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Who would have thought Bulgaristan would have had one of the most interesting McDonald’s menus we’ve encountered so far?  Not me!

We only had two days in Sofia, the capital, so we made sure to hit McDonald’s for dinner the night we arrived.  We saw so many things on the menu we wanted to try that we went back again the next day.  Because this is a double-shot of food sampling, it’s a slightly longer-than-normal video.

Also, this is where we learn that Oksana has been lying to us!  After I turned off the camera, she made a face and said she really didn’t like the Zorba.

“What?!” I asked.  “Why  didn’t you say that on camera?”

“I don’t know…” she replied.

We ended up swapping burgers, so I didn’t even get to eat my McMenu Shrimp Lemon Burger!  I have to admit, too, that the Zorba does whatever the opposite of “grows on you” is.  By the end, I had to force myself to eat the last bite.  Oksana was right on one point: That cheese was really salty!

And don’t worry.  Oksana has since vowed to be more honest on camera.  Let’s hope she doesn’t start doing spit-takes!

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Guess what?  We ate at McDonald’s in Turkey, too.

Not much to say about this one except that we used the trip to McDonald’s as an excuse to go a little farther from our hotel in Sultanahmet.  We rode the metro to the Kanyon Mall and planned to take in a movie, too, but the ticket prices were pretty high and nothing was starting soon, so we just did our McDonald’s thing instead.  The restaurant was so crowded (and obviously trendy) that we weren’t sure we’d even get a table at first.

And dang it!  This is the third week in a row I’ve posted a McDonald’s video with audio problems.  It’s a really good thing this sort of stuff doesn’t bother me.  This time, it wasn’t the fault of the video camera; what you’re hearing is what it picked up in a very noisy restaurant.  No, the fault lies in that little microphone you can see on the table with the red record light.  The red record light that lets us know it’s recording.  The red record light that has nothing to do with whether or not the recording will eventually be saved to the micro-SD card inside.  It’s only happened once or twice so far, but sometimes the mic (a Zoom H1) “crashes” (for lack of a better word.)  Oh, well.  At least I don’t have to type up subtitles this time.

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We really only had one day in Israel, so of course visiting a McDonald’s was high on our list of things to do!  My goal was to go to one of the few kosher restaurants, but they were all closed for Shabbat; we checked.  We lucked out because there was one in the airport and we hit it on the way out, but it didn’t have the infamous “blue arches,” one of the only logo changes McDonald’s has ever approved (supposedly.)

Anyway, we dragged our friend, Michal, to McDonald’s in Tel Aviv with us.  Turned out to be a good thing, as most of the menu was in Hebrew…

Oh, and I think the mic on Oksana’s point-and-shoot is toast.  No idea what happened (raindrop, perhaps?), but this is the second recording where the audio is just horrible.  Good thing we have friends bringing us a brand new Sony TX10 in a few weeks!

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I have to admit that recording this video — even asking to stop at a McDonald’s on the way — felt a little awkward.  I’m self-conscious enough recording videos in a restaurant; doing the same thing with two strangers in the car?  A little odd.  After it was over, though, Tina said I sounded very natural, so maybe it doesn’t come across that bad.

Exercise for the viewer: See if you can spot the continuity error!

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After a long Big Mac dry spell, we finally made it across Africa and found another country with Golden Arches: Egypt!  We ended up eating at McDonald’s again and again before we left the country if only because we kept stopping in for the AC and vanilla cones!  Egypt is hot in August!

This is the first video we didn’t shoot in the restaurant itself.  I find it ironic that we chose not to because the environment wasn’t conducive to good video, but look at the problems this video has!  The florescent lights in our room wreaked havoc with the image; sorry about that.  We weren’t planning to shoot another review, but when we saw the sandwiches on display in Aswan, I had to try one.  We only had Oksana’s point-and-shoot camera with us, however, and it did a horrible job with the audio.  (Not sure why, either, because we shot practically the whole Ecuadorian Jungle video with that little camera!)  These issues bother me, but I’m trying to remind myself that these McDonald’s videos were never intended to be perfect.  That comforts me somewhat.  It also helps when I think about the mayo that both Oksana and I had stuck to our faces in the first segment…

Speaking of awkward food review moments.  Boy, when you’re on camera, the time between taking a bite and swallowing it so you can talk again seems like an eternity.  I should watch the the Food Network and take notes on how they do it.

There’s not much to say about the video that we didn’t already say in the video, but I’ll give it a try:

We spent a little more than a week on the island of Zanzibar, near a tiny village named Bwejuu.  We spent the majority of that time very near our lodge, but we did manage to get out of our hammocks long enough to do a 2-tank dive with the Rising Sun Dive Center.  Glad we did!  The diving staff that worked there were great and we saw or did something new on each of our dives!

Technical stuff:

In some ways, I wish we could reshoot elements of this video.  For instance, our underwater footage is overwhelming blue — so close to monochrome that my normal trick of color-correcting some red back into the imagery didn’t work at all.  In all fairness, I expected this would happen as soon as I learned we would be diving at a depth of almost 100 feet.  Water filters out the colors of light and red is the first to go.  Besides that, it was an overcast day, and the sunlight wasn’t that strong to begin with.  We could see just fine down there, but our point-and-shoot camera can only do so much…  (Too bad we can’t travel with diving lights, too!)

We also recorded our voice-overs outdoors, at the lodge.  The tropical scenery behind us is quite fitting, but the wind noise was something we couldn’t avoid.  Not to mention the birds.

Still, even with these minor problems, I think you’ll get a good sense of what our dives were like when you watch this video.

Notes

Rising Sun Dive Center
Breezes Beach Club and Spa
Our tour review of the Rising Sun Dive Center

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The audio isn’t great in this one — we found ourselves in a McDonald’s that was packed full of screaming kids — but I think you can still understand what we’re saying. I suppose we could have recorded another McDonald’s session; we were in South Africa for over a month, after all. But honestly it takes a lot of effort (and a sort of public performance bravado we have to psych ourselves up for) to whip out a video camera and talk about what you’re eating with people all around you. Once we’ve got it “in the can,” we’re much less likely to go for “take 2!”

A couple mistakes I noticed in editing:

1) The McRoyale isn’t a renamed DOUBLE Quarter Pounder, it’s a renamed DELUXE Quarter Pounder. (Big diff, I know.)

2) I say that the BBQ sauce on the McFeast is the same that’s on the McRib in the States. That may or may not be true, but I wish I hadn’t referred to it as “BBQ sauce,” but rather “Braai sauce.” I didn’t see the burger box copy until later:

BRING ON THE BRAAI
The summer’s always here with the two quarter pounds of pure beef and the unique taste combination of smokey South African Braai sauce and tangy mayo.
Let the good times roll.