Vacation

Vacation Log Part 1: San Francisco

by

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….

Summer 2024 Vacation Photos (Long-Delayed)

by

I’d let this project fall to the side for a while, but I started coming back to it last week, and this morning before work, I finally finished processing and uploading my photos from our summer 2024 vacation up to Victoria, B.C.

If you’d like to scroll through someone else’s vacation photos, I have them split into two albums on Flickr: 2024 Summer Vacation 1: Sequim and Port Angeles and 2024 Summer Vacation 2: Victoria, B.C.. Otherwise, here’s a one-shot-per-day sampler.

My wife and I on a hotel rooftop deck, with green fields under a blue sky filled with fluffy grey clouds.
Day 1, Sequim: At our hotel in Sequim.
A Nikon camera with an old reflex telephoto lens attached.
Day 2, Port Angeles: While wandering through antique stores, we stumbled across this very cool old lens, a Nikkor 500mm f/8 reflex telephoto, still with its original carry case and filter set. If you’re into quirky old photo gear, I have more shots of and by this lens.
Flat stones on a sandy beach, in a nearly monochromatic image.
Day 3, Klaloch Beach: Playing with the new lens while walking along Klaloch Beach. The out-of-focus rocks in the distance show the characteristic “donut” effect caused by the mirror setup of the reflex lens.
A whale's flukes break the surface of the sea as water streams off of them, with forested hills visible in the distance.
Day 4, Whale Watching: A whale watching tour on the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Port Angeles and Victoria.
A snow-covered mountain in the far distance, rising above marshlands and out-of-focus driftwood in the foreground.
Day 5, Dungeness Wildlife Refuge: We took a nice, long, slow wander about a third of the way out along the spit at the wildlife refuge. Lots of birds and gorgeous views of Mt. Baker.
A dimly-lit basement with a gigantic spider sculpture.
Day 6, Port Angeles: On our last day in Port Angeles we went on their “underground” walking tour. Not as much underground as Seattle’s, but historical walking tours are generally fun, and this one was occasional enhanced by Halloween decorations that never got removed after the 2020 pandemic shutdown; apparently when the tours started again, enough people were amused by them that they’re just year-round decorations now.
A man wearing a keffiyah and waving a Palestinian flag stands next to a row of people holding an elongated Palestinian flag on the steps in front of Victoria's Parliament building.
Day 7, Victoria: We ferried over to Victoria, took a carriage ride tour through one of the historical neighborhoods, and then happened to be walking by the Parliament building when a protest against the Palestinian genocide was getting started.
On a hilltop with Camelot visible in the distance, a tiny knight in armor on horseback raises a sword in salute.
Day 8, Victoria: The Miniature World Museum was a fun treat, with lots of intricately detailed miniature dioramas of scenes past and future, real and fantastical. Our day also included high tea at the Empress Hotel and an evening walk along the waterfront.
Water drips from a bamboo pipe into a circular basin with a square indentation in the center. It's visually satisfying in an incredibly generic sort of way.
Day 9, The Butchart Gardens: We bussed up to spend most of the day at the Butchart Gardens, which are beautiful. Lots of pretty landscapes and flowers…and this, what I think is probably the most hilariously “should be sold with the generic artwork in frames at Ross or T.J. Maxx and hung in a mid-tier hotel somewhere” photo I’ve taken yet.
A 1960s stereo on display in a museum. It's made of two wooden cases, one on the right to hold LPs, the other on the left, twice as wide, to hold the turntable and central control panel. Black spherical speakers are on either side. The whole thing is probably about eight feet wide.
Day 10, The Royal BC Museum: The museum had an exhibit with a lot of mid-century-modern items as part. There were several stereos like this one that I’d love to have (if I had the space and budget to ignore practicality, neither of which I do).
A narrow brick alley, strung with lights and round red paper lanterns.
Day 11, Victoria: For our last day in Victoria, we took two walking tours: a food tour in the morning, and a ghost walk tour in the evening. Both were a lot of fun.
A snow-covered mountain in the distance under a clear blue sky and with flat blue ocean in the foreground.
Day 12: Heading Home: And then we hopped back on the ferry, caught a nice view of Mt. Baker on our way back to Washington, and drove back home.

(Last) Summer Vacation Photos

by

It took longer than planned (as many projects often do), but I finally completed processing my photos from our vacation last summer.

If you’d like to spend a little time browsing through someone else’s vacation photos, there are four albums up on my Flickr account:

Part one: From Seattle to New York City by cross-country Amtrak.

2023 Summer Vacation Part 1: SEA to NYC

Part two: Two days in New York City.

2023 Summer Vacation Part 2: New York City

Part three: New York City to London by transatlantic cruise on the Queen Mary II.

2023 Summer Vacation Part 3: NYC to LON

Part four: Four days in London, and then flying home.

2023 Summer Vacation Part 4: London

Finally My Turn for COVID

by

I haven’t said anything about this until now, and especially not on Facebook, because I didn’t want to deal with the inevitable flood of “have you tried…” and “you should…” and other such unsolicited advice in the comments (so, please, none of that here either), but:

Damn, COVID is no fun, y’all (and I have relatively mild symptoms).

I’d managed to avoid it until now, even to the point where I was staring to wonder (though not very seriously) if I might be one of the rare few with some amount of natural immunity. Well, that idle fantasy is no more: It was just the right combination of vaccines, boosters, and well-applied caution and masking.

However, when you take a three-week vacation that includes a week on an ocean liner, you accept certain risks. Which we had — though, admittedly, we hadn’t anticipated those risks including a tablemate showing up for dinner obviously ill, sniffling, coughing, bleary eyed, all while assuring everyone that it was “nothing” and “just some bacterial thing” and “not contagious”. In retrospect, we should have excused ourselves immediately, but the combination of wanting to enjoy the fancy dinner and the social pressure of not wanting to look rude (though really, he was the one being rude) meant we stayed and just hoped we’d be lucky enough to escape infection.

We were not lucky.

My wife got hit first, a little over halfway through the ocean voyage, and I started feeling it (though much more mild symptoms) a few days later, right towards the end of our stay in London. We COVID tested when she started feeling ill, and it came up negative, so we hoped that it was just a cold, flu, or other some such thing. We spent the rest of our vacation taking things a bit easier, taking cabs around London instead of walking or using buses or the Underground, taking a couple evenings to rest instead of finding more things to do, and of course, masking anytime we were indoors or in crowds (with some brief exceptions for selfies).

But we tested again when we got home, and I pinged positive — a surprise to us both, as my wife continued to test negative even though she had more severe symptoms than I did. But there it was, and with that, we’re just figuring that we managed to test her at exactly the right (wrong) times to miss the peak of detectability.

So, we’ve been isolating at home since we got back from our vacation, and while I’m back at work this week, I’m fortunate enough to have a job where I can just let them know I’ll be working from home instead of coming into the office. This seems to have been a good decision, as my next test 48 hours after the first one also showed positive, though with a much lighter line.

We’re also fortunate that my symptoms have been relatively mild, and my wife’s, while not as mild, still land in the general realm of a bad cold or notable flu rather than anything more serious than that. It’s not fun for either of us, and we’re both getting tired of “sick people food” (there has been a lot of soup since we got back home), but at least we have the ability to stay at home, take care of ourselves, and avoid risking anyone else. And hopefully, we’ll be through the worst of this in another few days.

But for now? We’re grumpy, and incredibly annoyed at our tablemate on the ship. Though we’ll never know for sure, and the source could have been someone else (we were virtually the only people we saw on the ship wearing masks at any point), he’s such an obvious likely vector that he has definitely been receiving the brunt of our ire.

Such a pity that people suck so much. I was really enjoying my “no COVID so far” status. No more of that for me, though.

Vacation Videos

by

As we were traveling, every so often I’d take some short time-lapse videos (using the apparently now discontinued Hyperlapse app) of wherever we were at the moment. I’ve collected those together into the following two videos: one of the SEA-NYC transcontinental Amtrak trip, and one of the NYC-LON transatlantic voyage (along with some London sights).

SEA to NYC

NYC to LON

Year 50 Day 120

by

Me in a the very empty lobby of the DoubleTree hotel.

Day 120: Today was all about napping and adjusting to the time difference. It was also an amusingly quiet mid-week stay at the DoubleTree with nothing else going on at the hotel. I’ve remarked on it before, but after spending so much time here over the past decade and a half during conventions, it’s always a little jarring to see the hotel this empty and undecorated.

Year 50 Day 119

by

My wife and I, masked, seated in an airplane.

Day 119: Goodbye London! We checked out of our hotel, caught a cab to Heathrow, and boarded our plane for home. After a long day of flying (two flights, with a brief layover in Calgary), we landed in Seattle. Instead of going straight home, however, we went to the DoubleTree Hotel near the airport (which, thanks to Norwescon, we’re very familiar with) so that we could spend two nights there huddled behind their heavy-duty blackout curtains in an attempt to force our clocks through the eight-hour time change.

Read more

Year 50 Day 118

by

My wife and I outside Westminster Abbey.

Day 118: Today we started off at Westminster Abbey, including the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries special exhibit, which has an incredible view of the abbey (but doesn’t allow photos) in addition to the extra artifacts on display. The abbey is beautiful, and it was neat to glance around and constantly be seeing another tomb or memorial with a historical name I recognized.

As we were waiting for our entrace time to the abbey we walked around the blocks surrounding it, getting some gorgeous views of the Palace of Westminster (Parliament) and Big Ben (technically the Elizabeth Tower; Big Ben is the bell), seeing New Scotland Yard, and some statues of famous people — including Abraham Lincoln. So yes, we went to London to visit a Lincoln memorial. ;)

After Westminster we walked over to Buckingham Palace, then took a stroll through Hyde Park to the Marble Arch (which is under renovation, so is currently serving as a Vodaphone advertisement), and then went on to Selfridge’s department store. Which may seem like a slightly odd tourist destination, but we had recently watched a surprisingly interesting PBS documentary on Henry Selfridge and the store that bears his name, so we had fun wandering through.

Finally, we ended the day with a visit to the London Eye ferris wheel and its beautiful views of London.

Read more

Year 50 Day 117

by

My wife and I at the Tower of London, with the White Tower visible behind us.

Day 117: We kicked off our day at the Tower of London, heading in as soon as the gates opened and starting by going straight for the Crown Jewels (which, phrased that way, sounds much more heist-y than it actually was). It’s a great way to make sure you can better appreciate them — it wasn’t much later at all in the day when we saw lines forming, where we were able to head right into the exhibit. Once done with those, we spent the rest of the morning just slowly working our way through the rest of the Tower exhibits at our own pace.

Once done with the Tower, and after taking some time to rest, we headed off for a Jack the Ripper walking tour of Whitechapel run by and ending with a visit to the Jack the Ripper Museum. This was a fun way to see a lot of the back streets and areas that we wouldn’t have wandered into on our own, all while getting an amusingly sensationalized (and occasionally conspiracy-theory-enhanced) account of the Jack the Ripper murders and mystery.

After that, since we didn’t have anything else planned and figured we could both use some more time to rest, we just settled into our hotel room and watched Mary Poppins, which seemed like a perfect choice after a couple of days exploring London.

Read more

Year 50 Day 116

by

My wife and I at Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London. We're in one of the upper galleries overlooking the stage and floor area. Other audience members are finding their spots for the performance behind us.

Day 116: Our first day of exploring London!

We started with a visit to the British Museum, which is a huge, gorgeous museum packed with loot artifacts stolen acquired from across the globe. It’s also so popular that I found it impossible to really enjoy the visit — there’s absolutely no opportunity to actually stop and appreciate anything, because there are simply so many other people crowded in, pushing through, and all to often either stepping directly in front of you or physically pushing you aside so that they can see whatever you’re trying to look at. Honestly, as gorgeous as the museum is, and as impressive as its collection is, the actual experience was something of a disappointment. That said, we made the most of it, and did see a lot of neat stuff.

Once we finished with the museum, we came back to the hotel to rest for a while. Then we were off again! We took a cab up to Shakepeare’s Globe, walked across the Millennium Bridge and around St. Paul’s Cathedral (sadly, there was no old woman selling crumbs to feed the birds for tuppence a bag), saw a rainbow over London as we came back across the Millennium Bridge, and then watched an incredibly good performance of Macbeth at the Globe.

Read more