Bender Travels

Christmas morn

2008-12-25T16:12:00.003-05:00

Christmas tree. Notice the grass outside is green.

Tony checking to see if any of the presents are for him. If they smell like chocolate, they're for him.

Continental breakfast. That's loose tea, fresh French bread, butter, Havarti, and another cheese whose name I forgot.

Fall Photo Diary: Day 45

2008-11-19T09:54:00.001-05:00

Last installment for this year. Most of the trees lost all their leaves at once. Now it's snowing and the daylight hours are waning. We hope you enjoyed it while it lasted; we certainly did!

Fall Photo Diary: Day 34

2008-11-08T10:03:00.000-05:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 32

2008-11-06T09:11:00.000-05:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 31

2008-11-05T09:26:00.002-05:00

It's amazing how much better these photos look when the light is good. The problem is that I usually go to work before it's light and get home after dark, at least at this time of year.

Our neighbor's maple apparently decided to drop all its leaves overnight.

Fall Photo Diary: Day 30

2008-11-04T17:12:00.000-05:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 28

2008-11-02T17:22:00.001-05:00

Here's the house on the corner of our block again...

Fall Photo Diary: Day 27

2008-11-01T17:00:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 26

2008-10-31T17:26:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 24

2008-10-29T18:11:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 23

2008-10-28T17:25:00.001-04:00

No photos yesterday because there was an inch of ice on the ground. It never got below freezing, though -- just freezing rain or sleet fell for a couple of hours.

Fall Photo Diary: Day 21

2008-10-26T16:22:00.004-04:00

There's a maple a couple houses away that's in rare form right now.

Fall Photo Diary: Day 20

2008-10-25T15:39:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 19

2008-10-24T16:08:00.001-04:00

And here's our jack-o-lantern, which I carved last night. We bought the pumpkin from a fruit farm in the area. That should keep those evil spirits at bay!

Fall Photo Diary: Day 18

2008-10-23T18:38:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 17

2008-10-22T18:34:00.001-04:00

I really need to start getting home earlier. It's getting pretty dark out.

Fall Photo Diary: Day 16

2008-10-21T18:13:00.001-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 15

2008-10-20T18:06:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 14

2008-10-19T15:53:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 12

2008-10-17T18:53:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 11

2008-10-16T18:35:00.000-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 10

2008-10-15T18:45:00.003-04:00

Sorry we skipped a few days. And it's dark again so these are a bit blurry, but I didn't want to wait until tomorrow.

They appear to have been an eventful few days, as far as the leaves are concerned. Note that the big tree to the left of the center picture has lost most of its leaves now. I don't recognize what type of tree it is offhand, though. Here's a picture of a leaf.

Leaves of five, let it jive!

Fall Photo Diary: Day 6

2008-10-11T18:14:00.001-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 5

2008-10-10T16:56:00.000-04:00

Hooray, Amanda got laid off today! (Note: sarcasm.) It wasn't surprising, given that she's working in real estate. What was surprising was when they hired her two months ago.

Fall Photo Diary: Day 4

2008-10-09T18:04:00.001-04:00

Fall Photo Diary: Day 3

2008-10-08T18:56:00.002-04:00

A bit later tonight, plus it rained most of the day. The photos are a bit blurry because it's actually kind of dark outside.

Fall Photo Diary: Day 2

2008-10-07T18:19:00.000-04:00

Note the McCain/Palin sign in our neighbor's yard that wasn't there yesterday. In general, I see a lot more Obama/Biden signs, but apparently not on our block.

Fall Photo Diary: Day 1

2008-10-06T18:21:00.003-04:00

Yeah, it's been awhile since we posted something. I'm going to try and take photos of the street in front of our house every day as the leaves change. It was really neat to watch last year, so I thought I'd try to share with the West Coast gang this year. It may seem sort of late to start an autumn diary, but remember that in Ohio, the seasons obey the rules (e.g., fall runs from Sep. 22 to Dec. 20).

Cross-country Summary

2007-06-07T21:14:00.000-04:00

Some statistics for the entire cross-country drive -- Pasadena, CA, to Woods Hole, MA, via Montana:

Trip mileage: 3800. This is roughly one-fifth of the way around the world at this latitude.
Driving time: 54 hours. Our mileage includes side trips, but driving time does not, although it does include gas stops. Without side trips, I think it is more like 3500 miles, meaning we averaged 65 mph.
Gasoline used: 100 gallons. 38 mpg is not bad for a heavily loaded car with 115,000 miles on it. Go Toyota!
Average gas price (cheapest gas price at each stop, averaged over 15 gas stops): $3.21, although we always buy the most expensive gas because it pays for itself in better gas mileage (and burns cleaner, too). Gas got cheaper the further east we drove, ranging from $3.459 in Pasadena to $3.099 in Toledo, OH, and Syracuse, NY.

I have now driven nearly all of Interstate 90, coast to coast. The only section I've missed is the 30 miles from I-495 to Logan Airport in Boston, which I will be sure to do before we leave. I'll also note that I've found the driving times given by Google Maps to be extremely accurate, with less than 1% error. I created a customized map featuring the exact locations of the rooms we stayed in each night, which can be viewed here.

State by state statistics:

state	dates	driving time	interstate speed limit	gas price	tolls
I-15
California	May 27	2.5 h	70 mph	$3.459
Nevada	May 27	2.5 h	75 mph	$3.359
Arizona	May 27	0.5 h	75 mph
Utah	May 27-28	6 h	75 mph	$3.199
Idaho	May 28	3 h	75 mph	$3.199
Montana	May 28	2 h	75 mph	$3.239
I-90
Montana	May 28 - June 2	4 h	75 mph	$3.159
Wyoming	June 2	3 h	75 mph
South Dakota	June 2-4	5.5 h	75 mph	$3.249
Minnesota	June 4	4.5 h	70 mph
Wisconsin	June 4	3 h	65 mph	$3.249
Illinois	June 4	2.5 h	65 mph		$6.70
Indiana	June 4-5	2.5 h	65 mph	$3.399	$4.65
Ohio	June 5-6	4.5 h	65 mph	$3.099	$6.00
Pennsylvania	June 6	0.5 h	65 mph
New York	June 6-7	6 h	65 mph	$3.119	$13.90
Massachusetts	June 7	1.5 h	65 mph	$3.199	$2.10

Our current residence is a large cottage near the beach in Woods Hole, MA. Woods Hole is on Cape Cod, and is in fact the starting point for the ferries to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. We'll visit those later. Here's a Google Map satellite photo showing the approximate location of our cottage (we're actually 5 houses south of the green arrow). The Marine Biological Laboratory, where I'm working, is about a mile to the west, by the Eel Pond. At the beginning of August, we will pack up the car and move to Cleveland, but for now, this is home!

Day 9: Spearfish, SD, to Portage, IN

2007-06-05T00:00:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we left the dogs and drove to Mt. Rushmore, less than an hour from Spearfish. We took a scenic route, through the Black Hills. The area is very similar to the country around our homes in Montana, but lower and maybe a bit drier, although of course everything but the bare rock is green now. The roads are dotted with tiny mining towns cum souvenir malls, which are quaint and friendly. We saw more license plates in this area than anywhere else on our trip, though I suspect we would have seen a large number in Yellowstone if we had gone that way. To compensate for the disappointment I felt in seeing neither an Alaska plate (pretty rare outside the Northwest) nor a Hawaii plate (very rare, especially outside of California), we were treated with a Puerto Rico license plate in the Mt. Rushmore parking structure, a sight I have never before witnessed (and suspect is rare even in the South). That was nice, but I never expected to see a German plate! This one was attached to a white, Hummvee-looking vehicle, also in the parking structure. We had dinner with friends in Rapid City, then returned to Spearfish to pack for an early departure this morning.

If you've never noticed, the center portion of the United States is really large, flat, and mostly empty. The two population centers in South Dakota are around Rapid City in the west and Sioux Falls on the eastern border. In between are the Badlands, lying around a very long, very sparsely populated stretch of I-90. We left Spearfish at 7:30 AM, passing through Sturgis (home of the annual Harley-Davidson motorcycle rally) and Rapid City by 8:30, then drove for five solid hours at 80 mph, during which I think we saw more out-of-state than South Dakota license plates. Somewhere in the middle of this desolation lies the border between Mountain and Central time, and we paused briefly during a rain shower in Humboldt, SD, at 1:30 PM for gas. Taking in 10.38 gallons for our 372 miles (36 mpg), we quickly passed through Sioux Falls and into Minnesota having seen not a single police car across the entire state (making South Dakota unique in that respect). The gas station at which we stopped advertised $3.169 per gallon, but on the pumps were pasted hand-written signs noting a $0.07/gallon discount for cash. Upon paying for my gas, I realized that the advertised price was including the discount, so in fact they were charging an additional $0.07 for credit cards. Either that or the woman at the counter charged me a $0.07/gallon premium for my California license plate.

The speed limit decreased to 70 mph in Minnesota, for the first time since we entered Nevada (excepting the few metro areas we've passed through). It was just as well, since the roadway was in absolutely miserable condition, as bad as any freeway in Los Angeles but spanning several hours. Cops were present again after crossing the border, but we continued on our merry way, not stopping until we crossed the Mississippi River into La Crosse, Wisconsin at 6:30 PM. There we again refilled the gas tank with 8.01 gallons to cover the 313.6 miles since South Dakota. Gas there was $3.249, but our 39 miles per gallon made me more content. The speed limit diminished again in Wisconsin, down to 65 mph, and the police seemed to be lurking around every bend.

We crawled across the countryside for a few more hours, passing into Illinois at about 9:30, where the speed limit remained 65. Our goal from the beginning was to get beyond Chicago before stopping for the night, as one of our L.A. friends told us that Chicago traffic is even worse than the infamous L.A. jams. As hard as that was to believe, it was worth quite a bit not to sit through any morning traffic -- the drive is long enough as it is. After driving through Chicago at about 10:30 PM on a Monday night, I'm quite ready to believe in the terrible legend of its traffic jams, although by sheer physical extent Los Angeles may still be worse overall. Not only do the toll booths require most drivers to stop every 20 miles or so (distance decreasing as one nears the city center), but literally every piece of I-90 in the state of Illinois seems to be under construction. And not only are the roads under construction, but the constant lane shifts, narrowings, ruts, and potholes combined to make the interstate through Chicago rate as the worst road of our trip so far, and the worst I've ever seen. Tolls of $1.00, $1.60, $0.80, $0.80, and $2.50 for the "skyway" totaled $6.70 for the state, which is much less than I expected considering the Bay Bridge in San Francisco is $8.00, but having to stop every few miles to pay again seems ridiculous.

In Indiana (a few miles past Chicago), the more commonsense ticket-toll system is utilized: one takes a ticket upon entering the toll road, and pays when exiting, based upon the distance traveled. Not only smarter and more efficient but also more fair. We were extremely tired of driving at that point, and the 55 mph speed limit between Chicago and Gary, IN, chafed quite a bit. The speed limit was never higher than 55 in the construction zones of Chicago, but no one drove less than 70 except through the tight corners. Although we saw no police in Indiana, drivers seemed to be more cautious here, maintaining less than 60 mph on average. After Gary, when the speed limit increased to 65, we started looking for a motel. We drove what felt like quite a ways in frustration before realizing that the welcoming clusters of neon, representing motels and restaurants, which dot the foot of every freeway offramp in the West, are completely absent in this part of Indiana. Even worse, I suspect that Indiana has laws limiting the height of signs, so even where motels exist they are nearly invisible. That's all well and good if you live there, but for drivers passing through the "crossroads of America" it makes things harder than they already are. It also seems that the toll roads of Indiana don't have exits for every cross street like they do everywhere else we've been. Eventually we concluded that one must exit the toll road onto a local highway, from which one can then exit to a local street. Then we looked for awhile before finding such a highway at 11:30 PM in Portage, IN, which had an exit labeled for some motels. We stopped at three before finally being pointed towards a Super 8 which would take pets (the Comfort Inn had no vacancies). We got the last room in the Super 8, a smoking suite which fortunately did not smell like smoke, although the hallway did so strongly. The lady at the desk told me that we were lucky that she had even one room available. Apparently there are no special events in town, just normal travel traffic through this part of the country. I suspect the relative scarcity of motels also plays a part. Happily, the suite was still cheaper than our room at the Super 8 in Nephi, UT. Bed, at long last, after 1020 miles today.

Day 7: Billings, MT, to Spearfish, SD

2007-06-02T21:45:00.000-04:00

We spent two days in Billings doing laundry, visiting family, seeing our accountant, etc. It rained for the first day and a half. Daisy loves Amanda's parents' backyard, and frequently refuses to come inside, even if it's raining or snowing. We took Alana, one of our nieces, out of daycare yesterday and took her to the mall, Target, and the park. We also spent some of the sunny afternoon dangling our feet in Amanda's parents' pond.

Today we drove 4.5 hours to Spearfish, SD. We left Billings about 1:30, passing through the Crow Indian Reservation, one of the largest Indian reservations in the country. Custer's Last Stand took place on this land, although the Crow tribe was not involved. There is a National Monument there today. Possibly the longest place name we've seen so far was also on this stretch: Baaxuwuaashee.

We refueled in Sheridan, WY, where gas cost $3.159. We filled up with 9.34 gallons, having traveled 331 miles (35.5 mpg). Wyoming has the oddity that occasionally there are mile markers with decimal numbers on them, in addition to the whole-numbered mile markers that appear in every state. Spearfish is less than ten miles inside South Dakota, and we arrived around 6:00 at the home of some friends from college. Tony went after their young black lab, so our dogs must again be separated while we're here.

Day 4: Three Forks, MT, to Billings, MT

2007-05-30T15:00:00.000-04:00

This afternoon we drove the 175 miles from Three Forks to Billings, where Amanda's family lives. We spent yesterday visiting family and friends in Bozeman and Three Forks. Although it never snowed in Three Forks, it did get cold enough to snow in Bozeman overnight, and there was still some on the ground in the morning when we went to lunch there yesterday. The weather was chilly but fairly clear. We had lunch at the Pickle Barrel restaurant, a sandwich shop across the street from campus. It's famous locally and has opened a few chain stores around the state, but the original is still the best. It's a small, old building with not much more than a counter and a grill inside, with an ice cream shop attached. The sandwiches are as huge as they are good and cheap. Rumor has it that they don't measure the meat they put on the cold sandwiches -- they just slap it on, depending sometimes on the mood of the cook. They also deliver, although I remember hearing in college that sometimes none of the delivery boys would feel like making certain runs (like to a fraternity they didn't like), so that wasn't always the most reliable option.

This morning and yesterday morning, we gave the dogs a walk that encompassed nearly the entire perimeter of Three Forks in less than an hour, including the half of town that still has dirt roads. They saw horses for what looked to be the first time, and had no idea how to respond. They seemed to be trying to decide whether they should bark or not, as if perhaps the horse was just a very large dog. They were a bit reluctant to get back in the car again, but we drove the 2.5 hours (11:30 to 2:00) without a hitch.

Gas in Three Forks was $3.239 when we filled up last night, and we had gone 348 miles on the 10.13 gallons we'd burned since Pocatello (34.5 mpg). Because this is the rainy season in Montana, the state is very green and beautiful right now, especially on a sunny day like today. Most of our memories are of yellow fields of ranchland, but it's even more alluring in its verdant coat. They've had a "normal" rainfall this year for the first time in about a decade, but they are predicting a dangerous fire season anyway, because the undergrowth is so productive in a wet year. I suppose that's what comes of unnaturally protecting the forests and range from burning as it was designed to do, but the economic livelihood (to say nothing of the homes) of the state's people requires the land intact every season.

Day 2: Nephi, UT, to Three Forks, MT

2007-05-28T20:30:00.000-04:00

We left Nephi at 8:45, after a long, dry walk with the dogs. We need to make sure we keep walking them regularly so they don't go stir-crazy from sitting cooped up in the backseat all day long. The cat wasn't very happy with his lot, either, and he woke me up at 4:30 for some attention. I figured that if that's the worst thing he does on this trip, that's not too bad. He's been very stoic about staying in his crate for the whole time.

Gasoline in Nephi was $3.199, and we got only 29 mpg on the tank we bought in Nevada (269 miles, 9.17 gallons). It has been steadily uphill, since Salt Lake City sits at an elevation of 4,000 feet, and hot to boot. I also added 10 psi to each of the back tires, since the rear end felt quite splashy yesterday. The springs on the rear wheels are almost maxed out, and you can't see the tops of the tires in the wheel wells. The extra tire pressure helped the handling quite a bit, but the car is still very heavy. We stopped again for gas and Taco Bell in Pocatello, ID, at 12:15. Gas there was $3.199, and our mileage was back up to 38 mpg (246 mi, 6.39 gal). The temperature got much more comfortable as we moved north.

At 2:15, we crossed the Continential Divide over Monida Pass on the Montana-Idaho Border, at an elevation of 6,879 ft. It's all downhill from there to Massachusetts! We broke from I-15 at Dillon, MT, to take state highways northeastward and join I-90. If one continues on I-15 to the I-90 interchange at Butte before turning east, one has to cross the Continential Divide twice more, since Butte is on the west side of the Divide. Not only that, but it's two hours out of our way.

We reached Three Forks, MT, at 4:15, to find it 45° and raining. We were quite unprepared for this, still being dressed for the southwestern heat, but it's not at all unusual weather for this time of year in Montana. It has snowed several inches in June three of the last five years before this one, and it's commonly understood that one's garden cannot be planted before Memorial Day (which is today). Apparently it was in the 80s yesterday, however, so many people jumped the gun slightly and planted their tomatoes this weekend. If the temperature drops any more tonight, they might regret it. We have very few warm clothes with us, as we packed from L.A. for a summer on the beach, but we can get by for a day or two.

My mom and stepdad made the trip from their home-in-construction in Republic, WA, to visit us as we stayed with my brother, his wife, and our nephew in Three Forks. We had a nice catch-up and good home-cooked meal there. Tony got in a fight with my brother's dog immediately after arriving, so their dog went to the next-door neighbor's house (where she was born) for the time being. He has had problems like that since we got him from the beagle rescue, but he has also been all right with some dogs off-leash before, so we thought it was worth trying. Their small dog wasn't relaxed with all the visitors, though, so she was growling and barking even before he jumped on her. My parents' Scottie will have to spend the evening in their truck, lest he attack her as well. My parents are returning to Washington tomorrow, but we are staying an extra night here to visit the folks at my old lab at Montana State University in Bozeman and then have dinner with my dad and his wife, who also live in Three Forks. Who knows when we'll be back this way next!

Day 1: Pasadena, CA, to Nephi, UT

2007-05-27T21:45:00.000-04:00

The moving truck took most of our things yesterday. We hoped to leave Pasadena around 9:00 this morning, so it was about 9:00 that I started loading the car. I didn't count on that process taking two and a half hours, however. Our car cannot physically carry any more stuff. I crammed items into every nook and cranny -- under the seats, between the seats, between the seats and doors, on the rear window deck, behind our legs, and anywhere else it would fit. I had to unpack several boxes so I could stow the contents in various smaller spaces, and we threw away some things at the last minute because they wouldn't fit in at all. Amanda's seat is almost all the way forward and is fairly uncomfortable to sit in. The dogs are riding on top of a stack of blankets and pillows about a foot high, with about half the backseat to share between them. The cat is in his crate, jammed behind Amanda's seat, under the dogs' blankets. The four parakeets are in a small cage we bought for the move, which is wedged between the ceiling and some bags of toiletries. The first configuration, shown in the picture, was disastrous, falling on top of the dogs as we pulled out of the driveway. The car also bottomed out on the back end during this maneuver. Many people laughed at the sign in our window, and some also waved. The sign remained in place until Indiana, when I figured that most people would no longer understand it.

The three-hour stretch of Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is the most desolate roadside landscape I've ever seen. It looks a lot like the pictures of Mars we get from NASA, except yellow-brown instead of red. Occasionally there are fields of sagebrush -- scraggly, dirty-green bushes spaced about ten feet apart. Death Valley and the Mojave Desert are only a couple of hours away. This freeway is jammed with cars on the weekends -- northbound on Friday night, and southbound on Sunday evening. We passed the exit that would always win you the highway alphabet game when you were younger, pointing to the miniscule town of Zzyzx, CA. We're not playing the alphabet game on this trip, but we did decide to play the license plate game. Amanda is taking it one step further than usual by recording every state license plate we see in every state we pass through. I'll have to make some maps to display the results, to post at the end of the trip.

At 4:00, we stopped for gas in Mesquite, NV. 340 miles on 8.0 gallons of gas means we got 42.5 miles per gallon, even with the air conditioner on full blast. It was very hot there, but not nearly as hot as it will be later in the summer. Gas in Mesquite, at $3.359, was $0.10 cheaper than it was in Pasadena. We stretched the dogs' legs on a strip of grass in front of a McDonald's, filled up our water bottles at the gas station, and quickly turned the air conditioning on again.

We decided to halt for the night in Nephi, UT, at 8:00 PM Mountain Time. I-15 passes through about a 30-mile chunk of Arizona before entering Utah. One enters the Mountain time zone at the Utah border or the Arizona border, depending on the time of year (Arizona does not observe Daylight Saving Time). The difference is nearly moot on I-15, since I don't think there are more than two offramps and one very small town in the Arizona section. Southern Utah is fairly bleak on an absolute scale, but looks almost lush after Nevada. There are even some areas of grass and birch trees. Late May/early June is the wet season, so there are large swaths of green partially masking the red dirt.

I suspect that most of the commerce in this part of the state comes from motorists. The motels in Nephi certainly charge a premium for their rooms, but it's not like you have any choice except to drive two more hours north to Salt Lake City, or four more hours to Las Vegas if you're southbound. You know you're in an empty part of the country when the interstate mileage signs say things like, "Salt Lake City: 543". Sunday night in southern Utah is even more dead than usual. We ate Wendy's for dinner, because the local Arby's was closed before 9:00.

So, We're Moving to Cleveland

2007-05-09T21:08:00.001-04:00

Ohio is not quite as inspiring as England, but we're looking forward to a change from L.A. When I was thinking about a postdoctoral lab last summer, I went to visit a lab at Case Western Reserve University, a well regarded technical school in Cleveland, OH. However, neither of my propsective hosts, there or in Cambridge, had any money to fund my position, so I was forced to apply for fellowships to pay my salary. To do that, I had to choose a specific host institution, so we aimed high by selecting Cambridge. Unfortunately, none of my applications was funded, so I was becoming increasingly in danger of being unemployed after I graduated in January. My graduate advisor was able to give me a postdoctoral position through June, which gave us a short reprieve. Happily, just as I was receiving the final rejection notices, the lab I had interviewed with in Cleveland procured a fair-sized grant and advertised a postdoctoral vacancy. I applied, was accepted, and I start in August.

Between now and then, I've been hired to help teach computer programming during a summer course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. Woods Hole is on Cape Cod, right across from Martha's Vineyard and not too far from Nantucket -- a great place to spend a summer. I will have my hands full with teaching, but we also hope to take in the sights on our first extended trip to the East Coast.

We're in quite an interesting situation now: we're moving out of our home in Los Angeles, placing most of our belongings in storage, and driving 3500 miles to Boston via Montana with our two dogs, cat, and four parakeets. We'll live there for about two months and then move to Cleveland, there to be reunited with our household goods. It promises to be an eventful summer, with much good fodder for a travel blog.

Happy Anniversary

2006-08-11T00:30:00.000-04:00

Today is our fifth anniversary! We spent it canoeing at Riverfront Park in Billings. (The river is the Yellowstone, but we took the canoe in a nearby pond instead.) It wasn't exactly how we had dreamed of spending our anniversary, but things worked out this way; and it was still fun. Daisy got hot, so she jumped in. She acted quite panicky, trying to swim back to the boat, and I hauled her back in by her collar. She must not have been too traumatized, though, because she did it again. That's very unusual for a beagle; normally they hate water like Tony does.

We spent yesterday trying to catch up with all our friends and relations in Bozeman. Unfortunately, we ended up not having enough time to spend satisfyingly with anyone. We'll have to plan it better next time we're here. We also forgot the camera, so no pictures of my dad's new house or my nephew, 9-month-old Thomas. At this age, he's like a wind-up toy that squirms in mid-air, and then takes off if you set it on the floor. My dad and my brother both live in Three Forks, not too far from Bozeman, where Amanda and I went to college. Three Forks is the headwaters of the Missouri River, where Lewis and Clark met their destiny, realizing that there is no waterway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific. The water table is very high as a result of all the rivers, so my dad built his entire three-story house above ground. This may not seem significant, but it is now one of the tallest structures in the city (pop. 2000). They have since changed the building codes to disallow residences taller than about two stories. My dad sure has great views, though!

I also only got to spend a couple of hours talking with my friend Zane, a graduate student in my former lab. He's finishing up soon, and has tentatively lined up a postdoctoral position at the University of Washington, near his alma mater at the University of Puget Sound. Congratulations to him and his new bride (as of September, anyway)! Apparently there will be one wedding in Bozeman with his family and another in Spain with hers... the one in Montana is first so she can legally return to the US. As I noted earlier, we really must plan better next time, so we can spend more time with these important people. At least we managed to squeeze in a sandwich from the Pickle Barrel, a famous shop located across the street from the campus. I would recommend it to anyone passing through Bozeman, including the local ice cream.

Tomorrow, we'll leave for home. (Oh, how I hate calling Los Angeles "home"!) We're planning to take some extra time to drive through Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Zion National Parks, all of which lie close to our route. We have driven past Zion several times but never visited it, and since we're moving soon, this may be our last chance without making a special trip. We're also planning to meet an old friend on Sunday. My next-door neighbor growing up in Missoula has just finished his Ph.D. from the math department at UC Berkeley, and will be visiting Pasadena with his wife. We haven't seen each other in nearly 20 years now, so we want to be sure to get home in time to catch up with him.

Montana Getaway

2006-08-08T19:00:00.000-04:00

It's sure nice to get out of Los Angeles, especially when it involves getting back to Montana, native country for both Amanda and me. She drove up a couple of weeks ago with the dogs, and I flew one-way on August 3. Her father and we spent last night camping in the Crazy Mountains, a rugged range located just north of Big Timber in south central Montana. The smell of the alpine air is totally unique, and instantly makes me feel better.

We were one of two groups in twelve-site Half Moon Campground, which is several miles up a dirt road, past a dude ranch. Apparently, the federal government ceded quite a bit of land to the railroads during the 1800s to encourage their westward expansion. Now, on a color-coded map, these mountains looks like a checkerboard, one section (1 sq. mile, or 160 acres) publicly owned and the next privately owned. It's gorgeous, and quite green despite the posted stage 1 fire danger. As we were preparing dinner (fajitas cooked in a skillet over the fire), a car with two hikers drove through the campground to warn us that they had just spotted a couple of bears a few hundred yards away, but that was the only indication we ever had of their presence.

We got up early so we could make the four-mile hike (each way) to Blue Lake and complete the two-hour drive back to Billings in time for the third birthday party of our niece, Alana. The campground sits at an elevation of 6000 feet, but the trail climbed gradually to 8000 feet at the lake, following Big Timber Creek for most of the distance. It passed a couple of abandoned cabins on a scenic pond which was just begging for a moose. Possibly the cabins were left over from the gold mine which operated during the 1950s, a few miles further up.

We ate lunch at an idyllic spot on the shore of Blue Lake, nestled beneath Big Timber Peak and Crazy Peak. Crazy Peak is over 11000 feet and normally has snow year-round, but almost all the snow has melted this summer. The lake was clear enough to watch trout swimming around, occasionally broaching for a fly. The only people we saw on the trail were ascending as we headed back. We saw a fair bit of wildlife, though: one deer wandered through our campsite several times, and then on the trail there were two grouse, one marmot, and a whole flock of butterflies. All in all, the trip was a bit hurried, but well worth it anyway. Now, on to Chuck E. Cheese's animatronic pizza parlor.

So, We're Moving to England

2006-07-11T03:03:00.000-04:00

I've been offered a postdoctoral position in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge [map]. (That's Cambridge, England, not Cambridge, MA). It's not quite a done deal; I have to secure funding via a postdoctoral fellowship. Oh, and I have to graduate sometime, too.

But it's still very exciting. The University of Cambridge is one of the oldest universities in the world (celebrating its 800th anniversary in 2009) and also one of the most prestigious. Even if we don't end up going, I'm honored to even have a chance at studying there. The university's website has an excellent history section, but I can sum up its prestige with a few names: Newton, Darwin, Tennyson, Maxwell, Rutherford, Bohr, Watson and Crick, Hawking, and almost one Nobel laureate per year for the 100-ish years of the prize's existence.

Anyway, it looks like our daily life will become worthy of a Travel Blog entry! At least we know they speak English, but everything else will change. For example, what brand of toothpaste/deodorant/dog food will we buy? Do people barbeque in England? Can you even buy ground beef? And these are only the questions we've thought to ask -- the ones that will really floor us are the ones we won't realize before arriving.

Even preparing to move is an ordeal. Apparently they have managed to keep rabies out of the British Isles so far, which means that you have to prove your animals don't have it before you can bring them into the country. The default method of demonstrating the absence of disease is by official observation during a six-month quarantine. Alternately, we can get all the animals microchipped, vaccinated (with a record of the microchip number taken when the shot is given), and tested for immunity by taking a blood sample which has to be analyzed in an EU-approved lab (the only approved lab in the US is at Kansas State University) -- all of which we did last week. Then, six months after the blood sample is drawn, we can bring them into the UK as long as we travel on an officially approved carrier by an approved route, assuming we've had them treated for ticks and tapeworms 24-48 hours before departure. And this is to say nothing of bringing our stuff over. We haven't looked yet, but I'm betting the shipping rate is prohibitive for most things like dishes and clothes, and I think they charge by the pound (or kilogram!), so we're planning only to ship the things we really want to have with us. We'll sell the car and most of our furniture, put our dishes into storage, and then carry as much onto the plane as we can, plus the two dogs and the cat. Quite a portrait we'll make; presumably we'll rent ("hire") a car, and hopefully we can get some temporary housing from the university so we don't have to rent ("let") a place sight-unseen.

It's almost overwhelming to think about, but the opportunity is just too much to pass up. So many people live "safe" lives, but I don't want to miss out a chance like this just because I don't know exactly how it's going to turn out.

Homeward Bound

2006-03-12T16:00:00.000-05:00

Well, we're halfway home, writing on Pacific Time again. The flight west is 12 hours (instead of 11 on the eastbound trip) and the plane continues on 8 hours to Tahiti after refueling in Los Angeles. Our flight left Paris at 11:30 AM and is scheduled to land in L.A. around 2:00 PM, local time. I'd like to take this opportunity to gripe about all the people who leave their seats fully reclined for the entire flight, most especially on a 12-hour, intercontinental flight. In our case, they're leaning forward to eat and even to rest, but their seats are still grazing our foreheads.

Anyway, we wanted to make sure we got one last, good French dinner before we departed, so we asked at the front desk where we could find some good crême brulée, which we haven't seen on a menu since Nancy. We made our way to a restaurant called Chez Pierrot a couple of blocks away. We managed to get seated and listen to the specials in French (although we didn't understand much). We hadn't thought about it, but the contrast was very apparent when an American woman came in a few minutes later and immediately asked, in English, whether she needed reservations for four. It's possible she was fresh off the plane, but not only did we not need to wait for a table at any restaurant in Europe, but it seemed very rude to make no attempt at even "good evening" in French. At least in our eyes, it just reinforced all the stereotypes about American tourists that we've tried to avoid. Oh, well. Amanda had a beef stew, and I had a confit de canard (duck leg) with genuine French fried potatoes (much better than our counterfeits, cross-cut rather than long). We had a Bordeaux Superiór wine, which was slightly dry for our taste, but smooth. For dessert: a crêpe au banane et chocolat and the promised crême brulée, which was good but not as good as in Nancy.

After walking underneath the Eiffel Tower once again, Amanda decided finally that riding to the top is only for fools. I thought seriously about walking her back to the hotel and returning by myself, but once I sat down in our room I changed my mind. We've done a ton of walking on this trip, and we also have much packing to do before bed. Amanda feels like she's actually lost a significant amount of weight, in spite of all our breakfast pastries. I think that between the wine, better food (less processing and fewer preservatives) and the walking, the European lifestyle has left us both healthier than when we left. I hope we can learn from this, both personally and culturally.

Our wake-up call came an hour earlier than we requested this morning, but we were almost ready to go before we noticed. We made the gruelling subway ride to the airport with our luggage once more on the sparse Sunday morning trains. For the first time on our entire trip, the weather was sunny and promised warmth today. We were over three hours early for our flight, so we sat at a café near our gate and had tea and some strawberries we bought yesterday. Now we're nearly home, but this trip will stand out as a highlight for many years to come.

More of Paris

2006-03-11T19:00:00.000-05:00

Los Angeles doesn't have much of a subway, so maybe they're all this way, but it's been quite an experience riding the Parisian rail system. Twice now, we've had a guy get on and begin what sounded like a formal sales pitch, loudly aimed at all the riders of the car. The guys looked kind of like bums, and nobody spoke to them, but we still have no idea what it was all about. One time, the car stopped at a station and a conductor spoke over the intercom. Everybody groaned and exited the train, so we followed and left the train to continue on its way, empty. We re-boarded the next train, which isn't a huge imposition since they seem to run about 5 minutes apart. Our most recent adventure was a woman who was quietly writing in a journal or something and suddenly stood up and started shaking with some kind of seizure. A couple of people tried to talk to her, but she shook them away and got off the train at the next stop.

Today, we took the subway to the Bastille, which was the state prison before the French Revolution. In comparison with our Independence Day, the French celebrate July 14, 1789, as Bastille Day, when they stormed the prison and began taking power back from the monarchs. The Bastille is gone today, and in its place stands a modern opera house (the non-Phantom opera). However, there is a memorial pillar in the square.

We had lunch at a French fast-food type restaurant down the street. I had a crêpe poulet fromage (chicken and cheese, basically a quesadilla with crêpe instead of tortilla) and a Dutch beer called "86, a Special Blond Beer" (in English). Amanda had another French bread/hot dog/cheese sandwich and a "Coke Light", which tastes a lot better than American Diet Coke. We almost walked out without our umbrella, and when we turned around some guy had picked it up and was walking away with it. He tried to claim he was chasing us down to return it, but I don't believe it.

Nearby is the Place de Vosges, another palace-type structure, which contains the Victor Hugo Museum in an apartment he used to inhabit. The photo shows the Place de Vosges from Hugo's window (I purposefully put the windowframe in the picture). This was a highlight for me, since I'm a big fan of his. He greatly glorified French and especially Parisian history and culture, although he was also a progressive liberal as well, standing for the Republic and education to the point that he was exiled during the Second Empire of Napoleon III (~1850) for leading a rebellion. His most famous works are Les Miserables and Notre-Dame de Paris, which was translated in English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, even though the protagonist is really the cathedral itself.

Our next destination was, in fact the famous church. We crossed a bridge onto the Ile de Saint-Louis, the upstream of the two Seine islands forming the heart of the old city. They're very upscale and more touristy than any other area we've visited (with the exception of the Eiffel Tower), but quite charming. We stopped at a shop called Cacao et Chocalat and bought a couple of small blocks of chocolate (one white, one 100% cacao) which cost much more than they would have anywhere else. We also shared a cup of hot chocolate from the fountain in the window. This turned out to be chocolate laced with chili powder (like in the movie Chocolat), which was unique. Amanda thought it was the greatest thing ever, but she also likes dark chocolate, so let the reader judge.

The cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris (meaning Our Lady of Paris) is on the second island, the Ile de la Cité. The photos show it from the back, where we first approached it, the side, and the front. It was constructed in 1163 as the first major building of what became the Gothic movement. It's not huge, but far more impressive in person than any picture could represent. It is a Saturday during Lent, but it was disappointing to have to wait in line to get inside. It wasn't even that they sell tickets, just that there were more people trying to enter than the doors could fit at a time. I think the interior is likely as amazing as the exterior, but much of the effect was lost due to the crowds of people and the live service inside, which was also shown on closed-circuit televisions mounted on the walls. The choir came on as we were leaving, but they weren't very good. The worst part, though, was the brightly-lit machines located at intervals around the perimeter that would stamp coins with the image of the cathedral. Amanda swears that neither crowds nor machines were there when she visited, 15 years ago.

The Louvre

2006-03-10T23:30:00.000-05:00

I think the right way to see the Louvre would be to go for a couple of hours each day for a month. As it is, we spent nine hours there (plus the half-hour walk each way from our hotel) and only had time to see a half or two-thirds of the collection. Of course, that includes only walking past and glancing at much of it. We missed most of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Classical Greek wings, in addition to the 18th and 19th century French painters (the museum's collection understandably overrepresents French art). The paintings are arranged by country of origin, and then by age. This allows you to walk through a series of galleries and watch the style evolve as the centuries pass before your eyes. Then there are several galleries of sculpture, which I think were organized by artist.

We purposefully chose today instead of tomorrow for this tour, wanting to avoid the weekend rush. It was still crowded around the well-known pieces such as the Mona Lisa. Most of the works are simply hung on the walls, but the Mona Lisa is mounted on its own wall in the center of one of the rooms, behind several inches of glass or plexiglass, separated from the onlookers by a rope. Photography without a flash is allowed in most of the galleries, but not in the most busy ones (like the Italian paintings), seemingly to avoid the patrons annoying each other with cameras.

We missed a lot, but we did take in all the most famous art including the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and works by all four Ninja Turtles (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael). In most cases it's impossible for us to tell why some pieces are famous and some aren't. At this point I think that the famous ones are famous because they're famous, not because they are intrinsically better than the others. Some of our favorite art was completely unknown (although being in the Louvre means that it already gets considerable artistic respect). I'm not trained in art appreciation by any means, but I think that art has to be personal to be meaningful -- deciding what you like based on someone else's opinion defeats the entire purpose, since then the piece isn't really speaking to you at all. However, my opinion coincides with "the experts" on a few points, at least. I do think the Mona Lisa is remarkable, although not so much that it needs an entire wall to itself. Also, the Italian paintings and sculpture are noticeably better than that from other countries. I think it has to do with the availability of the raw materials more than anything else. The paint colors they used are quite vibrant and striking, and the marble is smoother and more clear. My impression is that Italy had the rock and some indigenous plants for dyes that the others didn't have access to.

The building itself has an interesting history, although I don't know much of it. It seems like there was always a fortress there (relatively always, anyway). The foundations can still be seen as an exhibit in the basement, although we breezed through quickly because it was at the end of our day and we were tired. In the 1600s, one of the Louis built the vast monument to splendor and luxury that stands there today (the photo above shows about a quarter of the aboveground floor space; the cars are on the same street you can see in the top picture), although the glass pyramid is a modern addition. Amanda tells me that he had potted trees and horses brought up to the second floor of one of the wings, and then went fox hunting inside -- it's That Kind of palace. One of the corners has been preserved as it was kept during the stay of Napoleon III, through 1870.

In the morning, we walked past groups of students who seemed to be sketching the sculptures. It looks like some of the art classes from local schools come regularly to the Louvre for that purpose. It must be nice to have the world's premier museum in your backyard. That's how I would sum up the Louvre in one sentence: it makes every other museum in the world look second-rate. Its quality and quantity of classic art make it totally unparalleled. My major complaint is that the labels are all in French, so it's difficult to learn much about the pieces or exhibits if you don't speak the language. I'm not suggesting that the French should all speak English, but it would make more sense if the world's best museum made an effort to make itself accessible to the people of the whole world. I don't remember that aspect of the Smithsonian Institute, and I only visited the Air and Space Museum, but I know that the Danish National Museum labeled all its exhibits in Danish, German, and English. Denmark, of course, doesn't have quite the nationalistic pride (dare I, an American, say "arrogance"?) that France has.

Since we weren't completely exhausted, we stopped at a wine shop on the way back to our hotel. These little Nicolas shops here are as ubiquitous as Starbucks stores home. Since we don't know anything about wine, we've just been choosing by the design on the labels and the price. We've bought a total of five bottles and three demi-bottles to bring home with us, including the two bottles we bought in Strasbourg. We also stopped at a convenience-type store and got a couple of chocolate bars. We wanted to try regular stuff, not from a specialty store, but it's still as good or better than your average American gourmet chocolate. One bar was a dark (56% cacao) bar from Nestlé, who sells better chocolate in Europe than in the U.S., and the other was Lindt 70% cacao. This, however, was the last straw for our stamina. For dinner, we broke down and bought Pizza Hut d'emporter ("emport": the opposite of "import"; in other words, take-out) and ate in our room. Now, to bed.

À Pied: Paris

2006-03-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

We spent another three hours strolling the streets of Paris through sporadic rain. The architecture is no different from what we've seen elsewhere, but the extent of it is on a totally different scale. Every corner, every street, has new views of the French rowhouses and the spires of churches poking up from behind. On top of that, it's clear that the city planners spend a great deal of effort maintaining the unique feel of Paris. It's hard to explain exactly how it arises, but the colors and shapes, the types, spacing, and upkeep of the buildings and plants all combine to make it a truly romantic city. I've never felt anything like it before -- it's not pink and frilly, feminine, Hallmark/Disney romantic, or date-movie romantic, or even knights-and-chivalry romantic. It's more like gardens and holding hands romantic, balcony-serenade romantic, a genuine, Old World romantic city. The trees and flowers are not blossoming yet, but I imagine that Paris in April is an even more amazing place.

The names of the sights are relatively meaningless, but we walked around the Invalides, the St. Augustin cathedral, the Madeleine, the Paris Opera (of Phantom fame), and the Louvre. There's so much to see that we could easily spend a month here. I'd like to see the insides of all of these places, but we only have time to spend a single day in the Louvre. The hotel Amanda stayed at her last time in Paris, the Hotel du Louvre, is down the street from the Opera and across the street from the Louvre. The photo shows the view from the Louvre through the Jardins des Tuileries with the Egyptian Luxor Obelisk on the far end, then down the Champs Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, and the skyscrapers of the business district in the background.

To get back to our hotel, we followed the walkway along the bank of the Seine. The photo at right shows the view upriver across the Pont Royal (or maybe the Pont du Carrousel) toward the cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris. Because of its history, the Seine is supposedly one of the dirtiest rivers in the world, in a similar vein to the Hudson in New York. Until the late 19th century, it received the bulk of the city's sewer and industrial waste. We read on a plaque that one of the French kings built a wall across the river at the Ile de la Cité in about 1000 AD to prevent the Vikings from penetrating into the heart of France. This wall provided a major hindrance to commercial traffic until the 19th century. We took a detour by the Basilique St. Clotilde church, where I got my best stained-glass photos of the trip.
We had dinner at an Italian place down the street from our hotel called Ristorante La Taverna. Amanda had veal ravioli with a parmesan cream sauce, which she claims tasted a lot less heavy than an equivalent dish in the U.S. I had some pasta dish with bay shrimp, clams, and cuttlefish ink. The ink didn't seem to have a flavor, but made the whole dish black. We had the house vin rose, which was smooth and not too dry, and lingered for awhile in the nice ambience. We went to a different patisserie for dessert, where I got a succès (meringue with powdered sugar) and Amanda had a feuille automne (almond meringue and chocolate mousse).

Champs Élysées

2006-03-09T16:00:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning with a sore throat; apparently the foreign germs have finally caught up to me. We attempted to get an omelette for breakfast at the café next door, but it was way too smoky to stay there. Instead, we went up the street to a patisserie. We walked the whole length of the Champ de Mars, under the Eiffel Tower, and across the Seine. Riding the elevator to the top of the tower costs €11, comparable to the $9 they charged at the Space Needle last time I was there. Amanda has been afraid of heights ever since I dragged her to the top of the Mayan pyramid at Chichen Itza (Mexico), so although I really want to go, we'll leave the Tower discussion until later.

We packed slightly dressier clothes just for today. Amanda has been scheming (and saving) for almost a year to buy a purse from the Louis Vuitton store on the Champs Élysées. We didn't know exactly where it was along the street, so we began at the Arc de Triomphe and walked pretty much the whole thing. As in Germany when we bought our clock, the price tags on the items are including taxes, so you pay what you see. However, there's a 12% tax that applies only to citizens of the European Union, so we actually paid less than the sticker price. The Louis Vuitton store has five floors of top-end clothing, bags, and luggage. Naturally, they are very dedicated to providing excellent customer service, and probably even more concerned about shoplifting, so the staff nearly outnumbered the customers. It operated almost exactly like a jewelry store, with one salesperson helping one customer at a time, pulling items from the display case and assisting with the selection, and then walking the customers over to the clerks who collect the money. The items are individually wrapped and placed together in a large bag, made of the most sturdy paper I've ever seen. Then it was just a matter of carrying this large, conspicuous bag with its very expensive contents two miles through the streets of Paris back to our hotel.

We passed up the McDonald's and the Starbucks on the Champs Élysées and stopped at a deli for lunch instead. We shared a hot dog in a loaf of fresh French bread with cheese (parmesan?) on top. Finally, we limped back to the hotel, where Amanda quickly removed her dress shoes.

We were hoping to see and maybe buy a drawing from one of the chalk artists Amanda saw on her last visit, but the rainy weather has kept them in hiding. Instead, we bought a painting from an street salesman near the Arc de Triomphe. I'm sure the profit margin is enormous, especially because he's operating without a license. He had stacks of paintings in color, black and white, pencil, watercolor, and oil. Many showed identical scenes, indicating that they are copies, probably made by somebody slaving for a few euros per painting. We bought a brown-and-white oil painting of an imaginary Parisian scene (the buildings and river are not in realistic relative positions), but it's a real painting on canvas and a great souvenir of our trip. We'll have it framed when we get back.

Vers Paris

2006-03-09T00:45:00.000-05:00

One damping factor on our enjoyment of Strasbourg was that the hotel water literally smelled (and tasted) like swimming pool water. After that introduction to the morning, we found another patisserie for breakfast and drove back to Nancy. The weather started out cloudy and progressed to snow, then rain as we drove west. We took a slightly different route back than we took to Strasbourg the first time. At one point we found ourselves on a toll road, but only for a few kilometers, so it didn't cost much. Here, you take a ticket when you enter the toll road, and pay when you get off, presumably in accordance with the distance you traveled.

In Nancy, we bought our train tickets to Paris (€75) and postcard stamps (€0.91 each, I think), found an ATM to replenish our cash, and then had kebabs for lunch again. Many places take credit cards, but usually not smaller restaurants. We returned the car to the rental agency (Hertz) and waited at the train station. Our train was 45 minutes late, but we found a fortuitous pair of seats in a non-smoking car this time. As we were struggling down the aisle with our luggage, a couple of men pushed past us and grabbed a guy who was sitting quietly in the back, picked up his luggage, and escorted him off the train. So we took his seat.

Once we arrived in the Paris Gare de l'Est, we bought metro rail tickets to the École Militaire station, near the Eiffel Tower and our hotel. Again, it was a tough commute with our baggage, requiring two additional trains, but we finally arrived about 7:00. Walking up the streets in search of our hotel, we got a good view of the lights on the Tour Eiffel. We'll be staying at the Hotel du Cadran on the Rue du Champ de Mars for four nights. Our room is on the fourth floor (European fourth = American fifth), with a street view. The Champ de Mars is the plaza on which the Eiffel Tower sits, but the Rue du Champ de Mars is a small, quiet street running perpendicular to the Champ.

Paris is, in fact, more metropolitan and diverse than anywhere we've been so far. Things are a bit more expensive, and geared quite a bit more toward tourists, including many signs and menus in English. This is handy, but we can't help feeling like our French experience is somewhat adulterated here. We ate dinner at a restaurant called Pizza Tina, where we were greeted and served in English. We agreed to share a pizza quatre fromage (four cheeses) with mozarella, parmesan, gorgonzola, and one other. We had the house vin blanc (white wine) and a sundae with crême brulée ice cream. It definitely seems as though the French smoke more than the Germans, but they also seem to be thinner. There were advertisements all over Germany for what seemed to be a national fitness campaign. Perhaps the national cuisine or the difference between wine and beer has something to do with it.

Back to France

2006-03-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

After leaving Schönwald, we made our way downhill and out of the Black Forest. By the time we left the forest and entered the Rhine valley, the snow was completely gone. While the Schwarzwald maintains its magical, fairy-tale feel, it is also obvious that it is no longer wild. In fact, it is very carefully maintained and logged. There is little undergrowth, and all of the trees seem to be the same age. It was still an unforgetable experience, though.

We crossed the Rhine into France, and found a hotel in Strasbourg. It was snowing last time we were here, but it seems to have cleared up now. We strolled through the central square and the old part of town again, heading for a repeat visit to the chocolatier Christian. Amanda still feels that their chocolate truffles are the world's best; this time, I got a caramel truffle. It was good, but the chocolate was a bit strong for my taste (I prefer light or even white chocolate to dark).

We saw an old church, St. Pierre le Jeune, that we didn't get to see the last time we were here. It has quite a combination of architectural styles. It began as a shrine c. 800 AD, of which remnants are still present in the crypts. Additional construction was done in the Gothic style in the late 1200s, more in the 1400s and 1600s, with possibly even more renovations since. (We weren't quite sure, since the signs were all in French.) Looking on the Internet when we got back, I've now realized that we neglected to visit the cathedral Notre-Dame de Strasbourg, which was the tallest building in the world from the 15th through 19th centuries.

One of the things about European travel that has surprised us, but shouldn't have in retrospect, is that many of the restaurants specialize in foreign food (Italian, Thai, etc.), just as they do in the U.S. We've even seen places that serve "American" food, usually hamburgers (in addition to McDonald's). Tonight, we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, which made us note another aspect of our experience so far -- it's been almost totally monoethnic. The staff at this restaurant were mostly of Asian heritage, speaking accented French, and we realized that we have seen only a handful of people so far that were not white (like, less than 10). Paris will probably be more metropolitan, but there doesn't seem to be the same prevalance of immigrants in Europe that we're used to in the U.S.

Anyway, even French Chinese food is different than American, at least a bit. Amanda ordered sweet and sour pork (what else?), and I had cashew duck. The wontons in the soup seemed to be filled with shrimp, and they served steamed pork balls instead of the cold strips ubiquitous at American Chinese restaurants. For dessert, we had profiteroles, which are some sort of cream puff. We had a vin rose (pink wine) from Côtes de Provence, which was pretty good. I seem to have picked up a prejudice against pink wines, because the only thing you can get in the U.S. is white zinfandel and it's usually cheap, but they have been featured on the menus of all the restaurants we've visited so far in France.

Cuckoo!

2006-03-07T18:00:00.000-05:00

There were at least six inches of new snow on the ground this morning, and it continued to snow for a few hours. The photo shows some German kids trudging to school at the rather civilized hour of 9:30. At breakfast, we told the proprietors that we'd be moving on today, because we have to be in Paris tomorrow night. We could certainly make it in one long day, but our room didn't warm up appreciably overnight, so I think we can do better tonight. Possibly we'll make for Strasbourg, which is a city we'd like to spend some more time in.

Triberg turned out to be only 2 km down the road from Naußbach. These towns sit in a steep river valley (in fact, Triberg has a famous waterfall) and this made getting around quite difficult in the snow. My mom and stepdad have a 19th-century Black Forest cuckoo clock on their wall, so one of our missions for today was to find out some more information on its history. About all we know is that it was found in the trash in Berkeley, CA, in the 1920s, but was manufactured in Furtwangen in the Schwarzwald. Armed with some recent pictures of the clock, we attempted to drive there. However, Furtwangen is several hundred meters higher in elevation than Triberg, and our French car just couldn't make it up the hill this morning without snow tires.

Instead, we visited the Black Forest Museum in Triberg. Even before they started making cuckoo clocks, the people in this region were known for woodcarving. Cuckoo clocks became a big industry after 1850, when modern machining techniques allowed them to be produced more cheaply on a larger scale. The image of the peddler walking around with clocks strapped to his back dates from that period. As technology evolved, the region progressed to things like player pianos and grammophones, and finally to radios. The electronics company SABA had its roots in the Schwarzwald, putting out the first widely available radio kits in the 1920s and '30s.

After learning a bit of the history, we looked at a couple stores that sell cuckoo clocks, in search of our own. My mom and stepdad had decided they were going to buy us a clock for graduation, and panicked when they found out we were planning to buy a cuckoo clock on our trip to the Black Forest. So, they gave us the money to buy it as an early graduation present. The first store we went into was called Haus der 1000 Uhren (House of 1000 Clocks), which literally had a thousand clocks or more, including grandfather and other types, in addition to cuckoo clocks. We saw a few we liked, and took a break for lunch in order to think things over.

Apparently the Black Forest has a traditional winter festival at the end of February, which attracts a lot of tourists. After the festival, many businesses close for a week or two, which means they're closed right now. We eventually found a deli that was open for lunch, and I got a pretzel-bread sandwich again. We looked in another clock store after lunch, but they didn't have nearly the same selection. There was one I really liked which had two figures of men sitting at a table with beer steins. They lifted the steins in time with the clock's chime, and a woman standing behind one of them brought her rolling pin down on his head at the same time. Quite amusing, but not really what we want in our living room. A kitchen clock perhaps, maybe our second. But first, our first! We bought a souvenir cuckoo clock refrigerator magnet at that store. I think the lady behind the counter was upset that we looked at clocks for awhile but didn't buy one; she quoted us the sticker price for the magnet and tried to hide it when the register rang up a lower price. A sign outside the store said that all souvenirs were 20% off the sticker price. I guess that's what you get for being a tourist.

The Haus der 1000 Uhren, on the other hand, was very friendly and more classy. We gazed at and listened to a large number of clocks, including some that played the digitized song of an actual cuckoo or had water wheels with real water, before settling on one that stuck out to us. It has the scene, the sound, and the craftmanship (at least externally) that put it above the rest. The photo shows it without its weights attached; we will carry those with us on the plane to save shipping costs. We had a choice between the traditional glazed-lead pine cone-looking weights (as seen on the clocks above), or modern carved wooden pine cone weights with the lead inside, matching the stain color of the clock (on the shelf at the bottom of the above picture). Both looked nice, but we chose the traditional weights because they better matched the metal pendulum on our clock.

That finished, we tried again at 2:30 to drive to Furtwangen, which is apparently home to the Black Forest Clock Museum. We asked about my parents' antique clock at the museum and stores in Triberg, but they all said that the clock museum was the place to find the answers. We've made it a little bit further up the hill this time to Schönwald, but the road just keeps climbing, the piled snow gets deeper, and it started snowing again. Not knowing how much further it is to Furtwangen and mindful that we'll have to drive back downhill afterward, when the temperature will probably be below freezing, we will regretfully turn back empty-handed.

Through the Black Forest

2006-03-06T23:00:00.000-05:00

We got up at 7:00 this morning and had the hotel's (sit-down) Continental breakfast, and then drove to Tübingen through the Schwarzwald. Possibly it would have been faster to drive on the Autobahn via Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, but we're in no hurry and wanted to see the countryside. It was snowing lightly, and there was a foot or a foot and a half already on the ground. Even the back roads are well marked in Germany, so we drove uneventfully for a little over two hours to Tübingen.

There are only two states in southern Germany -- Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. "Swabia," which is basically the eastern half of Baden-Württemberg, has a very strong regional identity, though, and was quite disappointed that the state was not called Swabia. However, Baden has at least as much history as Swabia, but I have no idea why it's called Baden-Württemberg and not Baden-Swabia or something. Tübingen is a small university town on the western edge of Swabia, just east of the Black Forest. It's sometimes referred to as the Continental Cambridge, as the old university completely dominates the town's culture and population. It was spared destruction in both World Wars due to its status as a university and hospital town. As neat as that is, since we went to college in a scenic campus-dominated town (Bozeman, MT) and currently live on Caltech's scenic campus, it sort of felt like "just another college town". It had a lot of posters for social activism and art exhibitions, health-food stores, and young intelligentsia. While that certainly makes a vibrant community, we're trying to take a vacation and experience novel, traditional culture. So we decided not to spend the night there, as we had originally planned.

A friend (who did his Ph.D. in Tübingen) recommended that we see the Hohenzollern Burg nearby. Since we didn't have a map and it wasn't listed in the guidebook, we thought we'd stop in Tübingen for lunch and directions. Swabia is apparently famous for its Bretzeln (pretzels), which are similar but not identical to Bavarian pretzels. We stopped at a little deli, bought sandwiches made on pretzel bread, and found them extremely good. We ended up walking around for an hour trying to get a city map or directions to the Hohenzollern Castle. Eventually we got both at a bookstore near the city center, and found that the castle is a 20 minute drive east of Tübingen. We filled up with gas on our way out of town (about 32 liters at something like €1.20/liter, which brought us perhaps 400 km at approximately 30 mpg). I spontaneously bought Amanda a gas station candy bar -- in this case, a Ritter-Sport Edel-Bitter dark chocolate bar containing 71% cacao. Even gas station candy is high-quality here!

The Hohenzollern Burg occupies a fairly prominent location overlooking a highway and several small towns. There's a parking lot in the foothills from which a shuttle bus takes you up the one-lane switchbacks to the castle. At least, that's what the signs say. There was no bus running today, likely due to it being a weekday in the winter. There's also a footpath that leads straight up the hill, but that was buried beneath two feet of snow, so we walked up the road. There were only two or three other cars in the parking lot, from which the photo at the right was taken.

We arrived at the top just after 3:00 and inquired about tours in English. The answer was that if no one else was on the tour, they would do it in English, but otherwise they had to give it in German. Since it was the only way to see the inside of the castle, aside from the two chapels (one Catholic and one Protestant), we decided to do it anyway. It turned out to be a great decision, since not only was there no one else on our tour, but the guide was bored enough that he gave us a 75 minute tour in English. Sadly, they didn't allow any photographs inside the castle, but we learned a great deal about the castle and its history, and how it fits into German history. The Hohenzoller family is the family that later became the kings of Prussia and then the Kaisers of Germany, culminating with Kaiser Wilhelm in World War I. Among other highlights, the treasury had swords, suits of armor, and a dress embroidered with silver (as in the metal) thread, worn by the wife of one of the Prussian kings when she surrendered to Napoleon.

There has been a castle on that site since at least 1000 AD, although the current version was built in the mid-1800s. Again, this is a 19th century royal opulence thing, like the more famous Neuschwanstein Schloss in Bavaria. In the early 1400s, the original castle was razed after a 10-month siege by angry neighbors, after the count inhabiting it became what our guide called "a black knight". It was rebuilt about 50 years later as a palace, with no defensive wall. By the end of the 18th century, this palace had fallen into disuse and disrepair, and was allowed to go to ruin. In the grip of the Romantic middle 1800s, the family rebuilt it as what people now call a "fantasy castle" -- a castle built to recall the stories of knights and chivalry, rather than for any useful purpose. A large number of the castles standing in Germany today were built or renovated in this same vein, with windows in the outer walls and lots of superfluous turrets. The current Hohenzollern Burg has never been lived in or even heated.

Since it was getting dark by the time we got back to the car, we made a beeline for Triberg, the heart of the cuckoo clock manufacturing region for which the Black Forest is perhaps most well-known. Our plan was to spend the night there, but after passing through Rottweil (which has a dog breed named after it), it started snowing -- lightly at first, but progressively heavier. We somehow ended up behind a bus going as slowly as 20 km/h, so after that, we took our first opportunity to stop for the night. We ended up in a tiny town called Naußbach, with only one hotel. The hotel, in fact, turned out to be closed for the season, so we managed to find a Gasthof that was open. I think "Gasthof" is something like "guest house". This one, called Gasthof-Pension, is run by a local couple that speaks no English, doesn't take credit cards, and has no other guests. Our room is rather large, even by American standards, but not at all well insulated. The beds in both of our German hotels now have had instead of a queen bed, side-by-side double matresses in one frame, each equipped with nothing except a fitted sheet and a down comforter, with feather pillows.

Since the temperature is dropping and it's still snowing hard, we were reluctant to set out for dinner. We were overjoyed to find that the Gasthof's dining room serves dinner, in contrast to all the hotels we've stayed at previously. Amanda had a rump steak with garlic butter and French fries, and I had Jägerschnitzel and Bratkartoffeln, which turned out to be a pork steak with mushroom sauce and fried potatoes with bacon. The Bier (beer) was a "Ketterer Pils", which I think is a pilsner made by the Ketterer brewery which has been brewing in the Schwarzwald since 1877. Altogether, it made a good, hearty meal. We don't need to be in Paris until Wednesday night, so we could either stay here two nights or go a bit further tomorrow. We'll see how comfortable the night is, and decide in the morning.

Zu Fuß: Baden-Baden

2006-03-06T01:30:00.000-05:00

We spent the afternoon strolling around Baden-Baden. It's a very scenic town, with lots of hills, and it was very full of shoppers on this Sunday afternoon. It's still a fairly touristy kind of place, as it's been throughout much of its long history. We found a really cool chocolatier called König, which sold several exotic chocolate bars. They had various African and South American chocolates and mixtures of things like a Brazilian pepper chocolate bar and a chocolate bar infused with "extract of English rose". Amanda bought that one, and it tasted just like you'd think rose-chocolate would taste. We also saw a large old church, and hiked to a couple of grand-looking buildings that turned out to be schools.

On our way back to the hotel, we visited the museum showcasing the ruins of the Roman bathhouse that used to sit over the hot springs. It was built circa 70 AD and discovered in 1870 when they dug the foundation for the new bathhouse, the Friedrichsbad. It looks like they found the ruins, said, "That's neat," and proceeded to construct the new building on top of them unmodified; in a couple of places, the foundations of the Friedrichsbad cut right through the Roman ruins. There are numerous known Roman bath ruins in Europe, but the ones here in Baden-Baden are remarkable for their state of preservation. They heated the bathhouse using the naturally warm water, and apparently some controlled fires, beneath a floor which was elevated three feet to allow air to circulate. The walls were made from hollow clay bricks aligned to make tubes, which carried the heat from beneath the floor up the walls. They say there were several pools in the various rooms, each probably with its own water temperature, in addition to a sauna and cool-down room.

After returning to our room to warm up, we went to dinner at a place called Laterne. Tonight, I ordered Maultaschen and Amanda got a pork chop with garlic butter and French fries (or their German equivalent). I liked Amanda's Maultaschen from last night better than mine from tonight, but her pork steak was better than mine from last night. To top it off, we got a white beer they had on tap, which was decent. The wines have been more eye-opening in general, but we couldn't leave Germany without having some beer!

After dinner, we went over to the Caracalla Thermale baths. It's basically just a high-class swimming pool with many separate pools of different temperatures, plus an aromatherapy sauna. You pay by the hour, and they give you a card that you use to check in and out (like a subway) so they can automatically verify that you haven't used too much time. The locker room and shower are like an assembly line, and it was a lot busier than the other activities we've done on this trip so far. I guess it has something to do with being in a tourist town on a weekend. The bathhouse closes at 10:00, so we had to have an early dinner to make sure we got there in time to use our two-hour-minimum passes. There are a couple of pools that lead outside the main glass dome through archways, and they have hot tubs you can get to directly to and from the pools. We noticed it start to snow, so we went outside and climbed in the hot tubs. Sitting in a hot tub while it's snowing is an amazing experience. It was clear and cold all day, but for an hour or so, it came down in big, heavy flakes. We are very ready for bed after our swim.

Zu Fuß: Karlsruhe

2006-03-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

We had a long, leisurely dinner last night at a place called Weinstube im Baldreit. Baldreit is a little cul-de-sac in the rather large pedestrian zone of Baden-Baden. I had a pork fillet and Spätzle (homemade egg noodles), both regional specialties. Amanda had a local version of ravioli known as Maultaschen. We had a local reisling, on a label called Yburg. It was a very nice wine; the guidebook says that German white wines are the world's best. It's interesting to observe that the people at all the restaurants we've gone to have been in no hurry to finish. We had to wait 45 minutes to get our check last night, and all the people who were there when we arrived were still there when we left. In any case, it was too late to go to the baths last night, so we'll go there tonight instead.

I woke up at 5:00 this morning and killed time by reading about German history in our guidebook. Among other things, I learned that most of Germany was originally inhabited by Celts, who were pushed out by the Germanic tribes in prehistoric times. The Germanic tribes resisted Roman rule until they were overrun by the Huns in the 5th century, which caused the Saxons (from northern Germany) to invade England. After that the Frankish tribes, moving in from what is now Belgium, gradually took power, culminating with the empire of Charlemagne in 768. The emperor Otto the Great allied with the Roman Catholic Church in 962, having himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor in order to wield religious authority over the various duchies. The result of this is that Germany during the Medieval and Middle Ages is the source of all our cultural perceptions of the feudal system. This ended with the Reformation, which occurred when an otherwise esoteric scholarly debate between Martin Luther and some other clergy was used by some German princes as an excuse to take back some power from the (holy) imperial throne.

Anyway, we drove a half hour up the Autobahn to visit Karlsruhe, where my grandfather attended university just after World War II. It's clear and cold today, but our car wouldn't go faster than 170 km/h (105 mph) on the Autobahn. Most people seemed to drive around 140 (85), and they're very considerate about staying in the right lane except when passing. I think it's pretty necessary here, when people are driving such disparate speeds. Karlsruhe ("Karl's Rest") was founded in the 1715 by the Margrave Karl Wilhelm. There are various stories about why he needed a new capital city, but my favorite is that he wanted a place where he could relax with his mistresses while his wife remained at court. That story is so typical of the aristocratic lifestyles of the 18th-19th centuries. Those people had more time and money than they knew what to do with, and no guiding principles except luxury and indulgence. It's no wonder that era spawned so many revolutions.

We explored Karlsruhe on foot ("zu Fuß") for a couple of hours before lunch. Since it was founded fairly recently on an previously unoccupied site, it has broad streets and an aesthetically pleasing, fan-shaped street grid. I took many, many pictures, especially of the university, hoping to share them with my grandfather soon. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1950 after two years at the Universität Karlsruhe and has not returned since.

It was hard to find a restaurant open on Sunday, but we eventually settled on a hole-in-the-wall kebab place near the town center. I haven't seen this type of fast food in the U.S. yet, but it's got to be coming. Kebabs are some Mediterranean food consisting of shaved rotisserie meat in a pita-like bread, with lettuce, tomato, etc. They're really good, and much lighter than a hamburger. Although nearly every town we've driven through, large or small, has had its McDonald's, and there was a Burger King just down the street from our kebab place, we've managed so far to resist all temptation (what little there was!) to eat American food. I've also noted a branch of Manpower, a personnel agency where my mother used to work, in both Strasbourg and Karlsruhe.

Nach Deutschland

2006-03-04T19:00:00.000-05:00

It turned out to be another two hours from Strasbourg to Baden-Baden. The border between France and Germany runs down the center of the Rhine River at this point. We thought we might have to stop, especially because we're not citizens of either country, but the border station was closed and basically boarded up. As soon as we crossed into Germany, the road signs became clearer and more numerous. They still use lots of roundabouts for traffic flow control, but even then there's a sign ahead of time which shows what towns are off of what roundabout exit.

It continued to snow as we made a short jaunt up the Autobahn to the Baden-Baden turnoff. I was looking forward to the opportunity to drive on the Autobahn, but the weather and some rather heavy traffic forced us to go pretty slowly. Baden-Baden is set at the end of a narrow river valley near the center of the state now called Baden-Württemberg. In the Middle Ages, there was a duchy of Baden, and its capital city was also called Baden -- thus, Baden in Baden, or Baden-Baden. Before that, it was a Roman outpost and resort, thanks to the hot springs (or baths, "Baden" in German) that well up there. In the late 1800s, the Grand Duke Frederic built a bathhouse on top of the ruins of the Roman baths, which was the European spa destination until World War I. The so-called Friedrichsbade is still open today, next door to the modern Caracalla Thermale spa, built in the 1980s. We really want to go to the Friedrichsbade, but they're all-naked, all the time, so we'll probably pass on that. However, the ruins of the Roman baths can still be seen below the Friedrichsbade, so we'll be sure to see those.

Our hotel, the Hotel am Markt, is up a hill through a one-lane mixed pedestrian/auto zone, and about 300 yards from the Friedrichsbade and the "New Castle" (Neues Schloss, built in 1479). Apparently the Old Castle, built in 1102, still exists as a ruin above the city, but we didn't realize that until we got back. I reserved a hotel room via the Internet, but they didn't have us listed. In fact, they did have a Bender party, but it was somebody else. That's actually why we came -- I read somewhere that my family name originated in Baden in the 1500s or so. But it turned out to be no problem -- they had a vacant room with a private bathroom. Our room actually has great views of the city.

After some discussion, we decided to chill out for the afternoon and spend another night here. We're just a bit too tired to do our site-seeing here today, and it seems to be a really neat town and hotel.

Alsace

2006-03-04T16:00:00.000-05:00

Well, so much for beating jet lag. I woke up at 4:00 this morning, but I had to wait until after 6:00 to get Amanda up. Instead of paying €6.70 for breakfast at the hotel again, we decided to hit a patisserie (pastry shop) nearby, which was significantly cheaper and (more importantly) is an essential part of the European experience. We each had a small eclair (mine: vanilla, Amanda's: chocolate), and I had a raisin pastry to counter Amanda's croissant. Then I went to pick up the car and bring it back to load our luggage after we checked out. The same hotel guy who told us he couldn't speak English our first night had no trouble conversing with us as we checked out.

We have reservations in the German town of Baden-Baden tonight, which will probably be four or five hours' drive from Nancy. The detailed maps of downtown Nancy that we got from the hotel and rental agency didn't give any indication of what road we should take to get to Strasbourg, the next major town to the east. So, we ended up choosing a road that seemed to head in the right direction and hoping that there would be signs. We had to make several arbitrary turns (choosing the busiest-looking roads) but eventually, after getting outside of Nancy, we found signs for other small towns that looked like they were probably on the correct road. There are several roads leading from Nancy to Strasbourg, and we weren't very concerned with how long it took as long as we arrived in the end.

We made it to Strasbourg around 11:30, 2½ hours after leaving Nancy. We definitely took the back way, winding through some picturesque fields and forests and several sleepy French towns with names like Osterwimmer and Furnheim. We even saw a couple of French deer in a field.

We took an hour or so to walk around Strasbourg, a beautiful old town in the province of Alsace, just a few miles from the Rhine River and the German border. Even more than Lorraine, the Alsace region has German roots. If the names of the towns weren't evidence enough, the architecture of the area definitely looks more German than French, although the province is also famous for its white wines. There is a large, old fort and fortified bridge across the small channel or canal running through the center of town, and a large central plaza which will be the starting line for the 2006 Tour de France. For lunch, we had the remainder of the food we brought from home and washed it down with some delights from a bakery called "Christian". Amanda got a truffe chocalat (chocolate truffle) which she says is the best she's ever had, and I got a berry-filled doughnut (but a French doughnut).

À Pied: Nancy

2006-03-03T23:00:00.000-05:00

We got up this morning around 7:00 -- perhaps we've beaten jet lag by skipping one night, or maybe we were just really tired. It snowed maybe a half inch overnight. Amanda's hair dryer died an ugly death this morning when she turned it on without using the voltage converter (European outlets run 220 V as opposed to the American 110 V). Fortunately, the hotel had another one in the bathroom.

We ate breakfast in the hotel dining room. You sit down like you're going to order breakfast from a menu, and then they bring you a continental breakfast with orange juice and your choice of hot drink. I don't know why I was surprised to get a continental breakfast on the Continent. It was much better than the continental breakfasts you get at American hotels, though. There was a basket with a small loaf of bread, a croissant, and a pastry with semi-sweet chocolate. Then there was a plate of various types of jam (in the little plastic cups with a peel-back lid) and some butter packets. The breads were really good, but it's a lot more food, and of a different type than we're used to eating for breakfast. At home, usually we have fresh fruit and maybe some turkey bacon. Well, I guess we'll try eating European style while we're here. They certainly don't seem worse off for it. During our trip through the subways of Paris and streets of Nancy, I was overwhelmed with how thin French people are as a whole, compared with obese America.

We moved the car back into the parking garage by the train station rather than pay for street parking every two hours for the rest of the day. It's about a 10 minute walk without all our luggage, now that we know what direction it is! The next order of business was to change our dollars to euros, which we did at the post office (La Poste) at a bit better exchange rate -- I think it ended up being about $1.28 for €1. Then we began an undirected walking tour of old Nancy ("à pied" means "by foot"). Basically, we looked for large old buildings or church steeples and walked toward them, allowing us to see a lot of territory in between. It rained for pretty much the entire day.

There's a really large Gothic cathedral near our hotel, but it's being renovated and is closed to the public. So, we first stopped in the church of Saint-Nicolas, who was born in this area around 250 AD. I'm not sure exactly how the story evolved (although Google probably does), but I think they first had a celebration in his honor around December 6 every year, where people gave each other gifts. Then that celebration became associated with the Christmas celebration a few weeks later, so Saint Nicolas became a Christmas figure. In the 19th and 20th centuries, he became "Santa Claus" or Old St. Nick. Anyway, he is an honored figure in Lorraine. Joan of Arc was also born in Lorraine (although burned as a witch 19 years later) and has statues and streets here named after her. Next, we walked into the cathedral of Notre Dame -- since "notre dame" means "our lady", it appears that there are many with that name aside from the famous one in Paris. This one was built beginning in 1700 but was not a cathedral (which requires a bishop) until 1778 or so. Before that, the Duke of Lorraine was named a "primate" by the Pope, to admininster the church's interests in Nancy. Talk about the integration of church and state!

Then we walked through the Place Stanislas and the Palais Government, still the seat of the provincial government. In fact, we glimpsed guards in camouflage inside a guard room. Stanislas apparently was exiled from Poland and then became king of Lorraine somehow, in the 18th century. He built himself a magnificent new palace in Nancy, at the expense of the lower class, I'm sure.

We had lunch at a pizzeria called La Gourmanderie near our hotel. We were looking for a light lunch after our relatively large breakfast. I had a salade du chef (chef's salad) with ham, pork, and a fried egg. Amanda got a pizza quatre fromage (four cheese) which included some unusual cheeses such as gorgonzola. This was pretty good, if heavier than we had intended. We shared a large glass of their house white wine, Edelzwicker Alsace. (Alsace is the region or province between Lorraine and the German border, through which we'll be driving tomorrow.)

For the afternoon, we visited the Musée Lorraine, which labeled its displays in French only. The man at the front desk spoke English pretty well, and at least told us what we'd be seeing, and how to get around. It turns out that enough French words have relatives in English that we can figure out quite a bit of what the labels are saying without knowing the words beforehand. For example, at dinner last night, we realized that "bœuf" is "beef" and "veau" is "veal" without much trouble. From what we could gather, Lorraine was born after the death of the emperor Charlemagne circa 800 AD. His three sons split his empire into three parts, which basically became France, Lorraine, and Germany. Germany retained the title of Holy Roman Empire through the Middle Ages, France became its own kingdom (at war with England), and Lorraine rapidly lost most of its territory and became a small duchy in between larger powers. It was historically a haven for Jews, especially after they were officially expelled from France around 1150. Lorraine regained some prestige after Duc Charles V liberated Vienna from invading Turks c. 1685, but was eventually absorbed by France and Germany in turns.

Before Charlemagne, this area was heavily settled by the Romans as they expanded their empire north. It appears that they worked their way up the rivers of Lorraine after spreading into southern France (near Marseille), settling here before Paris or London. The museum's collection includes Roman artifacts from the vicinity back to 1000 BC, including many from c. 200 BC.

One of our reasons for deciding to visit Nancy instead of Nice where it's warmer was that some of Amanda's ancestors immigrated to America from this part of France. The records we have indicate that they lived in "Muerthe et Moselle", which are the names of two rivers that join just outside of Nancy. Unfortunately, we learned at the museum that Muerthe et Moselle was the name of this region of Lorraine, with the capital at Nancy. Therefore, it's likely that they lived in the countryside somewhere nearby, but there's little chance of us finding any of their graves.

Because of our large lunch and long day, we visited a chocolaterie to pick up dinner. We each had three selected small chocolates and a little bit of the sandwich we brought with us from home (intended for the plane ride). This chocolaterie (called Alain Batt) had some large chocolate snails in the window (eyestalks and all), which I really wanted to try but didn't. Apparently I took about 280 photos today, though some of them are duplicates. Many of them are also probably blurry because I tried to avoid using the flash inside churches and museums. Tomorrow we'll check out of our hotel and drive to Germany.

Dinner and a Bed

2006-03-03T00:30:00.000-05:00

Apparently restaurants around here don't open for dinner until at least 7:30, which gave us ample opportunity to find our way around old Nancy and get very cold. We saw the old Duke's Palace, which is now the Musée Lorraine, a great old cathedral and a chapel, and a yellow, handmade Italian sports car (Lamborghini) parked on the street. It's too dark to get good pictures tonight, but we have all day tomorrow to explore. We weren't able to change our money before going to the hotel, in spite of trying a couple of banks. We're told that the post office will do it, but they had a long line when we went there, so we hit an ATM instead and then got a bartender to make some smaller change for us in order to pay for parking.

We walked down a small street with restaurants on both sides, sort of what you'd call a walking mall in the U.S., and happened on a small butcher shop that sold snails. This is probably an everyday occurrence in France, but we found it amusing. It looks like most of the restaurants have "menus", from which you pick an entrée ("entry", or appetizer), plat ("plate", or what we'd call an entrée), and dessert for one price -- in the neigborhood of €20. You can also order a la carte as well, but I think we'll choose a menu tonight, both because we're hungry and for the experience of it. It looks like the restaurants generally take Visa, MasterCard, and American Express (Visa less frequently than the others, their advertising notwithstanding).

When 7:30 finally came, we found a little bistro-type place called Le Romarin (on "Old Street"), which had about six small, tightly-packed tables on one side of the entry hallway and perhaps ten on the other. There was one other couple there when we arrived. Either we ended up in the smoking section or the entire restaurant allowed smoking, but it turned out to be a hazy meal as other patrons arrived and lit up. I think we were the only table not smoking. California, of course, doesn't even allow smoking in bars anymore, so this is not something we're used to. The restaurant had a bar counter at one end where they staged some of the food before bringing it to the tables, and a narrow, downward staircase next to our table. Amanda had a boullion de bœuf (beef broth) with carrots, escalope (which she recognized as chicken) in crême sauce, and some cake-like thing with a fruit/berry sauce for dessert. I had escargot (snails) in the shell, soaked in basil and olive oil, foie de veau (some cut of veal), and a crême brulée for dessert. Everything was extremely good, except I didn't particularly care for the veal. (Today, I looked it up and found that "foie" is liver, which explains a lot.) The crême brulée was the best I've ever had -- warm, creamy, not at all tasting of egg. The waiter didn't speak any English, but we managed to figure out enough of the menu to order.

At home we drink less than one bottle of wine per month, but we decided that it's a shame to travel to France and not drink their wine; similarly with Germany and beer. The wine menu was organized not by style or grape, as in the U.S., but by color and then by region. Of course, most of the regions in France have historically produced distinct wines (Bordeaux, Burgundy, Côte du Rhone, Champagne, etc.), but, hardly knowing a merlot from a zinfandel in any case, we found it a bit daunting. So, I just chose a mid- to low-priced wine with an interesting name: Saint-Nicolas de Bourgeuil, a red wine (vin rouge) from Loire. We also discovered that you can buy wine here in small half-bottles (demi-bouteilles), which is really neat because there's no way we could drink a whole bottle by ourselves. (I've now read on the Internet that it is illegal in France to put the name of the grape on a wine bottle. The region of Saint-Nicolas de Bourgeuil grows mostly cabernet, it seems.)

Now, to bed at long last. It's just after noon in Los Angeles. The guy currently at the hotel desk didn't speak English, but we managed to find out that we'll need to pay for parking on the street after 9:00 in the morning.

Arrival in Nancy

2006-03-02T20:10:00.000-05:00

We just checked into our hotel, the Hotel de Guise in Nancy, after traveling for over 24 hours. During that time, we've learned a few things:

1. long journeys make you tired, and being tired makes you cranky
2. driving in old French towns is even harder than it looks
3. following a map is much easier when you know what direction you're facing, and much more difficult when the streets aren't all labeled
4. MapQuest maps are OK for directions, but bad for navigation
5. change your money at your local bank before leaving

To begin with, each time we changed trains required us to haul our luggage up or down anywhere from two to six cement staircases. We still made it to the Paris Gare de l'Est (East Station) in plenty of time to catch our 1:00 train, which turned out to be running 20 minutes late anyway. Being unfamiliar with the station and train layouts, we ended up with seats in a non-smoking section of a smoking car for the 2½ hour ride to Nancy. They're planning to run a high-speed TGV train on this route beginning next year, but for the time being we have to make do with an older (SNCF) train. The tracks run very close together, and we got buffeted quite a bit by oncoming trains. After we got off, our train continued on to Strasbourg on the German border and then to Munich, so there were a goodly number of Germans on board. The train station in Paris was patrolled by military personnel in camouflage with machine guns. I'm not sure if 18-year-olds with machine guns in a train station make me feel safer or not.

There was patchy snow on the countryside as we rode. Even though it's the end of a hard winter, everything seems much greener than we're used to in the western U.S. It doesn't seem like there is much new construction -- all the buildings look many years old. Much of the architecture in the U.S. gives you the feeling that you've seen it before, but everything here seems unique, built for its location rather than pre-designed. We passed many fields, hills, rivers, farms, and vineyards, as well as numerous small towns. I knew that Europe is a lot more densely populated than the U.S., but it's something different to feel it. Nothing is wild; it's all been cultivated and settled for hundreds of years. In Montana and Washington I could sometimes imagine that I was the only white person ever to walk in an exact location, but that feeling has no place here.

Nancy is a small city in what used to be the independent duchy of Lorraine. Since then, Lorraine has been in both French and German hands at different times, and as such was the site of very much warfare during the 19th and 20th centuries. The Lorraine American Cemetery, resting place of a great number of American servicemen lost during the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine during World War II, is something we hope to see, maybe an hour's drive away.

We eventually found our hotel and had no problems checking in in English. The hotel office is actually just a desk in the corner of the dining room, which is reached through some French doors (seriously) off of the entry corridor. The Hotel de Guise was built in the late 1700s and was apparently the house of one of the king's mistresses (the king of Lorraine, I think, not of France). I was a little worried that we might not have a private bathroom, but we do. We have a little tiny room with two front doors: one off of the main stairway and one about four feet beyond that, forming kind of an airlock with a few more stairs inside. We're on the second floor (which really means the third floor in Europe). There are parts of the hotel that have rooms right next door to each other, but our door is nowhere near any other rooms. However, there are other rooms and staircases that can be reached from other floors (or from the courtyard), so I'm sure that we still share walls with other guests. It was clearly built as a house, not a hotel. There is marginally room for two cars to park in the courtyard, but those spots were reserved before we arrived, so we'll have to leave the car on the street overnight. The rental company (Hertz) specifically asks that you park their cars in garages, not on the street, but this seems like a decent part of town.

We're feeling very tired, but we'll try to find some dinner before we crash. If we go to bed now, we'll be up at some ungodly hour. Plus, the prospect of exploring a new place is somewhat invigorating, although this is tempered by the continuing rain.

Ground Transportation

2006-03-02T12:05:00.000-05:00

No trouble with French customs, baggage, or anything else. They want $1.32 for €1 here, too. I thought the exchange rate was closer to $1.25, so we'll hold on to our dollars until we get out of the airport, anyway. It's about 30°F and snowing lightly. Our itinerary calls for us to take the train to Nancy, about 100 miles east in the province of Lorraine. We'll spend two nights there and rent a car to drive into Germany. Amanda took three years of high school French, and I took one year of German in college, so we're optimistic about being able to communicate at least minimally. I've also heard that a lot of continental Europeans can speak a bit of English -- in fact, it's required in German schools now.

I think we've made our first major blunder of the trip. I was trying to avoid driving in Paris, but it looks like it would have been much smarter to rent the car at the airport rather than take the train to Nancy first. For one thing, Charles de Gaulle airport is on the northeast edge of Paris, so it would allow us to see more countryside (which was part of the reason to rent a car) without making it too difficult to get around. However, instead of going right to our car and driving for ~3 hours, we waited a half hour in line to buy train tickets for €90 which will require 4 hours and 3 trains to bring us to Nancy. In addition to this hassle, we're starting to feel pretty tired since it's midnight Pacific Time now.

Thoughts from Mid-air

2006-03-02T09:35:00.000-05:00

We've just passed over the English Channel en route to Paris. The weather was clear over all of the UK, but it's become immediately cloudy on the French side. Our seats are at a window behind the left wing, so we had a great view of the sunset over James Bay at the southwestern end of Hudson's Bay in Canada. We flew directly over Ireland, north of Dublin, then over Wales, where it started to get light, and then southern England, south of London. Over Greenland I set my watch to Central European Time, 9 hours ahead of Pacific Time.

It turns out the the flight is moderately full, since a large number of people were continuing travel from Tahiti. Apparently they deplane in the U.S. and then reboard after the jet gets fuel, food, and a new crew. There are a large number of Polynesian-looking passengers, and all the announcements have been in both French and English. We left behind an ugly brown haze over Los Angeles, and I'm looking forward to the rain and snow forecast for eastern France and western Germany. I don't think Amanda is as excited about the cold, though.

Leaving for France

2006-03-01T12:50:00.000-05:00

This is the beginning of not only our 2006 trip to France and Germany, but also of this blog. Our plan is to update this website with notes from our travel journals, both for this trip and for past and future trips.

We got up at about 6:00 to finish packing and meet the airport shuttle. Daisy is staying with friends who have two beagles, and Ichabod is home alone. At the moment we're sitting at the gate at LAX, waiting for our 11:30 departure. We'll be flying in a big blue jet with an orchid painted on the tail, operated by Air Tahiti Nui. (Tahiti, of course, is a French territory in the South Pacific.) Air Tahiti Nui flies only a very few, long-distance routes, using LAX as a stopover between Paris and Tahiti. They had the cheapest flight, and only non-stop flight from L.A. to Paris when I booked on Expedia almost a year ago. At this point, there are only about 10-15 passengers sitting in the terminal area, so it may be a very empty flight. It's about 11 hours to Paris, putting our arrival time at 7:30 tomorrow morning.

We're excited, but pretty relaxed now. I wish we had ordered travel guides online a few weeks ago, instead of going to Barnes & Noble last night. We ended up with the Rough Guide to Germany, which has about 20 pages on the Black Forest region, and no French travel guide. It would have been better to get a couple of specialized books on the areas we're going to, I think. We don't have a full itinerary, so it would be nice to have a detailed list of roads, restaurants, and lodging in the vicinity, rather than a couple of paragraphs and two or three listings for only the major towns.

The money exchange counter at LAX wants $1.32 for €1, which seems a bit steep to me, so we'll wait to change our money in France, with the hope that they'll do better than that.