This posting is not as long as it seems – it’s actually pretty short on the global stuff. Most of it is trip notes from an August trip to Brazil and Argentina, and then a September trip to Lithuania, Latvia and Southwest France. Enjoy!
I was sitting on a plane looking at my digital boarding pass and I was wondering if I deleted it, would I be ejected midair out of my seat? Speaking of which, I am told that the Flighty App is a great thing to use while on board a plane that is delayed. If you are going to be cancelled or diverted, the app which is plugged directly into the FAA will tell you before the pilot might even know him(or her)self.
I’ve been wondering why the UN even exists anymore. It is a huge pain in the ass for New Yorkers every year when they have their General Assembly and the UN doesn’t actually do anything because any troublemaker can veto any attempt to pass any resolution at the Security Council level. But then it turns out that Israel used Netanyahu’s presence at the UN as a distraction to strike Hizbullah’s Beirut headquarters and kill their leader Nasrallah. They correctly figured that Nasrallah would call a senior level meeting while Netanyahu was in New York and thought that they would have immunity since he would be speaking at the UN. Big mistake, I guess. The UN served its purpose right then and there, as far as the Israelis were concerned.
You might recall a few years ago that I wrote on Global Thoughts that I’d heard in a private conversation that Eric Adams, the incoming NYC mayor, was corrupt and there was dirt on him. I’d mentioned that he had to resign from his police job less than a year before becoming eligible for his full pension, and you wouldn’t do that unless you had to. So it’s no surprise that Adams has been indicted not only for actions taken as mayor but for years before he was elected.
I used to wonder why Europeans thought Americans were gauche when they asked “what do you do” and “how much do you make in your job?” Nowadays I don’t like talking about my professional life and I am much more interested in asking people abroad “what is your passion? What do you like doing when you are not working?” That’s so much more interesting. It’s not a networking question but it leads to much more interesting conversations.
My brother called me up one night before heading off to Paris and asked if I recalled a family trip to Paris in the early 1990’s. I did but he did not. Although, I noticed that I didn’t remember any details about the trip. During the summer, my sister in law showed me a video of myself being interviewed about a family trip we took in the 1990’s. It didn’t trigger any memories. I wonder if my kids will remember any of the memories we’ve tried to create for them? Is all of this a waste except for what we enjoy in the moment (and frankly the nostalgia looking back is often better than what we feel at the time with our kids)? It makes me stop and wonder. Shutterfly books have helped; the pictures are more vivid than what you see in photo albums and you can put captions in them to remind you of things.
Elizabeth has started her year abroad in Israel. She is actually in a relatively safe place; her kibbutz is located about a mile from Bethlehem. Iran and Hizbullah don’t really want to fire missiles and rockets at a major Arab city. It’s the equivalent of hiding under a skirt, which I’m told is what the head of Hamas has been doing – coming upstairs from his hiding places dressed as a woman. She did spend 45 minutes in a bomb shelter just yesterday as Iran was attacking the country but felt generally safe.
I watched the presidential and vice presidential debates and I suspect that few people will change their minds based on what they saw. You have two different visions of America on display and both of them are plausible candidates. I thought Trump looked stronger but Harris did give you a sense of what she is, although I felt she looked more like a law professor. I guess the election will turn on how many people vote for Trump secretly without divulging to pollsters that they are going to vote for him. It will be a nailbiter. I’d like to think she will win with her positive message, but there are a lot of people who are scared and have a dark view of things, and are willing to take Trump at his word, fact-checkers be damned. So we will see. About an hour after the first debate, I saw that Team Trump was complaining about the moderators, an indicator that they lost the debate. But meanwhile, Trump keeps telling stories about immigrants eating dogs and cats and Arizona puts up billboards, so obviously a lot of people insist on believing his lies.
Harris is very vague about her plans. I thought about it and if I were running for president, I would be too. Not because it’s safer but because by keeping your mouth shut, you preserve more options for what you might do once in office. You don’t know who will control Congress and what the leaders of other countries will be like till you get there, so it’s better to get a fresh start instead of committing yourself in advance to positions that you might regret.
One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that the better shape I’m in, the less injuries I get lifting things or bending down to get something. One reason Jews complain so much and gentiles don’t is that Jews probably spend less time keeping in shape. Physiotherapy basically means strengthening the part of the body that is in pain so that you don’t get pain as often. I wish I had realized that 30 years ago.
As I get closer to 60, I ruminate on why I decided not to run for public office and still don’t think I will ever do it. I think lots of people I know expected me to do that. In high school everyone sang the presidential march when I entered the room. Mayor Bloomberg was a great NYC mayor who accomplished a lot and I felt terrible that the minute his bumbling successor came into office, he tried to undo everything he had done. When Trump came into office, he wanted to undo anything that Obama had done, just because he had done it. Many people are motivated by power and position and to have their moment. I am motivated to accomplish something and leave something behind, but you can’t do that if the whole system is built around destroying your predecessor’s work simply because you are not him. That looks like a waste of time and energy and I’m not interested. I’d rather enjoy my life, not put a target on my back for the rest of my eternity on earth, and to focus on my family because my wife and children are what I leave behind for posterity. I’m really not concerned with naming buildings and putting plaques on walls, although that certainly motivates many others.
Foreign Affairs had an interesting essay chiding the USA for trying to curb Chinese technological invention, particularly in AI. The essay wrote that if you look at the last 200 years of industrial development, it said that success is not determined by the rate of invention of technology, but rather by the diffusion of technology. The USA far exceeds China in this area, and it is a waste of resources to try and stop China from invention (and so far it seems to be failing because the Chinese seem to be able to get anything they want). Diffusion in this context means the adoption of technology across industry. The capitalist system works a lot better than the communist system at making things available and providing incentives for people to share things, such as open source technology. I’ve always felt that using economic levers to punish such as sanctions is a waste and self-harming. This essay is yet another proof that this is so.
Another persuasive article in Foreign Affairs takes on the argument against tariffs saying that the US is fighting the previous war of 20 years ago when Chinese exports cost American jobs. Over the last decade, it says that manufacturing jobs remained stable even as Chinese exports increased and that this was true both for the Trump and Biden administrations. The article says that continuing tariffs is hurting American business and workers, and that other actions would be better suited for dealing with China.
Biden and Co. tout the fact that they controlled drug prices for items such as insulin and that putting a cap on out of pocket expenses with regard to health insurance has helped people. The unintended consequence of doing this has been a steep rise in insurance premiums. Making it more affordable for people to buy drugs and limiting copays stimulates demand which puts pressure on insurance companies to come up with more money to reimburse people.
I watched Kamala’s speech at the Democratic Convention and felt she was a plausible candidate. When I read Brett Stephens column a few days later using the exact same words, I guess I wasn’t the only person who felt that way. She did a decent job of presenting herself and alleviating concerns about her and issues that she would have to deal with such as national security. I expect that she will be elected and that with a Republican controlled senate, she will have to be as pragmatic as she and her supporters say she is. Biden did not succeed as much as he should have because he ran as a centrist and turned into a progressive. She might run as a progressive and, like Bill Clinton, learn that to succeed she has to govern as a centrist. If she doesn’t, she will fail and 4 years later it will be someone else in the White House.
I’ve had to happily trash most of what I wrote in draft over the past month about Israel. Give Netanyahu some credit. He and his war cabinet sent a clear signal to their enemies that they were prepared to escalate to de-escalate and they were not going to intimidated by threats from Iran or Hizbullah. Instead, they did the equivalent of swatting away a punch and putting a good lock on the arms of their opponent, basically saying “don’t even start with me.” The Americans were not doing that and were encouraging Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran to think they could mess things up, but the Israelis put them in their place and made it clear that they would wipe the floor with them. The Israeli execution capability finally caught up to its swagger. The Israelis have momentum going for them with Hizbullah and are definitely on track to go into a land war with them. I’m told that the military plans are good ones and realistic. The early wins will come but there will be the law of diminishing returns as they run out of targets and then have to figure out what comes next. I’m not sure they are thinking about that part quite yet. Support for going into Lebanon is strong; people are fed up with the situation in the north of the country. The situation is not like it was in 2006; the Israelis are much stronger and more precise and their actions the past few weeks of literally decimating Hizbullah will be the stuff of military and intelligence legend. The Lebanese are more united against Hizbullah and want them out of the country. Lebanon is not a real country (it is a state made up of feuding mafia families and Hizbullah taking advantage of that), and it will be hard for the rest of the country to take it back even with a weakened Hizbullah. But you never know; maybe the Lebanese will rise up and make coalitions if they feel there is a void that can be filled. Now that they see that Hizbullah was so easily defeated it is a scary thing for them and Iran; the Iranians announced that they moved their leader Khamenei to a “safer location” and Hamas said they wouldn’t have any more meetings in Lebanon. So much for the regional war the various proxies were going to have. At this point, Hamas is a defeated military force and has nothing to say. The Iranians sent off another round of missiles that didn’t hit anything and ought to be afraid that they might also be exposed as weaker than they appear. I expect the Israelis to go after the Iranians now and not “take the win” this time. Nothing creates change in this region as much as defeat and there may be a golden opportunity to bring about real change in Iran from all this, especially if the Israelis decide to attack the source of their problems. This is quite a change from the past year where we saw Iran and its proxies essentially attacking Israel at will. What changed? Maybe the Israelis see Biden as a lame duck and are no longer being restrained. Or maybe they are just fed up with the threats around them and have decided to go on the offense. Their economy couldn’t stand much more of this state of war; United Airlines recently cancelled my March 2025 tickets and gave me a refund because they were looking forward 6 months and figured it’s not even worth it to sell tickets to Israel anymore. Something had to give here. I don’t know, but now unless they wind up in a quagmire in Lebanon, I would expect things to be much better by the end of October. This is the best time to call up the reserves and fight — the country is closed for the next 3 weeks due to all the Jewish holidays anyway.
The smartest thing the Israeli opposition could do right now is to promise Netanyahu immunity in return for walking away from the prime ministers job. That’s what you would do if you wanted to end the Gaza war and give him an incentive to stop short of total victory (although he must might get that victory and then stay in the job till the next election in 2 years). The reason it won’t happen is that a new government would be similar to the one that exists in its outlook, so bringing down Bibi won’t necessarily bring real change, and everyone knows it. This is a problem that winning the war won’t solve.
No matter what happens, there are still red lights here for this country. The American carriers haven’t been able to fly to Israel reliably for years. I have a friend who has a business in the Galilee and he hasn’t paid interest on a loan in a year. One of my company’s Israeli offices was basically shut down after all the men were taken to the army. Kids are now going into their second year without being in a regular school if they live near the borders. Companies in Europe can’t get people reliably in and out of the country to do business. University scholars know that Israel on their resume is a kiss of death. A famous kibbutz in the Galilee my father-in-law was a founder of has been abandoned. What is the future of this country? Is the rest of the world supposed to lend money to a place that it’s now hard to fly to, that doesn’t pay its debts, and can’t reliably staff a company’s office? Had Bibi, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir been the leaders of Israel in 1947, do you think they would have gotten even 5 votes in the UN to form a country? Do you think that either Harris or Trump are going to get on with these people? Truth be told, Bibi needs to win this war and make room for a new prime minister or get rid of the unsavory factions of his government because you could just see him talking to an empty room at the UN and see that people don’t want to have relations with a country led by him. After 80 years the country needs stability and to repair its relations with many countries that see it as becoming less democratic. It needs to get rid of these moves to make the country less democratic and replacing professionals with political hacks. Beyond dealing with threats to its borders, Israel is damaged goods under this prime minister and it needs to move on. Everyone can argue about what constitutes security but i feel that the past year has shown demonstrably that keeping the West Bank is not creating security if the 1948 borders are not safe. We ordered some fruit platters to give out to people hosting Elizabeth for the Jewish New Year and the platters were being delivered 2 days before the holiday because the proprietor was driving 3 hours to visit her son at an army base who wasn’t being given leave for the New Year and she was doing that the day before the holiday, when you’d expect the platters to be delivered. Everything here boils down to everyone and it’d be nice after over 75 years to approach something like a normal life for the people living in this region.
I went to a briefing with a veteran Washington hand and he kept saying that Israel needs a strategy. He kept outlining strategies but they were all based on something happening that wasn’t happening now. If the Palestinians get their act together; If Israel changes its government; If Hamas agrees to a ceasefire…. On and on. As I understand it, strategies are courses of action based on available options. Unless part of the strategy is to force a new option to become available, it’s not a strategy but a matter of denial of reality. Too much of what is coming out of think tanks today is denial. Does Israel have a strategy? I don’t know, but the Iranians do and they are executing on it. The past month may be indicating that Iran’s strategy has failed, even if Israel doesn’t have a strategy. We will soon see if Israel has a strategy and if it can do more than just make a big mess in Lebanon for a week and kill a bunch of people and if they have a plan for what comes next. Otherwise, it will just be Gaza all over again – muck up the place, leave chaos behind and ignore it hoping it will all turn out OK, except that we all know that nobody has any clue what to do with the place. I think that by the first week of November things will be clearer; it is sort of the unofficial deadline for ground actions in Lebanon before tanks get stuck in mud for the winter. Gaza might be low-level insurgency that is containable for the indefinite future, but it is going be a drain and a drag on its reputation. Perhaps it becomes ripe to deal with once Abbas and Bibi both move on. At this point, nobody has a plan for the place, just a list of things that they would do if the constellations all came up aligned correctly. Sooner or later the head of Hamas will be killed and then the issue of the hostages will be dealt with because there is no incentive for this person to make a deal for them. He knows that he has no lifeline without them. For now, all I can say to the Iranians is like they said in the movie, “Don’t Mess with the Zohan.”
Mark my words: Even though this will sound perverse and crazy, I have a feeling that a year from now we will look back and say that October 7th was a godsend because it put into motion the forces that resulted in the destruction of Iran and its proxies and turned the corner for change in the Middle East. Israel will use the end of the Biden administration to redraw the game board.
Ukraine either is doing a great job of making Russia look like a paper tiger or setting itself up for a blistering counter-attack if they spread themselves too thin going on the offense against Russia. I can’t tell which is true, but for right now, it’s a great story of David kicking ass against Goliath. I’m not sure that Russia has the means to do all that much and my sense is that you are looking at mostly a stalemate with incremental gains on both sides in different theaters that will eventually be traded through negotiations. It is inescapable that Russia has so many more people it can throw at Ukraine that it is just a matter of time. When I visited the Baltics, the issue was not whether NATO would do X or not, but whether NATO would really exist and do anything. The Europeans would rather fight on Ukrainian soil than further to the west, which is why I wrote several months ago that if Trump pulled out of NATO, you might see some European countries simply send troops to fight in Ukraine because they don’t want Russia coming into Europe. The Finns (Finland) have joined NATO and they are prepared to fight for the Baltics because they don’t want the Russians in their backyard either. Whether or not the Americans will fight for Europe, Europeans on the front lines are prepared to fight. The problem is they don’t have very much to work with; neither do the Russians. But I’ve noticed that the Europeans are placing more American missiles on their territory. It’s going to be interesting in this theater.
SOUTH AMERICA TRIP NOTES
In 1988, I went to Brazil and Argentina with a close friend and we visited Rio, Iguazu Falls, Bariloche and Buenos Aires. We were young and relatively poor and I passed by places I couldn’t afford and hoped that someday I would return and visit them. Now I returned with my family and we did the exact same itinerary day by day, had a great time and stayed at the places I wanted to experience.
There is no nonstop flight at this time of the year from NYC to Rio de Janeiro so you either fly via Miami or Sao Paulo, Brazil. We stopped over in Miami for a night and enjoyed the Ritz Carlton on Key Biscayne. It’s 30 minutes from the airport on an ocean-front island away from the rest of the city and it’s a great place to chill out. There is a state park near the hotel. It’s a great place for a stopover.
RIO DE JANEIRO
American Airlines has really good service to Rio and the 8 hour flight was good. AA gets the food out fast and lets people go to sleep. Their seats on the 777-200 are good and there was plenty of air conditioning. They also have a special Flagship lounge in Miami with expanded food offerings for this flight. We arrived in Rio at 6am just as it was getting daylight. They have built a highway from the airport to the city center so you don’t have to drive through bad neighborhoods. It’s smart to have a VIP service greet you at this airport and put you into a hotel transfer car. You don’t need to choose an armored car for this transfer. The city still has its reputation for being very dangerous but it has improved to the extent that you can walk around at least during the day and feel relatively safe as long as you don’t keep your cellphone loose; it is also cleaner and your fingernails will not go black after a day. It’s a good idea to have zippered pockets here and to stay on the sidewalks and not go off the main drags.
The Copacabana Palace hotel in Rio is the city’s iconic property centrally located on the Copacabana district across from the beach, and their facilities are great. Food was some of the best anywhere including a legendary breakfast buffet with lots of interesting and tasty pastries we haven’t seen elsewhere.
This is a city of people who enjoy the outdoors and a more chill lifestyle. On a Sunday at 7am, the place is full of joggers. After a morning breakfast and nap, we started at noon with an outdoor flea market in Ipanema called Hipaa Ipanema which was fun. There was an acai place across from this outdoor square where we enjoyed some fresh acai, which is an attraction here since in the US it is mostly made from frozen mixes. We then went on a hike to Pedra Bonita, a peak overlooking the city with great views. There are no safety rails here so be careful with kids. The hike took about 2 hours total, about 45 minutes up and 30 down through a national forest. There is a nice tourist spot with food and rest rooms at the place where you start and end the hike. We hired a guide and also a driver to watch the car in case we couldn’t get a parking spot in the parking lot (which can happen on Sundays). Then a photo stop at a lagoon that is a big feature of the city with pretty sunset views across the lake.
On our second day, we did a full day city tour. You need 2 days to do all this sightseeing. Our first stop is the Corcovado (the mountain peak with the statue of Jesus). You need 2.5 hours to do this attraction and it is important to buy your timed tickets in advance via the internet. It takes time to go up the funicular (about 20 minutes ride), then to walk around the place and come down. There are no fast-pass tickets and lines can be long coming down because there are no timed tickets to go down. A good guide with local contacts at the attractions will help you cut many lines but still the funicular only runs every 15-20 minutes or so. This was good to do in the morning and the earlier you go the faster it is. Next to downtown Rio which has a futuristic cathedral we used as our parking spot, and then we walked into town. Colombo Bakery is a European-style lunch and pastry place (it’s actually huge) and it is a beautiful tourist trap that is definitely something to see – food itself not so great or fresh. Not much to buy downtown but there are interesting places to walk and see architecture that looks like what you would see in Havana’s historical district. There is this place with colored stairs that is a big Instagram spot with lots of street art. We drove to the Santa Theresa district which is artsy and cute. That evening was the Jewish fast day of Tisha B’av so we went to a local synagogue in Copacabana which had only about 15 people present. You need to arrange this in advance and send them your passports. Sao Paulo has the much larger Jewish community. Uber works here and is what you would use to get to and from this place or a restaurant in the city, but take their Black or VIP cars. It is still less than $5 a ride. If you order a regular car, they might send you a horse, our guide joked.
On our third day, we visited a site known as Parque Lago which is an old mansion with a pretty pool where people like to take pictures. It gives you a sense of the botanical gardens surrounding it. We visited Ipanema beach with its huge waves and a rainstorm going on while we were there. Then to an attraction known as the Carnivale Experience – a one hour tour of the place where they make floats for the Carnivale parades. They show you a video about Carnivale and you get to put on costumes and have a short private samba lesson. At least that’s the VIP experience tour. It was not very expensive and we had a good time. My kids want to go back sometime for Carnivale!
Then to Sugarloaf Mountain which requires 1.5 hours if you have the VIP pass to move this along. I thought about the James Bond Moonraker movie with Jaws eating the cablecar as I rode down the mountain. This is an attraction that is best enjoyed in the morning for city views. It was funny watching our guide bribe people for whatever he wanted such as someone to park his car and fetch it while we were at Sugarloaf. Corruption drives everything here. There is some street food here such as corn cut from the cob and churros and it is safe to get it at the tourist attractions. Brigaderos (pieces of milk-chocolate fudge) are also popular. Dinner at Miranda Restaurant overlooking the Jockey Club with horses racing past you. It’s an Italian restaurant and one of the pleasant surprises about Brazil was how good the pizzas are here, if you like them Italian style. Jst tell the Uber to drop you off on the side of the street with the restaurant and not to try to cross the street by yourself. We did not go to the Ginga Tropical show which is pitched to tourists as a Brazilian cultural experience in a theater; we were told it was long and boring. It would have cost more than the VIP experience at Carnivale Experience.
IGUAZU FALLS AREA BRAZIL AND ARGENTINA
There are nonstop flights to Iguazu here and they go from the international airport but there is a domestic area and it is easy to use the airport here. There is an Amex correspondent lounge as well. Latam Airlines was good and offered Wifi service. Instead of business class, they have the equivalent called Premium Economy with a dedicated cabin with the middle seat empty and overhead baggage space. This is a good way to travel because you don’t have to worry about getting your bags on board and you board and deplane first. They also feed you on board just in case you are hungry while traveling. The flight is almost 2 hours. There are airports in Iguazu both on the Brazil and Argentina sides, and the Brazil terminal was larger and busier than we expected. We didn’t know that Iguazu Brazil has 300,000 people; the Argentine side is much smaller. You need almost 2 days to do this right and although we transferred from one hotel to another in the middle, we were very happy that we did and we felt we got two different experiences, one from each side of the falls.
We went straight to a helicopter tour which cannot be reserved in advance. There is only one helicopter tour company and it is only available in Brazil. We took the 35 minute tour going all the way to Itaipu Dam and of course heading over the Iguazu waterfalls. It’s a great way to see a lot in a half hour. The hotel picked us up at the airport and watched the luggage while we did the tour. Then we went to the hotel and took a late afternoon walk in the national park alongside the waterfalls with a guide. The Belmond Das Cataratas hotel is the place to be for this; you can stay in the park after visiting hours for tourists is over and also get a large head start in the morning. Karen got up early and got some nice professional photos taken by photographers waiting for people at the foot of the falls. Food was also very good at this hotel; the dinner buffet was excellent. We did a stargazing activity at night which was not so great. This is a very nice property with old-world charm. Its facilities were adequate, making it not the greatest place for an extended stay. Our rooms faced the waterfalls but the views were much better from the rooms in the Argentine hotel. I got as close to safari as I wanted with racoons and birds attacking our breakfast; better to sit inside.
At 10am we left to go to the Argentine side. If you ran a zip line between this hotel and the one on the other side, you could reach the place in 2 minutes. But it took 75 in a car and that was at a time when the border crossing was empty. You would not want to be stuck going back and forth here. We transferred to the Gran Melia Hotel, which was also a nice property but not as good. It did have better views of the falls and it was close to the airport on the Argentine side; only 15 minutes by car. This was a smart transfer for us because we had a morning flight out of the Argentine side and did not want to get stuck at a border crossing. We took a cool boat ride that takes you close enough to some falls to get moderately wet and taking a poncho with you is a good idea. They also took some photos and videos but it’s not worth $100 to get them. The boat ride from either the Brazilian or Argentine side is identical and includes a jeep ride through the forest; the actual ride is about half an hour even though the full activity is almost 2 hours. Afterward, we took a walk in the Argentine park visiting the falls and some pretty walking trails for about 3 hours. Even if you are in the Melia hotel, you need to exit the park at closing hours and only get a 15 minute head start in the morning. There are pretty places on both sides to get morning and evening photos. The Melia shows off its beautiful infinity pool viewing the falls but it’s freezing cold during the winter months; there is an indoor pool that is warm. We had dinner along with a small tango show and demonstration. This floor has a club lounge level that is convenient because you can get quick food during the day there. For the Argentine hotel, you need to purchase park tickets online before arrival even just to go to the hotel. Breakfast at the Melia was definitely inferior to the Brazilian property. The hotel has a more modern vibe; the kids preferred it but Karen and I were not as impressed. One nutty thing: there are monkeys living on the roof of the hotel and they will slide your door open from the patio and come inside and raid your mini-bar and grab your passports. You gotta lock the back sliding doors here!
I booked our day tour through Tours by Locals. It was better to have a local guide based in Argentina meet us at the hotel in Argentina rather than come to Brazil and pick us up. The Brazilian hotel does not let guides come onto the property to pick up tourists, so you’d have to take a hotel shuttle to the park exit (20 minutes with all your luggage) and then transfer to the guide’s car. You hope your guide doesn’t get stuck late at the border. Hotel cars get priority crossing the border, so I just had the hotel car transfer me from one hotel to the other. I like the Tours by Local service because you can coordinate with your guide prior to arrival; otherwise you just get whoever the hotel chooses and you don’t know who you will get and you can’t really plan things out in advance. Our guide gave us a lot of advice prior to arrival and I realized I needed to change my plans a whole lot in order not to waste tons of our time in bureaucracy. Our short visit required us to use our time wisely and everything did go like clockwork because it was well planned in advance to avoid surprises. Just buying tickets at the entrance to the Argentine park would have taken 30 minutes had I not taken care of it in advance.
The views from both sides are different and they are both worthwhile to see as long as you have come all this way. Each national park has pretty walking trails and the hotel on the Brazilian side is a special property. We were thrilled to get up and leave our hotel at 9 for a 10:30 flight instead of leaving at something like 7 and worrying about crossing a stupid border on the way to an airport. The reason is that the Brazilian side airport only services flights to Brazil and the Argentine side only services Argentina. We had come from Rio and were flying to Buenos Aires.
I’m getting a stiff neck from the pillows at all these hotels and am thinking of bringing 2 of my own pillows with me instead of 1 (I usually sleep with 2). The next morning we flew from the local airport on Aerolineas Argentinas (the national airline) to Buenos Aires and then after an hour’s connection to Bariloche. Each flight was about 2 hours long. There is no WiFi on these planes and the food is not as good, but the Premium Economy concept is the same. The Iguazu airport is small and easy. Very few souvenirs to buy (get them before passing security); I barely found something to bring back. The domestic airport AEP in Buenos Aires had good food options and a sit-down bookstore that looked like a library. It was overcrowded but it was functional and offered easy connections. There was a lounge but the line was so long to get in that we just abandoned the effort.
BARILOCHE, ARGENTINA
This small airport is easy to use and just a 10 minute drive from the city. We went past the city to the Llao Llao resort (pronounced Shaow-Shaow), about half an hour from the city as well as the Catedral Mountain ski area. Alma De Lago is a 5-star hotel within the city limits, and there is a ski in hotel at the mountain but it gets lousy reviews on Trip Advisor. This resort is the real thing and it is a sophisticated property with great food, rooms and views in a lovely lakeside area. The hotel has a spa, indoor and outdoor killer view infinity pool, good gym and night-time live entertainment. The BBQ trout fish was some of the best ever. When you drive around Bariloche, you would think you were in Switzerland. The Moreno wing is a bit of a walk but it is new and has beautiful rooms with a view.
People here run on a different time schedule, especially since sunrise in August is at 8:30am and sunset is at 7. The Kids Club at night is open from 9pm to 11:30pm. Restaurants are empty before 8pm. I wasn’t thrilled with customer relations here but as long as you are not asking for any favors here, it’s a great hotel.
The kids enjoyed skiing at Catedral Mountain and said it was on par with Davos in Switzerland, with beautiful views of the lake from the mountain. They had a lovely lunch on the mountain and enjoyed their guides. Lifts close at about 5pm. Karen and I hiked 3 hours for a fantastic view over the 7 lakes region and you can see that photo in this posting. Photos at this hotel are best taken in the morning and there is a professional photographer on site. There is a marina about a 5 minute walk away and you can take a boat at 10am to Puerto Blest which is about an hour away and then have a lovely day enjoying the national park area with hikes and waterfalls and a small restaurant with lunch items. I suggest going with a guide. We spent about an hour on our first hike to a nice lake (took the bus back to the restaurant) and then another 2 hours going through the woods to the waterfall and another glacier lake and then met the boat for the ride back. The ride to and from Puerto Blest reminded us of the ride along the fjords of Norway. The only difference was the flag flying at the back of the boat. I had been to this waterfall 35 years ago and it was one of the few things I remembered about the trip. 35 years later I’ve seen many other beautiful things so this wasn’t as special to me as it was then when I was only 22 and hadn’t seen very much, but it was still very nice and it was a different kind of special now coming back with my family. It was a cold winter day requiring hat and gloves; it started snowing just as we got on the boat. I’m sure the area is also fun in summer but it gets a lot hotter.
In Argentina, it’s a good idea to bring lots of cash with you. ATM’s only dispense about $50 at a time usually in $1 bills, and if you pay for things with pesos, you can get 30-40% more for your money than paying with credit card. We went to the city to walk around. Not much to see but it’s a mid-market ski town and there are a few nice places to buy things. We went to the most popular chocolate shop Mamuschka and for $20 I got a whole bag of stuff to take home. The shop is right at the corner of the main street. The look of the place is very German and made Karen feel a bit uncomfortable considering all the ex-Nazis who came here after the war. The airport is small and easy to fly out of with just a few gates. The national airline pretty much runs on time and there is almost shuttle service to Buenos Aires. The flight is a bit over 2 hours.
BUENOS AIRES
From the domestic airport, it’s about 20 minutes to the hotel. Our hotel the Alvear Palace is centrally located. There are 3 top-tier hotels in this area: the Park Hyatt, Four Seasons and Alvear Palace. The hotel has a sister hotel the Alvear Icon on the other side of town but this is much better (the Icon is a more humdrum modern property in an out of the way location and hard to get taxis there). Last time I was here I stayed at the Alvear Plaza which was at the top of Calle Florida. That hotel is under renovation and that neighborhood has become more seedy. The Palace is the iconic property of the area; it’s a grand dame hotel with beautiful public areas, stately rooms and suites, a lovely breakfast winter garden, and good facilities such as pool, gym and spa area, but I was disturbed that most of these facilities closed very early in the evening making them somewhat useless to the tourist. If I were returning, I would look at the other two hotels unless this hotel changes its policies. This hotel was also in a good location to get taxis. There are no real views to be had here.
We took a 7 hour city tour using a guide’s car and covered most or all of the neighborhoods and sites you expect to see. Be sure and see the bookstore that is housed in an old huge theater in Palermo district. The hotel is located near the Recoleta cemetery and it’s in an area of town that is walkable but not particularly pleasant at night. The city looks like Madrid but is in real need of some maintenance. There is an ATM on the corner but I have already told you of its limited utility; the hotel had only $20 in cash at the front desk and I had a stack of $1 bills from ATM’s. We had dinner at Glitter, a kosher restaurant in the Alvear Icon hotel. That steakhouse was rather good, but we actually prefer the meat we get in NYC. The hotel also has a kosher dairy restaurant with a great menu. The restaurants are not profitable but the billionaire owner is an Orthodox Jew who keeps them open to service the community. Orthodox Jews are definitely part of the landscape in this city and over 10% of the business class passengers going to NYC on our flight came from that community. Yeshiva Week is a big festival in the community for high school and college kids who usually go to Florida. They could have a great time in Buenos Aires with tons of kosher restaurants and reasonable prices. We saw lots of people here having a great time.
We went on a 3 hour Jewish heritage tour – this is one of the world’s largest Jewish communities and we saw sites and neighborhoods. We went to several shopping malls; nothing particularly exciting there. Patio Bullrich is the top of the line but it’s mostly international brands. We preferred Paseo Alcorta for its more down to the earth shopping. For leather we all preferred Uru near Patio Bullrich to Rossi y Caruso. Uru can get your jacket made up in 24 hours and you can pay via Zelle and get a 30% discount. We liked their styles better. Elizabeth saw this thing on Tik Tok about a professional shopper in Buenos Aires that takes you shopping and she used the service for about $300 for the day. She loved it and both she and Karen got loot out of it. We went to another kosher restaurant Galope for steak. This was less high-class but also pretty good and the kids loved getting big sizzling steaks at the table that came on a little grill. This restaurant only took cash and I had to go at 9 at night in a dark neighborhood to a dark ATM and come back with $150 in $1 bills to pay. Argentina used to be cheap but not anymore under this new government. Now it is just reasonable. The new guy is their version of Trump; they think he’s nuts but they are so fed up with the socialist system that they are hoping anything new will work and they are giving him rope to try. The only thing here that is cheap is taxi rides. Give the guy a $10 bill to pay for a $5 taxi ride and he has no idea how to come up with the change.
On our last full day, we took a 90 minute car ride to Ranch Ombu de Areco, a dude ranch for horseback riding, lunch and a show featuring some dancing and music. We played some family volleyball and hung out in a lodge with a pool table and had some snacks. There is a nearby village but we ran out of time because we had to get back to the city in time for our evening flight. We started at 10 and got back at 5. We took a stroll along Calle Florida, a pedestrian street which is famous but a bit seedy, and left our hotel about 3 hours before the flight for the 45-60 minute ride depending on traffic. There can be a lot of traffic here and rush hour goes past 8pm. Once you get onto the highway though it’s fine. The international airport is very pretty and you should stop and appreciate it. We were happy we got out of there – some wildcatters started striking in the jetway. It’s about a 10 hour flight to NYC and you leave about 9pm and arrive at about 7am. For this trip, all the places we went to were one hour ahead of NY time, so we had no jetlag and one time everywhere.
A few personal thoughts – for me it was strange retracing the same steps 35 years later and remembering so little from the previous trip. It’s a bit worrying because I hope my kids will remember these trips. I enjoyed visiting friends from law school who live here; they are among the people I know having the most interesting lives. Two of them have ranches in the country; two of them make cheese and wine. One races horses and the other plays polo; one has a 20 year old daughter ranked in the top 20 of up and coming polo players worldwide. Both of them were living in huge grand apartments that would be in the $50 million range in NYC. You could get a nice quality of life here but you have to live in Argentina. People here seem proud of their country and they are not all running to live in America. It’s not easy here with a pretty crappy economy and political instability. I didn’t see all that much new construction in the city center, although I did see things in the outskirts. In Rio I saw more going on. Cars are almost all manual transmission here. I am going to be happy to use tap water and soft toilet paper again.
Now that I’m back from my family trip, I went out on another trip solo to get away from everyone else and not have to worry about anyone else keeping up with me. This trip was to Latvia and Lithuania, and southwest France to a beautiful chateau and some pretty villages. I wanted to make sure to see the Baltic states before Putin tries to take them back. At one point, I was within 30 miles of the Russian border.
BALTICS: LITHUANIA AND LATVIA
Finnair is a good way to connect into the Baltics through Helsinki. It is part of One World with American Airlines. Look out for Saturday night traffic on the Van Wyck expressway going to JFK airport. Seems to be chronic on that night of the week. It is a 7 ½ hour flight to Helsinki that leaves near midnight and arrives in the afternoon; they serve a light dinner on board and a decent breakfast. Their airport is beautiful for connections with lovely shops, art, food shops and décor; the lounge is OK. There are lots of signs in Russian for arriving and transiting passengers, but for the past 2 years there have not been Russians using the airport. I was connecting to Vilnius, Lithuania. Finnair doesn’t have a business class on those short-haul routes and it was cramped; take a second seat and remember that on those planes, the front row is actually the back row because the plane boards from the rear. The front is a baggage hold. Helsinki to Vilnius is 90 minutes in flight.
I spent 48 hours in Vilnius, from Sunday late afternoon to Tuesday mid-afternoon. From the airport to the center of town is a 15 minute ride in a taxi at 35 euros with tip. The Grand Hotel Vilnius is a Hilton property across from cathedral square right in the city center that features a nice indoor pool, jacuzzi, sauna-steam and a very small gym. But a 4 minute walk takes you down a main street to the G9 shopping center and Gym Plus inside where you can buy a cheap day pass and even go in one day for free. Going to the local gyms is a fun way to see how locals do things. Gyms are pretty standard throughout the world these days. It’s a 24/7 facility with very little staff onsite; they don’t expect people to steal or trespass. I wonder if that would work in the US? People would sneak in. I ate all my meals at the hotel; I just didn’t care for the local menus which are heavy on meat and pork. This place feels like Quebec City in Canada. Stigliu street is a nice evening street that runs near City Hall and the main street that runs from there down toward the cathedral square and the hotel. It’s about a 30 minute walking circuit and it gives you a good orientation around the center of town. There is a large convenience store near the hotel on that main street (Pilies) and you can get just about anything there into the late evening.
I don’t know what it’s like outside of the capitol city Vilnius, but what the tourist sees looks pretty close to Scandinavia and things are modern and work well. Locals use debit cards but tourists with credit cards are fine and there are ATM’s dispensing Euros, which is the local currency in the Baltics. Some areas looked exactly like something you would see in the USA. The old city has a pleasant vibe to it and feels safe even at night. I was told that many criminals left in the 90’s because they felt that it was more productive to steal from richer people elsewhere in Europe. The only beefy guy I saw on my visit was one guard (and only one guard) in the gardens of the presidential palace.
I used Tours by Locals a lot for this trip and had a 4 hour city tour to drive around for an hour and then spend the other 3 walking around the old city. The main story for tourists here is the Jewish one. At the onset of World War II, Jews were about 50% of the city and they were also overrepresented in certain rural areas. By the end of the war, over 99% of all the Jews in the country or who were brought there during the war were killed. There was a lot of local participation with the Nazis but there were reasons, which were explained to me. It’s at least interesting to know what was going on there at the time. The Soviets had just occupied the place and then made a deal to turn it over to the Nazis. The locals wanted to ingratiate themselves to the Nazis and were also scared of them. The locals had invited in the Soviets and then came to hate them with Stalin in charge. They were receptive to Nazi propaganda that it had been the Jews that had invited the Soviets in.. It was convenient to offload their guilt on being able to blame it all on the Jews. It was not a sophisticated place but interestingly it was the more educated people who did the most collaborating; the Nazis let the locals keep all the loot they got from local Jews so there were some financial incentives there. So there were some “good” reasons for the locals to be so enthusiastic about participating, and they faced severe punishment if they didn’t. I saw how people all acted during Covid and I really wonder how many people would have stuck their necks out to save Jews if they were sitting in these countries at the time. I even wonder how many Jews would have done anything had they not been Jews. I’m not justifying any of this, but I can understand why people acted as they did, especially seeing how people got so mean to other people during Covid when nobody was pointing a gun at them but they were simply scared of getting sick from another person across the room.
On the city tour, I saw the local university, an artists “republic” district with its own constitution, a few churches, one of which had an elevator offering a great city view (and you’d be surprised how few people are willing to pay the 5 Euros to ride it); a historic district near the city center that shows homes from 100 years ago, some new commercial districts, and some historical sites. The funicular to one of the hills overlooking the city was broken. The Yiddish language is prominent here, with quite a few signs in that dialect. A few hundred Hassidic Jews that speak Yiddish have returned here. Prices for groceries are cheap here compared to western Europe. You can get a protein bar for less than a dollar and a roll of toilet paper for 40 cents.
After the city tour, I took another tour to the suburban town of Traiki, about 40 minutes drive. It has a pretty lake with a castle in the middle and you can walk around the village and shoreline. It’s not a big deal but it’s the only real touristic place to go an hour out of town to see something that looks like the countryside. You can take a boat ride there. The Karaite nation has its home here with a museum and its own synagogue and summer camp. There is a pretty manor house nearby and we stopped by on the way back to the city. The forest comes all the way up to the city center and Vilnius has a lot of green spaces and open squares giving the city a relaxed pleasant feel. It’s not a shopping city as far I can tell.
On my second full day, I did a 3 hour tour of Jewish heritage. Walked around the old city to see a statue of the Vilna Gaon (famous Rabbi) on the plot of land where he lived, the site of the historical synagogue which was huge at the time and which was completely destroyed, a monastery that hid Jews, and a community center filled mostly with bureaucrats dealing with elderly care. Drove 40 minutes to a memorial in the forest filled with circular pits where thousands of people were lined up and shot. Great way to end your visit. There are bagel stores in the city; people think bagels are local items from Poland. Take one for your flight. Uber works in Vilnius and it’s a good way to go to the airport. The prices for Uber are ridiculously cheap if you are used to US prices.
The departure airport terminal is under renovation but the departure area had a nice business lounge. Air Baltic is the regional carrier and it is a good one. Beautiful new and clean Airbus 220 planes. The front row on the right is built for 9 foot basketball players. Great food in business class. Had a 3 course meal on a 35 minute flight over pretty lands to Riga, the capitol of neighboring Latvia. Riga is a larger city and its airport is larger. Taxi into the city is about 30 Euros and about 20-30 minutes depending on traffic. Uber doesn’t work in Latvia. BOLT is another ride service that is popular in both countries. A tourist wouldn’t want to drive here except with GPS; there are no street signs at intersections telling you where you are, except if you are walking in a tourist area. People seemed friendly and speak English. Roads are good; buildings are pretty nice and things look better than they did in Rio or Buenos Aires, or Budapest. But not as good as first tier cities like Vienna. Riga is less polished than Vilnius but it has some beautiful neighborhoods with art nouveau architecture. Nothing is written in Cyrillic and Russians can’t come here. You can cross the border to Belarus about 30 miles away but you have to be in queues lasting for about 10 hours each way meant to discourage people from going.
I enjoy swimming more often when I travel; it helps wake me up and feel loose and avoid the desire to see a chiropractor. Both hotels had spinners to dry bathing suits. Bring a plastic bag to put a wet suit into. Riga has a tram system and has a city feel to it. Stockmann is a Finnish department store with a good store centrally located about 5 minutes walk from the Kempinski hotel, which is probably best all around in town. The hotel had a spa and pool and very nice rooms overlooking a central square with an opera house and gardens. There is a good restaurant right in the middle of the park near the freedom monument which is a central focal point that you cannot miss. I went an hour out of town to visit some typical castles and ate some lunch at a café next to a manor house. It kept us busy for about 5 hours and took up most of my first full day here. Fun fact; plastic water bottles here have lids that stay on. That seems to be the new EU standard.
On my second full day, I did a 4 hour city tour seeing some of the art nouveau architecture in districts with collections of restored buildings. George Soros has renovated a beautiful building to use as a university. Drove through the old Jewish ghetto, cemetery, site of a destroyed synagogue (there is one functioning in the city center as well) and a museum telling you about the Jewish history. It shows the same 20 photos several times and has a mockup of a home you might have found in the ghetto and a train car that shipped people to death and labor camps. I skipped the forest tour; I felt like I already got the idea. Visited a museum that was at the site of a gentile who was not particularly wealthy or successful except that he hid Jews in his backyard during the war. He had an apple tree in his backyard and I was invited to pick one. I took it to the airport and ended my visit with a sweet toast in the lounge to this man. It was on an island just across the river from the city center. His name was Jan Lipke. The airport had a very nice lounge and both Baltic airports had the newest TSA machines scanning passenger luggage. Flight to Paris from Riga is almost 3 hours. Air Baltic does not have in-flight Wifi as of now, so bring reading with you.
I didn’t have the chance to visit the third Baltic country, Estonia. It is supposed to be pretty and maybe next time. I probably wouldn’t have a good reason to return here although if I had to choose, I would say that Vilnius is at least a charming place to visit and seems to be knocking on the world’s door trying to get noticed. Riga was a bit more seedy and I did not have the desire to leave the hotel at night and walk around. One guide from Riga was Australian who had been living in Riga for about 25 years after the fall of communism. The other guide was a Russian who also lived there. She felt that the Latvians were excessively hostile to Russia and that’s why Putin feels threatened by them. She thinks they should tone down their hostility. The Russian embassy in Riga is next to a government building and they put up a mural showing Putin looking like a vampire facing the embassy. And the Ukrainian embassy is just down the block. So that gives you an idea of the local flavor. People in both Latvia and Lithuania feel there is corruption in government but that it only really exists at senior levels. The regular person is not going to bribe a police officer but you might have to go to a doctor’s private clinic to get the surgery from him that you won’t get if you wait at the public clinic. From Riga you can fly to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and then make your way into Russia.
TOULOUSE, FRANCE AND REGION
CDG airport in Paris is not an easy place to transfer flights. In my case, I had to exit the terminal 2D and walk to another building 2Fand then re-enter security. I had 75 minutes to transfer; it took me about 30 minutes and I was literally running my ass off and using the priority lanes in sneakers and shorts and a luggage trolley. The AirFrance lounge in terminal 2F is beautiful with great food and décor and a Claritin spa. It’s a one hour flight to Toulouse on Air France and it is a classy airline. They close the gates 20 minutes before and they take being on time seriously. It was a pretty landing near sunset. After a long run through what should be a small airport, it was a 15 minute taxi ride into town for 40 euros. There were lots of conventions in town and I wound up at an apartment hotel that was not what I really wanted, but for 200 Euros I had a one bedroom apartment with a terrace and breakfast about 2 minutes walk from the train station. It was the Privilege Apartment Hotel St. Exupery. There was a tiny gym and a very small but heated pool. You could walk to Fitness Planet on Bayard Street (you can’t miss it) and get a day pass. I never saw any TV channels in English in France till I got to the airport Sheraton at the end of this visit. There was a small supermarket on Bayard and an Oyster bar serving lots of fish toward the end of the street at the intersection of Strasbourg Blvd. This was an OK place to spend the night before leaving the next morning on a train ride to the countryside.
SNCF tickets can be purchased online and I got them in first class for about 25 euros each way by booking in advance. First class doesn’t go far here; the bathrooms are gross and there is no real food or air conditioning. You could find the NY Times in English in the train station news shop. It’s a 2 hour ride to Souillac, a town of no distinction except that it is about 15 minutes from the castle where I spent the night. A guide arranged by the hotel met me there (Clara) and we visited several area villages and sites. Fun Fact: Stop signs in France say Stop. In Quebec, they insist on writing Arret on them. Rocomadour is a monastery built into rock with 7 chapels and it’s worth a hike down; you can take the elevator back up. Autoire was a pretty village to eat a baguette with the local cheese and to visit a shop that sells mushrooms (the kind you eat). They are dried so you can bring them through customs. Lourresac was a residential village with beautiful valley views. Some of these villages were so pretty; they would make great housing development concepts in the USA. It was nice to drive by happy sheep and not have to hear any stories about dead Jews. Alas, in Toulouse right by the train station there was a public exhibition about the 1944 resistance; World War II is something they don’t let you forget as you go around Europe.
Chateau de la Treyne is about 15 minutes drive from the train station . It has been a castle for hundreds of years but was recently renovated and is a 4 star hotel with a swimming pool and a lovely dining room with excellent food. Its master suite is beautiful. The castle is atop a river with pretty views of the countryside. It doesn’t have a spa or a gym and there is no good reason to spend more than one night there. But it caught my eye years ago in a book of interesting hideaways and I’d wanted to go there. I was not disappointed. You come here to sit at the dinner table with a cheese board featuring 20 kinds of cheese from goats, sheep and cows. It’s all very lovely.
Back in Toulouse, I went on a one hour speed tour with a guide to see the essentials of the city center after being picked up at the train station. In this city, Christians killed other Christians during the Crusades. There is a rebellious streak about this place and they have their own Occitan dialect that appears on street signs. I saw some more churches and there was lots of traffic due to a festival going on that day. It’s a fairly pretty city and the experience staying by the train station was a bit unfair because that’s the seedy section. The 4-star Hotel d’Opera is right on the main city square. I don’t think there is a 5-star hotel in this city, which is to Airbus as Seattle is to Boeing. I got the sense of things and then headed to the airport for a flight to Paris. The Sheraton is the only hotel within the terminal buildings but it is so hard to find that you could be 25 feet from the entrance and have no idea where it is. It has been operating for 29 years according to the concierge and they have never stopped being in a dispute with the airport terminal over signage. Viva La France. My hotel room was good enough and it’s not a bad place to stay overnight. There are grab and go options below the hotel in the train station in the terminal two escalator flights down and I got dinner from there. If you arrive after 8pm there is nothing in the club lounge for you. I wanted to go to this place called Plaine Oxygene which was a water park and sports area about 15 minutes away but I was afraid I wouldn’t figure out how to get a car back to the airport on demand.
CDG airport is a pain on departure even in business class. It’s a 10 minute walk from the hotel to Terminal 2B, which is where the US flights go out if you are not on Air France. First you have the VAT refund. Then I got stuck in the security line for over 20 minutes as they had all these crew members bringing in groceries that had to be scanned. Any normal traveler would have had all those items confiscated and I cannot believe they allow these crew members to lug on 64 oz bottles of crap. All you need is one of these with a mental issue to blow up a plane. So many stupid travelers brining in things they shouldn’t and who should know better in a priority lane. Then another long line at passport control. I was there almost 2 hours before my flight in business class and found the airport less than smooth to get through. The Excite business lounge was pretty good but you still have to the passport line afterward and I’ll bet people don’t expect to get held up there and get very nervous when they do on the way to the gate. The AA plane was old and had backward facing seats. Not all 777’s are the same. The internet by Panasonic was so poor I got a refund later. A good idea is to take a clean shirt in your carry-on bag to put on the plane when you get aboard and a towlette to refresh yourself. I wear shorts in the airport and change into sweat pants with zippered pockets after takeoff. No matter what you do, you’re going to get sweaty by the time you get to the plane. These airports are not always well air conditioned, especially the jetways where you might have to stand longer than you expect.
I was nervous at departure; I had bought an avocado in Toulouse that was rotten. I went to exchange it but the person on line had 20 items in her cart and I had a train to catch, so I just said it was rotten in English and walked off with it. Someone said something in French to the cashier who seemed chill enough with it. But who knows if there is CCTV watching and if someone would stop me at passport control exiting the country over a 1 Euro avocado theft? Maybe they will say something next time I enter the country but for now I was safe.
Nice to be back in the land of soft toilet paper. Cheers!
