Thursday, July 26, 2012

honeymoon - Part 5 Lanzarote

Our final and actual honey moon destination was the little town of 'puerto del carmen' in Lanzarote and I haven't been here for about 16 years.

So the next 5 days were spend with eating countless amounts of food and drinking a fair share of sangria, relaxing on the beach of traveling to some sights.

During our stay it just happened that Germany was playing in the Semifinal against italy and we promptly run into a couple of germans with there little flags at a local bar...



Since the apartment we rented had a small kittchen, we could take full advantage of the gorgous views of our balcony



and cook some small homemade dinners, with a glas of homemade sangria

While doing a tour of the National Park of Lanzarote (which name I already forgot, something regarding the devil)...








...Robin somehow managed to make me ride with her on a smelly, stinking and jumping camel.




During this tour we also stopped at one of the main craters, or better what is left of it and surrounded by the ocean.


and last, but not least fulfilled my promise to Robin, to have some good paella at our last night in town.


Which also gave her a nice chance to dress up and look absolutely radiant.


and back to the USA we go. The vacation was fun, but sadly like always to short.

Honeymoon - Part 4 Slagelse/Denmark

the 4th stage of our honey moon were 3 days in the Kingdom of Denmark. More precise in the little town Slagelse. Where we had to work for 2 days to install our second international BinBase system.

Sadly this also meant that we had no real time togo sightseeing and instead just walked around the town and spend a little bit time at the beach.

Now I really wanted to try some original danish food here, but for some strange reasons all the Danish restaurants (there was only one...) were closed for vacation and so we did the next best thing. We went to a real american steakhouse in Denmark, which was surprisingly good and we rather enjoyed the food here.

The only disappointment was that our airline went bankrupt and so we had to buy last minute $$$ tickets at the airport, to continue to our next and final stage. Lanzarote/Spain of the northwest coast of Africa.
Needless to say Orbitz is still stating it was not there fault and refuses to reimburse us for the additional expenses we had with this and I'm getting tired of going from supervisor to supervisor to supervisor in the hope to make them see my point. We know it's not there fault that the Airline went bankrupt, but it is there fault of sending us an email 'prepare for your trip', which does not state the fact that the flight does not exist anymore.

They also did not update there webpage to reflect this change, so the blame is theirs and that every person told us something different so far is not helping either.

Orbitz employee: Sir you missed your flight, this is not our fault
Me: mam, the Flight did not exist and we were not informed about this, the airline went bankrupt
Orbitz employee: Sir this is not true, your flight was just changed there was no bankruptcy
Me: please do me the favor and google the name of the airline, they declared bankruptcy 3rd of May, 2012
Orbitz employee: this is correct we send you an email regarding this
Me: sorry this email was never delivered
Orbitz employee: our records show..
Me: do your records also show that you send an email to me on 23rd of June, called 'prepare for your trip'?
Orbitz employee: yes, but...
Me: which airline and flight number is mentioned in this email?
Orbitz employee: cimber sterling, 545
Me: do you understand what the problem is
Orbitz employee: let me transfer you to my supervisor

And this game continues. At this point we raised them to get a voucher of 100$ instead of the standard 75$ and my response was, that we only have 750$ togo before I consider myself reimbursed and we like cash. Let's see when I hear from orbitz the next time...

Honeymoon - Part 3 Berlin

While being in europe, we had to stop by in Berlin for three short days and enjoy some time with the family back home. And the beautiful german weather.

This also gave Robin the possibilities to watch a german soccer match in a nice Biergarten and enjoy a Doenner. I know it looks like our priorities are always food. But it's just so tasty and we have to enjoy it while we are skinny and don't have to count calories :)

looks like my camera is getting old, the clouds are awful looking.

Since we had only a limited amount of time, we kept all our sightseeing concentrated around the Alexander Platz.

better half
this time the clouds look fine
And off we go part 4

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Honeymoon - Part 2 Tarragona

after I short visit in Barcelona it was time to go to the beautiful little town of Tarragona, Spain and spend a couple of days here with Jesus working on the BinBase image, while Robin is discovering the area.

The interesting part is, I read about tarragona a couple of years ago in a book from Noah Gordon. Called 'Der Katalane/The Winemaker'. And this is a part of the statue described in the book.

human towers - a tradition from tarragona
During this time we obviously sampled plenty of original catalonian food, were introduced to Jesus amazing family and had all in all a couple of relaxing days. Which felt more like vacation than work.

And the best part, there is now a BinBase instance running in Spain.