Paris

After sorting through our September trip photos again, I noticed I never posted any of the pics from our handful of days in Paris. We made the requisite stop at the incredible L'As du Fallafel. L'As du Fallafel has some competition now: there are a couple of copycat falafel joints on the same corner. We spent solid chunks of our remaining time seeing the lights by night and checking out the flagship Le Bon Marche, one of Paris's oldest department stores. Bon Marche's market annex -- where many of the photos were taken -- went on and on.

We saw the distinctive Velib rent-a-bikes everywhere. What a cool idea. Too bad you need a "smart" credit card with a microchip in it in order to use the program. Most American credit cards don't have this.

Here are the Paris photos.

At the Dome

Saw Keynon Phillips (#80) play at the Metrodome today! His team -- the Eastview Lightning -- played really well but lost against a tough and fast Pearl Park team that got some breaks in the 2nd half. Here are some photos (the blurry one is of Keynon just after he made a catch in the first quarter).

Here is a video of a very nice fourth down catch for a first down.

Packers vs. Colts

Here are some photos from our trip to Green Bay for yesterday's Colts-Packers game.

There is a reason Ann is smiling in front of the sign that says "Ticket Problems." As Ann is passing out the tickets to me, Dave and Kyle one of us notices that the tickets say "Green Bay vs. Detroit Lions" and are for the last game of the season on December 28th. Yes, Ann stuffed the wrong tickets in her purse when we left from Minneapolis Sunday morning. Luckily, the ticket office was able to re-issue tickets for us to get into the game, which is why Ann is smiling.

Here is a video clip of a fourth-quarter play that won't be part of Peyton Manning's Hall of Fame highlight reel.

Dalmatian Coast

The next-to-last leg of our September trip was along the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia with stops in Split and Dubrovnik. Here are a whole lot of pictures.

Dubrovnik has a little of the flavor of Venice, without the canals: compact, stunningly beautiful, and deluged with tourists. Cruise ship shuttle boats started storming the docks at around 9 or 10 am and the walled part of the city was almost insufferably packed by noon. But in the evening things quieted down again. If you visit Dubrovnik, spend the night.

We all got drunk

Gerald F. Davis's short article "Who's to blame?" is one of the best things I've read about the causes of our current economic problems. The bottom line is that not balancing your budget has consequences.

On a less serious note: if you need to find a half-way point to meet with someone, check out MeetWays. It even finds coffee shops or restaurants near the half-way spot. Pretty neat!

Zagreb and Plitvice Lakes National Park

The trip continues from Slovenia to Croatia. After a brief stop in Zagreb for lunch, we spent a day at Croatia's Plitvice Lakes National Park. Here are some pictures.

The park-run hotel we stayed at had an early 70s throwback decor because the place hadn't been remodeled at all since the early 70s. Still, it was clean and pleasant enough. And the decor was kind of fun -- if you keep anything long enough it comes back into fashion.

Our hikes through the park itself were spectacular, despite the rain. Actually, the rain may have kept the crowds away, which supposedly can get pretty big, and it kept the water flowing over all of the beautiful waterfalls.

Slovenia

Slovenia. Tiny. Photogenic. Fun!

Lots of pictures here from the charmingly small and tidy capital, Ljubljana, and from the tourist town of Bled. They like to ride bikes in Ljubljana. Note the dude making a cell phone call while riding his bike (we saw this more than once)! And they really like to hang out in cafes. Great food in Bled, and we got to see our shadows while strolling around the lake.

Budapest

Great city. Kind of like Paris but with better public swimming facilities. Here are some photos.

I don't do captions at SmugMug so here are a few details:

• The Gerloczy Hotel and Cafe is where we stayed and is where the spiral staircase photo was taken (along with some others);
• The museum shots are from the amazing House of Terror museum, which remembers and memorializes Nazi and Soviet oppression of Hungary and Eastern Europe in the 20th century;
• Being named Attila is a-ok in Hungary;
• They seem to like frogs.
  

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Whatever your feelings about the bailout bill, it's useful to understand what caused the economic downturn that led to its passage so we can learn from our past mistakes.

The story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac explain a big part of it, as historically neither company has been subject to really any scrutiny or oversight in their government-guaranteed lending practices. Check out this succinct history of the companies. Here's a noteworthy excerpt: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the only two Fortune 500 companies that are not required to inform the public about any financial difficulties that they may be having." These private companies get to play with our money in the mortgage markets -- a LOT of our money -- without any direct oversight or control. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in other words, are like the Blackwater of the U.S. mortgage markets. The lack of transparency in these companies is a big reason for the economic issues we are facing today.

Let's hope our government can exert some financial restraint now that it is able to buy shares in two frighteningly large and unregulated companies. We should be paying very close attention to whomever Obama or McCain select as the next Treasury Secretary and we (i.e., Congress) should be demanding greater transparency from the Treasury Department so those guys don't "run wild" the way the mortgage lenders have.

Eger, Hungary

Whew! We're back from our 3-week trip through Central Europe. I gave up on blogging from the road to leave more time for travel experiences. Great trip despite the weather, which was almost comically disappointing after Prague. All of Europe was experiencing unseasonably cool and rainy weather in September. But the rain seemed to follow us around in particular.

Here are some pics from Eger, Hungary, a lovely small town where we had a chance to catch our breath a bit after busy days in Prague and Krakow. Eger is where the Magyars held off the Turks against extraordinary odds (hence the murals). In addition to chilling out at our hotel -- well, warming up -- we saw a delightful organ concert at the Eger Cathedral, a Marzipan Museum, and the local college's Astronomical Museum, which has a large camera obscura on its rooftop. By moving the rooftop mirrors around we were able to watch the street level activity of nearly the entire town in surprising detail, kind of like a live TV feed. The vendor at the marketplace standing next to Ann is wearing a Vikings cap for some reason. He was happy to learn that we were from Minnesota, especially since it helped get us to buy a couple of pears off of him.

Krakow

And here are some photos from the second stop on our trip: Krakow, Poland.

Yes, it was as cold as it looks. I'm too lazy to attach captions to the photos so you'll likely have to guess what some of them have to do with anything. The photos include a picture of our hotel, the Wieliczka Salt Mine, the Dragon of Krakow, and some of the other major sights.

Ann wants me to mention that there are an "insane" number of churches here -- all Roman Catholic, of course -- and that they are in constant use. It's true. The praying and confessing Poles outnumbered the tourists in all of the churches we saw. I hope some of them are praying for better weather.

On our last night we sat near a guy at an Indian restaurant in the old town, a friendly radiologist from Detroit who was in for a conference. As he began telling us about Jainism and how it relates to vegetarianism I got the uneasy feeling that he might be proselytizing. But when the conversation naturally shifted to lost & stolen wallet stories I realized that he probably wasn't. I also noticed that nearly all of the ten to fifteen diners in the small restaurant were speaking English. Our waiter didn't even bother to respond in Polish when we tried out our practiced three or four Polish words. English speakers are fortunate in Central Europe because English has become the lingua franca.

Prague

Ann and I are in lazy Eger, Hungary after busy stops in Paris -- for a 1/2 day layover -- Prague and Krakow. Here are a few pics from our 2.5 days in Prague.

The weather was nice in Prague, something we are no longer taking for granted as the skies have been bleak and the temps cool to cold ever since we left (wait 'til you see the Krakow photos).

Some highlights:

• Managing to find veggie or veggie-friendly places to eat. This can be tough in this part of the world.
• Stumbling on the Wallenstein garden, adjacent to the Czech senate building, which was not highlighted in our guidebooks. Ann spotted it on the long walk down from the castle (check out the drippy, gray wall slash art installation).
• The Mucha stained glass window in St. Vitus Cathedral.
• Our meal at Lehka Hlava ("clear head"), a funky place in the old town.

Prague was difficult to navigate, in a mostly-fun way. Even with the best map we could find we got turned around. But there was always a nearby trail of tourists you could follow back to a landmark. Prague is plagued with tourists -- I had more than one "I feel like I'm at Epcot" moment. But it was a really nice section of Epcot!

Czech hockey

Ann and I saw a Czech Extraliga hockey game last night at the O2 Arena in Prague. This is the same arena where two regular season NHL games will be played this year between the Rangers and the Lightning.

The game was a first-division contest between HC Slava Praha (one of two Prague pro teams) and BK Mlada Boleslav. Here are some pictures I took at the game. I have some video too but I'll probably have to upload that when we get home. The home team posted pics on its website too.

Some comments on the game:

• The most expensive ticket was $15 and the place was maybe 1/3 full. No idea why. It might be because the Prague team is playing in a large venue.
• No anthems. Instead, they played a full-length version of Queen's "We are the Champions" while they slowly raised last year's championship banner.
  
• The style of play here is definitely different. No fighting, of course. Much more fluid and less contact. The defensive play was lousy overall, perhaps due to the lack of physical contact in the European game. Defensemen were poke checking and getting burned alot. Made for some exciting set-ups though and a ton more chances. The goalies had to be good.
• Saw lots of nifty stickhandling. Dribbling the puck in the skates was common. I'm sure NHL players can do that but are told not to because of the risk of losing the puck.
• The players in the Czech league can be docked 10% of their wages -- which probably aren't that high to begin with -- for diving and faking. The decision is based on post-game video review of any such penalties. Welcome to Europe.
• The fans who showed up were great. No hooligans here and lots of kids having fun.
• As you can see from the signage on the concession stands, English is spoken everwhere.
• Ads everywhere, even on the officials' rear ends (how a company can be convinced to place ads there is beyond me). But there were oddly no ads on the zamboni machines.

For those of you who are checking my blog for traditional travel pics, I'll post some when I get a chance.

New Bridge

Interesting article in the NY Times about construction progress on the new I-35W bridge in Minneapolis.

Personal note: Ann and I happened to be on the very same tour as the NY Times writer and photographer. I highly recommend the weekly tour, which starts every Saturday at 11 am. The engineer was extremely patient with all of the questions and the information he provided about the construction methods was fascinating.

Another dog video...

We had a stump removed today. Huckleberry decided to help out with the sawdust:

Wings Win!

Abby's Graduation

Way to go Abby!!! The photos are also available at my SmugMug site.

Ball Machine

We need to get one of these for Huck.



Thanks Casey for the link.

Ann's New Show

The next time Ann gives you grief for watching bad TV, you might want to remind her about this incident.



In Ann's defense, one of her former students is a contestant on the show. I'm generally the bad TV guy in our house. So I love it that Ann happened to be watching something lowbrow tonight.

Sunday walk (May 11, 2008)

Snow Day

Wow, lots of snow for this late in March!

Our crazy dog will not step on the bare, cold ground in the Springtime but he will gladly romp around in the snow, as this video proves:

San Diego

Here are some photos from our trip to San Diego 10 days ago. Pretty tough to tell we were there because we're not in many of the pics. We stayed at a fantastic Marriott resort on Coronado Island (thanks cousin Kelly!) and even though the weather was chilly we had a great time. Ann and I hate zoos but we liked the Wild Animal Park a lot, where there is a clear emphasis on conservation. The other pics are from Point Loma and Balboa Park, mostly.

Visit my SmugMug page for a closer look.

New dog bed!

I know, big deal right? Well it's a big, fat deal for Huckleberry (our dog) because he's upgrading from a simple crate with little padding to a luxurious, ultra-plush dog bed. He's had it for a few days and he seems pretty happy to go to bed. Which works out well for me and Ann too.


Pics posted on SmugMug.