The Volks of Great Neck

Day 11 (2025) - Homeward Bound

2025-03-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, Sunday was our last day in Europe, although "day" is being generous. On a quick tangent, I am not sure I have shown an outside view of our house, so here it is:

Due to our flying rules, which were back in effect, we had multiple flights scheduled - Brian and Debbie were on an 11:20am flight to JFK, Amanda was on a 12:30pm flight to Vienna and Ethan and I were last at 2:20pm to JFK. All flights were on British Airways, with the NY-bound group flying in Premium Economy and Amanda in Business. Honestly, I didn't remember booking her in Business, but it worked out well since she left with Brian and Debbie and got there quite early but had access to the lounge.

We did our family hug, with some tears I might add, and the first group headed out. Ethan and I finished packing and cleaning up and headed over to the gourmet market for some Greek yogurt and, in the spirit of heading back to the US, grabbed Starbucks iced coffees. Meanwhile, at Heathrow Brian and Debbie had their own caffeine fix.

All of our flights were uneventful and we all arrived back in our respective homes, or temporary homes, safe and sound.

And since Debbie arrived home about 3 hours before I did, and I had the laptop with me so she could not start to catch up on More Than Paper work, she just HAD to take a walk to Starbucks for some coffee! Although at $5 a coffee she quickly realized that she would either have to quit the newly formed habit or we would have to buy a coffee maker.

The last blog post of a family trip is always where I get a little sentimental and wistful. This is no different. Our first road trip was in 2010, which was originally billed as Ethan's Bar Mitzvah Trip. But the fun of that trip made us realize that waiting for Brian's Bar Mitzvah Trip was too long and we made a bunch of trips from 2010-2018. Each one had its own set of memories that hopefully we will all cherish.

As you can see from the photo, lots has changed since 2010, and there's a fairly decent chance that this was the last trip with just the 5 of us. And if that's the case that is just fine with Debbie and me, because it simply means we will have new members of the family joining us. And then new memories will be made - and there will be more people to make fun of Debbie and me when we get lost or can't figure out how to use the freakin' Maps app.

CLO out, for now.

Day 10 (2025) - Busy Final Day

2025-03-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

Today (Saturday) was our last full day in London and last full day of the trip (waaaaah). We have been in London for 36 hours and have done zero sightseeing, so today the plan was to see as many London landmarks as possible, then head to Borough Market for lunch.

The first stop, natch, was Buckingham Palace. Actually, the first stop was breakfast. We knew that we could go to the same cafe we went to yesterday, but that place really didn't have anything for Debbie, well, other than her new favorite beverage. So we looked around a little on the street near the house to see if there was someplace else to go to. We had just about given up when I spotted what looked a gourmet market across the street. Brian and Amanda went ahead to the regular cafe and ordered their (and my) breakfasts and also coffees for the group while Ethan, Debbie and I checked out the market.

This was a good find. They had a lot of interesting items and even had a non-dairy yogurt for Debbie. Ethan and Debbie chose their breakfasts and we met Brian and Amanda at the cafe and sat outside for a short, lovely breakfast. Fun was had by all.

After breakfast, we headed to the bus for the ride towards Buckingham Palace. We had become very adept at using mass transit, but this route confused Brian and me, as there were two Hyde Park Corner stops shown on the route. While the app told us to take the second one, for whatever reason a little doubt crept in and we decided to jump out at the first stop. Again, we had a mini-Louvre escapade trying to figure out which way to walk (clearly the second stop was correct) but eventually found our bearings and headed to the palace.

Side note. Along the walk to the palace we passed by the London Hard Rock Cafe. Hard Rock Cafes are all over the place in every city at this point and are really nothing special. In fact, our Vienna tour guide mentioned that he just could not understand how anyone would come to Vienna and go to the Hard Rock there. If you are going to a new city, go someplace you can't find anywhere. This led me to recall that when we were in London in 1980 my dad had made a point for us to go to the London Hard Rock. I was only 13 but remember that it was a big deal. When we passed the Hard Rock this time, I noticed that it said "Est. 1971" on the awning. Thus it wasn't brand new in 1980, but I had a hunch so I once again used the trusty "Googler" to find out where the very first Hard Rock was located. Lo and behold (does anyone say that anymore?) my hunch was correct and the London Hard Rock was the first location. I have no idea how many locations they had in 1980 but I am going to guess there were very few and they certainly weren't as ubiquitous as they are now.

Anyway, back to modern times. We walked across the park from the Hard Rock and found the palace - right where it was supposed to be. We got there just before 11am. On most days this would have meant arriving conveniently to watch the changing of the guards. But evidently they don't do that on Saturdays (not sure how they change but I guess not as formally). We snapped the requisite photos and moved on to our next landmark.

The next stop was Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. One of Amanda's goals (requirements) was to get a photo with a red phone booth. We had passed many already in our few days in London, but she was holding out for the perfect shot. Well, now was the time. There are a few red phone booths near Big Ben and (stunningly) we were not the only ones with this idea, as there we lines at each one that had clear views of Big Ben. We picked a line that seemed short-ish and waited our turn. Most people in front of us took a few quick photos and moved on so the next group could have a turn. But of course the people right in front of us acted like they were Kardashians or something and took photo after photo with one pose more "Insta-worthy" than the next. I really hope the woman who was in the most photos had more than 27 followers, because she sure acted like there were millions of fans waiting for her photos.

When the wannabe finally left (yes, I was the old man who wanted to shout "get off my lawn" at this point) we took our - quick - turns and Amanda got the shots she wanted. And we all partook. So now I can go viral as well.

Classic

A little off...

After a few photos by Big Ben, we walked over to Westminster Abbey, but it was also closed so most of us took a selfie and moved on. I say "most of us" because Brian really needed to use a bathroom and he eschewed the Westminster Abbey selfie to walk and find someplace that would let him use their facilities. He found a casual restaurant way down the street and we all met him there and availed ourselves of their hospitality.

Brian had other priorities

The next stop was The Tower of London. Before the trip I had looked into buying tickets for the Tower of London for a tour and to see the Crown Jewels. Thankfully I didn't because no one was really interested in anything other than looking at the Tower from afar. So that's all we did, and moved on.

Everyone kept their heads on just fine for this selfie

By this point it was almost lunch and I think the group had already had their fill of sightseeing so we set out to walked to Borough Market. When I had mapped this out earlier I had thought we would walk over Tower Bridge, as that had seemed more interesting, but London Bridge was right there and more direct. So over London Bridge (cue the "thankfully it wasn't falling down" jokes) we went.

The more interesting Tower Bridge is in the background

We arrived at Borough Market to a massive crowd trying to get in. Thankfully, once everyone got into the market a little more there was room to move around and check out the stalls. Amanda's primary mission was to get chocolate strawberries. There was a huge line, but eventually she got her strawberries. I had to sample a couple to make sure they were good, which they were.

At this point it would have been difficult for all 5 of us to walk around together and find one place that would work for all of us, so reluctantly (for the parents anyway) we split up. Debbie and I set out to find something we would both like, and after walking around a while we settled on a sort of grilled cheese sandwich that looked good and didn't have a huge line. We shared one yummy sandwich with the idea of finding more things. At some point we had walked around so much without choosing anything that I was getting a little hangry myself. We bumped into Ethan who was on line for a dessert type thing and he told us where Brian and Amanda were sitting and eating. We went over to where they were for a short time and then headed back out to find something. Now I was really hungry and decided to get a wrap at one of the places that didn't have too long a line. Debbie set out on her own and returned with (more) falafel.

After everyone was sufficiently fed, and after meeting Maddy's sister, Estee, who happed to be in London as well, we headed out of the market. Debbie follows someone on Instagram (or Facebook, not sure) from London that she is obsessed with. She's a former model who reinvented herself and in addition to having a cosmetics store she also does these videos of shops in the London area. One of the areas she tends to highlight often is the Kings Road area, so Debbie wanted to check it out. We found our way to a tube stop and made our way there. Upon arriving it was pretty clear that for the most part this area has international chains that you could pretty much see anywhere. We, and by "we" I mean Debbie, looked in a few places, found the cosmetics store and were basically done.

After stopping into a coffee house, for an afternoon caffeine fix for everyone, the kids had had enough for a while and decided to bolt and headed back to the house.

Ready to go back

Ready to keep going

But the old fogies kept going. We walked down the street some more and eventually decided it was time to head back as well. But unlike the young guns we opted to walk back. The walk was a little longer than expected, but we got home in time to freshen up and head to dinner.

The dinner tonight was pretty much the only reason Brian wanted to come to London. He had told us about an Indian restaurant, Dishoom, that he and his friends loved, and it turns out I had gotten the same advice about going there from my friends. The restaurant has a few locations in London, and one just happened to be a short walk from our place (how conveeeeeen-ient). People wait in line for over an hour to get in, as they only take reservations for 6 or more. But I had gotten a tip to make a reservation for 6 and when we get there just tell them one of our party couldn't make it. So that's what we did, and thankfully so since when we arrived for our 6:30 reservation there was a long line. After a short wait we were seated.

Debbie, Amanda and I are not huge fans of Indian food, but Brian had insisted we would like it. And he was correct - even Amanda who was least looking forward to this meal found something she liked.

My only problem was that due to my strong hunger back at lunch I had ordered a pretty large lamb wrap. It was delicious, but I wasn't quite as hungry as I needed to be for this meal. By the end I was basically in some sort of food coma.

Before

After

We finished up and after my food coma improved we headed to a gelato place to wash down the dinner. We walked back to the house to start to pack up for our various flights home tomorrow (boooooo).

Day 9 (2025) - Another White Jacket and a Show

2025-03-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

Friday was our first full day in London. Brian suggested we go to an area called the Portobello Market that has a lot of thrift shopping places. We mapped out that the bus was the best way to get there so we headed towards the bus stop, with an eye on someplace to grab some breakfast. We shortly came upon a cafe and most of us found something to eat, and some (wait for it) coffee.

We found the bus stop a short walk from the cafe, did our easy tap-and-go and sat down for the 25 minute ride.

We hopped on the bus (Gus)

We got off where our app told us to and had a short walk to get to the market. But first we had to cross the street. After about 10 minutes of not knowing which way to look first, we all safely made it across and headed towards the market. Other parts of London have "look left" and "look right" painted on the road by crosswalks, which would have helped here. But we were not actually at crosswalk so we were on our own.

This would have been helpful

At first we were all a little disappointed in what we were walking past, as it was mostly buses on the side of the road with what is best described as "crap" for sale as well stores that really had no appeal. But after about 10 minutes we arrived at the start of the actual market area. It was stall after stall of flea market type goods - clothes, watches, jewelry, knickknacks, etc. Amanda was in the market for a watch so that was our first purchase.

Deep in negotiations

Anyone need a watch?

Snoopy and Friends?!?!
Could this BE any more perfect?

We walked around a bit more and found a ton of clothing for sale. Debbie was in heaven. The first place she went to had a black suede jacket that she immediately tried on and loved. She was all ready to buy it when the seller notified us that, unlike the watch seller, she did not accept credit cards - only cash. But since England had bolted from the EU they only used pounds, not Euros, and I had none. I did a little reconnaissance to see if there was any place near us to convert Euros to pounds but there was nothing in the area. We told the woman we would walk around a bit and try and get cash and come back. As you will see later, this lack of a credit card machine proved to be a fatal error on the seller's part.

We would own this but for a credit card device

After leaving the black jacket stall, Debbie spent (a lot of) time looking at other clothing, as did Brian. Brian tried on a few Burberry jackets and settled on a light tan one, evidently from the 80's or 90's. It was in good condition so Brian is now the owner of a Burberry jacket.

A fine looking chap

Debbie, meanwhile, found a stall that had a whole bunch of jackets that she liked. This was good news and bad news as she now had trouble figuring out which one she liked the most. She sent photos to her clothing gurus, with varying opinions on them all. This didn't help her decide, so after debating back and forth, she ended up getting none of them.

These were but a few...

By now the hangriness had returned to most of our traveling party, so we headed to the "food court" section of the market. The vendors here were almost unanimously aggressive in their offering of free samples to entice us to buy something at their locations. So much so that Debbie basically walked through the area like a celebrity trying to avoid paparazzi with her hands out shaking them saying no. Eventually everyone found something to their liking and we sat on a curb and ate lunch.

After lunch we start off to walk through the rest of the market down a different street and slowly made our way out of the market, stopping to snap some photos in Notting Hill that Amanda wanted.

The evening plan was to see the musical Mrs. Doubtfire, which I had bought tickets for the night before at dinner. I made 5:15pm reservations in the morning at a pub in the area of the theater, so we headed back to the house to recharge before we headed out again.

However, Debbie was having non-buyer's remorse about not getting one of the jackets and she asked if I minded going back to the market to get one - with her focus on a white jacket, but a completely different white jacket than the one she had purchased in Vienna (and was now wearing every day!). Thus, within a few minutes of arriving back at the house Debbie and I were off to retrace the route we had done in the morning and head back to the market, after changing the reservation to 5:45pm to give us more time.

For all of the fun we experienced on the trip so far, Debbie's trip was made at this point. See, Debbie had spent a lot (and I mean A LOT) of time picking out her outfits for the trip (whereas I packed in about 8 minutes, and I may have overestimated that by about 4 minutes). She actually had help from Lisa in putting together just the right outfits for the various cities and expected weather. While I told her she looked very nice each day, I am not sure she really believed me.

On our hustle back to the bus to get back to the market we had to cross a relatively busy street. Since we still had not really gotten the hang of where to look we started to cross and realized there was a couple on bikes heading at us. We were able to get across the street after the man had passed but we kind of cut off the woman, forcing her to stop.

When we were safely across and the woman was able to start up again, she called out to us "Excuse me." We thought she was about to berate the two dumb Americans who couldn't cross a street correctly. But no! She followed up with "I love your outfit!" and kept going. As we (rightfully) assumed that she was talking to Debbie and not me, Debbie spent the rest of the trip back to the market with a HUGE grin on her face.

After this thrilling moment, we shlepped back to the bus stop, got on the bus and did the whole Frogger thing again to start our walk to the market. We arrived back at the jacket seller and Debbie tried on the white jacket again along with a series of other jackets. Debbie also really wanted, or liked at least, the "upside jeans" the seller was wearing. A decision needed to be made, and we are now the proud owners of another white jacket.

We did not purchase these

We headed back to the house, but not before we just had to stop off for a coffee and a scone on the way back to the bus! Both really hit the spot.

After nearly recreating our Louvre escapade by having no clue how to find the right bus stop going the right way (and asking a 12 year old where to go) we hustled back to the house, freshened up and we all headed out to the tube to go to dinner and a show. We took the Piccadilly Line to Covent Gardens and went to head to the street, only to hear the announcement that the steps to get out numbered something like a million (or maybe a little fewer), and they recommended taking the lift to the street. Well, after our experience in Montmartre with the 180 steps they didn't have to convince us to follow their instructions and we all took the lift up.

We headed to dinner at Maxwell's and had a perfectly fine dinner, and Brian had a local pint, but nothing much to blog about, and headed to the theater. The tickets I had purchased were excellent - about 10 rows back in the center, with an aisle seat for yours truly. The show itself, while clearly not a classic, was quite enjoyable, and fun was had by all.

After the show we weaved our way back to the tube, took another lift down, and trained back to our house where we settled in for the night. Tomorrow the plan is to actually do some sightseeing and work our way around town and see as many of the major landmarks as possible. Until then, toodle-oo.

Day 8 (2025) - Off to Bloody Old England

2025-03-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

Today (Thursday) was a travel day, so not all that much to report on. But report I shall. We were being picked up at 11:30am to go to the airport for our flight to London. Amanda had class in the morning, so after (mostly) getting all packed up three of us (sans Ethan - see, I do know a little French) headed out for a walk before meeting Amanda at her school building to see where she had classes.

Of course, by now the definition of "walk" had to include coffee for our newest coffee addict. Brian, Debbie and I decided we would try and grab a coffee and breakfast pastry at the cafe that overlooked the Imperial Gardens, which we had seen on our walking tour on Monday. It would have been a beautiful spot to grab said coffee and pastry, had the place actually been open at 9am. Since it wasn't open, we headed back to our old standby, Joseph Brot, for the desired caffeine fix. We ordered our preferred coffees and pastries and headed to Stephansplatz to sit and enjoy them. And enjoy them we did.

After our morning fix, we decided to see if we could get into St. Stephen's Cathedral, considering all of the times we had walked by it over the days we were in Vienna. We were glad to see that not only was it open, but it was free to enter, so we went in and looked inside. It was just as impressive inside as it was outside.

Amanda's class was ending soon, so we we took the short walk from the plaza to her building. When she emerged we actually went inside as one of us needed to use the facilities. I won't say which one of us, but it may have been the one of us that had the least experience with coffee.

Anyway, after all business was completed in the school building we headed back to the apartment where we finished packing up and met our car at 11:30am. Thanks again to miles, we were flying business to London which meant access to the lounge at the Vienna airport. And not only did this mean we could all grab lunch, but we could also grab another cup of coffee!

Like the flight Amanda and I took from Paris to Vienna, business class pretty much meant early boarding with slightly nicer seats and the middle row blocked off. The flight was pretty uneventful and the business cabin was half full, at best.

I had arranged for a van to pick us up at Heathrow and after gathering our luggage we met our driver who took us to our house in the South Kensington area. Yes, we had an entire house this time, not just an apartment. When I booked the house it seemed like a good idea - everyone would have their own bedroom and we would have plenty of room to hang out. And for the most part this was correct. The only small issue was the house had 4 stories, with the kitchen and washer/dryer on the basement level, the living room on the ground floor and the bedrooms on the upper two floors. It just meant a lot of up and down steps during our stay, but it was fine.

Basement with Kitchen

Ground Floor Living Room

The rooms on the second floor, where Debbie and I stayed in one room with Brian in another room only had one bathroom, which was part of our room. Ethan and Amanda stayed on the top floor, each with their own bathroom.

But back to our bathroom for a minute. It's hard to explain how many things were just weird/wrong with it. First, the floors were little stones to match the walls. This might have looked good, but it was quite uncomfortable to walk on with bare feet. There were no outlets in the bathroom, and I mean none. So we would have to get ready in the bedroom area. The bathroom was one big room, with a sauna (Brian used it once), shower, tub and toilet. If anyone needed a little privacy in the bathroom (say, after a few coffees, perhaps) you would need to close the door to the bathroom. However, this wasn't even possible because the door would not stay closed - it would slide open and while there was a hook on the door there was no latch for it to connect to.

However, the most bizarre thing was the shower. First, it had one of those annoying half doors that do absolutely nothing to keep you warm while showering. But that was the least of the issues. The bigger issue was that the shower area was small, and right at the end of was the tub - and I meant RIGHT at the end of it. There was no barrier or anything from stopping you from tumbling into the abyss of the tub if you moved around too much in the shower. I cannot imagine someone thought this was a good plan.

My feet hurt just looking at this floor

Anyway, after settling into the house, I found a place to eat that was about a 15 minute walk away, so out we went. Dinner was fine, nothing exciting, and we walked a slightly different way home to check out the area.

Brian has been to London recently, so he has some ideas of things to do tomorrow. Until then I will make sure I stand still when I shower.

Day 7 (2025) - The Volks Get Some Cultchah

2025-03-11T08:46:00.000-07:00

Wednesday is Opera Day. But before we attended the opera, there were places to go, things to do and clothes to try on. The day started out with a tour of the Stadtempel Synagogue. This is the one thing that Debbie realty wanted us to do in Vienna. The temple was the only temple to survive the bombing in WWII and remains an active temple for the Jews in Vienna. We arrived at the temple right before our 10am tour, which ended up starting more at more like 10:15. The tour guide took us into the synagogue, which was a beautiful oval shaped room with a high ceiling and multiple levels of seating. The tour guide then led us in basically a 3rd grade Hebrew School class explaining everything in a Jewish synagogue. In fairness, she does this because she doesn’t assume anyone coming to visit knows anything about Judaism or a synagogue.

At some point in her info session she got to the surviving WWII part. Most online information about this synagogue explains that the main reason it survived was due to its very close proximity to residential buildings. However, she explained that the real reason the Nazis didn’t destroy this building was due to a much more practical reason – this synagogue was the hub of Jewish life in Vienna, and thus had detailed records of all of the Jewish members of the community. The Nazis used this treasure trove of information in their relentless efforts to root out Jews. She even said that Eichmann (I think she said Eichmann) used one of the offices when he was in town.

She also explained that while there were over 200,000 Jews in Austria before the war, there are now only 15,000 in the entire country, with 8,000 in Vienna. That’s in a country of 9 million and a city of 2 million. Also, what remains of Jewish life in Vienna is almost exclusively Orthodox. She explained that there was only one temple in the City that wasn’t Orthodox. And earlier I mentioned the multiple levels of seating in the synagogue. Well, the first floor is for the men only and the upper floors are for the women. We went up to the upper levels to check them out, and due to the oval nature of the room and the way the seats are set up, most of the seats up there are like sitting behind a pole at Fenway. You really can’t see a single thing that is happening down below from any of the seats.

The tour took about an hour and then we headed out to our next stop – the most expensive coffee in Vienna, which happened to be very close to the synagogue. The four us ordered the standard coffee in the cone, and passed on the extras he offered. Each coffee cost 12 Euros, so the order ended up costing around $53! The newby coffee drinker LOVED these, while the veterans among us liked them.

The presentation is worth 10 Euros of the 12 Euro cost!

After polishing them off, including eating the cones, we stopped one of us from getting another and headed to something we had seen on our walking tour. Every day at noon an old clock does a little musical thing for about 10 minutes. It’s hard to explain, but during the other 23 hours the clock has 12 characters that slowly make their way from left to right across the clock. It takes them each exactly an hour to get across, so you can tell the time by seeing where they are on the clock. But at noon, they all go across the clock, each to their own music.

We walked to the clock and Amanda met us there after her morning class. Actually, technically it wasn’t “after” her class since she asked the professor if could leave and meet her family. That was partially true, but she had texted earlier when we were at the synagogue that the class that day was extremely boring. So I kinda think the “meeting the family” was less of the goal than simply getting out of the class. Nonetheless, she arrived in plenty of time to see the clock do its thing. It was cute, but definitely something you only need to see once.

This shows the first 4 characters crossing, and you don't need to watch the whole thing to get the idea

After the clock, we headed back towards the apartment because Amanda had a call at 1pm that she was going to take from our apartment. But before we got home we stopped at one of Amanda’s favorite coffee/pastry places, Joseph Brot, which once again was near our apartment. And for the second time today, our new coffee drinker grabbed a latte. It also may have been at this point that after Amanda left us to go to the apartment that Debbie said she noticed a little extra “pep in her step.” I wonder why. We are starting to wonder what we have done.

Does anyone know who the woman in the middle is with her second coffee of the day? If so, let us know.

After Amanda left us, we just had to stop at the hot dog stand again and try to get the hot dog with cheese this time. We had also come to understand that most people do not get the bun, but instead get it cut up on a plate. I still wanted it in the bun, so that’s what I got, while the others got it the more traditional cut up way. Again the guy asked if we wanted it with cheese and we all said yes. But this time, since we had one cut up, we realized that it wasn’t like a Philly cheesesteak with cheese wiz, but instead the cheese was infused in the hot dog. In the end, the cheese was superfluous since we really didn’t taste it, although we don’t really know what one without cheese tasted like to compare.

On a side note, you may have noticed me saying “which was near our apartment” a lot – that’s because the place I booked was ideally located within walking distance of a lot of places we were going or were going to see. If anyone is planning to visit Vienna at any time I’d highly recommend staying in the 1st District by Stephansplatz, near St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

While Amanda had her call, the four of us went to go see State Hall, which both Amanda and Allie had suggested we see yesterday. They had told us it would be a short visit, but it was just so beautiful inside that we should check it out. So check it out we did, even with the 8 Euro per person entry fee. The girls were certainly correct, as the inside of the hall was a site to see. It looked liked a massive library.

After our short visit to State Hall, it was around 2pm. Due to the opera at 7pm, dinner was going to be on the early side at 5pm. We had wanted to see Amanda's apartment and this was the ideal time to do that. So we took the U-Bahn from the apartment to her place in the 2nd District. After a quick visit to see her place we left her to do some laundry and get organized for the travel tomorrow to London and headed back.

I title this, "Enough Dad"

The two young boys decided they needed to rest, while the two old fogies decided not to rest and instead head back to the area of last night’s dinner and check out the shops. We also had forgotten to take a photo outside of the restaurant so we planned to do that as well.

We weren’t really sure where we were, so we chose to take the U-Bahn back, with the boys getting out at our regular area and Debbie and I would transfer to another line to get off at the stop that we had seen right outside the restaurant. In hindsight that transfer wasn’t really needed, we could have just gotten out where the boys did and walked. But we got to the area, took our selfie and started walking up the street to where Debbie had seen the shops.

It took a little while to find one of the shops she had wanted to visit, and when we went inside Debbie immediately saw a white jacket that caught her eye. She tried it on and liked it a lot, but wasn’t sure if she was going to get it. She hemmed and hawed for a while, and sent a photo to her mother and her “clothing advisor” Lisa. Not surprisingly, her mother was up early and responded with a lukewarm reaction. Lisa was not as much as an early bird so Debbie didn’t hear back from her right away. So we left and Debbie told the woman at the store that she was going to walk a little and think about it. But after a short while Lisa responded that she loved it. That was all Debbie needed, so back we went to the store and we are now the proud owners of a nice white jacket.

The "White Jacket"

After our little shopping escapade, we walked up the street some more, where we realized that we were right near the apartment so we just continued to walk back to the apartment. We rested for a short time, then got all dressed up for the opera. Well, not really ALL dressed up, but we each brought one nicer outfit for this evening. Debbie brought a long skirt and I brought slacks and a jacket. It was getting a little chilly, so I channeled my inner George Santos and put on a light sweater over my shirt and under my jacket.

Tonight’s dinner, at Fuhrich, was right near the opera house (and yes, a short walk from the apartment, and was going to be a typical dinner with a lot of schnitzel. But I noticed yesterday when deciding which restaurant to go to of the two I had booked that this place had a ton of gluten free options, including gluten free schnitzel. So Debbie and I decided to share a gluten free schnitzel and a chicken-chickpea plate. The boys also ordered schnitzel while Amanda, who can have all the schnitzel she wants over the next couple of months, opted for gnocchi. Once again, everything was delicious and we followed the meal by ordering some desserts to share. In keeping with the “typical Vienna” meal, one of them had to be apple strudel. And because she only had two coffees so far today, Debbie joined in with the rest of us and ordered another one! Seriously, what have we done??

Use context clues...

When dinner was over we took the very short walk to the Vienna Opera House to go see our very first opera. This opera house is unlike most others where the other houses will have one opera that plays each night for a while and then a new one will take over. The Vienna Opera House is different in that they have a completely different show each night. They put on 60 different shows each year, with over 300 performances a year and each night is different. Tonight’s show was an opera called Werther. It’s based on an old story and is a tragic story of a man, Werther, who falls for an engaged woman. The woman has strong feelings for the man but honors her commitment and marries the other man. Despite their feelings and his attempts to get her to ditch her husband, she remains with her husband. Werther eventually decides he can’t live without her and shoots himself. But before he dies the woman finds him and expresses her love for Werther, in what turns out to be a long death scene (all of Act IV).

The seats we had were pretty high up but we could see fine. The opera itself was sung in French, but each seat had a screen that would display the words in the language of your choice. Despite my clear fluency in Spanish that I had displayed in Paris, I did opt for English. It was a little hard to keep looking down, but thankfully for me the woman in the row in front of my also chose English, so I could just glance at her screen. The room itself was beautiful, albeit extremely warm. It made my decision to add the sweater unnecessary and I ended up taking both the jacket and sweater off and rolling up my sleeves. On Amanda’s advice, at intermission Debbie took a flyer for another show to use as a fan.

I can’t say that any of us will be running back to the opera on a regular basis, although Amanda is scheduled to see another one at the end of the month when my parents visit. And I do have to remember to tell my dad that while there is no formal dress code to attend the opera, one thing they do say is “no flip flops.” I am not sure Birks count as flip flops, but he may have to actually wear socks and shoes that night.

The show ended promptly at 9:30, as advertised, and we walked back to the apartment. Somehow we avoided getting Debbie a 4th coffee of the day, but we did. This was our last day in Vienna. Tomorrow we are being picked up at 11:30 for a flight to London. Jolly good.

Day 6 (2025) - Exploration Day

2025-03-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

Today (Tuesday) was the first day of the trip without anything really planned. We had already seen most of the 1st District on our walking tour yesterday, so I decided we should venture out to some other districts I had noted that were worth walking around. But before we did that we met Amanda and her friend, Allie, for brunch. Allie is also a Lehigh student and lives next to Amanda in her Vienna dorm. Last night after we made this plan I did some quick work on “the Googler” and found a place to meet for brunch that was about a 15 minute walk from the apartment. They finished class at 10:15 and we met at the brunch place a little after 10:30.

Brunch was nice, as was Allie, but the most interesting part was Debbie ordering a latte. Oh my.

We added a 6th for Brunch - Allie

After brunch we decided to walk to the 7th District, which I had heard had some cute shops. The walk took around 20-25 minutes and we eventually got to some streets with places to check out. Everyone picked up a little something along the way, well, except me. Oh well. After a while Amanda had to leave to get back to her class, and the rest of our continued walking around the 7th District for a while.

When we felt we had seen enough of the 7th District I decided we should go to the 3rd District and check out something I had seen on my Instagram research – the Hundertwasser House and Hundertwasser Village. I didn’t know a lot about it, other than the house was very colorful. And I really didn’t know what the village was. But it was on my list of things to see, so see we shall do.

We took the street car this time to the 3rd District, where we then had a short walk to our destination. We encountered the village first so we went in. It’s hard to explain exactly what this is, but in summary it’s a little enclosed shopping area that they developed because so many people were coming to see the house. They have information on the artist that developed the house – named Hundertwasser, of course, as well as some other little touristy shops. We resisted the urge to buy any trinkets, and exited the village where we then encountered the house. It was indeed quite colorful and is actually a residential building. Not sure I’d like to live there, as cute as the place is, with all of the tourists coming by every day talking photos.

By this point were a little hungry, so our next stop was the Naschmarkt, basically blocks and blocks of food options. We started at one end and worked our way to the other end, taking note along the way. One things we noted was that if you liked olives or nuts this market would be ideal.

Some of the vendors offered free samples, including a nice man at the beginning of our journey who gave us a taste of his delicious falafels. There was also a not-so-nice man who was giving our free samples of cheese. He first offered it to Debbie, who passed, but Brian took him up on it. Brian was going to just take the cheese and keep walking but the guy gave him a hard time about not commenting on the cheese. So Brian stopped and told him he liked it. But when Brian then went to leave he started to berate Brian for not buying anything. We decided to pick up the pace a little to get away from the mean cheese guy – although Debbie insists she was close to going at the guy. That likely would not have gone well.

Along the way we did stop to buy some sort of dessert thing, actually two. One had chopped walnuts and the other had poppy seeds. We stopped at a bench about half way through and ate them pretty quickly, as we were hungry and they were really good.

We got to the end and started up the other side, but that side was mostly sit down restaurants. And after walking all the way to the end, we decided to go back to the nice falafel guy and get something there. See, being nice helps. We ordered 15 falafels, with a couple of sauces on the side, and were pleasantly surprised that it all came to about 8 euros. We took our bag of falafels and our sauces and found a quiet place outside of the market to sit and eat them. While the location was quiet, clearly we weren’t the only ones that found this place a good place to use, as it seemed to have a distinct urine odor that often wafted our way. This lovely aroma didn’t dampen the enjoyment of the falafels, although we may have eaten them a little faster than we would have otherwise.

We vacated our lovely location and decided we needed something wash it down with, which of course meant we had to get some baklava. Because nothing washes down falafel like baklava. After the baklava (which was excellent), we headed back to the apartment.

I know someone that might like this

Amanda came to the apartment after class and after resting for a short time (very short) we headed out to dinner. Once again, dinner was near the apartment so we walked. Tonight’s dinner was a recommendation from my fraternity brother, Howie Corb, and was called Plachutta. This restaurant was known for its boiled beef, called Tafelspitz. They advertise it as “world famous” and to prove their point they have many photos of celebrities on a wall on the way to the bathrooms that have eaten there over the years.

Much like the Paris steak restaurant, there was some trepidation (I know, a nice 50 cent word instead of the 5 cent version – fear) about this meal, but four of us decided to give it a shot. Amanda was the holdout and opted for schnitzel. The waiter asked us we wanted “pancakes” in the broth, and we said sure without even really knowing what it meant.

When dinner arrived it came in two large pots of broth and the waiter gave us each a bowl with what looked like egg noodles. He then ladled out soup from the pots to each of us, but there was no meat in the soup. I forget if he simply sensed our confusion or if someone asked, but he then told us “soup first, then meat” or something like that. The soup was really good – very hearty and we came to understand that the egg noodles were likely the pancakes he asked us about earlier.

After each of us finished the soup, came back and gave us the meat from the pots, along with some vegetables and potatoes we had ordered on the side. Once again, the initial concern about the meal proved unfounded and everyone loved the meal. We ordered for 4, and even with two of us who tend to eat anything that is in their vicinity, we had some leftovers to bring home.

For once we were too full for dessert, so we headed out to walk back to the apartment. Along the way back, Debbie spotted some clothing stores that were closed but had interesting items in the window and expressed an interest to come back. So I guess we will be coming back to this area at some point.

We got back to the apartment and settled in for the night. Tomorrow the Volks head to the opera!

Day 5 (2025) - A Whole New (Caffeinated) World

2025-03-10T14:16:00.000-07:00

Today was our first day in Vienna. The four of us arrived last night and Ethan arrived early in the morning. He got to the apartment around 10am and decided to take a little nap before our afternoon 4-hour walking tour. The tour guide I had hired was the one who gave an abbreviated tour to Amanda’s abroad group on their first day in Vienna. She liked him and thought he would give us a nice private tour. The tour was scheduled for 1pm, so while Ethan napped and Amanda attended class, Brian, Debbie and I did a little exploring on our own.

Like Paris and its 20 arrondissements, Vienna is organized into 23 districts. We are staying in the 1st District, also known as the Innere Stadt, or Inner City. Most of the old historical buildings are located in the 1st District, as well as a lot of nice shopping. One of the things we were in search of in our little expedition was the “famous” hot dog stand that Debbie had heard so (so) much about from her parents. From their reports, the “hot dog stuffed in a bun” in the stand across from the Sacher Hotel was the best thing they have ever eaten in their lives – OK, maybe they didn’t sell it that hard, but they did make (many) a point to make sure we found that stand. However, according to Amanda, there are hot dog stands on every corner, and in our brief exploration we saw at least 2 on our way to the Sacher Hotel, which happened to be around the corner from our apartment.

None of the ones we saw seemed to fit the bill, until we walked a little past the Sacher Hotel and saw a stand that sure sounded like the one. We sauntered over and tried to figure out what to order (at around 11am no less) by watching what others were ordering. We saw a bunch of people getting cut up hot dogs, but then we finally saw someone with the hot dog stuffed in a bun. We went to order and basically pointed at the guy who just left with it and said we wanted two of those – one for Brian and one for Debbie and me to share. He asked if wanted it with cheese – and we said yes, as Eve had made a (strong) point that we had to get it with cheese. He also asked if we wanted mustard and we said yes to that as well.

Even though we had joked about the pressure to get one of these things, we all had to admit it was very tasty. But we felt that the guy had forgotten about the cheese, as we didn’t taste any cheese. Although we did taste a lot of pretty spicy mustard, especially when we got towards the end where a lot of mustard had congregated at the bottom of the bun.

Found it

A couple of hot dogs eating hot dogs

The three of us walked around for a bit, taking photos of buildings that looked interesting without really knowing what they were. Amanda met us back at the apartment around noon when her morning class was over and we got Ethan up from his nap. Once everyone was ready we headed to meet our tour guide, Michael, near the McDonald’s in the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station. I believe he picks this place for two reasons (a) it’s a busy station where many U-Bahn lines meet so anyone can get there easily and (b) there’s a public restroom right there. After finding Michael (took longer than expected because he was on the other side of the station from where we entered he asked if anyone needed the restroom and amazing no one, including myself, took him up on it. So out we went.

At this point, if I tried to recount everything we saw and everywhere he took us this blog post would be so much longer and detailed than I am prepared to write. Suffice it to say, we got our Euros worth on this tour. He showed us famous places, not so famous places and some places we never would have found had we not been on a private tour. He also spent considerable time at a Holocaust memorial explaining the relevance of it and why it was so important for this to be in Vienna. He did not know that we were Jewish, nor did we mention it, so I do believe he was just very sincere in his comments about the memorial. The memorial also happened to be pretty close to the hot dog stand from the morning. And remember how I said we took photos of things we really didn’t know about? Well, the memorial was one of them where we took a photo of Debbie smiling in front of an interesting statue. We just didn’t realize what it was at the time. Innocent mistake.

About three quarters of the way through the tour we stopped at a coffee house, one of many in Vienna, to rest and have a coffee. This was a momentous moment in the Volk family history. See, while I have coffee every day, and Brian drinks coffee and Ethan has an occasional coffee, Debbie does not and has never been a coffee drinker. But it was a little chilly out and we had been walking for almost 3 hours, so Debbie decided to adopt the “when in Rome” attitude and have a coffee as well. We asked Michael what kind of coffee was a typical Viennese coffee and he suggested the mélange so that’s what four of us ordered (Michael got a beer and Amanda some sort of fruity drink). When Debbie tried her coffee it was as if the world had been re-born in a whole new way. She really liked the coffee.

The start of something...

A Sachertorte, but not THE Sachertorte
from The Sacher Hotel
(it was fair at best)

Later on in the tour, and after Amanda had to leave to get to her afternoon class, we passed a small little hole in the wall (quite literally, that’s all it was – a hole in the wall) that advertised itself as having Vienna’s most expensive coffee. We had to hold her back from getting it, as it appeared to be served in an ice cream cone. But she is determined to come back and get one!

Some of the many photos of the walking tour:

This is a replication of The Last Supper
but using tiny mosaic tiles

With our tour guide, Michael

Gonna come back here to see this clock do its thing

Another Holocaust memorial - books are backwards
to signify the knowledge lost with the loss of all of the Jews

We must have made a big impression already
for them to name a garden after us

President of Austria works here

Evidently this Mozart guy is big around here

Our 4-hour tour ended up being almost 4.5 hours and we finally bid Michael farewell and went back to the apartment for a short rest before we headed out to dinner. Tonight’s dinner was a place, Labstelle, that was on the itinerary of Ethan’s girlfriend’s parents when they visited Vienna recently. Although we found out later that they didn’t actually eat there as they were tired from their day. In doing my pre-trip research, I found a bunch of restaurants in Vienna and double booked each night and will choose which to keep the day before. Labstelle had a very different kind of menu so that was the place I opted for tonight.

The restaurant was near the apartment, so we made the 10 minute walk and got there right around our 7pm reservation time. When we got inside we were a little nervous because there were not a lot of people eating, which went against my mother’s “go where it’s crowded” advice. But we sat down and had a lovely dinner at what clearly was going to be our fanciest meal of the trip, considering all of the other places I have booked the rest of the way. The presentation and the food itself were outstanding, and we were glad we gave this place a shot.

After dinner we walked back to the apartment, including Amanda who brought a bag to stay with us, and we settled in for the night after a long day of touring and exploring.

Day 4 (2025) - Lassie, Please Help Find Our Parents!

2025-03-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day in Paris. We had two flights scheduled from Paris to Vienna, both around 3:30pm so we had some time in the morning. Before we left the states, I booked us entry to the Louvre at 9am, right when it opened. Based on my previous experiences at the Louvre I figured that if we got in a little after 9am, we might be done seeing what we really needed to see by 9:10 (OK, maybe a little later). The night before, Brian suggested we walk the 30 minutes to the museum, partially to get some good exercise but more realistically to try and work of last night’s dinner. We made plans to meet at 8am and walk to the Louvre, while along the way look for a place to grab something for breakfast. Unfortunately, or double unfortunately, on Sundays many places don’t open early, and anyway the route we took was mostly a retail shopping route with a lot of cute clothing shops (Debbie was bummed we hadn’t discovered this area sooner, me not so much).

We arrived at the museum around 8:40 so we figured we had some time to kill. We spotted a food truck near the entrance we were going to use (not the pyramid entrance so we didn’t have to wait outside in a long line) and Amanda and I ordered quiches and Brian and I ordered double espressos (about the size of a small at Starbucks). After we had eaten and had our coffees, we made our way inside to where I assumed we would just stroll right in since we had a 9am reservation. But no monkey breath, that’s not the way it works. We had to wait in a very long line (at least it was inside) to go through a single security checkpoint. It was long enough that Debbie had time to go to the food court and get her favorite – pain au chocolat. It wasn’t the best one she’s had, but it gave her some food at least.

Loading up before getting inside

We finally made it into the entry hall of the museum around 9:45, so we were already running late. Our new plan was to be done by 11 and then get back near the hotel to grab lunch before heading to the airport at 1. Inside the entry hall there were three escalators that would take you to the museum. We headed for one of them that seemed to have the least amount of people waiting to go up, but as we approached the escalator we were waived off and told to go to the one opposite us. We didn’t think much about it at the time, so we did what were told. We will come back to this monumental mistake later.

Debbie and I had gotten advice from our friend, Mark Putter, to download a 1-hour guide to the Louvre, which would hit the highlights. The kids had zero interest in this and headed off on their own.

I tried to open the audio guide, but it wasn’t loading. While I fiddled over and over with the guide app, we walked in through some statues. The kids had gone this way as well, and Debbie and I spent so much time dealing with the app that they came back to see what was taking us so long. I will come back to this concept later as well.

We walked up some stairs after the statue area and then took an escalator to another floor. When we got to the top of the escalator we had two choices – left or right. For the second time already this morning, we chose wrong and went left. In the rooms we encountered we saw a lot of large rugs and armor, but Debbie really liked all of the modern clothing that was on display. We never really figured out why all of these modern dresses were in the Louvre, but as they say in Paris (or I think they say in Paris) c’est la vie. My mother can correct me if this is not the correct use.

We kept walking and walking (and walking and walking) and kept seeing more and more rugs and dresses. We finally got the app to work and in the first few minutes of the audio it talked about entering the Louvre in the Denon wing. Unfortunately, that was not where we were. We were in the Richelieu wing.

As they say in Maine, "You can't get there from here"

We started heading back the way we came and at some point we stopped to ask a guy that worked at the museum how to get to the Denon wing. It was possible it was this guy’s first day on the job, or it was possible he didn’t even work there, because he pointed us back towards the way we just came. We turned back around and headed back again through the rugs and dresses. Have I mentioned we saw a lot of rugs and dresses?

These were but a few of the many dresses
I don't think I have photos of the many rugs

At some point we didn’t feel like this was the right way, and again stopped to ask someone for help. This time the person actually had an idea of what to do and explained where we needed to go and at what room number we should turn. The problem was that even though our map had room numbers on them, we could not in our two Ivy League graduated minds figure out which room we were in. So we asked, and the guy simply pointed to the sign high up on the wall. That might have been helpful to know about 30 minutes prior.

At least now we were heading in the right direction through the rugs and dresses, but again may have made a mistake and missed our turn. We asked one more person for help and she got us heading in the right direction.

By now we had been in the Louvre for probably 45 minutes and had seen nothing but some statues (not the biggies), rugs and dresses. It was also at this point that Lassie had likely located Brian and Amanda and told them that their parents were hopelessly lost and needed help. And like a miracle in the desert, Brian and Amanda appeared to (a) help us get to the Denon where the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory and Venus de Milo were located and (b) to make fun of us for our ineptitude. We asked them what they had seen already – and they had seen EVERYTHING of importance, while we had seen NOTHING!

Our saviors taking photos of their soon to be hopelessly lost parents

We had long scrapped the idea of using the audio app (all I end up listening to was that we were in the wrong area) and instead followed Brian. He led us successfully to see the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory and Venus de Milo (although not in that order). We had wasted so much time with the rugs and dresses that we pretty much saw the three "biggies" took a photo or two of each and moved on to the next one.

Could be the logo for our experience - no brain!

So long to find this, so little time looking at it

I've now saved you a trip to the Louvre -
you have seen the three "biggies"

Amanda had gone ahead and was waiting for us back at the main hall, and Brian, Debbie and I weaved our way quickly through the exit route to meet her and get out of there before we made another wrong turn and ended up back with the rugs and dresses.

We exited the Louvre a little after 11 as planned, Debbie and I with our heads hung low (although in actuality we thought it was hysterical all along and weren’t really upset about what had happened). We had to get back to the hotel, pack up and grab something to eat, since we had not really eaten. We hopped on a bus that took us back to the area of the hotel and went back to our favorite patisserie and grabbed some food and went to the room to finish packing up.

Waiting for the bus after our (mis)adventure

Since Ethan was not yet with us, we had two separate flights (Debbie-Brian and Judd-Amanda) but both were right around 3:30. I had arranged for a car to take us to the airport at 1pm, so right at that time we headed out of the Victoria Palace and headed to the airport.

The car dropped off Amanda and me first (while the times were the same, we were on different airlines and at different terminals), and then the car took Debbie and Brian what they felt was a long way to their terminal. For both flights I had “bid” on upgrades from economy to business and the day before I was notified that my flight with Amanda on Austrian Air would be upgraded for a small fee. We took advantage and waited for our flight in the lounge (wasn’t all that exciting of a lounge but it was better than waiting at the gate). In reality, the business class were three across regular seats in the front of the plane with the middle seat blocked off so no one could sit there. And we could board first.

Traveling in (a little) style

Can't beat the view from above on the way to Vienna

Our flight was a little delayed and took off about 15-20 minutes late, but we all arrived in Vienna safe and sound. Both baggage carousels were near each other and even though our flight was a little late I got my bag before Brian and Debbie got theirs. But eventually all bags arrived, and we headed to the Uber area. Amanda took an Uber back to her apartment to get settled while the three of us took an Uber to our apartment.

This was the first time in our travels (Judd and Debbie, not the kids) that we opted for an apartment instead of a hotel, so we weren’t really sure what to expect. We arrived at the building, followed the instructions and went up to Floor D to our apartment. The apartment was at the end of a hallway and when we got there the hall was dark, but we got ourselves inside and found a lovely duplex apartment. The apartment had three full bedrooms (one on the first floor and two upstairs. There was also a bed in an alcove upstairs. The bedrooms upstairs share a bathroom in between them so Brian suggested that Debbie and I take the downstairs room so we would have our own bathroom. To be fair, it was a good thought, but the rooms upstairs were larger. Nonetheless, we took his suggestion, and we encamped on the main floor and Brian took one of the upstairs rooms.

Before we left Paris, Amanda made a reservation at a pizza place kind of near her apartment, so one we got settled we ventured out on the U-Bahn (subway) towards dinner. Amanda had suggested we buy 3-day passes for the U-Bahn so we did. She also told us that in Vienna getting on the U-Bahn was kind of on the honor system – there is no required ticket checking to get on or off. The only real reason to have a ticket is if the authorities decide to spot check you. There would be a big fine if you didn’t have a ticket.

We made our way to dinner, which included a successful transfer, and we met Amanda at the pizza place. We ended up ordering three pizzas, and when they arrived we thought we had ordered way too much. Yeah, no. We polished them all off just fine, thank you.

During dinner we somehow got on the topic of Salzburg and the Sound of Music Tour. Our time in Austria would not really allow us the time to travel to Salzburg and do the Sound of Music Tour. Amanda had already traveled there for a day and done the tour, and I had done it when I was there after college. Debbie was bummed that she would not get to do the tour, as she believed she had not been there on her post-college trip. I say "believed" because she wasn't really sure, so she decided to text her friend, Debbie Novick, with whom she had traveled after college. Debbie Novick (have to use last names for a bit since there are too many Debbies in this part of the story) wrote back right away that yes, not only had they been to Salzburg, but they had also done the Sound of Music Tour. Debbie Volk had no recollection of this, which then led to a series of texts back and forth on our train ride back to the apartment where Debbie Novick tried to remind Debbie Volk of all of the things they had done together on their trip. The complete lack of memories by Debbie Volk of all of the things that Debbie Novick brought up ended up causing Debbie Volk to absolutely lose it on the train. I am sure any other passengers thought she was nuts!

Crazy American!

Editor's note: from this point onward all references to "Debbie" will revert to mean Debbie Volk

Amanda decided to bunk with us during our stay, not only because she loves us so much and wants to be with us, but also (and more likely) because our apartment was around the corner from her classes. This would save her 20 minutes of commuting to her 9am classes for the week.

So we all got back on the U-Bahn to our apartment building. Debbie and I decided to try and walk off dinner a little by walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. We figured, Floor D, four flights. Logical assumption. But wrong. The stairs kept going and going and going. Turns out, while Floor D is the top, before that there is an M floor, then 4 floors, then Floor D. Once again, the hallway was dark, but this time I noticed a round switch on the wall which thankfully lit up the hall.

Ethan arrives early tomorrow and we have a 4-hour walking tour scheduled in the afternoon. We settled into the apartment and went to sleep, with rugs and dresses in our dreams.

Day 3 (2025) - When One Choice Is All You Need

2025-03-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Today was a busy day. Brian arrived on the red-eye from JFK a little after 8:30am. We had already planned to go to the Rodin Garden when he got settled, then we had tickets to see Notre Dame at 1pm and to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower at 3pm, with dinner planned at Le Relais de Venise (more on that later). But yesterday when Debbie and I were walking around Le Marsais we came across the Picasso Museum. We tried to get in yesterday but it was too busy and we would have had to wait in line for over an hour to get in. So in the evening I looked online and they had tickets available at 9:30. Brian’s flight was actually supposed to land at 9:00am, so we figured that by the time he got his bags and cabbed to the hotel we could be there and back.

But, as I mentioned, Brian actually arrived a half an hour early so we told him we would meet him back at the hotel when we were done. The three of us headed out, stopped at a local patisserie where we got small quiches and I got a small coffee, and we then took the metro to Le Marsais and headed to the Picasso museum. As mentioned in a previous update, we are not a museum family, and the Picasso museum confirmed this. We purchased a couple of audio guides, which helped a little but, in reality, while all of the Picassos certainly looked like Picassos one kind of blended into another. After a short time we just kind of walked our way through while skipping turning on the audio guides and finished up rather quickly and headed back to the hotel.

I think we have a version of this in our kids art bin from Community School

At least we can say we were there

Upon arriving back at our rooms, we found Brian fast asleep (not surprising). We stirred him awake and once he was ready we headed out towards the Rodin Garden. When I organized all of the events for today prior to the trip, I had only planned on going to the top of the Eiffel Tower at 3pm and then I got tickets for Notre Dame at 1pm (I got free tickets two days beforehand). Rodin was not part of the original plan, nor did I think to look up the location of the Rodin Garden in connection with plans for the rest of the day.

Once the group was ready to go we headed back to the metro for the ride to the Rodin Garden. This trip required a transfer, and evidently our first metro ended somewhere in Paris while it seemed the second metro was somewhere close to Abu Dhabi. We got a ton of steps in, even with the help of a long walking escalator thingy, but eventually we made the transfer and walked over to the gardens. I don’t believe I had been to this museum before, but Debbie was here on her trip after college. Her recollection was that you could walk through the gardens without a fee, but if you wanted to go inside there would be a fee. While that may, or may not, have been true in 1990 it was most definitely not the case in 2025. There was a fee to enter, regardless of what you were there to see. I, somewhat reluctantly, paid the fee and we went in. I say “somewhat reluctantly” only because we were really only there to see one or two statues – The Thinker and The Kiss.

We walked into the garden, and pretty much the very first thing you encounter is The Thinker. We snapped some photos and kept going, where we very shortly thereafter found The Kiss. So, after maybe 10 minutes we were really kinda done. But the gardens were pretty and there were a lot of other statues to look at. While we didn’t really know exactly what we were looking at for each of them, they were nonetheless quite impressive in their detail. The muscle tones, the realistic expressions, etc. were really amazing. Not so amazing that we would be spending hours admiring them, but amazing anyway.

Two great thinkers

Could we be more touristy?

We wrapped up our tour of the gardens after probably no more than 30 minutes, and headed back out to (a) look for somewhere to eat and (b) head towards Notre Dame. But remember that comment about not researching the various locations? Well, we could very easily see the Eiffel Tower from the Rodin Gardens. Notre Dame? Not so much. We ended up pretty much retracing our (many, many) steps and doing the Abu Dhabi to Paris metro transfer in the opposite direction to get to the Notre Dame area. And since there was nothing to eat in the short walk from the Rodin Gardens to the metro, we decided to look around the Notre Dame area.

However, the shops and dining establishments in the Notre Dame area are very touristy and nothing really appealed to anyone. So, despite having a couple of (young) “hangry” members of our traveling party, we decided to eschew any food for the moment and just head directly to Notre Dame, as it was getting close to 1pm anyway.

It was good that we had our tickets already, as the stand by line was quite long and we easily would have risked a mutiny if we had to wait in that line. But we showed our tickets and walked right in to the newly renovated Notre Dame.

It was quite crowded inside (so much for limiting access) and we joined the crowd on our walk around the inside of the cathedral. Many photos were taken, but none when we joined some people in the middle of the cathedral who were sitting on chairs. We sat down with them to get a little rest and I took out my phone to snap some more photos. But before I could even unlock my phone a worker told us that no photos were allowed where we were sitting. The seats were only for praying. For pretty obvious reasons, praying was not an option so we got up and rejoined the crowds.

They may be smiling, but they are thinking - I wanna eat!

More photos were taken of this spectacular building, and we then found ourselves back outside, with the “hangriness” only growing. As mentioned, this was a pretty touristy area, but in the interest of family harmony, I made the executive decision to eat at the very first restaurant we saw on a corner next to Notre Dame. While I knew that this was likely not going to be a place to write home (or blog) about, I also knew that food was the priority at this time. As expected, the food was fine, nothing exciting, but it served its purpose and the “hangriness” subsided.

By now it was well after 2pm and we had tickets for the Eiffel Tower at 3pm. For the third (or fourth, I lost track) time today, we trudged to the metro and weaved our way to our next destination. We arrived at the Eiffel Tower a little before 3pm and hustled over to the tower, since our tickets called for 3pm entry. But we soon learned that just because our tickets said 3pm didn’t mean at 3pm we were going to be in an elevator to the top right at 3pm. First we had to wait in a line outside, where it was pretty cold, to get inside where the first elevator was, then once we got inside we had to wait in another line to get into the elevator. Once we finally got into the elevator, it took us to the second floor, where we (once again) had to wait in a line where now it was quite cold and windy to get in another elevator to the top. After quite a wait, we finally made into the elevator to the top, and got out.

Thankfully, this level was enclosed so at least it wasn’t cold. We walked around for a short time (way less time than we waited in any line to get to this point), took photos, walked up a short flight to an even higher level – which was not enclosed and was cold and windy - and then (wait for it) got in another long line to get into an elevator going back down to the second level. Once we got back to the second level we (I know you know what’s coming) got in another line to get the elevator back to the ground.

I know that anyone reading this who has been to Paris will say that this was a waste of time, and it may have been, but the kids had never been here before, and now they can say they have been to the top of the Eiffel Tower. They don’t have to do this again should they come back at some point, but I bet that if they do come back years from now with their own kids they will likely do the same for them. Or at least I think they will.

What was originally expected to be a short up and down was anything but, and my dinner plan for the evening was to go to a Volk family tradition – Le Relais de Venise. My parents have been going there every time they have come to Paris, and they took us on both of our family trips and I told Alan Nadel and Todd Sycoff there when we came after college. This is restaurant that serves one thing – steak and fries. No menu, no options. I can’t say that Debbie and Amanda were all that excited about going there, but I feel like it was my responsibility to give it a shot.

We took the metro from the Eiffel Tower to the area of the original Le Relais (they have another location in Paris, but I wanted to go the original) and were a little early. My notes said that the restaurant opened at 6pm, and my parents had told me that we would have to get in line before it opened to make sure we got right in. It was a cold night so I wasn’t sure there would be much of a line, but I didn’t want to take the chance. But when we got to the restaurant the sign on the door said they opened at 7pm (although at looking again at their website it said 6:45), not 6pm, so we were REALLY early.

We decided to walk around and explore the area, and at the end of the street we found a little café. There wasn’t much else around so we went inside and ordered hot chocolates. We sat for a bit, maybe until around 5:45, and we headed back towards the restaurant. There still wasn’t anything stirring there, so we decided to go to a golf shop I had noticed on the way back to the restaurant from the café. The golf shop was open, but was pretty small and we couldn’t just wait inside and do nothing, so Brian and I went to their little putting area and tried out some putters. One of the store workers came over and struck up a conversation and actually pointed out the type of putter I should use based on my putting stroke, which was helpful.

We left the golf shop and headed back towards the restaurant around 6:10. We were on the other side of the street and this time I did notice some stirring so we decided to go there and see what the story. Good thing we did. There were a few people already in line (after some context clues we determined we were 4th in line) and within minutes of us getting in line more and more people kept coming and getting in line. Within no time the line stretched most of the way down the street towards the café. It was like moths to a flame – they just kept coming.

Glad we got here early
You can spot Amanda at the front of the line in the white coat

At 6:45 they opened the doors and quickly stuffed everyone into tables. The line was so long by this time that many people didn’t make it in for the first seating and had to wait outside until we all finished. We were seated in the back right of the restaurant near the windows to the street, and I am almost certain I had been at that table before.

Now the fun began. The waitress came to our table and simply asked “how do you want it cooked?” My almost 36 year recollection from the last time I was there was that it was served family style, so I just said medium to make sure it worked for all of us, and she took out her pen and wrote “M” on the paper tablecloth. It was at this point that Amanda realized that when I said all they served was steak and fries, it meant one kind of steak. She assumed that while all they served was steak, there would be options on the kind of steak to order.

First, and within minutes, the waitress served us all salads, with a delicious horseradish infused dressing. We all devoured them, and then after clearing away the salads the waitress came back with our plates of steak with pepper sauce and fries.

Just the beginning

Plate #1

There wasn’t a ton of either on the plate, so I started to question my recollection of it being served family style. My one memory, which I was questioning, was of a large overflowing platter of fries. So I texted my mother to ask if this was it or if there would be more offered. Thankfully she responded right away that not would there be seconds, there would be thirds, or fourths or more if you wanted.

If you recall from earlier, I was a little concerned that Debbie and/or Amanda would not like this meal. But to say that concern was unwarranted would be quite the understatement. I believe the word Amanda used was “fire” – which if I am not mistaken means she liked it.

After we cleaned our first plates, or maybe even before we finished, the waitress appeared with a large overflowing platter of fries, which made me pleased that my memory was correct. She loaded us all back up with fries then came around with another round of steak. By now everyone was in hog heaven, or cow heaven. Everyone kept eating and eating and I think Debbie had thirds, but I was too busy enjoying my own meal to keep track.

Debbie's Plate #2 (or #3, I lost track) - Before

After

We finally had our fill of steak and fries, and moved on to dessert. Here you actually had choices. I had updated my mother about our status, all the while making her a little jealous and likely hungry, and right after we ordered two desserts she told us which one she always ordered, the “la tulipe.” Good thing she suggested that because I think that was Debbie’s favorite of the three – not that the other two were shabby.

The "after" version would have just shown three empty plates
My mom's favorite is at the upper left

After polishing off the desserts, and after a perilous climb up a very narrow spiral staircase to the bathroom, we headed out. I am sure those waiting on line were glad to see us leave.

They now understand the appeal of this place

One of Amanda’s goals was to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night, which it does at the top of every hour for 5 minutes. Her friends who had already been to Paris recommended viewing it from the Trocadero area. We took a short metro ride to that area and made our way to the viewing point. Clearly this was not a secret location as there were tons of people there waiting as well. The moment finally arrived and the Eiffel Tower did its sparkling on cue and many a photo and video were taken.

Yes, we are tourists

Was a bit chilly at this point

Happy camper

Can we go now?

Lit up and sparkly

After getting the shots Amanda wanted she was quite happy and we all headed back to the hotel. Brian was thrilled to finally be done for the day, as he had been up for countless hours, other than his short nap upon arrival, and was tired and cold and happy to go to sleep.

Tomorrow we leave for Vienna in the afternoon, but first the Volks will visit the Louvre. Wonder what we might see there?

Day 2 (2025) - Dive Right In

2025-03-04T09:40:00.000-08:00

Today was a day to explore. Our first stop was the Montmartre area of Paris. We took the metro from the hotel and got off at the Abbesses station, as this was described in my research as the "heart of Montmartre." While that was true, what none of these web sites that suggested this station as the starting point happened to mention was the 180 steps that were required to get from the train to the "heart of Montmartre." After trudging up the many, many steps, we emerged (tired but triumphant) into Montmartre.

We really didn't have any particular plan, route or destination in mind. The only place we wanted to find at some point was a gluten-free bakery that I had noticed on Google Maps when doing my planning. Turns out this place was also mentioned in a blog that Debbie had read. So since we didn't have any other goal in mind we looked up the address of the bakery and headed there. After a short walk we found the bakery, looked in, but didn't buy anything right away.

We went on our way and kept exploring, yet somehow the gluten-free gods must have been guiding us because within a short period of time, lo and behold we found ourselves back in front of the bakery. This was clearly a sign. And who are we to ignore signs. So this time in we went. Debbie (stunningly) chose a pain au chocolat and I chose some sort of variation of the same. I think mine had walnuts on it, but all I know was that it was a little different.

As you may be aware, typically gluten-free means not as good. But in this case that would be wrong. These were outstanding! It took some serious will power not to get something else. We considered buying a loaf of bread to eat along the walk, but didn't.

We walked around a bit more, mostly to work off the pain au chocolats (or is it pains au chocolat?), and after a while started to get hungry for lunch. We did a little Googling and found a few places that looked interesting. I set up the route on Maps and away we went. We found the first place and checked out the menu but decided to check out door #2. When we got to the second place, La Bossue, we decided to try it.

They seated us again at a cute little round table, with chairs barely above the ground. The decor was very cute and, according to Debbie, "Friends-like." Her observation proved accurate when we looked at the menu and a few of the items were subtitled "The One With The ..." And if you know Friends, you know that every episode's title starts with "The One With The ..."

We had a lovely lunch, well that was until Debbie asked the waitress for hot water. She looked at Debbie with a very confused face and said something like "just hot water?" Debbie said yes whereby the waitress said "No tea?" Debbie said "That's OK, I have my own tea." The waitress then looked like this was the most offensive thing she had ever heard and said "No, you can't do that. We have our own tea." In order to keep what is left of world peace, Debbie passed on the hot water and we finished up and paid.

We then headed towards Sacré Cœur with the idea of checking it out from the outside then catching a metro to the Le Marais area.

We trudged up the hill of Montmartre towards Sacré-Cœur, and walked along the Instagram-famous street, Rue de l'Abreuvoir, and reached the Sacré-Cœur area.

This area has a ton of artists in a square right outside the basilica. We walked around the artist area for a few minutes and then headed towards the metro.

Unfortunately, the station we needed to take to get to Le Marais was a bit of a walk and eventually took us into an area that, let's just say, was very different from Montmartre. But we got the station and headed to Le Marais.

There wasn't anything we really wanted to see in the area - that is except for a well-known falafel stand, L'As Due Falafel. More than one person had said we had to try the falafel there, so who are we to say no? We strolled around Le Marais with the falafel stand in mind and after a short time we arrived at the stand. There was a line, but not a very long line, and there was a guy taking pre-orders from those in line, so we didn't have a lot of time to check out our options. Thus, under immense pressure we simply ordered two falafel pitas.

Our first thought upon getting them was that one would have been enough to share, and the second thought was how do we eat this? This is where our strategies diverged. Debbie asked for a fork so should could very carefully and cleanly eat the sandwich. I, on the other hand, basically stuck my face into and bit down. While her way was most definitely neater, my way worked just fine, if I may say so myself. And not only did I enjoy it my way, so did all of the pigeons that filled up on the scraps that I ended up dropping on the ground. Oh, and that first thought that we could have shared one? Yeah, that was incorrect. We each polished off most, if not all of our own.

After we finished and I hosed myself down, we headed back to the hotel to await the arrival of the first addition to our trip - Amanda was flying in from Vienna. We got back to the hotel a little before she arrived and greeted her with long-awaited hugs and kisses when she came into the lobby. We headed up to our rooms, really a two bedroom suite with a shared hallway, and freshened up before we headed out to dinner.

For dinner I had made a reservation at a restaurant my parents frequent when they come to Paris, Le Souffle. And if the context clue of the name wasn't very obvious, they are known for their many types of souffles. You can get them as appetizers, main courses and desserts, and that's exactly what I did. After walking through the Tuileries Garden we arrived at the restaurant basically as it opened and were seated right away.

Amanda got a salad appetizer and Debbie passed on a first course, so I was the only one going for the trifecta. I got a blue cheese souffle appetizer, a chicken and mushroom soufflé for my main course and an apple soufflé for dessert. After dinner I kinda felt like one big combined soufflé had formed in my stomach. Amanda got some sort of spinach based soufflé for dinner and a chocolate soufflé for dessert, while Debbie made the rookie mistake of getting an artichoke and haddock soufflé for dinner, and the pear and chocolate soufflé for dessert. After a few bites of her dinner she recognized the error of her ways, so I shared mine with her. While each of the soufflés, other than Debbie's, were good, I think we all felt a little overdosed on soufflés.

After dinner we tried to walk back through the Tuileries again, but it was closed for the evening so we had to walk around. We were able to see the Eiffel Tower lit up on our walk, and we made a pact to get a better view tomorrow night. Each night at the top of the hour the tower sparkles for 10 minutes and it's evidently a big deal and Amanda felt she could not leave Paris without the perfect Instagram view. So that's the plan for tomorrow night. As for tonight, we souffléd, I mean sauntered, home and called it a night.

Brian arrives tomorrow (Saturday) morning early and we have a full day of sightseeing planned, including the Rodin Garden, Notre Dame and going to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Day 1 (2025) - 7 Years of French Down The Drain

2025-03-03T09:15:00.000-08:00

After a 6 year hiatus, the Volk family is embarking on another "road" trip - but this one though will not be traversed in our old trusty minivan but via a series of plans to, within and from Europe. Amanda is studying abroad in Vienna for the spring semester so we are off to Europe to visit her. The Chief Logistics Officer ("CLO") of the family was put to the test in organizing the plan for the trip, as there were a lot of travel complications. We decided to visit a few other cities over the weekends of the trip, so the plan was for Debbie and me to fly to Paris on Wednesday, Amanda will join us in Paris on Friday afternoon after her morning class, Brian will join us Saturday morning after a red-eye on Friday, the four of us will then fly to Vienna on Sunday afternoon, Ethan will be joining us in Vienna on Monday after a red-eye from Orlando (where he has a bachelor party weekend - don't ask), we will all explore Vienna Monday-Thursday when we all fly to London through Sunday, then we will spend a long weekend in London and all of us will return to our collective homes on Sunday afternoon. Oh, throw in there that we needed multiple flights from Paris to Vienna and then London to New York since we would not all be together for those legs. See, I wasn't lying about the logistics the CLO had to coordinate.

The one saving grace on the logistics was that for the first time since we had kids, Debbie and I would break our rule and fly together to Paris. So, thanks to VERY hard earned Capital One miles, she and I flew business on Air France on Wednesday and arrived in Paris on Thursday.

After a basically uneventful, yet not extremely restful, flight we arrived at our lovely hotel, Victory Palace.

Unfortunately, since we arrived at the hotel around noon the rooms weren't ready. So we left our bags at the hotel and went to explore the area and find someplace to eat. After walking a bit and checking out a bunch of places, we decided to have lunch at a lovely cafe, Carousel de Rennes. They sat us at a cute, little round table and we had a nice lunch. My lunch was a very typical French meal - cheeseburger with fries (not French fries, since we are in Paris, just fries). Debbie ordered avocado toast, which came with some other veggies. The meals were very good, even if Debbie left the toast part of the avocado toast uneaten.

After lunch we walked back to the hotel around 2pm to see if our rooms were ready and grab a scarf for Debbie and a sweater for me, as it had gotten a little chilly out. The rooms were still not ready, but we grabbed the clothes and headed to the metro to visit the Musée d'Orsay. As you or may not be aware, the Volk clan is not really a big museum family, yet the museum was highly recommended by many travel sites and friends as well. So in we went. When we got inside we got a museum map and Debbie asked a woman at the information booth where someone with an hour to spare should go in the museum. She told us to start on the 5th floor (impressionists) and then go to the first floor.

We are not really an art museum family, or couple, but this museum lived up to the hype. There were Van Goghs (or as they pronounced it on the audio guide we purchased - "Van Goff"), Monets, Manets (which is which?), Renoirs and other masters as well. There were paintings we recognized (Van Gogh self-portrait, the one with the room that was part of a 3D exhibit on Long Island a few years ago, one that inspired one of the Jewish New Year cards by Michele Pulver that is sold by More Than Paper, etc.) and others we didn't recognize but caught our eyes (ballerinas, some amazingly HUGE paintings, etc.). I would highly recommend this museum.

The museum used to be a train station

You can get a card like this at More Than Paper

This measures 4 meters by 7 meters

We probably spent 2 hours in the museum, which was realistically about an hour and a half more than we had expected to, and we decided to walk back towards the hotel and try and find a place for dinner, as this was the only night of the three in Paris that I didn't have reservations for dinner. My mother had told me to look for crowded restaurants, as that was a sign they were worth trying. So away we went.

We looked a whole bunch of places along the way, but none really interested us. Then we noticed a side street along the main road we were on that seemed to have a lot of restaurants and a lot of activity. Both observations proved accurate. But then the problem was deciding where to eat. We were hoping to find something authentically Parisian, but it was hard to decide. We walked up and down this side street a few times. At one point I had said something like "why don't we go back towards the start of this street and just grab a baguette" as I had seen a small place along the way. But during our exploring of the area we had seen a very busy place with a red awning that we had considered. The problem was it was hard for us to see the menu among all of the people. So when I suggested we go back and grab a baguette the place I was thinking of was not the place Debbie was thinking of - she was thinking I meant the red awning place. When we decided to go to the red awning place she thought it was the baguette place I was thinking of and I thought she just meant to try the busy place.

Anyway, we went into the red awning place and got a table. On the table was a small menu with mostly drinks, so when the waiter came by (and dropped off a small bowl of popcorn) I asked for the food menu. He then promptly picked up the menu on the table and dropped it back down and pointed at it. It was at that point we realized this was pretty much just a bar with very non-Parisian fare - mozzarella sticks and chicken wings, for example.

By the time we figured out this was not a dinner place, we had already polished off the small bowl of popcorn so we discussed ordering something to justify sitting there. We were still discussing what to do when the waiter came back to ask what we wanted. We still weren't sure, so I wanted to buy us a little time. I was never fluent in French by any means, but I did take 7 years of it, so harkening back to my extensive knowledge of the local language I proceeded to say "dos minutes" to the waiter.

At which point Debbie started laughing hysterically that not only did I speak to him using Spanish, but also because I never took one minute of it ever. Without going into a long tangent, I basically replicated what my dad did in Paris in 1980 when he asked someone "Numero Uno?" at the Arc de Triomphe. Ask me in person to tell that story, if you are interested.

After "dos minutes" we came to the conclusion that there was really nothing either of us wanted so we pulled a quick disappearing act and left. Debbie thinks the waiter noticed and gave us a look, but we did what we had to do.

By now we were really hungry so we just opted for the cliche-named Cafe de Paris. This was not really a quintessential Parisian cafe, but we needed to eat. Debbie ordered a salmon and I ordered chicken piccata - both of which we could have gotten in Bayside. Yet, Debbie loved her meal. Me, not so much due to the prevalence of garlic on the rigatoni that came with it. There was a lot of chicken so I just ate that and filled up.

We finished our meal and headed back towards the hotel, all with the eye on places to grab dessert. Back on the Rue de Renne, the main street near the hotel, we found a dessert place called Secco, where we purchased some delicious actual Parisian desserts - a small blueberry tarte thingy, a small cheesecake and a pain au chocolat. The original thought was to have tastes of each and save them in the fridge for the next day. Yeah, right. The only thing we could have saved were some flakes from the pain au chocolat.

This is the "before" photo - the "after" has nothing in it

After a very long day, really two days, we showered and called it a night. Tomorrow we head to Montmartre and Le Marais to explore.

Day 7 (2018) - Fly Away Home

2018-12-29T19:52:00.002-08:00

Today was our last day on the road, and our day started early (and cold) with a tour of the Texas Rangers' ballpark, Globe Life Park. As we learned yesterday while touring the football stadium, this is the last year the Rangers will use this ballpark, with their new one being built now on the other end of the parking lot. When they built the current park in 1992-1994 either retractable roofs were not an option, or it was a massive and expensive oversight. While it was cold today (37 when we left the hotel), it is brutally hot in the summer and can get uncomfortable for fans, especially during day games. The new park will have the coveted retractable roof.

Putting the X in Texas

The park is currently being used for a holiday activity, so the field doesn't look anything like it would during the season.

Not exactly game ready conditions

The tour took us to the press box, a suite, the batting cages, the interview area, and the Rangers dugout. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to go into the Rangers clubhouse because of some previous issues on tours where people didn't leave with the rest of the tour and things went missing. What is wrong with people?

Any questions?

No more questions

Stop the presses!

Good to know the Alligator and Elk jerky options are Gluten Free

Another interesting option at the ball park

After the tour we made our usual donation to the team gift store, and headed down the street to a place called Texas Live, which is basically an upscale food court with many large TVs. I would imagine that the place is typically busy, but with the Clemson-Notre Dame game taking place a few hundred yards away in a few hours, the place was kind of like a fraternity party on steroids.

Pre-tailgating. Notice all of the orange and green attire.

We were never going to get a seat at any of the restaurants, so I looked up someplace to eat that was between where we were and DFW Airport. I found a place that seemed to have a decent menu called The Ranch and made a quick reservation. Turns out that (a) we really did not need a reservation and (b) the food was really good. Stunningly, after we finished lunch we passed on dessert and headed to the airport, which was only about 10 minutes away.

Giddyup

I dropped everyone off so they could check our one piece of luggage that needed to get checked, then headed to return the car (which was so far away I thought I was heading back to Houston).

The flight home was uneventful, and thanks to the fact that the seat configuration was 2+2 Debbie was guaranteed (hopefully) not to have a nauseating seatmate (Amanda was on her best behavior to make sure).

So ends our latest road trip. Things have changed quite a bit since our first trip in 2010, but some things have stayed the same. The kids are much older, more opinionated, and much less enamored with some of the quirky side trips we make. They remain more of a hands-on group, and still enjoy a good meal. And as annoyed as they sometimes get with those side trips, they likely will remember things like the Toilet Bowl Museum or the saloon in Montana or the "throwed rolls restaurant" or Debbie's face after getting into the St. Louis Arch elevator for the rest of their lives.

A classic

I am very thankful that we did all of these trips, and I am sure they are also. The thought of doing a trip like this back in April or May of this year was the furthest thing from my mind, or any of our minds, so I don't take these trips for granted.

I have no idea if/when we will do another trip that is "blog-worthy" so for anyone that has read these daily summaries, thanks. It truly started out in 2010 as simply a way for me to write down some of the stuff we did so we would have a record of it. I sometimes go back and look at the old posts just for fun, and they make me smile. I hope they did for you as well.

As I said before at the end of one of the other trips - until next time, if there is a next time.

Day 6 (2018) - Too Late

2018-12-28T20:23:00.001-08:00

Today was a long day of travel and sightseeing, but the day didn't go quite as planned. We woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel and got on the road a little after 8:00. The drive to Dallas is a bit under 4 hours, and I had marked a few places to stop along the way - partly to break it up and partly to see some other unusual things.

The first stop was an hour outside of Houston and, fittingly, it was to see a very large statue of Sam Houston. The statue is just off the highway we were taking to Dallas, and on a cold day in December we were the only ones there (other than a few workers). The statue took two years to build and is visible from the highway, but that would not work for photos. We got out of the car and made the short walk to the statue and took the obligatory photo, which evidently is the most photographed statue in the state. For the most part, the statue is pretty impressive, other than the mismatched letters which drove Debbie nuts. For a statue to be the most photographed in the state you would think they would make a little extra effort to make it all look professional and neat.

The big man, literally

Get the man matching letters, please

We got back into the car for a short ride to the next stop - a house that is built to look like a cowboy boot. And when we got there we realized we got more than we bargained for, since the house next door has a large cowboy hat on it. I can only imagine how the architectural review board in Great Neck would respond if someone went in with these plans.

This would go over well in Great Neck

We took a quick photo and got back on the road, heading to a BBQ place I had noted. This place, called Cattleack BBQ, is only open two days a week (Thursdays and Fridays) and only from 10:30-2, or until they run out of food. That last part was clearly the key part to understand. When we arrived around 12:30 there was a line out the door to get in. I dropped everyone but Amanda off (she was still waking up from her car nap) and found a place to park. By the time she and I joined the others they had already made an announcement that they were out of turkey and beef ribs. And about 2 minutes later they made another announcement that said it was highly doubtful that they would still have food left for anyone standing in line. With heavy heads and hungry stomachs, we left.

I had also noted a drive-in not far from the BBQ place as a backup, so I suggested we head there. The crew was not all that enthusiastic about that idea, so Debbie found a different BBQ place about 20 minutes away called Lockhart Smokehouse. This was actually a smokehouse, where you order by the pound and then get a table to eat it. There was also a line at this place, but at least they had plenty of food. Debbie found a table while the boys and I stood in line. We weren't really sure how much to get, so our first thought was to get a pound each of the brisket and turkey and a half pound of ribs. But as we watched others place their orders we started to think that wasn't enough. When it was our turn I told the guy I needed enough for 5 people, and he started slicing. We ended up with (I think) 1.5 pounds of brisket, a little over a pound of turkey and 1.5 pounds of ribs. We grabbed a bunch of sides - potato salad, regular coleslaw, blue cheese coleslaw (2) and ordered mac 'n cheese and beans. After taking out a second mortgage we gathered up all of the food and headed to the table, where we chowed down on everything.

Before the carnage

I would agree about the sauce, but we kinda needed forks

Starting the carnage

The Menu

The meat

After the carnage

Not surprisingly, we ordered a little too much, but it was clearly better to order too much than too little since by the time we were done the line had basically doubled in size. What was not taken into consideration when planning the trip was that the college football semifinals are scheduled for Saturday, so the town is overrun by Clemson and Notre Dame fans - all wearing their respective school colors. We clearly got there at the right time (a line spoken more than a few times on the trip). After eating too much of the food that we ordered too much of, we threw away the rest and checked out the area a little before heading to the Sixth Floor Museum.

We got to the museum around 2:30, only to find out that they were sold out of tickets for the day. The parking guy we spoke with said it was a bit of chaos today with all of the people from Clemson and Notre Dame in town, and the museum was packed all day. Debbie went to see if there was any way we could get in, but was told no. The only option was to buy tickets for tomorrow at 11:30, but with a flight at 2:50 that would be cutting it too close. We parked in the lot (illegally) and walked around Dealey Plaza a little. We saw the X marks in the street where Kennedy was shot and stopped by a conspiracy table. We then headed to the museum gift store, where there was also a line to get in, and looked around a little and bought a few souvenirs.

Where the first shot hit JFK

And where the second did

Where the shots were fired from

Or was THIS where they were fired from???

It was now about 3:30 and we were in no man's land. We had a tour of AT&T Stadium scheduled for 6:00 and it took about 30 minutes to get there. We could not really think of anything to do so we (reluctantly) headed to the hotel in Arlington. We checked in a little after 4:00 and basically sat in the room until we were ready to leave (although I typed most of this while waiting). I also booked a tour of the Texas Rangers ballpark for the morning, before we were too late and that got sold out also.

We left for the stadium around 5:30 and got there around 5:45. The tour was at 6:00 and they started taking us up the escalator at 5:55. That means we had 10 minutes of standing around right in front of the Cowboys gift shop. Right before the tour was about to start they announced that if anyone wanted anything from the gift shop they should go back down now and do it quickly, as the store would not be open when we finished. So as not to be late, again, today, we ran down and got a few things (Cotton Bowl sweatshirt for Brian and Cowboys t-shirt for Amanda, Ethan opted out).

I paid and hurried back up to the tour, which had just gotten moving. Our tour was very large, filled almost exclusively with fans of either Clemson (in their orange outfits) or Notre Dame (in their green and blue outfits). I truly believe that if we had been on this tour on Monday we might have been the only ones on it. The tour guide was nice and peppy and showed us around the massive stadium - we went into Jerry Jones' small private suite where he watches the games (but not his 4,000 square foot private suite), a regular suite, the Cowboy Cheerleaders' locker room (passing on any jokes here to be safe) and the Cowboys' locker room. We passed by the Press Box and went into the area of seats at field level, which really aren't great seats since you are actually below the field level and behind of the team benches. Not sure what you can really see on game day from that vantage point, but I am sure you can hear a lot.

The calm before the storm

The reason the tour was so full

The place is LAAAARGE

How 'bout them kids?

Just to prove we were there also

After the tour ended and we purchased the obligatory photo, we left Jerry's World and headed to dinner nearby. Dinner was nothing to get too descriptive about, but after dinner we (or 60% of "we") could not pass up the chance to get some warmed up cookies at the cookie store next to the restaurant. Those cookies were pretty much gone before we got out of the parking lot, and we headed back to the hotel for the evening.

Tomorrow we head home, but not before going on a tour of the Rangers' ballpark (which we learned this evening is being replaced in 2020 with a brand new stadium nearby). Then we will head to the airport and fly home. It's supposed to be pretty cold tomorrow (around 37 at tour time) so I am hoping they will show us a lot of indoor stuff.

Day 5 (2018) - Fun and Games

2018-12-27T21:01:00.002-08:00

Today was supposed to be an educational day, with a trip to the George HW Bush Presidential Library in College Station. But the government shutdown put the kibosh on that so we had to improvise. I'm not sure that missing the library was the worst thing in the world, since I have learned in the 8 years that we have done road trips that the kids really aren't all that excited, or interested in, museums where you have to look at things and read about them. They have always been way more of a hands-on group, and nothing has really changed since 2010 when we did our first trip. Yesterday's NASA expedition was no exception. So when plans changed yesterday and we started talking about other things to do, they were not all that keen on my idea to go to the National Museum of Funeral History, despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews it received.

So I told them last night to find something else to do, and Brian suggested a place called Top Golf, and we planned our day around that. First things first though - we had to eat a ridiculously good, high-calorie breakfast. To achieve that lofty goal, we headed to The Breakfast Klub. This is another one of those simple, local places, where you order at the counter and find a table. The line had already formed around the building when we arrived there around 10:00, but it moved relatively quickly, and as soon as we knew it we were ordering. And order we did. For the table we got orders of wings-n-waffles and biscuits and gravy because, well, why not? We all ordered some version of eggs for ourselves and the food came out pretty quickly and was eaten just as fast.

It's biscuits, it's gravy, how can this be bad?

Not exactly sure why these go together, but glad they do

After breakfast, we headed to the golf place. Just as we were finishing breakfast I made a reservation for noon, but we actually arrived closer to 11:15. Since we had a reservation they moved us way up in the waiting list for a driving bay, and we were called around 11:30. So, Top Golf is an interesting concept. At its core it's a driving range, but the difference is that on the ground are circles around pins at varying distances. You get points for both accuracy and distance, so if you get it in a circle (on the fly or on a roll) you get points, and you get more points for the closer you get to the pins and even more points the further away those pins are. Got it?

First thing you have to do is buy a lifetime membership for $5. Not only are we members of NASA, we are now also all members of Top Golf. That's a very exclusive club. To play you first decide how long you want to play, so we selected an hour. Then you choose the game. The basic game is where every player gets 20 balls to amass the most amount of points. The other games are more about accuracy and hitting certain targets. Considering the wide range (pun intended) of golf ability in our group, we opted for the basic game.

I went first, and started by trying to chip into the closest circle. But after a few chips that just missed, and got no points, I started to ramp up the swings, first going to an iron, then to a 3-wood. That proved to be a better strategy since I was getting points for distance, and even the ones that didn't immediately hit their target ended up rolling into the next one. I hit all 20 of my shots, then everyone else took turns.

As I mentioned, there was a gap in golf skill in the group, but that really didn't matter since even rolled shots often ended up in a circle and got points. So playing "hero ball" and just wailing away with a driver (not gonna say who took this approach, but congrats on his upcoming college graduation) was not necessarily the optimal plan, especially when said driver did not always produce accurate shots.

We all hit our 20 shots each, and the winner was not exactly a surprise. Again, not going to name names, but a small clue is that this person is the one typing this clue.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

But everyone had fun and since we had already used up 45 minutes of our hour on the first round we extended it another hour. The second time around we changed things up and decided to hit 5 balls at a time, to rotate more and allow for less just waiting around. Some of us (most of us) liked this plan, some (one) didn't. Anyway, everyone came up with their own strategies as to how they wanted to play it, and we again crowned a winner (same as the first winner).

Just sayin'

But really, we were all winners (but one won more than the others). We extended play another 15 minutes so we could get one more turn through, and finally wrapped up around 2:00.

Again passing on the funeral museum idea, Debbie found another escape the room place not too far way that had availability at 2:30, so we headed there. We got there right before 2:30, quickly signed up and headed into the Sherlock Holmes room to try and escape. This time it was just us in the room, and we all added some help to get us through, although we did utilize more than a few clues. With minimal infighting, we successfully escaped with about 8 minutes to spare.

It was almost 3:30 when we left, so we headed back to the hotel to rest a little before our early dinner. The Rockets-Celtics game was at 7:00 CT. I had made a reservation at a restaurant in the hotel at 5:15 because the Toyota Center, where the Rockets play, is literally around the corner from the hotel, and I wanted someplace where we could just walk to the game. The meal was fine, nothing special, and we headed to the game around 6:30 (and got there at 6:35). The Flash Seats app that I needed to use to get us into the game was acting strange (turns out it wasn't just me, others were having problems also) but it ended up fine and we found our seats.

The game started a little after 7:00 CT, and the Rockets built an early big lead but the Celtics made a run in the 2nd quarter to get it close at halftime. However, the Rockets hit about 549 three-point shots and eventually pulled away to win by double digits.

Boooooooo

James Harden had 45 points, but it was definitely not your father's style of basketball. He hit 9 three-pointers and made 14 free throws (with at least 5 or 6 of them coming after being fouled while taking three-pointers), so if you do the math that means he only made two 2-point shots.

Fun was had by all, except the Celtics and their fans

Despite the loss, the game was fun, and Debbie particularly enjoyed the Rockets' announcer. He was VERY animated with any announcements that had to do with the Rockets, but channeled Eyeore when announcing positive things for the Celtics. It's hard to do it justice in text, but the difference was dramatic and funny. After the game ended we walked back to the hotel. Tomorrow is our last full day and it will be a long, busy day, starting with a drive to Dallas, with some funky stops along the way. The plan for Dallas is to see the JFK stuff in the afternoon and take a tour of Jerry's World (aka AT&T Stadium) at 6.

Day 4 (2018) - Houston, We Have a (Rain) Problem

2018-12-26T21:02:00.002-08:00

Today was NASA day. When we woke up we looked at the weather forecast and it said a high of 65. Sounds good, no? No. More on that later. We started out with a deluxe breakfast at the Embassy Suites and then headed about a half hour to NASA and arrived there around 10am. It was already drizzling a little, and the wind was picking up. I went to the ticket booth to get our tickets and asked about the family membership package, as it seemed like that was a good deal. But the lady in the booth convinced me (or bullied me) that it was better to just get single tickets for everyone, so that's what we did.

We went inside and headed for the tram tours, as that seemed to be the popular thing to do. There are two versions of the tram tour - one that goes to the Mission Control building and the other that goes to the astronaut training building. The Mission Control line was 30 minutes and the training center line was 90 minutes, so we headed for the former. But we also learned that members have their own line that gets you to the front of the line. After waiting in line for a while, we decided to see about upgrading and Debbie went out to the info center to check out the story. Basically, for about $30 we could upgrade, so we did. We are now proud members of the Johnson Space Center (for a year). Since we were already near the front of the line at this point we just stayed where we were and got on the next tram. The trams are open on the sides, and they make two worrisome announcements before leaving - first, if it rains you are likely to get wet and second, there are no bathrooms on the route until the end. Not sure which was more concerning to me.

At this point, the tram ride was simply cold, as it wasn't raining. We drove by a bunch of buildings and our tour guide gave some interesting facts about space travel, like how the spines of astronauts can grow 6 inches while in space. The tour guide spoke too fast, and in a monotone style and I think had the mic too close to her mouth. Other than that she was great (sarcasm). We stopped for 15 minutes at Mission Control where we got off the tram and went up to a viewing area where we learned about how Mission Control works.

We got back on the tram and headed to the building where an old, unused Saturn rocket is housed. This rocket was to be used on the Apollo 18 mission, which never happened once they scrapped the moon missions in the early 1970s.

Anyone need a rocket?

After walking around the rocket for a while we headed back to the tram for the ride back to the main building. At this point the weather was looking more ominous, so we decided to have a little snack and head to the second tram tour before it got too bad out. And this time we used the members-only line to get to the front of the line, which had now grown to a 2-hour wait. The joke of it is that no one actually looked at our ticket to make sure we were actual members. In reality, anyone could have just gone into the member line, but we were legit.

The second tour guide was much better, she had pep, made some jokes, spoke clearly and also imparted some facts about space travel - like how the spines of astronauts can grow 3 inches while in space.

After getting off of the tram and checking out the training center, we returned the tram. At this point, the weather had gone from ominous to lousy, with strong misty rain and COLD wind. Remember how they said that if it rained we might get wet? They weren't lying. Brian was sitting on one end of the rows of seats and bore the brunt of the rain and was pretty wet by the time we got back to the main building. We were all wet and cold, and Debbie had clearly wasted a lot of time doing her hair in the morning, as by now it was all wet and curly.

Miss Curly Q

She is now the proud owner of a NASA hat.

Amanda is in there somewhere

By now it was close to 2:30 and the gang was hungry (and cranky) and didn't really want to eat NASA food, so we headed to the car to go someplace and eat and possibly come back after to see more. But as we were sitting in the car trying to figure out where to do, we realized the two places I had in mind were either closing at 3 or had already closed. So we decided, reluctantly, to go back in and get NASA food and see some more stuff. We had a scrumptious meal (again, sarcasm) then headed to a presentation on life on the International Space Station, where we learned some interesting facts about space travel - like how the spines of astronauts can grow 2 inches while in space. Yes, three people talked about the same issue with space travel and gave three different measurements for spinal growth. I really hope the math that the actual rocket scientists are doing at NASA are a tad more precise.

The final exhibit that we wanted to see (and at this point in the day by "we" I am excluding any college or high school aged humans in our group) was the jumbo jet that carried the space shuttles from place to place and a mock space shuttle sitting on top of it. We went up the stairs and into the jumbo jet and some of us spent more time than others reading the various exhibits and then went up further to the shuttle.

Photo was taken on the way in,
before everyone was cold, wet and cranky

By 4:15 we had wrapped up, much to the chagrin of the school-aged humans (once more, sarcasm), and headed back to the hotel to rest, warm up and get ready for dinner. Tonight's dinner was a bigger hit than last night's, thanks in no small part to sitting inside and not being freezing. Plus the food (Mexican) at Original Ninfa's was really good. Their steak fajitas were on a list of "must eats" in Houston, so who am I to go against that advice and I ordered that. Brian got ribs (I think from about 7 cows). Amanda got tacos, Ethan had a fajita mix of steak and chicken and Debbie got salmon tacos.

Soup meant for a giant

"Nacho" average nachos...

No, this was not family-style dining

You won't see these at Taco Bell

Happy diners

Everything was really good and WAY too much to eat. The huge portions filled us all up so we skipped dessert tonight (I just can't stop with the sarcasm).

It may be officially called "tres leches cake"
but it should be called "millones de calorías cake"

We finished up at dinner and headed back to the hotel and unfortunately were not able to go for a walk to futilely try and walk off some of dinner due to the weather.

The original plan for tomorrow was to drive to College Station and go to the George HW Bush Presidential Library. But thanks to the government shut down most of the library is closed. So we will be calling an audible and figure out something to do before we head across the street from the hotel and go to the Celtics-Rockets game.

Day 3 (2018) - Everything is Bigger in Texas

2018-12-25T22:13:00.000-08:00

Today was a travel day, leaving San Antonio and ending in Houston, with a stop in Austin in the middle. We started out with another boring, overpriced breakfast at the hotel and packed up and piled back into the minivan around 11:00. First stop along the route from San Antonio to Austin was The World's Largest Armadillo. I know what you are thinking - "Wow, that sounds amazing!" And you would be correct, or not. The armadillo in question is part of a flea market along the highway, and unfortunately, the flea market was closed (or fortunately, since parking would have cost $2.00 just to see this thing).

Can you sense the excitement?

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it

After the thrill of the giant armadillo had started to fade, we got back on the highway to the next "world's largest" of the day - Buc-ee's, the world's largest convenience store! And they weren't kidding, the place was huge, with what had to be over 50 gas pumps (I did not count them) and a massive store with all kinds of items. However, while they did carry a large supply of bacon grease, they did not have any gluten-free pretzels.

You thought I was kidding?

The boys did not get motivated early enough to have breakfast at the hotel, so they each grabbed a brisket sandwich to go, passing on the WIDE selection of jerky.

Choose a jerky, any jerky

We got back on the road and headed to Austin. The plan was to head to lunch at a diner that I knew was open on Christmas then check out some sites around town before heading to Houston. But when we got to the 24 Diner we found that I was not the only one with the idea to eat there, and the wait was estimated at 1-1.5 hours. We put our names on the list and gave them my cell number then headed to the UT football stadium to see if we could get in to check it out. Sadly, we could not get in, even though I tried to find some entrance that was open (much to the mild embarrassment of the kids).

Hook 'em

We then drove to the ZBT fraternity house, as evidently every Jewish kid the boys know that goes to UT is a member there - and they have a pool. Again, no one was there but the fraternity guys left their back gate open so we did a little trespassing and checked out the infamous pool and party area.

We then headed towards the UT clock tower area, parked and walked onto campus. The highlight was the turtle pond, which seemed to be populated by some pretty angry turtles who kept jockeying for position on a rock and knocking any interlopers off the rock.

He ain't heavy, he's my turtle buddy

A Capitol View

We had stalled for about an hour, so we headed back to the diner and the timing we excellent as we were seated within about 5 minutes of returning. The food was good, nothing noteworthy, and when we were done we got back on the road.

We had already seen the world's largest armadillo and the world's largest convenience store, but we weren't done. About an hour between Austin and Houston lies, wait for it, the world's largest gingerbread man! The kids were so mentally drained from the other excitement of the day that they could not muster the energy to check out the gingerbread man, so Debbie and I represented the family.

Yeah, that's big

Before we left town, we needed a bathroom break so we went towards a cafe that looked open. Turned out the cafe wasn't actually open, but there were a lot of people just hanging around. Before we left we asked what was going on, and it turns out that the place, called Comfort Cafe, is run entirely by former addicts, of all kinds, and the cafe is open on the weekends with no prices for the food, only donations. They also have a large home where they live and try and get back on track. We made a small donation and got back on the road, driving through a very cute town called Smithville (hence the name "Smitty" for the gingerbread man).

After exhausting the "world's largest" sites for the day, we headed to Houston, where we arrived around 6:00. Dinner was scheduled for 7:30, so we all relaxed a bit and got ready for dinner. When making reservations before the trip, the hardest part was finding places that would be open Christmas night. I had found one that was mentioned on a few lists and booked it. Up until now, my dinner or lunch recommendations were all winners. I would call tonight's dinner average at best. The first problem was that when we checked in they said that parties of 5 had to sit outside. Besides the fact that it was chilly, they put us at a high table with stools instead of chairs. And not cool, new stools. These were old rusty ones. The menu was a tapas-style menu, with lots of smaller plates meant to share. There wasn't a lot that Amanda liked, and the one thing Debbie was looking forward to (lamb chops) was sold out. We ordered a whole bunch of plates and slowly they started coming out. After the first dish, they came to us and asked if we wanted to eat inside instead, as a table had opened up. We were all cold so we were glad to move inside - until we realized that it might have been colder inside with the air conditioner set at freezing. The plates kept coming, and while the food was good, it wasn't all that filling.

We ripped through all of the plates and paid and left, and headed to a dessert place I had noted called The House of Pies. We should have just gone there first. It wasn't just a pie place, as it had a full comfort food type menu, and we decided that in addition to pie we would also get chicken-n-waffles since we heard this was a popular Texas thing. The only issue was that they didn't really have chicken-n-waffles, so we ended up with chicken (fingers) AND waffles - not really the same thing at all.

Nonetheless, the pies were great, and Amanda recreated her "I like pie" photo from the last road trip in South Dakota:

2018

2014

Possibly the only person who loves key lime pie

Is it "PEE-can" or "pe-CAHN" pie?

Don't judge us

Not gonna say who ate most of this,
but she gave birth to three of the people on this trip

We rolled out of the House of Pies and headed back to the hotel, where the kids went to their room and Debbie and I decided to try and walk off the evening's food. However, to really walk it off we would have had to walk to Seattle, and back, so we just walked around for about 15 minutes. We ended up going through a park that was decorated by a whole lane of pinwheels with a nice message.

Finally, we headed back to the hotel. Tomorrow's plan is to go to NASA in the morning, then play it by ear in the afternoon, depending on how long we are at NASA. Maybe we can find the world's largest pie.

Day 2 (2018) - Segways, Scooters and Automobiles

2018-12-24T21:23:00.003-08:00

We woke up early today for a 9am Landmarks Segway tour around San Antonio. Not sure if it's always like this at this time of year, but when we finished breakfast (boring, at the hotel) and headed down the street to the Segway office it was pretty cold outside. It wasn't one, but it was in the 40s. We didn't bring truly winter clothes, and Ethan packed like he was already on his way to Turks & Caicos, so we were all a little chilly. Only Ethan had ever ridden a Segway before, so some of us were a little nervous about figuring out how to do it (I say "some of us" loosely). But after a few lessons from our tour guides Robert and Joseph off we went.

Let's Roll

Livin' on the edge

We buzzed all over San Antonio, going by The Alamo, the Riverwalk, the Alamo Dome and other parts of the city. Everyone (yes, everyone) got the hang of it and with the exception of needing a bathroom break and time to warm up, there were no issues. To warm up we stopped at an area called La Villita for hot chocolate and the much-needed break. Unfortunately, the hot chocolate was more like warm chocolate, but nonetheless it was a good break.

Having fun, but cold

How cool are we?

For whatever reason I can't add videos directly on here, so here are some links to the Segway tour:

Debbie rolling along

A Little Bit of Everyone (but me)

We wrapped up the Segway tour around 11am, then headed back to the hotel for a little bit just to warm up before heading to The Alamo. After yesterday's Battle of Texas experience we were primed and ready to see the real thing.

Remember The Volks

You could take a guided tour but we opted for the self-guided tour, which was fine since I am not sure how interested everyone really was. We did learn that most of what you see when visiting The Alamo is not original to the time of the battle in 1836. About 25% of the walls are original and 85% of the church is original, with the rest having been restored later. We did learn that for a time in the late 1800s to early 1900s the site was used as a supermarket, until it was reclaimed as a Texas monument.

After zipping through The Alamo the troops were hungry, so we headed back to the hotel to pick up the car and head to a BBQ place I had found. Again conjuring up a previous experience, this time at the Cozy Corner in Memphis, this place needed no reservations. The restaurant, Barbecue Station, was created in what was a former gas station, and the menu is short and delicious.

Hungry just reading this again

Now I'm even hungrier

Basic decor

In hindsight, we didn't mix up the orders enough, as Brisket and Turkey was a popular choice, with Amanda going outside of the box and getting a taco and Debbie and I also sharing an order of ribs (any Kosher readers please avert your eyes - we ordered beef ribs but they were out so we got the pork ribs, and they were so good). Debbie actually liked the turkey the most, and did her little "I like what I'm eating dance" all the while eating it.

Kosher pork ribs

Who needs fancy?

The popular order

Have I mentioned how much she liked the turkey,
especially when adding cole slaw?

After lunch we again headed back downtown, dropped the car off at the hotel and headed to Escape The Room. We had recently (successfully) escaped the room in Philadelphia and had fun doing so, and thought it would be a fun afternoon activity. When we did it in Philly we booked all 10 spots so we would be the only ones in the room. But since we had not planned ahead to do this, we ended up with another family of 5 as our partners. They had never done this before, so we explained how it worked on the fly and they turned out to be decent partners. After some ingenuity (and a few clues from the house), we again successfully escaped, at the end thanks to Amanda randomly figuring out how to disarm the lasers in the Bond themed room, with about 7 minutes to spare.

Winners!

San Antonio is a very scooter friendly town, with scooters from Lime, Bird and Razor literally scattered all over the place. Brian uses scooters quite a bit to get around WashU and the surrounding areas and had been itching to use them here. So we all downloaded the Lime and Bird apps and once again spent time motorizing ourselves around San Antonio, but this time without lessons on how to use them, other than Brian's help. Eventually we all (mostly) got the hang of it and zipped around for about a half hour.

Alert the media, I'm a scooter pro

Bird is the word

We scootered back to Alamo Plaza where we checked out the famous Menger Bar then did what we always do - eat. The Segway tour guides had told us about a great dessert place that was across the street from our hotel, and when we saw the place earlier in the day the line was out the street. By the time we got there around 4:00 there was no line, and for a good reason. They were basically out of food, but still had a few desserts left and we ordered one of each kind, because, why not?

Dessert is not just for dessert

By late afternoon everyone was wiped out, so we headed to the hotel to rest before dinner. After everyone had time to relax, we headed to dinner at a place called Whiskey Cake. This is one of those "farm to fork" places that also happens to have a large variety of whiskeys (well, that seems obvious). Unfortunately, since no one other than me drinks, and since I am currently avoiding drinking, we were unable to get the full whiskey experience. The food experience, however, we did well with. Everyone got something different and each meal was a big hit.

I know, stunned right? She ordered a burger.

The "before" photo.
The "after" would have just shown an empty plate.

Before we had eaten the last morsels of food from our plates, our lovely waitress asked if she should put in our dessert order of a whiskey cake. Since the place was named after this dessert who were we to say no? And I know what you are thinking - did you guys just have dessert? Yeah, and so what? We had another dessert, deal with it. And this one was even better than the first round earlier. Once again, Debbie did her little "I love this dance" and there was no part of the cake, homemade whipped cream or locally made ice cream left on the plate.

It would have been rude not to get one of these

Our waitress mentioned the lights on the Riverwalk this time of year, so when we got back to the hotel the youngins (Debbie and me) took a walk to the Riverwalk while the tired puppies retired to their room. The Riverwalk was hopping, even on Christmas Eve, and the lights were very nice (pictures were too dark). We walked around for a little while then headed back to the hotel, walking by The Alamo at night, which was all lit up.

For you, Mom

So ends our Segway, Scooters and Automobiles day. Tomorrow is a travel day, heading to Houston by way of Austin, with some side trips to see some more wacky Texas stuff.

Day 1 (2018) - Leonardo Has Nothing On Barney

2018-12-24T09:27:00.002-08:00

After four and a half years off, the Volk Clan is back on the road for a family road trip. Over the past 4 years life has gotten in the way of our ability to go on trips, and with the kids getting older and Ethan entering the real world next summer we figured this might be the last time to take a true road trip with just the Fab Five (Jive Five? Volk Folk? - haven't really come up with a cool nickname). This time we decided to resurrect an idea that we had considered in the past and are seeing all that Texas has to offer. Well, not all of Texas, as that would take way too long. But the plan that fit into the schedule has us starting out in San Antonio, heading to Houston (via a day in Austin) and then to the Dallas area. Before anyone says "But Austin is great, why aren't you spending more time there?" let me answer that. First, when planning trips I always look for things we can do during the day, so the fact that Austin has a great music scene put it behind the other cities. Plus, part of the trip revolved around going to the Rockets-Celtics game in Houston on Dec. 27, so there was only so much we could do in the week that we have.

With that background, on Saturday night we flew from NY to San Antonio to start the adventure. Piece of advice for anyone reading this. If you ever thought of traveling with Debbie consider either sitting someplace else on the plane or taking a different flight. This comment has nothing at all to do with Debbie, but EVERYTHING to do with the people that end up sitting next to her. When we fly together we generally sit 3+2, with the kids sitting together and Debbie and I taking the aisle and middle seats (me in the aisle, Debbie in the middle), with a random person in the window seat. Unfortunately, she has not had much luck with her flight neighbors. Not only was this neighbor a seat hog, leaning way too far over towards her and using all of the mutual armrest, but for at least the third time, her neighbor had the wonderful habit of biting her nails, non-stop. Now this wasn't just biting, this was basically chomping like the nails were chocolate brownies. It wasn't as bad as the passenger on another fight that proceeded to flick the gnawed nails when done, but it was still driving Debbie nuts. The four hours on the plane could not end fast enough.

Eventually, we landed in San Antonio, picked up the rental car and headed to the hotel. The hotel is only about 15 minutes from the airport, so we got there pretty quickly and we all would have gotten into our rooms and to bed fast (yes, first time we have two rooms - kids too big to squeeze into one room for so many nights) but when I pulled in and asked the valet to park the car was told that the lot was full and I would have to find my own place to park. I checked in and everyone else went up to the rooms, while I looked for a lot. Luckily there was one not too far away, so I parked the car and walked back to the hotel.

Sunday was our first full day in San Antonio, and it started the way many of our trips start - with lots of food! I made a reservation at a place called Mash'd, as it was listed on a couple of top brunch places in town. It did not disappoint.

Pick your poison

Basically egg flavored biscuits

I had plenty of help finishing this

WAY too healthy

I read the news today, oh boy

A new take on a classic

When we had sufficiently stuffed ourselves, I made a call to the "curator" of a unique museum I had read about in researching things to do in San Antonio. He said he would meet us at the museum at 1:00, but we had an activity planned for 1:30 that was due to take about 2 hours. So I rescheduled the activity so we could start it earlier, then called the "curator" to see if we could go to the museum at 2:00, which he said would work.

Words to live by

We headed back downtown from brunch, parked and went to the "home base" of the San Antonio Wacky Walk. This was a new activity for us, and it is basically an app-guided scavenger hunt, which very much excited Debbie. Once we were at the starting point, I texted our guide that we were ready and we all used the app to go from place to place around town, answer questions based on what we learned at each spot, then head to the next spot. Part of the game involves having a king or queen that is in charge, and at each spot you are supposed to perform some moderately embarrassing activity to determine who would take over as king or queen. Since the kids had no desire to embarrass themselves in front of all of their friends that were walking around San Antonio (sarcasm), Debbie was nominated as the permanent queen, and Debbie and I were the only ones to partake in any of the required activities.

The Wacky Walk was more Walk than Wacky as we went from location to location, generally reading plaques at each stop and answering questions about what we read in order to get points and being able to move to the next location. For all of its faults, evidently the Common Core training worked, as the kids were able to cut to the chase when trying to answer the questions based on the text on the plaques, while Debbie and I spent more time actually reading the text. We walked by The Alamo, the Riverwalk and other spots around downtown San Antonio, walking a total of about 2.5 miles over 1.5 hours.

When we were done it was time to head to the museum. I know you might be thinking - a museum is a museum is a museum. Well, you would be wrong. And calling the person that runs this museum a "curator" is nowhere close to an accurate description. See, this was Barney Smith's Toilet Museum. And the "curator" is Barney Smith, a 97-year old retired plumber.

When I called he told me, loudly and often, to make sure I went to the garage where the artifacts are, not to his front door. We arrived right at 2:00 as another family was leaving. Their comment was that Barney was in a bit of a grumpy mood, but we didn't find him grumpy. Just busy. He has made a deal to sell all of his toilet seats and other art to someone that will be moving it all to Dallas, so he is in the middle of packing everything up. You can imagine that packing up over 1,400 toilet seats and other items would be quite overwhelming for anyone, let alone a 97-year old.

Organized Chaos

Who Needs an IM Pei Entrance?

And as soon as we got into the garage, he must have smelled the corrugated blood in me and immediately put me to work creating a larger box out of two banana boxes. He was sitting on a chair with the two half boxes on the floor and a very large knife. He started to poke holes in the boxes but let me do it instead. The holes were so we could put wire through them and twist the wires to keep the two boxes together. Once we had secured the box he started directing me to find very specific items to put into the box. He knew exactly what he wanted, and where they were, and also showed us binders of all of the art that he had already packed. It was very organized, but all manual. He said he had someone helping him with this, but we didn't see anyone else. The art on the toilet seats is really amazing and so intricate.

Just some of the hundreds of exhibits:

Debbie found one with a NY toilet seat and saw that others had signed it and asked if we could as well, which he said was OK.

The Volks Were Here

He had us all busy, as we needed the boys to help get some things off of a wall, and had me up on a ladder with pliers untwisting wire holding some of the art. When I had trouble untwisting it, he basically yelled at me "You can't do it? Try again!" Thankfully, I finally got it untwisted and off the wall. Then we told him we had to go, took a photo with him, then kind of closed him up in the garage. I hope he had another door in the garage, or there might be a problem.

The Louvre of San Antonio

We ended up spending an hour there, which I believe is longer than I have spent at the Louvre in total, over three trips there. I mean, how long does it take to look at the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo?

After bidding Barney a farewell, we headed back downtown to go to an attraction called The Battle for Texas, which is a touristy type of thing where you learned a bit about the fight between Texas and Mexico, culminating in the siege at The Alamo. Before we went in though, everyone was getting a little hungry, so we channeled our old Graceland lunch from 2010 and had frozen yogurt for lunch. The boys knew a little more than the rest of us about The Alamo, but while pretty much overpriced, the exhibit did give us all a little more understanding of why The Alamo and the battle there was such a big deal. The plan is to go to The Alamo tomorrow.

The King of the Wild Frontier, with the Queen of the Wild Theater

After the Battle for Texas, we headed back to the hotel to rest (and for me to shower as I was schvitzy from working with Barney). Later on we headed to dinner at a Mexican restaurant called La Fonda on Main. The food was very good, and it was a good thing we did a lot of walking earlier.

Tomorrow we have a Segway Tour early in the morning, with The Alamo and other sightseeing planned. We might also go check on Barney to make sure he's not stuck in the garage.

Day 5 (2014) - Mary Tyler Who?

2014-08-27T15:54:00.002-07:00

After two days of "livin' on the edge" the final day of our short trip was relatively tame in comparison. The day began with a 10:30 reservation for brunch at a restaurant in Minneapolis called Hell's Kitchen that was recommended by Alan Nadel (2nd day in row for Alan credits, by the way). He had been there a while back while in town for a family wedding, and said it was a "must do" while we were there. Luckily he told me about it well in advance of our our trip so I was able to make a reservation.

We arrived at the busy restaurant a little before our reservation time, and were seated almost immediately. Alan had said that the corn pancakes ("Big, house-made cornmeal/buttermilk pancakes dusted with powdered sugar and served with pure maple syrup") were "the best pancakes" he had ever had, so I wasn't even going to look at the menu (when Alan tells me to do something, I do it, have been for almost 30 years so why stop now?).

But when we asked the waiter about it, he actually said that the lemon ricotta pancakes ("Here are the hotcakes that put us on the map. Three melt-in-your-mouth hotcakes made with freshly-grated lemon zest and whole milk ricotta cheese. Served with fresh berries and pure maple syrup") were the best sellers. So, Brian and I decided to share and placed orders for both types and we would each have half of each plate. Brian also took the opportunity to get a side of Buffalo tater tots ("So popular in Minnesota, these are practically a food group"), made with his beloved Buffalo hot sauce, not buffalo meat.

Ethan went with an egg-based meal, and Amanda decided to go solo on an order of the corn pancakes. Debbie tried to stay good and ordered scrambled eggs with some sides. However, the waiter also mentioned that another best seller was their sausage bread, which was described on the menu like this "Yes the name IS strange, but trust us on this deliciously dense bread made with sausage, toasted walnuts, black currants, spices, and black coffee. Go on, now...be brave and try it! Those who do usually grab entire loaves to take back home as gifts." Not exactly gluten-free, but it sounded too good for her to pass up so she ordered a serving.

It's sausage, it's bread, how you beat that?

Well, they weren't just whistling Dixie with their comment about ordering more, since the first order was gone in about 20 seconds so we immediately ordered another serving. What enhanced the sausage bread even more (not that it really needed enhancement) was their homemade peanut butter (available creamy or crunchy) and jelly that was so good you could just eat it plain.

Mouth watering yet? Mine is.

After devouring the second helping of the sausage bread, our brunch meals arrived, and (sorry, Alan) the waiter was right - the lemon ricotta pancakes were in fact superior to the corn pancakes. The corn pancakes were really good, but as was the consensus opinion, the lemon ricotta pancakes tasted like "gran'ma's lemon cake." And to give equal billing, let it be known that one of my favorite things that my mother used to make when we hosted Break The Fast was also a lemon cake, so in fairness, to me it was like both of their lemon cakes.

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

No, those Buffalo tater tots aren't made from Buffalo meat

Amanda with the corn pancakes

"I like eggs"

That empty plate used to contain sausage bread

Before we got our food, we had looked at the dessert menu and were eyeing a few items that looked outrageously good, but after the (laurel and) hearty brunch food were all stuffed. We also checked out the bathrooms, which were not quite Stoneville Saloon styled, but unique nonetheless, with holograms all over the place.

From straight away

From the side

I paid the bill, we took some photos outside (the kids were so excited to do this) and headed out into Minneapolis. Our first post-brunch stop was a quick walk to the Mary Tyler Moore statue that sits outside a Macy's store. For anyone maybe 35-40 years old or older, no explanation is needed on who Mary Tyler Moore is, or why there would be a statue in Minneapolis of her. But for our kids, we got some version of "Who is that?" when we told them where we were heading. (FYI, there's also a Fonzie statue in Milwaukee, which would likely elicit the same replies). We quickly found the statue, Debbie did her best MTM impression (much to the embarrassment of all three kids) and we were done with the statue.

They can turn the world on with a smile

We had done a little research in the morning about what to do after brunch, and decided to try out the Mill City Museum in town. Evidently, Minneapolis used be known as a mill town, generating much of the country's flour, that is until the whole block of mills blew up, which was a bit of a downer. One of the mills was turned into a museum on the history of the industry, so that's where we headed, only agreed up by the kids when we told them there were supposedly some hands-on exhibits there.

We hopped on a free bus that took us down the street because we were under the impression that the museum was pretty close to where the bus would drop us off. Well, not so much. After about a 15 minute walk, and after about 1500 "are we almost there" questions, we arrived at the mill.

The museum exhibit starts out with a 19 minute movie on the history of Minneapolis, followed by a show not unlike the Carousel of Progress at Disney that recreated different scenes from the old mill. This was all somewhat interesting, but the kids only really sprung to life when we then went to the hands-on area and they were able to play with things like water tables and the like.

After wrapping up at the mill and taking some photos outside (natch), we decided to walk back to the car using the various indoor walkways that Minneapolis has installed that connects most of the downtown buildings. The walkways enable the people downtown to get around during the winter when the weather is bad. This leads me to ask, how bad are the winters in Minneapolis that they needed to break holes in every building to build these walkways? Answer, they must have REALLY harsh winters. Anyway, the thrill of going through the walkways back to car wore off after about 5 minutes (they weren't air conditioned and it would likely take longer this way), so we headed back down to the street level and trudged back to the car.

Man, I'm short

By now the troops were tired, and the vote was to head back to the hotel for the afternoon. So we did. The boys changed and went to the gym, Amanda put on her bathing suit and went for a swim while Debbie napped at the pool and I worked on the blog from earlier days. I also took the time to check out StubHub for tickets to that night's Twins-Tigers game. Since none of us are Twins or Tigers fans, I didn't want to spend a ton of money on the tickets, and settled for tickets in the left field bleachers. And since no one was selling 5 seats, I had to buy one set of 4 tickets and one set of 2 tickets in the same section. The good news was the set of 4 tickets were in the front row (the other two tickets were in the 8th row). Eventually the boys joined us at the pool for a bit, then I woke up Sleeping Beauty and we headed up to the room to change for the evening.

One thing I have neglected to mention thus far about the hotel in Minneapolis is that when we checked in the clerk at the desk said he upgraded us to a "special" floor and also gave me free WiFi and an access code that would enable us to get unlimited snacks and drinks from the vending machines (which happened to be right outside our door). You would have thought that he had given us unlimited access to Fort Knox, because we kept raiding the snack machine like we were heading into battle or something. We loaded up on Hershey's bars, chips and M&Ms to the point where I was afraid we might need another piece of luggage if we were going to take the extras home (we did bring them home, but since we ate a lot of what we killed there was room).

After freshening up, we headed back into Minneapolis for the game. I pulled into a parking lot about 2 blocks from Target Field (which cost me all of $5 for the evening) and we headed to the game. We found our seats (well, really bleacher seats with backs) and settled in. At various points throughout the game (won by Justin Verlander and the Tigers, by the way) we headed out to get dinner. I have to say, even though Target Field is a relatively new park, the food is more traditional ballpark food - lots of burgers, hot dogs, chicken fingers and sandwiches, etc. Not a lot of local or unique foods, although Brian was happy to have found the one stand that sold burritos. The kids ventured out on their own about halfway through the game for Dippin' Dots (because, you know, that is the ice cream of the future, has been for about 20 years) and later on I was the good husband and walked halfway around the stadium to get mint chip (officially peppermint) ice cream for Debbie (and cookie dough for me). By the end of the 7th inning the gang had seen enough (with nary a home run to show for our prime ball-catching seats) and we headed back to the hotel. We got back to the hotel pretty quickly, packed most of the luggage for the flight the next morning and called it a night.

Must be in the front row!

Luckily, the girl with the big hair (no, not Debbie) hadn't arrived
yet to sit next to Debbie, and by next to I mean basically on her lap

The flight from Minneapolis back to JFK was early in the morning (7:15 am) so we had to wake up pretty early to get to the airport, return the car and check in. I dropped the rest of the family off (much more of a big deal in Minneapolis than in Rapid City) and headed to return the car. What I had also failed to mentioned previously, was that in both JFK (where I dropped them off before heading to Long Term Parking - which at JFK is somewhere near Saskatchewan) and at the Minneapolis airports, the rest of my family was treated to "old school" security screening. They did not have to take off their shoes or sweatshirts, nor take the laptop Ethan was carrying out of its bag. I, on the other hand, must look like much more of a national security threat, since I was not granted this luxury and had to deal with all of the regular screening process at both airports.

The flight home, on the now seemingly huge 20-row plane (after two 13-row plane rides) was uneventful, and most of us closed our eyes for some portion of the flight, while I performed my role as backup bathroom guard to perfection.

It's a crappy job, but someone has to do it

We got our checked bag back pretty quickly and headed to Saskatchewan via Air Tran to get our car. At this point, the trip was over, and another fun, memorable, different, enjoyable family trip was in the books.

Until next time, if there is a next time...

Day 4 (2014) - Mall Rats (and Debbie the Good Sport - you will see why)

2014-08-25T18:18:00.001-07:00

When we told the kids that we would be spending most of the day today at the Mall of America they looked at us like we were nuts, probably thinking something like "Why in the world would our parents have us spend a day of our annual trip at a mall?" Well, as you may or may not know, the Mall of America isn't your everyday mall. Sure, there are stores galore (at least three Lids stores, a few Foot lockers and multiple food courts), but this is much more than just a mall. In addition to the stores, there is also an amusement park, an aquarium, a flight simulator, Barbie's Dollhouse, a CSI adventure, and various other entertainment locales. When they told them this, their reaction went from "We're doing what today?" to "Oh, we get it now."

When we arrived, and they saw what was there, it made even more sense. Pretty much right when we walked in we encountered the Nickelodeon-themed amusement park, with rides of all kinds. When we eventually found where to buy tickets, we purchased 85 points worth of tickets. Since the rides ranged from 3-6 points per ride, we figured this would be enough to satisfy the crew. When we asked the kids which ride they wanted to go on first, Amanda immediately suggested the roller coaster. We pointed out that the roller coaster started with a pretty steep initial drop followed by a few loops where you go upside down. She said she didn't care, and wanted to go on it. Brian passed on it, but Ethan said he would go with her. As they waited in line, Debbie watched as others went on the ride, and became quite concerned that the ride was too much for Amanda. It was at this point that Brian noticed the faces Debbie was making every time the ride took off, and asked for Ethan's cell phone.

[Commentary from Debbie, before you look at the photos: Are you going to explain that I have a fear of roller coasters and misjudging how scary a ride can be, especially since Amanda's comment was "It's a Sponge Bob ride, how scary can it be?"]

What you will see next are some of the (real) faces he captured (and this was BEFORE our kids were even on the ride):

Not exactly "Livin' on the Edge." Miraculously, they survived the ride (and went at least 3 more times throughout the day).

The Survivors

After this experience, Amanda felt emboldened and went on two other rides that brought back the fear in Debbie. On one they flew around and ended upside down for much of the ride, and on the other (which Amanda did alone), she was on a winged car that she could control to do flips.

Can you call this "hair raising" if you are upside down?

The daredevil herself

While Amanda enjoyed her fearlessness, Debbie - not so much. Eventually, we moved on to tamer activities, including the Aquarium, which was an OK aquarium, probably not worth the price I paid for admission. We also went to a CSI exhibit where you had to pick a crime, review the evidence, and then try and figure out whodunit. We all enjoyed the CSI exhibit, and clearly Debbie much prefers murders to scary rides. Go figure. We grabbed a food court lunch (Brian was able to get his coveted Chipotle, which is usually off limits during family trips), and went off to find more mall fun.

We paid to go through a mirror maze, which is like a corn maze, but with mirrors. At first it seemed hokey, but once you got through the maze it merely felt, well, hokey.

Mirror, mirror on the walls, how do I get out of here?

We also went on a Buzz Lightyear type ride, where you had to shoot at targets. Clearly my time in the Wild West did me good, because I was the runaway winner for most points (by more than double everyone else, but who's counting - I am!).

Fastest gun this side of Kolbeh

Before we wrapped up at the mall for the day, Debbie and Amanda hit the American Girl store for a new outfit for Amanda's doll (regrettably, we forgot to bring her doll so she couldn't get a new hairdo), while the boys and I killed time in a sports memorabilia store.

By late-afternoon we left the mall and headed back to the hotel, where the kids relaxed for a bit, Debbie took a power nap and I started writing my blog. Eventually I woke up sleeping beauty and we started discussing where to go for dinner. I had looked up a few places online, and had also gotten some recommendations from a friend of Alan Nadel's, but when presented with all of the options and a vote was taken, it was decided that we would simply return to Cowboy Jack's next door. So across the parking lot we went for another nice, easy meal.

If it ain't broke...

After dinner we just headed back to the hotel and called it a night. Tomorrow's (final day) agenda includes brunch in Minneapolis (the Mall of America and our hotel are in Bloomington, about 15 minutes from Minneapolis), then we are going to play it by ear for the rest of the day, with an eye on the Twins-Tigers game at night.

Day 3 (2014) - Livin' On The Edge

2014-08-25T15:47:00.003-07:00

The point of today was to cross off a couple of states from the Have Not Visited list - Wyoming and Montana. Before we left on the trip, I had looked at a map and noticed that we were going to be on the western side of South Dakota, not far from both Wyoming and Montana. Who knew when we would be back in this area again, so it seemed like a good time to visit both states, even briefly. I tried to find something to do or someplace to eat in both states, and came up with a plan. In Wyoming we would visit Devil's Tower National Monument, the country's very first official national park, and in Montana we would grab lunch at the Stoneville Saloon. The whole trip, including the return to Rapid City should have taken about 4 hours of driving.

Since we passed on driving through Custer State Park the night before, we decided to take a little more of a scenic route to Devil's Tower, and drive through the Black Hills National Forest. After utterly confusing our GPS lady for about 20 minutes, we entered the Black Hills National Forest, and we were mildly surprised to see many homes along the road. We kind of assumed that a national forest would be mostly, if not totally, filled with trees and mountains. It seems a little odd that they would have had to cut down trees in a national forest to build homes, but that's evidently just what happened.

To be honest, the ride through the forest, while scenic, wasn't really all that impressive. At one point we had the option to catch up with a highway or make the trip continue on the scenic route, and despite our disappointment with the forest so far, we opted for the scenic route. Good choice. This part of the trip made the previous hour to hour and a half worth it. There were mountains and babbling brooks - Debbie LOVED the brooks, and we got out to take a few pictures (and some of us marked our territory in the forest).

What a nice brook

Nature calls

This whole scenic route thing added quite some time to our trip, so by the time we got to Devil's Tower it was about 12:30 (we had left Rapid City around 9:30, with a short gas fill up). Devil's Tower is a natural rock formation, the origins of which are somewhat in dispute, but if you ask our resident Earth Science expert (self-titled), he will tell you that it was due to an igneous intrusion, or something like that. The site was quite impressive, but we really didn't have much to do there. We weren't going to go for a hike, and we certainly weren't going to try and climb the rock (unlike some people we spotted on the rock), so after purchasing more clutter, and again marking our territory, albeit in a more conventional way, we were off. I think we spent only slightly more time at Devil's Tower than Chevy Chase did at the Grand Canyon. But hey, we were in Wyoming.

I'm thinking Close Encounters of the Third Kind

You have now spent as much time looking at
Devil's Tower as we did

Now we headed to Montana and lunch at the Stoneville Saloon. I had found this place by locating the one (and only) actual town near the Wyoming-South Dakota border, Alzada, population 29, and the there was really only one choice for lunch. The reviews of the place made it sound like a real western saloon, with sawdust on the floor and all the ambiance of what you would expect in a saloon, but where the food was surprisingly good. The problem we had getting there was there was only one road from the Devil's Tower area, and there was a sign that said "Road Work Ahead - Consider An Alternate Route." Unless we were going to somehow convert The Cube into a helicopter we had no choice. So ahead we went.

Well, the road work sign significantly understated the work being done, because at some points the road turned to gravel, and then at one point we came to a stop where a worker had a hand-held stop sign. We waited about 10-15 minutes for a "pilot car" to come to our location, and the once the pilot car turned around we started to follow it. It was at this point that we understood the scope of the work. Basically, the road disappeared and we would have been better off in an ATV than in The Cube. Where there was once road (I only know that because the GPS said the speed limit where we were was supposed to be 65) there was nothing but dirt. Eventually we got through the area and were back on real roads headed to Montana.

Alzada is really close to the Montana border, so shortly after we entered the state we took a quick left and the Stoneville Saloon came into sight. It looked just like it did in pictures, and we parked and walked in.

Looks like any movie saloon you have ever seen

The first sign of trouble was the owner/cook behind the counter (who was adorned with a series of leopard spot looking tattoos along her arms and tattooed rings around her eyes) talking to a local cowboy while puffing on a cigarette.

Since we were afraid to take a "live" photo of her,
here is the owner from a Google Image search. This was
clearly from her younger, glamorous days.

There was no real "welcome to my restaurant" or even a simple greeting to acknowledge our presence - we were the only ones there besides the cowboy, who left shortly after we arrived - so we grabbed a booth by the door (easier to make an escape in case Josie Wales showed up and a gunfight erupted), and Miss Congeniality came over with our menus and asked if we wanted drinks. We fell further on her bad side when we all opted for water. The look of disgust at that point should have had us headed for the door, but we were all really hungry. She returned with 5 waters, in red plastic cups, and asked if we were ready to order.

Fine dining

Most of us ordered hamburgers with tater tots (this part of the country is very big on tater tots). But then Debbie really made the lady mad when she ordered a cup of chili. The owner's reply was "Just a CUP? You want something ELSE with that? Maybe grilled cheese?" In an effort to survive, Debbie decided to add sweet potato tater tots to her order (glad Debbie didn't order a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which for some reason was priced at $19.95 on the menu, versus about $3.95 for a burger). Not sure that really placated our cheerful host.

Tater tots may have saved our lives

After about 10 minutes of cooking, Miss Happy Pants came back with our meals, again without a word uttered. The food was actually pretty good, but we pretty much ate in silence, so as not to say or do anything that might further anger our gracious host. I walked around and took some pictures, went to the uniquely decorated bathroom, picked up a shot glass for Brian's collection (likely a used one for all we know), and asked for the check.

Can't believe they copied our decorating!

Now what am I supposed to do with my chew??

Place your orders soon before they sell out

When she brought the check I informed her that we wanted to purchase the shot glass, and she nearly ripped the check back in disgust and added the $4 to the bill. Still, I am glad I mentioned the shot glass because who knows what would have happened had we inadvertently walked out with the shot glass without paying for it. She returned with the updated check and I paid the bill and we hightailed it out of there and took some quick photos out front.

Stay classy, Alzada

Our rednecks

We got back into the car, and then Debbie uttered the line that her kids may never forget (or let her forget). I believe it went something like this "I like living on the edge, but that place creeped me out." Well, the kids, especially the boys, erupted in laughter at the idea that Debbie "lives on the edge." As Brian pointed out, maybe 78 times over the next 30 minutes, if the world was a big square, Debbie would live very close to the epicenter, with the edges barely in view. What Debbie meant, I believe, was that she likes to experience new places and things, which in fairness she does, as our trips have proven (the initial reaction to the pod up the St. Louis Arch notwithstanding). All of this made for a very humorous ride back to South Dakota.

Our flight was at 6:30, and the GPS said we would get to the airport at 4:30. The airport in Rapid City makes the airport in Portland look like JFK, so we knew we didn't need to be there 2 hours in advance. So, what to do? Of course - MORE PIE! We adjusted the GPS destination and headed to the Colonial House Restaurant where we were quickly seated and all ordered pie, Debbie this time also. The kids all repeated their pies from the first night, while Debbie went for the chocolate cream pie and I chose the pie that had 4 different berries, which they called the Oregon Berry Pie. Here are the description of the berries in the Oregon Berry Pie - blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and Marion berries. I had obviously heard of the first three berries, but had no idea why a crack smoking, convicted felon, ex-Mayor of Washington, DC would have a berry named after him. Regardless, the pies came and were all delicious and were gone in about 5 minutes.

If Marion Barry had stuck with pies containing
Marion berries he might still be the mayor of DC

We then left the restaurant and headed to the airport. We arrived at the airport a little after 5:00, and I dropped the rest of the family off while I went to return the rental car. Normally, this is a long exercise, which is why I drop them off first to check in. This time, I basically drove to the other side of the building, parked the car, dropped off the keys and met them inside the lobby. We checked our one bag that needed to be checked and headed upstairs to go through security. However, since there were all of 3 flights leaving Rapid City that night, and ours was first about an hour away, security was closed. We hung out in the bar/restaurant area until they opened and went through. The bad news was that I had forgotten that I put the large sunscreen bottle in Amanda's backpack, which I use during the days, so that bag got flagged and we had to toss the sunscreen.

We headed to the gate and waited for our plane to arrive. It came in on time and we boarded the 13 row plane (same type of plane we took from Salt Lake City to Rapid City), gate checked the rest of our bags and took off for Minneapolis. The flight was uneventful and only took an hour or so, but once we landed it took forever for us to get to the car rental. First we had to walk a long way to the central area, then we had to take a tram to the baggage claim area, then once we picked up our bag we had another schlep to get to the rental car area. We picked up our car from Hertz (a normal looking Dodge Caravan) and headed to the hotel. This time I had booked an Embassy Suites, so it was like moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a 5-bedroom house. The room seemed huge, and now everyone would be able to sleep in peace (although the double bed for Debbie and me is a little tight, but we will survive).

Everyone was hungry, so we started looking for places to eat. When we parked the car at the hotel we noticed a restaurant next door, and when we asked about it at the front desk he said it was an American food/BBQ type place, so we opted for convenience and walked next door after dropping off our luggage. Turns out the place was called Cowboy Jack's Saloon. While it was the second saloon we ate at on this day, Brian's comment pretty much summarized the differences between the two saloons - "It's nice to eat at a restaurant where you aren't afraid of getting killed."

Quite an improvement from saloon #1

The food menu was extensive, and everyone found something they liked, and we enjoyed our meal in comfort with a very nice and friendly waitress, again a big difference from the lunch saloon. The "living on the edge" jokes continued to the point where they started to get old (at least to Debbie and me, not the boys) and we also enjoyed the TVs and live music at the restaurant. By this time it was very late, so after dinner we headed back to the hotel next door to grab some rest.

Tomorrow we will check out the Mall of America and see how the rest of the day goes to see what else we will do.

Day 2 (2014) - Dream Fulfilled

2014-08-25T05:21:00.002-07:00

As I mentioned in the Day 1 post, the room we have here in SD is small, not Arthur's hooker's country small, but small nonetheless. There are two queen sized beds for the 5 of us. Ethan and Brian shared a bed, and in the morning Brian complained about Ethan's sleeping style. But that had nothing on the restless night Debbie and I got thanks to the sleeping hurricane known as Amanda. All I have to say is, when she gets married (MANY years from now) she must purchase a king sized bed. Otherwise her husband (MANY years from now) will end up bruised and sleep deprived. The girl just cannot sleep in one place for more than 5 minutes. She elbowed, kicked and crowded me, and Debbie reported the same. I love my daughter, and enjoyed having her in the bed when she was a baby, but will be glad when she is in her own bed again.

If you saw the rest of me you would see I was dangling on the edge

But back to more important things - the day has finally arrived where The Volks will be visiting Mt. Rushmore. After 4+ years of waiting, asking, planning, and many, many Amex miles, we woke up this day a short drive away from Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. After a basic hotel breakfast, we piled into The Cube and headed off. After about 30 minutes Washington became visible and then all four were seen from the highway. We pulled into the parking lot and made a beeline for the monument (with a pit stop for some of us - read: me - to make a bathroom break). We headed up the flag bordered walkway to the main viewing area and snapped about 4,765 pictures, because, you know, what if the first 4,674 weren't good.

1, 2, 3, 4 - yup all there

The Kids

The Men

Once we confirmed that all 4 presidents were still up there, (and after Amanda got her much anticipated shot of her picking one of the president's nose) we headed off to take different looks (again, because maybe we will see something different if we look from different angles).

This is why we schlepped to the middle of nowhere?

We headed to the right (an important and misguided idea), if looking at the presidents, and headed along a trail that lead to the sculptor's studio. There we learned a little about the monument and the sculptor before we embarked on the President's Trail (or is it Presidents' Trail?) that would take us up closer. Before we started, we read a sign that called the trail a "strenuous walk" with 250 steps. Being the workout mavens we are, we said "no problem" and headed out. The kids bounded up the steps without much effort, while the elders in the group - read: me - started feeling burning legs somewhere around step #8. Eventually we made it up the steps and got really good looks at the monument (and took another thousand or so pictures).

Up close and personal

So cool they have to wear shades (the kids, not the presidents)

The Trail is a loop that takes you back to the main viewing area, and (here is the reason going right was a big boo-boo) most of the way back was via a ramp, not steps. Turns out, had we started out to the left we would have walked a ramp most of the way to the top of the Trail, then walked DOWN the 250+ steps. Oh well.

All the while when we were walking up and down the Trail, Debbie was looking for the "perfect" photo op location. Last week she got an order for Photo Jewish New Year cards and when the customer sent the photo it turned out the photo was of her kids in front of Mt. Rushmore. The photo was taken from a really great location, and we just couldn't figure out where they were when they took the photo. When we were in the gift shop (you know, because we can't pass up a gift shop) Debbie showed the photo to the workers there and they also had no idea where the photo was taken. So Debbie emailed her customer to see if she could help, and the customer emailed right back asking Debbie to call her. After talking to the customer and getting a detailed description of the location, off we went. Turns out the photo was taken down by the sculptor's studio, so down we went and there it was, the PERFECT spot.

The "Shot"

If we sent photo holiday cards, this would be the photo

After getting the perfect shot (and another whole bunch on the way out), we left Mt. Rushmore and headed down into town.

Action shot

Keystone is a small, touristy town that likely would be an even smaller, non-touristy town if Mt. Rushmore was anyplace else. The family was hungry so we stopped at a local restaurant, called Peggy's Place, for a quick bite where Brian and Amanda ordered the soup of the day - cheeseburger soup. Yup, that's right, they make a soup out of all of the ingredients used to make a cheeseburger, with the exception of the bun. We had seen a similar soup on the menu the night before but they were sold out (must be a hot item) so they jumped on the chance at lunch. Brian devoured his and Amanda ate about half, and I think their need to have cheeseburger soup has been satisfied.

Lunch

After lunch we ventured a very short way to an alpine slide. We signed our lives away with a waiver that no one read, bought tickets for one ride each and hopped on the chair lift to the top. Along the way you could catch a glimpse of Mt. Rushmore (we were glad to see that all four presidents were still there) and disembarked the chair lift at the top. When we arrived at the starting gate for the alpine slide there were two tracks - fast and slow. Four of us chose the fast track, with one of us choosing the slow track. I won't divulge which of us wimped out by taking the slow track, but I will give one small, hard hint - she gave birth to three of the alpine sliders.

The Riders:

All of us enjoyed the ride down the alpine slide, albeit at different paces, and then we hopped back in The Cube and headed to Bear Country USA, or as I call it - Bear Country Safari. Very similar to Lion Country Safari in Florida, you ride slowly through different areas and view different animals. The difference with this place is that the highlights are bears instead of lions. This is actually a big difference, since in all the times I was at Lion Country Safari the lions were basically asleep, while the bears were much more active. They walked along the side of the road where were driving, and crossed in front and back of us. At the end of the driving, there is an area where you can get out of the car and walk around and see smaller animals and baby bears. The other animals were cute, but the baby bears were really fun to watch. It was like watching a series of MMA fights between short furry MMA fighters. There was one golden colored bear that was either a bully or just a little hyper, because he kept going at each of the other bears.

Da Bears:

After visiting the gift shop (more clutter), we headed to another one of Debbie's customer's recommendations - an ice cream store back in Rapid City called Armadillo's Ice Cream Shop. At this place they have a flavor of the day (pineapple the day we were there). We each filled up on ice cream (Debbie had Snicker's Delight, Ethan had non-dairy strawberry, Brian had soft serve vanilla with sprinkles, Amanda had a malt with chocolate chip and dark chocolate fudge and I had a coffee shake).

"Do we HAVE to a take a picture in front of EVERY place we eat???"

We then hopped back in The Cube and headed off to see Crazy Horse. On the way to see Mt. Rushmore Brian noticed a sign that said that the Crazy Horse Memorial was 12 miles past Mt. Rushmore and suggested that we visit that monument. This monument was started in the early 1940s, and is nowhere near done. The project is privately funded and was the idea of an Indian leader to have a monument that celebrated the Indians and their heritage. They hired a sculptor to do the work and for the first dozen years or so he worked alone. Then he got married, had 10 kids and voila - a workforce! Still, it was a very slow process, and when he died in 1982 all he really had to show for it was a mountain that had less rocks on it than it did in the early 1940s. But he had mapped out what needed to be done, and when his wife then took over the project upon his death the one thing she changed was that instead of working on the horse first they switched up and worked on Crazy Horse's head. That was a major change and worked out well, since they were able to finish his head by the late 1990s. Once the head was done, tourism tripled and they were able raise more funds. Now the project is on a fast track, and is expected to be done in a mere 60-90 years. Yup, that's right, my great-grandchildren MIGHT have a chance to see the completed project. If not them, my great-great-grandchildren should be in the clear. That assumes the ozone layer is still a thing then and the world still exists, but I digress.

The painted rock is where his horse's head will be, some time around
the year 2100, so book your flights now

He looks mad because he's probably thinking,
"You guys have been here 60+ years, where's the rest of me?"

Our great-great-grandchildren can compare this shot to
the one they take when they visit. Hopefully they will have
made some progress by then.

Once we wrapped up at Crazy Horse (a surprisingly enjoyable and informative visit), we had the choice of driving through Custer State Park or heading to dinner. The issue was that we wanted to be back at Mt. Rushmore by 8:00 because they do a nighttime ceremony where they show a slide show of the presidents (narrated by James Earl Jones - I guess Morgan Freeman was busy), then they light up the monument (for you mom). We were told that the drive through the park and back to Mt. Rushmore might take 1.5-2 hours, so we opted for dinner. I had the name of a place from Road Food in Hill City called Bumpin Buffalo, and since we couldn't come up with any other place, to Bumpin Buffalo we went. We decided to sit outside upstairs on the patio, and luckily were given a table far away from the two couples that were chain smoking between bites.

The 3 seconds it took to take this photo didn't make or break
our timing to get back to Mt. Rushmore

The meal, nothing special, took quite a while to get and by the time we finished and got back to The Cube it was 7:50 and Mt. Rushmore was 20 minutes away. I sped off (initially) and after following the slowest cars on the planet, got to Mt. Rushmore a little before 8:15. We caught the end of the slide show and the honoring of the military in the crowd and watched as the presidents were illuminated (for you, Mom).

All lit up

By 9:00 we were back in The Cube heading to the hotel. After a very full day in South Dakota, and the fulfilling of a dream for Debbie, we retired for the evening in our too small room for another restless night. Tomorrow we cross off two more states from the Haven't Been Visited list - Wyoming and Montana.

Day 1 (2014) - When Buffalo Isn't Buffalo

2014-08-24T17:58:00.001-07:00

After a year off, we went back on the road for a (short) road trip. We only had a week after camp ended before the boys had to be back for the start of soccer practice, so we had to be a little creative with the planning of this trip. As many of you loyal blog readers may (or may not) know, Debbie has long wanted us to incorporate visiting Mt. Rushmore into our summer trip plans. One of my versions of our very first trip had us working in a side trip to South Dakota to see Mt. Rushmore, but that was cut out of the final version. Subsequent trips really didn't lend themselves to going to South Dakota (have you looked on a map to see where South Dakota is?), so it was not an option. That is, until this time.

With a limited time span for the trip, it made sense to fly someplace instead of driving, especially since we had pretty much exhausted the options for driving directions (first trip headed west, second trip went north and third trip went south - and unless we wanted to drive to London we were out of choices). So earlier in the summer I started thinking about where we could fly and do something interesting and fun in the 5 days we had. An early version had us heading to the Wisconsin Dells area for a series of water parks and amusement parks. As fun as that sounded, we decided that this would be the year we finally saw Mt. Rushmore. Then the decision was made to avoid long driving and instead fly into Rapid City, SD instead of flying to Denver and driving. This meant taking a connecting flight, since you can't fly direct to Rapid City from New York. In a fact, you can't fly direct to Rapid City from many places. Therefore, our flight took us via Salt Lake City, where we connected on a small plane (13 rows) to Rapid City. Again, look at a map - Salt Lake City is NOT on the way to Rapid City.

And Away We Go

Anyway, we arrived in beautiful, and warm, South Dakota around 6:30 pm (Mountain Time) on Tuesday. After a very warm experience with the rental car lady, who obviously is not happy with her job, we hopped into our Ford Traverse (a.k.a., The Cube) and headed to the hotel.

"The Cube"

I had decided to stay in Rapid City instead of closer to Mt. Rushmore since there were more choices of hotels. Sadly, there was no Embassy Suites in Rapid City, so I had booked a room at the Country Inn and Suites. Many of you know that when we travel we bring an air bed (or two, sometimes) with us so we can all bunk in one room. When we stay at an Embassy Suites this works out great, since there is at least one real bed (sometimes two queens or doubles) and a pull out couch. This allows all of us to have our own beds - with the obvious exception of Debbie and me. However, this hotel uses a very loose interpretation of the word "suite" as the room we had was really nothing more than a regular hotel room. It had two queens and there was really no room for the air bed, so it was decided that the boys would share a bed and Amanda would sleep with Debbie and me.

Everyone was hungry so we decided to head someplace for dinner. Debbie and Ethan used their fancy iPhone gizmos (I know, I sound like an old fuddy duddy), and both came up with a restaurant called the Colonial House Restaurant. We asked the guy at the front desk if the restaurant was good and he said yes and when we asked for directions he said it was just up the street, short of the Walmart. Well, we headed where he said and there was no sign of the restaurant. There was a different restaurant around where he said our place would be, so we could only assume he had misunderstood where we wanted to go. We looked up the address for the Colonial House Restaurant and plugged it into the GPS and were on our way again. This restaurant was about 10 minutes away, and pretty much all we saw along the way were fast food restaurants and law offices. Not sure what that means, but it must be related.

We arrived at the address we had in the GPS only to find an empty building with a sign that said "Colonial House Restaurant Coming Soon." But Debbie and Ethan had seen recent reviews of the restaurant when they were looking up places to eat, so we were very confused. Debbie looked up the phone number and called them. Turns out where we were will be the new location of the restaurant and the current location was just a little farther down the street. We finally arrived at the right place and went in.

Found it!

The food was very good, nothing unusual or special to the area, but the highlight was the dessert. They are known for the their bakery and had a long list of pies to tempt us. And who are we to turn down pie? Ethan went with the key lime, Brian opted for banana cream, Amanda went with chocolate cream and I chose cherry. Debbie was good (this time) and only had mint tea. The pies were as good as advertised and there wasn't a crumb left on any of our plates.

Mmmmmm, chocolate cream pie

I am NOT going to pose with my banana cream pie

Me neither, I'm not smiling with my key lime pie

Sweet Cherry Pie

While the meal and dessert were delicious, Brian was a little bummed about one thing though at dinner. See, Brian is a big fan of Buffalo Wings and anything else Buffalo, like Buffalo chicken pizza, Buffalo chicken wraps, and Buffalo crepes (at Penn's Houston Hall). So Brian was very excited that there were a bunch of Buffalo items on the menu and as part of the specials. Only one problem - these Buffalo items were actually buffalo items (lower case b) made out of buffalo meat, not hot sauce. Every time Brian heard or saw buffalo in the food title there was an initial reaction of joy followed by the disappointing realization that it was the "wrong" buffalo.

After devouring dinner and dessert, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the big day - visiting Mt. Rushmore!

Day 13 - The End

2012-08-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

For our last day of the trip we headed to the Penn campus to walk around and reminisce. From the hotel I drove to campus via Walnut to look for a parking spot. When there were none available, I decided to head to Spruce, only to find out that Spruce was closed due to freshmen moving into the Quad. I could have merely pointed towards Ethan and said we were moving in, but I didn't so I turned around and ended up parking at 37th and Chestnut. From there we walked towards Locust Walk where our first stop was the obligatory picture with Ben Franklin.

The 4,956th picture of the kids with Ben

(You will note that I am now able to embed photos into the blog because I am typing this on my home PC which has a more up to date browser. Debbie wants me to go back and embed some photos, which if I have time I guess I will do, but you are not required to go back and re-read the whole trip blog, in case you were wondering.)

We then walked down Locust Walk towards the Library and Button (for another required photo op) only to find that the button was undergoing some sort of renovations, so no photo op today. In fact, much of the campus seemed to be undergoing some sort of renovation. Many buildings had scaffolding or other construction equipment. Too bad they couldn't have finished what they are doing before the students arrived. Anyway, instead of the Button Debbie and I located our respective Ivy Day plaques and then we went into Houston Hall. It was hard to recognize Houston Hall as we knew it, as it has undergone a substantial renovation.

Judd's Ivy Day Plaque (well, not only Judd's - Class of 1989)

And Debbie's

From Houston Hall we continued walking down the campus to the Palestra. We walked in the front door and asked if we could go to the court and the guard said sure, so down we went.

I'll take The Palestra over the Dean Dome
or Cameron Indoor any day

After the Palestra we walked next door to Franklin Field to see if we could get onto the field. We walked in one door and were told that the field was closed on the weekend. So we decided to head towards Spruce and walk back up that way. But upon turning the corner on 34th Street, I noticed the entrance to the field where we used to enter for intramural games. I walked up to the gate and it was wide open, so in we went, where the kids ran on the track and on the field.

Not exactly the Penn Relays

Hike

After Franklin Field we went and checked out the new Penn Park. It is quite a nice series of sports fields, which I am sure will get a lot of use. They are a little far from campus, so as 40+ year olds we thought it would be too far to walk to go play, but we figured that 18-22 year olds would not feel the same way.

We then walked up Spruce and, not surprisingly, were unable to get into the Quad today, so instead we headed to Walnut for what became "Get Your Wish for Lunch Day." Brian had been busting our chops for days that he wanted to go to a Chipotle (both in Washington and Philly), but we resisted. Every time we were at a ballpark Debbie asked if there was a Jimmy John's (so she could get her "unwhich" concoction) and Amanda had seen signs for Bobby's Burger Palace and was naturally in love. So as luck and progress would have it all three of these chains are right next to each other on the renovated block on Walnut between 39th & 40th. After my 3rd failed attempt to get into the Sammy house everyone got their wish. That is, except for me, who left Philly without one side order of cheese fries. Oh the humanity. I gave Ethan and Brian $20 to go to Chipotle, Debbie went off to Jimmy John's and Amanda and I went in for burgers, where Debbie joined us with her lunch. After everyone was satisfied with their lunch (again, other than me) it was time to leave Dear Old Penn and head home.

Due to traffic approaching the GW Bridge (and a few bathroom breaks) the trip home took almost 4 hours, but after just more than 1,400 miles, 1,071 photos, 4 colleges (Duke, UNC, Eastern, Penn) and a ton of calories, home we got at around 5:30. Now the reality kicks in with piles of laundry and piles of work, but it was worth it. This trip was definitely different than the first two - much less action (and fewer truly funny situations) and much more looking and learning. I definitely don't think the kids appreciated all of the looking and learning at this time, but I think they will later. We saw a lot of historical things this trip, things they will learn about (or have learned about) in school. That can't be a bad thing. I have no idea what next year's adventure will be right now, although Brian has suggested going way out of the box and heading west (via plane) then renting a minivan out there and exploring the other side of the country for a few weeks. We'll see. Until then...

Day 12 - Fun in Philly

2012-08-25T17:47:00.001-07:00

Today, our last full day on the road, the goal was to do some things in Philly that we had not done before. That meant our first stop of the day, after a late start to sleep in a little, was the US Mint. This is the location where most of the US coins are made. I found a perfect parking spot a short walk from the Mint and we went in. Unfortunately, what we didn't know was that the Mint is not operational on the weekend, so that left us to read info on the walls and in the exhibits, which as any loyal blog reader knows is not the preferred activity of the Volk children. The machines looked quite impressive, but since they weren't working it kind of lost its impact. At one point we came up to a group that was being led by someone that worked at the Mint, so we slowly walked behind them to hear what he was explaining.

We finished at the Mint (after, of course, buying stuff at the gift shop) and headed next door to what looked like a very old cemetery. From inside the Mint we could see people walking around the cemetery, so we figured this wasn't any old cemetery. This was a correct assumption, as this turned out to be the burial place of Ben Franklin, the Christ Church Burial Ground. There was a small admission price to enter, and as we were paying the cashier mentioned that they were having what was basically a scavenger hunt for kids that related to 7 signers of the Declaration of Independence that were buried either at this location or on the church grounds. The man who explained the details gave Amanda the pamphlet and she and Debbie were off and running.

The answers to the questions for five of the men were found on their graves at the cemetery, and Amanda dutifully read the info and wrote the answers. We then got in the car and drove a few blocks to the church, where I once again found a very good parking spot (George Castanza would have been proud) and we headed into the church. This church was where not only Ben Franklin attended, but so did George Washington and the Penn family. So we didn't actually go someplace where Washington slept (unless he dozed off during a sermon or two) but did sit where Washington sat. Amanda found the last two answers and headed to the gift shop for her momentous prize (not really momentous, as I guess the thrill is in the hunt).

After leaving the church we headed nearby on Market Street for lunch at a cheese steak place that was recommended by one of the people that worked at the church. The place was small, but the food was good (although the lack of a fryer for cheese fries was a big mark against the place) and the woman cashier was very good at upselling the "cole slaw, macaroni salad and potato salad that [her] mom makes." Like suckers, we bought all three sides.

By the time we finished lunch it was around 2:45, and we had arranged to meet Derek's family at Mariah's dorm room at 3:45. The ride there should have only taken 20 minutes or so, so we were kind of in no-man's land. But we decided to head there anyway, figuring we would walk around when we got there. Good thing we left early because the traffic was awful on 476 and 76. We didn't get to Eastern University until a little after 3:30. Derek, Amy and Mariah were still in a meeting and they asked us if we could go pick up Dylan, Lilly and Serena from Danielle's house (and Adam's house, just easier to reference one name each time) to bring them back to the college so they would have time to say goodbye to Mariah. We drove the short distance to Danielle's house, got the kids and headed back to Eastern.

By the time we got back to the college the meeting was done so we all convened in Mariah's room. Good thing her roommate decided not to attend school right now, because there would not have been enough space in there for 3 families. It's a very cute, little room that Mariah was already making her own, and we are sure that very shortly she will love being in college there. We bid our goodbyes and headed out.

Now it was time to bring back the memories, as we headed towards the Penn campus. First stop, the Book Store. I am sure if I looked back on blogs from 2 years ago I said the same thing, but I have to say again that I really prefer the old book store from when we were in school versus the Barnes & Noble book store of today. That place had the real college feel. OK, it was small and cramped and was always a zoo, but it was a true college book store.

Anyway, we spent lots of time looking for new Penn gear, and everyone got something. We finished at the book store around 6:15, so we headed up the street to the Sammy house to see if we could get in. No luck. The place was locked and no lights were on, so we just took a few pictures out front and moved on up the street to Lee's Hoagies (at this point in the blog I am sure Matt is rolling his eyes, but I don't care). I found a parking spot (again with the parking spots?) on 41st Street directly across the street from 219, where both Debbie and I lived (not at the same time, at least technically). As I walked across the street to take a picture, Debbie noticed that a light was on in Apt. D (top floor, our apartment) so I rang the buzzer. A woman answered and I explained quickly that Debbie and I had lived there years ago and wondered if would be possible to come show the kids. Not sure if she truly believed me until she came down to open the door and saw the kids standing there. She nicely let us in and up the 3 flights we walked and entered a time warp. Other than the fact that they converted what was our living room into a 7th bedroom it pretty much looked the same. We showed the kids where Debbie's room was and where my room was, and left.

We walked around the corner to Lee's and ordered. As has been the case since 1987, I ordered a tuna hoagie (again, deal with it Matt, it has meaning), Debbie and Brian had turkey, Ethan got corned beef and Amanda went off the grid and got chicken fingers. Yes, it was tuna on white bread with Provolone cheese, but mmmmmmm was it good. We finished our hoagies and left.

As for evening plans, we simply headed back to the hotel because Ethan needed access to a laptop and the internet because he was going to be involved with a fantasy football draft with his camp friends. Unfortunately, the draft that was supposed to start at 8:00, giving us a slimmer of a chance of walking around afterwards, has not started as of 8:45 as I type this. Oh well.

Tomorrow I think we will head back to the Penn campus to walk around and see what is new. After that, I believe we will wrap up Volk Tour 2012 and drive back to reality. Waaaaaaah.