Day 14 (part 2): Brussels to Paris

Well, that was a long travel day. After the four hours sitting in the Brussels Midi station and getting on our train, things looked fine, with the most interesting piece being checking the weather report for Paris and seeing thunderstorm warnings. Well, we’re from Seattle and brought lightweight raincoats, so we didn’t think much of it, and ended up missing all of the rain anyway.

We got to the first train station on the outskirts of Paris, and transferred to one of the local B-line trains to go into the city — almost missed it, but just squeaked in the doors with the help of a man on the train. We chatted with him until he got off, and then we rode a few more stops to where we had to switch to our next in-city C-line train. And waited…

…and waited…

…and eventually figured out (along with everyone around us) that the storm had downed some trees on a track somewhere and the C trains were entirely disrupted. So we decided to go up to street level and see what we could figure out, hoping it wouldn’t have to be on foot, since we were about an hour’s walk away from our hotel. We got up to the street level, and were immediately distracted with a gorgeous view of Notre Dame at dusk. Once we got over that, we walked a little ways up the street until we found a bus stop and taxi stand. At that point, it was after 9 p.m. we were tired, and it was time to admit that sometimes, a taxi is worth it. Fifteen minutes later we were at the hotel.

The hotel is very cute, all built around an inner courtyard, with an elevator we had to take one at a time, tiny walkways, and a tiny room, and it’s great. We’re here, the beds are comfy, and that’s it for the day.

Day 15: Paris

Big day for exploring Paris and seeing all sorts of pretty things!

We started by getting up nice and early in the morning and walking from our hotel to the Louvre (just over two miles, which is entirely doable after a night’s sleep and when you’re not carrying backpacks). Made it to the Louvre with about half an hour before our 9 a.m. entrance time (when the museum opens), stood in line at the entrance closest to the Mona Lisa…and then right at nine, a museum staff person came up to tell everyone who was lined up there that that entrance wouldn’t actually open until 10, and to follow them. Of course, by this time there was already a huge line at the main entrance, so we were a little concerned that we’d just get dumped into the end of that line, but instead, we all got marched over to the group entrance and let in there. No biggie, as it turned out.

Once in, we beelined for the Mona Lisa…along with nearly everyone else. This really is one of those things you do to be able to say “I’ve seen the Mona Lisa in person”, not to actually, you know, stand there, look at it, and see the painting. The scrum wasn’t as bad as trying to see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, and we were able to get to the front and get our 15 seconds of photo and selfie time in, so we called it a success and went off to investigate these rumors that the Louvre has one or two things worth seeing other than the headliner. We then had a very pleasant few hours wandering the museum and finding all sorts of things to gawk at.

When lunchtime rolled around we grabbed a bite at the Louvre’s cafe (it was close, quick, and convenient), went out and wandered the grounds for a little bit, and then went across the street to the Musée d’Orsay for the afternoon. What they say (whomever “they” are and wherever they say it) is true: you go to the Louvre to say you’ve been to the Louvre, you go to the Orsay to be able to see the art. Another incredible collection, but not (quite) as crowded (save for the Van Gogh rooms on the top floor, but having just been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, we were okay with skimming those rooms), and much easier to be able to find something you like and be able to hang out and really appreciate it.

Once we were all art-ed out for the day, we crossed back over the Seine to the Jardin des Tuileries, and then proceeded to walk the entirety of the Avenue de Champs-Élisée, all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. Once there, my wife found a bench to rest on while I climbed the 280 steps to the terrace at the top for some gorgeous views of Paris. When I made it back down to ground level, we walked from the Arc back to our hotel.

The Orsay-to-Arc-to-hotel leg of the day’s walk was about 4.7 miles. All together, my watch tells me today ended up with 23,705 steps and 10.58 miles — a record for this trip so far! (We’re not really trying to set these records, we just want to see All The Things, and then whine when we get back to the hotel about walking too much and swear we’re going to take it easier the next day. Then the next day comes along….)

Day 16: Versailles

Today’s adventure was an excursion out to Versailles. We got up really early, had a quick in-room breakfast, and headed out. Hopped on a local train, rode ten stops, and a short walk later were at the gates. We had the earliest entry tickets we could get (9:30 a.m.), and had made sure to get there nice and early, so we had time to start our day with a short walk through the gardens. Being able to do this first thing in the morning was really neat — hardly anyone else was there (a few visitors early for their entrance time like us, and locals out for their morning run…y’know, like you do, when you live close enough), so we had the entire space nearly to ourselves. We did that for about half an hour, then went back up to stand in line for our entrance.

Once in, we kind of skimmed through the first half of the palace (lots of pretty paintings, but having just done a number of museums, we were okay with doing a quick breeze through while keeping an eye out for any we really wanted to stop at) so that we could get to the Hall of Mirrors before it got too crowded. While not empty when we got there (there were 9 a.m. entry people before us), it wasn’t super crowded, and so that was where we really slowed down to take things in, and enjoyed moseying our way through the rest of the palace.

From there we went back out to the gardens, which while much busier, had the advantages of having the fountains running (which hadn’t been turned on yet earlier) and more dramatic skies (instead of the morning’s flat grey). We went down along the main walk towards the Grand Canal, then headed off toward the Grand Trianon. We weren’t sure if we’d be able to go in or just wander the outside, but it turns out our tickets were good for that too, so we got to wander through the inside of that smaller palace as well.

After the Grand Trianon we went out and explored the Trianon’s gardens and fountains for a bit. This was a nice treat as well, as fewer people make the trek out to the Trianons, so it was a much quieter stroll than in the main gardens.

Eventually we could see the skies getting even more dramatic, so we decided that it was time to head back (not an easy decision when we realized we’d missed Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon, but there’s only so much time…). We got back to the main gardens just in time for a heavy rain storm to start, which lasted our entire walk back up the gardens, out of Versailles, and the few blocks down the street to the Paris Metro station where we got on our train. We were absolutely soaked, but still having a good time. We got back into town and to our hotel, hung our clothes up to dry, and crashed out for an afternoon nap.

After a couple hours to rest, we were hungry and ready for dinner, so we headed out and walked down the block to a really cute little Italian place just at the end of the street from our hotel. Had a good dinner there, then walked two more blocks to the Champ de Mars, and stood and watched the Eiffel Tower slowly light up as the sun set, then as it put on its sparkly light show shortly after sundown. We then walked up through the park to near the base of the tower — and as keeps happening on this trip, knowing about something on a theoretical level doesn’t really prepare you at all for the reality of standing underneath this colossal structure. It’s really an incredible thing.

After enjoying the view for a while, we decided that it was time to call it a day and headed back to the hotel.

Day 17: Paris

Today we made another attempt at taking things a bit slower, with…mixed results, unsurprisingly. We slept in as late as we could, and had a nice slow morning, with breakfast in the room and no rush to get out and about.

When we did venture out, we started off by getting a bag full of pastries from a local patisserie, and walked up to the Champ de Mars to eat them while sitting in the park in the (figurative, due to the time of day) shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Then we strolled around the park and the base of the tower for a bit before making a brief stop back by the hotel room to make sure we were prepped for our afternoon adventure.

Heading out again, we started by crossing over to the other side of the Champ de Mars and finding a cute French restaurant for lunch (we had to get actual French food at least once while we were here, of course). When that was done, it was back to the Eiffel Tower, where up to the top we went! We took the easy way up in the elevators, which is a two-stop process: one elevator up to the second level, and then a second elevator (and then a short flight of stairs) up to the top.

As can be guessed, the view was incredible. We went all the way around the top, me taking photos and my wife (who is somewhat afraid of heights, but was determined to do this, and handled herself quite well) stayed nearer to the inner wall. After our circuit, we started heading back down again. We took the elevator down from the top to the second level (the only option), but then, having spent our time in line for the elevator sandwiched between one family who didn’t bother to rein in their rambunctious 7-year old at all and another family who were remarkably pushy and kept trying to go around (or through) us even though there was no space to either get around or to get to, we decided to just skip the next elevator and take the stairs down. All 674 of them!

It’s a lot of stairs, but easier to do going down than up, and though it took longer, it was a much more pleasant experience than being crammed into one of those elevators again. About 15 minutes or so later, we were back on the ground (to my wife’s great relief). We took a little time to recuperate, and then headed back to the hotel to get back into a quiet space and away from people…and once there, though we’d considered some other evening jaunts, we decided we were fine with calling it a day. A short venture out to the local grocery for dinner sandwiches, and then we tucked ourselves away for the evening.

Day 18 (part 1): Paris to…?

It’s another travel day! So, the usual routine: sleep as late as possible (today that meant we got about 11 hours of sleep…we may be getting a bit tired at this point in the trip), pack everything up, and head out. We walked to the closest metro station, took two metro trains, and made it to the Gare du Nord with several hours to kill before our next train. Camped out on the floor, found some lunch, waited, and eventually made our way to the right platform, boarded our train, and are now watching the French countryside roll by on our way to….

Day 12 (part 2): Amsterdam to Brussels

Before we left for this trip, while researching so that we’d be prepared, we’d read that trains in Germany were the most unreliable. We’d also read about some of the most common behaviors to avoid to make sure we didn’t stick out as stereotypical rude Americans: Talking unnecessarily loudly, having loud phone conversations or playing music without headphones, placing our bags on seats so that we took up multiple spots, and so on.

Well, bad behavior is universal. Europeans are just as bad about all of those as we were warned not to be (and we’re not much for that kind of behavior anyway), and so far, the German trains were rarely more than a few minutes late if at all and they regularly apologized when it happened, while every Dutch train on our Amsterdam to Brussels leg has been late by at least 15-20 minutes. One time that just meant we had to change our connecting train, but then later they decided that the train we were on was late enough that it was better to pull it out of the schedule entirely, made the next stop the final stop, kicked us all off, and we had to find another train to get us the rest of the way into Brussels.

It’s nothing we haven’t been able to cope with, and all part of traveling like this, of course, but it has definitely been a bit of a shift from our expectations.

Minor grumbling aside, we did make it to Brussels without any major complications. The mentioned minor ones, but no major ones, ending up at our hotel just about two hours after we thought we’d be here. That was still early enough (about 5 p.m.) for us to get our room and then head out for a bit of a wander, finding dinner and then getting fancy dessert Belgian waffles and sitting in the gorgeous Grand Place as we ate them. Not a bad evening at all! Then back to the hotel to wind down and get to bed.

Day 13: Brussels

Today we had just one thing planned: a morning tour of Choco-Story Brussels, a really cute little museum all about the history of chocolate. It’s a self-guided walkthrough of displays tracing chocolate from its initial cultivation through its being brought to Europe, and ends with a demonstration from a chocolatier making pralines (which you then get to sample). It was fun, and quite tasty!

Just before entering the museum, since we’d shown up a bit early, we were walking up and down the block and peeking at what was on nearby streets, when we realized that we were standing right next to Manneken Pis, a famous fountain of a small boy peeing. One more Brussels landmark seen (in a city full of them; Brussels really is gorgeous).

After the museum we took the rest of the day for a slow wander, starting with browsing through a music store we’d spotted just a half-block away from the fountain. The store had a nice mix of vinyl and used CDs, and I had fun browsing through and picking some up as Brussels souvenirs. Then, as we walked on, we found two more vinyl shops in the next two blocks! Considering how just a few days ago I was bemoaning the modern dearth of record stores, this was a fun part of the day; apparently Brussels has a good physical media scene!

From there it was just a day of poking around the streets of Brussels, peeking into cute shops and fancy cathedrals, and just seeing where we ended up going. We were nice enough to ourselves to take a few hours of mid-afternoon downtime instead of pushing through the full day again, which was a good idea. Then sandwiches for dinner, ice cream while watching people at the Grand Place, and back to the hotel again for the evening.

Day 14 (part 1): Brussels to…?

This is a long travel day. Our train out of Brussels doesn’t leave until 16:52, and checkout time at the hotel was noon. So we checked out just a bit before noon, walked to the local station, hopped a short train to our departure station…and then spent the next four hours camped out in the Brussels Midi station until it was time to board. Not exactly the most exciting hours of the trip, but sometimes that’s how it goes. We’re on our next train now, headed for….

Day 10 (part 2): Berlin to Amsterdam

No private cabin this time, but that was fine; we still had booked first class seats, so were in the first class car. One of the things I discovered on the Frankfurt to Berlin ride was that no matter how pretty the view is, it’s extremely difficult to take decent pictures while traveling at 150 MPH, so I left the camera packed and just alternated between watching Germany go by out the windows and watching Max Headroom episodes on my iPad.

The train to Amsterdam was about six hours, and then we figured out the local tram system to get to our hotel. Turned out to be nice and easy: one tram line for about 30 minutes, then a short walk along a pretty little canal before heading about a block into a residential/commercial neighborhood to get to the hotel.

Got ourselves settled in, walked a couple blocks away for a really good dinner at a neighborhood Middle Eastern place (Turkish pizza, which though called pizza, is closer to a burrito in form, is really good), stopped by a grocery for breakfast supplies, and now are getting ready for bed, as we have an early morning planned for tomorrow.

Day 11: Amsterdam

A day of museums and wandering around the central part of the city.

We started the day with the Rijksmuseum (Dutch masters, Rembrandt, etc.), had a great lunch at a nearby café, and then went to the Van Gogh Museum (all about the VW microbus and where it’s been…wait, no, that’s not right). After that we took a tram a few stops towards the city center until the main canals started, when we got off and walked the rest of the way in so we could walk over each of the canals. Then we spent the next couple of hours just randomly wandering our way through central Amsterdam, seeing what we could find.

Amsterdam is a gorgeous city, and for all I’d read and understood on a theoretical level that bikes are a big thing here, I didn’t really get it until today. It’s incredible to walk around a city like this, where bikes, walking, and the transit system (trams and buses) are by far the preferred ways to get around, and cars are drastically deprioritized. You’ll see streets as wide as a three- or four-lane road in the U.S., but there’s just one car lane each direction, and all the rest is pedestrian, bike, or tram lanes. Bikes are everywhere at all times; the morning and afternoon commute look like you’re on the sidelines of the Tour de France, only instead of athletes on speed bikes, it’s everyday folks on regular bikes, from modern e-bikes to old style Schwinns (or the European equivalent) to various forms of cargo bikes. It’s really incredible, and I wish the U.S. would get on board with this kind of thinking and city planning (or re-planning) – this article on how Amsterdam became a bike city is worth a read.

What with not having seen a single SUV or pickup in almost two weeks, convenient and low-stress country hopping on Interrail (formerly Eurail), and experiencing Amsterdam, this summer vacation has been an amusing experience in just how far behind Europe America is when it comes to seriously thinking about transportation as anything other than cars, more cars, bigger cars, and more bigger cars.

Eventually we were running out of steam, so we found a restaurant for dinner and ate while sitting outside and watching people stroll and roll by. Then we hopped on the tram back to the hotel, and called it an end to our day.

Day 12 (part 1): Amsterdam to…?

And it’s our next travel day!

You know the routine: Get up, have breakfast, pack out, and get to the train station. All of which went as expected, so we’re ion the train, nicely settled in to our first class seats, and off to our next stop!

Day 8 (part 2): Frankfurt to Berlin

Midway through our ride to Berlin, a couple joined us in our cabin. It turned out they’d originally reserved two of the other seats in the cabin, but at first didn’t want to bother us with their two small terriers and sat in general seating. But then the dogs started getting whiny, so they asked if they could join us so as not to bother other passengers in general seating. We said sure, the dogs settled down, and we had a nice chat with them as we rode the rest of the way into Berlin.

We made it to the Berlin Spandau station, changed trains, got to the Zoologischer Garten station, and then had a walk of just under a mile to our hotel. Got checked in, went out to find dinner, and decided to try a burrito place a short walk away, as we’d been told that Mexican food in Germany is its own thing, almost but not quite like what we’re used to, but not bad. We got there and were amused to realize that the restaurant had a San Francisco Mission district theme, and I was wearing my “I ♥️ SF” shirt that I just got a few days before…obviously this was the right place. (And the burritos weren’t bad, either.)

After that we wandered down the shopping district street we were on, eventually stopping by the Haribo store for gummies, peeked in the Lego store and found an exclusive Germany set, and then stopped to get some gelato…and the place we stopped at had a flavor called SanFransisko (with saffron, honey, and apricot), so obviously that was the flavor to get.

Back down the street to the hotel, and it’s time for bed!

Day 9: Berlin

We originally had grand plans for the day. We were going to visit the Berlin Wall memorial (or one of the other places where parts of it still stand), see Brandenburger Tor, maybe some of the other big historical things that Berlin has to offer…

…and then decided that, yes, those would be good to see, but we’d just done a few days of history in Frankfurt, and neither of us are huge WWII buffs, and there’s this other big famous thing just a mile away from us that isn’t at all related to war…

…and so we went to Zoo Berlin instead, and spent a very pleasant day slowly strolling the zoo and seeing the animals. We saw nearly everything the zoo had to offer (the aquarium building had a line out the door that didn’t seem to be moving, so we skipped that), and some of them multiple times (as someone in this household really likes hippos, and this zoo has both full-size and pygmy versions, with babies of each size, so they got multiple visits).

When we finally ran out of zoo, we came back to the hotel, rested for a little bit, changed, and went out again. Yesterday evening as we were passing the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, my wife saw a poster advertising a classical concert for tonight. So tonight we got to see the Berlin Orchestra’s eight-piece Chamber Orchestra with guest performers of a solo violinist, an opera soprano, and and an organist play a selection of pieces, including Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on a huge, beautiful pipe organ. (However good of a recording of that piece you’ve heard, it doesn’t compare to hearing it played live on a big pipe organ. It’s incredible.) The musicians were really good, and the whole performance was wonderful.

After that, we walked back to our hotel and called it a night.

Day 10 (part 1): Berlin to…?

Travel day! As such, the morning was all about repacking and making sure we were ready to go. Walked up to the Zoologischer Garten train station (where a cute older lady asked for a photo of me because I was wearing my kilt and she had a friend who is Irish…at least, I’m reasonably sure that’s what she said) and took a local train up to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof. We had about an hour there before catching our next train, so I took a few minutes to wander around and look at the place. It’s huge, and basically a big three-level shopping mall sandwiched between the local train tracks on the top level and the long-distance tracks on the lowest level, with much of it open, so you can look down from the top all the way to the train platforms at the bottom.

After a few minutes of exploring (and buying a couple pastries), I went back down to the platform, and not long after that, we were on board and settled into our seats, watching Berlin pass by outside our windows on our way to….

Day 4 (part 2) and 5: San Francisco to Frankfurt

Getting off the ground took a long time, as the San Francisco airport is down to two runways due to construction. We were scheduled to take off at 4:30 p.m., didn’t board until almost 5, and we actually took off at…(it’s 5:52 as I write this, and the pilot just told us we’re 12th in line, so…getting there, but a bit longer yet)…6:30?

Since we knew this was going to be a long flight (about 10 hours), we sprung for Premium Economy class. We’re finding it a nice upgrade – a little more space and legroom and some extra amenities, just enough to make a long flight noticeably more comfortable. Since we brought our own entertainment (iPads loaded with books, movies, and TV shows), I just set the seat back monitor in front of me to track the plane as it flew. Our route was a nonstop straight shot northeast out of San Francisco, continuing on over Canada, Greenland, Iceland, a bit of Scotland, and the Netherlands before descending into Germany.

The flight itself was fine, with nice smooth takeoff, flight, and landing, and friendly staff. Even a fun little set of welcome goodies, including earbuds, toothbrush and toothpaste, sleep mask, socks, and a little case to hold them all. I, unfortunately, do not sleep well (or at all) on airplanes, but I dozed and zoned out as I could and otherwise watched the first Resident Evil movie and a couple Max Headroom episodes and finished one Discworld novel (Reaper Man) and started the next (Witches Abroad).

We landed in Frankfurt, taxied forever, and then, accompanied by pained groans from many of the passengers (including us), pulled up next to a couple sets of stairs and a few buses. Everyone got packed onto the buses like proverbial sardines, and they drove us to a gate (and while it felt like they drove the long way around, I expect that’s probably not actually the case). But once we got to the airport, the rest — including customs and the new biometric scanning system — went nice and smooth. They even stamped our passports; we weren’t sure if that was still a thing that happened or not, so we were excited to hear the ker-CHUNK of the stamp.

From there, it was a quick swing through baggage to get our backpacks, around the corner to the train station, four stops to the Frankfurt Main Hauptbahnhof, and two and a half blocks to our hotel.

We were pretty well exhausted after going for over 24 hours, but with the time change, it was just four in the afternoon. We got settled into the hotel, and then wandered out to find food and a grocery for some simple hotel breakfast supplies. Food ended up being (very good) cheese fries from a little place that only does fries, as it was simple and we were too tired decide on anything else. We found a supermarket, but only after missing a turn and discovering that our nice quiet hotel is about two blocks off of a red light district…that was an amusing realization.

Back to the hotel, a small load of sink laundry, and then pushed ourselves to stay awake until 8 p.m. to (hopefully) knock our jet lag around and onto local time.

Day 6: Frankfurt

The battle with jet lag isn’t over yet, but we’re making good progress. While neither of us had our best night’s sleep, we stubbornly refused to completely awaken when we started to, and took the morning nice and slow, not leaving the hotel until around 10 a.m.

Once we did get going, we had our first full day exploring Frankfurt. We had only a rough plan, so started off on a more or less random direction and ended up next to the Städel museum, at which point going in seemed like the only choice that made sense. Right off the bat, they had a really neat exhibition of prints by (and related to) Pieter Bruegel the Elder; most of the rest of the museum was its own (very impressive) collection. Another current exhibition by Elmgreen & Dragset, in addition to its own installations, includes lifelike sculptures placed throughout the museum, often in humorous juxtaposition with the museum’s regular collection. We had a lot of fun stumbling across these additions.

From there we wandered over into the Altstadt (old city), had our first sausage meal, and then visited the Frankfurt Cathedral (Frankfurt Dom/Kaiserdom Sankt Bartholomäus), including climbing all 328 steps up (and then down again) to the top of the tower to see the views of the city. Once done with that, we wandered the Altstadt some more and picked a couple more museums that might be on the list for tomorrow, ventured a bit into one of the main shopping areas nearby, and poked our heads into a couple more churches.

By this point we were starting to fizzle, so we went by a place we’d spotted earlier to get currywurst (my first time in 35 years, and just as good as I remember), stopped by a grocery for drinks to hydrate with, and came back to the hotel. As we were getting ready for bed a thunderstorm rolled over the city, and we got to watch the rain and see the clouds light up with lightening for a little bit.

Day 7: Frankfurt

Our plan for the day was to get an earlier start and hit two museums. Then a jet lag induced lack of good sleep took effect, and we got neither.

We did get out and about, but not quite so early as planned, and then headed for our first planned stop, the Historiches Museum Frankfurt (history museum). This was neat, and in a gorgeous building that had been recently remodeled, but had lots of info about and peeks at the old building incorporated into it. However, it quickly became apparent that we did not have the stamina to make it through the full museum, so we went off to lunch.

A little later, happily stuffed with schnitzel, we peeked at the Museum of Modern Electronic Music (MOMEM), but didn’t quite feel drawn in. Instead, we decided to walk back to the river and stroll along in the shade of a tree-lined cobblestone path, enjoying the views of the city and looking at some of the other museums we could have gone to if we were here longer or had more energy.

After that, it was back to our hotel, figuring that we were better off declaring ourselves done for the day. A couple hours’ rest gave us enough energy to grab dinner from the corner pizzeria…and that perked us up enough that we decided to walk down to the train station (just a couple blocks further down the street) to scope it out and make sure we knew where to go for the next part of our trip.

We grabbed gelato on the way back, sitting at one of the many outdoor seating areas, people watching as we ate, and then came back to the hotel. And that wrapped up another day in Frankfurt.

Day 8 (part 1): Frankfurt to…?

It’s a travel day!

Slept as late and as well as we could (still not adjusted, but getting there), packed ourselves up and out, and walked down to the Frankfurt train station (Hauptbahnhof). Since we’d scouted that out yesterday, we were able to get some food and go directly to our platform. A while later, our train showed up, and we found our seats. We’d reserved first class seats, and it seems we got lucky, as the other four seats in this cabin are unoccupied, so we have a cabin to ourselves for this part of the trip.

And with that, we say goodbye to Frankfurt and hello to…?

I last visited Germany in the summer of 1991, and was here the summer before that in 1990 as well. Both times, part of what I blew my hard-earned (…ahem…provided by my parents…) money on was music that I wouldn’t have found in the United States. These are also the only souvenirs that have survived the decades from those trips.

I discovered Poems for Laila, a German folk/pop band, and brought home their first two albums, Another Poem for the 20th Century and La Filette Triste on CD, both of which I still count among my favorite albums, and I’ve picked up the rest of their albums digitally over the years.

I got several CD samplers, the first two in the Techno Trax series (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) from ZYX Records and the first two of Zillo Jubilaum’s German Mystic Sound Sampler series (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), and a lot of those tracks were in regular rotation when I started DJing a few years later.

Most painfully in retrospect, on that second trip in ‘91 I remember seeing in-store displays for The KLF’s just-released The White Room, listening to bits of it at listening stations, and thinking it sounded neat but then choosing something else and leaving it behind. The KLF, of course, soon became huge, and I’ve always good-naturedly regretted having missed the chance to have been among the first to play them in the U.S. (and possibly the first in Anchorage).

Listening to any of those albums immediately brings me back to those first European trips; the trips themselves, but also the experience of finding a music store filled with music I didn’t know, browsing through, trying listening stations, and taking chances on things that caught my ear.

Sadly, with online purchasing and streaming having taken its toll, music stores are much fewer and harder to find, and generally cater more to the vinyl collector. Which is fine, and I’m glad they’re able to hang on in some form, but as I’m backpacking around on this trip, picking albums up on vinyl isn’t a terribly realistic plan.

Yes, it’s just an aspect of the modern age, and in many ways, the online purchasing options are both more convenient and (if you actually go for purchasing through storefronts like iTunes, Bandcamp, Qobuz, or the like) better for the artists. But being here and having the memories of those earlier trips and the music I was able to bring home has really been making me miss not having that as an option now.

Day 1: Seattle to San Francisco

This was originally planned to be an overnight train trip on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight run, but when an abandoned building burned and was deemed so unstable that it could collapse onto the tracks at any moment, Amtrak cancelled all runs between Seattle and Portland. So, we fly instead!

TSA at SeaTac was fine, and we breezed right through. Found our gate, got some lunch, and settled in to wait to board.

First time flying first class. Not bad at all!

Got to SFO; looks like a nice airport. Started finding out way to the BART station, got on the airport train…and got right back off again — once they manually opened the doors — when it broke down. At least it was still mobile, so it pulled away and another appeared. Got on the BART and went the wrong way, but it was only one stop and then this line reverses to go the other direction, so it was only a minor detour. Taking the scenic route?

Got to the hotel (quite a walk with these backpacks), dropped our stuff off, took a few minutes to rest, and then went out to find food. Wandered up and into Chinatown and discovered that there was a big street market/festival in progress on the main drag. Explored that for a little bit, but it was a bit much after a long day of travel, so we found a good Chinese restaurant for dinner. Walked around a bit more after that, then back to the hotel to crash out.

Day 2: San Francisco

Our first big walking day! Over 20,000 steps. Started from our hotel (a block away from the Transamerica Pyramid) and went down to the ferry terminal, then slowly walked up along the Embarcadero to Pier 39, pausing to take photos and browse interesting looking places as we went.

Grabbed lunch, then had an incredible catamaran sailing tour of the San Francisco Bay, including going under the Golden Gate Bridge. The weather was perfect the entire way, and we got some absolutely gorgeous views of San Francisco. We can highly recommend Adventure Cat Sailing if you get the chance.

When that finished, we continued our walk north along the Embarcadero, eventually making it all the way up to Victorian Park/the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. That was when we turned around…but not without a detour through Ghirardelli Square to pick up a little chocolate.

We walked all the way back down the Embarcadero to the ferry terminal where we’d started, and then back up to the hotel. By that point it was 7 p.m. and we’d been going pretty solidly since 9 a.m., so it was time to stop so we’d be ready for tomorrow.

Day 3: San Francisco

A little less walking today…but not by a lot, I still broke 18,000 steps and went almost 9 miles.

We had a fairly slow morning, eventually making our way up to the closest BART station and heading out to the Mission district. Once we were there, we got a small taco brunch using the “first open place we walk past” method, and it worked great.

From there, we headed up to the Mission San Francisco de Asis, and realized we could tour both the old (1776) mission and the “new” (1918) basilica. Both are gorgeous, and as it was Sunday morning, we were able to listen in to the choir at the end of one of the Sunday morning masses in the basilica.

After that we decided to head towards Golden Gate Park, started that way, and a ways along realized that we were about to cross Haight street. So, we turned and walked the rest of the way there along Haight street, enjoying all the old classic San Francisco homes and the many cute little shops and restaurants along the way, stopping in one for a lunchtime burrito, right through the Haight-Ashbury district until we hit the park.

Once at the park, we ended up finding and riding the carousel, listening to a Hungarian folk trio and the Golden Gate Park Band as they celebrated St. Stephen’s Day, and then spending most of the rest of our time there slowly exploring the San Francisco Botanical Garden.

Eventually we could tell we were wearing down, so we headed out of the park. We found local burgers for dinner, hopped on a Muni train back towards downtown, and made it back to our hotel a little after six. Time to rest!

Day 4 (part 1): San Francisco to…?

This morning we kept nice and slow. Took our time waking up and getting mostly ready to go, then had a brief outing to get breakfast at a corner place we’d passed a few times that looked good (and it was). Back to the hotel for the final load out, then a quick ride on the BART to get to the airport.

Now we’re all checked in, through TSA, lunched, and kicked back at our gate, ready for the next part of our summer adventure….

• ♿️ Work has been pretty standard day-by-day, save for last Thursday when I went up to Shoreline College for the day for a planning retreat for the Committee for Accessible Technology Oversight (CATO), one of the SBCTC groups I’m part of. We got a lot done in planning for the next year, and as this is a group of college representatives from across the state that generally meets only on Zoom, it was nice to get most of us together in person.

• 🎭 Sunday we went out to meet some friends and see Wooden O’s Macbeth Shakespeare in the Park production. It was very well done, though rather surprisingly straightforward after having recently seen the same company do some incredible work incorporating fun tweaks to both The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.

• 🗺️ Other than that, most everything has been getting everything ready for our summer vacation — which we’ll be setting off on tomorrow! We’re all packed and ready to go, the house is clean and set, and now it’s just a matter of waiting until it’s time to head off and get things started. This is also a big reason why this post went up today instead of waiting until Sunday as I’d normally do. It’s possible — likely, even — that I may not be posting much until we’re back from this trip. Imagine that!

📸 Photos

📚 Reading

Two books finished recently:

• Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall, which was a fun “zombie apocalypse at a Star Trek convention” romp. This was very kindly sent to me a while ago by Elena/theresmiling, and I’ll be passing it along to someone else in turn.

• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, which I did not like at all, and wouldn’t have finished if it wasn’t part of my Hugo Best Novel reading project.

📺 Watching

Forgot to mention last time that while coming back from our Providence/New York trip, I watched The Gorge, and it was…alright, but not great. The first half of the film, where it’s all setup, teasing the mystery of what’s in the gorge, and developing the relationship between the two characters is a solid three-star film. There was promise here. The second half, where it’s all watching someone play a Playstation zombie-hunting game, is a solid single star.

🔗 Linking

• Michael Bolton at Carnegie: Breaking the PDF Habit in Higher Ed: Why Website Bloat is a Governance Problem, Not a Tech One: Yes, this is basically an ad for Carnegie’s services, but the problem of “PDF bloat” in higher education is real.

• Henk Van Ess at Digital Digging: How to plant a nuclear plant in Iran (archive.is mirror of a paywalled Substack original): “Tonight I typed just one sentence into Google Earth and put refugees near the Mexican border. Then I planted a nuclear plant in Iran. Then I put a fatal crash on a street in Amsterdam. Google’s own satellite imagery underneath all three. What on earth is Google doing?” (Google has since removed this “feature”, but…for how long? And seriously, what the fuck?)

• Henk Van Ess at Digital Digging: Nano Banana 2 removed from Google Earth (archive.is mirror of a paywalled Substack original): “Google has rolled back the image generation feature it launched in Google Earth on 30 July. The tool let anyone zoom to any coordinates, type a sentence, and get back a photorealistic image built on Google’s own satellite, aerial and 3D imagery of that spot. It went live worldwide, on the web, with no waitlist. It was withdrawn on 31 July.”

• Gerrad Hall at Entertainment Weekly: Inside CODA director’s follow-up Being Heumann, about Judy Heumann and her fight for disability rights: “Being Heumann, which opens the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 10, centers on Judy Heumann, who, after contracting polio as a toddler, used a wheelchair the rest of her life for mobility. […] While Heumann became known as “the mother” of the Disability Rights Movement, she is not widely known outside of the disability community.”

• FlockHopper: See where Flock cameras are in your area, and use the map or iOS app (Android under development) to plan routes that avoid them.

• Reading Maps: Plotting maps from notable books and films to see where the characters went.

• Russell Samora, Florina Sutanto, Arjun Kakkar, and Sushant Karki at The Pudding: Why some people mow a lawn better than others: “You’ve probably done something like mow a lawn or vacuum a rug hundreds of times without thinking much about it. Some part of your brain works out a route that’s usually good enough to get the job done. People are actually pretty good at this, and better than you’d guess for a problem that is hard for computers. We wanted to see it for ourselves, so we built a lawn and asked people to mow it.”

• Danny Westneat at The Seattle Times: WA Democrats face no backlash for ‘millionaires tax’ (archive.is mirror of a paywalled original): “…after ruling Democrats finally pushed through their own version of a personal income tax this spring, the big question has been: Will they face backlash from voters? ¶ The answer seems to be a resounding ‘No.'” Now we just need to make sure the push to repeal the “millionaire’s tax” fails at the ballot in November.

• Shaun Smucker: Please use AI (archive.is mirror of a Substack original): “Be sure to use AI when making
  your next, I don’t know, meal plan,
  for example. Definitely do not call
  your friend who loves to cook and ask her
  for her favorite recipes or tips or ways
  to save time making meals,
  because you will end
  up talking for longer than you had hoped,
  hearing, perhaps, about her father’s cancer
  diagnosis or how lonely she’s been or even
  what she’s planted in her spring
  garden and then lost with the early frost.”

• Sharon Yoo at King5: UW: ICE used Washington driver’s license database in at least 90 immigration arrests over the past year: “Researchers say federal agents continue accessing WA DOL records despite a state law limiting the information from being used for immigration enforcement.”

• Drew Dotson at the Kent Reporter: Renton City Council votes to cover Flock cameras: “‘We’ve been hearing a lot of concerns around transparency and trust, and I think it’s in the best direction to help foster that by listening to the public,’ Councilmember Carmen Rivera said. ‘The camera’s already paused. They’re not collecting anything. If it’s safe and if it’s within the purview of our staff to be able to do it, I think it’s something that is just some easy simple fix that tells the residents one that we’re listening and that we’re trying to foster that trust and that transparency.'” Now if only we could get Kent to back away from their love affair with Flock….

• Amogh Dimri at The Atlantic: The Color Recession May Be Permanent (archive.is mirror of a paywalled original: “Color trends used to come and go. But the color recession that began early this century has dragged on far longer than the heyday of avocado green in the 1960s or hot pink in the 1980s. ‘Our top color from 2000 to 2010 was ‘Pelham Beige.’ We thought that would never change,’ Sue Wadden, the director of color marketing at the paint company Sherwin-Williams, told me. The next decade, she said, ‘gray was dominant. Like gray, gray, more gray.’ Sherwin-Williams’s current list of its most popular colors for home interiors features ‘Ice Cube’ and ‘Crushed Ice’ (both white), and ‘Agreeable Gray’ and ‘Passive’ (both gray). Colors are now getting warmer again, Wadden noted hopefully, but they’re ‘warmer whites.’ The company’s color of 2026 is ‘Universal Khaki’—otherwise known, unfortunately, as ‘greige.'”

• Luke Plunkett at Aftermath: Welcome To The Resistance: Meet The Workers Dodging (And Sabotaging) Their Employer’s AI Mandates: “‘I work for a company that produces luxury items’, one worker tells me. ‘Any time I get prompted that my ‘token spend’ is too low (0), I go in and ask ChatGPT random gardening questions. So far it has failed to adequately build a rain garden, but I’ve gotten it to describe a sweet potato once.'”

• Brett C.: I’m done using AI: “Upon reflection, I’ve come to believe that quality software is not about how many features something has or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by the designers, developers, and product people who work on it. There’s an ineffable aspect to my favorite pieces of software where I don’t think of it is as feature matrix but rather as an interface made by a human for humans that’s a joy to use. And when you build software with AI, it leads to worse software. Sure, it’s faster to build initially, but I think to the detriment of the quality of the code and the user interface and the user experience.”

⭐️: Actively disliked this one; a rare instance where I came very close to bailing out and DNF’ing, and only stuck it out because it’s part of my Hugo Best Novel reading project.

A dystopic future where fossil fuels have run out (and, apparently, renewable options like wind (except for sailing ships), solar, hydro, etc. just…aren’t a thing? anywhere? for no discernible reason?) and power comes through kinetic energy stored in ‘kink springs’, and the resulting societal collapse combined with ecological change has devastated food supplies worldwide. The overall background is basically colonialism; substitute genetic engineering agriculture companies for the East India Tea Company and Thailand for India, and you’ve got the gist. Genetic engineering has progressed enough that there are now “New People”; genetically created intelligent artificial life that is genetically encoded to be servile.

One of these New People is the titular “windup girl” (who isn’t actually windup, but New People are intentionally given a way of moving that mimics stop motion/clockwork creations), a sex slave who is repeatedly abused over the course of the story, with some of these instances being explicitly detailed across multiple pages of the story. The first instance within the first few chapters was more than enough for me, having it happen again and in greater detail and length later on was when I almost bailed out of the book entirely. Instead, I just skimmed past and kept skimming through the rest of the book just to get it done with.

Obviously enough people liked it and found it worthwhile for it to win a Best Novel Hugo award, but I can’t recommend it.

⭐️⭐️⭐️: An entertaining adventure as a Star Trek convention becomes ground zero for the zombie apocalypse. A few things here and there that bothered me a bit, but mostly nothing really major. The biggest thing for me was that the authors couldn’t resist giving nearly every person and place very obvious Trek nods for names (the hero is Jim Pike, the hotel is the Botany Bay, and many, many others), and yet, somehow, it seems that none of the die-hard Trek fans at the convention ever notice this or think it’s at all noteworthy. While identifying the names was a fun mini-game as I read, within the context of the story, it broke my suspension of disbelief (apparently, zombies are fine, but insufficiently observant and pedantic Trekkies is over the line).