Entries Tagged 'Travel' ↓

I visited NYC for the first time in mid-September.  A friend of mine found a $99 flight from Seattle, so off we went for a short trip.

Despite having never been before, everything felt familiar.  How many times have you seen the Brooklyn Bridge in photographs, on television, or in movies?

In less than three full days we managed to see:

• Broadway
• Times Square
• the Empire State building
• Grand Central Station
• MoMA
• NY Library
• Natural History Museum
• Central Park
• some of the Upper West Side
• Lincoln Center / Juilliard
• Trump Tower
• Park Ave, 5th Ave
• Wall Street, NY Stock Exchange, Federal Hall
• Brooklyn Bridge
• Battery Park with views of Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
• Little Italy
• Radio City Music Hall (filming the MTV music video awards)
• David Letterman theater

Yes, we did a lot of walking.

Highlights:

• seeing the area where my brother lived while he went to Juilliard
• the Natural History museum
• delicious French Toast at Balthazar
• MoMA and seeing the classics in person, e.g,. Starry Night:

(Click image for a nice large version.)

Back from a short trip to San Francisco.

Highlights:

• A long walk in perfect fall weather from Union Square to Presidio via Coit Tower and North Beach
• A great dinner at Boulevard
• A surprisingly interesting cable car museum

Despite living in Seattle for a summer and traveling all around Washington state over the years, I had never visited Mount Rainier National Park — until yesterday.  The drive through the park was surprisingly pleasant though longer than expected.  A day trip from Seattle really isn’t enough time to do justice to this park.  During a short hike in the Paradise area of the park (all a friend and I could manage after the brunch buffet at the Paradise Inn) I took a few photos including this one:

For years and years a friend of mine and I have been saying we should go to a Star Trek convention someday.  We finally did, and it was surprisingly fun.  It was also a good excuse to hang out in Las Vegas where the convention was held.

Together we took over 2000 photos, so it will take a while to sort through them.  Here’s a few I like: