Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
It was time to return to leave Austria and Germany. After arriving in Munich, we started a walking tour of the city. The timing worked out that we got to see the Town Hall's glockenspiel play.
For our last full day in Salzburg, we went to Hellbrunn Palace, famous for its trick foundations. For the afternoon, we took it easy and hung out in a café for a while.
On the agenda for this day we’re touring Mozart’s birth home, Hohensalzburg Fortress, and walking along Mönchsberg. Later, wanting to go to a concert in the city of Mozart, we did just that.
Our stay in Füssen was the shortest of the trip, and it was time to head into Austria. After getting settled in our apartment, we went into Salzburg to do a walking tour of Old Town.
While it was nice to walk around Füssen the day before, the reason we stayed there was because it was conveniently located to Schwangau with its two star attractions, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, the Königsschlösser or the King’s castles. We spent most of the day in the area, and also did some hiking and took a ride up Tegelberg for the views.
Time for a travel day to the Bavarian Alps. After the trains, we arrived in Füssen and explored the town a bit.
For our last day in Cologne, we did probably the most popular tourist attractions, the Cologne Cathedral and the Chocolate Museum. While there were quite a few people at each, it’s easy to imagine how they could be so much more crowded.
We took our first side trip of this vacation, looking at the sights in the Middle Rhine Valley including a quick boat ride on the Rhine and visiting Rheinfels Castle.
The day started with a relaxing morning and a loop going across the Rhine. We then went to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, relaxed at a café, then went a bit out of the city to a party.
For our first full day in Cologne, we met up with Kellen and Noël to go through the Museum Ludwig, grabbed some lunch, did a short walking tour through the city, and got to chat with a friend of Noël's.
This year’s big trip is to visit Kellen and Noël who have been living in Germany for the past year and a half. After spending time with them in Cologne, we’ll head to the Alps, Munich, Salzburg, and Berlin. It’s been almost a quarter-century since Melody has been to Germany and over 40 years for me.
A while ago my dad let me scan some photos he had of his family from when he was young. The one I always go back to from 1936 has the most people, most of them old enough that I can easily tell who is who. I ran the picture through a colorizing service full well knowing it would be only a best guess at what colors went where. The result evoked a surprisingly strong reaction. I thought it would be appropriate to share since tomorrow would have been my grandparents' 107th wedding anniversary.
The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is getting a lot of deserved attention, and there is a lot of media coverage and documentaries. Even in just the past ten years, a lot of great items have shown up in various media forms.
I recently passed 1,000,000 views of my photos on Flickr. While the number doesn't really mean that much (it's surprisingly hard to know what a view is), it seemed like a good time to take a look at the ten photos which have gotten the most views on the site.
The only thing we planned for Saturday was a hike up Neahkahnie Mountain. That took most of the day, and the great weather yielded lots of views.
We went a bit south to Tillamook County to a couple capes. And since we were in the area, we stopped by the Tillamook Creamery.
We decided to take a long weekend to go to the north part of the Oregon Coast before the crowds start to show up, so we packed up the car and headed south. We looked at a shipwreck near Astoria, visited Fort Clatsop National Preserve, and walked a bit along the Seaside Promenade.
It’s become a tradition for me to record something for my mom’s birthday, and this year it’s a Chopin Prelude, Opus 28, No. 6, Lento Assai, in in B minor.
Seeing a performance at Benaroya Hall, it's hard to miss the banks of pipes surrounding an organ console raised to be in the middle of the stage's back wall. Almost a couple of decades after the organ was installed, we finally got to hear it a couple weeks ago, but not with the piece you would expect.
Every year the Seattle Times holds their Pictures of the Year event, not only celebrating favorite photos and videos for the previous year but also highlighting two staff members who can talk about not only the past year but the path which led them to their current career. This year the presenters were long-time photographer Alan Berner and videographer Corinne Chin.
