We got home last night at around 10:30 after spending way to much time on planes and transferring between planes and getting to airports. The cats were very pleased to see us, but were well looked after while we were gone.

I have many thoughts on our trip and of course a couple thousand photos to troll through looking for gold. I'll get started on that right away. I'll post more about our trip (and perhaps a few of the small number of sketches I did) this weekend after I've had a bit of time to decompress and unpack and do all the returning to normal life things that one must do after a long trip.

Including starting the planning for our next trip: Mexico! But that trip is a long way off.

Labels: france, journal_entry, paris, provence

Labels: france, journal_entry

Hello all, sorry we've dropped off the radar but we've been moving around a bit and have been unable to get to an Internet cafe.

We are currently in Vaison-la-Romain and spent the day driving around the indescribably beautiful Cote du Rohn countryside stopping at a number of cute little medieval hill towns, not forgetting of course to do a little wine tasting along the way.

This morning we awoke to the sounds of the weekly market setting up in the square below our window.  We bought a picnic lunch to take with us on the drive and ate it in the tiny town of Suzette on the side of a hill overlooking vineyards.  The sun was out and shinning but the wind was blowing hard and threatened to carry away our lunch.

In the past week we have visited Avignon, where we stayed for three nights and used as a base to travel.  We day tripped out to Pont du Gard, an old roman aqueduct, and Nimes where we rolled into town during the annul bullfight festival (not listed in any guide book, Gretchen). The town was hopping and we had a nice lunch of Paella for Irene and Gardienne de toreau (bull) for me.

Another day we drove to Arles and spent the day, and yesterday we visited the abandoned medieval town of Les Beaux, and the not so abandoned town named after my cat, St. Remy.

Well, that about catches you up. Tomorrow we head for Roussillon and the Luberon hill towns made famous (at least in the states) by Peter Mayle in his books about Provence.

Labels: france, journal_entry

Labels: france, journal_entry

Labels: france, journal_entry

I type this from France's computer (our friend France, of course, not the country, it would be absurd if there was only one computer for all of France). We landed yesterday at 9:40 am and hopefully got all the problems were going to have on this trip on the first morning. But that's another story.

This is just a short note to let everyone know that we got here safely and met up with France this morning. And everything (after that first troublesome half day) has gone swimmingly.

Labels: france, journal_entry, paris

We leave for France tomorrow and I'm a bit antsy. I've been planning for this trip for so long that I'm ready for it to just get started.

Last night I had a little anxiety dream about the trip (the only bit I've felt so far). In the dream it was our first day in Paris and we'd been going around having a great time when, around 4pm, I suddenly realized we were meant to meet the apartment guy at noon, and now where were we going to sleep. I immediately hopped on the metro to set off for the apartment only to realize I didn't know where I was going. So I began digging around in my bag for my metro map. The first one I pulled out was for the NY subway, and the second for something else entirely. It dawned on me that I had brought no map at all and now I was really screwed.

And then I woke up and realized how ridiculous the dream was. We would have noticed that we were still schlepping around or backpacks and I would never have not packed a map. I'm very well prepared for this trip and expect it all to go very smoothly.

I'll keep you updated, though, if it should not.

Labels: france, journal_entry

One week from now we will be having diner in Paris. That is all.

Labels: food, france, journal_entry, paris

Last time I covered only the first day of our trip, so I'll try to cover a bit more ground with this post.

Sunday we spent in the city with our friend B. We started off with walking to Golden Gate Park to check out the new de Young museum which has a pretty spiffy new building with a free observation tower and nifty sculpture garden. We didn't actually go into the gallery portion of the museum but did wander around the building and grounds. The building itself is this funky ultra modern design and very cool.

Afterwards, we headed to the Haight area to have lunch at a taqureia and so I could stop in at both Kid Robot and Giant Robot (not related, well, related in merchandise, but not business-wise). I picked up a few vinyl toys at Kid Robot, but they were all out of the Aztec Dunny's which was a bit sad.

After lunch we went over to Japan Town so that I could pop into the Kinokuniya (disappointing), and to have desert at this crazy japanese crepe place where they've essentially taken a crepe and turned it into a waffle cone. Very tasty.

That night we went out to diner with B and his partner E to a place called Foreign Cinema which was a disappointment on many levels. First, their whole schtick is that they show foreign films on an outdoor screen, but when we were there, they were showing Bullitt which is not a foreign film, it was shot in San Francisco, for christ's sake.. That should have been a sign if they couldn't even get that right. Second, the place is expensive, overpriced is probably a better word. And worst of all, the food was so-so. I would have expected more for the money.

We spent the first half of Monday in the city as well, again with B. We went the San Francisco Center (I think it was called) so I could go to Maido, which while related to Kinokuniya, has a much better selection of pens. I bought two, a Sailor Ace ($16) and a Platinum Preppy ($4), both of which I will be reviewing over on my other site.

We then headed over to Valencia to check out the Pirate Supply Store, but they were closed all week. I guess we'll just have to try them next year.

We headed back to Menlo Park in the early afternoon to avoid traffic as it was the first night of Passover and the seder started at 6. They seem to be getting shorter each year (the seders) but that only gets us to the amazing food that much faster. S is an amazing cook.

Tuesday we mainly hung around the house helping set up for the second seder. We also went out to lunch in Palo Alto with A. We ate at Francis Ford Coppola's restaurant Cafe Rosso and Bianco, though we didn't know it was his restaurant when we went in. The food was pretty tasty and they had these cool wine machines where you could purchase tastes or glasses of a variety of wines using a special card. We didn't try it but it sure looked cool.

That's about it for now. Next time I'll cover our time in Wine Country, and probably the coast.

Labels: california, journal_entry, san_francisco

Even though this trip was low-key as far as our vacations go, it was still plenty busy.

When we got in on Friday night, A and family were all ready in bed so we were met by the elder Gs (Judge J and S), given good food and shown our room for the week. So it wasn't until the next day that we finally got to met Baby C for the first time. I think he was sleeping. Or breast feeding. Or one of those since he seemed to be in one of those two states the entire time we were there. Yes, I know, he's an eight week old baby, that's what they do. Baby C is actually a very quite little boy, hardly ever cries, just grunts when he wants his current situation to change. And cute. He's cute too.

Our first day of vacation was spent in Half Moon Bay. So two things about the car ride there:

1) There were six adults and two children crammed into a mini van with seven viable seats, which meant that Judge J (the elder G) was on the floor between the seat and the door. Irene was in the back of the van, not wearing her seat belt because, in her words "it just didn't work". So that's the situation when we approach a stop sign. On the other side of the intersection is two cops, one at the corner and one about 30 feet or so beyond him.

Now as soon as we went through the intersection I see the cop switch on his little radio and say something to the guy down the road and I knew it was all over for us. And sure enough, the second cop points to us and tells us to pull over. Apparently the first cop had spotted that Irene wasn't wearing her seat belt, which can net the driver a hefty fine. He starts asking questions, wants the registration and proof of insurance, so I open up the glove box and it is just full of wadded up papers and receipts and crap and I'm digging through all this stuff and Judge J is out of the car next to me and I'm handing him papers and trying to figure out what everything is and the whole time the cop is talking to J and getting fairly annoyed.

We finally manage to come up with the paperwork he's asked for and by this time it's pretty clear that he's going to give us at least one ticket and maybe more if he can. And the amazing thing to me is, he didn't even spot that Judge J was sitting on the floor when he first pulled us over. So as the cop is talking to J,Judge J strolls around the car and starts to talk to the cop and pulls out his little "I'm a judge card" from his wallet. The cop sighs, shakes his head and tells us to buckle up and be careful and off we go with out penalty. Amazing. But lucky for us.

2) You forgot about there was a second thing didn't you? Well this ones not as exciting. After the cop incident we're driving to Half Moon Bay and we pass a family fun farm thing were they offer pony rides and wouldn't that be fun for Young J (just so you can keep track there is Judge J, the grandfather, J the father, and Young J, the three year old son). So we stop and Young J gets his pony ride, feeds the goats at the petting zoo, and goes on what was apparently a pretty creepy train ride through some sort of miniture haunted wild west town. The farm was a kick and looked like it hadn't been updated since it opened in 1940-something.

Half Moon Bay itself is a cute little town where we stopped for lunch before heading for the ocean. Really, though, all the excitement happened on the way there.

Well, I think that's probably enough for now. I'll post more later. And I'm still hoping to get photos up this weekend in between household projects.

Labels: california, journal_entry, san_francisco, wine

Here's a couple of travel related doodles I did today at work.

This first one is me during the day.



And then what I look like while we are between locations.



And here's me in just over a month!

Labels: journal_entry, sketches

We got home yesterday afternoon around 4. Spent most of the night decompressing and sorting through receipts and finances.

I'll have a longer post about the trip up sometime this week, with photos to hopefully come this weekend.

We had a great time, and did a lot of running around (as usual).

Labels: california, journal_entry, san_francisco

Last night I spent about an hour and half on the phone with Alaska Airlines booking tickets for our trip to France next year. And although the customer service woman was very friendly and helpful, it was still far more complicated than I was expecting. Eventually, plans had to change in order for us to get tickets at all.

Originally I wanted us to fly in to Amsterdam and then out of Nice. Not possible. And so after going through every possible iteration of date change and arrival/departure city change we finally settled on flying into and out of Paris (not ideal, but we'll live with it), pushing departure back a week and taking on an additional day at the end.

The net result of all the changes is that we have decided to skip Amsterdam this time and concentrate exclusively on France. This is not entirely a bad thing, I think. After our last hectic trip (to five countries in 18 days) it will be nice to take things at a (slightly) more relaxed pace. Well, at least as relaxed as any vacation I'm planning can be.

I will update the rest of the site to reflect these changes in our plans. Now that we have our departure firmly settled, I'm really looking forward to diving in to the meat of the planning, including booking an apartment for our week in Paris.

Labels: france, journal_entry, paris, travel planning

Last post I covered our time in New York, so this time it's all about our three and a half days in Washington, D.C.

Our flight from NY to DC left at 6 o'clock in the morning on Thursday the 21st. Which meant we had to get up at four in the morning in order to be ready to leave by 5. It was tuff, let me tell you. And J was nice enough to get up that early to take us to the airport. Our flight actually ended up getting canceled, so we had to go on the 6:30 instead.

We were staying at the Tabard Inn in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, but since we got into DC at 7:30 we weren't sure what to do with our bags, but after a minor misstep we settled on going to the hotel and storing them in their luggage room.

Having settled that we walked over to the National Geographic Society where they had a couple of really good photography exhibits and an exhibit on extinct animals.

We went from there to make a quick stop at Fahrney's Pens to see what there was to see. I escaped with only buying a bottle of Mont Blanc English Racing Green fountain pen ink, which I haven't been able to find in Seattle, and for $2 cheaper than it would have been here if I could.

That day we also strolled by the White House (I was going to say hit, but now that King George has been given absolute power by his pals in congress I better watch what I say) to snap a few shots (photos, that is). As well as the WWII Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. At which time we were both completely knackered, so we went back to the hotel for a short nap.

That night we headed out to Arlington, VA to visit J and R and catch up. I'm glad we got to see them before the move to Cuba!

On Friday we decided to go to the zoo to see the baby Panda (and the other animals of course) but the Panda was not making things easy. The first time we stopped by their enclosure, the momma and baby were inside and the papa was sleeping. The second time we checked in on them, the baby was up in the tree and safely hidden from prying eyes and camera lenses. And the third time, mamma and baby were off in corner nursing and too far away to get a clear shot.

I did get a few good shots of the papa bear chowing down on bamboo.

We actually ended up spending the whole day at the zoo and in the surrounding Adams Morgan neighborhood, which has a lot of funky/cool shops and restaurants. We had some delicious poboys at a New Orleans style restaurant.

That night we had a very nice diner in the restaurant at our hotel. The food was outstanding.

That's all for now. I should have my pictures ready to put up soon, so stay tuned for those as well.

Labels: dc, journal_entry

I always approach the end of a vacation with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'm happy to return to the familiar comforts of home, but I'm also very sad that I didn't have more time to see more of what I wanted to see. And that was very much the case this time as well. We only had three and a half days in DC, and that was not nearly enough time. But I don't want to get ahead of myself.

We arrived in New York (well, Newark, actually) at around 5pm and were picked up at the airport by J, who took us back to their apartment on the upper west side where A and little J were waiting for us. A is five months pregnant and starting to show a little. We dropped off our stuff and headed out for dinner to an Indian restaurant that had recently opened near by (can't remember the name). We don't go out for Indian much at home (don't know why, really), so we were excited to have some good curry. And it was very good, particularly the Lamb Somethingorother.

The next day, Sunday, we all went to the Feast Of St Gennaro festival in Little Italy, but only after stopping by The Pickle Guy for a variety of pickles (the full sours proving the most popular), and The Doughnut Plant for what A assured were the best doughnuts ever*. And next door to the doughnut place was a bagel shop where we had to stop for a Bialy. And then, while walking to the festival we stopped at the Yonah Schimmel Knishery for a Knish, because Irene had never had one before and the place had been around for over a hundred years.

So by the time we got to the festival, we had all ready noshed quite a bit, and after sharing a Mozzerepa we had no extra room for any of the extremely tasty looking festival food that was everywhere (sausage and peppers, steak sandwiches, pasta, pizza...).

After walking the festival from one end to the other and back (with a short stop for some playground time for little J) we parted company with A and J so they could take little J home for his nap. We spent the rest of the day walking around SOHO and before heading over to Katz's Deli , where we split a Reuben for a late lunch.

I guess I won't give you the play by play, and will instead hit the highlights. So:

Museums we hit included The Jewish Museum (for the comic artist exhibit, which included work by the incomperable Will Eisner, and the amazing Chris Ware [man, that bastard is too good]), The National Design Museum (which at $12 a pop is not a good deal).

We had an amazing meal at Public restaurant. We both had the Grilled Lamb Tenderloin, kinda lame to both get the same thing but we both really wanted it and it was super tasty. If you are in New York anytime soon I highly recommend the place. Plus the interior and desgin is very cool.

As this was only the second time Irene had been to New York and the first time was a short trip as well, we did a few of the tourist things that she'd missed out on last time. Like going up to the top of the Empire State Building . Which let me tell you was an overpriced and obnoxious expierience. Let me tell you why obnoxious. As we were waiting in the line at the top, a woman kept yelling about and pushing this audio tour that was for sale for only $6 more. And to sell she intimated that you would need the tour or you wouldn't know what you were looking at while you were up there as there were no signs telling you. Which in fact turned out to be a lie, there were in fact displays with the skyline and markings on every side. So if you do decide to go up, keep that in mind. We passed on the audio tour. I'm glad we went up though, because now we never have to do it again.

A much more pleasent experience was hopping on the Staten Island Ferry which was free. Free! and the short 20 minute trip takes you with in photo taking distance of both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

I guess this is running kind of long so I'll end it there and continue in Part 2 later.

*We were skeptical because we have Top Pot Doughnuts here in Seattle, and those are some pretty damn fine doughnuts. So while we were in the shop, the guy behind the counter asked us where we were from, and when we said Seattle, asked if we knew Top Pot. He then claimed that Top Pot stole one of there doughnuts. Well, whatever, I'm going to show my home town loyalty, because I think that Top Pot makes the better doughnut.

Labels: journal_entry, new_york, united_states

As of Saturday my baby and I will be on vacation. First we head to New York for four days and then D.C. for four days.

I will hopefully be blogging a bit from the road, and will at the very least be moblogging photos here with the help of my newish phone.

So stay tuned for that, and when I return, I will be posting up photo's from our trip not taken with me phone.

Labels: dc, journal_entry, new_york, united_states