Chris and Jenn's Blog

Tailgating at Tulsa

2014-01-01T19:17:00.001-08:00

Pig roast!! Football!! Beer!!

And more pictures of cornhole, pig, football, and beer, if you're interested.

SCV and Mike Trout's Angels Debut

2014-01-01T18:53:00.002-08:00

(Visited July 7-10, 2011.) I'd almost forgotten about all the fun times on this trip! We gave Andrew a trip to Santa Clarita Valley (SCV) and tickets to an Angels game for his graduation present. I never bother to take pictures of SCV, so this partially explains why I forgot, but Foursquare remembered!

We spent the first day at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, where Chris lost his glasses. We had to go to the mall to get them replaced at LensCrafters. (Awww, remember Valencia Town Center? Well, it's a Westfield mall now.)

Sadly, he couldn't get them repaired in time for the evening's Angels game. We had awesome seats behind the Angels dugout.

More crucially, we watched Mike Trout's Angels debut. At the time, he was baseball's most promising prospect, and now, two and a half years later, it turns out it wasn't just hype!

The next day, we went boogie boarding at Zuma Beach, and later met my parents for delicious Peking duck for dinner at Duck House (after sitting through something like two and a half hours of traffic to drive from the beach to Monterey Park...forgot about that L.A. traffic at dinner time). Yummy duck though! This is one of my dad's favorite restaurants.

See more pictures from the weekend (mostly of the Angels game).

Trampolines and Santa Cruz

2014-01-01T18:22:00.002-08:00

(June 24-26, 2011) In the summer, Andrew came out to visit us, and if I remember correctly, we got a Groupon deal for Sky High Sports in Santa Clara.

We also went out to Santa Cruz for tacos and tide pools!

See more pictures of trampolines and our trip to Santa Cruz.

Andrew's Graduation

2014-01-01T18:09:00.003-08:00

(Attended May 13-16, 2011.) Well, Andrew at this point already has his master's degree, so it's somewhat lame that I'm only now writing about celebrating his bachelor's degree, but here it is anyways! Congratulations Andrew!

Our recreational activity of the weekend was golfing at the Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve. It took us like two hours to finish maybe four holes? Thank goodness there weren't many other people out playing that day!

Andrew hit a car. Well, the ball hit the road and then bounced up to hit the bottom of the car, and this is where it ended up.

To his credit, he played it from that spot!

And later, there was a wild goose chase!

Most of us had to leave early to drive to the airport, but Andrew finished the course and I think ended with a respectable score.

See more pictures from Andrew's graduation weekend.

Tongariro (Not) and Waitomo Glowworm Caves

2014-01-01T17:24:00.002-08:00

(Visited March 17-20, 2011.) Tongariro starred as Mordor in the Lord of the Rings, and we definitely wanted to say that we "simply walked into Mordor" despite Boromir's dire warnings. This might have been funnier in 2011, but still, the scenery on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing looked amazing.

I was super depressed that we didn't get to do it. The weather was terrible, and apparently the pass is dangerous in high winds, and therefore closed to all hikers. We should have allocated a couple more days to wait for the clouds to pass by, but instead, we decided to head to Taupo. Hopefully we go back to New Zealand and try Tongariro National Park again someday!

Taupo turned out to be a fun, if touristy choice. We signed up for a "blackwater rafting" trip through Waitomo's glowworm caves. We chose the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company, and I believe I bought a CD of pictures from them, but...we'll need to look around for that, oops. (I didn't attempt to use my already water-logged camera here.)

Anyways, we (unexpectedly) had a blast, because:

The glowworms were really cool, like a starry sky inside a pitch black cave.
We rappelled down a 200-foot hole, even though we've never done anything like that before (they gave us lessons and a couple practice runs before we did the real one).
We jumped off a big cliff into the underground river (we had inner tubes).
We rode a short zip-line in the light of the glowworms (otherwise totally dark).
We climbed up a waterfall to exit the caves.

Climbing up the waterfall was one of my best memories, simply because I was so completely terrified when I first looked at it. I thought there was no way I could do it, but the guides talked me through exactly where to put my hands and feet, and underground caves, which have no sunlight, also have no algae, so nothing was slippery. I was so thrilled that I did it!

Sorry for the text-heavy post, but hopefully I'll eventually find the CD and share some pictures.

The one picture we do have is from driving through Taupo. We stopped by the Honey Hive, a honey store, and bought some of New Zealand's famous Manuka honey (as well as some honey whisky and honey mead).

Coromandel

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(Visited March 15-17, 2011.) Coromandel was another memorable high point of the trip. After departing the fern-filled rainforests and glacier-carved fjords of the South Island, we headed back up to the North Island for some beach fun. Coromandel is apparently where the locals go for their vacations.

We stayed at a terrific bed and breakfast called Hahei Oceanfront. This was possibly my favorite bed and breakfast ever. The house was right on the beach, and they loaned us a kayak to row around in, as well as a shovel so we could dig ourselves a hot tub at the nearby Hot Water Beach. I remember the breakfast being delicious, and also walking distance from the cliffs where they shot scenes from the movie, Prince Caspian. This is the house from the back.

The Hot Water Beach is a hot spring underneath the beach that becomes accessible at low tide. Being fairly popular, we didn't really need our shovels because there were plenty of pre-dug holes, but the water was very nice and warm. (In some spots, the water is maybe too hot, so be careful!)

See more pretty pictures from Coromandel.

Milford Track

2014-01-01T14:25:00.000-08:00

(Hiked March 9, 2011 - March 13, 2011.) The Milford Track was actually the main reason we decided to vacation in New Zealand. Well, that and being nuts about the Lord of the Rings. I saw an article in the New York Times ("A Walk Through New Zealand's Watery Wild") and immediately gave it the top spot on my bucket list.

This particular trail has been called "the finest walk in the world". We hiked 33.5 miles over three days, with an extra two days for transportation to and from Queenstown. (Well, there was a bit of hiking on the first day, but as I recall, it was negligible, probably less than a mile.)

Despite how famous the Milford Track is, only a limited number of people are allowed to start this trail each day (100-ish?), and everyone is required to hike in the same direction. This means that if you keep enough spacing from the people behind and ahead of you, it's extremely peaceful and quiet, often to the point where you can imagine you have the entire gorgeous national park to yourself.

The Milford Track is open to both independent hikers and guided hikers, although the two groups use different lodges. We took the guided option with Ultimate Hikes (the only company authorized to run guided tours for the Milford Track) and thought it was a great experience. All we had to carry was our own clothes; they took care of hot meals and logistics!

I don't know how I can do this segment of our trip justice, except to start posting some of my favorite photos.

Day 1: The majority of the first day was spent driving and boating to the trailhead. We arrived at our first lodge, Glade House, fairly early in the afternoon.

We definitely weren't roughing it! To give you an idea, this is what our room at Glade House looked like:

This is the view of the river and the first suspension bridge, from the front yard of the lodge:

With plenty of daylight left in the day, the tour guides took us on a short nature walk where they taught us about the local plants. I'm very sad not to remember more about them, but the guides were really knowledgeable and funny and if I remember correctly, we even ate a couple of the plants notable for their pungency and prank potential. This is a picture of us on the nature walk:

Day 2: We started early, by crossing the suspension bridge.

There's not a ton of large wildlife in New Zealand, and the animals they do have tend not to be overly worried about predators, because there are no predators native to New Zealand. This means even the birds aren't very afraid of people. We saw a "cheeky" thrush that will come and sit on your shoe, if you drag your heel in the mud and make it think worms might be available. Wish I'd gotten a sharper picture, but here's one sitting on Chris's boot!

More pretty scenery from the second day:

Our destination on the second day was the Pompolona Lodge.

Day 3: The weather was gray and rainy on the third day, which was both kind of sad and kind of awesome.

It was sad because this was the day we reached the highest elevation, but we didn't see much of the view due to the fog.

It was awesome because we were surrounded by thousands of tiny waterfalls coming off sheer cliffs, and the forest was beautiful in the rain.

When we reached the highest point at the Mackinnon Pass, our guides made us hot chocolate!

My favorite wildlife sighting came on the third day too. We saw a weka, a chicken-sized bird often mistaken for a kiwi, but much more common. If you recall, New Zealand birds didn't evolve a healthy fear for predators, so like the thrush, the weka walked right up to us, and started attacking my shoelace, presumably because it looked like a worm! Not a very bright bird, but very persistent; it stayed for several minutes pecking my toe with great force and repeatedly tugging at the shoelace.

Later on, we had another sighting. We're not particularly good at spotting birds in general, but these guys apparently liked to walk on trails.

The forest was strikingly more green and lush on the other side of the pass.

Possibly too green and lush. My camera was really struggling with all the rain and mist by the time we reached Quentin Lodge. The display was starting to fizzle out, and then I tried to dry it out with a hair dryer, which turned out to be a terrible idea, because afterwards, the screen was completely fried (and never recovered). So the remainder of the pictures from the trip were taken using the old-school tiny view finder, and at the time, we weren't even sure the pictures were really being taken. (Turns out they were, thankfully! But many of the pictures get more blurry or dark from this point forward.)

Day 4: We finally saw the waterfall that's on all the marketing, Mackay Falls!

And finally, we reached the end of our 33.5 miles, at Sandfly Point. Sandflies are like mosquitos, and there were clouds of them at Sandfly Point. The legends say that the gods made sandflies, because people would become too spoiled living in such a perfect paradise without some form of annoyance. I remember us being bitten like crazy while this picture below was being taken. (Yeah, my smile does look a little forced doesn't it?)

We ended our day with a boat ride to our final destination, the Mitre Point Lodge on the Milford Sound.

Day 5: Done with walking! We took a boat ride around the Milford Sound, which was stunning, but my broken camera really didn't capture it well, except for this one shot of Chris by one of the waterfalls, complete with the New Zealand flag waving in the wind.

A pod of dolphins later visited our boat too!

Overall, the Milford Track was a wonderful experience. We highly recommend both the trail and Ultimate Hikes, and we'd love to do some of the other "great walks" someday too!

See more pictures of the Milford Track (there are lots and lots)!

Queenstown

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(Visited on March 8, 2011 and March 14-15, 2011.) Sadly, after another year and a half, details are even hazier, but I'm once again attempting to pick up this blog where we left off.

People call Queenstown the adventure capital of the world, because of all the extreme sports offered there, like bungy jumping, river surfing, or canyon swinging. Being slightly less adventurous types, we opted for zip lining and jet boating.

Queenstown was our first ever zip line experience. We totally loved it and became addicts, jumping at every opportunity to do it again in subsequent vacations.

The company was called Ziptrek Ecotours, and we took the Skyline Gondolas up to the starting point. (Apparently they offer a luge these days too, but not when we were there!)

Lovely view of Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu at the top!

The jet boats were perhaps a little less memorable in comparison, but still fun. Jet boats are essentially a gigantic jet ski that can go up rivers, and I remember our jet boat driver being taking some improbable hairpin turns and making crazy waves.

A less adrenaline-filled Queenstown highlight was seeing the kiwi exhibit at Kiwi Birdlife Park. They're shy, nocturnal, and endangered, so it's difficult to spot one in the wild, and we weren't allowed to take flash photography in the dark room, but they looked like big furry squeezable chickens with a long beak. We watched the presentation and were particularly struck by the ratio of egg to internal organs in this picture of a mama kiwi. Doesn't look comfortable...poor mama kiwi.

Restaurants We Enjoyed in Queenstown

Fergburger – Delicious and interesting burgers (though we've forgotten exactly what was on the menu). We braved the long line and ate them by the lake, just a couple blocks away, with many envious sea gulls and ducks watching enviously.

Flame Bar and Grill – WOW, MEAT COMA...see the picture below. Come hungry!! I actually think we ate almost the entire thing. I don't remember which menu item this was (maybe the mixed grill?) but Chris says whatever it was, he'd totally order it again.

See more photos from our stay in Queenstown.

Waiheke Island

2012-09-23T22:06:00.001-07:00

(Visited on Monday, March 7, 2011.) Sadly, after a year and a half, most of the details from our New Zealand trip are fading, but Waiheke Island was a fun day trip from Auckland. We caught a ferry at the Downtown Ferry Terminal.

We made the short hike to lovely Oneroa Beach from the ferry terminal, and then took a cab to the highlight of our day – lunch at Te Whau Vineyard. The view was screensaver gorgeous, and the food was absolutely delicious – probably the best meal we had during our entire ten-day trip!

The Bluff Oysters were a special treat. They just came in season as we arrived in March, and are so delicious and prized that there are strict quotas for the amount each fisherman can catch. I like oysters in general, but wouldn't say I ever craved them...until I tasted these guys. They were the sweetest, juiciest oysters I've ever had. I think they also cost more than a buck apiece, so they definitely weren't cheap, but if you have the chance to try some, DO IT. They only grow off the coast of New Zealand (I think at a town called Bluff).

We spent the rest of the day taking the bus and strolling around town as we made our way back to the ferry terminal. Oneroa Beach and Onetangi Beach were very lovely.

And here's the obligatory funny sign we saw as we headed back to Auckland in the afternoon.

Updates After a Long Hiatus

2012-09-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, it wasn't only laziness that kept me from writing here in the last year and a half. After we got home from New Zealand, I thought surely there must be a more satisfying way to share pictures and stories from our trips. I considered making physical books using sites like SnapFish or Mixbook but that seemed like too much work. I also considered moving everything to G+, but the structure of posts aren't very expressive. Eventually I came back to Blogger and realized that wow, maybe all I had to do was wait for them to improve this site! The editor is much nicer now, so I'm going to attempt to catch up on all my missing posts here.

Since last spring, we've gone some amazing places: Big Island, Belize, and just last week, El Pescadero, Mexico! About three weeks ago, I joined a new team at Google that I'm really, really excited about. Next week, we're going to Austin for Staceyfest IV. Over Thanksgiving, we're going to Costa Rica for Jinger and Calvin's wedding. And over Christmas, my family is meeting up in Key Largo. So now seems like a good time to look back and remember a good year, before it all disappears from memory, replaced by new adventures in my LRU cache of a brain. Stay tuned!

Auckland

2011-04-23T21:41:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 6, 2011: Vacation begins, after a close call with our passports! (Yes, we didn't realize we'd forgotten our passports until we got to SFO without them and tried to check in. Luckily we were early enough to go back home and get them.)

We landed in Auckland at 5:55 a.m. – early enough to qualify as a "night landing". The flight on Air New Zealand was pleasant as 13-hour flights go. We especially liked the flight safety video, in which we learned that "theirs" rhymes with "ears" from a furry chipmunk(?) muppet named Rico.

The airport was impressive too. Spotlessly clean, efficient, and user-friendly, it reminded us of Zurich. There were posters encouraging us to vote for Auckland International Airport for the World's Best Airport award.

I've been to 35 states at this point, and I have never seen such a poster in the US. (I'm amused to imagine what responses they'd get if JFK or LAX started a poster campaign like that. Ha!)

The survey's results are below, and funny enough, Zurich and Auckland were neck and neck, at 7 and 8. Unsurprisingly, there were no American airports in the top ten. Sigh.

1	Hong Kong International Airport
2	Singapore Changi Airport
3	Incheon International Airport
4	Munich Airport
5	Beijing Capital International Airport
6	Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
7	Zurich Airport
8	Auckland International Airport
9	Kuala Lumpur International Airport
10	Copenhagen Airport

There were only a couple hitches.

New Zealand has strict biosecurity checks, and we had to wait a while for them to clean Chris's hiking boots of any potential undesirable flora or fauna. Yes, you have to declare muddy hiking boots at immigration. If you want to save some time, clean off the mud before you fly.
We rented our car from Alamo online, but Alamo doesn't have a booth at Auckland Airport; it's operated by Europcar.

Awesome factoid about flying from the West Coast to New Zealand in winter (their summer). With daylight savings, we flew 13 hours, but only ended up with a 3-hour time difference. That's like flying to Hawaii. (Give or take a day.) NOW, at the end of April, it's a 5-hour time difference, since both countries have "fallen back" and/or "sprung forward" appropriately.

Another awesome factoid. Auckland lies at latitude 37, which is the same latitude as the Bay Area, except it's 37 South instead of 37 North.

But enough about the airport and flying.

After we landed, we checked in at Hotel de Brett, which had a nice lounge for us to relax in while we waited for the sun to rise properly. The breakfast at their cafe was very nice too. I had a delicious eggs benedict.

After breakfast, we strolled around downtown Auckland, which was largely deserted, so early on a Sunday morning. I laughed at the glass kiwis we saw in a shop. They're like the glass hummingbirds that my cousins and I loved in Helen City, GA. Except with no wings. Teeheehee.

I was also super-amused at this poster for the New Zealand Air Force. What does it say about your air force when it's represented by a flightless bird? Arguably this is even worse than the Aussie air force's mascot, a kangaroo. At least kangaroos get some air!

We later heard from a fellow Milford Track hiker that New Zealand only has like seven planes in its air force, so maybe it's appropriate that they chose an endangered species?

Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World

At about mid-morning, we took the shark bus (free shuttle) to Kelly Tartlton's, which is a really unique aquarium that features a clear, underwater tunnel through a shark tank.

Really a cool experience to see sharks swimming directly overhead! The entire thing is built in a former sewer tank. Lots of aquariums seem to have this now, but I think Kelly Tarlton's was the first to create this kind of underwater tunnel, in 1985.

The gigantic short-tailed stingray and the Emperor Penguins were really cool too, although I didn't manage to get very good pictures.

Restaurants We Enjoyed in Auckland

Tanuki – Yummy, popular sushi place that wasn't too expensive. We were lucky to get the last available table, at around 7 p.m. without a reservation. Afterwards there was always a long line to be seated. We heard that in New Zealand, when you order a "lemonade" they give you a lemon-lime soda. We tested that advice here, and it was true!

Divan Cafe – Lovely spot for breakfast, brunch, or lunch, whether you're in a rush and want to grab something to go, or want to sit down to a leisurely meal. Chris ordered french toast, and I had another eggs benedict. Both were delicious. Divan is right off of Queen Street, but we didn't spot it immediately, because it's tucked back in a little alley.

Mt. Eden Village Fish and Chips – This restaurant isn't in downtown Auckland, but it was our favorite fish and chips place on our trip. And we ate a LOT of fish and chips, because it seems to be as close as New Zealand has to a national food. The fish is super fresh and delicious, and they also have kumara fries (kumara being the Maori sweet potato). We ordered both the snapper and the tarakihi, and liked the snapper especially.

There's not a ton of space to sit as most people order takeout (or take-away in New Zealand lingo). But we there are a few chairs and a bar facing the window, if you want to eat there.

New Zealand!

2011-04-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

Chris and I had a fantastic vacation in New Zealand in mid-March! We spent two weeks enjoying the stunning and varied landscapes of the country – lush green rainforests, towering sheer cliffs covered with waterfalls, fjords, volcanoes, glowworm caves, and glorious picture-perfect coves with white sand and turquoise water.


Auckland	Waiheke Island


Queenstown	Milford Track


Coromandel	Tongariro and Taupo

Karekare Beach

We spent our two weeks like this:

2 days in Auckland, with a day-trip to nearby Waiheke Island for some lovely wining and dining.
1 day in Queenstown, to prep for the Milford Track.
5 days on the breath-taking Milford Track, which has been called "the finest walk in the world".
1 more day in Queenstown, to get some adventure sports in! Ziplines and jetboats!
2 days in Hahei, on the Coromandel peninsula, to relax, recover, and lounge on the beach.
2 days in Tongariro, where we were supposed to do the "Mt. Doom" hike, but we got rained out. We spent the day exploring Taupo and its geothermal and honey-farming features.
1 day spelunking in the Waitomo glowworm caves. Totally more awesome than we expected!
1 day strolling on the black sand beaches at Karekare, and driving back to Auckland Airport.

We've been wanting to go to New Zealand since 2001, when the Fellowship of the Ring came out, and it didn't disappoint! All the New Zealanders were incredibly warm and friendly, and I think my new favorite animal is the kiwi, with its furry feathers and cute wingless waddle.

My camera didn't quite survive the trip, since the Milford Track got pretty wet, and the LCD screen shorted out. After a few days of using the tiny view finder (I know, view finder?!) and dozens of "don't-worry-just-press-the-button-it's-taking-the-picture" explanations to kind strangers offering to take pictures of us, I was terrified that I was going to have hundreds of blank pictures when we got back.

To my HUGE relief, the pictures mostly came out fine. Some are dark or sort of misty and ethereal-looking, but that's not too far off from the reality. Certainly better than nothing!

Over the next week or so, I'll write more posts and highlight details and pics of the places we went. Highly recommend taking a trip to New Zealand if you've never been and you love the outdoors!

Holidays in Germantown, MD

2011-01-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

After two weeks in Europe, we returned to Germantown, MD, to hang out with Chris's family at their new condo by the lake. We baked and cooked a ton: gingerbread cookies, molasses cookies, banana bread, pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes, aloo saag, butternut squash soup, and cucumber yogurt salad.

We also saw South Pacific at the Kennedy Performing Arts Center, and got ourselves hooked on Firefly.

But probably the most memorable theme of the holidays was "throwing things".

Chris's parents' new condo had an upstairs loft, a great place for launching stuffed animals at victims below. And the lake had a thin layer of ice on it, so we spent a great deal of time throwing rocks, logs, and basketballs into the lake, so we could hear the space-agey rattling when the ripples cracked the ice in waves.

Best sign we saw by the lake:

ICE NEVER SAFE. A little over-general maybe?

We also saw a hilarious bear at Cold Stone, lol.

A few more pictures of the lake and our first GeoCaching experience here.

Vacation in Rome, Continued

2011-01-09T16:32:00.000-08:00

Appian Way and Catacombs of San Callisto

After seeing so much impressive art and architecture, we decided to spend some time visiting Roman feats of engineering, particularly the aqueducts and the ancient "queen of roads," the Appian Way.

Surprisingly, chunks of the ancient aqueducts are still in use (though this one below probably wasn't one of them).

The visit to the Appian Way was a near catastrophe. Various tour sites recommended taking the 218 bus from the San Giovanni Metro stop, but we looked at the map and said, "Hey, that looks like a nice stroll through the park, let's just walk!"

Bad choice. It turns out the Via Appia Antica is now used as a normal road, with ten-foot walls on either side, no sidewalk, and an endless stream of cars whizzing by at terrifying speeds. We were walking on a narrow cobblestone highway, and the cobblestones quickly lost their charm. My feet and ankles were screaming, it was getting dark, and prospects of getting hit by a car before seeing anything cool were steadily increasing.

Minutes before 5 p.m. we finally reached the Catacombs of San Callisto (St. Callixtus). The tour guides were locking up the shop before they noticed us and hustled us to the entrance. They almost didn't let me use the bathroom, until I set my foot down and said I wasn't going on the tour unless I got to go. (Yes, I was fairly grumpy by that point.)

As the tour began, I started to freak out. Everyone else had left, it was completely dark, and we were the last people going underground, into a crypt with miles and miles of tunnels. All the bodies had long since been removed, but in one of the holes was a marble statue of a corpse, a martyred Christian woman (St. Cecilia) who had been hit on the neck with an axe, and left to bleed to death over the course of three days as she was buried alive.

Chris thought the catacombs were the coolest thing ever. I was completely creeped out. Either way, it was very memorable.

We weren't allowed to take pictures, but if you want to see some, click on the links I added above, or do a Google Image Search for "catacombs of san callisto".

On the plus side, we gave our tour guide a nice tip for staying late for us, and he told us how to catch the 218 bus back to Rome. No more cobblestone hiking, thank goodness.

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica is a remarkably well-preserved ancient Roman city, much like Pompeii, except without the volcano. It's located on the former mouth of the Tiber River, before natural phenomena caused the river to change course.

Really cool. It was especially lovely to be outside and wandering slowly through a quiet ruin, far from the bustle and traffic in Rome. Ostia Antica was an easy 1.5 hour train ride from Rome and well worth the visit.

St. Paul's Basilica

On the train ride back to Rome from Ostia Antica, we hopped off a few stops early to see the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls (Basilica di San Paolo).

I was curious why St. Peter's Basilica got all the attention, when Paul wrote more books of the Bible. The answer, I think, is that Paul was buried "outside the walls" of Rome, and that his basilica was sacked more frequently. In addition, 1823, a fire started by a negligent roof repair worker practically burned it to the ground.

We had a debate about whether it's more sad for an architectural wonder to be destroyed maliciously, or by accident. I somehow felt more sad that it was destroyed during modern times, by people who were supposedly taking care of it. Congratulations, you just burned down St. Paul's Basilica! "Need a moment?"

Anyways, the St. Paul's Basilica is being restored now, and recently (as in 2009) they carbon-dated the purple linen and bone fragments in Paul's tomb and confirmed that they're indeed from the first century. Bible stories seem so much more real when you're staring at the sarcophagus of the man who wrote Romans and Corinthians!

Musei Capitolini

On the last day, we considered going to Florence, but it was somewhat rainy, so we decided to see the Musei Capitolini. These were some of my favorites.

Medusa. (Wouldn't this be a great profile pic?)

She-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus.

Marcus Aurelius.

Funny epiphany moment: When museums label statues as "larger than life" they are not being cliche or making references to the Backstreet Boys. They actually mean that the statue is larger than the life-sized version of whatever is being sculpted.

And that's basically it for our trip!

Hotel Artemide

For anyone who's planning a trip to Rome and wondering where to stay, we thought our hotel, Hotel Artemide, was very good.

Pros:

Location. Hotel Artemide is a ten-minute walk from Termini Station, which is where the train from Fiumicino Airport (FCO) stops. Actually, it's a ten-minute walk from basically everything we wanted to see, except Vatican City. The Colosseum, Pantheon, Spanish Steps, and Trevi Fountain were all easy to get to by walking.
Breakfast. Every morning, we were greeted with an impressive spread of pastries, donuts, croissants, cheeses, meats, scrambled eggs, sausages, poached apples or pears, fruit salads, yogurts, and juices. The tea and cappuccino were great too! We really looked forward to Hotel Artemide's big yummy, and best of all, complimentary breakfasts every morning.
Rooms. If I remember correctly, we got a free upgrade on our room, so we had a nice amount of space. There was a mini-fridge with a free mini-bar that got restocked every day! We especially liked the apple-banana juice and the Euro-style Fanta (that tasted a lot more like Orangina). The free cookies and wafers also got restocked everyday.
Service. The staff was fluent in English and very nice about recommending restaurants and helping us get a cab to the airport when we left.
Price. We paid $216 / night, which I think was pretty reasonable for what we got.

Cons:

The bathroom smelled a little funny. I suspect that maybe some bad air was coming in through a vent or pipe. But airing it out for a few minutes basically got rid of the smell.

Good restaurant near Hotel Artemide – Berzitello. The front desk recommended this restaurant to us the first night we were in Rome, and I liked it a lot. We had buffalo-style mozzarella with tomato, and very good spinach and cheese ravioli. They apparently specialize in seafood, which we didn't realize at the time. It was a nice casual place very close to the hotel, and totally hit the spot after a long, tiring day of travel.

Okay restaurants near Hotel Artemide – La Taverna dei Monti, and Gran Caffe Strega.

At La Taverna dei Monti, Chris really liked what he ordered, which was a pork and bacon dish. I ordered lobster and pasta, but it was kind of gross. I was expecting lobster tail meat, but I was served a cut-open lobster head, which didn't have much meat and was very fishy-smelling. I wasn't very hungry to begin with, but I couldn't eat more than a few bites of my food, even to be polite. La Taverna dei Monti is very highly reviewed on TripAdvisor though, so perhaps I just ordered the wrong thing.

On the bright side, we were served limoncello after the meal! The limoncello was delicious, like drinking liquid lemon sunshine. We'd never had it before, but it's made from soaking lemon zest in some neutral alcohol like vodka and adding tons of sugar, so it's very citrusy and sweet, not sour or bitter at all, since no lemon juice is involved.

At Strega, the pizza we ordered was decent, but the house wine was so bad that Chris got a horrible hangover and couldn't face any more alcohol for two days afterwards. And he only had one glass!

I'll end this post by recommending...

A fantastic pizza restaurant in Trastevere – Dar Poeta. We ordered the "Dar Poeta" pizza and loved it. They describe their pizzas as being neither thin nor thick crust, but something perfect in the middle. I'm salivating just thinking about it. If you go to Dar Poeta, definitely save room for the nutella calzone for dessert too!

Vacation in Rome

2011-01-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

We saw and ate so much stuff in Rome that it's a dilemma how I should write about all of it! But I guess I'll just dive in and tell all our most memorable stories. For the visual learners, here are our pictures from Rome.

We had fun exploring the city with Andrew and his girlfriend Lindsay during the first weekend. The two of them were studying abroad in London for the semester and basically went to a new country every weekend. (I think 22 countries was their final total?! So envious!!) Anyways, they kindly waited until their very last week in Europe to visit Rome, so their trip could could overlap with ours. Yay!

We spent Saturday at the Vatican. Various friends had advised us to find a tour guide, because as a group of four art-challenged engineers, we'd have no clue what we were looking at. We failed to do any advance planning for this though, so we ended up finding some British tour guide who approached us off the street. I was having flashbacks of Slumdog Millionaire and hoping fervently our metaphoric shoes wouldn't be stolen. But it out mostly turned out okay...

The tour guide's first comment, after finding out that everyone in the group was from the US, UK, or Australia, was about how nice it was to have an all-Anglo-Saxon group. I said, "Er, I think this is the first time anyone has called me an Anglo-Saxon." He replied with something like "well, actually, the true definition of "Anglo-Saxon" is really inclusive of everyone!"

Hm.

To be fair, the Wikipedia definition of Anglo-Saxon says that the term "can be used in a variety of contexts, often to identify the English-speaking world's distinctive language, culture, technology, wealth, markets, economy, and legal systems." Suffice it to say, we had an early warning to take what he said with a grain of salt.

I'm not sure how much of our tour was actually lies, but it was at least more interesting than us going around and thinking "hmmm, and this must be another painting...". Plus the tour guide legitimately seemed to know a lot about art (based on my extensive high school Art 1A training).

Both the ceilings and floors in the museum were surprisingly gorgeous.

The Sistine Chapel might have been more awesome with less noisy people and less security people shouting at the noisy people to shut up. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the actual Sistine Chapel, but here's Michaelangelo's Pieta, which we spent a LOT of slides on in Art 1A, so I know it's important.

Of all the lovely sights we saw in Rome, I think I was most impressed with the size and grandeur of St. Peter's Basilica.

Decent restaurant near St. Peter's Square (Piazza San Pietro): Arlu. This place was recommended by our tour guide. We stopped by for lunch and I got some excellent spinach and cheese gnocci there.

Later that night, we got some gelato (mmm, stracciatella) and walked to the Trevi Fountain. I had major deja vu when I saw the Trevi Fountain.

I swore I'd seen it before, despite never having been to Rome.

Me: "HEY!! Maybe I saw it in Las Vegas!!"
Me: "Yeah maybe at the Venetian or something!!"
Chris: "Um, try Caesar's Palace?"

And indeed, there is a fake Trevi Fountain at Caesar's Palace.

The Pantheon was under construction and had a nice two-face effect going.

A good restaurant near the Pantheon: Trattoria Dal Cav Gino – Warm, cozy, friendly restaurant in a little alley. I don't remember exactly what we ordered, but it was a very nice meal and the prices were very reasonable. It's about a five minute walk north of the Pantheon.

A GREAT restaurant near the Pantheon: Fortunato Al Pantheon – This was our favorite restaurant of the trip! I'm still salivating at the memory of what I ordered. Well actually they ran out of what I ordered (originally pasta with porcini mushrooms). They offered me pasta with artichoke and bacon instead. I realize this sounds completely plain and unexciting, but it was REALLY perfect. The artichoke was delicately done (cut up nicely, no chewy bits), and the bacon in Rome is more fatty and very flavorful. I wish I knew what they did so I could make this.

Chris ordered a steak in cream sauce with green peppercorns. The steak was so tender, and the cream sauce with peppercorns was divine.

We highly recommend Fortunato Al Pantheon if you're looking for a restaurant near the Pantheon. It's just a hundred meters away from the Pantheon, but shockingly not filled with obvious tourists. The meal was more expensive than other restaurants we went to but certainly not bad compared to anything in Zurich. Our waiter was super polite and helpful. The patrons were dressed nicely (business suits etc.) so we felt slightly underdressed in our nicest casual clothes, but this place was well worth the trip.

Okay, enough ranting about food (for the moment), haha.

The next day, we saw the Colosseum, which was much, bigger than I expected.

The audio tour claimed that in ancient times, they could probably jam in a maximum of 70,000 spectators. That means in comparison to other pro sports stadiums, the Colosseum might rank higher than Candlestick Park, whose capacity is a piddly 69,732. And Ancient Romans built this thing by stacking rocks on top of each other. Mind-blowing.

Also of note: I almost got robbed while taking the picture above.

People warned us repeatedly to watch out for pick-pockets in Rome, and it actually happened. I was listening to an audio tour with one hand, taking pictures with the other, and a bunch of kids were bumping my legs and purse. Perfect target right? By the time I got suspicious about the extra jostling, I whipped my head back just in time to see a man snatch his hand back from under my purse flap, turn around with his big black leather bag, and walk quickly away.

Scary. But at least I noticed before he took anything. Whew.

Good restaurant near the Colosseum: Naumachia (Na Machia?) – This was a really nice find just a couple blocks away from the Colosseum. We were too hungry to do much research on where to eat, so we wandered resolutely past all the restaurants trying to hustle tourists into their restaurants, and eventually stopped at Naumachia, precisely because they just said hello, and didn't try to push us in. I ordered the special, which was a lasagna in cream sauce with porcini mushrooms. Chris snarfed half of my meal it was so good.

After lunch, we went to the Basilica of San Clemente. This was an awesome layer cake of a church. It's a 12th century medieval church, built on top of a 4th century basilica / pagan mithraic temple, built on top of an ancient Roman citizen's home, which was in turn built on top of an underground river. We went all the way down to the bottom and saw the water flowing underneath.

What we still haven't figured out is how all these buildings accumulated enough dirt that subsequent inhabitants found it easier to build on top rather than demolish and start over. Could it really just be dirt carried in by the Tiber? Or dust blowing in?

Later in the afternoon, walked quickly around the Roman Forum, but it was raining, and Andrew and Lindsay had a flight to catch, so we didn't stay long. Thus ends the first half of our trip to Rome; I'm going to take a break and continue in a little bit.

Best picture of the first half of the trip: Italian leather roses!!

Some poor cow got made into ROSES.

Favorite Restaurants in Zurich

2011-01-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's 2011, and vacation's almost over! I guess that means it's a good time to jot down the highlights of our trip before we forget.

We spent about a week in Zurich, mostly working, but also wandering around town and eating. The sights were nice, especially since I'd never been in a European city before. (Wow, cobblestones!) But piggies that we were, the most memorable part was probably the food, so I'll write about the restaurants we went to and liked.

Hiltl

This is the best vegetarian restaurant I've ever eaten at. Granted, I don't eat at many vegetarian restaurants, but this was very yummy. Founded in 1898, Hiltl is also the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Europe. I ordered the Jalapeños and Salad, which was fried cheesy jalapenos with delicious quinoa, red rice, and green salad and guacamole.

Chris ordered the Green Thai Curry, which he said was good, but since he caught a cold, we should note that he couldn't taste much.

Le Dézaley

Since Switzerland is supposed to be known for its cheese, we decided we HAD to try some fondue. Mmmmmmmm!!! (Also, here's a fun fact. The Swiss don't call their cheese Swiss cheese; it's called Emmental.)

I liked the casual atmosphere at Le Dézaley (not too dressy), and our waiter was a nice smiley guy. We followed the advice of this nice blog post about Le Dézaley, and ordered the Käsefondue (cheese fondue) and Geschnetzeltes Kalbfleisch nach Zürcher Art mit Rösti (sliced veal "Zurich style" with rösti). We also ordered a few extra sides – potatoes, bread, and an assortment of pickled gherkins, baby onions, and baby corn to go with the fondue.

We devoured the fondue. We ate the entire pot of cheese, and then the waiter scraped out the bottom of the pot to give us two more bites of delicious chewy cheesy goodness. He mentioned that lots of people think that's the best part, haha.

I was expecting to dislike the pickles (because I don't like pickles), but these were a very pleasant surprise. Seems like the Swiss know how to make pickles better than Vlasic. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me.

The veal and rösti were also very good, although we were already feeling very full by the time it came. Veal is probably not our favorite meat, but it was very tender and the cream sauce was tasty.

Rösti, I learned, is a traditional Swiss dish that's exactly like hash browns, except that they sometimes put more cheese, meat, and seasoning on top.

The total bill (including the wine) came out to be around CHF 130, so this was probably the most expensive meal that Chris and I have ever eaten together, but hey, I guess this is what eating in Zurich is like!

Sternen Grill

Chris read that this was one of the best sausage stands in Zurich, and since they're supposed to be good at sausage in this part of the world, we were excited to give it a try. I was too hungry to take pictures, but you can see some on the Sternen Grill's photo gallery. Really excellent sausages. I thought the white ones were especially good.

Sprüngli

Sprüngli is a chain of cafes in Zurich. The luxembergerli were just heavenly. They're like tiny French macaroons, but the famous flavor at Sprüngli is champagne. The hazelnut and chocolate were terrific too. I really wish I could have brought some home to share with everyone, but they're very delicate and only last a couple days.

Luckily, since Sprüngli is the same company as Lindt, they also make delicious champagne-flavored chocolate, so we could send that instead!

Zermatt, Switzerland

2010-12-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

Finally, some downtime to write about our amazing last several days! We:

Flew out of SFO on Wednesday. (Fun fact: There were at least five other Googlers on the same flight to Zurich. We recognized five, but there may well have been more.)
Landed in Zurich on Thursday afternoon. We worked for a couple hours, and then shuttled off to the Google Christmas party.
Scrambled around Friday morning to find power adapters and SIM cards. We then worked for a few more hours, and took a three-hour train ride to Zermatt.
Skied on a glorious, sunny Saturday, underneath the Matterhorn.
Strolled around Zermatt on Sunday morning, took the train back to Zurich, and then strolled around Zurich while sipping Glühwein and watching pre-Christmas festivities in the city.

Now, Chris has found a way to stream the Patriots-Bears game, and we have some time to relax.

Here are the pictures from our Zurich/Zermatt adventures (so far). For once, I wish I could write about all my pictures, but since they're really painful to import into Blogger, I actually added captions in Picasa, and I'll only post my favorites.

Front and center at Zermatt is the Matterhorn, of course! I didn't really believe how close we would be until we got there. And how lucky were we, to get such a crystal clear sunny day?!

Before the trip, we were super-psyched about the idea of skiing into Italy. I'd read about a particular run called "Red 7" which is an intermediate run starting from Switzerland and ending in Cervinia, Italy. It's been called one of the top intermediate runs in the world. But sadly, the top of the "Matterhorn glacier paradise" wasn't open.

We ended up spending the day on the blue (easy) and red (intermediate) slopes around Gornergrat and Trockener Steg, and had a ton of excitement. We took our first ski lesson at Squaw in Tahoe the previous weekend, and thought we'd improved by such an amazing amount (hooray, Level Four skiers) that we could tackle lots of reds, but it turns out the blues at Zermatt were quite challenging enough for us.

The conditions were a bit icier than they were at Tahoe last week, and we both took a bunch of spills, but we managed to make it all the way down from Gornergrat to Furi. WOOHOO!! Our reward was a yummy, warm, ~$15 (!!!) cup of goulash soup. (People are not joking when they say Switzerland is expensive.)

Toward the end of the day, we went up to the highest slope open, a wide, gentle blue one with magical powdery snow, a fantastic view, and best of all, very few people! Gornergrat was extremely crowded with (in my humble, level four opinion) really good skiers that went intimidatingly fast. Up at the blue run above Trockener Steg (the one with the t-bar lift), close to the time the sun was setting, it seemed like we had the whole mountain to ourselves. We felt so lucky.

Staying at Hotel Antares

At the advice of my teammates who organized the trip, we booked at Hotel Antares, a hotel that was practically next door to the Matterhorn Express Gondola Station. Google Maps says it's 110 meters.

View Larger Map

The location was perfect for someone with short legs and who can't really walk in ski boots. There was an ATM at the station, and the rental shop, Dorsaz Sports, was right across the street and a short elevator ride down. Couldn't be easier.

The hotel itself was cozy. I thought the furnishings in room were a little faded-looking, though very clean and comfy. There was a nifty balcony with a view of the mountains and the river Vispa. The most annoying thing was that the bathroom, which looks so sleek and new, had an absurdly low shower head, below chest-level for me, and I'm 5'2". But the location was so excellent that I didn't mind, and we loved the breakfast – delicious croissants (I had no idea croissants were supposed to taste so good), lots of meats and cheeses, and Nutella!

As I wrap up writing about Zermatt, I'll leave you with one more awesome picture. That's right, an ad for a Swiss Army knife with a laser pointer and USB key.

More on Zurich some other day! Again feel free to look at the album if you want to see more.

Sean and Dani's Wedding

2010-11-14T19:09:00.000-08:00

Another lovely weekend in Colorado Springs last weekend. This time, we went out for Chris's cousin Sean's wedding, which was held at the beautiful Shove Memorial Chapel.

And yes, the chapel did have an office. :-)

It was a very pretty rose-themed wedding, and we all had a fantastic time!

I uploaded lots more pictures of the weekend on my Picasa account, so feel free to browse.

But the fun didn't stop with the wedding. On Saturday, we threw an 80th birthday party for Chris's Great Aunt Mary. Since Uncle Ray graciously hosted, we were once again treated to barbecue from Rudy's. We demolished FIVE pounds of meat, which is not bad for eleven people!

On Sunday we were mostly on our own, so we toured the Celestial Seasonings factory in Boulder, as well as the Butterfly Pavilion in Broomfield. The tour of the fea factory was interesting; we learned that the top three bestsellers for Celestial Seasonings are actually not tea at all. They're "herbal infusions" since they contain no tea leaves. The weirdest flavor was probably the blueberry green tea; it actually tasted less like tea and more like weak blueberry juice, but it was kind of tasty.

Air Force vs Navy

2010-10-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

Continuing the tradition that the Taylors and Staceys started last year, we had Mini Family Reunion 2.0 in Colorado Springs last week. Like last time, the ostensible main event was a college football game, but since Andrew was in London, we got tickets to the Air Force vs Navy game. Chris has a cousin who graduated from the Naval Academy (and is now in the Marines), and another cousin in the Navy, so it was at least somewhat relevant.

After the pig roast from last year, tailgating this year was rather tame in comparison, but it was a lovely day. Here's Falcon Stadium, as we were walking in.

And here's the obligatory fly-over. I think these were WWII era planes. Later we got a fly-over by four awesome jets, though I don't remember exactly what they were. I remember hearing the announcer saying "eagles" so maybe they were F-15s? Anyways, pretty cool.

There was a lot of pomp and ceremony before the game too, which was nifty to watch. A bunch of cadets from Air Force (and some from Navy too!) marched onto the field led by various Cadet Colonels whose names and hometowns were announced over the loudspeaker.

The Air Force was wearing green flight suits, and the Navy was wearing white. The football players for Air Force were wearing interesting uniforms too; all the shirts either said "Freedom" or "Service" on the back – no names.

Possibly the coolest piece of minutia (for someone who holds a personal best of 13 push-ups in a minute), was seeing how buff and fit all the cadets were. Whenever Air Force scored, a couple dozen members from the stands had to get out on the field and do a push-up for every point. Of course, the final score was only 14-6, but but DANG they were FAST. Made me wonder what my life would be like if I'd gone to a military academy.

The synchronized cheering was awesome too; they were way more loud and organized than any student section I'd seen (which is admittedly not many, but still). I think my favorite was a "YOU-CAN'T, DO-THAT" chant (you know, that same sing-song chant that people do "LET'S-GO, RED-SOX" to). Air Force did that one when Navy got a penalty.

Anyways, fun weekend, lots of great food and company, and some pretty hiking around Garden of the Gods. The extra red blood cells and motivational push-up watching helped me have a good workout at the gym on Monday too!

Howard's Wedding in St. Louis

2010-09-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, our good friend Howard got married out in St. Louis. Congrats Howard and Emily!
He, John, and Chris had a fun mini high school reunion, which is apt, since this is the year of our 10th high school reunion.

Now, we've been to a bunch of weddings at this point, but Howard and Emily threw a really spectacular one that had waaaay delicious food. Lobster bisque, caprese salad, the tenderest tenderloin...and LOOK at this dessert buffet!

In addition to the terrific food, Howard and Emily's wedding won the award for Best Special Effects, haha.

Fireworks show! So awesome!

What else did we do in St. Louis? Chris, John and I made the obligatory visit to the Gateway Arch, which was very Halo-esque. It was also very fun to take pictures of, but I'll only subject you to my favorite one.

After waiting in a looooooong line, we went up to the top of the arch in one of these little claustrophobic pods (the so-called "tram").

By the time we finally got to the top, we were running late for the wedding, so we stayed for only about 30 seconds. (I mean this quite literally.) But it wasn't really a huge loss...we all now agree with Howard that the arch is indeed a "tourist trap" and "overrated". The view from the bottom was much cooler than the view from the top, I thought. Still, I'm glad we did it at least once.

The next day, we braved the crowds once more to visit Forest Park and the (free admission!) St. Louis Zoo. Favorite animal of the day? Take a wild guess.

Yeah, missed my girls. :-)

I also enjoyed seeing a real okapi, after looking at the model on Daniel's desk every morning.

There wasn't any time to make the reunion complete and have a nice D&D session...but we'll save that for next time, heehee.

Lots more pictures of the weekend here, if you want to see them!

USTA Playoffs and Districts

2010-09-12T19:10:00.000-07:00

This season, I joined three USTA teams, and as luck (or skill, haha) would have it, two of the teams made it to playoffs, and one of them made it all the way to districts! Here's a cool picture of me playing with my 3.0 team, University Club of Palo Alto. (Thanks Chris!)

But wait...isn't that... Jenn in a SKIRT?! Let it be known, that's the team uniform (white top, red bottom). And I couldn't find red tennis shorts. Rick told me "wow, that's the best tennis outfit I've seen all day" the first time he saw me wearing it. And then he secretly told Chris "well, it doesn't look like her personality at all, but I was trying to be encouraging." Gee, thanks coach. But yeah, usually I wear the colors of intimidation: black tank + black shorts, GRRRRR! :-)

In the spirit of honesty, I should probably note that most pictures of me playing tennis do not look awesome. Here's a particularly horrible one of me doing everything wrong on a serve. BAD BAD BAD. Open racquet, open shoulders, AND a foot fault. So embarrassing. :-( But actually having this picture was the main thing that motivated me to work on my serve this summer!

Anyways, my 3.0 team ended up losing in the playoffs. I lost my match, excruciatingly, in the third set, when I had to retire with a calf cramp. I've never had a calf cramp before, but this one was bad. It took almost twenty minutes to even get my toes to uncurl. Lesson learned, drink more water on hot days!

My 3.5 team made it to the district championships, which were held in Folsom. The luckiest thing ever happened with our assignment of venues; Chris's team ALSO made it to districts and got assigned to Folsom! This was pretty seriously improbable, given that districts were being played all over NorCal that weekend, but it meant we got to hang out and watch each other's matches, which was fun.

Here's a shot of a slightly improved serve at districts.

Wearing the so-called "colors of intimidation" in 95 degree heat was possibly retarded, but oh well, haha. Both of our teams ended up losing, but I managed to win one doubles match with my partner Cindy, and we had a good time. Better luck next year!

Flying Fortress in Denver

2010-09-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

Shockingly, it's September already. Where did the summer go?! Oh yeah, I guess that's what I'm supposed to be writing about. :-)

In June, about a week after we got back from Yellowstone, we flew out to Denver to visit Andrew and Lindsay, who both got internships at Lockheed Martin. We happened to be in town at the same time as the "Flying Fortress," which is a B-17 bomber from WWII. It was refurbished so that people could actually sign up to fly in it, for a few hundred dollars. We actually thought about it, but ended up just taking a ground tour.

The ground tour reminded us that planes have come a LONG way since WWII. A bunch of space on the plane was taken up by racks of big bulky radios, one for each frequency they wanted to hear. At one point, I saw a bunch of cylindrical tanks in a corner, and asked the tour guide what they were for. That's when I was reminded that the cabin wasn't pressurized and that people needed the tanks for air.

Unless thing was going to stay under 10,000 feet (and given that Denver is already at 6,000 feet, so it was probably unlikely), I was glad we decided not to fly!

We also had fun doing short hikes. At the lake near the Lockheed offices, we saw monster dandelion fluffs (my hand included for scale).

Snake River and Alpine Slides!

2010-06-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

Finally, it was time to say goodbye to Yellowstone. We checked out, and after a brief kerfuffle with the front desk about the bill ("um, I think this charge is off by at least $1000..."), and a parting visit to the gift shop (where Kasandra finally bought herself that cute "I'm Your Hucklebeary" shirt), we were on our way south to Grand Teton (again).

Signal Mountain

On the way south, we drove up to the top of Signal Mountain and saw both a great view, and this funny sign. If anyone can make sense of why it says "UserFee" on it, please tell me!

It seemed apt that we would have five bars at a place called Signal Mountain. This was probably the reason:

Our next activity was to do a scenic float on the Snake River, but the outfitters said it would be too windy to go out until the late afternoon. So how to burn a few hours?

Answer 1: EATING!
Answer 2: ALPINE SLIDES!

We had a delicious lunch at Dornan's Pizza and Pasta Company in Moose, WY. We had really yummy pizza, pasta, and beer – a perfect lunch, in a dining room with a spectacular view of the mountains.

Alpine Slides in Jackson

After lunch, we still had some time to burn, and we weren't sure what to do in Jackson, so we figured we would just...check into our hotel early? This seemed somewhat boring to us, so during the drive from Dornan's to Jackson, I frantically looked for things to do on my Nexus One. I suddenly remembered Uncle sending me a link about alpine slides, and managed to look up where it was, find out their ticket prices, and text the other van about the change of destination. I LOOOVE my data plan!

The alpine slides at Snow King Resort ended up being totally, totally awesome. (What else would you expect? I mean, *alpine slides*!)

Mom and Dad needed to be convinced that it wasn't dangerous, and they ended up going down sooooo slow that I got worried and asked the guy at the desk to radio up and check on them. But in the end, nobody fell out of the lift, had a heart attack, or broke any bones going off track. Everyone was all grins at the bottom – possibly the biggest grins we saw all trip!

Except maybe Tiffany, who got stuck behind speed-demon Kasandra. :-)

Scenic Float on the Snake River

Originally, I was completely gung-ho about taking the group white water rafting. Mom has always wanted to go, and of course, Chris and I had an amazing time on our three-day trip down the Rogue River in Oregon. But a week of snow and ice convinced us that perhaps getting soaked in frigid water in gusting wind and rain wouldn't be that much fun. So we went on the scenic float and hoped that we would spot some wildlife.

On the drive out, we briefly spotted a moose. On the float itself, we saw a couple beavers building dens, and a pair of bald eagles! Here's a shot of one of them sitting on a branch. I saw its mate sitting in the nest across the river, but couldn't quite catch it on camera.

We were also amused to find that beavers really do chew through the bases of trees like they do on cartoons!

Still, it was cold and we were happy to get someplace warm and have dinner! We thought our folks would appreciate some Chinese food (finally), and went to the Chinatown Restaurant in Jackson. The big "kids plus Ama" table thought the food was yummy, but when I asked my Dad what he thought, he was surprisingly frank: "Oh it was terrible. Everything tasted the same." In retrospect, I guess that was totally true, but still, I thought it was satisfying. We're such gringos. :-)

The menu even had a big tipoff how Americanized it was: "American Delights: French Fries". Ha!

And finally, for our last night together, we stayed at the Trapper Inn and Suites (a.k.a. The Lexington) and played poker, spoons, and Monopoly (the card game) into the wee hours of the night.

The End

Who knows when we'll EVER be lucky enough to get everyone's schedule lined up like this again, but wow that was a lot of fun memories! The sequel, I'm told, might happen in China – but we'll see!

Grand Teton and Jenny Lake

2010-06-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

By our sixth day, we figured that we'd seen enough pools of steaming water, so we drove down to Grand Teton National Park to get a change of scenery! Besides the breathtaking snow-capped Tetons, the main attraction here was Jenny Lake.

We debated whether we should hike around the whole lake (Jenny Lake Loop is a ~7 mile loop), or just do a small piece, but once we arrived at the visitor center, we found a great compromise; there was a shuttle boat crossing the lake every 15 minutes, so we could hike ~3.5 miles to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point, and then take the boat back to the trailhead. Perfect!

On the trail, we saw this funny-looking bird, standing literally a foot off the trail.

Its head looked distinctly snake-like, and yet its feathers reminded us of a turkey. Kally dubbed it Snurkey. Looking at a hotel wildlife classifier brochure, we thought it was a sage grouse, but Wikipedia now tells us that it's really a ruffed grouse.

Chris and I also spotted a couple of marmots off the trail, but they scrambled away quickly so we couldn't get a picture.

To get to Hidden Falls, we had to hike across some snow, but wow, it was awesome. It was the tallest cascading waterfall I'd ever seen, and I thought it was even cooler than Lower Falls in Yellowstone.

Our steep climb up to Inspiration Point was rewarding too. Gorgeous view.

But who's looking at the view, right? :-P I think Chris may have been most inspired at having cell reception.

Plus there were some very people-friendly chipmunks... It seemed like *someone* (i.e. maybe three someones) had been feeding them.

For dinner, we ate at the Jackson Lake Lodge, which was probably our group's favorite restaurant of the trip. They served us moose-shaped butter!

Kally recommended the Jackson Lake Lodge because it had a lovely view of the Tetons from the dining room, and her friend mentioned that it was a great place to watch wildlife.

I don't know if this is funny or just truly awful, but while I was looking at those lovely mountains, all I could think of was the Coors "Love Train" commercial. And Kasandra said she was thinking about Arrowhead Water. How sad is that?

Lower Falls, Norris, Cody Rodeo, and WOLVES

2010-06-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks (and a trip to Colorado) later, I'm finally back to finish writing about the trip to Yellowstone!

Day 5 was a long, exciting day – so long and exciting that we actually got complaints from the peanut gallery. We woke ourselves up with a steep, slippery, nerve-wracking 325-stair descent to get up close and personal with the beautiful Lower Falls. Then we moved on to Norris Basin, where ominous storm clouds and thunder threatened to drench us at any moment. Then we witnessed a pack of wolves feasting on coyote cubs after chasing away the parents. And THEN we drove out to Cody, WY to watch the Cody Nite Rodeo, which was pretty fun to see overall, but man, the icing on the cake was their borderline-bigoted-misogynistic-homophobic MC to REALLY make us feel we were in the Wild West.

But let's start from the beginning!

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone: Lower Falls

As you might remember, our first attempt to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was mostly foiled by the fog. Our second attempt was much more rewarding. We drove to the South Rim and hiked down 3/4s of the way down to the bottom of Lower Falls. The stairs were slick because of rain and little waterfalls splashing across the path.

I've always been afraid of heights, and being able to see through the metal grate stairs was not comforting. Even more disturbing was the number of dented or bent stairs, which made us think, hm, maybe we should have eaten less for breakfast... Mom stayed behind, but the rest of us helped each other down.

Even my cousins' Ama made it, and she's almost 80!

Finally, here's the view at the bottom.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone: Artist's Point

After huffing and puffing our way back up (no really, it's the altitude, I'm in better shape than that, honest!), we drove out to Artist's Point, where we were treated to a rare but perfectly-timed beam of sunshine.

Norris Geyser Basin

The Norris Geyser Basin is supposed to be the most volcanically active area in Yellowstone, and as such, we read that the landscape is constantly changing. We didn't see any of the big geysers go off, though we did see little Whirligig Geyser send up a nice tall plume for a few seconds. Otherwise, we just took pictures of all the fascinating colors, while hustling along to finish before the threatening thunderstorm.

This one below was called Pearl Geyser, which I thought was a cool name.

And there was a monster sighting at Green Dragon Spring!

Wolves in Hayden Valley

As the trip progressed, we improved at spotting interesting wildlife, not by spotting wildlife itself, but by gauging the number of cars parked by the road and the number of people with fancy tripod-mounted cameras.

Lots of traffic => "This is MAJOR!"

This is how we spotted the wolves. They were far away on the crest of a hill, so I don't understand how anyone could see them without knowing what to look for! This is probably my best picture, pardon my sad 3x zoom again. If you squint you can see the silhouette of a black wolf right in the center of the picture.

When we got out of our vans, we saw a black wolf and a grey wolf, chasing what we thought was another light-colored wolf down the hill. Turns out the light-colored one was a coyote, which the ranger said had been trying to misdirect the wolves from its den since 10 a.m. Other visitors mentioned that the wolves had been digging for some time, and the ranger confirmed that they were hunting for the coyotes' den and cubs.

Kally, with her macho 7x zoom, even got a picture of the black wolf with something hanging from its mouth, so awesome! Isn't it almost cannibalistic for wolves to be eating coyote babies though?

Cody Nite Rodeo

All of this unplanned wolf-watching made us somewhat behind-schedule to make the two-hour drive to Cody, WY. We considered postponing the trip, but were told that it would snow the next day and the roads might be closed. Plus, my uncle and parents had heard from a friend that there was *gasp* Chinese food in Cody, so we decided to head out! Haha, so cute.

We played "I Spy" in our van, but got stuck on Z. I think Tommy said "zygote" (we had a six-character minimum rule), and we were like, um, I certainly HOPE you don't spy a zygote. (And also "I spy with my little eye" implies little *unassisted* eye. That was also a rule.)

Ultimately, we didn't have quite enough time for Chinese food. Here was the sad conversation we had when we got to the stadium:

Chris: "Don't worry, it looks like they have food here."
Mom: "You mean, like...hot dogs?" (Looking sad, kind of queasy.)
Employee: "Oh yeah! Hot dogs, and barbecue too! The food here is really great. And at a good price too!"

(Employee sees the look on Mom's face, getting sadder and more queasy-looking.)

Employee: "At least, *I* think so..."

Poor Chinese parents. But actually, the food was yummy. They had kosher hot dogs, and I liked the barbecue better than the Cowboy restaurant in Gardiner, MT (less vinegary).

The events were also fun: bucking horses, bucking bulls, individual calf roping, pair calf roping, barrel racing, and junior versions of most of the above too.

My first inkling that something was weird was when the MC made the comment before one of the women's events that this was the "most dangerous event in rodeo" (or something like that) because "it's all women driving". Yeah okay. Ha. Ha. Joke. Fine. Then before the ladies' calf roping event, he asked, "why do the ladies only need to rope the calf, but not tie it down?" And then proceeded to sort of taunt the event, going "yeah ladies, what happened to equal rights?" I was like...hm. And THEN there was that awful intermission act which culminated in the MC sticking his head between this woman's legs (an actor I'm sure, but still), and making fun of her big butt. Yeeecch.

Oh right, and then there was the part where the MC welcomed visitors from various countries (France, UK, Belgium, etc.). Then he asked the Californians to cheer, and said "Welcome to the real America!". Totally lame. Chris and I both shouted loud boos. I think I was most appalled because he was saying this to my family, a bunch of minorities sitting in the front row, and it reminded me of the George Allen "macaca" thing in Virginia a few years back. But then I realized he probably couldn't see us, and figured okay, just another bad joke, ha ha.

I don't think I'll even go into the comments he made about gays or Obama. But I will close with one last awful snippet of the show, which was that they had a straw man propped up in the center of the arena during the bull riding event. Those bulls are BIG, STRONG animals. One pissed-off bull, after bucking his rider, charged the straw man, and just sort of...blew through him like it was...well a straw man. It was a little horrifying because it was such a vivid illustration of what might happen if someone didn't dodge fast enough.

What DIDN'T need to happen, was the MC insisting that it was Bill Clinton getting what he deserved. And then kicking it around some more. In the nuts. Sigh.

I must say I was shocked that these comments were being made in public, but I guess Wyoming is really a different part of the country!

Cutest part of the rodeo:

All the little kids in the audience were invited to come into the arena and try to pull ribbons off of three calves' tails for a prize. So cute...baby cows are much better at running than baby humans.
There was a kid (must have been 4 years old or so), who did his barrel race at a walk. Reminds me of how I did barrel racing at Don-E-Brook, haha.

At 10 p.m. we began the long, mountainous drive back to Yellowstone, in the rain and fog. I can't say I blame the peanut gallery for being tired, but it was definitely a memorable day!