World Heritage: 2009 in Review

Well, this year I made it to two World Heritage sites, the lowest total since 2001. I sort of saw that coming, given the location of this year's conferences. Still, I was happy to make it to these two sites:

1. Augustusburg Castle in May
   
2. The Lavaux Vineyards in September
   

The list is up to 890. I didn't pick up any from new inscriptions again this year. My 46 out of 890 gives me 5.2%, marginally up over last year's 5.0%. I don't anticipate a big haul next year, but one conference near an iconic World Heritage Site (on the level of Stonehenge) intrigues me. Stay tuned...

Halfway to France (and Back)

Last month, I told you about biking halfway to Mexico. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of biking halfway to France. I borrowed a bike from Lausanne's free bike rental program and headed along the lake to Vevey, about 10-12 miles away. It looks like if I had continued around the circumference of the lake, another 10-12 miles would have put me in France. I suppose biking all the way around the lake would make a good vacation, but since all I had was a free day after four days of conferences, this trip was a nice diversion.



For a more detailed analysis of my route, you can check out my Everytrail post. Here's what I had to say about the ride there:

I should have taken the Metro to the Ouchy station near the lakefront, but I let the guy talk me into riding my bike. Of course, I couldn't understand his directions in broken English and ended up riding all over the place before getting out of town.

Once I got out of town, however, the ride was great. There is a main road near the lake, which has bike lanes most of the way, but occasionally there were detours. At one point, I rode through a medieval town center, and at another point, the route rose through the terraced vineyards that hug the coast. I could have reached out and grabbed the grapes. (I didn't.)

When I got to Vevey, I visited the tourist information center, ditched the bike, and headed out. The woman in the information center claimed that there was nowhere to lock my bike, but that I didn't need to. She also sent me to a mall when I asked about souvenirs, so I'm not sure of the quality of her advice. I locked the bike to a sign, which seemed to work. I had lunch at a Thai restaurant, bought some postcards and visited Charlie Chaplin's grave. All in all, a successful visit.

On the ride back, I tried to minimize my detours, not entirely successfully. I had an idea of leaving my bike at Ouchy, then returning for it via Metro after rush hour was over. I really wish I had done that; I meandered all over town trying to find a good route back to Roule Lausanne. Eventually, I did and left tired after my longest bike ride yet.

I should note that both the tourist information center and Chaplin's graves are waymarks, which allowed me to find them more easily. I now have the "grave of a famous person" category. While that doesn't help me with waymarking bingo, it does bring me up to 251 waymarks.

Also, the Lavaux vineyard terraces are a World Heritage Site, which makes them the 46th that I have visited, and the 2nd for 2009.

Finally, here is a link to a Picasa album I made up with some selected pictures from my trip. Now it's off to change my remaining Swiss Francs into British Pounds and find the gate for my plane...

Switzerland

Biking Santa Barbara

 

I rented a bike when I was in Santa Barbara for a conference earlier this month. I got in over 80 miles of biking in 4 days, so it was more than I'm used to doing. One day I did 27.9 miles, a personal best (and an exhausting one). The weather was cool, the terrain was flat, and the bike paths were well marked -- all conducive to lots of riding. Two of the days I just rode around near campus on breaks from the conference. Two of the days, on the other hand, I had free afternoons and challenged myself to ride from campus to downtown Santa Barbara.

Both times I did some waymarking...I made it up to 250 categories (from 202 in February). I thought the bike would be great for waymarking, but there were so many waymarks close together, the bike was a nuisance. (Or the waymarks were.)

 
 
 

Halfway to Mexico (and Back)

For Christina's birthday, we drove the bikes down to Coronado and rode down to Silver Strand State Beach. When I looked at the satellite view of the trip, I realized that the ride had covered about half the distance from Coronado to Mexico (hence the title of the post).

The ride is really beautiful, with San Diego Bay on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. The beach is also very nice -- it's actually two beaches, one on each side.

All in all, a fun excursion, and a fitting way to celebrate Christina's birthday, since she got us on the biking kick starting with our trip to Holland almost a year ago.

 
 
 
 

Bike To Work

 

On Monday, we drove down to Coronado and rented bikes. On Tuesday, I biked to work, following the above path. It's a lot easier in California, what with the bike lanes and such. I also biked to work on substantially the same path the following two days -- I'm not going to record any more trips to work unless I take a different way. I have one idea for that, but the path depicted above has been easy enough -- about 3.5 miles each way, no incredibly awful stretches of uphill biking.

World Heritage: 2008 in Review

Well, as predicted last year, I broke my streak of visiting 5 world heritage sites per year. Unfortunately, it was in the wrong direction, as I only visited 4.

1. Istanbul in April.
   
2. Nancy, France in October.
   
3. Naracoorte Caves in Australia in November.
   
4. Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne in December.
   

The list is now up to 878. Sadly, none of the sites inscribed in 2008 were ones I could claim retroactively, so my total is now 44 out of 878, or 5.0%.

2009 is not particularly promising. I could hit sites in the US and UK again, perhaps. I have a trip planned to Cologne. Although I've already seen the cathedral, there is a site in the outskirts that I could add. My Asia trip is to Tokyo, but my preliminary scouting indicates no sites right around the city. Of course, I never know what the year will bring...

 

 

 

 

Tiny Penguins

Merry Christmas, and please enjoy these pictures of our last evening in Australia. We drove to Phillip Island, a couple of hours south of Melbourne to see the Penguin Parade. On the way, we stopped for dinner. We were just looking for a quick fish & chips meal, but we ended up at a relatively fancy restaurant with a nice view of the ocean. Too bad we had to eat and run, but the weak Australian dollar made it a reasonably priced experience.

We then headed to the Nobbies Centre, which was closed, despite what they had told me over the phone. The one bright spot was the ability to photograph any stray penguins, which was forbidden at the penguin parade itself.

The penguin parade itself happens at sunset when the tiny penguins come back to the beach to rest for the evening. I am not usually a sucker for cute animals, but there are few things more adorable than a foot-tall penguin waddling up the beach, being bowled over by a foot-and-a-half-tall wave, and struggling to its feet to waddle some more.

 

 

 

Melbourne Aquarium

The conference dinner was at the Melbourne Aquarium. Once again, still pictures did not quite do justice, so I present for you this video:


The aquarium seemed OK, but also seemed to fall into the category of "you've seen one aquarium, you've seen them all."

National Gallery of Victoria Waterfall Window

The National Gallery of Victoria, where we saw the Gursky exhibit, had a neat waterfall window. A picture didn't really do it justice, so I shot this short video.



I didn't notice the anatomically correct statue until later.

Ned Kelly

While looking over our pictures, I realized I left out one establishment from my "Dining Out in Adelaide" post. On our last night there, we went to "Ned Kelly's Restaurant" in North Adelaide.

I think that the US and Australia may be more like each other than they are like any other countries. They're both big, new, wild countries -- the main difference is that Australia is emptier and newer. One of the similarities is the propensity to turn outlaws into heroes.

Ned Kelly is a 19th century Australian outlaw, whose most amusing feature is that he prepared for his last stand by donning a set of homemade armor. Thus, "Ned Kelly's Restaurant" is a cheesy testament to Australiana. Think Outback, but based on Australians' idea of Australia, rather than Americans'.

I had the kangaroo, emu and camel. Christina passed on the camel; wise choice. But the kangaroo was tasty. Too bad they were out of wallaby.

 

Dining Out in Adelaide

Well, we're back in the US. "Only" a five hour flight left. Here are some pictures of places we ate in Adelaide. We went to Coopers Brewhouse. Coopers is the local South Australia ale, which I enjoyed a lot that week. The brewhouse served good food, too. We also enjoyed sandwiches at Vili's, our old friend Sushi Train, and the Adelaide Central Market.

 

 

 

 

Day at the Beach

As we sit waiting for them to call our flight out of Melbourne, please enjoy these pictures from Wednesday (last week), our beach day. It was colder than I expected (yeah, I should have done more research), so we didn't spend as much time at the beach as I thought we would. Still, we headed south of Adelaide to Noaralunga. It's amazing to me that you can have a nice day like that, a beautiful beach, and the only large group of people were kids on a field trip. Australian kids get the best field trips!

 

 

Cleland Conservation Park

Last Tuesday, we went to Cleland Conservation Park, outside Adelaide. It was a nice opportunity to interact with native Australian wildlife, in a semi-natural setting. We got our picture taken with a koala, but I'm going to have to wait until we get back to scan that.

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Echidnas are strange animals.

 

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Here is Christina feeding a wallaby. I think -- since the animals roam relatively free, it's not always easy to figure out which is which.

 

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Here she is feeding a kangaroo.

 

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Here's the Tasmanian devil. I think this was my favorite.

 

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See! I feed things too!

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I defy you to look at this picture and not wander around for a while saying, "Maybe a dingo ate your baby."

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We bought two bags of feed, which at first seemed like too much, but the waterfowl seemed grateful when we needed to get rid of it at the end of our visit.

Around Adelaide

OK, now I'm more than a week behind, but here's a few images from Sunday (Nov. 30) and Monday (Dec. 1) in Adelaide. We really enjoyed the week we spent there.

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They had a number of interesting memorials and statues; here is one.

 

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We did some shopping at the Sunday Rundle Street Market.

 

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One of our favorite places to eat in Adelaide was Sushi Train and its sister establishment, Sushi Train Express.

 

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The South Australian Musuem had a quite nice collection, but it was interesting seeing them trying to reconcile their century and a half of collection history with modern standards of what is culturally appropriate.

 

Saturday Drive

Here are some pictures from our Saturday drive. As predicted previously, I'm hopelessly behind -- I've just gotten to posting the pictures just before we got to Adelaide, and we only have a day and a half left of our week here before heading back to Melbourne. Anyway, I think the highlight of the day was Naracoorte Caves National Park, an Australian fossil site and part of a World Heritage Site. We saw some animatronic reconstructions of prehistoric Australian mammals (I should post a video so you can hear the grunting) and toured a couple of caves. On the road, we took a look at a number of site affected by Australia's decade-long drought. We came across the first one by accident...we were looking for a resting point, and wondered what had happened to the lake promised on the sign.

 

 

 

Friday Night in Mt. Gambier

At the rate I'm going, I'm not going to catch up on our travels before we leave Australia. Here are some pictures from the place we stayed the second night of our drive from Melbourne to Adelaide. It's called Clarendon Chalets, and it's just outside Mt. Gambier. It was basically a little cottage on a farm. After we got in, we got some groceries, Christina made dinner and a fire (in my defense, I had done the day's driving), and we watched The African Queen.

 

 

 

 

Friday Drive

 

We took a picture at our B&B before hitting the road on Friday. We saw various natural rock formations off the Great Ocean Road.

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The Twelve Apostles.

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London Bridge, which became London Arch in 1990 when the part connecting to land collapsed.

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Bay of Islands.

At the Big Lobster

Jon at the Big Lobster
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

We haven't seen as many "big" objects this time through Australia, but this was one of them. This was on Saturday's drive to Adelaide. The Internet access in the lounge at the Adelaide Hilton is doled out in 15 minute chunks, but at some point we'll break down and spring for the in-room access. At that point, I'll post more pictures.

Thanksgiving in Australia

We had a quite non-traditional Thanksgiving (again). We drove out of Melbourne, visited the National Wool Museum in Geelong, picked up the Great Ocean Road where we saw some amazing deserted beaches, and ended up at our B&B where our host used a stick to keep a horny koala away from a mother trying to protect her cub.

 

 

 

 

Arriving in Melbourne

 

We got into Melbourne yesterday. We planned to burn most of the rest of our Marriott points for a couple of nights here to recover. That's quite a flight. After checking into our hotel, we walked to this espresso bar/pasta joint and had some of the best pasta I've had in quite some time.

Tomorrow we pick up the car and head out on the Great Ocean Road.

Red state?

Despite the Obama win, some parts of North Carolina are as I remember.

Fast Trains

 

That's 199 mph, if you can't read the GPS receiver.

European Countries

Well, I'm back in the States, so it's time to visit my countries visited map. I may have more interesting things to say about Holland later, but right now I'm jetlagged. So it's easier just to update the map. Rather than a medium-small hole where Holland is, my map of Europe now has a small hole for Luxembourg. I actually have no clear plans for visiting any more of these countries. The conference I go to in Europe in the spring is going to be in Germany and France the next two years. Hmm...in 2010, it'll be in Nice, which is a 23 minute car trip from Monaco. So there is that.

Waymarking Santa Barbara

Last year, I spent my free afternoon at this conference in Santa Barbara geocaching. This year, it was time for some waymarking. I was particularly interested in increasing my category count. Yesterday, I told you I was at 73; now it's 95. Here is an assortment of pictures from an afternoon of waymarking. Some are interesting; some are mundane -- like the waymarking categories. Annoyingly, some require me to put my GPS receiver in the picture in order to get credit. Enjoy.
 
 
 
 

Snorkeling La Jolla Cove

 

Yesterday, Christina, some co-workers and I went to La Jolla Cove to do some snorkeling. I took along the waterproof camera case Christina had gotten me for Christmas last year. It's really a neat device -- a complicated mechanical setup that gives you access to all of the camera's functions, while protecting the camera.

I assumed it would work, but I was a little nervous. I needn't have been -- it survived the snorkeling completely dry. I took a lot of bad pictures, and a couple that turned out well. When we got back, I figured out how to set the camera in "underwater" mode -- I'll have to remember that for next time.

Peace Pole

We're out here in California. I don't have anything exciting to report, so I thought I'd share pictures of us at a peace pole. Just another random thing I wouldn't have found had it not been for waymarking.

 

 

Earthcaching Banff

Since Christina and I had previously visited Banff, I figured I was under no pressure to "see the sights" yesterday on my free afternoon. So I decided to do some geocaching, which led me to sights I would not have ordinarily seen.

I actually found one geocache on Sunday -- about 50 feet from the conference site. After failing to release Free State Mover #3 in Puerto Rico, Malaysia, Singapore, England and Turkey, I finally set it free. It should have an easier task of getting back to Maryland than its European predecessors.
 
In a previous post, I claimed that "virtual" caches had been eliminated. That's not entirely true -- there is a special type remaining: the Earthcache. Unlike the old virtual caches, which could be of anything the submitter found interesting, Earthcaches have to teach something about geoscience, and it has to be approved by the Geological Society of America. This approach seems like a good compromise -- it allows caches in sensitive areas where you can't put a physical cache, but it limits their proliferation to educational sites.

The first cache I visited yesterday was, in fact, an Earthcache. It was the Banff Upper Hot Springs. Christina and I had visited there, so I didn't feel a need to bathe in the springs this time. Good thing -- paramedics were treating a woman, and the line of people waiting to get in the pool was backing up.
 
My second cache was another Earthcache and another set of hot springs. As it turns out, this set of hot springs is no longer open for bathing, but it is an important place in Canadian history. When trying to figure out what to do with the springs, the Canadian government decided that they should be publicly owned. This decision eventual led to the establishment of Canada's first national park.
 
Looking for another cache, I was led to my third Earthcache of the day, Limestone Hoodoos in Banff. A hoodoo is a particular geological formation (pictured) created by uneven erosion of sediment. After taking some pictures, I headed out down the Hoodoo Trail. A sign said that walk was 1 km and about half an hour. I turned around when I reached 1.55 km (as the crow flies) -- I'm not sure what the 1 km represented.
 
I decided the day of geocaching wouldn't be complete without finding a physical cache, so I headed to Jumpin' Johnson Lake. The cache was about one-quarter of the way around the lake, but I continued to walk the whole way around. While walking, I was listening to a geocaching podcast where they had a call from a listener who had reached 500 caches about two months of caching. Given that yesterday's haul of 4 matched my all-time high, I am clearly in a different category from people like that. (I'm at 49 total after 14 months.) But I'd rather use geocaching as a jumping off point -- I wouldn't have come to Johnson Lake without it. As a result, I got some nice scenery and some much-needed exercise.

I almost got more exercise than I bargained for. As I had almost completed my circumnavigation of the lake, the trail dead-ended at the lake. I was afraid I was going to have to go all the way back around. First, however, I tried doubling back and seeing if I had taken the wrong fork. As I got on a more promising path, I noticed a rushing steam that would block a walk around the lake. Fortunately, a few minutes later, I saw the bridge that would allow me to complete my hike.

Hockey Night in Canada

 
Even though the meals here are included with my room rate, I haven't been able to bring myself to hit the dining hall for dinner. Last night, I walked into town with the goal of watching Canadians watch hockey, as well as grabbing a buffalo burger. Less than a block after reaching Banff's main drag, I found a bar that was showing the game (in fact, showing the Red Wing's first goal) and advertising a special on buffalo burger. On the other hand...there were no customers in the bar. I kept going.
  Bruno's looked more likely. There were a handful of people in there watching the game. After a check of the menu determined the availability of buffalo burger, I headed inside. As it turned out, there was one vocal Red Wings fan inside; the rest of the patrons had the grim air of people watching a bunch of foreign teams contest the championship of their national sport. At one point, the Red Wings fan started yelling at the TV when Wayne Gretzky appeared -- though I doubted his claim that he was now better than Gretzky at hockey. Other than that, the highlight was when the drunk French Canadian a couple of barstools down from me tipped over and smashed into the floor. After the manager determined there was no need for an ambulance, he told the guy's buddy they had to leave.

By the end of the 2nd period, the Red Wings were up 4-0, a microphone stand had appeared in the bar, and even the Red Wings fan had decamped for the sushi place next door. It was time to leave, so I walked to an ice cream shop that was foolish enough to accept the US dollar at par, and then headed back to my room.

Deer Prudence

Last night I headed out from my room to the "general store" at the Banff Centre. I had a less than thrilling day -- most recently, I had discovered that the phone in my room reeked of beer.

When I opened the door to the building, I saw two deer grazing not fifteen feet away. Suddenly my mood improved. I continued on to the store. I figured that the deer would be gone by the time I got back. Instead, there were now three deer. I rushed back to my room, dropped off my purchases, and grabbed my camera. When I came out, there was an employee talking to someone. I walked past him to take a picture of the deer (there were now two). The employee then advised me that it was safer to take the pictures behind glass.

He said that the deer ordinarily would just run away, but when they were in an enclosed space, they might just try to run through you. He said they knew what [pretends to aim gun] meant, and it was pretty similar to [pretends to aim camera].

As I headed inside to take the second picture below, I heard him say to the other guy, "Of course, back in the Yukon, we get a deer this close, it's dinner time."

 

 

I Have a Canadian Stamp in My Passport, Part Two

Six years ago (to the day!), I posted about finally getting a Canadian stamp in my passport after years of disappointment. I assumed that the stamping had something to do with Quebecois particularism. But last night, when I arrived in Calgary, they stamped my passport (without my having to ask). I changed passports 5 years ago, so I now have a stamp in my new passport. This new passport has been neglected by Calgary (2003) and Vancouver (2006) as well, so I have no idea why it got stamped. Either the Canadians have tightened things up, or it was at the whim of the guy with the stamp.

About two-and-a-half years ago, I sent my passport in for additional pages. They tripled the size of my passport. There is not always a clear reason for where officials choose to stamp, but they have uniformly avoided the third section. As the passport has gotten more crowded, the officials are more likely to stamp on the first "available" page, although each official has a different definition of "available".

Pages 8-12 have been completely filled up (1-7 are not for stamps). Then we switch to letters (the way they added the new pages is a little strange). A-C were full, and now the guy in Calgary finished off D. There's one space in E -- we'll see if that's the next one to go -- two on F, then it's pretty full until we get to L (though I bet the Brits would be willing to squeeze a stamp or two in). I despair whether there'll be a chance to finish it up through X and move on to the other new section before 2013.

Istanbul Virtual

When I was in Istanbul a couple of weeks ago, I didn't expect to do any geocaching. First, there aren't any "normal" caches within 10 miles of the city center. Second, Turkey wasn't a country where I felt super-comfortable rummaging around for hidden containers.

The only two caches near where I was staying were virtual caches, which as I've mentioned before is a now-obsolete form of a cache that contains no physical container. I had no expectation of finding either one -- one was on the Asian side of Istanbul, and the other was at a bridge connecting the two sides. Since I had no plans to go to Asia, how could I find them?

As it turns out, our conference excursion included a cruise on the Bosphorous. I turned on my GPS, and was wondering how close we'd get to the cache at the bridge. After all, it was a one-hour cruise, and I knew we had to turn around at some point.



As you can see from the tracking, I got pretty darn close! In fact, by the standards of virtual caches, that counts as a find! It's kind of neat that the cache essentially was our turn-around point.

I snapped this picture of myself at the cache location.



This find does nice things for my countries-cached-in map. (Click for the full-size version, where you can see I get credit for Singapore and Puerto Rico.)



Unfortunately, finding a virtual cache means I don't have a chance to drop off any geocoins. I plan to take care of that next month in Canada.

Stuck in my hotel...

...and enjoying every minute of it.

I got in to my hotel in Istanbul about 7pm yesterday after an interminable taxi ride through pollution and traffic. Since I have today free, I called the concierge to see about arranging some sort of tour. I figured I'd be happier in a bus (hopefully air-conditioned) than walking around and breathing pollution.

No luck. The "Tour of Turkey" bicycle race is starting today, so the roads around the hotel are closed. They could put me on a Bosphorus cruise at 1, but since the conference tour includes a Bosphorus cruise, I think I'll pass. I've spent the past 7 days working, traveling, or both. The conference opening reception is tonight, so I will technically be working tonight, but otherwise a day to relax doesn't sound too bad.

My hotel room is very nice. The desk clerk apologized for not being able to upgrade me to the executive floor, so they gave me a corner room (and free breakfasts). One window has a view of some allegedly fashionable neighborhood of Istanbul, and the other looks out on the Bosphorus. I slept very soundly, despite an excessively firm bed and dragged myself downstairs before the breakfast buffet closed at 11. I plan to spend the rest of the day ensconced in the room enjoying the Internet connection.

Hilton Istanbul

The Merchant of Venice

Stratford

Today eight of us headed to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform The Merchant of Venice. We had dinner in a pub first and then went to the play. I had never seen or read the play. Beforehand, one of my colleagues commented that it was anti-Semitic. I promised to explain afterwards why it wasn't.

Of course, afterwards, I realized it was. I had a fairly tenuous argument that I decided not to push. Nevertheless, I'm sure someone has retold the story from the standpoint of Shylock; I think that could be a fairly sympathetic story about how the Venetians subverted the justice system to deprive him of his property and force him to convert to Christianity. It would, at least, be historically accurate.

The play was good. Not great, but good. Some of the actors seemed sub-par, but others were excellent. Still, it was hard to beat as a way to spend an evening in this part of the UK.

I took a few pictures; please enjoy.

Countries Visited

I was updating my Wikitravel home page, and I decided to check that the links to other pages were working. This, in turn, reminded me that it was time to update my countries visited map.



Map generated by World66.

Since my last update, I've visited Malaysia and Singapore. The mostly likely country to be added in 2008 is Turkey; we'll see.

All Arted Out

Christina and Mondrians at MoMA
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

Yesterday I headed up to the Guggenheim. I had planned to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but in the end I felt like something more modern. As it turned out, most of the museum was closed for installing a new exhibit...that was fine with me. Admission was reduced to $8, and I still got to see a wide variety of "name" paintings from the late 19th and early 20th century. On the other hand, the paintings seemed to be the "other" paintings by great artists...nothing too inspiring. I did like one Picasso, though. The most impressive thing about the museum was probably the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building.

Afterwards, I turned on my GPS and discovered I was about a third of a mile from a geocache, which looked to be right on Fifth Avenue. As it turned out, it was a "virtual" cache right in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was another cache another third of a mile away, so I headed into the park to catch it. If the park was semi-deserted the previous day in the cold, it was almost empty in the cold and rain.

Then I took the subway back to Midtown to meet up with Christina after her conference. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has free admission after 4pm on Fridays, so we took advantage. I thought the collection of paintings was the most inspiring I've seen on this visit, with fabulous works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Johns and Lichtenstein.

I was, however, by the end of the day, essentially done with art museums, at least for this trip. I saw a lot of great paintings, but I'm going to turn my attentions elsewhere this afternoon.

Everybody's a Critic

Christina in front of BXL cafe
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

I have been my photos to the blog via Flickr, since that seems to be the easiest way when I don't have access to my own laptop. After I posted yesterday's Central Park picture, I got this comment:
"Nice composition--love the steps; otherwise rather mundane and not too exciting colors. Keep at it, friend! :-)"

Of course, it was from someone I don't know. From my perspective, it seems odd to criticize the colors -- that's not my department, that's Mother Nature's.

After trying a variety of dining options from guidebooks that ended up disappointing, we decided last night to try a place that I had not seen in a guidebook -- rather, it had caught my eye while walking back to the hotel yesterday. It was a Belgian restaurant called "BXL cafe". It was probably the best food we've had yet this trip. Christina's spaghetti bolognese was tasty, and my mussels were excellent. There's a Belgian restaurant kind of near home (in Olney), but we don't get out there often enough.

We had to wait half an hour for the table, so we walked around, and Christina bought a hat.

Dead Laptop in NYC

Central Park
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

So, here we are in New York City. Last night I opened up my laptop to find that it wouldn't boot up. Grr. I can probably fix this with a Windows disk, which is at home. So I'm posting this from Christina's work laptop.

Today while she was at her conference, I first went to Central Park to attempt some geocaching. I did not find the cache, but I took the accompanying picture.

Then I went to the Frick Collection to look at some art. They had some nice pieces by Degas, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Whistler. I bought postcards to show Christina what I had seen. Some of you will be receiving those postcards, since at $1/each, I have to get another use out of them! :-)

Tecate

Tecate

Thursday night, I was walking around the house and noticed a disposable camera on a shelf. Rather than walking past it as I had a number of times, I picked it up. It had expired in October 2006, but I wondered if it could still be developed. The answer...sort of. Many of the pictures were ruined due to brown splotches on them. Some of them were OK, to one extent or another. A few were from a trip we took two-and-a-half years ago to Tecate, Mexico. When we were in San Diego for the summer, we drove down to the border one day and walked across.

Tecate had the advantage that it wasn't really very touristy. We had a nice lunch, then looked around for other things to do. Then, not being touristy became a disadvantage. The brewery was closed (we may have gotten there too late), and there weren't any souvenir shops. We went into a couple of stores and bought some random stuff (I got some plastic playing cards) and then went home.

Ponce

Puerto Rico 2007

We're taking it easy here in Arizona, so I have time to get together some pictures from previous trips. Here are some from our Thanksgiving in Puerto Rico. This time we got out of San Juan; we stayed in Ponce. Since we had a car, we were able to get out to more of the island.

World Heritage: 2007 in Review

Well, another year is drawing to a close, and time for me to take stock of my visits to World Heritage sites. (See 2006 or 2005.)

Five appears to be my lucky number. For the third year in a row, I visited five sites.

1. In early May, I visited Tallinn, Estonia.
   
2. In late May, I visited Barcelona, including the works of Gaudí ...
   
3. ...and the Palau de la Música Catalana.
   
4. In September, I visited Schönbrunn in Vienna...
   
5. As well as Vienna's historic city center.
   

I also got a bonus site...the Sydney Opera House, which Christina and I visited in 2002, got listed. So that puts me at 40.

2008 is a promising year. I have the potential to add sites in Australia, Turkey, the UK and the US. Maybe I'll break the string of fives...

nyny

To accompany the statue, they are playing a 9-11 country song. I was able to endure without comment until the lyrics about not knowing the difference between Iraq & Iran.

monorail

I have now been asked by 3 tourists for monorail tips. I could answer
2 of their questions. I am now researching the other -- can you ride
to the end & just stay on? The answer is yes.

Done Gambling

Well, I have finished all my goals & I have about 5 hours until my
flight. I am very glad I did not go early this morning.

I started playing nickel video poker with a stake of $20. I bounced
between 18 & 23, had a free drink, started smelling like smoke & got
bored. I switched to quarter vp & almost immediately hit 4 of a kind.
I cashed out my 49.25 & am now headed back to the monorail.

I plan to stop at each stop & see if there are any geocaches or
waymarks. (I got an all day pass.)

Spice Market Buffet

They changed the casino from the Aladdin to Planet Hollywood, but left the buffet intact.

Vegas

Well...I made it.

Red Carpet Club

I am enjoying my last saved rcc drink coupon before heading to the gate.

Too tired to drive to the airport...

...or at least too sane. At this point I'm valuing 4.5 hours of sleep in my bed ahead of 4.5 hours in Vegas. I think I have successfully canceled the standby, as well as checked in for the return flight. I'm going to grab my printouts, then go back to sleep until after the morning rush hour.

Mileage Run

Well, I've packed my bags for a trip to nowhere. Or Las Vegas, depending on your perspective. Recently, I calculated my total "Elite Qualifying Miles" on United Airlines, and I discovered that I was going to end up with 96,972 at the end of the year. (For reasons documented a year ago, that's more miles than I actually am flying.) What to do?

One option, through the bizarre calculus of frequent flier programs, was to spent 40,000 "earned" miles to get 4,000 EQM and put myself over the top. But 40,000 miles is a lot. It's more than enough for a flight to the Caribbean or Hawaii, and almost enough for a flight to Europe or South America.

So a $198 fare to Vegas -- that gets me more than 4,000 EQM and 8,000 "earned" miles. And I can fly there during the day and come back on the redeye. Only eight-and-a-half hours on the ground in Vegas. I could have had a quicker turnaround, but if my outgoing flight was late, I could miss my return flight!

So what to do with my eight-and-a-half hours in Las Vegas? Well, by the time I get out of the airport, catch a cab, and account for enough time to get back early enough to make my return flight, conservatively, I'm down to five-and-a-half hours. I identified three priorities:

• Enjoy a buffet.
  
• Do some geocaching and waymarking.
  
• Play the nickel video poker machines at the Las Vegas Hilton.
  

Hmm, even with the monorail to zip me from location to location, that seemed a little tight. So when I did on-line check-in today, I decided to standby for the early morning flight. That'll add 4.5 hours to the whole deal, and if I wake up tomorrow morning too tired to drive to the airport, I can go on-line and cancel the standby.

I said my bags are packed, but really it's just a backpack. I have a book, some spare clothing in case I get stuck, and various electronic goodies. I've transferred about fourteen-and-a-half hours of video to my iPod -- in retrospect that seems like overkill. I bought a battery backup for the iPod that allows me to use AA batteries. I have my phone for Internet access (I may annoy subscribers to this blog with frequent updates) and my camera and GPS for geocaching/waymarking. I have Lonely Planet Las Vegas Encounter and a printout of Wikitravel Las Vegas which I'll pit against each other for usefulness.

Wish me luck!

Sentosa

Well, I'm back in Singapore. I have some cool stories and pictures from Malaysia to post, but they'll have to wait...well, until I set aside some time to organize and post those, along with the cool stories and pictures from Puerto Rico.

My sightseeing ambitions for today in Singapore were rather limited. I headed for Sentosa, which is an resort island off the south coast of Singapore, itself an island. I was actually headed for an island off the south coast of Sentosa. This island is, in fact, the southernmost point on the Asian continent. I headed there for three reasons. One, I find extremes interesting. Two, the site is a virtual geocache, and it allowed me to check off Singapore on the geocaching list. The third reason was not apparent to me originally, until I thought -- wait a second, how can this be considered the southernmost point in Asia? Parts of Borneo, definitely in Asia, are south of Singapore. If we're restricting ourselves to "continental Asia", well, this is an island. I finally realized that we were talking about the southernmost point in Asia, reachable by ground transportation. There are more southerly points, but this is the farthest south you can go without getting on a boat or a plane.

Then I remembered an article I read several years ago about the prospect of taking a train from Scotland to Singapore. This seemed to me to be a wonderful journey. There are a number of obstacles -- some of the train tracks don't exist yet (see this Asia Times article from earlier this year for an update), and at least a couple of countries aren't the best for an American to travel through. So I decided this trip is one I could take in retirement -- that'll give people plenty of time to build the railroads and, well, achieve world peace.

So the third reason is that this is one end of my journey. Maybe some day I'll come back here at the end of that trip. Most likely by then, someone will have built a bridge to an island slightly farther south, though.

Sentosa

On a positive note, I got to ride a monorail to Sentosa, and the rain stopped for long enough for me to see the site. On the other hand, it was very muggy, and switching from the train to the monorail required me to navigate through a mall. I decided to head for the Asian Civilisations Museum next, but I got caught in a downpour while trying to walk there from the mass transit station. At this point, my desire to be anywhere but home evaporated, and I headed back to the hotel. Sorry, George, but my trip to get a Singapore Sling will have to wait for some other trip. I showered and changed into whatever clean clothes I could scrounge, and am about to head back to my room to order room service.

Sarawak GPS

 

I had a really good time on the conference excursion this morning -- more details on that later. Above is a map of the trip we took. To a certain extent, it was pointless to take my GPS along -- it was a bus trip, and we were going exactly where the bus took us. Nevertheless, it made me feel much better to have it along. Bus trips have their pluses and minuses, but one minus is the lack of control -- not only of where you're going, but the information about where you're going and when you'll get there. At least the GPS got the information for me. (For one thing, I could tell we'd get back early based on our speed and the distance back to Kuching.) It was interesting to realize how close the longhouse was to the Indonesian border (the gray line in the lower left). Yeah, it's just a map -- not as cool as a video of a orangutan swinging -- but the latter will take a while for me to upload to YouTube.

Sarawak Museum

 

This afternoon I found some non-raining time to go for a walk. (At lunch, a Malaysian from Kuala Lumpur told me that he didn't understand why the conference was in December...because of the rainy season, they never have conferences in November and December.) I walked along the river and inland a few blocks to the Sarawak museum. As you can tell from the sign above, I have no pictures of the museum to post. Just as well; it was a rather tired affair. Clued in by the Wikitravel article on Kuching, however, I knew to take the pedestrian bridge across the street to a newer museum, skip the exhibit, and head straight to the gift shop. I snagged a set of postcards, an interesting looking t-shirt for myself, and something for the holiday gift exchange at work.

I made it back to the hotel sweat-soaked. I changed and am now in the executive lounge enjoying a refreshing Coca-Cola.

"Conference participants just can’t help being in awe of State’s capital"

So says an article in Monday's Borneo Post. Guess they didn't read my post from last night. :-) To be fair, I think most of the blame for my ill mood lies squarely on the Holiday Inn. Right now I'm enjoying a breakfast at the Hilton that is comprised of an excellent selection of Western, Chinese and Malay dishes.

Marinated Honey Chicken Wing Ball

I don't like to think of myself as the type of guy who travels halfway around the world (in this particular case, to Kuching, Malaysia -- this loses to Sydney by a couple of hundred miles for the "farthest I've ever been from home" honors) to order room service. So I braved a torrential downpour (thankfully my hotel lends umbrellas) and headed to the opening reception. What's that smell? Ah, overflowing sewers. When I got to the Holiday Inn Kuching, I remembered, oh yes, the organizers had planned a poolside reception. I tried to take pictures of the overflowing pool, but I think my camera lens was too fogged up.

When I arrived, I was beset by two gentlemen offering me a sample of the local wine and a discount on a future purchase of it. Jon's new rule: Always drink the local beer, never drink the local wine. Unless you're in France, Napa Valley, or some place you'd drink wine from even if it wasn't local. (Not as snappy with that qualification, is it?) Then I moved on to the appetizer buffet. The mini pizzas were pretty awful -- why do places think they need to provide "international" food -- but the chicken satay was passable. What pushed me over the edge was something labeled "Marinated Honey Chicken Wing Ball". Looking at it, it may have simply been a chicken wing, but I was not going to take any chances. Dispensing with a half-formed plan to try a local restaurant, I high-tailed it back to the Hilton and turned in my umbrella.

Now where is that room service menu?

80 minute walk in Singapore

Singapore

Well, I got about an 80 minute walk down to the Botanic Gardens and back. Boy is it hot here! When I got back around 10, it was downright sticky. I'd better pack up the computer and head out to the airport, but I thought I'd share my quick glimpse at Singapore.

Sunday Morning in Singapore

Greetings from Singapore, where it is just past 8 in the morning on Sunday. I had hoped to have some time to see the city, but when you get into the hotel about 12 hours before your flight out the next day, and they tell you to leave about 3 hours before your flight for the airport, not much of that is going to happen. I will probably finish the post and go for a walk for an hour or so, but any more intensive sightseeing will have to wait until Friday (I think I have about 18 hours then).

The flight from DC was, well, long and boring. The main advantage of my upgrade was that the seat had a "bed" button that converted it into a reasonable approximation of a bed. Which was good, because for 22 hours, there wasn't much else to do but sleep. I did spend about 60 minutes transferring planes in Japan...I thought I'd at least get to see a little bit of the airport, but I was so rushed trying to make the connection that I didn't.

Anyway, it's amazing how far I can travel in 24 hours...and end up seeing so little.

PR GPS

 

The green paths represent where we went this week in Puerto Rico. We took the GPS because it turns out that its North America coverage includes Puerto Rico. It also turns out that the GPS doesn't speak Spanish as well as it thinks. On our first full day, it took us down a one-way street in Ponce. Still, it made it very easy whenever we needed to get back to the hotel.

Fifth Anniversary

Christina and I got back today from Solomons Island, where we celebrated our fifth anniversary. It was a nice two days (and a very nice five years)! Above, you can see a YouTube video of me eating crabs on Friday night. We hadn't had crabs in over a year, so I was a little bit out of practice. Still, we try to make it out for Maryland crabs at least once per year. We really caught the tail end of the season here.

Pope's in Town

Apparently I'm not the only one who decided this would be a good weekend to visit Vienna. His Holiness is here, which I discovered yesterday when I saw a sign at Stephansdom indicating he'd be performing mass there Sunday (today). His visit presumably explains the sparsely attended concert in front of the cathedral, consisting of what I can only assume is Christian rock. Enjoy the snippet below. (Or not.)

Schönbrunn

 

I've got the first two rules of taking pictures of my big head in front of historic sites:
1. Hold the camera level with my head, so the picture isn't up my nostrils.
2. Smile.

Apparently, now I have to work on:
3. Don't squint.

After a much needed late start, I took the U-bahn (underground/metro/subway) out to Schönbrunn palace, the summer home of the Hapsburgs. The guide book said it was second only to Versailles in terms of magnificent European palaces. I've never been to Versailles, so I can't vouch for that, but it dwarfed most other European palaces I've seen and definitely topped the czar's digs.

The most impressive sights were the gardens, which I wandered for half an hour while waited for my timed-entry ticket to take effect. After choosing the audio guide (I guess my other option was a live guide), I got to the desk and was told they were out of audio guides, but I could have a nice pamphlet instead. Boo, Austria! That put me in a bit of a sour mood the rest of the day. The benefit of my getting the audio guide would have been that I could have looked at the palace rather than the pamphlet. The benefit of everyone else's getting the audio guide would have been that they could have watched where they were going instead of constantly bumping into me. Still, it was neat to see the room where a young Mozart first performed for the royal family (and then jumped into the Empress' lap and smothered her with kisses) and the room where the last Emperor abdicated after 600 years of Hapsburg rule.

I wonder what changed...was Austria really so horribly defeated in World War I? They had lost wars before. Was it the fact that fewer monarchies were on the victorious side, so fewer countries had an interest in preserving the monarchy? In the US, not much history east of Germany gets taught; this visit points out certain gaps in my education.

Sunrise Over England

 

I had trouble sleeping on the flight over yesterday, so around 5 I opened my window to discover the most astonishing sunrise. I tried taking pictures, but they didn't really capture the full range of colors I saw. In a way that's comforting -- it was a nice experience, and apparently one I can't just get looking at pictures.

Santa Barbara

I think they're afraid of getting sued by tsunami victims. They made conference attendees sign a waiver about the beach bbq and pickup soccer game.

Re-Cross Country

I tried to post Day 3 from Champaign, but the Internet crapped out right as I was about to post it. I wasn't thrilled with that motel in general. I think I've developed a new rule: never pay less than $50 for a hotel room.

Also: never try to drive across the country in four days. I'm exhausted, but home (for a couple more days).

I detoured about an hour out of my way to go through Champaign. I didn't want to drive through Chicagoland again...a) I've done it, b) traffic is ugly and c) Champaign seemed like a better place to find a hotel room. But it was a pretty boring drive. I look forward to a more leisurely road trip the next time I hit the highways.

Pennsylvania

I feel like I'm almost home.

Skyline chili

I was driving and thought...ooh, I'm in Ohio. I should go to that chili place...what was it called? Oh yeah , Skyline. But first I had to get gas. Fortunately, there was a Skyline next to the BP.

Re-Cross Country: Day 2

Well, today was a little bit of a boring I-80 day. I did manage to get in a little geocaching, and I learned an important lesson: don't buy cheeseburgers from truck stops. I've driven about 2 hours more than I did 2 years ago in 3 days, so I've been packing a lot in. But I'm halfway home! Tomorrow should be easier...it's my shortest day of driving, and I don't lose an hour to a time zone.

Wyoming

My first time in Wyoming. Sadly the timing didn't work for me to stay here tonight, so I can't cross it off my list.

Pony Express

I pulled off I80 and saw that I am on the trail of the Pony Express.

Re-Cross Country: Day 1

Well, I'm on my way back East. I can't stand to take exactly the same route twice, so this time it's mostly I-80. Today, however, was mostly I-15. I am planning to make this trip in 4 days (a record for me), so I only allowed myself about a 3 hour deviation from Google Maps' claim of the shortest route. Today this took me to the Microtel Salt Lake City. Microtel has won all sort of awards in the budget category, so I thought I'd give them a try. The room seems nice. Teddy's zonked out on the floor.

Other observations (with accompanying cell phone camera pictures)...

• Utah has a proper welcome center, unlike California and Nevada


• Every time I see Vegas, they've built something new. This time it's "THEHotel".
  
• Without rain, Southern California really misses out on rainbows. I had forgotten how much I missed them.
  

In Nevada

The welcome center is in an abandoned Mexican restaurant.

Hopefully I'm attaching pictures correctly now.

Barstow

In California, rest stops are in malls. Weird. Off to find lunch.

Hotel Days

When I stayed with my parents last weekend, I remarked on how nice it was to be saying goodbye to hotel living for the next 8 weeks. Life has come back to taunt me, however, as the sewage system has backed up at the place we are renting. Around 10 pm last night, with the plumber's snake stuck in the sewage pipe, we decided to check into a hotel. Today, plumbers are out excavating the front yard. When they said that they thought the pipe was broken, I extended our stay for another day.

Still, I can't complain about the free breakfast.

Cross-Country: Days 4 & 5

Well, my web site is finally back up, so I can publish my last tracks from the journey. The detour to see Ham the Astrochimp's grave allowed me to avoid having the GPS route me through El Paso. Instead, I saw parts of southern New Mexico that I had never been through. It was really pretty -- sort of like Arizona, but greener.

Connecting up with I-10, I tried to stop at a cafe in Las Cruces I had picked out. Apparently the recommendations I had read had some basis -- the place was packed at 1:30. Too packed to leave Teddy in the hot car while I got some takeout. Instead, I continued on to Deming, NM where I search the GPS for "taco" and ended up at Tacos Mirasol. Tasty.

Then I continued on to my parents', where I had dinner and spent a nice Father's Day. Sunday, I headed out again. I was sick of being on the road, so I didn't plan any stops. So now I've got the summer in La Jolla. Less travel, more relaxation, hopefully.

Ham

Greetings from Alamogordo, NM, where I just paid my respects to the world's first astrochimp.

Cross-Country: Day 3

Here's the map from Day 3. "Giant Head" on the map is the aforementioned Giant Bo Pilgrim Head. The little check mark at the end of the day was my Escape from Texas. The second time I drove across the country, it took 2 or 3 days to get through Texas. (OK, the fact that Ben and I went to two amusement parks and a preseason football game probably had something to do with it.) Texas seems to go on forever, so anything I could do to cut some of it off made sense. The last little bit was actually fairly pleasant, as I got off the Interstate and into the lonely, desolate territory that I enjoy in the West. A little less desolate is Carlsbad, NM, from which I write this.

Cross-Country: Day 2

On the second day of my trip, I made it from Knoxville, TN almost all the way to Texas...in fact, all the way to Texarkana, AR.

My one stop of the day was, appropriately enough, the "One Stop Cafe" in Franklin, TN. I had two delicious pork bbq sandwiches from there.

Big Goofy Head

Big Goofy Head
Originally uploaded by jongrantham

In a special sequel to last year's Big Head Trilogy, here's a picture of me next to the Giant Bo Pilgrim Head in Pittsburg, Texas this morning.

Al Gore invented the interstate?!

(For what it's worth, his son never claimed to invent the Internet.)

Back In

That was quick. The desk clerk got "instructions" on how to get the door to work. Now I just have to see if I can carry all the stuff down in one go.

Locked Out

Greetings from the Super 8 Knoxville, where I'm locked out of my room. I got up, took a shower, and was enjoying a Vanilla Coke Zero while transferring some music from Christina's computer to mine when Teddy started to stir. I took him out, moved the car closer to the room, and tried to go back in. My card key didn't work.

At this point, I had to put Teddy back in the car. He was getting sick of the stairs, so I decided to get a new card key, pack up, and go. Unfortunately, the new card key didn't work. Neither did the desk clerk's master key. She's been very nice about all this, but I'm starting to get antsy. Teddy is in the car in a shady spot with plenty of water, and someone is supposed to be here in 5 minutes...

Cross-Country: Day 1

Greetings from Knoxville, TN. I'm too tired to post the pictures from today's trip, but here's the path I took. "Anawalt" is a town in West Virginia, named for my great-grandmother's cousin (or possibly uncle). I figured I wouldn't be within 200 miles of it again any time soon, so I drove through. I forgot how much I hate mountain driving.

Time to Make the Cava

Today's conference excurstion was to Codorníu Winery. Below you can see a video I took of the machinery being operated.



Here is another one.

La Sagrada Familia

When I was growing up, the Alan Parsons Project was one of my favorite music groups. I think anybody willing to do concept albums about Edgar Allan Poe or robots appealed to the nascent egghead in me. Their last album was Gaudi, which included songs about Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. One of these songs was "La Sagrada Familia", about the cathedral that Gaudi worked on for over 40 years prior to his death in 1926. The cathedral today is incomplete and still an active construction site.

I got into Barcelona yesterday, and the cathedral was my first stop. The jaded traveler through Europe can experience cathedral fatigue, where one cathedral looks a lot like the previous one. La Sagrada Familia is different. It looks unlike anything else on the planet. One factor is that it is newer than most European cathedrals. In particular, it is part of the Catalan "Modernisme" architecture movement (apparently equivalent to "Art Noveau") rather than the standard Gothic or Neoclassical cathderal. The architecture is much more influenced by the natural world than any other church I've seen.

I got there just in time to take the guided tour in English, which was a fairly interesting overview. The highlight, however was the elevator ride to the top of one of the towers and the subsequent walk down, which gave close-up views of the amazing detail on the cathedral facades. In fact, my only regret is that I didn't end up going up the other tower right after that. I blame jetlag for the error in judgement.

Enjoy the photo album below.

La Sagrada Familia

Places Visited

Now that I've been to Estonia and Spain, it's time to update my map of places visited. Previously, I had only been considering places visited as places where I had spent the night. That seemed a little ridiculous when I had a quite substantial day trip to Estonia. Would it have been more substantial if I had just gone overnight and not done any sightseeing? So I'm revising my criterion to an overnight stay or a significant travel experience. Here's the resulting Europe map:



Map generated by World66.com

Based on my new criterion, I'm counting New Hampshire as a visited state, since Christina and I went skiing there with my cousin Ian. Here's the new US map:


Map generated by World66.com

40 down...10 to go. I think I'll make it to 43 by the end of the summer. At that point I might have to consider trips specifically to fill out the map...

And, just for completeness, here's my world map...


Map generated by World66.com

Estonia

Greetings from Spain. The previous weekend, I took a day trip from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia. It was a lot of fun...Tallinn is set up very well for such day trips. Enjoy the photo album below; I have integrated my description of the trip as photo captions.

Click here for photo album

Naantali

Click here to view album

I've been trying to figure out the best way to blog pictures. Flickr, which I used for the previous post, seems to be good for individual pictures. I didn't like the way it worked for sets of pictures, though (especially since free accounts are limited to 3 sets). So I switched to Picasaweb (by Google). If you click on the album above, my comments about yesterday's conference excursion to Naantali are included in the picture album.

Finland Has It All

Pizza Menu (red ovals added by me)

Christina has observed that every country besides the US offers tuna pizza. Finland is no exception.

I don't like the idea of tuna on pizza, but I did eat at this place yesterday. Turku, for whatever reason, is lousy with kebab/pizza places. It seems like an odd combination to me, but I'm sure there's a reason for it.

I used to observe, while driving around rural America, that there always seemed to be combination video stores and tanning salons. I never knew why until later, when I read an article in the Washington Post. It turns out that several years earlier, at a convention of independent video store owners, someone made a presentation about ways to expand video businesses to include tanning salons. The idea caught on like wildfire.

Perhaps years ago there was a similar event at a Finnish kebab convention...

PS I had the falafel, which was drenched in the kind of red sauce I've come to recognize as the Hallmark of bad food across Europe. Same with my burrito today.

I'm crazy for these cupcakes, cousin

Last Saturday night, I headed back into New York City. This time, I thought I'd spare myself the long subway ride, so I headed for Greenwich Village and the East Village.



My first stop was "Alamo", the evil twin of "The Cube", one of my favorite locations in Ann Arbor. They say the University President spins the cube each morning to start up the University. Here, the cube was harder to spin, what with all the people loitering underneath it. Still, as I was leaving the area, a group of people got it started.






Next, it was off to Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant. I had last enjoyed Ukranian food in 1999 in Winnipeg. I sat at the counter and had some delicious pirogies. I was thinking of buying a t-shirt to commemorate the visit, but the t-shirts read "Challah-leujah!" and "Beet me", neither of which seemed interesting enough to wear.



After dinner, it was back to Greenwich Village to Magnolia Bakery. I've read that this store was made famous by "Sex in the City", but I know it from the Saturday Night Live sketch "Lazy Sunday":

But first my hunger pains are stickin’ like duct tape.
Let’s hit up Magnolia and mack on some cupcakes.
No doubt that bakery’s got all da bomb frostings.
I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling.
Two, no six, no twelve, BAKERS DOZEN.
I told you that I’m crazy for these cupcakes, cousin.

I got there, and the line ran down the block. After 20 or so minutes waiting, I was allowed entrance to the store. I was allowed to approach the cupcakes and buy no more than a dozen. Since I had to transport these home via subway and Amtrak, I stuck to one box. Five seemed about the limit without overly squishing the frosting.



I brought them home to Christina, and we enjoyed them over the next few days. I don't know what I was thinking considering getting a dozen -- one cupcake per day is probably about 1/2 a cupcake more than necessary. Still, they were really good, and I hope to go back the next time I'm in Manhattan.

Shea

Shea

Greetings from Hoboken. Since that doesn't sound exciting, I decided to start the weekend off with a trip into New York City. Specifically, I ordered a ticket to the Nats-Mets game at Shea Stadium. It took about an hour and a half to get from my hotel in Jersey City to Queens.

It's always entertaining to see a city through the eyes of its sports fans. ("Hey, what's that guy doing coming here with a Boston jersey?" "Better than a Yankees jersey." "Yeah, but still...") The seat was excellent. On the loge level (just above field level), and almost directly behind home plate (as you can see from the album above). It seemed to be a great place for catching foul balls...at least two headed into the adjacent section and one was nabbed on the concourse in front of me.

I decided not to provoke the New Yorkers by displaying any outward signs of Nats fandom. In fact, I did not see one single piece of Nats gear on any fan. I quietly cheered the Nats on to a 2-2 tie, which they held into the 7th, and then...I left. It was really cold, and I had to get up at the crack of dawn to make it to the conference I'm actually here for. I tried to hang in longer, but yet another pitching change sent me headed back to the subway. So I only was able to hear the crowd roar as the Mets scored the game-winning run.

By my count, that's 8 major league baseball teams I've seen home games for.

• Baltimore Orioles (2001, and before)
  
• Cincinnati Reds (1989)
  
• Minnesota Twins (2002)
  
• Montreal Expos (2002)
  
• New York Mets (2007)
  
• Oakland A's (1993)
  
• San Diego Padres (1993)
  
• Toronto Blue Jays (1999)
  

Staying Cool in the Pool

Call me crazy, but with all the exciting things to do in the Bahamas, one of my favorite things to do was chill out in the pool. In some sense, it felt weird not to be taking advantage of the beach or the tropical setting, or anything but the fact that it was warm enough to be in the pool. Nevertheless, floating around, staring at the coconut trees and the wires holding them together was strangely peaceful and relaxing. Not so relaxing that I'm looking for a pool around here or anything. But relaxing enough that next vacation in the sun, I'm sure I'll grab an inner tube or a floating chair and head for the pool pretty early on.

Not Exactly a Cruise Ship

In a post from the Bahamas, I stated that I had heard a cruise ship coming in that morning. Boy was I wrong. As you can see from the picture, it was a US military ship. Well, you can't actually see the US flag, but trust me, it's there.

This picture is one of my favorites of the ones I took in the Bahamas. I like the contrast among the seagull in the foreground, the ship, and the construction at the monstrous Atlantis resort & casino in the background.

The Shoal

Wednesday night, after the snorkeling, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice meal out. We had been doing a lot of eating in the executive lounge and the cheap-o Imperial Cafeteria across the street from the hotel (perhaps worth of a separate entry). So we decided it was reasonable to spend a few bucks on something fancier. I looked through the guidebooks and came up with The Shoal Restaurant & Lounge. Somewhere I probably lost the "fancier" idea...

We went downstairs and got a taxi. When we got in, the driver asked where we wanted to go. Forgetting slightly, I asked to be taken to "Shoal's." This request confused him to no end. He kept asking the bellman at the hotel if he had ever heard of this restaurant. Finally, we checked the guidebook and mentioned that the restaurant was a few miles up Nassau Street. A light bulb appeared over his head and said, "Oh, you want to go to The Shoal. Not Souls." He kept repeating that the name of the restaurant was not "Souls" -- I guess my accent threw him.

Anyway, he was delighted that we wanted to get out of downtown to a non-touristy restaurant. After we established that the fare would be $10 (approximately what I figured it should be if metered -- but no taxi driver ever turned the meter on for us), he started giving us a tour of the "Over The Hill" neighborhood. Several guidebooks had warned us against this neighborhood, and our driver in fact referred to it as the "ghetto". Christina remarked that it was the nicest ghetto she'd ever seen. There are places near our house (that I'd feel comfortable driving to) that aren't as nice as this neighborhood.

When we got to the restaurant, the driver gave us his card and said to call him when we needed a ride back. I tried to pay him the fare, but he said we could just pay him on the way back. That was remarkably friendly and trusting and set a good tone for the evening.

At the restaurant, we had what was probably the best meal of the trip. After having a salad (me) or soup (Christina), we enjoyed some delicious grouper (me) or snapper (Christina). We finished off with way too much guava duff, which we couldn't finish. During the meal, the manager (the owner?) kept coming over and giving us information about the Bahamas. He explained, for example, that Bahamians have the same last names as Americans because they are largely are descended from Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution...and their slaves. He further expressed optimism that things were only going to get better in the coming months, because they were due to replace the government in an election. I'll watch for the results with some interest.

Once our meal was over, our driver was waiting for us. He took the pictures displayed in this entry, in fact. On our drive back to the hotel, he explained that he normally doesn't work this late, so he went across the street to a bar and had a beer. (As Christina pointed out, at least he said '''a''' beer.) Thus ended our one venture into a local neighborhood and one of the high points of our trip.

Snorkeling, both with and without sharks

Well, we got the photos developed from the waterproof cameras, which I believe we didn't do when we did the snorkeling with sharks in La Jolla two years ago.



Last Tuesday afternoon, we went on a snorkel excursion with Stuart Cove's.

They took us out on a boat around New Providence Island to two sites where we swam around and looked at pretty fish through our snorkel masks.


The third site was somewhat different. The boat first lowered shark bait (some sort of raw meat -- no, not the snorkelers). Then some of us jumped in the water and did not swim around -- that's one of the things they told us not to do. Also on the no-no list -- petting the sharks. How silly do they think we are?


Pretty silly, I guess. I was planning to hold onto the rope line to prevent drifting, but my fellow snorkelers (a lot of spring breakers among them) engaged in so much thrashing and giggling that I paddled a short distance away to watch. Fortunately, the sharks seemed equally intent on keeping their distance.

These were Caribbean reef sharks, which were somewhat bigger than the types of sharks we saw in La Jolla. It was a neat experience seeing them up close, but a few minutes of it was quite enough.

Police Band

One of the serendipitous sights we saw in the Bahamas was the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band. The band is quite a big deal...they're on the back of the $1 bill. We were enjoying the Hilton's executive lounge (one of its best features) when we heard music coming from outside. We looked out from the balcony and saw the band marching away. A hotel employee later told us that a group had hired the band to escort them to dinner -- he implied that a lot of money had been involved.

More Bahamas Pix

Here's me in front of the "Queen's Staircase", Christina in front of Parliament, and one of Nassau's newer tourist attractions...

First Pictures from the Bahamas

Here is our first set of pictures from the Bahamas. Many of our pictures are on the waterproof camera, so we'll wait until we get back and get them developed. But here are a few pictures from Sunday and Monday.

The first picture shows the view from our hotel room. Unfortunately, the largest coconut tree on the property is right in front of our window. Still, you can sort of see the pool and the Hilton's "private" beach. (All beaches are public, but the only access to this beach is via the Hilton property -- or the water.)

The second picture shows Christina on the beach, with one of the cruise ships in the background. The last two days there have been three in port. I'm not sure about today, but I heard one coming in this morning.

The third picture shows Christina shopping at Prince George Plaza. No, not that one.

And, finally, the fourth picture shows us sitting down after wandering the downtown area.

Greetings from Nassau

Hello from the sunny Bahamas. We've been here about 24 hours now and are enjoying ourselves. The Hilton is nice enough...unfortunately, there's a tobacco convention going on at the same time. The tobacconists are a bit rowdy and, well, they smoke a lot. We managed to avoid them at the Hilton's beach this morning. The water was a little bit cold today, so we floated around the pool for a little bit before lunch.

After a couple of fish burgers, we booked a couple of excursions for later in the week & then headed into the downtown area. The hotel is a couple of blocks away from where the cruise ships dock, so most of the shops cater to their passengers. Yesterday, a Carnival ship was in port -- today it was Disney. Fortunately, that made it easy to pick up a few souvenirs before stealing a glance at Fort Fincastle and the Queen's Staircase.

When we get back to the hotel, we'll probably go to the Cable Beach area for dinner. At some point, we'll get Internet access from the hotel and post some pix.

World Heritage: Year in Review

Looking at last year's update of five sites inspired me to take stock of this year's total.

Looks like it's five again!

1. In early April, I went to Cologne and saw the cathedral.
   
2. Later that month, Christina and I headed to New York and took in the Statue of Liberty.
   
3. In June, I traveled to Russia and saw St. Petersburg.
   
4. In September, we went to England. One World Heritage Site we saw was the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape.
   
5. Another was the Ironbridge Gorge.
   

For the second year in a row, Christina made it to a site I missed (which is only fair, given I made it to two she missed), Suzhou. If only I didn't have to go to these conferences...I wouldn't be traveling so much in the first place, I guess.

That brings me to 34 sites. Over 4%, finally! At this pace, I probably have a couple more years to go before I hit 5%.

Travelers' Century Club Update

I've been going through my old posts and tagging them with labels like "travel" and "go". In the process, I've come across a number of old posts I had forgotten about (and some with typos that had stayed there for years).

One of the old posts is one about the Travelers' Century Club, an organization of those who have visited 100 or more "countries". At the time, I was at 15 or 16, depending on how you count. Now I'm up to 22. New additions:

• China, People's Rep.
• France
  
• India
  
• Puerto Rico
• Russia
• Switzerland

Wow. Still not even close.

Thursday in China

Click Here for the Photo Album

Careful readers will note the omission of "Wednesday in China". On Wednesday, Christina took the camera and headed to Suzhou for an excursion. A link to her pictures will follow.
Also, on yesterday's post, it came to my attention that some people were having trouble displaying the picture, which was hosted on a server in China. So I made a local copy.

On Thursday morning, I ducked out of a few of the conferences more skippable talks to head to Amy's Pearls with Christina. (Look here for a picture of Tony Blair looking particularly goofy visiting the shop.)

In the afternoon, after the conclusion of the conference, we went on a city tour for which we had signed up. The guide was better than the one we had on Tuesday. Still, I noticed a certain commercial theme to the tour.

First we went to the Jade Buddha Temple, which has two buddhas brought to Shanghai from Burma in the late nineteenth century. They are carved out of enormous pieces of rare white jade. We were told a story about how the priest who had transported them from Burma left them in Shanghai because they were too heavy to transport. Not too heavy to move from Burma, but too heavy to move to his final destination in China? That didn't make a lot of sense. After touring the temple, we were taken to the monk's tea room, where we learned about the restorative properties of Chinese tea, and then were given an opportunity to buy some.

Next up was a tour of the French Concession. Fortunately, we didn't repeat the tour of the shikumen from Sunday -- probably because one guy had spent too much time in the Jade Buddha Temple gift shop and we were running late. We walked around for a few minutes and then got back in the van.

The People's Square also got the walking around for a few minutes treatment, but at least we got a nice picture of ourselves in front of the Shanghai Museum.

Our final stop was the "Treasure Gallery". Here was an opportunity to "learn" about pearls and purchase them at higher prices than Amy's.

At the Conference in China

The organizers just posted pictures from the conference I attended in Shanghai. There I am talking with Scott, with whom I went to graduate school.