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Yellow Fiat Panda

Wednesday, August 19, 2009 
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We had some amusing rental cars in Italy.   First and last a Ford Focus that was quite competent, had enough room, and handled quite well.  Then we went to Portugal and rented a car to drive to Spain.  Perhaps because Spain and Portugal still have some hard feelings, it is absurdly expensive to rent a car in one country and return it in the neighboring company.  It would cost less to pay someone to push the car back.

So we were given a “Spanish car” in Lisbon, a Toyota Yaris with a really pronounced fuel delivery problem at anything above 1/2 throttle which had the car juddering and barely making it up hills.  Hertz sent out the mechanic who asked if we had the AC on (yes, it was 40 out) and then said it was normal. I told him it felt like it was running on 3 cylinders and he said that was right, it had 3 cylinders.  Now we’ve rented a couple of Yarii before, and they make it up the mountain in Italy fine with the AC on, and would easily have climbed the hills of Lisbon, but they wouldn’t take it back and besides even if they wanted to there simply wasn’t another car available in Iberia.  So we got a reservation from EuropeCar and called Hertz and were told we could drop the sick Yaris off at LIS.

But when we got there, that wasn’t the case – apparently Hertz Spain would charge Hertz Portugal €25,000 if they accepted it.  As we made it clear we wouldn’t be driving it away, there was suddenly another Spanish car at the Hertz downtown office.

We drove downtown where they were super nice and promptly produced another of the same competent Ford’s we had in Italy with one minor variation – the driver’s side mirror had been destroyed by the car wash just before we got there.  So they gave us a nice Portuguese Renault Laguna III with the key card ignition system.  It worked great and was a fine car to drive with a useful 6 speed manual transmission.

It got us to SVQ without any problems and we could even keep up with our friends in their Mercedes C230 with the strange transmission that switched into “limp home mode” immediately.  Yes, the car rental adventure was not ours alone, their car, a high end rental Mercedes was flawed as well.  They asked “why does the car redline at 150?  Is that bad?”  It took a little work to be sure there wasn’t a button or feature being missed (like some manual shift override), but no… it was a “feature” not a bug, and was to remind the driver to get to a service station before the transmission fell out of the car.  It made it to Spain and back in 2nd.

When we got back to BLQ our Focus was touring around Florence, so we picked up the cheerful Yellow Fiat Panda.  Pandas are great little (little) cars.  They handle surprisingly well, have surprising pickup and, like the tardis, are bigger inside than outside.  Even so, a panda can’t really hold more than two people and their normal travel luggage, and three is a tight squeeze even if one is only 80% full size.  But we all packed in and zipped back home suddenly noticing that the yellow panda must be the year’s most popular car.

Finally we returned the Panda, got our Focus, and drove to Rome with three adults, one awfully tall 12 year old, and a lot of luggage in relative comfort and in good time.

Posted at 10:12:02 GMT-0700

Category: photoRental cars

Hertz portugal rents motorcycles

Friday, August 14, 2009 

From 80€ a day for an F650 to 119€ a day for an R1200GS with bags.

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Very tempting, though most people apparently only rent them to test the bikes for a day and you can’t ride them out of the country, a bit limiting in a small country.  Still, could make a for a very nice vacation riding around.
Posted at 04:33:46 GMT-0700

Category: photoRental cars

Where’d Worldbeat Go?

Friday, June 12, 2009 

This is an important question: where did Worldbeat go? Worldbeat is the essential reference for news about both Penii and angry robots. Without my weekly does of worldbeat, the world seems colder, as if the sun is hidden behind a permanent haze that just won’t clear.

Even if you don’t know Chris Watson’s worldbeat, you want it back because until you get the chance to experience Worldbeat you will never know how bright the sun shines on absurdity. Where else will you learn:

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

In March, a 13-year-old girl sent a letter to her mother. There were, however, some problems this letter. First of all, she didn’t put a stamp on it. Secondly, her mother is dead. And third, the letter was addressed to “Paradise Street, Heaven.” Two days after she mailed the letter, it was returned to her. It came marked “unknown at this address” and with a 1.35 euro fine for the missing stamp. Everyone got all pissy at the French post office, for what was seen as its callous treatment of the girl. Nobody got all pissy at a world that tricks kids into thinking there’s a magical fantasyland where their dead parents are waiting to get mail. Nobody except Worldbeat. Because that’s what we do here.

Michael Cahill of Cambridge Beat wants to know where Chris has gone too. Where is our worldbeat? I stopped by the offices of the Echo Weekly personally and asked, but nobody there knew.

It is time to demand answers! Write the Echo and demand Worldbeat!

Posted at 10:43:28 GMT-0700

Category: PoliticsPositiveReviews

Ski Megeve

Saturday, February 14, 2009 

A business trip took me to the French Alps and I managed to escape to the Mageve ski resort at the (excellent) advice of our sponsor. It’s a beautiful place, the winter counterpart to St. Tropez. It is easy to get to from Geneva, though the GPS took us up a tiny winding back road when we trusted it that wasn’t plowed and definitely was not the approved route. The resort is huge and interconnected with other valleys in the European style. There is a good range of terrain, though nothing too terribly difficult. The crowd tends to be fashionable and right now is the holiday season and in France so it is a bit crowded. Rentals are cheap (25 Euro) and lift tickets are pretty affordable too (35 Euro).

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The crowd is generally a bit fashion conscious: in fact, everyone I’ve met thus far is a seasonal employee and also works at St. Tropez. Which also suggests something else: the visitors tend to be a bit fashion conscious and with my old gear and less than fashionable presentation I seem to connect more with the local employees than the other guests. There was a very cool woman from Cote d Ivory I met at a Jazz club, and a hilarious photographer I ran into at a bar/tapas place. He spoke pretty good English and had a hilarious story about why he was there having crashed into his friend and broken his snow board while trying to avoid a tourist that had stopped on the downside of a big mogul (bad idea).

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Ski School is a big part of the holiday season and the kids fly down the hill like brightly colored ducks in a row.  Some are pretty advanced and the instructors take them to fairly challenging terrain sometimes leading them off into the woods: au revoir les enfants.

There is wonderful powder in the Cote 2000 lift area, which takes a lot of traversing to get to and even more to get back from – two Poma lifts back, one of which is the longest Poma lift I’ve ever had to ride. Near the summit after what seems like 30 minutes there is a sign “>50% Grade.” Uh oh. Then, right on that grade, the lift stopped for about 10 minutes to clear some injured off the track. Ow My Ass!

Instamapper ski map

In one of the back country areas there was some lovely off piste deep snow. I was cruising along and jumped a small creek. OK, nearly jumped a small creek. The far side was a nice steep rise and got me quite airborne, butt high. I landed flat on my back skis up in the air which engendered screams of tiny laughs from a swarm of little French ski students. Hey, one of their own had just missed the same jump and was retrieving his skis, so I don’t feel too bad.

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Ski School Megeve is an English (British) speaking outfit.

Posted at 09:20:54 GMT-0700

Category: photoPlaces

Borgo Cafe

Monday, January 28, 2008 

Our favorite cafe in Borgo recently changed ownership. Nikola has taken a new job and now it is the Gecko Cafe. 0.80 Euro for an espresso – the best coffee I’ve had. It’s a really cute coffee shop and the new owners are very friendly.

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Posted at 22:00:28 GMT-0700

Category: photoRestaurantsReviewsTravel

Winter in Borgo a Mazzano

Monday, January 28, 2008 

Winter is beautiful in Tuscany. The light is more gentle all day than in the summer and the warmth seems closer when the distant mountains are covered in snow and the nights are cold. We had a lovely time there, if only for two nights, warming the house with the wood furnace and taking long walks down to town and up to Rocca.

We ate at I Macelli in Borgo a Mazzano the first night – I had the Minestra Di Cereali, then the Ravioli di Castagne and finally the Filetto Di Manzo, all excellent as always. The food at I Macelli is excellent, always. The second night we had dinner at The Butterfly, just outside of Lucca. Butterfly is a Michelin rated restaurant and perhaps the best restaurant I’ve ever been to. Everything there is amazing.

Carolyn and I both had the “of the land” tasting menu. Of I think about 8 courses, only the pasta with sardines was not to my taste, but I don’t normally like them anyway and even so it was good.

It is a source of constant amazement how affordable first rate restaurants are in Italy. The food there is much better than anything one can get in the US, probably because the supply tend to be local and everything is made fresh and from local ingredients, and possibly for the same reason the prices are surprisingly low, even with the painful exchange rate one eats better in Italy than one could in the US at 4-5 times the price.

And then there’s the bulk wine dispensed into your own bottle at less than 2 euro a liter…

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More pictures…
Posted at 14:18:53 GMT-0700

Category: photoRestaurantsReviewsTravel