Chris and Jenn's Blog

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!

Mammoth Hot "Springs" and TWO BEARS

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

After our bear sighting, we were so filled with enthusiasm and spunk that we decided to get out the door SUPER early the next morning. We had heard repeatedly that dawn and dusk are the best times to spot animals, so we drummed up support to drive to Lamar Valley first thing in the morning and see some more wildlife! ("Maybe we'll see wolves! Ow ow owwwoooo!")

To our dismay, it turns out that 7 a.m. does not count as dawn. Not even close. Now that we're home and have access to internets, it turns out that sunrise at Yellowstone (today) was at 5:36 a.m. and dawn was at 4:59 a.m. Plus we didn't check ahead of time that the road to Lamar Valley (through Dunraven Pass) would be open. It wasn't. Seriously stupid.

Should. Have. Gone. With. Dusk.

So instead, we drove, all sleepy-eyed, out to the opposite corner of Yellowstone, the Mammoth Hot Springs area. I remember telling Kasandra that while Eric Hutchinson, Jack Johnson, and Jason Mraz were all very nice, her mellow-licious iPod was not going to cut it that morning (no offense).

I've wanted to see Mammoth Hot Springs ever since I wrote my science report about Yellowstone National Park in sixth grade. If you search for pictures of Mammoth Hot Springs online, you'll see lovely photos of colorful, delicate, glistening mineral formations. I spent the long drive hyping this up to my slightly-cranky and sleep-deprived family. Imagine my disappointment, when I found out that the springs have been dry for quite some time now!

But all was not lost. Some of the springs still had water. Here's one with a pretty bacterial mat, which I touched despite the copious "do not touch" signs. (Rest assured, I made sure a little boy dipped his hand in first, to make sure it was safe.)

Once again, however, we saw the best stuff last.

For lunch, we were seriously sick of lodge cafeteria food, so we drove out to Gardiner, MT, to see what we could find. One of the locals recommended that we try the Cowboy Lodge and Grill, which just opened up last week and served delicious BBQ (the real kind, with a smoker).

After lunch, as you might expect, everyone had major food coma. But just when we least expected it, on the road between Mammoth Hot Springs and Roosevelt-Tower, we saw TWO MORE BEARS!! And a bighorn sheep!

Then, ironically enough, we finally made it to Lamar Valley and saw no animals. (Well, no animals except buffalo, which we'd seen plenty of already.) But the valley was very pretty!

We drove home via the now-open Dunraven Pass (it opened at 9 a.m., go figure), and had dinner at the Fishing Bridge cafeteria (more burgers and hot dogs...uh, yum).

I digress now to discuss the following depressing display at the gift shop.

Mugs for kiddies. When I was growing up, I could never find my name, because it was so popular that it always ran out. And now, I can't get one because nobody is naming baby girls Jennifer anymore. All the trendy names, like Jaden, McKenzie, etc. were there, but no Jennifer! I realized with horror what was happening.

I'm going to be the Gertrude of the 80s.

According to babynameshub.com:

Girls Named Jennifer

This chart illustrates how many Girls were named Jennifer in the U.S. since 1880.

On that note, we all went to bed at 8:30 p.m., well before official dusk at 9:42 p.m.

West Thumb, Old Faithful and a BEAR

2010-06-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

The road to the Old Faithful and other nearby basins opened up on our third day, so we saw lots of geysers and hot springs, and breathed in lots of delicious sulfuric steam. ("Mmm, smells like Taiwan!")

West Thumb

I think I was most impressed not by geysers going off, but by the bright, vivid, colors of the pools and their "bacterial mats". Apparently you can tell the temperature of the water by the colors of the "extremophiles" that live in it. (Warmer colors mean warmer water, cooler colors mean cooler water.)

Here are a couple nice colorful pools from West Thumb:

Old Faithful

Here's the obligatory picture with Old Faithful! (And various other Asian tourists...there were a LOT of Asians out there.)

And here's a couple more neat ones from the Old Faithful Basin:

We wanted to hike a longer loop around the Old Faithful area, but it was super cold and about half our group looked sort of sad and shivery when we suggested a longer walk, so we moved on to other basins.

Unfortunately, the weather was too cold for the hot springs too. I was super excited to see the Grand Prismatic Spring.

But there was too much steam coming off the water to see anything. :-(

Our next spot, Artists' Paint Pots, however, was a cool-looking surprise.

And we were really pumped to see a black bear in Hayden Valley on the way back home!

Curse my feeble 3x zoom, but I'm sure Kally and Kasandra will have some awesome ones to share later!

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

2010-06-06T18:22:00.000-07:00

On our first full day, all the roads were still closed, except the road to the Canyon area. We got some nice views of the canyon.

But we ran out of luck by the time we came to Inspiration Point:

When it started snowing again, everyone in the park crammed into the Canyon diner, where we eagerly nommed some cheeseburgers after a long wait. Little did we know how sick we would get of diner food, but that first burger was good at least.

Later, we stopped by the Mud Volcano area, where the conversation was mostly dominated by talk of cooking eggs. Hmm...I wonder why.

We loved this picture warning us to stay on the boardwalk. Onoes, it's Tommy again!

For dinner, we ate at the fancy Lake Lodge Restaurant. Chris had a bison steak, which was delicious, although the grownups didn't like their duck so much.

While we waited for dinner (outside the restaurant), we taught everyone how to play poker, with a grand pot of $7 for the winner. Chris and I learned an important lesson, which is not to bet against Tiffany. Tiffany managed to wipe everyone out without ever making a bet or a raise, if you can believe that. We realized waaaay too late that her simply calling a bet meant she probably had the winning hand.

After dinner, my cousins made us surprise visitors! Cute!

Sometimes the Snow Comes Down in June

2010-06-06T17:32:00.000-07:00

There are basically two routes from Salt Lake City to Yellowstone:

Through Idaho on I-15.
Through Wyoming and the Tetons on various smaller highways.

I'd been planning for months to use the latter route (I mean, what's interesting in Idaho right?), but for whatever reason, we changed our minds at the last minute and went through Idaho, to the west entrance of the park.

This was possibly the best decision of the trip. First, we got to see a herd of buffalo on the road! With baby buffaloes too! The ranger had just given us a scary cartoon of a visitor being gored by a buffalo ("uh oh, that looks like Tommy!"), so we were too chicken to roll down the windows.

But the real advantage of choosing I-15 was that the snow started coming down hard. And all three of the other park entrances (south, east, and north) were completely closed. Chris and I were worried that we would (once again) get caught in the snow with a lousy two-wheel-drive car and no chains.

Mom, inexplicably, was worried that we didn't have a compass.

Best Music of the Drive:

Vivaldi's Four Seasons. (Jenn: "Oh Winter is perfect for this weather; it sounds just like a snowstorm." Chris: "Um, this is Summer.")
I'm on a Boat! (AWWW SHIT! My parents and my brother had apparently never heard this before.)

When we finally arrived at the Lake Lodge, after a couple tense hours of driving in the dark in with juusssst-almost-too-deep snow, we found that our peril wasn't over. Apparently Uncle and Ayi had endured hours of puppy-dog-eye treatment from the lodge staff and stranded visitors, who wanted to use our room for the night, since nobody believed we could enter the park.

It's crazy to be reminded how difficult it is to figure out simple things like meeting up without cell reception!

Best comment of the night: "You weren't expecting to see snow when you got dressed this morning, were you." --Stranger, chuckling about my shorts and flip flops.

Most depressing comment: "Who's Vanessa Williams?" --My cousins, who have never heard 'Save the Best for Last' before. 1991 wasn't THAT long ago, was it?

Family Reunion in Yellowstone

2010-06-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

Whew! Just finished posting pictures from our week-long family reunion in Yellowstone!

Yellowstone

It took a while to get Picasa face tagging to work, but I figured it was worth it to be able to filter out all the random shots of buffalo butts and steaming holes of water (pretty as they are).

I think this was the first time all twelve of us have gotten together since our wedding in 2006, so it was super exciting that everyone's schedules lined up for this trip! Who knows when we'll ever get a chance to do this again, so I'm just going to jot down some highlights to remember the trip by. I'll split it up day by day, since it's really painful to make gigantic posts in Blogger.

But first some stats!

We were lucky enough to spot 15 of Yellowstone's awesome animals. Credits, in order of appearance:

Buffalo
Elk (a.k.a. Kally's 'white-tailed deer')
Duck
Crane
Canada goose (boring)
Black bear (three times!)
Bighorn sheep
Coyote
Wolf (black and grey, eating coyote pups!)
~~Sage~~ Ruffed grouse (a.k.a. 'Snurkey')
Marmot
Moose
Pelican
Bald eagle
Beaver

My family also loves to take pictures with all combinations of people. We were curious how many combinations of 12 people there actually are, and here's the answer.

Number of People	Combinations
1	12
2	66
3	220
4	495
5	792
6	924
7	792
8	495
9	220
10	66
11	12
12	1

Total number of people combinations for photos: 4095

I took a total of 599 pictures (most of which consisted of buffalo butts and holes of steaming water), so I bet we didn't even come close to getting all the combos. Goal for next time, haha.

We also drove a LOT in our two minivans. Our little white Chrysler Town & Country went through 4 states and a total of 1,534 miles.

To Infiniti and Beyond!

2010-05-21T22:32:00.000-07:00

We got a new car!!! :-)

It's an Infiniti G37 (hence the dumb pun in the title). We're so excited!! It accelerates so smooth that I have to keep checking the speedometer to make sure I'm staying under 90 mph, haha. Even the name of the color is super sleek: Graphite Shadow.

After a year of complaining about the Avalon's long list of problems (spastic engine acting like it wanted to jump out of the hood, broken clickers, broken seat belt, no key access to the trunk, broken cassette player), we finally did it. We are, however, feeling a little sad at consigning it to the faraway bat-cave of a parking garage at our complex...it's been a great car. Lots of great memories.

While shopping, we also looked at Audi A4 and BMW 328i, but ended up liking the G37 much better – both how it felt and how much it cost. Plus it's currently rated as the best sports sedan according to Consumer Reports. The A4 was nice, but Chris didn't like how it was hard to check his blind spot, since he had to move the seat all the way back. We might have liked the 328i better, but the salesman only let us demo an older model and didn't seem to take us scruffy twenty-somethings seriously. Oh well, his loss.

Now off to have more adventures with our shiny new toy. Zoooooom!!! :-)

P.S. Don't you think it's great irony that I'm wearing my green save-the-Earth "Stay Cool" t-shirt while buying a (sort of) gas guzzler? Though actually, the G37 has nearly identical mileage to the Avalon, so technically we're not making things worse... Plus we gotta get these fun cars while they're still legal, right? By the time we need another new car, Obama may have outlawed new cars with mileage like ours, heehee.

Win Win Win

2010-05-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

The USTA Adult League season is a little more than halfway through, and Chris and I are both getting some fun wins now, after a slightly rough start.

Chris started off his season with a loss to a tough team, probably because his muscle memory was a bit screwed up after all the new things we tried to learn at tennis camp in Utah.

I started with not one, but three consecutive losses at singles. In my very first singles match, I was so flustered that I lost track of the score and accidentally gave my opponent credit for a free game. Before this season, I only played doubles, so I was mentally unprepared for the long, tiring rallies, the different angles, and I was certainly not used to keeping track of the score myself. (So nice to have Chris keep track of the score for me in mixed doubles!)

After such a demoralizing wakeup call, we both hit the courts for some extra practice time. Chris started going to 7 a.m. Saturday morning practices with his team, and I started scheduling singles matches with anyone who would play with me, via OneClick, the ladder at work, my team's practices, anything!

Since then, Chris won his next two matches and developed some killer blazing first serves and evil high-kicking second serves. For me, I won my next seven singles matches, ending with three wins in three consecutive days this weekend. Five wins at 3.0, and two at 3.5 – super-psyched!

Now that we've totally overdone it and are taking a break to nurse our various injuries, time to get some more ice and ibuprofen. Will write more if we make it to playoffs!

Lovely Spring Weekend

2010-05-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, Chris's parents came to visit, and we spent the lovely spring weekend exploring the Bay Area.

Wine Tasting at Casa de Fruta

Our first stop was the Santa Clara Valley Wineries Spring Wine Celebration and BBQ, which was at Casa de Fruta (near Gilroy). I know...wine from Santa Clara Valley?! Isn't the real name Silicon Valley? And don't we basically only grow startups here? I at least, have never seen any grapes growing along 101. But actually, they had some nice wines; overall, our favorite winery was Cinnabar.

We listened to a lot of 70s music, and also realized that I was the only Asian at the entire event. I didn't even see any Indians. Seriously non-Silicon Valley. But a lovely day nonetheless! Before we left, we bought some dried fruit and an olallieberry pie. There was much confusion as to what an olallieberry is, but here is the final equation (according to Wikipedia):

Loganberry = Blackberry x Raspberry

Youngberry = Blackberry x Dewberry

Olallieberry = Loganberry x Youngberry

Olallieberry + Pie = YUM!

Hiking to Tomales Point

The next day, we went hiking in Marin for the very first time (despite having talked about wanting to go for several years now). We chose to hike to Tomales Point and it was gorgeous; ocean views, wildflowers in full bloom, and plentiful wildlife (elk). What more could we ask for?

We also ran into this interesting flora (below), which Kevin Gong's site calls a "thistle". But we dubbed it the "Mordor Flower".

You know, flaming eye, ensconced in a spiky pillar (of sorts)?

Anyways, beautiful weekend. Very glad Chris's parents came out and motivated us to do something other than play tennis! Please feel free to look at more pretty pictures from wine tasting and hiking on Picasa.

Vic Braden Tennis Camp

2010-03-31T20:39:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was our last day at the Vic Braden Tennis Camp in lovely St. George, UT.

This will likely be the most timely blog post I have ever written, thanks to a lovely two-hour flight delay in Las Vegas. (And thanks also to McCarran Airport's free WiFi, which gives me better options than to keep feeding the slot machines sitting in front of us.)

Tennis camp at a resort sounded like a perfect mini-vacation for us, because we get to play tennis all day, and then jump in the pool, soak in the hot tub, or get a massage. I was first drawn to the idea of doing the camp at Saddlebrook Tennis Academy in Tampa, FL, because the resort is beautiful and they seem to have a reputation for being very intense training-wise. Plus the timing would have worked out perfectly so that we could see BOTH a Red Sox spring training game at Fort Meyers, AND some matches at the Key Biscayne Masters. But in the end, we were afraid that maybe Saddlebrook would be too physically demanding, and decided to stay closer to home.

The Vic Braden tennis camp appealed to us, because like Saddlebrook, they use video recording to tape your strokes and analyze how to improve your technique. They're known for being very scientific in looking at the physics of what the pros do, and isolating what works and why. Chris and I obviously already take private tennis lessons (and think Rick's doing a great job with us!) but we were excited to get a different point of view on what we're doing and how to improve.

Besides, nobody takes pictures of me when I play (because I take all the pictures), so I really wanted to see what I look like, haha.

Turns out it was a great decision. We both thought we got some really cool tips and insights from having the coaches analyze our strokes and drill us on how to fix them. We're so impressed that we're thinking about doing it again in the fall, after the USTA Adult season ends.

We signed up for the three-day camp, both morning and afternoon sessions (hard core!). We had the option to stay in the same group, but thought we'd both learn more if Chris signed up as an advanced player (4.0-5.0 USTA rating), and I signed up as an intermediate (3.0-4.0 USTA rating). There were a different number of students everyday (between two and six more), but they added instructors so that the ratio was never worse than 4:1 (students to coaches).

The schedule went like this:

Day 1: Backhand groundstrokes and volleys (both sides).
Day 2: Serves and approach shots.
Day 3: Forehand groundstrokes and lobs.

We both got some really effective advice on groundstrokes and volleys. For instance, on my backhands, I need to "add a loop" or in other words, take the racquet straight back and let gravity accelerate it as I swing low-to-high. On my forehands, I need a lower my contact point so that the ball is in my "power zone" when I hit it.

By far the most REVELATORY day, however was when we worked on serves. As you might know, I've always hated serving (think multiple shoulder dislocations, painful surgery and recovery). As a result, my serves are weak, inconsistent, and overall no fun to practice. No amount of hearing "reach up!" or "snap your wrist!" or "whip your arm forward!" helped, until I saw myself on tape.

Slight digression for a moment. Let me first say that the tape was not flattering to my figure in general. I think the aspect ratio was off, because I looked like a massive chubster. I was like, "Hmmm...no wonder Rick keeps saying 'you're a strong girl, not like one of those toothpicks that blow over in the wind'".

Chris saw my tape and was like "wow you look like a little tank".

Yeah. Thanks.

Anyways, my serve was not flattering looking either. My arm was choked in and I sort of short-armed every ball. I was like "OHHHH...I get it. I need to reach up." But how?

Dave Nostrant, who runs the camp, is an extremely knowledgeable coach who does an excellent job at teaching people with all sorts of learning styles. He said that some players were musicians, and they learned better when he could hum the rhythm of the serve to them. Software engineers liked having a step-by-step guide to the motions – totally true for me – turns out I cut out a few key steps before.

By the end, I cracked a couple good ones – much faster than I ever thought I could hit a serve. The guys at the Vic Braden Tennis College really know what they're talking about!

Food in St. George

On a slightly non-tennis-related topic, during the trip, I decided to play with FourSquare and Gowalla. It was sort of fun being the first person to check in at a lot of businesses; apparently neither of these services are very popular in southern Utah yet. What I REALLY wish is that I could export my check-ins and share all the places we went, for the edification of any future visitors to St. George. For now I'll just list a few of our favorites:

[Google][FourSquare][Gowalla] Jimmy John's: Delicious sandwiches!

[Google][FourSquare][Gowalla] The Orange Peel: Smoothies + bubble tea.

[Google][FourSquare][Gowalla] The Egg and I: Breakfast + brunch.

[Google][FourSquare][Gowalla] The Dogfather: Hot dogs, what else, haha!

But this was the coolest business we found by far.

We didn't even go in, but the name speaks for itself: "Paintball, Food Storage, Violins & Band. Your Family Still Matters." When I first saw it in Google Maps, I thought it was some sort of title spam or keyword stuffing. But nope, it's real!

Undefeated

2010-02-21T11:19:00.000-08:00

I'm probably jinxing us just by writing this, but Chris and I are super thrilled that we got our fourth mixed doubles win last night. GO TEAM TAYLOR!!

This is our first season playing USTA Mixed Doubles, and we started out by joining our friend Ali's 7.0 team, thinking it would be a fun challenge. Chris's USTA rating is 4.0 and mine is 3.0, so it works out perfectly that we can play on a combined 7.0 team. We were a little worried that I would get picked on as the weak link, because a full point gap is pretty big (it's the biggest gap USTA will allow between partners), but we figured it would be way more fun to play together than for me to play on a 6.0 team.

In our first match, we played a tough 4.0/3.0 pair, and won 7-5, 6-1. That second set might not sound close, but the first set felt like it was balanced on a knife's edge until the end. We were celebrating the win for about a week. For our second match, we played #1 (i.e. as the top pair for our team), and won 6-3, 6-4.

Then our teammate Dana invited us to join his 8.0 team. 8.0?!?! We thought, well realistically nobody expects us to win at this level, but it would be a good opportunity to see what the next level looks like, so let's do it!

We were on cloud nine when we won our first match, 6-3, 6-4 (played #3). For the second match, Chris was busy having his lesson with Rick, so I played with another teammate (played #2) and won what felt like an epic three-setter, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (8-6). We were down 3-6 in the tiebreak before coming back to win. Whew!

Last night, Chris and I played #1, and won 6-3, 3-6, 6-4. SWEET!! Just from warmups, it was clear that we had very little margin for error. Our opponents were solid – strong and consistent, with no obvious weaknesses to pick on – so it was really a battle of who could execute shots better. It was cold, dark, windy, and drizzly, but we pulled it out! This morning, Chris has all sorts of aches and pains, and I have been icing my sore "pseudo-calf" (whatever you call the muscle that's on the front of your lower leg instead of the back) practically nonstop, but wow that was fun!

I wish I had some pictures to share, but we were both too busy playing, haha. Next time I'll ask a teammate to take pictures. Of course, next time we're bound to be on the losing side, but for now, we're undefeated and loving it! :-)