Muscat Susie, Muscat Sam: Oh Man, Did We Enjoy Omanby Randi / July 9, 2019Wadi Shab is Gorges: My Favorite Place in Oman (+ Bimmah Sinkhole!)
I can’t even begin to explain how nervous I was to trek into Wadi Shab. Before our Oman trip, we’d found a very detailed blog post from another travel blogger about how the hiking route through the cliffs to get to the wadi is completely unmarked and so they went the wrong way, and ended up at the top of super steep sheer cliff face that they had to, terrifyingly, scale down as people yelled at them to ‘go back!’ but there was no way back. I mean. I was pretty sure I was going to die, and all because of idiot other travel bloggers. (What have I BEEN SAYING about the quality of other travel bloggers. I am throwing so much shade right now my head hurts. SHAAAADE.) Seriously, this was one of the easiest hikes, and for the G-D LIFE of us, neither Z nor I could figure out how you could possibly take a wrong turn. These other travelers almost scared me away from my very favorite experience for no good reason. LE. SIGH.
Now that we’ve established that other people are the worst, let’s talk about the magical Wadi Shab, a place so beautiful and so fun that it’s one of the most popular attractions in Oman. It’s about a 90-minute drive from Muscat (which you learned all about yesterday), on really nice modern roads that were never crowded. You’re probably asking right now, “What is a wadi? Also what is a shab? Also what is a wadi shab?” A wadi is a valley, and sometimes it means a dry riverbed that fills with water during the rainy season. A shab, I don’t know, I think it’s simply the name of this wadi. A Wadi Shab is a magic land of gorges and canyons and caverns along a river that culminates in 3 freshwater pools in the middle of the canyon, and the last pool you swim to is inside a cave, and it has a waterfall. It’s magical wonderfulness. A cave of wonders, if you will. I’ll tell you everything you need to know!
Before you leave your hotel/house, pack a small backpack with snacks, water, sunscreen, a hat, sunglasses, and water shoes (which we happily picked up at the Dubai Mall!). Bring enough rial in cash to cover the boat fees (below) but not much more, because you’ll be leaving all your shit out in the open at one point (below too). WEAR A BATHING SUIT under your trekking clothes – there is no place to change – and wear sneakers or trekking shoes too. Leave a dry change of clothes in the car if you can.
NO NOT ME TO THE RIGHT OF ME!
okay I guess it’s technically Wadi al-Shab but everyone and everything calls it Wadi Shab so I am not a bad person
To get to Wadi Shab, you either rent a car (which honestly you should be doing anyway for sightseeing around Muscat or anywhere else in Oman, unless you’re staying the entire time inside a resort which like, why) or you can book a tour with a group, but that means other people and other people’s time frame which sounds terrible. There are road signs for it, and any GPS/google maps should know the way (yes our google maps finally started working the day after we arrived; it just wanted us to have that initial nighttime terror leaving the airport). Once you arrive, you park in the small parking lot along the riverbank.
Guess what they have in the parking lot area: TOILETS! HERCALEES HERCALEES!!!
Leave your change of clothes and any other money and any extra phones and cameras in your car! Bring your day pack with water and snacks and water shoes, your car keys, and one photo-taking device, just in case your shit gets stolen you don’t want to lose all your phones. (It won’t get stolen though; everyone leaves all their stuff by the pools it’s fine.)
Sitting on the bank will be a group of locals. They’re in charge of the river crossing. So, you park on this (left) side of the river, but the attraction part is on the right side of the river, the canyon hike and the magic pools, so they bring you across the river in a quick little boat ride (you can see the quick little boats in the picture). If I recall accurately (lol watch me be wrong and pulling a total Josh’s college girlfriend saying “um I think I recall Hamlet accurately” and BEING WRONG UGH), it was 1 Omani rial per person per way, and that’s all you pay for the whole shibang, there’s no ticket office or anything to go explore nature, so it was 4 rial total for this BEST DAY EVER. This parking side of the river has a food and drink stand with bottled drinks and snacks.
So you pet the dog, you say yo what up to the goat (you gotta read the captions), and you cross the river in the little boat. Oh we’ve got an action shot:
And then you’re on the other side (I’m on the east side, I’m on the west side!) ready to start the hike. It takes about 40 minutes to get to the interior canyon pools (do these phrases sound right), and the first 10 minutes or so are totally flat, just walking along the river and along the base part of the gorges. Then it starts to get freeeeakay! But in a completely doable way, not in a scary or difficult-to-maneuver way like inferior blogs would have you believe.
Despite the high numbers of tourists who also have this on their to-do list, it didn’t feel overly crowded at all. In fact, while all the visitors on the day you go will likely convene at the main swimming part at the same time (as you can spend however much time you want there), the hike to the interior of the valley plus parts of the swimming holes (“I call it my swimming hole” – Mindy St. Clair in Oman) were empty for us, which added to how incredible it all was.
Once the flat part of the hike through the canyons is over, you start climbing up and around the rocks, but none of it is very tricky or difficult if you are in average shape and don’t have mobility issues. The path is marked by painted black arrows on the larger rocks at times, but at other times the path is straightforward just by using common sense: “Hmm, there’s no arrow here. Do I go up this set of rocky stairs or DOWN INTO THE RAVINE?” Seriously there was never a moment where the right choice was unclear.
Because it’s a wadi, some of the walking path surrounds water, as it’s traveling to the main part of the river you start at. Oh a good rule of thumb is to follow the black pipes.
You do this climby rocky bit for about a half hour, and then, and then, and gentlemen and then, you are greeted with this:
You come around a rocky bend and voila! You’ve reached the magic swimming pools inside the gorge! After a mostly solitary hike, you’ll be like ‘oh HERE’S all the people!’ As you can see, they are all leaving their bags and shoes along these side rocks, and you do the same. There are enough people – and enough tour guides who do this everyday telling you it’s fine – that you shouldn’t really worry about your belongings. Leave your packs, your hiking shoes, and your clothes (you have your bathing suit on already right?? this is where’d you would have to change), put on your water shoes (you really want water shoes for the rocky bottoms of these pools) and get to swimming for however long you have!
Since this is where the swimming begins, this is where the photos end, sadly. You’ll have to go to see what it’s like in the rest of the pools and the cave! (Or find someone who wisely took a waterproof GoPro. I’ll get one someday okay.) This first pool is fairly deep, as you can see. You can stand for some of it but you do need to know how to swim to go any farther. The second pool is mostly walking through shallow water, which is why you want to bring those water shoes – it’s all tiny rocks which really hurt our soft Western feet (as a guide in Burma once told us we had. She wasn’t wrong.)
The third pool is the magic wonder shiz, though. It’s quite deep – you have to swim – but you are swimming to a cave! There’s a small hole that might be scary if you have claustrophobia or ya know any run of the mill fear of drowning, but you swim through the hole and then you are in the cave with a waterfall! It’s so freaking cool. There are some ledges and hanging rock bits around the cave to hang on to when you need a rest, so don’t worry about getting tired out. If you want the opposite of a rest, there are ropes hanging down the rocks of the waterfall, so some absolutely bonkers adventure seekers among you can try your best to climb up it, land on the slippery rocks up top with the water gushing over them, and jump off into the pool of the cave. Someone tried this while I was there and it seemed terrifying and painful, so, yeah. This guy also had his phone with him in a ziplock bag. Fun fact, he left Wadi Shab with a totally forked phone.
At one point, we were completely alone in that cave, which sounds kind of scary but we knew more people would be swimming in soon. But during that time, it was one of those ‘holy crap are we really here experiencing this?’ kinds of moments. It’s absolutely wonderful.
When you’re done (be mindful of the opening hours so you don’t miss the last boats!), you do it all in reverse, say goodbye to the animals, pee again, and – if you’ve planned your day properly – you drive a short distance to the next swimming adventure.
BIMMAH SINKHOLE
About a 20 minute drive from Wadi Shab is the Bimmah Sinkhole, a water-filled sinkhole by definition but a shimmering turquoise underground lake by mine. It’s back towards Muscat, which is perfect. It’s best to hit the sinkhole after Wadi Shab, on the way back to Muscat, since you’ll already be in your wet bathing suit, rather than on the way from Muscat, since if you swim in the sinkhole first you’ll have to do the Wadi Shab hike all wet both ways.
Fun fact: the Bimmah Sinkhole ALSO HAS A TOILET! What is this amazing new world! It’s also in a sort of park looking jawn, with children’s playground equipment randomly here and there. There is fencing around the top of the sinkhole so lots of people will be taking pictures of the swimmers below. When you’re ready, you leave all your stuff in the car this time (all of it; there’s really nowhere to put anything), climb down the stairs and get in that water! It’s such a beautiful place to swim.
The water was filled with those little biting fish which was funny, if weird. Despite being pretty well-known and touristed, the pool itself was never too crowded.There were all these little nooks and crannies in the rocks to explore, like little caves and enclaves. It was a lovely swim!
So that’s my favorite day in Oman! We got back to Muscat tired but happy, and ready for an amazing dinner at my favorite restaurant in Muscat: a falafel stand called Arax. More on that in the next travel post, all about the food and hotels in Muscat (including our own little resort stay! (yes I talked shit about staying in resorts but I mean ONLY staying in resorts, clearly we did all the things first!)).
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Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, Here I am in Granada (Spain not Camp)
After a few days in Seville, Husband and I traveled to Granada, mostly to see the Alhambra. I have to admit, I had no idea about the Alhambra before this trip. How could I have known, when most of my life I thought Granada was a fake camp made up in the song I refer to in the title? (By the way, today I learned that that song won a Grammy.) (So has LeVar Burton which is my favorite random fact.) (Obama has two.) Obviously, I had no idea of the wonder that was in store for me. Not only is the Alhambra even more incredible than you can imagine, but Granada itself was probably my favorite city of our whole trip through Andalusia. Is it because it was the only one with a strong vegetarian restaurant that I really enjoyed? The world will never know. But that wouldn’t change the fact that I had a very enjoyable time.
Great start to any trip!
Getting to Granada from Seville was not too much trouble. I was shocked when I saw a standee advertisement for a vegan sandwich in the Seville train station! I would never have guessed. It was just a slab of tofu with tomato and basil and you know what, it was really good. MUCHO GUSTO! ME LLAMO ELLIOTT! So the train journey is about a 3 hours, but the train route at the halfway mark on the journey to Granada has been under construction for several years. We first had to take a train to Antequera and then a bus the rest of the way to Granada. I was super nervous about the bus because they only have bathrooms onboard in the USA, one of the best things the USA does, so I was so scared about what would happen if I had to pee! I was okay though. Dehydrated but okay. The train part was so nice! We had really good train snacks, including corn nuts (obsessed) and delicious oranges. OH I forgot to say in the Seville post, the famous Seville orange in the beautiful orange trees all over town? Those are not for eating. I took some super-ripe lookers off trees when I could reach them, and they were full of tears. Just so sour and awful and I made babies-eating-lemons face. They are not the oranges you get for eating. I think they are mostly sent to the UK for marmalade! weirdddd. Although I was not impressed by the wild oranges, I was impressed by the newer-looking Renfe trains. They were fast and clean and they even had digital screens announcing the next stop! Amtrak doesn’t do that! Amtrak is for lovers. Anyway, we got to Granada and walked to our hotel. The walk took us up this steep inclined path that was pedestrian-only and looked like it was transplanted from Agrabah, with so much incense burning and all these tapestries and curtains hanging everywhere and tables of sugar dates and figs and pistachios for sale. I of course did not take pictures of this because we were carrying our bags but now I kind of think I was hallucinating. Even if I was, it was my first look at Granada and it was magical. Full of tourists and smelling of disgusting incense (disgusting always), but magical.
I quickly learned that Granada is for realsies the Brighton of Spain. There are a lot of dogs, which is very nice (unless they are stray and then I cry), and there are a whole lot of hippies living off the grid and making art, it seemed. But there are also a lot of homeless people, and it was much more noticeable than in Seville and in London, too, where homelessness is an out of control epidemic, so it was really sad to see. Can governments please get their shit together and take care of homeless populations? Why did anyone vote Tory today you idiots?!
Before I get to the important sights to see, I have to complain about the weather. It shows just how amazing the Alhambra was, considering how much I liked Granada despite the fact that it was FREEZING morning and night. And afternoons. It would be 50 degrees (Fahrenheit) when we set out in the mornings and still so cold at noon. Then by the later afternoon like 4-5pm, it would be freaking 85-90 degrees. And then it would fall 40 degrees during the evening. I was screaming. You’re either shibber or sweating & burning all the time. The crazy weather was matched by the crazy people who like to walk in the middle of the sidewalk and then stop short like great tourists do and who smoke all day long. Seriously the whole country smells like stale cigarettes, no matter where you are. Sometimes it was so smoky and hard to breathe outside in the ‘fresh’ air that I would cry, just walking around in the open! That’s a horrible way to live, people! I do not understand smokers, especially when it’s like community-wide. Is it mandated? I will never complain about the City of London anymore now that I’ve been to southern Spain. Just kidding of course I will ugh I hate cigarettes.
Okay that is enough of my bellyaching. There are a few important sights in Granada, but one that surpasses them all. (I can’t say trumps anymore even though it is a regular word.) Like I said in the Seville post, we were here during Easter week, and it was equally if not more insane in Granada. Parades happened in the main and not so main streets ALL DAY and ALL NIGHT (which unfortunately we heard clearly, oh how they love to bang those drums). With all the Spanish people in the world being off from work and school because of Jesus, it was very crowded everywhere we went.
CATHEDRAL OF GRANADA
i mean you’re fine
You’d think that during Easter week, the church would really want people to, well, go to church and see statues and paintings of Jesus in his famous Easter pose (on the cross). However, some force in the universe really, really wanted us to stay out of the Granada Cathedral (maybe they thought I would burst into flames because of my previous sentence), because we spent an embarrassing amount of time walking around and around the main square, trying to find the main entrance. We thought we were smart people so this was ridiculous. We found the gift shop exit a few times in our wanderings, but no dice on the main entrance. WHAT THE HEY-ZEUS. It was mind-boggling! Finally after circling the main section of town over and over, the entrance was Brigadooned to us. After all that, there’s no way a church could prove itself worth the trouble, but this Cathedral was fine. They gave us audioguides with our tickets, which were sort of helpful. I look forward to the day when I see a Cathedral that afterwards I could pick out of a lineup.
But the best part of this cathedral was that the monstrous (not calling Jesus a monster) parade floats were waiting inside for their big outside reveals! Granada was SERIOUS about its Easter floats. It looked like they took really important statues of Jesus and Mary and put it on top of a boat they made from the wood of antique pianos. Very nice.
I would like to see how seaworthy this boat is
Raquel would be fine if you didn’t convince people that they would suffer after
One thing I don’t like about Granada and all of Spain (and Italy and other religious countries) are its seriously outdated, sexist, patronizing views on abortion. I was aghast when I saw this sign standing in the cathedral entrance. How dare they put this bullshit in the entrance especially when we had so much trouble finding it! At first I thought it was anti-abortion and saying “don’t get one”, but if I’m translating correctly, I think it’s about helping women recover after they get one. So not as bad, and sure it seems kind of nice, especially for the small percentage of women who do have trouble with their decision and the aftermath. But this perpetuates the religious right’s favorite message: that if you have an abortion you will suffer afterwards because, as it boldly states, abortion ruins both lives. This kind of language contributes to the horrible stigma of abortion when it should be treated like any other medical procedure, and women who need help after should be able to get it without needing to demonize the entire procedure as a surefire way to ruin your life. I saw the same sign at every cathedral in the rest of the cities we visited. GROAN. This is where Granada WISHES it were more like Brighton. Oh Catholics. Get your shit together. Your shit is a mess.
ALHAMBRA
From one of the fortresses at one side of the mountaintop
Now we’re talking! The Alhambra is a sprawling medieval complex, with numerous sections and buildings that once acted as fortresses, with high lookout points and lots of stairs to get up top for great views; as palaces and residences that get super cramped as people imagine what it was like to live there; as gardens, in my favorite part, the never-ending Generalife; and as an expanse of government buildings. The Alhambra is also a gorgeous display of Moorish architecture and civil planning as it was the last Moorish stronghold of Europe. Located at the top of a steep hill that offers beautiful views of the city, the Alhambra reminded me of the Acropolis in Athens in that regard and because we got super sunburnt when we visited both those places. But the Alhambra is bigger and has lots and lots of actual still-standing buildings you can visit. Also there are beautiful flowers and trees and great water features like fountains that make you feel a tiny bit less dry and like you’re baking in the sun. I love water features. The visit requires most of your day, and you need to buy tickets in advance. They recommend buying tickets weeks or even months in advance, and considering we were there for Easter week the months-ahead rec was really important. We had an afternoon-entry ticket, which was GREAT because that’s when it’s super hot, yay.
View of Granada from the Alhambra
The Alhambra was incredible. It’s like an entire city up at the top of a hill, with various buildings that were used for all kinds of purposes, from residences to government buildings, and gardens and plazas that you wish you could live near. Some of the residences were for the Nasrid Sultans, who ruled Granada from the 1200s to 1492 (what a busy year that was), as well as important government officials, important servants of the court, and important soldiers. Basically you had to be important to live up here. We were there for over four hours in the bright sun and heat – and we skipped two of the museums in the Plaza de Carlos V (one was more money, one was closed on Tuesday afternoons which is when we were there, which is random and feels personal). There is a lot of walking and most of it is uphill climbing, so bring lots of water. We went at a reasonable pace so it’ll really be a whole day for those who move more slowly or those who want to really see every nook and cranny of the expanse. If you can choose your time of entry, go for the morning. It was gross in the sun and heat. Although then you’d have to have a big breakfast and bring snacks if you would be delaying lunch that long. I guess just deal with the heat then. Luckily, they had a few vending machines in the lobbies of the impressively well-located and well-appointed bathroom buildings, and when I needed salt (water-drinking + sweating for hours = you need salt) I found a little bag of trail mix that had my new favorite thing in it, corn nuts. Happy me. (There are also several snack bars but nothing is vegan.) There are water fountains EVERYWHERE which made me soo happy to see and might have been my favorite part of the whole trip no that is crazy I liked other things too. There are also trenches of water running throughout the whole place back from how it was first designed for water flow. What a cool place.
Part of the fortress section
My favorite! Water! |
I wanna say this leads to the Palacios Nazaries, which is the only timed entry part. |
The Generalife was by far my favorite part, because I love gardens and I love water, and this was a whole shittonne of both. So many fountains and little paths and beautiful plants! It goes on and on and on, as you climb up to higher and higher levels that you would never have guessed were there. It’s so big it takes you around so you can see the rest of the Alhambra complex. Even though by this point (if you do it right, you should do the Generalife last) you’re likely exhausted, the gardens are so peaceful and soothing that you won’t want to rush through. The layout offers endless surprises, with hidden sections and staircases up to new gardens. Somehow, regardless of how crowded it is, you will likely see very few people nearby, because there are so many small segments that really works to spread out the crowd. It’s such a relaxing space, I wish I could go every day.
so tranquil
The Alhambra from the Generalife
The night before our day at the Alhambra, we got a tip from Husband’s friend about a great viewpoint in the city from which to see the Alhambra at sunset. This great viewpoint is the Mirador de San Nicholas, and I definitely recommend going at sunset. It’s quite the trek up winding little stone streets to get to the top of this hill, and can be very confusing even with functioning google maps. Just keep going up and you’ll get there. It’s a very popular lookout so it will be crowded, but it’s easy to get a few pictures. Remember it is cold at night, especially up high so dress accordingly. The Alhambra is beautiful as the sun sets. Sigh.
Isn’t it so cool? I can’t believe I didn’t know about this place for most of my life. I’m so glad I got to see it. It’s definitely a must-see in the world.
FOOD AND LODGING
It was really hard to find anything open before 3pm. Oh you Mediterranean lifestyle with your late nights and subsequent late mornings and your afternoon siestas and your lack of catering to my schedule! I bought oranges and bananas to have in the mornings along with bars I brought to tide me over until the regular Spanish lunchtime which is closer to my regular English dinner time.
But Granada was great because it was the most HappyCow-ed place of the trip. I had so many vegan-friendly restaurants on my list and was excited to get cracking. We went first to Al-Laurel, a little bistro-like restaurant that was supposed to be good. HappyCow said it opened at 11am, Google said 12pm, and its own front door said 12:30pm — but the guy prepping the bar inside at 12:30pm said they wouldn’t start serving food until 1:30pm. That is SUPER STUPID, GUY. Who opens an hour before they will have food? ANGER INSIDE. Off my to-do list and onto my shit list.
But Granada was great because it was the most HappyCow-ed place of the trip. I had so many vegan-friendly restaurants on my list and was excited to get cracking. We went first to Al-Laurel, a little bistro-like restaurant that was supposed to be good. HappyCow said it opened at 11am, Google said 12pm, and its own front door said 12:30pm — but the guy prepping the bar inside at 12:30pm said they wouldn’t start serving food until 1:30pm. That is SUPER STUPID, GUY. Who opens an hour before they will have food? ANGER INSIDE. Off my to-do list and onto my shit list.
We spent quite a bit of time looking for something else but everything was either still closed or had nothing close to being veganizable. Why don’t people eat before 2pm? Luckily, a standard touristy but nice-looking restaurant along a nearby big plaza was open and had a quinoa salad on the menu! It was called Laseda, and I think it was Plaza de Bib-Rambla. The quinoa salad was pretty good, and had something going for it most quinoa and veg and lettuce salads don’t but really should – it was served in a crispy cracker bowl. Lol I love eating my bowl after eating the contents. What a lifesaver.
Hicuri, so good
My favorite restaurant was Hicuri, a casual vegan place pretty well located (and near a vegan-friendly ice cream place we will talk about after) and with lots more seating than vegan places usually have. It’s such a fun menu, with salads and burgers and then salads with chicken nuggets in them and seitan and curries and eggplant bakes and Asian tofu dishes and fun smoothies and all kinds of stuff. It was such a sprawling menu that I have no idea how to describe the cuisine. I got a gigantic ensalada de la casa, which was all the basic salad veggies plus avocado, sprouts, and apple. Fun and random additions! I know you are mad I didn’t get the salad with chicken nuggets but it was dressed in mayo which is blech. They brought us little carrot sticks and ranch dressing while we waited which was adorable and actually the ranch was really good. I was never a ranch fan but I liked this so much that I kept it and put it on my salad.
Little bites at Hicuri |
Great salad at Hicuri |
For our mains, Husband and I each got a burger, the chicken burger for him and the legumes burger for me. I never ever order the burger when at restaurants, but something made me choose it and it’s a good thing I did because these burgers were fantastic. I am sure they are the best thing on the menu even though I didn’t have anything else. So good. We each got vegan cheese on it too and damn I want one now.
Burger at Hicuri
Of course we got dessert! They had a traditional (I guess) arroz con leche (rice pudding) that we shared and I got a hot chocolate with oat milk. The rice pudding was very good, cinnamon-y with the right about of sweetness. The hot chocolate, on the other hand, was like hot milk with cocoa powder mixed in, but with absolutely zero sweetener. It was so weird! Like they used regular cocoa powder and forgot to add sugar or agave or maybe thought they had grabbed hot cocoa mix but reeeeally didn’t? So strange! But whatever, I didn’t care that much. Everything else was good!
Arroz con leche at Hicuri |
Unsweet hot cocoa |
baby sized food plate not okay i not a baby
In hindsight, I kind of wish we ate at Hicuri every meal. But that would be ludicrous. But nothing else was as good. Our next veg restaurant experience, at El Piano, left much to be desired. All the food was displayed in a glass case and we looked and talked with the staff before sitting and ordering. They were very helpful when we arrived and took lots of time trying to explain to us what everything was, but it didn’t really coincide with their menu, which they gave us to order off of. After we sat, it was really hard to get their attention even though I think one other person was in there during our entire meal, and she was getting take away. I ordered a combo of mushroom soup and a spinach dish, and was given baby sized portions of both, to my surprise considering how much it cost. The food was just okay too, nothing special. Husband’s Mexican-style food was better and bigger, but not enough to excuse it. When our food came, we asked for bread. The staff member said it’s a gluten-free cracker bread because they don’t do gluten, which was fine for us, bring it on. We asked a few times for it in the next 20 minutes or so but it never came before we finished eating. Actually, fifteen minutes after I stopped pretending I wasn’t already done eating my little meal, we decided to just forget it and we asked for the bill. I was shocked to see the cracker bread was on the bill! She said it was coming, so we paid and waited a few more minutes and it still didn’t come so we just left. WHAT THE HECK was going on? It was crackers they were probably in a box! I immediately went next door to a little bakery and brought a small loaf of bread with a lot of gluten for 50 cents and ate it in the street and we liked it and we loved it.
So moral of the story is, don’t go to Al-Laurel or El Piano, definitely go to Hicuri at least once, and if you want a decent quinoa salad when nothing else is around, go to Laseda.
Luckily, there was ice cream. There is a ecological ice cream shoppe very close to Hicuri. It’s not great because in addition to being milk-free, it’s also fat-free so it’s a bit icy, and it has very stupid hours (it closes at like 7pm so no after-dinner ice cream). But hey even not great ice cream is still ice cream! It’s called de-leite and had a ton of flavors and also did horchata and granitas and tortes and raw cheesecake-type desserts, which I should have gotten.
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We also had plenty more tapas in the various old traditional tapas bars. I never want to have gazpacho or salmorejo again. At one of the many gelato shoppes we stopped in (I always want to know which ones have vegan flavors even if it’s fruit sorbet and of course I wouldn’t waste my time on that but I still want to know), they had a toppings bar with mini Chips Ahoy and mini Oreos so I took a picture for my dad because he loves the minis. I do too but they wouldn’t sell me an ice cream cup just of cookie toppings. Well really I didn’t know how to ask for it in Spanish and it was not worth miming.
We stayed in the Palacio de Santa Ines, which was in a superb location. Well, we did clearly hear the parade gongs in the middle of the night (Jesus never sleeps) but I think the entire city heard them beat out dat rhythm on a drum at all hours. As for the place itself, the lobby was nicer than the rooms (the bathroom smelled a little weird) but it was a clean decent bed AND we were given a random two-story room with a loft bed upstairs that had better wifi reception so we used the spare bed for internetting.
Overall Granada was nice because the Alhambra was just spectacular. It’s a must-see site in a fun, vibrant city and I’m so lucky I got to see it.
The one thing Granada got wrong. It’s Pacienca y FE!!
Olkhon Island & Lake Baikal, Siberia: I Don’t Think You’re Ready For This Jelly (me)
After three weeks of exhausting, nonstop activity in our big summer travels, we planned for four days of just pure relaxation in a presumed idyllic spot, Olkhon Island on the famed Lake Baikal, a tiny fishing village that is hard to reach and so we simultaneously assumed two incongruous thoughts: 1) that we would be two of very very few visitors (pretty true) but 2) that even so the island and village would be equipped to deal with visitors (hahah no). Can’t have it both ways. Really, parts of the island, like the lake itself and the cliffs and rocky terrain along the northern parts of the island, are beautiful, but getting there and for the most part being there is too stressful to allow for any relaxation, or, honestly, to allow me to recommend a trip here.
it’s like a little baby Azure Window! Oh Azure Window, RIP! (read the Malta posts on the main Travel page)
Through the Hostel Baikaler in Irkutsk, we booked a trip to Olkhon Island up on Lake Baikal. Most people in Irkutsk are indeed stopping there in order to venture out to the lake, which is the biggest freshwater lake in the world. The guidebook says that if all the other freshwater in the world disappeared, Baikal would be able to fill our needs for forty years. That’s a big ass lake. So the Baikaler people booked us a minibus ride to Olkhon and a 3 night stay at Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, the tiny ‘town’ on Olkhon. When I say to you to never, ever use Baikaler or Olga’s people to book anything, I really, really mean it.
The best thing I saw all that day of the 8 hour minibus – our only big toilet stop
My view for an entire day – this was the best road we took. SO BUMPY
The minibus seemed nice enough, one of the nicer vehicles we’ve seen, and since we were picked up at our hostel early we got the first row which I figured would help with my carsickness (the van fit about 16 people). I was so funny thinking anything could stop the nausea on this ride, even if you aren’t prone to it. After we left, at about 9:05, we picked up a few more travelers at another hostel, before we set off and…nope, we just parked in a busy market square one block from our hostel at 9:15, the driver got off, and I watched as he joined apparent friends to smoke in the middle of the market. At 10:30 (that’s right), he got back on the bus, and we thought jesus christ are we finally leaving, an hour and a half late? Nopeeee, he drove around while on his phone yelling at people until we found 4 other people to pick up outside a stadium. I mean. WTF. I thought okay NOW we’re leaving and it’ll be fine. Little did I know.
The roads on Olkhon
After just under two hours, we stopped for a bathroom break, which is the best kind of break you can ever offer me. Five minutes later, we drove down the road to stop for lunch. It sucked that our two stops in a 7 hour bus journey were back to back; I was so nervous about having to pee, I was having palpitations. When we left the cafe in the middle of nowhere on the side of a dirt road, the real ridiculousness of our journey started. The road to Olkhon Island is not equipped for people to drive on. There aren’t roads, really, it’s just land. And we were not in a jeep or a landrover, we were in a minibus and pretty much off-roading. We felt every jarring bump and throw from the rocky paths that turned into sand dunes that you had to carefully maneuver and then back into rocky again. It was INSANE. We were all looking at each other like ‘oh my god this cannot be the way’, holding on for dear life to the handles above us or on the seats in front of us. It was like being on a roller coaster that also shook your seat violently and spun you around. I’m nauseous just remembering it. Of course that part of the trip was about 2 hours. It was the worst travel experience ever, until the return journey three days later, which was actually worse.
The town of Khuzir (after a terrible rainstorm, hence the road is a pond)
One of the two main grocery stores in Khuzir/Olkhon
When we finally got to Olga’s Guesthouse in Khuzir, it was not the fresh sigh of relief we were counting on. It was a few lackluster wooden shacks, and our room was a small, dank, windowless affair with two college dorm beds with ugly, not very clean looking bedding on them. Windowless was the worst part. We told the staffer that her colleagues who had arranged this for us months ago promised that we would be in a building with a bathroom inside it (I pee at least every 90 minutes and I cannot be walking to another building in the middle of the night that often). The staffer was like, um no none of the buildings have bathrooms, here is our bathroom — two outhouse stalls about a full minute’s walk up the road of the grounds. (One was a western toilet; the other was a beginning-of-Slumdog-style-elevated wooden floor with a hole in it. When I talk about outhouses from here on out (and I’m sure I will), I mean this latter kind.) The sinks were halfway back down the little road. I mean. No. Your colleagues told us you had a bathroom in our building, and that was literally the only reason we booked with you instead of elsewhere, and we told them that at booking, that it was dependent on that! She was just like well nope we don’t have a bathroom so that’s it. We got our stuff from our jail cell of a windowless room and hightailed it out of that shithole. Luckily, we hadn’t paid yet, and luckily the staffer I guess heard from the colleague who made all the false promises (lies, they are called lies) and gave us our deposit back. We walked about 30 minutes in the sand dunes (omg it was so hard I’ve never been that sweaty before it’s like I had some sort of fever) up the road to Hotel Baikal View. It looked like a little string of colorful motel rooms, little log cabins in three rows, but they were so much better than motel rooms and the hotel itself was that sigh of relief we needed. The bed was the most comfortable in the entire country so far, and they had a bar, and a restaurant, and lots of staffers who spoke English and there was a POOL and a SAUNA and omg it was just great. And still much cheaper than the equivalent would be in the west.
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Our multi-colored string of hotel rooms! So cute
I loved that bed. It had clean white sheets and a big fluffy white comforter. The best. And every single room had its own bathroom. I was so happy that I didn’t have to put shoes and a headlamp on in the middle of the night to pee, I didn’t even care that the cabins were full of bugs (log cabins on a lake, man!), I didn’t even care that it was too cold to swim in the pool (we did jump in after our daily sauna use though, which was bracing but amazing hot damn I love saunas), I didn’t even care that housekeeping threw out my retainer/night guard and I’ve been grinding my teeth like crazy every since. (Okay, that’s not true, I cared a lot and cried but once a one-inch piece of clear plastic is gone, it’s gone. Fuckers.) I did love that sauna, hoo boy. And our first night, all night, was the hardest rainstorm I’ve maybe ever heard. I couldn’t sleep for a few hours because I thought our cabin was going to blow away, or at least flood quickly and completely. It was unbelievable. Can you imagine if we had stayed at Olga’s and I had to go out in that to trek to the outhouse in my boots and raingear and headlamp in the pitch black five times in the night??? Thank god we left. I’m so grateful to Z money for that one. I mean he didn’t want to stay at Olga’s either, he’s not a filthy monster, but yay for finding a nice place.
We ate a few times in the restaurant at Baikal View, because it was about a mile on the sand dunes to the ‘town’ of Khuzir and we were usually so tired from our day of exploring that we didn’t feel like trekking there and back (there’s like one taxi and you have to either be very lucky and find him randomly or get someone to call him, and it usually takes like 20 minutes for him to come anyway so no). The restaurant was fine, full of all the Baikal specialties husband was supposed to get. It was harder for me, but they had a really good pickle plate and good potato dishes (I say that like I’m not just talking about French fries and potato wedges). We also tried this weird kind of pickled mushroom that was interesting. I know the deathly gray color is unappetizing but they were decent.
oh I’ll have my usual thanks I guess |
like the most colorless plate of food ever |
Then, one night, the waitress was the first one (they all only spoke Russian) who understood really what kinds of things I was looking for and tried to help me get something that wasn’t just pickles and potatoes. She said what about this soup, otroshka? I had read about that soup before, and knew that it was cucumber, potato, egg, meat, sour cream, and kvass, that beer-like soda-ish dark bready drink that I for some reason like. She said this version was vegetarian, and they could do it without the egg and sour cream. I was skeptical but excited to have a soup. Lol again.
my kvass soup I can’t believe I ate this for dinner lolol
It was literally chopped up cucumber, potato, and a shittonne of spicy radish in a bowl of cold kvass. I mean. What. We were CRACKING up. It was…not bad, but it was incredibly strange and like WHAT. Imagine cold chopped veggies served in a bowl of undiluted, unadulterated soda, that’s what it was. I mean I ate it. It was still raw veggies. I still can’t get over it. I think the waitresses were laughing at me, having dared each other to see who could get the weird Americans to eat the craziest thing. I said to Husband that it’s usually with sour cream and egg and maybe that makes it less like a soda bath of cucumber and he said actually that sounds like it would be even stranger, and truly revolting. I guess the idea of soda and sour cream and egg mixed into a broth really is disgusting oh man alive Russia.
literally main street Khuzir
We did eat several meals in Khuzir, too. There were a lot of fish shacks, and a lot of small cafes, and a few decent ramshackle places with some things I could pick out. We went twice to this hopping cafe on the main drag (the name of it was just its address, and there’s like one street, so just like…it’s there) that had salads in a glass case (not refrigerated…I am living dangerously) and so I picked out a cabbage-y cucumber-y looking salad and another carrot-yuba salad! I had that yuba salad twice at this place, I was so happy to find it again, my favorite dish of Siberia. I really hope this yuba looking stuff I keep finding in Siberia (also had some in Yekaterinburg) really is tofu skin and not just some weird part of a fish (or worse) that I’ve just never seen before. That would be bad, and embarrassing. Let’s say it’s yuba before my stomach starts to hurt.
I love that this carrot-yuba salad was everywhere in Siberia!
We also went to Kafe Olkhon on you guessed it the main drag, which I really liked the look of. It was a proper old dark wooden pub-sort of place, full of Russian people and travelers. They had a menu with pictures and some English translations, and I got a giant plate of plain kasha (love it, I’m sorry) and a carrot-cabbage salad. It was a great meal for me if totally boring and plain to everyone else. I love that kind of meal.
There were a few sad grocery stores in the town, one less sad that had a few fun chocolate treats we found. That less sad store also had a fellow customer wearing the best shirt I’ve ever seen. I tried to get a picture of her without being too obvious but I failed. Anyway, the shirt was red and in white block letters it said “Puberty Silent’. WHAT. IS. WHAT. We’ve seen the most incredible tee shirts with things in English written on them. I guess this is how Chinese people feel when they see the nonsense character-tattoos of westerners.
ate the entire bag of chocolate-strawberry things on the walk home. should have gotten two of them. yummm
Wandering through the dirt roads once with new French friends we met, we passed a house that had a ‘homemade bread’ sign out front. So we rang the doorbell , it started to pour, and the lady came out to the gate, in that order. We said ‘you have bread?” and she said yes how many? and we said um, I guess two? and she came out with two enormous loaves of bread. like, enormous. 50 rubles each, so pretty cheap. We were cracking up. She didn’t even let us in, we just bought bread from a random lady at her house on the side of the road. It was hilarious. Almost as funny as trying to break into that bread itself, which took not joking all of my strength to break apart. Inside, it was really nice and fluffy, delicious really, but that outer shell was f-ing armor.
“homemade bread” |
the bread lady’s house. she didn’t let us in |
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Okay, that’s enough about the food!
Olkhon itself is interesting. The town of Khuzir (and, consequently, the entirety of the surroundings for miles and miles considering Khuzir is the most built up touristed part, despite it being literally two dirt roads) is not really ready for tourists, at least not a lot of them. It doesn’t not have the infrastructure to support tourism. Does it even have infrastructure? That bus ride, I’m not exaggerating, it was horrendous. We really can’t recommend going to Olkhon because this ride was so hellish and it takes up two entire days. It’s just not worth it. Once there, the guesthouses all seem to be like Olga’s and the very famous Nikita’s, complexes of small wooden shacks with shared outhouses (oh p.s., the entire island except for our hotel was outhouses. The restaurants too – you were lucky if the restaurant you chose even had a key to the nearest outhouse shack down the block. It’s fine when traveling (used to it by now) but like not in the place you’re staying for days). (Nikita’s charges hourly for wifi, so glad we didn’t book there.) It’s cool to be at a place that is so remote and raw, but it really cannot handle the tourist trade in its current state. It’s a shame because parts of the island are beautiful, but I just don’t know how people can really go to see them. There is a hydrofoil boat that might go once or twice a week, saving most of the minibus ride, but then even getting around the island for the tours (which is the most important and best thing to do on the island; you’re not there to stay in the ‘town’) requires driving in minibuses on the same and even worse roads! The entire day! It’s just a mess there.
the roads we drove on for like a whole week
Let’s talk about those tours. We booked a tour of the north cape of the island, called Cape Khoboy, with our hotel. Every hostel or hotel books the same tour, with the same sort of driver and Soviet military-looking 9-person van, the same fish soup cooked for lunch by the driver (smelled great but I wasn’t going to eat even if it was vegan when we were driving all day on those obstacle sources of rocks, dunes, and tree roots), and the same collection of sights before and after Khoboy along the way. It cost 1100 rubles per person (100 of that was a random charge that we weren’t told about in advance and I kind of think was the driver and his friends tricking us but what could be do), which is like 15 pounds, so not bad for an entire day of sightseeing. And the landscape really is beautiful.
Okay, so this is a little terrible, but the name of the cape is pronounced like ‘ho boy’, a little phlegmier, but still close, so the entire week not joking (and still) Z and I were repeating to each other our favorite bit of SNL weekend update:
it’s when your whole body goes
hoo boyyyyy
Khoboy itself requires a decent amount of time for a hike down and up through all the twists of the mountain. We ran into our French friends there, which was hilarious. It was a beautiful place, which makes me sadder about how weird it is to be a tourist there. Seriously if they just paved the road and excavated the outhouses once in a while (it had been a too-long while for most of them) it would be oodles better.
All over Siberia, we have seen trees and bushes covered in scarves and pieces of colorful cloth. It’s like a shaman thing, I think. Shamanism is big in this part of the country. The trees are really fun to see.
Khoboy had an outhouse (worst condition of whole island), so that was lucky, since this was another of the three days (out of four) where I was a ball of nerves all day about having to pee. I’m so dehydrated.
The driver also took us to other outlets along the north side of the island, beautiful rocks jutting out over the lake that we climbed up and hiked down (some of the pics above are those other parts of the cape; I can’t tell which was which part). It was exhausting but really worth it, so beautiful.
But again, the roads. My god. I bet you think I’m being dramatic just for the sake of drama, exaggerating. Here is another picture I took on the route when I WASN’T hanging on for dear life.
These are not roads, and our little bus, my god, it’s a miracle that it made it through. All the tours are in identical buses and I just do not understand how they operate after driving through this. We spent almost 45 minutes driving through WOODS. Like, without a road, just making our way in the woods. In a bus. Here’s a picture of us going through the woods behind another car. The one in front of us really gives you the perspective I need you to have in order to agree with me on how insane this all is.
pretty scary right?
Another day, we went on a hike along the lake with the French people. It was a cold and rainy day, but we said hey let’s be outdoorsy. But then it started to really rain, like buckets, like pouring freaking rain, and the ground/sand was incredibly muddy and I started to have trouble making my way up without slipping backwards, which is a really scary feeling, and the ground just kept giving way instead of letting me progress and it was miserable. Beautiful, but miserable. Luckily, the foggy weather really reflected that state.
that’s a boat!
It totally looks like Japan, or a scene out of Avatar, right? That fog was insane. The farther we went, the harder it got to see where we had come from, and with the rain getting harder and harder and the ground getting wetter and wetter, we all decided to stop and head back before too long (too long for me though). Our shoes were so disgusting. Not to mention our pants. We’re just always dirty this trip, it seems.
I know right now you are like…dude…all of these nature scenes look gorgeous! Why are you complaining so much! But see it’s just because it’s been a minute since I wrote about the driving conditions. After all this beauty, we still had to get back to Irkutsk/civilization. And when I tell you that the return minibus journey was BY FAR the worst bus trip yet, I really mean it. The van was not nice this time. Instead, it was over-crowded, and the door was broken. There was no trunk area for luggage, so 20 people all with giant backpacks and suitcases had to sit WITH their luggage either on their lap or in the aisle next to them, making this the most unsafe bus ever, not to mention impossible to get on and off of. The driver was awful and refused to stop for lunch. The whole thing was so bad that, when we got to the ferry crossing (where we got out of the car) (after about 1 1/2 hours), Z and I actually knocked on the windows of every car on the ferry and asked if they could take us the rest of the way for whatever money they wanted. Unfortunately, the only ones who had room for us were not going to Irkutsk. Seriously, that’s how bad it was. Thank god we made it back in one piece. When the driver started letting people off in Irkutsk, we got off at the first opportunity even though we were like 20 minutes walk from our hostel. We didn’t care we just needed to get off that death machine.
minibus from hell
Luckily, we got off in Irkutsk right near our favorite place, Engineer Coffee (or something like that), with the best, nicest staff and the best coffee (according to the coffee drinker of the two of us). They also had clean bathrooms, free water, and good wifi. It was a godsend.
After we dropped our bags back at the Hostel Baikaler for the few hours we had until our sleeper train to Ulan-Ude, we went in search of food. We decided on the great-named Sushied, with the ‘sushi’ part in cyrillic and then the ‘ed’ added after that. So fun, and the food was decent. I needed all the vegetables and ordered a green salad, a seaweed salad, a veggie sushi roll, and a veggie noodle stir-fry (to share and granted I gave Z most of the stir-fry but still, lots of food!).
my favorite kind of salad is two salads |
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So, all in all, I guess I’m glad we went to Olkhon? Lake Baikal is beautiful, and it’s cool to be somewhere few people go. But man. The discrepancy between the scenery on the coast and the lake versus the journey there and the roads and the town, it’s drastic. If you had a private helicopter you should take that and try it out for 2 days maybe. It really is so beautiful. But what a mess it all was. Except that bed. My god I loved that bed.
the main intersection of Khuzir, Olkhon Island
that lake tho
honestly I think my fave thing about Olkhon is that they recycle. first place we saw in Russia doing it.
1 Comment
Wonderful! So proud of your zest for adventure
And a good falafel 🥙 ❤️Googling wadi al Shab