For our three weeks here in Paris, we’re renting a small studio (about 250 square feet) on the 5th floor (4th floor as they’d call it here) in a building from the 1600s. We have views out on other buildings built around the same time here in the 3rd Arrondissement (the Marais area) of Paris. When they were originally built, they were mansions for the aristocrats of the time. This is one of the few neighborhoods in Paris that didn’t get drastically changed in the 1800s, so it’s got a lot of small cobblestone streets and alleys.
The inside of the apartment (photos soon) doesn’t really have much of an older feeling to it, but looking out the windows—you definitey feel like you’re someplace old! And the walls are super thick (i.e. quiet) which is really nice when you’re in a city.
We just posted photos of some highlights from our last two days in Iceland (October 2 & 3). We drove on the Ring Road from the Gauksmyri horse farm (about 30 minutes south of Blondous), to Reykjavik. We lucked out and had a beautiful (but cold) sunny day in Reykjavik for our last day there.
If you know Nikita (the cat) or Rube (the fish), you know there’s a lot of chillin’ that happens at Fine and Full Manor. Even when we’re not there, of course.
Fortuitously, Ian (Anastasia’s cousin) is chillin’ at Fine and Full Manor now—and so there’s like a power trio thing going on, except, since it’s all chillin’, it’s not really so much a “power” trio, but like a quantum counter spin / looks like you’re going backwards but it’s really so fast it’s time travel thing—as seen is this most excellent picture:
This is probably part 1 of a longer video about our aforementioned adventure day (yesterday). Please note that some of the facts and observations in this video are later proven to be mere optimism.
We’ve been driving a lot the past few days, and the car has a CD player, but no input jack. We’ve got iPods, but no CDs.
Last night, we remembered to burn a CD with some mp3s, starting from a very small collection that’s on Anastasia’s laptop. This worked out great today, as we had music for our whole drive.
We listened to 4-5 albums, and I thought a couple were particularly nice with today’s scenes (including: oceans / fjords, rivers, river deltas, lakes, ponds, snow covered hills and mountains, farms with and without snow, sheep, cows, horses, birds, dogs, one cat, and a couple dozen people)–all interesting. These were:
“Salvador Kali,” by Sir Richard Bishop
and
“Lost Channels,” by the Great Lake Swimmers
I probably should also include the new Rodrigo y Gabriella album we enjoyed today, too. And, then there were another couple good ones, too. But those two above really stood out to me.
We ended up with a big adventure today, with much of the day driving slowly down a totally remote, unpaved road, in a snow storm. Pictures and video coming soon.
We started from our hotel in Reykjahlid (Hotel Reykjahlid, which is really lovely) on Lake Myvatn (also really lovely), and headed out to get to Husavik via the route 85 864 (edited: route 85 was the nice road we got to later, after 864) where we would see the Dettifoss waterfalls. En route, we also tried to see the lava fields by the Krafla Geothermal Plant—we couldn’t see any bubbling sulfur through the snow, though we saw lots of lava rocks (comparable to the Big Island of Hawaii).
And, anyway, lots of snow and unpaved roads, and then a beautiful drive along the coast of the Arctic Ocean to get to Husavik—and we had some fine pizza (at Salka) and a nice visit to the local baths, and now we’re warm and safe in a room at the Fosshotel Husavik.
More photos and video in a day or so—the next evening we’re sitting around with web access.
On our recent trip to Palm Springs, we visited Tahquitz Canyon, just at the end of Palm Springs. Tahquitz Canyonis owned by the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians and there’s a couple mile hike you can take through the rocks and desert landscape. We (Jay, Lee, & Sachi) hiked to the 60 foot waterfall – and it was a coolish day for April in the desert, but still hot! More photos from the Coachella festival coming soon….
For the first time ever, Jay and I went on a winter “snow” vacation instead of a winter “sun” vacation. We just got home from a long weekend at Whistler. While not entirely injury free (we are both trying to learn to snowboard, and both had some falls on Saturday), we did have a lot of fun. This set of photos are from the day we went up the mountains on the lifts for some tourist activity. They just built a “peak to peak” gondola for the Olympics that goes between Blackcomb and Whistler mountains — it was quite a view.
We were joined on the trip with Jen, John, Colin, and our friend Jesse (who was John’s snowboard friend, since the rest of us are still beginners).
A little late, but over the holidays, my friend Curtis sent me this video of the gingerbread house he made this year. And, by gingerbread house, I of course mean: intricate recreation of a famous architectural wonder in gingerbread. This year’s is the beautiful Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, which Anastasia and I had the great fortune to visit when we were there in 2000:
OK, extra bonus feature this year: after visiting his family in Salt Lake City, Curtis also made this video called “Holiday Horrors!” It’s super awesomely holiday horror hilarious! A perfect way to say goodbye to the 2008 holidays.
Here are some photos from our family get-together on Xmas eve — the one that almost didn’t happen because of the snow; but thanks to our awesome friends Lee & Sachi and their 4×4, us “kids” all braved the weather and made it to Kenmore-by-the-Lake for holiday festivities. The photos here account for all of us in some way, but both Colin and Mary turned away from the camera, so only their backs are included. I’ll have to be more diligent next time. Enjoy!
On our recent trip to Palm Springs, we visited Tahquitz Canyon, just at the end of Palm Springs. Tahquitz Canyonis owned by the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians and there’s a couple mile hike you can take through the rocks and desert landscape. We (Jay, Lee, & Sachi) hiked to the 60 foot waterfall – and it was a coolish day for April in the desert, but still hot! More photos from the Coachella festival coming soon….
