Vacation Log Part 5: Brussels

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And now for Belgium (my apologies for using such rude language)!

Day 12 (part 2): Amsterdam to Brussels

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

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

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

GPS track log of our route from Amsterdam, through Rotterdam, Breda, and Antwerp, and ending in Brussels.
Delays and train swaps and all, it was a really pretty trip.

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

Panoramic view of a large cobblestoned square surrounded on all sides by large, ornate gothic and gold-trimmed buildings.
Brussels’ Grand Place, the central square of the city, was just about a ten minute walk from our hotel.
GPS track log of our first evening’s wandering around central Brussels.
For two people tired after a long day of travel, we didn’t do too well at staying put once we arrived.

Day 13: Brussels

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

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

Selfie of my wife and I in front of a stone alcove with a fountain made of a small bronze sculpture of a small boy peeing.
This funny little fountain is a huge part of the Brussels culture. Images of it are everywhere.

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

Me browsing through CD sleeves in a big bin of used CDs separated into various categories with plastic dividers, in a store with yellow walls covered with shelves of records, box sets, and other music items.
Ended up coming out with a Hooverphonic album from the early 2000s, a techno/industrial sampler from 1993 called Blood and Computers (I have Vol. 2 already, so it was fun to find Vol. 1), an album from a band whose name I don’t remember right now but who was described as New Wave/Buggles/OMD-inspired because I wanted to get at least one thing I was totally clueless about…and the old Songs in the Key of Springfield Simpsons soundtrack album at my wife’s request.

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

GPS track log map of our day wandering around central Brussels.
Even with a few hours of midday rest, we definitely still got our steps in.

Day 14 (part 1): Brussels to…?

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

Two shelves of reproductions of the Mannekin Pis peeing boy statue, in various sizes and in gold, silver, or bronze colors, stacked several rows deep.
Just one small section of one tourist shop in the train station. If you’re ever in a sudden need for a small figure of a urinating boy, Brussels is the place to be.

Vacation Log Part 4: Amsterdam

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…the Netherlands, and Amsterdam!

Day 10 (part 2): Berlin to Amsterdam

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

A train monitor display showing a map of our route from Berlin to Amsterdam and the stops along the way.
Our first in-Europe country hop!

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

To the right of the photo, a paved path leads by some small apartment buildings. To the left of the path is a grassy green area with pretty trees, and to the left of that is the blue water of a small canal, with small personal boats tied up along the banks.
If you’re going to have a bit of a walk to get to your hotel, you could do far worse than this.

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

GPS track log map of us walking from our Berlin hotel to the tram stop, then taking that to the train station.
Walking to the local tram stop, then taking that to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof.
GOS track log map of our journey from Berlin to Amsterdam.
Berlin to Amsterdam!
GPS track log map of our route from the Amsterdam train station to our hotel.
Tram from the train station, and then a short walk to the hotel.

Day 11: Amsterdam

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

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

Very wide painting of a group of men in fancy 1600’s military dress.
My only iPhone shot of the day from the Rijksmuseum, to take advantage of the wide lens. Militia Company of District VIII in Amsterdam under the Command of Captain Roelof Bicker by Bartholomeus van der Helst, c. 1643.

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

A bicycle with a smaller front wheel and an extended front section covered to form a small enclosure for a child to ride in.
I saw a lot of this style of cargo bike, some kitted out like this as a child carrier, and some with a more utilitarian cargo compartment.

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

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

GPS track log of our day in Amsterdam, mostly in the city center.
The longer straighter line is the tram from our hotel to the museum plaza, the rest is us wandering wherever our feet took us.

Day 12 (part 1): Amsterdam to…?

And it’s our next travel day!

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

Panoramic shot of a traditional Dutch windmill rising over trees and green fields.
We did manage to spot a number of traditional Dutch windmills out the window of our train after we got out of Amsterdam and into the countryside. This was the closest we got.

Vacation Log Part 3: Berlin

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From Frankfurt, we rode the train northwest to Berlin!

Day 8 (part 2): Frankfurt to Berlin

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

With modern office buildings in the distance, the remnants of a war-damaged large stone cathedral rise behind a sign for the Zoologischer Garten train station and a street performer dressed in a large blue inflatable costume of Disney’s Stitch.
Our first view of Berlin once we left the train station: The beautifully preserved ruins of the original Kaiser Wilhelm church building and a Stitch street performer.

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

Me wearing an ‘I (heart) S F’ t-shirt standing in front of a wall decorated with a map of San Francisco centered on the Mission district.
I ♥️ Serendipitous Food (choices)

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

My wife and I on a cobblestone street, each holding small cups of ice cream.
We’re really enjoying how so many eateries have outdoor seating areas.

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

Day 9: Berlin

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

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

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

Selfie of my wife and I with two large hippos munching on grass cuttings in the background.
Guess what? Hippo butt!

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

Panoramic view of tall walls made of grids of blue stained glass squares, and a large pipe organ on a platform with multiple rows of staggered sizes of silver pipes.
The inside of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is gorgeous.

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

GPS track log map showing our path to, from, and wandering around the Berlin Zoo.
20,567 steps and 9.37 miles.

Day 10 (part 1): Berlin to…?

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

Vertical panoramic shot of the inside of the Berlin train station, from the metal-girded glass arched ceiling at the top, two levels connected by stairs and escalators, and a lowest level with a train and empty tracks next to platforms, all with crowds of people.
Taken from a middle level, looking all the way from the glass ceiling to the long-distance train platforms at the bottom.

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

Vacation Log Part 2: Frankfurt

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In Part one, we spent two days exploring San Francisco before jetting off for…somewhere else. That somewhere else was Frankfurt, Germany!

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

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

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

Airline seat back display showing a globe with our flight path from San Francisco to Frankfurt.
Up and over, nice straight shot.

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

Panoramic shot of San Francisco as seen from above out the window of our airplane, with a fog bank stretching over the bay but with a bridge and the city visible.
Saying goodbye to San Francisco (and Karl the Fog).

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

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

Selfie of my wife and I standing in the Frankfurt train station, with a sign visible behind us that says, “Herzlich willkommen in Frankfurt am Main Hbf”.
Gotta get that “welcome to Frankfurt” sign in there or y’all wouln’t beleive us. ;)

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

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

Day 6: Frankfurt

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

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

Me, in my T-shirt, black kilt, and Converse shoes, taking a photo of an unpainted white sculpture of a male figure in sweater, jeans, and sneakers, looking pensively at art hung on the wall of the museum.
What’s he looking at, anyway? Photo by my wife.

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

The tower of Frankfurt’s old cathedral as seen from the ground, looking up at where we climbed.
We climbed that! Sure felt that in our legs later on, too….

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

GPS track log map showing this day’s wandering around Frankfurt.
Our day’s wanderings.

Day 7: Frankfurt

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

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

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

Panoramic view of Frankfurt’s Altstadt as seen from the opposite bank of the Main, from the historical museum to the cathedral.
The historical museum is the building to the left with the four-story tower capped by black turrets; we climbed to the top of that tower as part of our museum tour. The cathedral tower we climbed yesterday is to the right.

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

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

Another GPS map track log showing our route around Frankfurt.
Our second day of wandering around Frankfurt’s Altstadt.

Day 8 (part 1): Frankfurt to…?

It’s a travel day!

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

My wife and I sitting on either side of a narrow table in a train cabin, with a train platform visible through the window behind us.
About to leave Frankfurt.

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

I Miss Music Stores

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This has been coming to mind as I travel through Germany on our vacation this year: I really miss music stores. Just like scrolling through Amazon or Netflix is a pale shadow of browsing through a bookstore or a Blockbuster, the convenience of online music shopping (specifically purchasing, though choosing something to stream fits as well) just doesn’t give the same satisfaction as browsing through the bins of a good music store.

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

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

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

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

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

Collage of the covers of the six mentioned albums.
So much good music on these. I can easily recommend any of them.

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

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

Vacation Log Part 1: San Francisco

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A brief note to begin with: I’ll be including a few iPhone photos here and there, but most of my photography for this trip is being done with my “real” camera. And since I want to focus on enjoying the vacation and not processing photos, those will be waiting until some time after we get home before they make it online. Until then, enjoy what’s here and use your imagination. :)

Day 1: Seattle to San Francisco

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

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

Two large backpacks lying on a tile floor, both wrapped in rain/travel covers; one black and tan with a blue cover, and the other all black with a bright orange cover.
We didn’t want to deal with the hassle of roller bags for this trip, so we’re backpacking it. Trussing ‘em up with these rain/travel covers works great for checking them as baggage without worrying about straps flapping all over the place.

First time flying first class. Not bad at all!

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

A BART electronic map showing our location on the red line, down at Milbrae.
We’d started at SFO and were aiming for Montgomery, but went down to Milbrae first.

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

The main street in Chinatown, with red lanterns stretched from side to side over the street, and the street filled with people and stalls.
Apparently this is an every-second-Friday thing and not an everyday thing; we honestly weren’t sure, and were just enjoying the atmosphere.

Day 2: San Francisco

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

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

Selfie of my wife and I on a boat with a sail just visible to one side of us and the San Francisco skyline in the distance behind us.
We’re on a boat!

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

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

GPS tracker map of San Francisco showing our walk along the Embarcadero in red and our sail around the bay in yellows and greens.
I use a GPS tracking app so I can later easily geocode the photos I take with my “real” camera, but it also comes in handy for seeing just where we went over the course of a day.

Day 3: San Francisco

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

An old faded advertisement painted high on the side of a brick building that says, ‘ROOMS 25-30-35-50¢ PER NIGHT $1.50 PER WEEK And Hot and Cold Water Free Baths’.
Our hotel was not this inexpensive, but thankfully still had the listed amenities.

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

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

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

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

A carousel entirely motion blurred as if it was spinning at severely unsafe speeds.
World’s fastest carousel! Or, well, maybe me playing with a long exposure. Maybe.

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

AGPS track map of San Francisco showing our ride to the Mission District, walk from there to Golden Gate Park, and ride back to the financial district.
The lighter colored lines are faster (the BART and Muni trains), the redder lines are slower (walking).

Day 4 (part 1): San Francisco to…?

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

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

Week-and-a-half-ish-ly Notes: August 3–13, 2026

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I missed my target of Sunday for my weekly roundup, and for reasons which will become clear, don’t expect to be making this coming Sunday’s post either, so here we are, with an off-cycle Thursday catchup.

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

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

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

📸 Photos

Sculptural artwork of a girl in a dress perched on a windowsill and reading a book. The entire thing is made out of cardboard and is hung on a brick wall above a printer and computer workstation.
Neat bit of artwork in the Shoreline College library.

📚 Reading

Two books finished recently:

📺 Watching

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

🔗 Linking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

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Book 37 of 2026: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.

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

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

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

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

Me holding The Windup Girl.

Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall

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Book 36 of 2026: Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall.

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

Me holding Night of the Living Trekkies.

Weekly Notes: July 27–August 2, 2026

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  • 🏡 Back at home this week! We had a good week of conference and travel, but it’s always nice to get back into the familiar comfort of our own home.

  • ♿️ Work was fairly uneventful, which is always nice after being away for a while (even if I was technically working last week). No explosions or catastrophes to worry about, at least.

  • 🚀 Yesterday I was able to head down to dig into the physical Norwescon archives, and grab a selection of stuff to bring back home so that I can scan it and get it added to our online archives. Some I’ll be able to keep in my part of the archives (what I’m now calling the “annex”), some will go back down to be re-filed in the primary archives.

📸 Photos

I got my photos from Providence and New York uploaded to Flickr. Here are a few favorites; there are many more in the Flickr album.

A night shot down the Providence river, which runs through downtown Providence. Tall stone buildings lit by streetlights flank a river banked by stone walls, under a deep blue evening sky that fades to a light purple at the horizon behind more city buildings. The sky and buildings are reflected in the surface of the river.
The Providence river in the evening, as we were walking back to our hotel after touring the Lippett House and exploring up around the Brown University campus.
With a slightly blurry dark wooden staircase in the background, a white stone sculpture of a crouching woman with a severe expression looks towards the camera as if angry at the photographer.
I kind of get the feeling she didn’t really want to have her photo taken….
A red brick walkway shaded by tall green oak trees leads to the white marble staircase, edifice, and dome of a large governmental building under a clear light blue sky.
Walking up to the Rhode Island state house building.
A white stone sculpture of a sailor, leaning back slightly on one leg, holding a rope in both hands, wearing a sweater that open and falling off of his shoulders and with the sleeves rolled up to expose a very muscular chest and arms, and with very tight pants rolled up at the cuffs to show off his muscular legs.
There are several 1940’s-era (I think) statues around the Rhosde Island capitol building honoring the various branches of the armed forces. This is the only one I took a picture of. With the style of the time, with that pose, those muscles, and that sweater open to show off that chest…all this sassy sailor boy needs is a leather jacket to be a Tom of Finland model.
A black and white shot of the Empire State Building from street level, symmetrically framed, so that the straight lines of the building rise and converge towards the top center of the photo.
The Empire State Building. We didn’t have time to go up to the top, but it’s pretty impressive from street level, too.

📚 Reading

After getting home, I finished one book I’d started before we left (Star Trek: The Enterprise Logs Volume 2) and one I’d started towards the end of the trip (Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett).

📺 Watching

While working our way through the flights home on Sunday and Monday, I watched the two most recent live-action Predator movies, Prey and Predator: Badlands. I’m definitely enjoying how Dan Trachtenberg is expanding the Predator mythos, without feeling restricted by following a particular storyline or set of characters, but playing with different stories within the broader universe.

🎧 Listening

This week’s main listening has been a new two-part post-punk/EBM/goth/industrial compilation from Sideline Magazine, United 1 – The Freya Files and United 2 – The Odin Files. Both are free to download, but if you chip in a little money, all proceeds go to support humanitarian and frontline aid efforts in Ukraine (I did).

🔗 Linking

  • Emily Wilson at the London Review of Books: An Uncomplicated Man: “Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.

  • Bettina Makalintal at Eater: In the Age of AI, the Analog Restaurant Feels Radical: “The backlash to AI imagery is growing across a certain part of the culture. Sentiment along the lines of ‘I’d rather see a poster made with Sharpie on a scrap of paper than an AI event flyer,’ or ‘I’m not going to your restaurant if the ad is the AI’ is proliferating. ‘Frictionmaxxing,’ a term that writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton coined to refer to a rejection of technologies of convenience in favor of slower and more analog processes, has escaped containment, coming to mean the general choice to choose pre-internet ways of creation and problem-solving. In this sense, it can refer to the choice of the handcrafted over the AI-generated.”

  • Julian Fong on Mastodon: “I still don’t use any AI code in my work, but I have to review more and more of it these days. One of the things bothering me about that these days is just how lacking in personality that code is. […] Code is art. I work at a studio full of ungodly talented artists, but I will still die on this hill. Code is often messy and dirty and it’s a pain to create and get right but the results reflect the personality of the creator and the pain of the creation. Just like the rest of art. Sometimes you have to look at the source code to see that, but it’s there if you look for it, hidden beneath the surface. ¶ AI generated code is not art.”

  • Catherine Rampell: Inside Trump’s Stealth Trick to Rig the Census—and Congress (archive.is mirror of a Substack original): “A vaguely ominous but little-noticed regulatory filing issued in late June could have a profound impact on business, immigrants, and the balance of power in our country. […] The actual specifics of those new rules remain scant. But from conversations I’ve been having with people close to the process, it is widely expected that the administration will try to recategorize millions of immigrants (both unauthorized and legal) as not actually living here in the United States.”

  • Danny Katch at Revolution for Cowards: We used to be able to buy things in this country (archive.is mirror of a Substack original): “Why has our society gone backward in this small but really annoying way? Surely there must have been an epidemic of shoplifting? No, there really wasn’t. Instead, the great lotion lockup was a corporate moral panic, which has been a disaster for their profits and for the rest of us a degrading enshittification of running basic errands.”

  • Stephanie Rohler at Star Trek.com: Accommodations On Board: A Celebration of Disability in Star Trek: “None of Star Trek‘s disability portrayals and accommodations have been perfect — but that’s alright. Star Trek still exists as a rare piece of fiction that openly begins discussions about what life with disability looks like, and the adaptations necessary for disabled people to find a comfortable home in society. It’s the fact that Star Trek has and keeps including disabled characters that makes the difference, especially in a modern world that argues so often about the rights of disabled people.”

  • Nikshep Myle at MSN: AI companies are still buying up old books by the pallet – then shredding them: “Every out-of-print volume that disappears into a scanner may be the last copy accessible to anyone outside an AI lab’s servers. Rare, foreign-language, and low-circulation titles – many never digitized elsewhere – vanish from physical existence after a single scan. Who controls humanity’s textual heritage is no longer a question anyone can afford to leave unanswered, especially as the push to build AI Data Centers accelerates the industry’s resource acquisition at every level.”

  • Newsmax: Newsmax and Meta Enter AI Content Partnership (archive.is mirror; I’m not linking directly to Newsmax): Meta is partnering with Newsmax to feed their right-wing claptrap into Meta’s AI chatbots as training material. Don’t be surprised by any Meta chatbot (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.) becoming even more right-wing loony than they already are.

  • Jasmine Nackash at The Pudding: How the Words We Teach English Language Learners Changed, and What That Says About Us: “While these [“essential vocabulary” lists] were practical tools, built to capture which words people need most, the answer also doubles as a snapshot of ordinary life, 70 years apart: what people were expected to engage with, and had to deal with, in their daily lives. ¶ Treating the lists as an indirect record of day-to-day life, I went through the differences between them from a few angles: what the words were about, how tangible were they, and to which parts of speech they belonged.”

  • Cory Turner at NPR: Adults have struggled to set rules for AI in school. These teens figured it out: “Over the course of one frantic, late-July weekend, 98 teens representing all 50 states put their busy lives on hold to try to do something remarkable. ¶ The students, most of them high school juniors and seniors, gathered in a precise replica of the U.S. Senate chamber and attempted what the real, adult Congress has largely failed to do: draft and pass ‘legislation’ to help the nation’s K-12 schools navigate the questions and chaos created by artificial intelligence.”