I’m suffering greatly this week. Pulled in to the peripheral of a military planning conference, I’m suffering only minor flashbacks of my glory days as a Southeast Asia exercise coordinator. The bright side of enduring some really boring sea stories and being repulsed when people ask if I am a Reservist? Well I have finally learned that life as a visitor to Dakar can be pretty fantastic. Additionally, this conference feeds into my new research on maritime security, so I feel justified in partaking in the fantastic view.

 

Behold the conference site. It’s only a mile from my house- and while I have run by this hotel a zillion times in the past year, I had no idea how well the Beautiful People could vacation in Dakar. I want to pitch a tent by this pool and move here. Kinda. Actually, no I don’t.

I’m not exactly moved by the African Renaissance Monument, but this is the view from our glass-walled conference room. The waves crash quite high in February (note: this is the time to visit Senegal), so I have no idea how anyone is concentrating on the scheduling items being briefed this week…

My seat at the conference. I’ll explain why I was excited by this sight below.

So many of you know that my Dad is a retired airline pilot (probably the least significant thing in his repertoire). This means that growing up, I was surrounded with endless amounts of the following:

• Hotel-size soaps and shampoos
• Hotel stationary and pens (my favorites were the Hotel Nikko de Paris and the Golden Tulip in Amsterdam)
• Hotel mini sewing kits
• Hotel shower caps
• Hotel towels- I’m not sure that we ever bought a single bath towel in our house. Instead, I would step out of the shower and reach for the nearest plush super-sized terry goodness that had “Sheraton” or “Dhahran International Hotel” emblazoned across it. For real. 
• For good measure, we also had plenty of bagged peanuts from Northwest Orient, wine glasses from Republic Airlines First Class and silverware with the Eastern Airlines logo inscribed at the base.

Why am I outing my Dad for all of his pilfered items that stocked my house as a kid? Here’s why: in doing so, Dan kind of created a bit of a monster. See, as I sat down at this conference table in Dakar, I immediately took stock of the pens and stationary in the conference room and thought, “Cool! I am totally bringing this stuff home!”

Yes, I do get excited by hotel logo-ed paraphernalia . I can’t help it. It’s in my blood. Case in point: in 1996 I was on a backpacking trip with some friends and my brother around Europe (little bro was 14 at the time). We took a ferry from France to Ireland on Irish Ferries- and when we disembarked in John Boy pulled me inside.

“Hey, check out what I got.” he said, as he dug down into his massive backpack.
What does he produce? That’s right, a hand towel with “Irish Ferries” emblazoned across the front.

“Good Lord”, I say to my him as I in turn rummage through my own pack. You see where this is going- that’s right, I had snatched the other Irish Ferries hand towel from our cabin.

I’m not saying that I am proud of these things, but I still think they are neat (and free) souvenirs.

Okay so with that Hallinan sea story accomplished, I will wait to be arrested by the morality police by posting a few more sweet pics of Dakar. See, the bright side to hanging out with “new people” who tell lots of sea stories is that you can accompany them to the nicer places of in your town. In this case, such a trip was a bit overdue for me. I have been showing you too many photos of trash lately:

Megan: 1, Dakar: 333 (only half evil).