The Long & Winding Road

It was festive, fun & finally relaxing once all the teams arrived at the CN Tower to turn in their final score sheets and enjoy celebratory cocktails. Small annoyances and irritations from past weeks seemed to melt away as we realized the undertaking we’d just completed together.

For those of you keeping score, for the Toronto leg of the competition, Jeff & I pulled off a respectable second place finish, sandwiched in between two strong Canuck teams (Home field advantage… they already knew the language, ay?) For the overall competition we took the third place bronze medal- just 100 points behind the second place team.

But, the scavenging, points and competition was such a small slice of this adventure. We had the honor of traveling with some lovely, funny and talented individuals who made the adventure a learning experience for us. We hope to continue these relationships for years to come. We also found that if we utilized the scavenge/challenge list, not as a checklist or rule book for our journey, but instead, allowed it to guide our actions in each city, it helped each city unfold for us in interesting and unexpected ways. Many special moments presented themselves- a stunning view, an interesting interaction, a quaint shop or café- as we were in the process of hunting for an item in our book.

It’s a bit overwhelming to consider. We traveled over 41,000 kilometers as we circumnavigated the globe (we determined that is a difficult word to say when drinking wine.) We did much of the travel using public transportation and even threw in the occasional camel or horse for fun. We traveled through countries practicing many varied religions- Greek Orthodox, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim & Christian- all with equal fervor but varying customs & belief systems.

We saw so many similarities among the many places we visited. Whether in Nepal, Toronto or Athens, ethnic enclaves exist & thrive. We visited Chinatowns, Little Italys & Little Indias around the globe. They were more alike than different and reminded me a lot of the ethnic neighborhoods we frequent in Manhattan.

We also saw solutions and opportunities in many countries that could hopefully be applied on a more global scale. Toronto utilizes an efficient system of trolleys and underground protected walkways to ease commuting. Amsterdam residents integrate commuting and exercise by biking to work. China, unfortunately, has picked up western customs and is ditching bicycles for road-clogging & polluting cars. I couldn’t help but imagine NY with pedestrian walkways, trolleys, bike lanes and less honking taxis.

Throughout the adventure, we reconfirmed that human nature is basically good and people want to help and enjoy other people. People in our group had very few negative experiences with local residents & they were far outweighed by the positive ones. So many shared stories of taxi drivers sharing family dinners with team members. We had so many drivers take a personal interest in our adventure that they worked hard to lead us to scavenges and even called friends to get information to help us in our efforts.

We feel very privileged to have seen many of the world’s greatest wonders on this adventure- from the Great Wall of China and Beijing’s Forbidden City; Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers; Mt. Everest in Nepal; the Pyramids in Cairo; the Acropolis and Temple of Zeus in Athens, the People’s Palace and castles in the Romanian countryside and the lovely canals of Amsterdam.

But ultimately, as Dorothy told Toto, “There’s no place like home,” & we’re looking forward to coming home to our little cottage by the sea and to our own little Toto, Scooby. Thanks for your words of encouragement on the blog- it meant a lot as we were on the road. If you are planning trips abroad to any of the sights we visited, let us know… we have scavenges to share!

Maple Leaf Madness

Our global adventure wraps up in Toronto- another city Jeff & I have never visited together.

An update on the GreatEscape World’s Greatest Traveler competition (view the event blog at www.globalscavengerhunt.com/blog.)... I can see why so many of our pals are so successful- what a goal-oriented bunch! Many of you have written back to say, “We love hearing about your trip, but how is the competition going?”

As you know, in Greece we made a difficult decision to pull back from the competition (the 24 hours of Greek & Romanian buses & trains did not sound the least bit enticing)- instead opting to forego the points for that leg of the competition, to fly to Romania. Since five other teams ultimately opted to join us (the more, the merrier, we always say!) we knew we’d drop from second place to a solid middle-of-the-pack position. We were at peace with this decision and at least knew we’d be well-rested for the remainder of the trip. Upon arrival in Bucharest, it became apparent many teams had veered from the prescribed (but a bit cryptic) rules for the leg- some in minor ways by utilizing taxis to one or two scavenges… others in more major fashion. The organizers debated partial point fines for each leg where infractions occurred to more draconian measures of eliminating points for entire portions of the journey. Ultimately, their decision was to call the Greece to Romania leg a “Mulligan” and not count the leg at all (We now refer to that entire region as the "Land of Mulligan!")

As you can imagine, this caused quite an uproar- especially from the teams that had endured train rides without food or water or waiting for hours for buses that never arrived due to modified holiday schedules. Those of us that flew to Romania felt well-rested but quite guilty, since the standings remained the same yet we were not forced to endure the hardships of the Mulligan leg. We found the decision particularly difficult as one of our favorite teams had worked extremely hard to follow each and every rule, only to have their efforts and points negated.

So, as we moved to Amsterdam, we remained with a meager few point toehold on the second position. Our attitude was that while we would continue to complete scavenging efforts, if a team that went through the grueling train/bus effort to Romania jumped ahead of us, we were fine with that as they truly deserved the recognition.

Apparently our “Steady Eddie” (the kissing cousin of Even Steven) approach paid off as when we met in Toronto on the final morning of the competition, organizers shared the current standings. No one could mathematically challenge the leading team, Steve & Bart, for the title. We’d partnered with them for several legs of the competition (think Survivor alliances) and were in awe of their work ethic (they awoke at 4am many days to begin scavenges and averaged 4 – 6 hours of sleep nightly.) We particularly enjoyed our many strategy sessions to plot and plan approaches to maximize our impact in each country (did I just slip into Pfizer-speak?) Zoe & Rainey, a hard-driving pair of attorneys seemed a lock for second place throughout the journey. These two had been action-oriented and ferreted out points around every corner throughout the adventure.

Three teams- none of which had taken the arduous Mulligan journey- were in close competition for the final third position- 100 points separated the teams. At this point, we had to make the call… do we turn it on in Toronto or take in a Blue Jays game?

Jeff was a trooper… The competition monster got the best of me & I dragged him around Toronto as we traveled the city through its labyrinth of neighborhoods by foot, subway and PATH to accomplish challenges in local markets, visit Toronto’s Chinatown & Little Italy, museums (we even visited the Shoe Museum, ladies!) and landmarks. Torrential rains may have dampened our shoes and clothes but not our spirits as we made final stops at the Hockey Hall of Fame (Jeff got to touch the Stanley Cup) and yes, we even got to catch part of the Blue Jays game, before our group convened at 3pm high above the clouds at the top of the CN Tower. How would the points tally up? Stay tuned...

Canals & Cannabis

What a great city! We LOVE Amsterdam.
We arrived bright & early and took a train to our hotel and hit the ground running on today’s scavenges. We opted for bikes to speed ourselves throughout the city. There are thousands of bikers throughout the city- encouraged by the system of bike lanes and easy bike parking. We’re still stopping frequently to fight through with our maps (every street has at least 16 letters in its name!) and there is no such thing as a grid system for streets. But, around every corner is an enchanting view of a canal or cobblestone street lined with lovely homes. Flower markets, town squares, pubs and sidewalk cafes abound. We’re in the middle of a series of national holidays so the locals have been partying a bit and are all sporting orange garb and hangovers.

We’ve been using our scavenger list as a roadmap to lead us to hidden windmills, great cheese and chocolate shops, parks, museums and don’t-miss landmarks. We've also been instructed to visit a local museum and have now been fully informed on the history of cannabis. Our hotel is great- right next to the red light district and near to lots of great restaurants. It’s a visually-stimulating city with a great vibe and healthy energy.

Tonight we head to Toronto- then on to NJ. See you all soon.

From Bats to Bars

We continued our Romanian adventure with a trip to Transylvania. I’ll hand it to the Romanians- they are smart marketers. They’ve latched on to pieces of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and pieces of reality to build a healthy tourism industry.

We first visited Peles Castle. Considered by many to be one of the most beautiful castles in all of Europe, Peles and its 160 rooms are a masterpiece in architecture and are an opulent display of design, artifacts, glass, Cordoba leather (not rich Corinthian), and sculpture.

Bram Castle, a fortified medieval castle, often referred to as Dracula’s Castle, was built in 1377 to protect nearby Brasov from invaders. It sits atop a 200 foot rock overlooking the village and is full of passageways, courtyards and fireplaces. Not a vampire bat in sight but plenty of gypsies to sell us postcards and plastic teeth.

Actually, Count Dracula (the word Dracula means “son of the devil” in Romanian) was supposedly inspired by one of the best-known figures in Romanian history, Vlad Tepes- Vlad the Impaler. When Turkish invaders landed in Romania, they were greeted with a horrible stench. Supposedly, Vlad had had the heads of earlier Turkish invaders impaled on poles and placed in fields as psychological warfare. Apparently it worked well. Although he was greatly overwhelmed in numbers, he was victorious over the Turks.

Later that evening, we gathered with the group to get instructions on flying to our next leg- Amsterdam (these 3:30 wake-up calls are tough.)- neither of us have been outside the airport in Amsterdam.