So we awoke nice and early for our second day of traveling the Rhine River valley. Unlike the previous day where we covered little ground but saw a great deal. Today, we needed to get some miles under our belt while seeing a lot. And only had until 4pm to get to the Frankfurt airport.

Our first major stop was Loreley, a large rock jutting up above the river that provides a wonderful scenic viewpoint of the area. It’s about a 400 ft climb and we decided to get some exercise. We get to the top, slightly winded to find there’s a road on the back side of it and a tour bus of people hanging around. That’s always a fun feeling. Here we worked hard to get our scenic spot and these people just sat around. Well, here’s what it looks like from atop Loreley:

Note the ginormous ship. The Rhine still gets used for a lot of shipping. This picture doesn’t show it, but along the right bank of the river in this direction, there are two castles: Burg Katz and Burg Maus. That’s right, cat and mouse. They were built by a local duke and archbishop as ways to make each other look cooler and more powerful than the other. Katz won.

We were now in castle country. We made it a goal to check out a castle that hadn’t fallen into ruins and one that had. Our choice for the former was Marksburg. It was one of the few castles that wasn’t bombed during WWII and, as a result was still well preserved after 800 years. Alas, we were hoping to do a self-guided tour of sorts, especially since time was short and we found the only way in was a guided tour, only in German, that would take an hour. So we took in the beauty of its exterior and headed onward.

We made it to the top of the area, Koblenz and made a bit of a U-turn to check out the left bank. Our first stop was a town called Boppard, which is a very nicely preserved old town. We managed to catch the beautiful main church as services were getting out:

It was a really nice town, sitting right on the river with lots of wonderful old buildings that reminded me of what I picture towns up in the Alps. And it segued into our successful tour of a castle ruin in the next town over, St Goar. This was Burg Rheinfels and used to be the largest castle in the region. Unlike Marksburg, this place was self-guided and encouraged exploration of the ruins. Some parts of it had well groomed paths among the ruins while others were crumbling staircases that led into completely unlit rooms and corridors. As someone who likes to scramble around and explore things like this, I was having a blast. It was a sprawling complex of rooms and fortifications and on many levels that you check out. Really nicely laid out.

Once the castle was mostly explored, we made our way to the last town we stopped in, Bacharach. We found a nice place for lunch and one more tasty glass of Riesling. Alas, it was time to take our leave and race back to the airport for our flights home.

So I managed to get Carolyn to post on the blog. Cool! If you think she should post more, feel free to voice your opinion and maybe she can be convinced. 🙂

As promised, it’s my turn to contribute. I’m going to break it into two parts. Last weekend, we got to spend a lovely, relaxing time in the Rhine River valley. Specifically, we hung out in the part renowned for its Riesling wine. This 60km long stretch of land is an UNESCO heritage site and it’s understandable why. It rolls along with a peaceful, beautiful pace. Every few miles, perched up high, are castles built back when people had pissing contests by building bigger fortresses along the hillside cut by the Rhine river. And at the foot of each castle is a cute German town.

We rented a car to drive into the area. Alas, the map the rental car agency provided was completely useless and we got to see a lot more of the Autobahn due to the fact that the signage is shite and the exits are pretty far apart on the A-3. However, the plus was it allowed me to open up a bit in our top-of-the-line Opal. They can in fact go 100mph. Viva speed limits! Let’s ignore the fact that I was still being passed.

After a little detour, we blindly felt our way to the main road into the right bank of the river and into Eltville. It was a cute town but very dead since it was Saturday afternoon and the quiet season. We had lunch in a place with tasty looking cakes and no English spoken. So we picked blindly on the menu and hoped for the best.

The bulk of this day was spent simply enjoying the entrance to this lovely area. We had gotten some recommendations on some places to see and, as we cruised down the road, we saw a sign for one of them: Schloss Vollrads. It turned out to be a winery with some very good wine. Now, this being Riesling country, we had to partake:

After a glass, we trekked onward to the gateway to it all: Rudesheim (pardon my misspellingingsjks!). The guidebook we have seemed to make this out as kind of a tourist trap. But, it being the slow season, we were able to soak it in. It certainly is touristy, but it’s very nice and friendly and walkable. So we parked our car and looked around.

This is the central square of the town. Those cool ass trees are everywhere. The church was rebuilt after it was bombed in World War II.

Perched above Rudesheim is a gigantic monument erected in honor of the unification of Germany. To get there, you can hike up the smallish mountain or take a chairlift up. Here would be Carolyn on the chairlift:

Look at the church and beautiful blue skies! We had wonderful weather.

Now, I mentioned that this is Riesling country. I’ve never been a white wine fan, but the stuff we had was quite tasty and refreshing. The area is covered in vineyards.

We made our way to the top of the mountain, took in the beauty around us and strolled back down. We still needed to find a hotel. We found a nice hotel where we were the only people staying there. Dinner was a local winery’s restaurant. We both had some absolutely delicious soup and wine as well as very good mains. We ended the night in the (I kid you not) pub on the ground floor of our hotel where I think the local 12 year olds go to drink (at least in the off-season). Then we retired for the night in anticipation of a very early morning so we could hit the castles and sights of the Rhine River valley. That’ll be next!

I thought some of you might be curious about what I (Carolyn) have been up to during my trip to London (while Matt has been at work). While I have been keeping busy getting settled into the apartment and job searching, I have found a fair amount of time to explore the city and do some touristy things too. I am not much of a blogger so I am just going to include a pictorial journey of my last week with some descriptions. 🙂

On St. Patrick’s Day, we celebrated with Guinness and I discovered the joy of half pints.

Last week I went to the Kew Botanical Gardens, on Dina’s recommendation, to see an exhibition of Henry Moore sculptures. I was able to get to the gardens on the London Overground rail system which is about 20 feet from the apartment for just one pound with no transfers! There were over 20 sculptures scattered throughout the gardens and I spent several hours wandering through the plants and art. Here is one sculpture set near the tropical green house.

This past weekend, I went to Germany. I got to explore Frankfurt, Germany a little bit. It is a really interesting city. Frankfurt is the financial center of Germany, extremely modern with tons of skyscrapers, and has an amazing array of museums. It was pretty much entirely rebuilt after the city was devastated by allied bombing during World War II. I spent one day wandering around the reconstructed old city, visiting museums and walking on the riverfront.

Another day, I took a train down to Heidelberg about one hour from Frankfurt. Heidelberg is a beautiful town with a large university, ruins of a historic palace, and tons of students and tourists.

Matt and I had a chance to travel in the Rhine river valley which Matt can tell you all more about tomorrow.

Since I’ve got another bank holiday, I thought I’d start the day off with a little Easter festivities. In keeping with our youth, all parties involved this weekend made sure we ate plenty of Cadbury candy (mmmm, cream eggs). However, on Easter Sunday, Carolyn and I decided to take a trip to church. Well, which church does one go to for Easter whilst living in London?

Why Westminster Abbey, of course! It was a very chilly, snowy March day and we got off to a bit of a late start and arrived just as things were getting started. And there was still a line out the door. However, the folks running things were very efficient and the line moved quickly an we managed to get inside to a standing room only service. We found a nice pillar to lean against which afforded us a decent view of things. Alas, being part of the unwashed masses, we were standing in the back half which is behind a large decorative divider which made it hard to see much beyond the Gospel reading (which was done right in front of us) and the backs of the London Brass who played for the service. The music was beautiful overall. They had an organist, the London Brass and the Westminster Choir performing during parts like the offering and Communion. It was a very nice way to spend your Easter morning.

What’s that you say? That picture could have been taken anytime since it’s always gray and rainy in London? Here’s the Easter program:

Hope everyone had a happy Easter. And to those of you in the US who had to work on Easter Monday? Ttthhhbbt!! 🙂

While we get less bank/federal holidays in England than the US, we do get a 4 day weekend for Easter. In honor of this, Carolyn and I took a trip down to see Dina and Adrian in Brighton. As it were, there’s a beer festival in Adrian’s hometown of Shoreham, which is a nice short trip from their flat. Naturally, we needed to partake of the fun and games that a beer festival has to offer.

Those of you with exceptional memory might recall my trip along the River Adur. This picture is near where it empties into the Channel in Shoreham. The cool-ass buildings in the distance make up a private school. This as a meandering route to the festival so people could take in some natural beauty.

Here stands a solitary figure guarding Britain from the Germans. I’m standing next to the Shoreham International (really) Airport on the remains of, I think, an old WWII anti-aircraft defensive thing. It was very very windy that day.

The festival was in the Red Lion which I’d been to previously. For those of you unaware of beer festivals, it’s basically where a vast number of good beers are set out for people to buy samples of (half or full pints — ok, so more than a sample). This festival had about 70 different beers on tap. Take a look see:

Lots of choices! Well, because it was a very cold March day, seating in the protected areas of the pub were highly prized. After moving tables about 4 times in the first hours, we managed to score a coveted indoor table. Here are Dina, Carolyn and Adrian soaking in some afternoon sun and beer:

It wasn’t just the four of us. We ended up with a jolly old crew consisting of Heather (former coworker of Adrian), Ben, Lou, and Heather’s brother, David. Alas, I managed to snap nothing but shit pictures of all of them, so I figure I should spare them the embarrassment of posting them online. 🙂 We spent a good 3 hours there enjoying ourselves and the nice setting. Now, this being a pretty small town in southern England, it wasn’t just a lot of beer snobs/geeks sampling beer. We had the good fortune to meet what might be described as a cross between white trash and frat boys if this weren’t England. I guess it would chavs here. Anyway, they are harmless, but it can be a little annoying when the rain and hail comes down and 100 people who all know each other come rushing into a room that normally fits about 20. And, each time one of them walks in, there’s a big “HEY!!” that goes around the room. Eventually, the sheer number of people got to be a bit too much, so we moved on to other pubs. We met up with Adrian’s parents in a pub called the Amsterdam and then went on to a pub called the Sovereign:

It was a nice local pub with a good friendly vibe. We all did what you usually do at a pub: socializing, getting to know new people and drinking. Here’s another picture of some of the happy crew:

As always happens the night winds down and everyone goes their separate ways. The four of us went back to Dina and Adrians. Alas, the next day, Carolyn was having all sorts of problems with her leg which, coupled with it being cold and snowy (yeah, it’s snowed a little for the last 3 days) meant the next day was just a nice lazy weekend kind of day. It did give us a chance to a have a freshly baked Guinness cake. Here’s the cake with the chef:

Carolyn and I are back in London now. We’ll post about our actual Easter Sunday tomorrow.

This was the view when I came out of my elevator this morning in my office:

My coworker came in for some work on Saturday and they were just putting it out. Since I took this picture, it seems as though the roof has collapsed even more and there people milling about taking pictures inside and whatnot. It was unoccupied at the time however, the part to the left was (I think) still an active hipster kind of bar. The building is literally 20 feet from my building, just across a street but it seemed to be pretty well contained.

Wow, this guy got action photos. Crazy!

Well, it took a year, but Carolyn is finally making the move. She arrived for her first really extended stay on Friday night. She makes the final, official move after the wedding (in 2 months!). Now we’re stocking my bachelor pad up to make it a little more friendly to others as Anna and Chewy get used to the confusion of another person around. And, as luck would have it, the hot water broke in my place. Allegedly, it’ll be fixed tomorrow morning. I never realized how much I love having a shower nearby. We have some nice friends who are letting us borrow theirs, but it takes a little trip to get there. Never fear, Linda, your daughter is not stuck without a hot shower.

In the meantime, I’m obviously very happy to have her here. It’s nicer to have your loved ones around in person than over the phone. And, the waiting is over as Carolyn begins her adjustment to a pretty big move. Here’s a picture of Carolyn and her new roommates:

I’ve mentioned a trip I made to Highgate Cemetery before. It was one of the Magnificent Seven, a group of privately run cemetery’s that ringed what was, at the time, London. They were set up because the inner London burial sites were filling up and the dead bodies in the middle of a dense city were causing health problems. The British of the 19th century loved their burials and business in these new cemetery’s was good. As the Victorian fascination with death gave way to more of an interest in things like cremation, they ran into trouble. First they cut back on landscaping and maintenance and eventually, they shut down. Today, I checked out Abney Park, which is one of the other shuttered cemetery. Unlike Highgate, this one was taken over by the local council (Hackney) relatively early, although they didn’t do anything with it to keep it from becoming overgrown. However, it has recently done quite a lot to turn it into public park space. So, unlike Highgate, you can easily just go in and take a stroll around and take in all the impressive sights to see. And, it’s only about a 20 minute walk from my flat. Here would be some highlights:

I think this gives a good impression of the state of things in this burial site. It’s been overrun by this lush greenery which makes it pretty cool looking and feels very relaxing, especially since it’s surrounded by the hustle and bustle of Stoke Newington.

There’s something about the way these graves have all lilted in various directions that I liked.

A unique part of this cemetery is the remains of this old church right in the middle of it. You might notice the supports holding it together as it’s in very bad shape. You’ll also notice the beautiful blue sky today (I was not even wearing a coat). 😛

This is the interior of the church. I love how, in the middle of London (this isn’t the very center of the city, but it’s still central London), you can have this wonderful piece of history and greenery and have buildings like this as a reminder of how old everything is around here. Hackney has done a great job of keeping this space a beautiful combination of history and park space while respecting the fact that’s thousands of people’s final resting place is right here.

For those of you with good memories, you might recall my triumphs last year in both lawn bowling and American bowling. Well, I was heading home one night and ended up catching my bus home in Finsbury Square, which has the lawn bowling pitch in the middle of it. The architecture around it is a mix of 1920s, 1950s and contemporary architecture. This building isn’t that exciting looking, but I do like the colors on it once the sun goes down:

Since it’s a winter lull in the interesting part of my life :), I’m shooting just to capture some of the fun little things in life. Hope you enjoy. And mom, if you’re nice, I might take some pictures of skinny Anna and fat Chewy.

The last couple of mornings have been extremely foggy. However, the fog has burned off and it’s become very lovely. As luck would have it, I thought about an interesting compare and contrast photo and whipped out my camera on my way to the bus stop yesterday morning. Let’s compare shall we:

Normal (slightly overcast and rainy) weather

Slightly foggy 🙂

I saw a picture in one of those horrible free dailys always floating around town where someone managed to get a photo from an airplane in which the entire city was socked in except the tall buildings in Canary Wharf. Pretty cool.

So less than a week ago, I was still on vacation. Granted, I was flying between AZ and NJ, hoping the nor’easter coming into the East Coast would not mess up any of my flights, but I had yet to return to the UK. Allow me to give you a the nickel tour of my nice 10 days off in back in the homeland:

1. A trip to New Jersey – I got to spend some time with Carolyn and her family in New Jersey. It was also my first real chance to assist in the wedding planning. So I saw a lot of the malls of New Jersey and got to sample delicious cake and see where the wedding will be. I was happy to be a part of it, but I’m a terrible shopper, so it could be exhausting at times 🙂
2. Lots of flying. I flew from London -> Newark. Then four days later, I flew from Newark->Tucson via Phoenix. A short 5 days later, I was back on a plane from Tucson->Newark. 12 hours after that, it was back to London again. In a 24 hours period, I was on 4+ hour flights, 1.5 hours on a train and various time on buses and in cars. But it was alllll worth it.
3. Some fun in Arizona. There was still a wedding component to it, but I was able to take a little timeout and relax after a crazy year. I swam, hiked, took in the beauty of the desert, golfed and got to see this wonderful new home my parents built. And my sister came down for a visit as well which was nice since I hadn’t seen her in a year (sniffle).

There’s the quick tour. Here are some photos:

Since I missed Christmas with family this year (not to say that Dina and Adrian weren’t saints for helping me through a nasty flu), I got a nice welcome back to the US with lots of Christmas. Both the Hysons and Badanes’ kept their Christmas decorations up for me and I got a Christmas dinner from the Hysons. This is Linda and Jim wearing the crowns you get out of those Christmas popper things.

I’m very impressed with Tucson. It is obviously a very dry place, but the geography is diverse, rugged  and mountainous. My parents look out on an 8000 foot mountain, which gets snow in the winter. There are crazy passes that look out over canyons and go up into areas with skiing. And the saguaro’s are everywhere, creating a forest of cacti. This picture doesn’t quite capture that forest, but it is nice nonetheless. It was taken a wild 15 minute drive from my parents place on some cool-ass roads.

This is my parents new place. That long bank of windows in the middle is the kitchen and living room. To the left is the master bedroom area. To the right (out of this photo) are the guest rooms/lisa and my bedrooms. It’s a wonderful house. They built it from scratch (I was there about a year ago when it was in progress), but it was nice to see the mostly finished product. They did some really nice things to it and made it a high-quality, comfortable place to be.

I forgot how easy it is to eat like shit (and eat a lot of it) in the US. However, I couldn’t resist in some situations. Like the above meal I had with Lisa before she headed back home for Arizona. That’d be Jack’s Barbecue – a pork sandwich and fries. Yummy.

So, my parents are retired or in the process of retiring. They’ve moved to a lovely house in Arizona with magnificent views of the desert. Since this is Arizona, they have to play golf, right? Well, here’s a golf course about 10 minutes from their house:

As a fun family outing, we decided to give 18 holes a shot. Personally, I play golf once or twice every couple of years. And, while it’s probably not the best use of water in the desert, it can be a fun and relaxing way to spend a few hours. They’re usually very nicely laid out and you spend the time walking around or tooling around in a golf cart (which is fun). But I suck at golf. I can get a few decent shots off now and then, but I am completely inconsistent and have a nasty slice. I lost a crap-ton of balls into the desert on this course. Still, here’s evidence of me playing 🙂

(Oh jeez, that’s the same hole — and here I was hoping to give you a different view — here’s looking back at the 18th hole)

My dad is the best golfer in my family. But my mom is learning and now that they have the time, they should see their games improving. My sister is a hack like me although she should feel free to contest that description in the comments 😛

OK, technically, the previous post was the last one on Paris. However, I’ve had a few people who have seen that I usually take more than 3 photos of a place mention that they’d like to be able to access these photos outside of my apartment. Now I could easily do this with flickr or ofoto or a million other sites that I have no control over. Instead, I’ve set up an area where I’ll try to dump my photos on a regular basis for all the world to enjoy. While I’ll not upload really shitty pictures or ones where I took 7 trying to get the right angle or focus, it’ll pretty much be raw. The photos are about half their original size (otherwise, it’ll load veeeery slowly) but they’re still quite large. If i feel like a photo needs an explanation, I might add one, but that’ll be it. And i’ll just add a link to the blog when a new one is created. So, without further adieu:

Matt’s Paris Trip — December 2007

(If you want to see any and all photos I might have on that site, check out the Main Picture Page)

Much of what I previously posted ended up being moments while I was walking around the city. Cold or not, I wanted to use the downtime I had (mostly in darkness 🙂 ) to see a little more of Paris. I did manage to do a little sightseeing in the daytime too, though. I initially thought it would be possible to check out the Louvre, but I ended up working longer on Sunday than expected and figured I’d need a full day to see it. So I went for something a little smaller, but equally as nice, the Musee d’Orsay. It was originally built as a railroad station, but it now houses a great collection of late 19th and early 20th century paintings, sculpture and decorative art. I was impressed. First of all, it uses the space it occupies in an interesting way. Once you go through the absurd security and buy your ticket, you begin in a large hall:

They’ve lined this part with large sculptures from various periods. Off the hall are some smaller galleries to check out. The rest of the museum is laid out chronologically, but it’s hardly linear. You should start by heading up to the fifth floor and working your way through the proto-impressionists and then on to the impressionists themselves, which is what the museum is best known for. It was a good cross-section of artists from that time period and contains a decent number of master works from these artists. In this section, there are also places that provide nice views of Paris as well.
You then travel towards a nice hall (the museum got a big makeover in the 80s incorporating the station into a modern museum nicely) that has artists like Gauguin and Rousseau:

Now, if you wish to see the Naturalists and Symbolist art that came a little after the Impressionists, you go back down to the second floor. However, since the majority of the building is the main hall, there are many sub-floors to explore as well. Once you’re on the second floor, it provides a nice place to sit and soak in the atmosphere amongst the sculptures. That includes this cool bear which sits in view of the Great Clock of the station:

The clock is still working.

Also make sure to walk to the end of the main hall to see the inner workings of the Grand Opera (which I STILL haven’t been into yet) and a cool scale model of the area around the opera house.

Overall, it’s a lovely museum. The collection is excellent and it’s laid out in a meandering way which slows you down and allows you to appreciate the location as well as the art. They’ve kept the element of the old railway station intact so you also get to see a slice of French architectural history as well.