if you did get a like I'm a little overheated, you could literally just swim 30 feet.
Poolside Relaxation and Pub Adventure
Speaker 2Wow, and I say swim, I mean the water was only four foot deep, or whatever yeah, you just float over to the, to the other area and cool down a little bit. It was not cold or cool anyway, it was just not as hot. Right, they had these little private areas where you couldn't bring a cell phone, you couldn't get to keep quiet. We went over there and hung out for a little bit as well. That was kind of neat, the bridge going over it. They had another section where they had beds under the water where you could get massages and facials and they do pedicures and stuff while you're in that water. It was really like they ain't joking around. It's really nice, that's cool. And then the other. So that was so I told. So, like you mentioned, you had the bands. You can go get your drinks. What was the other booth? Because it was also interesting. I think Don was the only one that did it.
Speaker 3Oh, the facial mask.
Speaker 2Okay, I'm like really.
Speaker 3Yeah, so that was part of the package as well. You can get this special facial mask and put on and everything. And Don was the only one that did that. How was it?
Speaker 2It was so weird, I didn't do it. It was so weird.
Speaker 3I didn't do it so it looked weird. He never said if his skin was softer.
Speaker 1Was it made with the?
Speaker 2volcanic minerals and the algae too that's in the water. It like came out of a bucket and they like scooped it up and just put it on your hands. And it wasn't for me.
Speaker 1Do you rinse it in the water?
Speaker 3They had fresh running water going into the pools and you can go over there and just use your hands to wash it off, but then it goes into the water.
Speaker 2Yeah. And then the fresh water no, not where the fresh water was, because there was a little. No, yeah, I guess it did go in the pool, didn't it? The nice thing about the fresh water, too, was it is drinking water. So they did say, like if you have a cup or whatever, you can actually just go there and get water. You don't have to buy the expensive water. And Icelandic water is like Fiji water or like Right.
Speaker 2It's really delicious, great water, and it's so. They're like why buy a bottle of water when the stuff coming in the tap is literally like we ship it all over the world, didn't? I did end up buying a bottle of water. It was like a dollar fifty who cares? Um, but that was only because I wanted to be able to seal it and take it back on the bus with me, um, and I actually drank all my water and then refilled my bottle from the tap. They had two or three of those taps around the pool, which meant you always had to wait in a little bit of a line, but not much. It was just great. It was super relaxing. It started raining Remember that? It started raining on us while we were in it and it was just like who?
Speaker 5cares.
Speaker 2It was great. Only weird thing, only weird thing. I think I've said a couple weird things, but I think the biggest weird thing I think I've said a couple weird things, but I think the biggest weird thing is the in and out of the pool procedure.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2It is everyone. Everyone is required to take a full nude shower before being allowed into the pool. Really, every single person.
Speaker 1So are you nude getting in?
Speaker 2No, you wear trunks or swimsuit in, but you cannot shower in your swimsuit. You have to actually get fully naked, completely wash off, and then you can put your swim trunks on.
Speaker 1That is weird. Very odd, because I think your swim trunks would hold a lot more than your body. Laundry soaps, fabric softeners.
Speaker 4I don't make the rules we heard from them. It used to be open shower yes, no walls, and there still is.
Speaker 2Both men and women. They do separate us. Obviously they do have the open showers Because in Europe and in some places around the world really people don't care about nakedness.
Speaker 2It's just not a thing, right, us prudish pilgrims yes um, we're the ones that are like, oh and so, um, they had a bunch of private showers, uh, but they were nice and private, but it was weird. They were, um, translucent glass and it was just a shower. There was no area to put clothes on or take them off. So, like, I walked in with my bathing suit on and then close the door, and then it's pretty small, so you gotta figure out how to how to take them off and throw them over the door, because there's literally attendance, like they're paying attention to make sure you're doing this. So throw the swim trunks over the door so they know you actually are showering.
Speaker 2And then they had the body wash and the shampoo and the conditioner, like we talked about, which are all really high-end products. You know, when you're showering, you can tell like, oh, this was expensive, this was all really nice stuff. They were not trying to be weird or scrimp on anything, it's just they want to protect that pool water. You do that and then when you come back, obviously you have to as well. I guess you don't have to have to.
Speaker 4But you want to. But after being in that water, you want to.
Speaker 2All that salt on your skin and all the minerals and stuff. You want to get it off you.
Speaker 4Plus if you ended up with it in your hair people who put conditioner in their hair got to get it out.
Speaker 2Well, I had to wash my hair regardless. I don't have the hair, it would be an issue, and it was pretty short at that point. But I did shower and condition my hair afterwards, because you could just tell I don't know how to describe it? Incredibly hard water. That's what I Imagine, the hardest water you've ever experienced. And then multiply it by 10. And then take algae and put it in your hair, or silica that part was wild.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2But it was a wonderful experience. We were the last people back to the bus, very, very.
Speaker 1Was that the end of Iceland for your 14 days?
Speaker 3Yep. From there we went to Ireland.
Speaker 1Oh, oh. What did you do there?
Speaker 3That was kind of a quick part of the trip. We actually only had what?
Speaker 2four or five hours in dublin now, we had longer in dublin, but we did, we, we didn't have an excursion.
Speaker 3No, we didn't have an excursion yeah, they took us to the city of dublin and they were like, okay, just back here in like four hours, yeah, the whole trip the whole excursion was like six or seven hours, but you only have four hours in Dublin.
Speaker 2They dropped us off at Art Museum and we did what everybody does responsibly and we went straight to a tavern. If you're in Dublin, you got to go to the pub. You got to. Even if you go get a Pepsi and have some cheese, you got to go to the. That's a thing where I come from Pepsi and cheese. Anyways, you got to go and experience a little bit. Listen to the guy playing the guitar and singing the Irish songs.
Speaker 2Yeah, the ditties and it was a lot of fun. It was really cool. The food was great. Packed it was a packed house. Went to Temple Bar in Temple Bar area like the OG of OGs.
Speaker 4We were able to get a table together.
Speaker 2We were able to get a table together. Everything was exactly the way you thought it would be. I kept telling them it's like when you go to Disneyland and you go to the Irish pub at Disneyland and it's like, wow, Disney really studied these places and got all the right parts and pieces and everything. This was like that, but 600 years old. It's been that same thing for ages.
Speaker 4Their greenery on this world, oh yeah plants, flowers everywhere.
Speaker 2Like it was it was. You could definitely tell it was old and you could definitely tell it was kept up and it was. It was really nice.
Speaker 4I was um trying to figure out do they did they do it better in london or in dublin? Like the greenery, did they do it better in London or in Dublin?
Speaker 2Like the greenery.
Speaker 4Man, that's a tough one.
Speaker 2I thought Dublin was a little extra. Dublin felt more authentic and I think because it doesn't have the money behind it that London has. You know what I mean. Like Dublin's not a highfalutin, like I don't think we saw a Louis Vuitton store, I don't think we saw a Christian Dior store, like they didn't have that kind of stuff there. A lot more local stuff, a lot more local. That was one thing too about that area. Remember I said I don't like those Disneyland-type places or whatever. There's people living above us. We're at this bar and above us is apartments. You know what I mean. People just live in that area. It's kind of like if you go to New Orleans and you go to the French Quarter people live in the French Quarter. You're actually in someone's home turf. I really appreciated that.
Speaker 2One of the restaurants we ate at we were in Dublin was really good food. It was huge portions, gigantic portions. None of us finished what we were eating. But that was a local dive restaurant. It was not on the main strip, it was not whatever. It just had 10 000 positive reviews. So we kind of sought it out and went to. It had a great meal, um, and it was actually very reasonably priced too. It was. It was really good. I think y'all got the fish and I did okay uh, yeah, and so that was really fun.
Speaker 2Did we go to Belfast too on that trip? We did.
Speaker 3Where they made the Titanic. We didn't explore that, though. They talked about it on the tour that we were on Belfast was a little weird for me. It was more. It is northern ireland, yeah ireland there's a big difference, you know what's the word I'm looking for, though? It's more um just conflict, and, yeah, it's war-torn yeah, I mean, it is the site of like.
Speaker 1Oh, it's Wartorn, I like that.
Speaker 2It's a site of where they.
Speaker 4You'd say it's politically tense.
Speaker 2Yeah, they had the IRA. That's where the IRA is based out of. That's the Irish Republic Republic. Yeah, and they.
Speaker 4It's where, like all the car bombings happened and stuff and all those I was going to say it's not politically correct to go into a bar and ask for an Irish car bomb.
Speaker 2Do not do that, and so I do all that. But it's been decades so I figured by now it would be fine, but it's not at all.
Speaker 5Well, their ceasefire, their treaty is still relatively new.
Speaker 2Yes, and they still have a wall that divides the two areas, um, and it's still. They close the wall every night and reopen it the next morning, and all the walls have police presence and at any moment, if things get too hot, they'll close it and shut it down. That's the kind of stuff that was shocking. I had no idea that part of I don't want to say civilization, but whatever, still existed.
Speaker 2I didn't know. I wouldn't expect that at all. I knew we were going to go see the wall. It was part of the tour we were going to do. I thought we were going to go see. This is what is remaining of the old wall this is the active wall. This is the active wall and we have to keep the piece. That really surprised me. How tall would you say the wall was?
Speaker 425 feet, 30 feet, something like that, at least two stories tall, with the net barbed wire on top of that.
Speaker 2And it's two-sidedsided, so there's one wall here. There's a big gap, uh, but they actually neutral zone it's kind of, but they actually businesses, businesses and stuff there, so they're, they're using that space. It's not uh like cleared out, like uh, other other places have done um, but it's still it's you know, at nighttime. It's no man's land and they have another wall on the other side. The wall's completely covered with political propaganda and it literally depends on which side of the wall you're on as to what they have. It was the strangest thing.
Speaker 1And can you go between the two if the gates are open?
Speaker 4If the gates are open. It's totally fine. We did Until the gates close at night.
Speaker 1And which side do you want to be on when they close?
Speaker 4Depends on your beliefs.
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't think neither how to put this. Neither neighborhood felt like this is the safe one and that's the unsafe one. Right, they are just two very different minded people. Both neighborhoods seemed about the same level of safe. They seemed like they had the same level of safe. They seemed like they had the same type of houses. They like there was no like. Oh, we've crossed the tracks and now all of a sudden we're in a slum.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Nothing like that. Um, it's just two people who don't get along.
Speaker 1And foreigners are welcome in Belfast.
Speaker 2Yep, um, there's a big Jewish population, there's a big muslim population there, obviously, uh, northern ireland, the whole thing is catholics versus protestants, so that definitely depends on which side of the wall you're on yeah um, but it was very interesting.
Irish History and Travel Mishaps
Speaker 2Now when you go downtown ireland the wall's not there. Our downtown belfast, rather, that wall's not there. It's only when you get just just outside of downtown that the wall starts. But they had a lot of buildings where you could still see where the bombs were happening and such. There was a huge area where a movie theater used to be and they blew the movie theater up and so they'd actually erected a temporary um pub like an outdoor pub with like concert grounds and stuff. I don't know. It's kind of weird. Um, which is meant to be a temporary thing but it's permanent now. You know, at this point it's been there for years so I don't know.
Speaker 2It's really interesting to see there's a lot of that. History is still there.
Speaker 4It's not that far removed from it at all, and they have two types of division. One of them has to do with their religion Protestant Catholic. The other division is the people who want to be a part of England and the others that want their own country.
Speaker 2Absolutely. There's the whole loyalist versus the nationalist. It's just very interesting yeah definitely. It was not at all what I was expecting. I feel very much like you. It's shocking. So if you get a chance, go, Just you know.
Speaker 1How long were you there for?
Speaker 3That was another.
Speaker 2That was a pretty long trip, five hours maybe, yeah, five hours.
Speaker 3Uh went and saw the capitol building was beautiful, yeah, nice the whole titanic things where they built that and everything in belfast. He, he said they liked to joke.
Speaker 2Uh, whenever it left there it was, it did not functioning yeah it was properly functioning, but it left um, so we left there and then, uh, was that it that was it that we were. We were back on the boat, our back to the dover a day at sea and then we uh back to dover and uh, part of the reason why I get a little bit of this confused or blurred a little bit is because when we got to Dover, Jerry and Don got off the ship, took a train, waited two days and then flew home.
Speaker 1Oh.
Speaker 2A little bit of a scheduling mishap, just a little Just, neither here nor there.
Speaker 3Now we did have a little trouble coming back home. Once we got back to, uh, uh, leaving, leaving london, uh, we were okay, but when we landed in, uh, new york, uh, we stayed at a hotel that night, got up early the next morning, they had really, really bad fog.
Speaker 3Uh, we ended up having to sit on the runway for like almost two hours just sitting and waiting in the plane yeah, we were, we were taxing, taxiing out, and then they had a whole lot of them and they just stopped all of us and we had to just sit there yep yeah, but we finally got out and then made it back home wow that's rough yeah, they let you get up and serve you cook water, coffee or anything like they would.
Speaker 3They would get a little bit of a clearing or something and they'd let a plane take off and everything and they kept coming on and they would say, you know, like, hey, if you need to go, we want you to go, but you, you have to be seated, we can't move on the taxiway if you're outside your seat so it was kind of like that point of you know, if you've seen someone get up, you're like sit down we can't move.
Speaker 3You know. But on the other hand, if you had to go, they were like I've got to go.
Speaker 2And then we would have to sit there. Don had to go at one point and he started walking away and Jerry yanked him right back to his seat and he's like 10,000 feet, you hold it a little bit longer. Oh wow, I didn't even know about any of this, because Eric and I stayed on the boat and we were up in the pool area where they had the Lido deck and just kind of watching the city, taking pictures and stuff, just really appreciating Dover, the cliffs and everything.
Speaker 2It's really, really beautiful. They got a big castle up there on top. It's beautiful. I look over and guess who I see.
Speaker 1Not Jerry and Don.
Speaker 5No, jerry and Don left already.
Speaker 2It wasn't us no it wasn't us, my dad and my sister. Really Wow, another surprise, another surprise. Wow, another surprise, another surprise. Thankfully, again, we planned it. Wow and um so no, they had actually flown over the day before and they uh took the train down there and they joined us and uh, we went on a cruise.
Speaker 5It's funny. Since they're not there here to tell their story of travel, I'll share what I know about it. Pray tell. So they were supposed to fly from here in Columbus to JFK and then on to London. Their flight got rerouted through Detroit and then JFK to London.
Speaker 2Oh, it did. I forgot all about that.
Speaker 5I remember that text message oh yeah, lots of travel issues this summer. Oh, and they freaked out too. I remember this text message oh, yeah, yeah. So lots of travel issues this summer.
Speaker 2Oh, and they freaked out too. I remember this, like when they reassigned them, they assigned Melissa a seat Right and did not assign Dad a seat Right, correct. So they're like so does this mean Melissa's going to make it? And I'm not Like what's happening here and I'm like you should really talk to your gate agent. And they were like we're inside the restaurant at the airport eating and I'm like that's not a good place to be.
Speaker 2You need to get to the gate agent, like now, and so they did. When they got over there, they said seats have not been assigned because we have to manually sign them. Melissa must have just got her ticket in just before the system locked them out of it. But they're like, you're on the list and you have a seat. We just haven't literally manually put it in yet. So, yeah, once that was done, their flights went pretty good, but I forgot all about that.
Speaker 5I'm looking forward to later on in our story time.
Speaker 2Oh, I know, I know you are. So yeah, melissa and Dad got there and we began our adventure.
Speaker 1Did you do Iceland again, or was it a different adventure?
Speaker 2Well.
Speaker 1Because you didn't get off the boat.
Speaker 2You know what we should? Do yeah, let's find out next week. Yeah, good idea, all right, yeah, good idea.
Speaker 1All right.
Speaker 5Yeah, a little cliffhanger.
Speaker 1Y'all have a good one A cliffhanger.
Speaker 2Ah, that's funny.
Speaker 5Enjoy a cliffhanger.
Speaker 2A Dover cliffhanger, a salty cliffhanger, that's awesome. Look, I know we didn't talk a whole lot about their company this show. We hope you've enjoyed your time. If you like what you're hearing, please hit that like and subscribe button. Touch all the buttons, you see. If you don't like it, hit the thumbs down. It still helps us.
Speaker 1Just a quick little intermission between summer to catch up when we come back.
Speaker 2Absolutely.
Speaker 1We're going to have all those trucking questions and all that good stuff.
Speaker 2Next week, you're going to hear part two of all this. We're going to hear part two of all this. We're going to find out about our second loop around Iceland, or will you? Oh yeah, and then we've got some more exciting stuff I can't wait to hear about the Lokshire summer, because I already know some things and I'm excited about that.
Speaker 2So join us next week. You can catch us on YouTube. You can hear us through the podcast version of this, anywhere you get your podcast from. If there's anything you want to talk about season three, drop us a comment. You can email us at theouterbeltpodcast at gmailcom.
Speaker 1Like, subscribe, share the friend. We're on all the socials.
Speaker 2Absolutely yeah. We're on all the socials.
Speaker 5Absolutely yeah, sounds good to me.
Speaker 2All right. In the meantime, stay safe. Make good decisions. Don't leave money on the table.
Speaker 3And keep as well as a turner.
Speaker 1Good night, thank you. We'll see you next time.