Cypress

We moved to Cypress in July of 2019 and, honestly, it was probably too pricey to stay at, but we made the choice anyway because it was a bigger space and such a pretty view. Little did we know, a pandemic was around the corner. I really am very grateful and humbled at the privilege of being able to stay somewhere so lovely with the person I love the most—my best friend and the person who’s laugh and smile always brighten my day.

Anyway, I routinely took pictures our window and here are some pictures.

Cascades National Park

Dates: June 20th, 2020 to June 21st 2020 and July 6th, 2020 to July 8th, 2020

We actually had a chance to head to the Cascades before, but weren’t feeling the trip, so put it off until the pandemic was in full swing. Like so much in Washington, this is just beautiful and the colors are unreal. We ended up booking a campground two weeks later and walking around a little more.

This is much closer to Seattle than the Olympics—maybe a ninety minute drive total. And heading to Colonial Creek Campground, you drive through Newhalem, a company town run by Seattle City Light with a very Wes Anderson-esque power station. During the pandemic, many parts of the park were closed down, such as the visitors center and a lot of stores. But that allowed us to spend more time on the camping.

The second time we stayed here, we got a campsite on the water (this is right next to Diablo Lake), but the water levels were really low, so we weren’t that water adjacent.

All told, this was a good pair of trips.

Oregon Coast

Date: December 8th, 2019

This honestly should have been titled “Portland”, but we spent a day in Portland, hung out at a bar and played some Scruples (an absolutely soul-crushing game wherein you realize that folx in in 1986 had some real moral dilemmas around things that shouldn’t be moral dilemmas and a bizarre equivocation of the mundane and the socially just). But in our illegal hotel we noticed an Oregon shaped cutting board Valhalla—the Tillamook Creamery. So we lit out in the morning, went on the self-guided tour, ate some free cheese, ate some expensive cheese, ate some ice cream, and it was wonderful.

We then drove—we in this case is R and I with Will—along the Oregon (later Washington) coast up to Seattle. We took a stop at Cannon Beach and vowed to return. A pandemic ran right into us shortly thereafter, but I still hope we see it again.

Bratislava

Dates: November 27th, 2019 to November 30th, 2019

Honestly, this was a city I’d just only known through learning capitals for Quiz Bowl, but we took a chance and checked it out. Definitely learned a lot about the history of this place.

First of all, Bratislava is a relatively new town. It was historically called Pressburg (Anglicized) and was recently renamed after Slovak populations were moved around and this was positioned as the capital of a new Slovak state. Ultimately, this was a city that had been around and has a history, but has seen people located and relocated inside of it as a result of meddling from Maygars, Nazis, Soviets, and post-Soviets. Ultimately, this city feels very new, has a lot of construction going on, and has a small Old Town where we stayed.

This isn’t a particularly glowing recommendation, but I think that if we could do it again, we’d likely have spent less time here and more time in Budapest. While this a perfectly beautiful city, the character and, hmm, personality of cities like Budapest and Vienna are immediately clear. Here it still feels like its figuring it out.

I’ll note there was a Julius Meinl here… but was strangely awful and smoke-filled. Do not recommend. We also went shopping because apparently Black Friday, which we knew had spread to Canada, was also littered through the section of Eastern Europe we were hanging around. Internet and Amazon probably to blame here.

Budapest

Dates: November 24th, 2019 to November 26th, 2019

We arrived at our illegal hotel in the Jewish Quarter near the Dohány Street Synagogue after a debacle with the bus, so we went straight to bed. The next morning, we quickly head to an ATM to get some forint. The ratio is about 300 to 1 with the US dollar, and we—two experienced math teachers—talked ourselves into confusion and accidentally took out 15000 forint, aka 500 dollars. So we had some forint to burn.

Talking with R’s family Beata, who is from Budapest and thinks it is objectively more beautiful than Vienna (not a competition, but definitely has some wonderful hills). Seeing the Országház was a cool experience and it is a beautiful building. We spent most of the time in Pest (from our recommendation, the more urban part with Buda being residential per our source). only crossing the river to get some views and see the Castle District.

A few places we got some food:

• Tökmag Vegan Street Food—we actually stopped here twice. Per the name, good vegan options and GF bread for sandwiches.

• Nanushka Store & Cafe—shop, but had a pretty decent coffee shop. I had a drink with some orange powder stuff on it. Great stuff.

• Hotsy Totsy Budapest—a nice corner bar.

• My Little Melbourne Coffee and Brew Bar—a feature from the coffee book and an oddly Australian themed bar.

• Madal Cafe—Not going to lie, I was truly floored to find a coffee shop themed around Sri Chinmoy, the spiritual figure of the now defunct Victory’s Banner.

We’d love to come back again. We walked up to but didn’t get a chance to indulge in the many hot springs. And we’d love to see it in the summer.

Vienna II

Date: November 24th, 2019

Our return to Vienna was the result of plane delay that dropped us in Philadelphia for 24 hours. Trying to be a little budget conscious, we were able to get back to Vienna after a layover in London for the amount of our vouchers from American. While Vienna is a wonderful city and has a great Christmas energy that was in full swing, we opted to use this as a base of operations to see Budapest and Bratislava (Prague will have to wait, as will Belgrade).

We grabbed dinner at Pizzeria Scarabocchio, which has some solid GF options (and Italian cuisine reliably has vegetarian options), ate some Choco-fresh, the absolute best Kinder chocolate that is not available in the States, and walked around a bit.

There was some drama with our bus to Budapest where they stopped at the wrong portal and had no identifying markers that they were our bus and therefore pulled away without us. We ended up catching a later bus and passed the time at the airport eating Choco-fresh and watching Star Trek Deep Space Nine.

Vancouver II

Dates: October 4th, 2019 to October 6th, 2019

Taking a quick trip to Vancouver with Mary on her first international trip (we brought both the passport and the passport card!)

We stopped at the Richmond Night Market. And while the market was fun, it does cost money (for non-senior citizens), and most of the booths are meat-filled.

The next day, we stopped at a few places we’d been to before (namely MeeT on Main, Umaluma, 49th Parallel Coffee & Doughnuts, and Revolver). We also stopped at a few new places: tacos at La Tacqueria Pinche Taco were amazing with four different veg and drinks at La Mezcaleria were… pretty good.

The highlight of course was a walk through the massive Stanley Park. The benches that run through out are littered with dedication plaques to loved ones and family. I was beyond delighted to find a bench dedicated to Olicity, the ship name for Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak in the CW show Arrow. Like all the Arrowverse shows, Arrow is shot in Vancouver, so I guess it has special meaning to the city?

Colchuck Lake

Dates: September 6th, 2019 to September 7th, 2019

Darion was visiting from Denver and he came with R and me to go on a hike. We drove to Leavenworth (eh, not going to knock anyone, but a German-themed town is very strange to me). From there we went to the trailhead for the Enchantments and engaged in one of the most arduous hikes I’d ever been on. It was all up the whole time. The scenery was other-worldly though and highly recommend.

Also notable was the discussion around White Claw versus Truly. Darion is a hardcore Truly stan, but White Claw had the name recognition. As we asked every hiker we passed, we were hard-pressed to find any other Truly drinkers. This was before the lemonades came out.

Olympics

Dates: May 24th, 2019 to May 27th, 2019

Years ago, a friend and I took a trip to Seattle and while looking through the Seattle Library downtown, saw a guide of the Olympics National Park. We decided to hop a ferry and rent a car on Bainbridge and drive out. We spent the day driving around the peninsula, doing a little bit of hiking, finding a quiet and private beach on the Pacific. Anyway, that friend and I started dating and now we’re married and living in Seattle, so we wanted to go back. We went over Memorial Day weekend with our friends Vanessa and Manny.

We stopped in Port Townsend and had a pretty decent breakfast at Hudson Point Café. No real gripes here other than locations on the water tend to be very nice for seafood lovers and not great for vegetarians.

A few places that are worth checking out in this giant park:

• Sol Duc has some great hot springs. Natural springs do have a smell and these were a little crowded, so your mileage may vary.

• Kalaloch Campground is where we stayed and is great and right by the water. Being close to the water means it’ll be considerable cooler (this was May, but even when we visited in August the temperature dropped precipitously when we got to the coast).

• Lake Quinault has a great lodge there and we’d love to stay there eventually.

• Hall of Mosses is a good, easy-ish hike that gives you a good feel for what this park has to feature.

• Ruby Beach and Beach #2 are beautiful, serene views of the Pacific.

But really, it’s a great park. Hard not just to be in love with whatever you see.

• Ruby Beach and Beach #2

Thailand

Dates: April 5th, 2019 to April 13th, 2019

Let’s start at the start. This trip was a schlep. We realized that it would be significantly cheaper to fly out of Vancouver than Seattle (as it went with our notion that life in Seattle would be the Portal to the Pacific that the engraved message on the Mount Baker Tunnel purports). So we got on the bus to Vancouver, stopped at MeeT and then flew out late at night. (For what it’s worth, the train or bus are so much easier in terms of the border crossing. You stop for a little while, but it pales in comparison to the hours of delay, especially on reentry into the US). We had a layover in Guangzhou and were so exhausted we needed to make use of a travelers’ hotel you could rent by the hour. Which sounds seedy, but it was really nice albeit a little humid. Ultimately, we eventually land in Phuket, but still need to get ride on a bus to a boat to get to Koh Yao Yai and our resort—Santhiya Resorts & Spas.

The views were beautiful and this was a wonderful time. The prices here were more expensive than Bangkok, but ultimately very affordable by prices typically found in the US (other than sunscreen. They charged a lot for this). We also had a lot of wonderful tropical drinks served in pineapples (not coconuts, which was disappointing). R really wanted to go to a nearby island, but I sort of hemmed and hawed to much about it and ultimately screwed that up. So… sorry and I love you?

We then went to Bangkok which is a wildly large city with a lot going on. We only really saw one corner of it, taking a tuk tuk or two around, but staying close to our hotel which was right across the river from the Wat Arun. We did take a bus to a night market, which was a little stressful as you need to communicate to an attendant on the bus where you’re going and they would change you accordingly, and neither R nor I spoke or understood any Thai. This is also where I point out this was the most out of our element we’d been in terms of language ever (close second would be Turkey).

I did really enjoy the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre. We headed there because the only entry in my book about coffee was there (Gallery Drip Coffee), which makes sense as Thailand’s relationship with coffee isn’t the same as Europeans and most of their sources of the drink are on roadside carts serving up iced coffee with condensed milk. But the museum had some nice shops and exhibits.

The temperatures were very hot, even in April, and our attempts to get out early were thwarted by the fact that little was open that early. But still we got a good view of the city that seemed to have different neighborhoods with all different feels.

Our trip back was the same as our trip there, with two differences. We’d planned a long layover in Vancouver because we liked the city, but were so exhausted and the weather was so cold and rainy that we just paid a lot of money to go to the top of the Harbour Centre (the fake space needle) and chilled until we got to the train and just slept (which, by the way, the view from the train is gorgeous. Highly recommend that ride). We then took the streetcar back to our apartment and slept.

Tenerife

Dates: December 31, 2018 to January 3rd, 2019

We were definitely looking for somewhere warm to intercut our vacation to a location with a climate identical to Seattle, and we found a cheap flight to the home of Richard Alpert, so there you go. Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands (and the largest island in Macronesia). It’s close to Morocco, but not so close that you can get there by boat. This island is at roughly the same latitude as Orlando, so it’s warm all year. The island is also the home of the largest mountain in Spain (Canary Islands are a territory of Spain). As a result the north side of the island (where were were staying) is roughly ten degrees cooler than the south side of the island.

Our Airbnb was at an abandoned resort by the Tenerife North airport (which is unfortunate because we landed in the south). Renting a car, we drove there after sunset (which was around 8pm). We spent around forty dollars to get an international driving permit from AAA (which is one of only two places you can get this), though at no point was it asked to be seen. The Airbnb was one of the most impeccably styled places we’d ever been, and the abandoned resort felt equal parts cool and terrifying. There were other occupants, but the rooms were all individually owned and the amenities (like the pool, clubhouse, bar, patios) were empty.

In our time there, we did a little exploring to some beaches. They were black sand beaches and had amazingly high waves, which made for great swimming and great sitting in the sun. The beaches were surprisingly not crowded for such a lovely day.

Our last day on the island we went to La Laguna, the oldest city on the island. The parking there was very difficult to come by and toward the city center, the streets were mixed with both cars and people. This city is a twin city with Santa Cruz, the capital of the territory, and has roughly 400,000 people combined. In general, despite the single Starbucks and Subway we spotted, we found this place to be much less American than other places we’d visited. Many people spoke no English (making communication very difficult, especially because Canarian Spanish is not exactly like Spanish).

All told we feel like we could have spent months there.

London

Dates: December 24, 2018 to December 31, 2018

I feel very lucky that we got to spend a great deal of time in London. We put £50 on our transit cards and used all of it over the course of the week. We walked a ton, we saw a ton. London is very much a different place than any other European City I’d been to as it is filled with so much activity and life. R had been there before but this was my first time.

It’s hard to summarize everything we did there. A lot of museums, a lot of shopping, some nice bars, some middling coffee (sorry England, lock it down), some Indian food. In summary:

Museums:

• Tate Museum—free and wonderful. Clear efforts to represent diverse artists. The building is also great with some quality gift shops.

• The British Museum—also free and the one that’s famous for having all the stuff the British stole from around the world. The Rosetta Stone is there, which is amazing (the best take I heard about the Rosetta Stone: it aided the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs because there is the same message written in three languages, one of which was Ancient Greek and still understood at the time of its discovery. But the takeaway is that multicultural and multilingual societies have existed for thousands of years). I definitely was looking for more vibranium, but I guess Killmonger got it all.

• The Victoria & Albert Museum—also free! Good for you Britain for making things so easy to see. Their highlight was a casts exhibit—meaning a display of replicas of famous sculptures. It was strange.

• The Tower of London—decidedly not free. We bought tickets ahead of time, but we got there two hours before closing and we were told that the queue for the crown jewels was too long. We reset our tickets for the next day… and the queue was still insane. In the end we didn’t see the jewels. But we did see a very terrifying animation about how Richard III maybe killed two children.

• Westminster Abbey—also not free, also booked ahead of time. Doing this meant not waiting which was great. The church is beautiful. It has a crazy amount of memorials. Like a crazy amount. You’d be walking next the grave of Queen Anne and then there would be a plaque for Cecil Rhodes. It was great to see my old friend and personal role model Henry V.

Indian Restaurants

• Little India—we landed on Christmas Eve and these guys were open for dinner and lunch the next day so we ate there twice. Delicious.

• Dishoom—very hip space reminiscent of Beatnik, but the food was less vegetarian and GF friendly (which is a bummer for Indian food).

Bars

• The Library Bar—this might have been waaaay too nice. Like much of London, this was pretty pricey and needed reservations to get further than the outside room. The drinks were good and R got an elaborate, built-it-yourself gin fizz that came in three separate glasses and included potato chips garnish. Also a hotel bar, so pretty great.

• Hide Bar—attempted to find a coffee house, but ran into lots of places closed for the holidays. Needless to say, we had a great noon drink. Londoners love gin.

• Happiness Forgets—a nice underground bar underground in Shoreditch.

• Cafe Pacifico—a Mexican restaurant with a good bar menu. They also had tacos, but honestly weren’t terribly good.

Shopping

• Too much to list here. Harrods is the craziest place I’ve ever seen. They sell cars? Also, in general, it was a bummer to see how expensive London is.

Miscellaneous

• The only notable coffee in London was probably Monmouth Coffee Company. A few places we heard about were closed for the holidays, so maybe there’s more.

• Have you had beiju? It’s cassava flatbread from Brazil and we got it from a food truck. It was literally the greatest thing that has happened ever.

Philadelphia

Dates: December 22, 2018 to December 23, 2018

The City of Brotherly Love is not a nickname for Philadelphia, rather a direct translation of the Greek. This trip to Philly was a surprise trip—we had a one hour layover from Seattle to London but our plane was downsized, because that’s a thing, and they had to kick forty or so people off the plane. We knew this was coming because we were told this in Seattle and almost given a direct flight, but no luck.

Before going into all that Philly has to offer that we found, a few things about being bumped from flights.

1. This is an awful experience for everyone involved. When having to move 40 people to other flights to London when London isn’t necessarily the final destination in a timely manner is an impossible ask. Multiply that by a million when you’re doing this at Christmas.

2. Judy, the attendant at the desk, was incredibly awesome. She had to do a lot of work re-booking lots of flights and did us a solid by getting us two seats by themselves on the flight. She also had to deal with some stressed out people for a long time.

3. Speaking of a long time, all told we were waiting for maybe 90 minutes, during which we listened to the litany of non-famous Christmas pop playing at the Philadelphia Airport. Highlights? “Hey, Santa” by The Wilsons, which are Wilson-Phillips minus Phillips (for what it’s worth, the top 10 original Christmas pop songs from the 20th century are in order: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey, and end of list).

4. Here is some advice about getting bumped. You are entitled to compensation if you are not allowed on your plane. If you volunteer your seat though, you aren’t entitled to anything (though the airline will likely offer you something). In the chaos, we were asked if we would volunteer to be bumped, we said yes and that was it. That said… I’m glad we did. The last person on the flight was a pregnant woman flying alone. Among those who were left off the flight was a woman married to a British man, a whole family starting their vacation, and a man connecting to halfway around the world for a job interview. The airline offered a $700 voucher. Maybe we would have gotten more or maybe someone who really couldn’t miss their flight would miss their flight. And now, Philadelphia

The greatest coffee product in the world is the La Colombe draft latte. They sell these in cans, but if you can get them on tap, then do it. There was a location off the Damen Blue Line in Chicago. But they are from Philadelphia. We opted to take a cab straight to the La Colombe flagship store in Fishtown. In addition to their coffee, they had tons of pastry and some great food for brunch.

From here we took the train (which is surprisingly like Chicago’s El in terms of font choices and design) to Market Street and saw the Liberty Bell. Well, “saw.” Thanks to the Republican administration and Congress, government funding for National Parks were shut down and we could only see the Liberty Bell in profile (no crack) from a window after waiting in a surprisingly long line of other disappointed tourists. We went for a walk through downtown. The city hall is a beautiful building that reminded me of Vienna, both in architecture and the Kristkindlmarkt in the courtyard. We stopped in Macy’s and watched their Christmas light show, popped into Reading Terminal Market, and then walked to the Museum (the one with the Rocky Statue in front). It’s a good museum, but after living the Art Institute for 10 years, everything seems only okay. They had a special exhibit on fashion which was dope though.

We then took another cab to Rittenhouse Square, went to Franklin Bar, a speakeasy in a basement, stopped at the fanciest Anthropologie in the universe, and then got on the train to return to the airport. Off to Europe

Vancouver

Dates: November 21-24, 2018

Hot facts. Vancouver has the 5th highest population density in North America. This is probably why it’s used as a shooting location for so many movies and TV shows (including my beloved Arrowverse). It has a large Chinatown, and dense New York-like downtown, shipping ports, mountains, farms. Lots of cool stuff.

We stayed in Chinatown, but spent a lot of time in Gastown. (Though we did find three amazing places in Chinatown: The Union (a great Thai restaurant), Vegan Supply Chinatown (where we found some great GF and vegan jerky!), and Umaluma for some dairy-free gelato).

The best coffee we found was Revolver, though The Birds & and the Beets was a nice cafe with quality hipster food, and 49th Parallel Coffee had some great doughnuts and blue coffee cups.

Continuing on theme, though, the real highlights were the vegan food. We found MeeT in Gastown (and later MeeT on Main) and went there literally three times. There was another vegan restaurant, Chickpea, which R loved, but I was underwhelmed.

Fun fact, Vancouver seems like a Thanksgiving destination for Seattleites. No fewer than three of my coworkers ended up there at the same time we were (we only managed to meet up with one of them though). Heads up, though, the line into Canada is long. The line into the United States is actual insanity. We were there for three hours. That’s actually longer than the drive.

Orcas Island

November 9th - November 12th 2018

Orcas Island is the largest of the San Juan Islands, off the coast of Washington, and just a ferry ride away! We drove up to Anacortes and caught the 10:30 ferry. We rented a little house on the water that could not have been more idyllic; when we arrived there was classical music playing and champaign left out for us.

Saturday we went to Eastsound for breakfast and coffee. There was a beer festival happening with over 600 visitors, and some great live music.

Sunday was spent hiking in Moran State Park and Obstruction Pass. It was freezing at the top of Mount Constitution, but the #views were incredible. After hiking we stopped in Olga at an art gallery/ restaurant [Catkin Cafe], J ate Mac and Cheese and I had an incredible omelet filled with carrots, caramelized onions and parsnips, who would have thought! After a quick walk to the beach at Obstruction Pass we stopped back in Eastsound for some our favorite treat, ice cream, at Clever Cow. We ended the day watching Four Weddings and a Funeral on DVD, neither of us were impressed. Best supporting actress, BFTA, really?

Our ferry reservation for Monday was for 7:50pm, but I had dinner plans with some new friends and we hoped to catch the noon ferry. Unfortunately, due to high demand we were left waiting until 5pm and I missed my dinner plans. All was well though because we spent the day getting work done at the cafe in Orcas Hotel.

All in all, we were again amazed by the Pacific Northwest!

Plymouth

October 19th - October 22nd 2018

Quick trip home to see some alum at University of Michigan. We spent the next day walking around with Teddy through our yard.

St. Louis

October 4th - October 7th 2018

Headed to St. Louis for Erica and Matt’s wedding. R was a bridesmaid, which meant I spent most of the day of the wedding at Gelato di Riso in the Hill working. Other than a complete deluge the day of the wedding (a few hours before it started). Ironic.

We also got a chance to check in with a Mitrovictor. She’s crushing it. It’s awesome. Got some pancakes.

Los Angles

Dates: September 21st - September 23rd 2018

R & I have actually been to Los Angeles three times now together. While there’s plenty of appeal to the city that never sleeps (is that LA’s nickname), each time we stayed with Shartinez, each time we spent most of our time in East LA. This time though, we can to LA to see our favorite married couple. Jay-Z and Beyonce. At the Rose Bowl. It was awesome.

We also had the chance to go to Occidental College to meet some former students who go to the school. We stopped at El Huarache Azteca to grab some tacos with the kids (also some filled doughnuts at Donut Friend). It’s in Eagle Rock, a place we’ve visited many times (some highlights there are Highland Cafe and Shorthand, a stationery store. Not for nothing we also met Darion on an earlier trip), who would’ve known that there is a top-tier university just tucked in the background.

No trip to Kitchen Mouse this time. But soon, Kitchen Mouse. We will return.

Mount Rainer

September 14th - September 16th 2018

My co-workers organized a trip to Mount Rainier for the weekend and we jumped on it. They are a great crew and it seems like trip was an improvement on the year before (they apparently almost died in a blizzard). The weather was beautiful and our vacation home was about five minutes from the Paradise entrance to Mount Rainier. You can’t hike up the mountain without a pass, but you can hike well above the tree line. It’s a beautiful hike. In general, it’s clear that Mount Rainier has a special place to people in Washington—though there are mountains in view all around Seattle, Mount Rainier looms over the skyline and it was great to go there in person. We only spent one afternoon hiking, so there’s definitely more to see and more to come.

B.T. Dubs the lodge at Mount Rainier is awesome. There was a piano. There were free cookies for guests, but no one was checking. They’re by the upstairs bathrooms.

Portland

Dates: August 31st - September 2nd, 2018

Quick trip to Portland. The weather could not have been better, and Portland itself is, like, ten degrees warmer than Seattle. The main attraction for us was Powell’s, a bookstore the size of a city block that is unrelated to the one in Hyde Park. We made sure to visit Salt & Straw, get coffee, visit a new-wave themed food truck, and more coffee. We were looking for a quality veggie burger—and when the place we found online turned out to be not at all vegetarian friendly, we walked into a bar next door and to our delight discovered we were in a vegetarian restaurant, the Sweet Hereafter.

The day we left, we visited the Peninsula Park Rose Garden (apparently roses are a big thing in Portland) and we went through the 36 questions to fall in love from the New York Times.