Superlatives

Best View:
Sunrise, Borobudur
Zanzibar Coffee House rooftop
Florence sunset from the Piazale Michelangelo
first peek at the pyramids
snow on Hagia Sofia

Best Meal:
Ada and Alfredo’s, Rome
kebap, Spice Bazaar, Istanbul
Greg and Kate’s homemade tortillas, Dar
Byzantio: Athens, fish dinner with Ellie

Best Music:
Street performers, Barcelona
Busara- Mem Suleyman
Grand Bazaar: Dire Straits from a laptop

Best Hotel Gecko:
Manohara Hotel, tiniest gecko ever
Greg and Kate’s porch
Nusa Lembongan: epic battle with cricket

Best travel segment:
boat with the chicken, Nusa Lembongan
bush plane out of Zanzibar
bus, Granada to Cordoba

Best Overall:
Istanbul, the whole package.

Best Hotel breakfast:
Zanzibar Coffee House
Hotel Side
Santorini

Most Universally Accessible subway:
Athens. Thank you- it made the $1.50 ride back to the airport so much more pleasant than the $70 cab ride into the city.

Best travel outfit:
hands-down, black wrap dress over jeans. Modest enough for Islamic areas, easy to layer, excellent pickpocket defense.

Most Beautiful Language:
Italian
Turkish
Swahili

Best Drink:
Sahlep, Istanbul
Zanzibar cappuccinos
Beachside beer, Dar
Chimay bleu, Belgium

Best Line:
You can have al the Turkish Delight you like, but none of it’s as sweet as your smile....

Best sound:
flipping of train schedules
call to prayer
cheese sellers

Best Piazza:
Piazza del Campo, Siena
Piazza Navona, Rome
Piazza Signoria, Florence

Best dessert:
caramel gelato, Florence

Prettiest fields:
Rice fields, Java
Olive/cherry groves, Spain

Best Pastry:
Nannini, Siena
Butter Street, Brussels

Worst Fellow Travelers:
Rome Airport, semester abroad kids: I don’t know why Rome let them in, but I hope America doesn’t take them back.

Best smelling city:
Brussels

Best Hotel Location:
Hotel San Giovanni, Florence, above the Duomo
Hotel Side, Istanbul, overlooking Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque
Acropolis View Hotel, Athens, aptly named
Manohara hotel, at the foot of Borobudur

Best Travel Book:
Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
West with the NIght, Beryl Markham

Best Market, in the Whole Wide World as Far As I am Concerned:
Spice Bazaar, Istanbul

Most Impressive volcano:
Santorini.
Mt. Merapi

Worst line:
Everything, just everything said to me by the men of Eqypt.

Best Art:
Miro Museum, Barcelona
David, Florence
Caryatid Porch, Acropolis

Hardest Place to Communicate:
Cairo (but it wasn’t a language problem)
Greece
Spain

Best Museum:
New Acropolis
Fundacion Joan Miro

Best Urban Design:
Siena
Florence

Most moving architecture:
Borobudur
Duomo, Siena

Best Fashion:
Italy
Zanzibar

Worst self-inflicted travel injuries:
applying DEET to directly to eye in Bali, brought about by being freaked out by the phrase “Japanese Encephalitis” and having to use DEET in the first palce
bike crash

Worst hotel:
Arabesque, Cairo. Scary.

Most dramatic scenery:
Santorini, Greece
Nusa Lembongan, off the coast of Bali

Best Hotel:
Zanzibar Coffee House
The Tanis, Mushroom Bay, Lembongan Island
Hotel Side, Istanbul

Worst travel segment:
Quatar to Rome. Curry. Ick.

Best bathroom:
outdoor bathroom in Bali.
Zanzibar Coffee House

Worst Cab Driver:
Athens

Best Cab Driver:
Athens.

Best Beer:
Orval, Brussels
Westmalle, Brussels
Chimay, Brussels

Best beer labels:
Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
Serengeti, Tanziania

Tackiest souvenir I should have bought:
sexy priests calendar, Rome
Mannequin Pis chocolates, Brussels