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.
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.
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.
Walking to the local tram stop, then taking that to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof.Berlin to Amsterdam!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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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).
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.
The inside of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is gorgeous.
After that, we walked back to our hotel and called it a night.
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.
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….
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
About to leave Frankfurt.
And with that, we say goodbye to Frankfurt and hello to…?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Death gets fired, and explores life as a mortal being (more or less), while the rest of the Discworld has to figure out what’s going on when Death isn’t doing Death’s job anymore. It’s easy to see why Death is a favorite character in the Discworld series, as Pratchett continues to do a masterful job of using the character to look at life and make death (the concept) a bit less intimidating.
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. :)
TSA at SeaTac was fine, and we breezed right through. Found our gate, got some lunch, and settled in to wait to board.
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?
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.
Apparently this is an every-second-Friday thing and not an everyday thing; we honestly weren’t sure, and were just enjoying the atmosphere.
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.
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.
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.
A little less walking today…but not by a lot, I still broke 18,000 steps and went almost 9 miles.
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.
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!
The lighter colored lines are faster (the BART and Muni trains), the redder lines are slower (walking).
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….
Book 37 of 2026: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. 2010 Hugo Best Novel winner (tied with China Miéville’s The City and The City).
⭐️: Actively disliked this one; a rare instance where I came very close to bailing out and DNF’ing, and only stuck it out because it’s part of my Hugo Best Novel reading project.
A dystopic future where fossil fuels have run out (and, apparently, renewable options like wind (except for sailing ships), solar, hydro, etc. just…aren’t a thing? anywhere? for no discernible reason?) and power comes through kinetic energy stored in ‘kink springs’, and the resulting societal collapse combined with ecological change has devastated food supplies worldwide. The overall background is basically colonialism; substitute genetic engineering agriculture companies for the East India Tea Company and Thailand for India, and you’ve got the gist. Genetic engineering has progressed enough that there are now “New People”; genetically created intelligent artificial life that is genetically encoded to be servile.
One of these New People is the titular “windup girl” (who isn’t actually windup, but New People are intentionally given a way of moving that mimics stop motion/clockwork creations), a sex slave who is repeatedly abused over the course of the story, with some of these instances being explicitly detailed across multiple pages of the story. The first instance within the first few chapters was more than enough for me, having it happen again and in greater detail and length later on was when I almost bailed out of the book entirely. Instead, I just skimmed past and kept skimming through the rest of the book just to get it done with.
Obviously enough people liked it and found it worthwhile for it to win a Best Novel Hugo award, but I can’t recommend it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: An entertaining adventure as a Star Trek convention becomes ground zero for the zombie apocalypse. A few things here and there that bothered me a bit, but mostly nothing really major. The biggest thing for me was that the authors couldn’t resist giving nearly every person and place very obvious Trek nods for names (the hero is Jim Pike, the hotel is the Botany Bay, and many, many others), and yet, somehow, it seems that none of the die-hard Trek fans at the convention ever notice this or think it’s at all noteworthy. While identifying the names was a fun mini-game as I read, within the context of the story, it broke my suspension of disbelief (apparently, zombies are fine, but insufficiently observant and pedantic Trekkies is over the line).
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: A fun send-up of Hollywood and our tendency to lose ourselves in the “magic” of cinema, as told through the magic of Discworld. Got quite a few laughs out of this entry in the series.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: A shorter book, this is a relatively quick romp through a mashup of three wishes, Discworld’s version of The Odyssey (rather amusing, as I read this just as Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film was in the theaters), and the joys of mid-level bureaucracy. Not bad, but not a standout.
