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Best Coffee

1. Hanoi, Vietnam
2. Bilbao, Spain
3. Buenos Aires, Argentina
4. Positano, Italy
5. Dalat, Vietnam

A Room with a View

1. Hvar Island Apartments, Croatia. We had a view of the castle, harbor, marble promenade along the sea, and the Adriatic Sea. The sunsets were amazing from our balcony.
2. Bayview, Koh Phi Phi Don, Thailand. The bungalows are terraced into the hillside, giving each room a view from the balcony. At night we would sit on the balcony, read, drink a cold beer and stare out at the Andaman Sea as longboats chugged by.
3. Pensione Maria Luisa, Positano, Italy. The city is built on a cliff that gradually goes down to the water at about a 13% grade. Since we didn’t have anything obstructing our view we had spectacular views of the Tyrranian Sea from our balcony.
4. Pension San Sebastian, Spain. When we walked into our room, we looked straight out at the Bay of Biscay. This was great until the sea turned angry and tore out the balcony below us overnight and knocked on our window a few times. It might have been too close for comfort.
5. Marriott Marquis, New York City, USA. Even though we were using Marriott reward points we lucked out by being upgraded to a room that overlooked Times Square. It was a lot of fun watching the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks battle it out on the JumboTron.

Things We Take For Granted

1. Flushing toilet paper down the toilet
2. Paper napkins instead of waxed paper
3. Stop signs and other means of traffic control
4. Ice
5. Tap water—not only for drinking, but for brushing your teeth too.
6. Black pepper. This is completely non-existent in Chile. It is hard to come by in Argentina, but some places do have it if you ask.
7. Picking up our cell phone and calling home without mortgaging our house.
8. Enjoying the scenery while walking down sidewalks instead of dodging the various piles of dog poop!
9. Wearing perfume instead of DEET!
10. Fresh Water showers

International Headlines for 2007 (what we saw when we had CNN)

1. Myanmar Protests
2. Bhutto Assassination and Pakistan politics
3. Trapped Miners in Utah
4. Disappearance of Madeline McCann in Portugal
5. Iranian President Amadinajad speaks at Columbia University
6. Paris Hilton goes to jail. Paris Hilton gets out of jail. Paris goes back to jail (do we care?)
7. San Francisco Oil Spill
8. Kenya Elections go south, riots breakout
9. Britney Spears melts down, loses her kids
10. Maradona hospitalized in Buenos Aires
11. South Africa wins Rugby World Cup
12. OJ Arrested in Las Vegas sports memorabilia armed robbery
13. US Sub-prime mortgage crisis
14. Dow Jones Tops 14,000
15. Tiger Mauls kid in San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day
16. Australia wins Cricket World Cup
17. Michael Vick Arrested for Dog Fighting Ring
18. Chinese Toy Recalls
19. Marion Jones Confesses to Doping, loses medals
20. Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize
21. Oil Hits $100 a barrel
22. Anna Nicole Smith found dead. Who is the Baby Daddy of little Dannilyn?