Ronks, Pennsylvania + Zanzibar, Tasmania
It's a guest googler episode, and we are so excited to have Dinty Herrera here with us. If you are part of the 10K Dollar Baes, you have likely seen her name pop up, as she is one of our most engaged listeners. Oh, and she's Lulu's mom! Who besides being absolutely adorable and a blast to have around, has made Alison and Lulu dinner for after they record the episode. It's a dish of filipino vegetables, including a bean that looks like it has four wings...? So curious about this, but also really hungry as she describes the bean and the dish, with hand gestures that you can't see, because it's a podcast.
Alison is obsessed with benefit's the POREfessional face primer. It's so good at making her skin look better that she doesn't even need foundation. Score! Our guest googler Dinty is obsessed with fried basil leaves. She made some for Alison and Lulu and now they are obsessed too. They are thinking of grinding the fried basil leaves up, and making a seasoning out of it. You know, to put on popcorn. Stay tuned to our insta stories to see how that turns out. Lulu's long-running obsession is The Divine Comedy. The band, not Dante’s narrative poem. Lulu has listened to The Divine Comedy for ages, and so you have a frame of reference, she says they are like a mix of Queen and Burt Bacharach. So there you go. Give it a listen!
Dinty's wish is to see the Northern Lights, now she has to decide whether she is going to Iceland, Norway, or Sweden to take it the experience. Alison is on a makeup streak, as she is wanting this color changing foundation by Taylormade. It goes on white and instantly self-adjusts to match your exact skin tone. And it's now only $8 on Amazon, so totally worth a try! Dinty's commentary on this feature is both hilarious and informative. Gotta love our guest googlers. Lulu is wishing for something not real. She wants an airline membership where you get free overweight luggage allowance. It always seems that you just need a few more pounds. Or twenty more pounds, really. As our guest googler so aptly puts it "you can't travel with only one pair of shoes, like who are they kidding?" So very true. Of course she could have just wished for a membership in a time-share of a private jet, which would have as much luggage allowance as she'd want. Because that's a real thing. So she's changing her wish to that.
Have you ever heard of this place? Alison only heard of it because of the Red Caboose Motel which has thirty-eight cabooses, and each one is decorated in a unique way. There's the couples' caboose, the queen's caboose, the honeymoon caboose, and if you aren't laughing at the word caboose yet, then you are clearly more mature than we are. Congratulations. Alison rents ten of them, because she wants to see multiple cabooses. I can't. I just can't stop laughing. She grabs breakfast at the on-site restaurant, Casey Jones where she gets "The Hungry Engineer". Next she heads to the Li'l Country Store and Miniature Horse Farm to visit their little horses and little goats. She even gets to feed them some baby carrots!
Apparently she is in Amish Country, so she has to take an Amish Buggy Ride with Ed's Buggy Rides. They take a tour through Pennsylvania Dutch country landscape, and get to observe daily Amish life along the way. While a lovely, scenic day, it’s been an inexpensive one so far Alison found the most expensive place around to have dinner, TÉ at The Inn at Leola. She has the Five Course Prix Fixe Menu with the Wine Pairing. Even with that magnificent meal, she is still nowhere near $10,000. So what is Alison going to do? Well I’ll tell you. She's going to buy a white miniature horse named Snow for $2000. But now she has to get Snow back to Florida from Pennsylvania, so she found a deal (-ish?) on a used horse trailer and rents a uhaul truck. She makes it to $10,000, but to be fair, SHE BOUGHT A HORSE.
Lulu informs us that Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania which has many small islands and two large ones. It is known as a "Spice Island", thanks to its production of cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and black pepper. She stays at the Park Hyatt Zanzibar .She was wanting to stay at a non-chain hotel, but she couldn't tell if others had air conditioning, so she went the safe (and luxurious) route and got the Royal Residence Suite, which comes with a 12-seat dining room. Just in case.
She looks for a car service, but couldn't find one of our usual go-to's in Zanzibar. Luckily she found “Eddie Taxi Driver Zanzibar” on TripAdvisor. She could only find pricing for airport transfer, so she did some math. Time it takes to get to hotel from airport —> take the time she wants to hire him —> divide by time it took to reach from the airport —> multiply by airport transfer charge. Whew, something like that. Anyways...Eddie drops Lulu off at a Spice Tour where she gets to see spices harvested, eat lunch on site, and buy spices for souvenirs.
After that she heads on a tour of Changuu Island or Prison Island which used to be a prison for rebellious slaves in the 1860s, then was a quarantine island for yellow fever, now it has a tourist resort and houses a collection of endangered Aldabra giant tortoises. Lulu is killing it on this day as she heads out for her third tour, a walking tour of Stone Town, the old part of Zanzibar City which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. On this tour she specifically requests to pop into Zanzibar Curio Shop which is apparently like Aladdin's Cave.
It's a bit curious, but she has to buy some Merrell Water Shoes in order to go to dinner. Say what? The Rock is a restaurant on its own little rock island. When you head to dinner it is low tide, so you step on guide rocks through the shallow turquoise waters. After dinner it is high tide, so you take a boat back to shore. That is very clever because in addition to her tagliatelle and green curry stew, Lulu enjoys two cocktails. A boat ride seems smart…and safe. Still in the mood for food, she spends the rest of her day wandering the food market at Forodhani Gardens.
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