Posts tagged as travel
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- Tuesday, June 05, 2012:
Travel Planning Day It recently became apparent that no one was going to take the initiative and be our volunteer travel agent. I was averaging 62 hours of work per week in the first part of the year and Rebecca was making the ten-hour round trip between Sterling and Springfield for school every day, and the window for planning exotic locales like New Zealand gradually slipped away. Since the only alternative for adventure that didn't involve planning would have us flaunt rolls of Benjamins on the street corner until we were kidnapped and held for ransom, we finally got our asses in gear this past weekend and cobbled together our slightly-less epic yet still exotic summer vacation. Day 1 Fly int... - Friday, May 02, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part X of X List Day: Ten Travel Tips for European Adventures Pack lighter than you could possibly imagine. Slice up guidebooks so you only have to bring the information on the cities you're visiting. Leave extra clothes at home and wash your underwear a lot. The more mobile you are, the more fun you'll have. If you injure your leg on the second day of the trip, buy a cane so you don't look like a total retard hippety-hopping across the Continent. Don't waste your money on maps at magazine stands -- the Tourism Office will be chock full of maps, lodging and restaurant info, and free tips. Not all toilets are created the same. If you can't figure out how to flush, just... - Thursday, May 01, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part IX of X Budgeting When we first planned this trip out back in January, we'd decided that $3000 per person was the maximum amount we wanted to spend. In the end, despite all the heart palpitations over the expensive pounds, we actually spent just under $2500 per person. We alternated lavish meals with local foods from the market and hit the freebie museums (especially in London), but never sacrificed the things we WANTED to see because they were expensive. Of the $2500, about $1200 went towards major transportation (planes and trains), $600 went towards lodging, and the remaining $700 was our slush fund for the Metro, food, drinks, and daily attractions. If you plan ahead, going to Europe is suprisingly feasible --... - Wednesday, April 30, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part VIII of X Monday, April 14, 2008 Most of Monday was reserved for travel. Since we had a 4:35 flight back to London, we woke up late and went straight to the airport, loitering as much as possible but preferring to get there and wait, rather than get held up somewhere out of our control. Our budget-balancing was so immaculate (a.k.a. lucky) that we had just enough euros remaining for a small but filling meal at an airport eatery. We even had enough cents leftover to buy ketchup packets (20 cents each), but did NOT, solely on principle. In the airport terminal, we met an American who had been stationed in Iraq for years, and was on his way back after a Spain vacation with his wife (who had already gone back... - Tuesday, April 29, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part VII of X Friday, April 11, 2008 Friday was a cold and rainy day, once again the perfect time to be on a train. After some more quiches, we bundled onto a 10:35 Regional train (a designation which means that the train will stop in every single backwater town along the way to Barcelona, and not arrive there until around 3 PM. Because this was the first big travel weekend of the travel season, it was much harder to find an affordable hotel in downtown Barcelona. After several "sorry, we're full" emails before our trip, we finally scored a last-minute reservation at the Husa Via Barcelona in a suburb several miles from downtown. It was so last minute that when we printed maps of all our hotels, we didn't rea... - Monday, April 28, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part VI of X Wednesday, April 9, 2008 Collioure is a small town on the Mediterranean Sea that's nearly invisible on most tourist maps. Rick Steves devotes a few sentences to it in one of his guidebooks, and we thought that a town off the beaten path might be a nice "vacation within a vacation" at the 2/3rds mark of our trip. At first glance, fresh off the train, it was just a deathly silent tiny town with no vistas of interest. As we walked down the single street from the station, though, this perception changed. First, we hit the market square where all manner of goods were being sold to the locals, including a stand selling nothing but spices and sweet-smelling herbs. This spilled out next to a long ancien... - Friday, April 25, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part V of X Monday, April 7, 2008 Throughout the trip, we learned a great deal about the conversion between Celsius and Farenheit. For example, 28 C = 82 F and 20 C is room temperature. The average temperature in London was around 12 C, and the average temperature in Paris was 7 C. However, we did not need to pass our SATs to know that -2 C is very cold. We woke up early (around 6) on Monday to make a train, and were greeted by a cold, slimy, sleet & snow mixture with wind gusts up to a million kilometers per hour (evidently I need work on my distance conversions). It was the perfect type of day to spend in a warm train, and we checked off Day 1 of 5 in our Eurail Saver Pass. This pass lets you travel for free on five... - Thursday, April 24, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part IV of X Saturday, April 5, 2008 Although it couldn't be mistaken as the summertime, the first four days of our trip had been fairly nice for April in countries on the same latitude as Maine. This all ended on Day Five, when the damned Norwegians sent a subversive cold front across the area, mixed with clouds and light drizzle. Based on the weather and the amount of logistics it would take to schedule trains to the Palace of Versailles, we decided to skip it, and started today off by making train reservations for the end of our Paris trip. With that taken care of, we hit Ile de la Cit?, the island in the middle of the Seine containing Saint-Chapelle and Notre Dame. Both were beautiful and very typical of... - Wednesday, April 23, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part III of X Thursday, April 3, 2008 Day Three of our adventure began with a bum knee -- my own. It started hurting halfway through day two, but I merely attributed it to being out of practice with walking extended distances (besides, in Warcraft, you can turn on auto-run and forget about it). By today, it was obvious that I had sprained a joint or something in my right knee, even though there was no specific event that triggered it, like a fall down the Wellington Arch or getting kicked by a midget. For the next week and a half or so, I walked in various states of cripply goodness, and on this last day in London, I was forced to walk with my right leg completely straight, no doubt looking like a modern American peglegged pi... - Tuesday, April 22, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part II of X Tuesday, April 1, 2008 Refreshed after our siesta, we took the Tube to South Kensington, passing a street performer playing "The Lonely Goatherd" on an alto saxophone to a "Best of the Sound of Music" Karaoke CD. We visited the Victoria and Albert Museum near closing time which was uninspiring except for the collection of old musical instruments tucked away in the back. We also power-walked through the rather boring collections of ancient furniture, where we were accosted by a crazy guy in lipsteak and sweat pants who told us that we simply must visit the Lacquer Box because it was brilliantly beautiful. We edged away as quickly as possible, and later encountered him in another room mumbling to himself (we... - Monday, April 21, 2008:
Euro-tic Adventure, Part I of X Monday, March 31, 2008 With the cats successfully sent off to grandma's house and our ridiculously tiny bags packed, we were dropped off at Dulles by Anna around 4 PM on Monday the 31st. After successfully navigating the always-flustering security checkpoints, we arrived in Concourse D which was chock full of every brand name store possible, from Border's to Starbucks. Travelling 100 yards down the concourse brought us to exact duplicates of these stores, making me worry for a moment that we had actually circumnavigated the globe in a looping terminal straight out of an Infocom game. This was my first international flight, a nonstop affair from DC to London in 8 hours, and I was surprised ... - Wednesday, April 16, 2008:
Chad Darnell's 12 of 12 8:35 AM : Waking up in our unexpectedly posh hotel room. 9:44 AM : Making the half mile walk to the train station in our little suburb (because all the hotels in the Old City were booked up). 10:29 AM : Wandering down the Ramblas, watching all the street performers and living statues. 11:00 AM : Barcelona looks a lot like California. Now I know why Sydney Bristow went to Spain all the time -- it was easy to film. 11:37 AM : Looking up at the main Cathedral, which was closed for renovations (a recurring theme in much of the city). &n... - Tuesday, April 08, 2008:
Untitled Post Day 8 and we are in Carcassonne which is excellent. It started snowing on the last day in Paris so we gave a big thumbs down to Versailles and fled for the southern coast a day early. So far our decision was highly successful. Tomorrow we leave for Collioure and then on to Barcelona! - Thursday, April 03, 2008:
Untitled Post It's Day Three, and the final day in London! We've seen every museum, church, pub, and tube station around and will be leaving in the morning for Paris. We have plenty of stories to tell, like the meeting with the sweatpants-wearing lipstick-wearing Brit who was obsessed with the Lacquer Box at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and our world-premiere interview with people in Hyde Park. Hope everyone is having fun at work! - Tuesday, April 01, 2008:
Untitled Post BU will be busy spreading American consumerism across Europe until April 15th. Regular updates will resume on April 21, although the occasional "on-the-road" post may appear in this space from a seedy Internet cafe, thanks to the PHP magic of Mike (of Mike and Chompy). In the meantime, feel free to check the News Archives for your daily fix, or visit one of the wonderful blogs in the left sidebar. Au revoir! - Wednesday, March 26, 2008:
Europe Day an occasional post about finding the way to Europe The maps are printed, the reservations are made, and I've researched Rick Steves' back door more than I'd care to admit. We have tickets and passports and we've gotten the special immunization shots that will prevent us from inexplicably become French. All we have left to do is pack our bags, dispose of the cats in a suitably plush living area, and head for the airport on Monday! If you want to play at home, you can use Google Earth to stalk us along this itinerary: 4/1 - 4/3: London 4/4 - 4/6: Paris 4/7: Versailles 4/8: Carcasonne 4/9: Collioure 4/10: Back in Virginia for Mom's B... - Monday, February 04, 2008:
Europe Day an occasional post about finding the way to Europe In the previous post, we had just purchased the Eurail pass for unlimited train travel in France and Spain. The next step: make lists of fun things to see in each city and then pare them down to fit comfortably in the two and a half week period. For this task, we relied on guidebooks from the local library and the wise advice from world-traveler Paige, who has written plenty of London/Barcelona posts on her blog . We had good success with the Rick Steves guide books, because although he had different interests than us (and a strange fascination with ice cream shops), he laid out the information very concisely and exhaustively c... - Wednesday, January 16, 2008:
Europe Day an occasional post about finding the way to Europe In the previous installment of Europe Day , we had purchased plane tickets to bookend our two week trip like, well, bookends. The next step was to work out all the interstitial transportation arrangements. We wanted to devise a plan to get us from England to Spain at a reasonably leisurely pace, with a fair amount of flexibility to veer off the planned itinerary. We also figured that handling the bulk of the transportation up front would help us to more accurately budget things like pints of beer and prostitutes from the Quarter Pigalle, Paris' red light district. First, we considered our options for getting out of t... - Thursday, January 03, 2008:
Europe Day an occasional post about finding the way to Europe Everyone has a different reason for wanting to travel to Europe. For me, I could give a rat's ass about this little block of marble carved into a Renaissance codpiece or the birthplace of the guy who invented the alto clef. I want to experience the ancient (and Alexandria of the 1600s doesn't cut it), eat tasty foods, and see exotic vistas and architecture -- to be a foreigner on the outside looking in, away from the comfort of my home office with a cat in my lap. In addition to these artistic goals, Paige has been bugging me to go to Spain and visit her ever since she and her husband moved there on March 18, 2006 to escape the military coup in ... - Wednesday, January 02, 2008:
2008: Year of the Mudskipper Happy New Year from the URI! Zone! After a jetsetting weekend of holiday visits that encompassed both Front Royal and Baltimore, New Year's Eve was a quiet, fancy, affair at Kathy and Chris' house, where we paid the ten dollar cover charge to lose ostentatiously in poker. To cover our losses, we stole some of their wedding silverware and sold it at the local pawn shop, Sterling Silver . 2007 was a decent year for the Zone -- it was proven that the Zone now has a credible draw of 23,000 visitors per year without resorting to such devious tricks as having an RSS Feed or mentioning Britney Spears or U2 in post titles. Although the numbers dipped slightly from 2006, I attribute this mainly to Australian Rachel ... - Thursday, October 25, 2007:
Blacksburg Travelogue part II of II Kentland Farms is an independent farm run by Virginia Tech where all the Animal Science students can hone their skills (I hear that one student majored in animal husbandry until they "caught him at it" one day). Because it was Parents' Weekend, there were several hands-on demonstrations showing how the cows move through the various stages of their captivity. Becca and her friends showed us how to brand a cow with dry-ice, giving new meaning to the Applebee's term, steak fajitas con sizzle . I also took a brief video of one of the talking cows for all the readers who have never left the pleasant captivity of the suburbs (2MB WMV). The next part of the tour al... - Wednesday, October 24, 2007:
Blacksburg Travelogue part I of II We left northern Virginia around 10:30 on Friday, after a leisurely breakfast of bacon and eggs. I-81 surprised me, because for the first time I can recall, there were no state troopers along the entire stretch from I-66 to Christiansburg. I reflexively slowed down at every cubbyhole near Staunton just to be safe, but for this one trip, the only hazards to worry about were the reckless truckers and land piranhas. Throughout the drive, we listened to XM (mixed with random CDs when south-facing mountains were too high to get reception), and learned The Salmon Dance, among other classy tunes. Lunch was a chicken ranch sub at a Subway in Salem. After dropping our junk at my sister's hou... - Tuesday, September 27, 2005:
Tallahassee Travelogue, Part II of II Saturday morning (following a late awakening) was spent tooling around Tallahassee, including a visit to one of Tallahassee's 2.5 malls. We made breakfast for lunch, a balanced diet of bacon, maple sausages, hash browns, and scrambled eggs, and then played one more game of trading wheat for sheep. After this, we decided to take Chompy for a walk around Lake Ella, since it was right across the street and not three miles away like the Tallahassee Dog Park. Chompy is looking very fit these days, and no longer has the sloppy flab look she had long ago. Apparently she's been working out regularly with John Basedow in his Fitness Made Simple exercise program. Who knew it also worked on dogs? We walked her across the street ... - Monday, September 26, 2005:
Tallahassee Travelogue, Part I of II The city of Tallahassee, with its magical one-way streets and majestic phallic skylines, is almost exactly the same as when I left it two and a half years ago. The air is sticky and humid inside and out, and the buildings have an air of fungal decay, as if all city beautification projects get to 90% and then get cancelled. I only took three pictures while I was down there, and two of them were of Chompy -- I always take my camera everywhere I go, but then forget to actually whip it out and use it. Perhaps I should add "become better at whipping it out and using it" to my list of things to accomplish in October. I left work early on Friday to finish packing, and then Anna came over to drive me to the airport. We watche... - Tuesday, September 07, 2004:
Untitled Post OBX Travelogue - Part V: Friday and Saturday 8/27 - 8/28 On Friday, I left the Outer Banks around 6 in the morning and made the trip back home in dense fog. There were traffic cops everywhere but I made it back in only four hours. I spent the day at my parents' house, cleaning digging tools, leeching laundry privileges, and getting reacquainted with the cats. I returned to Sterling on Friday night and then spent all of Saturday settling in and paying bills. The worst part about paying bills the old-fashioned way is having to write the account number on the check. Is it really more efficient for a data entry specialist to read some chicken scratch numbers off the check when they could just look up the account ba... - Monday, September 06, 2004:
Untitled Post OBX Travelogue - Part IV: Wednesday & Thursday 8/25 - 8/26 By this point in the week, I had lost all sense of what day it was so my account may be a little blurred. On Wednesday, we decided to take a break from the beach and drove around the island instead. Three people left the night before and two more showed up. We took a trip down to Kitty Hawk where we browsed through a bunch of shops. Anna and Bethany got one of those Old Time Photos with the saloon and costumes. On the way back, we stopped off at a seafood place and loaded up on tuna steaks, lobsters, shrimp, and mussels (all of which were delicious). In the evening, we ate seafood and watched both parts of Kill Bill . After watching... - Friday, September 03, 2004:
Untitled Post OBX Travelogue - Part III: Monday & Tuesday 8/23 - 8/24 On Monday, we went out to Jockeys Ridge State Park in-between beach trips and wandered around the dunes. The pond at the base was a festering boil of mosquito larvae (completely with wading children and oblivious parents) and the dunes were about what you'd expect: big and sandy. We found a spot on the back side where you could dive down a dropoff and bury yourself in the sand near the treeline, no doubt accelerating eons of dune shifting in the process. From there we took a hike through the brush and ended up on Currituck Sound where you could wander a hundred yards into the water and still only be knee-deep. We stopped at DQ which n... - Thursday, September 02, 2004:
Untitled Post OBX Travelogue - Part III: Sunday 8/22 Sunday was a beach day with nary a computer in sight. We got up early to do some grocery shopping, but the Corolla Food Lion was packed tighter than a Costco in the heart of yuppy Fairfax. The checkout lines stretched down every aisle and most of the shelves were empty. Seeing this, we turned around and went home, and I had Cup O' Noodles for breakfast. The house we rented was a three-story, five-bedroom, three-bathroom house with twelve sleeping slots, and we had nine people there in the beginning of the week. It wasn't beach front, but there was a boardwalk connecting directly from the carport to the beach, so we didn't have to cross any roads. The dist... - Wednesday, September 01, 2004:
Untitled Post OBX Travelogue - Part II: Saturday 8/21 I left Alexandria at 8 in the morning for the three hour trip to Schley, Virginia, a tiny burg outside of West Point and Williamsburg in Gloucester County. I started out by listening to at least two songs on every station of XM Radio, but that got old pretty quickly around channel 16. The 60s channel had an all-day Monkees marathon, so I settled into a groove of listening to that, the global pop station, the comedy station, and the punk/alternative/new wave/80s station. I got to Schley around 10:30 with several hours to go before the 4 PM wedding of Philip and Kara. After scouting out the church, the reception site, and the McDonald's, I found myself bor... - Tuesday, August 31, 2004:
Untitled Post OBX Travelogue - Prologue I spent most of Thursday and Friday packing and shopping and stocking up on Costco goods for the trip. On Friday night, I drove the cats to my parents' house after turning off the water and lights and random house appliances. Kitty replied by dropping a big wet turd in her carrying case, ruining a cute fuzzy red and yellow (and now brown) toy. Booty peed in her case, leaving a piquant odour in my back seat which won't go away until I've cleaned it for a few more months. After they had settled into the new house, they were fine, and even did a little playing. I slept in my old bed that night, which triggered a round of dreams featuring people and events from high school and before. ... - Sunday, January 06, 2002:
Untitled Post New Year's in Jacksonville: Part II of II After sleeping in, we drove to the stadium and helped the local economy by paying twnety dollars for parking. At the stadium, we met up with Philip, his friend, Chris, Liz, Kathryn, and Kevin (pictures on the Photos page). We didn't get there in time to see Pre-Game, but apparently the Marching Virginians did their usual routine with the State of Virginia and the VT logo. The VT stands were fairly well packed, but the FSU side had plenty of bare patches which were never filled. FSU scalpers apparently had a rough day, with $40 tickets going as low as $5 a pair. At halftime, the MVs did a lackluster arrangement of Nature Boy and then the traditional Hokie Pokie wh... - Saturday, January 05, 2002:
Untitled Post New Year's in Jacksonville: Part I of II I'm feeling mostly better now, and ready to take on a new semester of composition and other enthralling musical ventures. I think I had some variant on the flu, and of course it came at a disappointing time. My friends from Tech, Scott, Wythe, & Nikki, drove down to Tallahassee on Sunday and rolled into town around ten o' clock or so. We got up for a leisurely breakfast of eggs and toast the next morning and were on the road for Jacksonville by 11:30. Scott drove the "party van" and I followed in my car, since we'd be heading our own separate ways after the game. Nikki's dad had secured us a room in the Navy Lodge at the Naval Air Station for $48 a night, whic... - Saturday, December 22, 2001:
Untitled Post A Few Days Up North: Part III of III After a leisurely breakfast of bacon and eggs, we got back on the road around 11:30 to head back to Virginia. Nikki had done all the highway driving the previous two days, so I offered to drive the whole way back. The weather was sunny but chilly, and there was only one major delay in Connecticut. In New York, we took the Tappan Zee Bridge back across the river (being the educated return travelers that we were) and avoided all the city traffic. New Jersey wasn't as fun since we hit the turnpike at the peak of rush hour, but it was probably better to hit that jam than a jam in New York or D.C. We finally got back to Montclair around eight in the evening, and I drove from ther... - Friday, December 21, 2001:
Untitled Post A Few Days Up North: Part II of III We got back on the road around eight in the morning, but made the mistake of taking the GW Bridge through New York (being the unsophisticated Southern travelers that we were). Because of that and the damp windy conditions in southern Massachusetts, we didn't get to Boston until three in the afternoon. Drivers in Boston are even worse than Tallahassee, with enough blatant red-light running and double parking for the whole family. The New England Conservatory was even smaller in scope than Westminster -- two academic buildings on the edge of southern Boston, and a single dormitory. The quality of musicianship was obviously very high, judging from the sounds of pract... - Thursday, December 20, 2001:
Untitled Post I'm back in Alexandria now, and finished up the last of my Christmas shopping early this morning. I was down in Springfield to go malling, so I got to try out some of the recent additions to the "mixing bowl" project where I-95, I-395, and I-495 all meet at the same time. Traffic is horrible during this in-between time, but it looks like things may actually run smoothly when everything is finally open in about twenty years. A Few Days Up North: Part I of III The trip to grad schools was a fairly successful one. I drove down to Montclair, VA early Monday morning and we finally left the area around 9:30, missing most of the commuter traffic that plagues the D.C. area. The drive to Princeton was... - Saturday, December 15, 2001:
Untitled Post I know I said there wouldn't be any updates for a while, but with so many people still visiting on a daily basis, I feel compelled to say something for my loyal readership. I left Tallahassee at 5:30 on Wednesday morning and was stuck in pea-soup fog until Savannah, Georgia or so. The trip, though long, was fairly uneventful for the most part, and I made it to Blacksburg around 4 PM (about 730 miles). I did have a close call on I-77 outside of Columbia though. The fog had lifted by this point, and up ahead, I could see a 12-foot metal ladder stretched perpendicularly across a lane of traffic. I quickly changed lanes, but the dumbass driver of a semi in front of me decided to hit the ladder head on at about eighty miles an ... - Saturday, November 10, 2001:
Untitled Post A Weekend in Blacksburg: Part IV of IV Monday morning, I wandered on to campus to catch up with the music faculty. The BT still provides free transportation to students and I'd brought along my old Hokie Passport, kept around for the sole possibility of conning unsuspecting transit companies out of the $0.50 fee. Even though the buses were slow as ever, it was still a better solution than driving the rental car that I didn't have to a campus with twice as many students as parking spots, where the fines are usually $30 per ticket. I checked in with the faculty, dropping off Brick House, Edition II with Dave McKee, and securing a possible performance of Badinage on a CD ... - Friday, November 09, 2001:
Untitled Post A Weekend in Blacksburg: Part III of IV Sunday in Blacksburg was a relaxing affair. After breakfast at a bagel shop(pe), Nikki and I drove up to Mountain Lake to poke around the wildlife and enjoy the nice November weather. Unfortunately, the parking lots were closed off at the resort, so we could only drive by the water. The lake, which had started draining a few years ago, now covers less than half of its original surface area, and the boat ramp has been "temporarily" extended with floaters for about one hundred and fifty yards before finally reaching the new edge of the water. It was a pretty sad sight, since I'd seen the lake when it was fuller (pictures on the Photos page under May 2000). That after... - Thursday, November 08, 2001:
Untitled Post A Weekend in Blacksburg: Part II of IV After a late night spent catching up with friends and hearing the latest topics in useless gossip and rumours, I was roused from my sleep around nine o' clock the next morning by a phone call. Philip, Shac, Liz, and I watched the Pittsburgh game at noon, which was a horrible display of uncohesiveness as Tech lost 7-38. Kelley was off in Lexington earning gig money and Nikki was doing the student teaching thing by taking her students to All-District tryouts some three hours away. The rest of the day was pretty low-key. I checked in on my cat a few times, since everyone in that apartment was away for the weekend. Blacksburg really hasn't changed much in si... - Wednesday, November 07, 2001:
Untitled Post A Weekend in Blacksburg: Part I of IV I got to Tallahassee Regional by cab around 1:30 on Friday afternoon. After breezing through the security checkpoint (complete with the two National Guardsmen that are now fixtures in every airport), I ended up sitting around the empty airport for about two and a half hours before my flight arrived. In Atlanta, I had a quick meal and sat around for a couple more hours. I sat next to a guy from Bermuda who was apparently heading for Covington, Virginia. His accent was so thick that I could barely understand a single word, but I think we talked about being a chef, playing in a band, and time zones. Right before my connection flight left, I was paged to the counter...
