Britain: Christmas in London

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12/25/2015

We spent Christmas day in London. Anticipating it to be similar to Christmas in the US (a popular holiday, but with things open), we planned on doing a fair amount of stuff. Unfortunately, pretty much everything was closed, and it was both cold and rainy, but we still had a fun day exploring the city.

Lots of balls! This display was intended to give some idea of the size of space. Pretty cool for a department store window.

Lots of balls! This display was intended to give some idea of the size of space. Pretty cool for a department store window.

On Christmas eve, we’d gone along the Thames – south of where we were staying. For Christmas, we headed north and west, out of the central Marylebone area into Little Venice, Notting Hill, Paddington, and Hyde Park.

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First stop: Baker Street. In particular: 221B Baker Street, to visit the residence of one my favorite fictional characters, Sherlock Holmes. I remember my grandfather gave me a Sherlock Holmes stories when I was maybe 10 or 12, and I absolutely loved them. I even remember him telling me that Holmes had since retired to live in the country as a beekeeper (now a movie). I knew that Conan Doyle, the author of the Holmes stories, had invented a fictional address. Maybe to save some unfortunate Londoner from regular harrassment. There’s no actual 221B – or at least, there wasn’t. Now there’s a Sherlock Holmes museum, which you can visit. Naturally, it was closed for Christmas (and I wouldn’t have wanted to go in anyway – a tiny museum in a fictional place dedicated to a fictional character). We posed outside among the Japanese tourists who were also taking photos. The apartment/museum is suprisingly close to the large Regents Park.

Ha! Candid photo at the start of the day's exploration, near Marylebone.

Ha! Candid photo at the start of the day’s exploration, near Marylebone.

We followed the border of this park north, and it was already starting to get dark at this point. This was a problem for the duration of the trip. Although milder than the US, the UK is much further north than even NY (look on a map). So although I was expecting it to get dark early, the sun was already down by 4pm! In the dark, we visited Abbey Road for more photos, trying to remember which way to face while crossing.

Abbey Road

Abbey Road

Abbey Road itself is a pretty busy intersection, and you have to pity the local drivers, with all the tourists frozen mid-stride on the crosswalk. This area of the city is pretty far outside the center, and we curved further away from our lodging to visit a few more neighborhoods. Our ultimate goal was Notting Hill. Alex loves Hugh Grant, so it was a must-visit.

Little Venice in the murky weather

Little Venice in the murky weather

On the way, I was curious to see ‘Little Venice’. After all, we’d seen ‘Big Venice’ the year before. It’s basically three canals whose banks are filled with houseboats, and felt closer to Amsterdam than Venice – perhaps also due to the cold weather. (Clarification: Alex doesn’t really love Hugh Grant).

Awesome sculpture made of soap - it was slowly disintegrating in the rain.

Awesome sculpture made of soap – it was slowly disintegrating in the rain.

Notting Hill was a bit of a disappointment to me. Cute, but it was filled with BnBs and hotels, probably because of the cachet of the name and fact that it’s not too far from Westminster and Buckingham Palace. That said, we found a really cozy little pub… perhaps the second that we saw open all day (I managed to track it down online – Sun in Splendour).

It turns out that pubs in Britain have a separate kind of tap for some beers, a handpull. They’re supposed to aerate the beer, but in practice I didn’t notice much difference. Some brands always seemed to be served via handpulls, while others were on regular taps. I naturally ordered these handpull beers, since they seemed more exotic – my favorite was Doom Bar, not least because of the awesome name.

It was a long walk back along Hyde Park to the School of Economics, where we were staying, and we headed to bed early. We had a travel mishap, uncovered a few days early, that meant we’d be getting up extra early to arrive in our second city of the trip, Manchester.

Britain: Christmas Eve in London

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After my first trip to Europe, I rapidly settled on a particular style of travel: thorough research, lots of cities, lots of walking. Focusing more on neighborhoods than on tourist sites. And I haven’t really tried traveling in another way since.

For Christmas and New Years, Alex and I visited the UK. We kept up a very aggressive schedule, one that led me to rethink this method of travel a bit. I’ll discuss why in a bit… but this was the apotheosis of the style of travel I’m most familiar with.

Our itinerary, from London to Edinburgh

Our itinerary, from London to Edinburgh

How do I plan for these trips? These are methods that I first started using myself, but which scale really well to multiple people – so they’ve helped Alex and I coordinate quite a bit. It’s all in the tools. After deciding on a place to visit (ie, Britain), we create a shared Google Doc to put “must-see” sights or things that friends told us about. That involves looking at other people’s itineraries, local websites, and tour guides. For this trip to Britain, we had a lot of options – there’s so much history, and a diversity of both landscape and urban style. We can both edit simultaneously without worrying that someone will have an out of date itinerary. So it’s easy to throw together resources and clean them up later. For Britain, we considered the following destinations: London, Canterbury, Oxford, Cambridge, Wales, Manchester, York, Newcastle/Hadrian’s Wall, Edinburgh, St Andrew’s, Glasgow, and even Paris (via the Chunnel).

After choosing a set of destinations, next step is elimination. We had a bit over a week of vacation time available, and once we found cheap tickets, we knew there were three fixed destinations on our timeline: London, from which we arrived and departed, and Edinburgh, where we had plans for New Year’s Eve. We could fly from London to Edinburgh, spend a lot of time in London, maybe do a short trip to Paris. Or we could work our way up through the country and see stuff within England.

We opted for the latter, preferring to get a better picture of as much of Britain as possible, rather than see London, Edinburgh and Paris. Within England, we wanted to see a Premier League soccer game, and among the various options, the one that aligned best with our schedule was in Manchester. I’d heard about York as a really cool medieval city with alleyways and twists and turns, and city walls, and we were interested in the far north as well, near Hadrian’s Wall and Durham.

Having selected destinations, we next figure out where to go within each city. The key tool for that is Google’s My Maps. It’s basically Google Maps, but you can save any location that interests you, view it on your phone, etc. I create a new map, find the city (eg, London), and then drop pins in all the sights in our document: museums, parks, squares, cathedrals, etc. I use wikivoyage for basic research. This map is invaluable, because it does a good job clarifying where in the city is most interesting – and thus, where we should find lodging. Here’s our map of London. This map is also handy to track restaurant recommendations from friends, as well.

Locations decided and hotels booked, the only step remaining is to arrange travel between cities. All this goes into the doc, including addresses, phone numbers, and times. I print a copy of this doc for each of us, in case we don’t have internet access or phone batteries die. Be prepared!

I like this planning process, (it sounds like it’s a lot of work, but in reality within half an hour of lazy research you can have a quick picture of a city). If you know about better tools for this sort of thing, I’d love to hear about them.

What I’ve found, and which I felt was a problem even prior to visiting Britain, was that it’s too easy to research. For instance, it’s easy to look at Google street view and get 1/4 of the impact of being somewhere. Or you can watch endless travel videos on YouTube, mostly with shaky cameras. Hundreds of photos are available on Instagram or Flickr with a simple search. All these seem to dilute the impact of the place when you actually arrive. I’ve cut back on this type of research, preferring to see something with fresh eyes rather than be even more prepared.

My new policy, which I instituted for London, and fully committed to for our next trip to Istanbul, is not to see any visual depictions of the place if I can avoid them. Wikivoyage doesn’t have a lot of photos, so that’s good, and I prefer guide books that don’t have glossy photos (I’d rather have more details anyway). Instead of watching YouTube videos, I’ll read a book set in the location or about the history or culture. That enhances understanding, without diluting the experience.

Arriving in London

Rambles in London. First day in red, second day in blue.

Rambles in London. First day in red, second day in blue.

We flew into Heathrow and took the tube into London. That in itself defied expectations. NYC subway cars are broad, tall, with a layer of filth, and there’s lots of standing room. London tube cars were cozy. Two rows of facing upholstered chairs, with low ceilings. It felt like traveling in a hobbit hole… I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but it reaffirmed things I’d previously heard about the British preferring snug little accomodations. The tube stations were different than NYC as well: deeper, with a warren of tunnels. When we stepped out, we found ourselves in central London (Holborn Station), early on the morning of Christmas Eve. It was cool, but not chilly, with a misty rain. We wandered, getting our bearings. Our eventual destination was Shoreditch, the trendy ‘Brooklyn’ of London. (Comparing the trendy/revitalized downtown areas of foreign cities to Brooklyn irks me, but I guess it’s a useful shorthand for “trendy, rapidly gentrifying, hipster neighborhood”).

Shoreditch street art, under a bridge.

More Shoreditch street art, under a bridge.

On our way, we ended up walking past Charles Dickens’ house (now a museum, but just one of a great many identical little rowhouses on a broad street).

Street art

Street art

Shoreditch, which is a fun word to say, is the platonic ideal of the gentrified UK industrial zone. Apparently it’s even become a verb: ‘shoreditchify’. Regardless, it’s a nice area. Lots of cool street art, restaurants, but still with very old Georgian overtones. It felt old and new alike. Even better, it’s right near Brick Lane, a street completely full of Indian restaurants (also Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bengali cuisine). We had some curry there. I really enjoyed it. Having worked at an Indian restaurant, and eaten a lot of Indian food in the US, I know the basics of Indian food… and there was a lot more variety here.

Damien Hirst statue outside the Gherkin

Damien Hirst statue outside the Gherkin

From there, we arced South, towards The City and Whitechapel. The City is the business/financial district, most known for the ‘Gherkin‘, as well as London Tower and Tower Bridge. Somehow, I’d conflated London Bridge, which has a recognizable name, with Tower Bridge, which has a recognizable appearance. We crossed to the south side of the Thames on Tower Bridge, which is really as beautiful as the photos lead you to believe.

Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge

From there we continued along the Thames, taking in the views of London tower, before crossing back to check out St Paul’s Cathedral (closed without tickets), and eventually making our way to the London School of Economics. Why visit there? During holidays they rent out the dorms, so we had a cheap stay in downtown London. It felt like being back in college, down to the complimentary cafeteria breakfast.

Our dorm room

Our dorm room

After dropping off our backpacks, we went back out to find food. This was a tremendous challenge. Unlike in the US, things really shut down for three days during Christmas in the UK. Most supermarkets were closed, nearly all restaurants as well. We stopped in the local Chinatown and found some snacks, and found the restaurants opn – but with a Christmas ‘special:’ pricey prix fixe. We passed on that.

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We also went through Leicester Square, which had a cute Christmas festival going on (ferris wheel, booths, etc), and walked past Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Both really cool. One of my preconceptions about London was that all the big sights were both close together and awkwardly positioned around the Thames, like a tacky amusement park. But the reality didn’t bear that out. In fact, the layout of the city is pretty graceful.

Having arrived early, seen the sights over the course of a long day, and now that it was past dark, we returned to our dorm room, keeping an eye open for any pub or restaurant at all. And we had a stroke of good luck: there was a bar two blocks from the dorm. Even better: they had amazing mulled wine, and gave out little party poppers to celebrate the holiday. So our dinner was wine, beer, and potato chips (“crisps”). Regardless it felt cozy: the quiet dark city around us, cold weather pressing in on the windows, warm mulled wine in our hands and friendly people around us. Christmas Eve in London.

Washington State: Finishing Up

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9/5/2015-9/6/2015

We had two more lazy days in Port Townsend, though six months later, I don’t quite remember the chronology.

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Just outside town (within walking distance), is a small state park – Fort Worden. There’s a pricey artillery museum, some hiking trails, some bunkers, and also a marine wildlife museum. I’d been to the park quite a few times, but never to the wildlife museum. It’s pretty conspicuous and was composed of two buildings: a traditional sort of museum, and then an aquarium built on top of a pier that pumped up water from the Puget sound. The museum was a little dull, and was basically just a huge Orca skeleton – though that was interesting after seeing a real wild orca a few days previous.

Starfish and anemones in the aquarium

Starfish and anemones in the aquarium

The aquarium was actually really cool, though. There were a variety of sea stars and anemones, including some you could touch, and a lot of tiny fish, kelp forests, and so on. We got to talk to some very dedicated volunteers about the tanks and just had a good time.

Farmer's market food!

Farmer’s market food!

Another morning we woke up early and stopped by the farmer’s market. There’s two each week, I think, right outside the community center (where Alex demonstrated her Zumba skills as the star of the Zumba class). We tried orange raspberries and a fancy soft cheese, all local to Jefferson county in Washington. The prices were surprisingly reasonable.

Badass Muay Thai poster in the restroom

Badass Muay Thai poster in the restroom

Pretty much the whole time we were on the peninsula, we ate at the local Thai takeout restaurant, 1-2-3 Thai. Alongside Indian, I absolutely love Thai, so I’ve eaten at quite a few places. I have to say there’s something about this particular restaurant – it’s hands-down my favorite Thai food.

Weekly poetry, free to read

Weekly poetry, free to read

We puttered around town for a few days, mostly taking it easy. We walked around town our final night, and I didn’t want to go home – it was an art walk, lots of local galleries open to visitors and lots of free wine and snacks. But nonetheless… we had a long trip home. I think this was the first time Alex and I calculated the number of ‘hops’ a trip would take. It was pretty epic: car (rental) -> ferry -> car (dropoff rental) -> Lyft to airport -> Flight to Dallas -> Airport transit between terminals -> Flight to La Guardia -> Taxi to Penn Station -> PATH train to Jersey -> walk to apartment! That’s 10 hops and 5 forms of transit… but we were home.

Yankee Stadium on the flight home

Yankee Stadium on the flight home

Washington State: Day 6

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9/4/2015

After a few days in Port Townsend, we wanted to get outside. On the recommendation of a friend, we went to Dungeness Spit, near Sequim, Washington, a town known mostly for its lavender farms and retirement homes.

A spit is a sand promontory that extends off the coast. Sand is blown along a beach and deposits at the end. This process, continuing over decades, can form a spit. So basically its a beach with no inland area, and the Dungeness Spit is the largest of these in the US.

German apple pancake. This is after it's "deflated" - it starts out hot and filled with air

German apple pancake. This is after it’s “deflated” – it starts out hot and filled with air

But we didn’t start there. Sequim has the single best pancake place I’ve ever been to, Oak Table Cafe. They serve German apple pancakes, which are voluminous and gooey. I’d been here before but didn’t properly remember just how enormous they were. Alex and I ordered both a pancake and an eggs benedict.

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Needless to say, we left with our plates empty and our bellies aching. If we were to survive, the hike would be a necessity.

Typical view of the spit

Typical view of the spit

Luckily, it was just down the street (a street named “Kitchen-Dick Road,” for the record), as part of a national wildlife refuge.

We hiked out the spit and back, and let’s just that 5.5 miles on the sand is longer than it looks like – we only made it halfway, and because the spit curves we looked no closer to the lighthouse that terminates the spit at the end of the hike, than at the start. Luckily, the weather was beautiful, warm with clear skies.

Driftwood bear? Maybe?

Driftwood bear? Maybe?

As a huge extended beach, one of the defining features is the extensive amount of driftwood of innumerable forms.

Looking landward

Looking landward

Eventually we had to call it quits – we had an appointment back in Port Townsend for mid-afternoon and couldn’t spend the whole day, but we both had a good time.

Lighthouse at the end of the spit

Lighthouse at the end of the spit

We’ll have to reach the lighthouse next time.

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On the way in and out from the parking lot, there’s a short 15-minute hike in a stunning Pacific Northwest forest, the kind where the air itself feels green.

Washington State: Day 5

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9/3/2015

After spending one quiet day in Port Townsend, we spent the next whale watching. This was a birthday gift for Alex, but since I hadn’t gone since I was a kid, it was also a gift for me!

We left right from downtown Port Townsend. The area near Seattle is known for its orcas (among other wildlife), and we actually saw some porpoises the day before from a pier in town. There was a nice boathouse nearby, with a ton of crew shells in it – a surprise to me – and we talked to a really eloquent six-year-old about his dog while buying breakfast.

The weather was nasty – squalls of rain throughout the morning. Actually I kinda liked it, except for the stress of not knowing whether it would prevent us from seeing whales. The little boat we were on was filled with elderly couples and wood paneling. They had a good deal for bottomless coffee/hot chocolate. It was cozy.

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We saw some crazy gyres of birds around schools of fish – usually a sign that whales are nearby, but we didn’t have any luck. It was still cool to see – just a ton of birds diving around.

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Eventually the weather cleared up a little, and we saw what we came for – two orcas just outside the San Juan islands. It’s amazing that you can recognize these orcas by their markings, so we got a whole family history. Orcas are organized into pods, other whales that they travel with which have their own culture. But these two were basically loners, male and female siblings.

Tail slapping

Tail slapping

They didn’t get too close, but it was a blast to see orcas in the wild. We even got to see some tail slapping (it’s unclear why orcas do this).

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Pulling through a narrow inlet on the way to lunch, we got to see a small rock island completely covered in seals and sea lions. The stench was unbearable… but I do like sea lions.

Statue of Popeye

Statue of Popeye

Letting us off for lunch, we wandered around Friday Harbor, a cute tourist town that you can see in a half hour stroll. We had a big brunch before returning to the boat. Our friend on the boat, the coffee/snacks guy, who looked like the prototype of 40-year-old distance runner, had suggested we check out a local mascot: a seal named ‘Popeye’ (so named because he was actually missing one eye). He floated in the marina, near the docks, snacking on anchovies thrown to him by locals and tourists alike.

The real Popeye

The real Popeye

He looked pretty worn, to be honest – one flipper was crippled, but it was a cool opportunity to see wildlife up close (even if he wasn’t that wild).

Sailboat motoring away from Port Townsend

Sailboat motoring away from Port Townsend

The return trip was less eventful than the trip out. There were rumors of various whales in the area. The weather had cleared up, but it didn’t help us find them. I did see a pair of porpoises out the cabin window.

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That’s right, we got to sit right up front in the cabin with the captain… an honor I think would have been more exciting if I was 12.

Looking out at Puget Sound

Looking out at Puget Sound

We got back into town relatively early in the day, so we also took a walk around the downtown area (charming Victorian) and along the water to Chetzamoka Park, a garden/park with great views of the water… and lots of swings.

Who loves swinging?

Who loves swinging?

It was a little drizzly, but totally worth it. I’d actually never visited this park again, and it was one of my favorite in town.

Garden in Chetzamoka Park

Garden in Chetzamoka Park

Washington State: Days 3 & 4

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8/30/2015 – 9/1/2015

We spent two more days in Seattle mostly quiet. Alex wasn’t able to take one day off, so she worked remotely from our AirBnB. It was raining that day, so I ran some errands and also went for a run at a nearby park. It was cool but not chilly. I found a baseball.

View from AirBnB

View from AirBnB

That evening we went out to meet friends – Matt, who I grew up with in NY, and DJ, Alex’s friend from college (and roommate).

Obligatory duckface

Obligatory duckface

We ate a Mexican place with Matt, who’s doing comedy in Seattle, before heading over to a nearby bar (stopping outside to play with the puppy statue outside Trader Joe’s).

Puppy!

Puppy!

The next day, we picked up our rental car to head out to the Olympic peninsula. I’d debated the various routes around the Peninsula… there’s a long driving route on highways that’s mostly boring. And there’s a ferry. I dislike city driving and didn’t want to drive through Seattle, but the cheapest prices were actually renting within the city center, so the ferry, which leaves from right in the middle of the city, was perfect.

Seattle from the ferry

Seattle from the ferry

Besides, it’s quicker, and has the best views.

Almost at Bainbridge Island

Almost at Bainbridge Island

The car rental was slightly delayed… there were some scratches on the car, so the guy filling out the paperwork (this was at Enterprise, I think) was awesome and gave us 3/4 of a tank of gas… we drove that car for half a week and didn’t have to pay for any gas.

Washington State: Day 2

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8/30/2015

We started the second day early, with a walk through Queen Anne, a neighborhood I was growing to like (a sort of dense suburbs with some good arteries for shopping). First stop: Kerry Park (photo up top). This is the park where all the south-facing photos of Seattle are taken, and it’s a great view. There’s a steep drop below it with an apparent elementary school at the bottom.

We were looking to walk along Lake Union, but apparently that’s not a possibility along the west side (highways interfere). Curving down, we went through the tech (Amazon) district. A fruitful stop at Goodwill provided us with Subway Sandwich-branded ’12th man’ hats to blend in with the locals (also: two beer glasses and a corkscrew for 50 cents). For those not in the know, the 12th man is the fans at Seattle sporting events.

Sporting fancy Twelfth Man hat at the game

Sporting fancy Twelfth Man hat at the game

Target: a Seattle Sounders game. I’d been anticipating this game for a very long time – since we started planning the trip. A Sounders game, in Seattle, against their bitter rivals, the Portland Timbers. That’s probably the best game in Major League Soccer each year, and it coincided with our trip. (It turns out the crowd agreed with this assessment: this was the 6th highest-attended MLS game of all time, with 64 thousand people attending)!

The view from the stadium wasn't shabby...

The view from the stadium wasn’t shabby…

Detouring through Uwajimaya Asian market to avoid the rain, we arrived at the stadium early. The atmosphere was great. The Sounders play in the same stadium as the Seattle Seahawks, so this was actually the first time I can remember being in an NFL stadium.

From left: Skinny Drew Carey, possible domestic assailant Hope Solo, badass Megan Rapinoe, and others

From left: Skinny Drew Carey, possible domestic assailant Hope Solo, badass Megan Rapinoe, and others

The pre-game was great (Megan Rapinoe, Hope Solo and Drew Carey did a little award routine in front of the crowd).

PITY!

PITY!

There was also an awesome display in the supporters section, with flags unrolled so that a huge orca swallowed up a logger struggling to swim (Sounders devouring Timbers), and the crowd went nuts. The game was good, but I thought the Timbers played better. The Sounders still managed to pull off a 2-1 win due to a questionable call, so we saw some action and got to see the crowd erupt after a score.

Marination Ka Mai - best shave ice since I was in Hilo

Marination Ka Mai – best shave ice since I was in Hilo

Near the stadium there’s a water taxi, which we took over to West Seattle, my first time to this part of the city. We stayed along the shore here, which had a spectacular view of the city, and had lunch at Marination Ma Kai, a Hawaiian restaurant right on the water, where we indulged in tofu tacos and huge shave ices. I devoured them too quickly to get photos.

Floozies along the West Seattle shore

Floozies along the West Seattle shore

We strolled a nearby waterfront park and savored the view (and the weather, which was nice this day). A skywriter was trying to write “BLACK LIVES MATTER” above the city (this was right after the Bernie Sanders incident with BLM protestors), but only 4-5 letters are visible at any time so the message was mostly lost. I hope it was cheap to hire the skywriter.

Running back to the water taxi

Running back to the water taxi

With the sun setting, we ran back to the water taxi and started the trek north to our AirBnB, passing along the tourist sites.

Classic Photo

Classic Photo

It’s quite a walk after a full day around town, and Uber was ~$5 to get back… so that’s what we did.

Washington State: Day 1

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8/29/2015

Alex and I had visited some cities in the northeast, in the spring of 2015, but we hadn’t taken any time off since our November 2014 Italy trip. Finally, at the end of August, it was time to do some more traveling.

Alex hadn’t been north of California and wanted to see the Pacific Northwest, and I hadn’t been to Washington since 2013, so Washington State was a good compromise. We’d visit Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula.

Wide awake at the airport.

Wide awake at the airport.

The trip out was pretty painless overall: I’d recently discovered that a ~90 minute public transit commute from my apartment to the Newark airport could be reduced to a 20-minute Uber/Lyft ride (for about $5 more). Totally worth it. Our flight was first thing in the morning.

Airplane View

Airplane View

We napped en route and I woke up in the air over Washington, which meant I got a wonderful view of the Cascades as we flew in – not to mention the sprawling Seattle suburbs.

Welcome to Klondike Gold Rush NHS

Welcome to Klondike Gold Rush NHS

We didn’t have a lot planned for the first day: we’d get the main tourist sites, like Pike’s market out of the way, as well as checking out some of the other things downtown, like the new Seattle public library (awesome), and the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Site (which I’d last visited 17 years before). I enjoyed these smaller sights. The only problem was something we faced throughout our trip: bad weather. After a serious drought during the summer, it rained 7 out of 9 days on our trip.

Memorial to Seattle Firefighters

Memorial to Seattle Firefighters

The summer drought was so bad that there were a bunch of forest fires in the state, so everybody else was happy to see rain. Furthermore, there was a huge wind storm that practically knocked us over as we walked the streets.

Olympic Sculpture Park

Olympic Sculpture Park

When the weather finally cleared up, we played foosball and ping-pong in the park, then walked along the waterfront, making our way to the Olympic Sculpture Park, one of my favorite free locations in Seattle.

AirBnB Chickens

AirBnB Chickens

Refreshed by an Indian buffet, we went to our AirBnB. I’ll admit – I wasn’t sure what to expect. And it was a crazy place! There was a nice view over northern Seattle, and the person we were renting from had 3 units, including two tiny wagons he’d built himself.

Nibbler!

Nibbler!

But the highlight was the animals: in addition to a small garden, thee were 6-7 chickens roaming the yard in search of worms. And two incredible rabbits we could pet (at first I thought these rabbits were Silkie chickens), but in fact they were Angora rabbits (named Nibbler and Tribble). To top it off, we got free postcards with studio-style closeups of the rabbits. Score!

Europe, 2013: Bruges

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Maybe the single biggest reason I wanted to visit Belgium was the movie In Bruges, a genius dark comedy starring Colin Ferrell and Brendan Gleeson, set in – you guessed it – Bruges. It made the place look like a fairytale town, besides which Bruges is reputed to be the best-preserved medieval city in Belgium.

Did it live up to the hype? For me, not really.

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Of course, it’s a charming place, but it feels a bit like a Disneyland for grown-ups – like a more sophisticated amusement park, where the curtains and the tunnels are a bit less obvious.

It’s no grand conspiracy, but this is a city whose entire economy consists of lace shops, kitschy tourist places, fancy chocolate stores, and restaurants.

When I reached Bruges, I had been traveling for over three months, first around the US in a van, and then through Belgium. I was a bit tired of all this movement, never staying in the same place for more than three or four days. And as a fabricated, Disneyland kind of romantic place, there wasn’t a lot for one person to do in the town.

De Halve Maan

De Halve Maan

I did take a brewery tour, with a genuinely funny France-hating tour guide.

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But even here… the main brewery operations had long since been moved outside of town, so what exactly were we touring?

Park at the edge of central Bruges

Park at the edge of central Bruges

I really enjoyed two things in town: first, going to the very edge of the tourist zone, which was encompassed by a ring of canals with parks and windmills, an area I found peaceful, with few tourists.

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The parks were extensive, with ponds, swans and little castles. Not to mention a few alcoves and recognizable sights from the movie.

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I also loved the city after dark. The crowds started to disappear, at least outside of the main restaurants, and most of the buildings are lit by tasteful floodlights. It’s quiet, and there was a slight drizzle. It really felt like another, older world (one that just happened to have great lighting and safe streets).

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The canals were charming, too.

Lace map of the city

Lace map of the city

It wasn’t like this before – during the middle ages, Bruges was an authentic large town, a trading port and center of lace manufacture. But it started to silt up, and trade moved to Antwerp and other cities, leaving the city as a backwater. That’s the case for all these “authentic” medieval towns: once they were something important (otherwise they wouldn’t have been a city) and now they’re a curiosity (if they were still an important city, they wouldn’t have all these “authentic” old buildings).

Central square

Central square

I don’t mean to be so down on Bruges. I wouldn’t mind returning at some point.

The stairs were really narrow

The tower stairs were really narrow

It was a good town for pondering on two feet, for snacking on chocolate, and for people-watching. From Bruges, I traveled back to NYC, via Brussels, to return to work. This was the end of my travels in 2013.

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Europe, 2013: Ypres

10/19/2013

Growing up in the US, you can only see a few types of battlefield firsthand: revolutionary war battlefields, which basically just look like fields. And civil war battlefields, which are mostly fields with a few earthworks thrown in (Vicksburg is an exception). You might also see French and Indian battlefields, or battlefields from the Indian Wars. I figured these were pretty different from modern battlefields.

Uniforms at the Ypres museum: German, UK, French, American. Click to expand.

Uniforms at the Ypres museum: German, UK, French, American. Click to expand.

One of my top goals in visiting Belgium was to visit a World War I battlefield (I also wanted to visit the Ardennes, sight of the Battle of the Bulge, but it was in a far corner of the country). I wasn’t sure if the World War I battlefield would be the same or different than Civil War battlefields.

Ypres before and after the war

Passchendaele, near Ypres, before and after the war. Those dots are craters.

My target was Ypres (pronounced ee-pruh), sight of some of the worst fighting in the entire first world war – Ypres was a battlefield for almost four years, divided into some five barely distinct ‘battles.’ Whereas a civil war battle was typically a one-day affair (Gettysburg was an outlier – open fighting lasted three days; the only longer battles I’m aware of were the extended sieges of Vicksburg or Petersburg). Although the numbers are impossible to pin down, more men maybe have been killed on the Ypres battlefield than in the entire Civil War (620,000 men were killed in the Civil War; the upper estimate for total casualties on Ypres is 1.2 million, of which maybe half were killed). That’s leaving out the hundreds of other battles – such as Verdun, the Marne, or the Somme.

Ypres during the war

Ypres during the war

Not only did Ypres see intense extended fighting, it was also the sight of the first chemical warfare attack, ever. Also, Hitler fought there. Incidentally, if you’re unfamiliar with WWI, there’s an amazing 5-part soldier’s eye podcast produced by Dan Carlin that covers the war over the course of 15 hours.

The town today, looking toward the Menin Gate

The town today, looking toward the Menin Gate

Ypres was pretty close to Antwerp by train, so I took the train into the city center. The city as a sort of physical entity was pretty much obliterated during the war (it was a mid-sized cloth manufacturing town). Now, it looks pretty much like other Belgian towns, with a charming downtown that belies its bloody history.

The center, which was had a cute farmer’s market when I visited, also features an outstanding WWI museum, my first stop. It’s a pretty intense museum – there are lots of artifacts, videos, some gruesome photos, reconstructions of trenches. This is a part of the world where there’s still unexploded ordnance in farm fields, and where trench systems are still being uncovered.

After visiting the city, I started out on a tour of the battlefield with a few other people. The tour met by the Menin Gate, a memorial that commemorates 54,000 men from the British Empire whose graves remain unknown. There’s a ceremony here, every single night, to pay tribute to soldiers from the Empire who died in Ypres.

The battlefield during the war

The battlefield during the war

The area around Ypres doesn’t look much like a battlefield. There’s no craters, and no sign of fighting at all. Most of the land is farms; it’s absolutely flat, enough that a 200-foot hill was a major strategic objective. It rained lightly during the tour, which felt fitting. Most of what you hear about the western front is mud. Because there was four years of fighting, and because men were confined to trenches by artillery fire, it was often impossible to move bodies. You dug a shallow grave, but when you left the front and another unit came in, and they needed to dig? The only gruesome option was to dig through the bodies from one or two or three years before.

Tyne Cote cemetery

Tyne Cote cemetery

Nonetheless, there are graveyards, and we visited three: a small and large English graveyard, and a German graveyard. The large British cemetery was Tyne Cot, with about 12,000 graves, with soldiers from the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of the empire. It’s hard to believe, but at this time, Newfoundland was a separate country from Canada, so you also see soldiers with Newfoundland flags on their gravestones.

South African gravestone, with Springbok

South African gravestone, with Springbok

It’s a beautiful cemetery, on a slight rise, very peaceful. It doesn’t look like 12,000 men are buried here. We also visited the German cemetary of Langemark. German cemeteries in Belgium are something of a sore topic – or, at least, they used to be. After all, Germany invaded Belgium during the war, and there was a lot of bad blood between the two countries afterwards.

Langemark German Cemetery

Langemark German Cemetery

The British cemetery, Tyne Cot, looked basically like an American military cemetery: rows of white stones, about 2 feet hight, with clipped green grass. It was familiar. The German cemetery was totally different: wooded, with black stones set into the ground. The stones aren’t for a single soldier. It’s common to see stones saying “7 unknown soldiers buried here.” But far and away the most striking thing was an empty square in the center of the cemetery.

"In a mixed grave, here rest 24,917 German Soldiers. 7,977 remain unknown."

“In a mixed grave, here rest 24,917 German Soldiers. 7,977 remain unknown.”

It’s surrounded by low stones, and a small metal wreath. If you walk around it, on the far side, there’s a small plaque that states simply that 25,000 soldiers are buried in the grave. I found this cemetery had a far more profound effect on me. Maybe it was how few soldiers were named, and how few soldiers had their own grave. And it also was different from other cemeteries I’ve visited, so I had to reconsider what it really meant.

It’s a complicated cemetery. Many of the soldiers who fought here were students; some were 15 years old. On the other hand, Hitler visited this cemetery. After all, he fought at Ypres and received a commendation for bravery. You can stand in front of a memorial, where he’s photographed standing during World War II, and wonder what you’re supposed to think.

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The final stop, and my favorite on the tour, was some of the few remaining untouched World War II trenches. These trenches, which had been occupied by a unit from New Zealand, belonged to a farmer who took back the property after the war. He thought it might be worth preserving these, maybe to make some money, so he left them unchanged. Now they’re part of a little amateur museum.

Stereoscopes

Stereoscopes

The museum itself isn’t much: lots of old rifles, lots of helmets, bits of metal. Lots of stereoscope photographs of the war. Behind this museum are the trenches.

Craters near the trenches

Craters near the trenches

It was raining while I was there. The bottom of the trench was muddy, filled with pools of water. Metal sheets lay against the edge of the trench, and there were big craters on either side. A forest grew around the trenches, which would never have been there during the war. But this was still far and away the most authentic-looking battlefield I’ve seen. It didn’t take a whole lot of imagination to think about what it would have been like to fight here.

Besides this little plot of land, the rest of Ypres, and the land around it, looks like farmland everywhere else. Like there was never a battle fought there. The only sign of fighting is what’s still below ground, and the dozens of cemeteries that dot the countryside.

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