European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part Two - Evening Walk

As I mentioned in Part One, after our nap and rest we headed back out in the evening to check out some of the places we'd seen during the day at night 'under the lights'. It is in situations like this that our Olympus OMD-M1 and M2 really shine. They are just great low light cameras. Much to my surprise Wife was hungry again. So we hit up some street food which is all over the place here during the Christmas Festival. Each year another country is featured during the festival. This year it's Lebanon. So we were eating Lebanese dishes. A will be making a more complete foodie post later. We did not stay out for too long. For one thing, the markets on weeknights close at 8 PM. And when they say 8 PM, they mean 8 PM.

Photos

What's Christmas without Lights!

Place Kleber 

Christmas Tree - Traditional

And Non-Traditional
Mood in the Fog

Finally some reasonable exterior shots of the Cathedral

European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part One - Photos

We were not even an hour arrived in Strasbourg when we were in full photo mode. It had been so long since I'd done any that I had a bit of a time remembering how to operate the camera. Then I discovered that a number of the buttons that control various menus and functions weren' working! That really freaked me out. Fortunately, I was able to operate the most important functions. I looked online and could find nothing of value for fixing the problem. I suspect there is an IC chip somewhere that is biting the dust.

Having failed to find a fix through empirical channels, I fell back on spirituality and sent an appeal to the ancient Northern European God of Photographic Repair, Lord Shiveau by chanting the appropriate prayers in the original Gravelskrit. Low and behold, less than an hour into our shooting, most of the functions had returned! There is a holy place to Shiveau in Amsterdam. I will need to make an offering. I am told you are supposed to rub the alter rillettes (a type of pork spread of the region here) and stick pieces of French Bread on it. Well let's get on to the pictures.

First Night Out

Evidently, I am not the only one who had trouble remembering what certain settings were required

Christmas time here is a time for lights

A light unlit

The next day and it is time for serious photo shooting

There are something like nine different markets in the Old Town of Strasbourg

But for us, it was more just exploring a shooting

It is a very city with lots of texture and design and stimulating to shoot

 Walking Strasbourg Videos

 

 Cathedral

HA! Come on...all you old de-I readers

You KNEW some kind of religious building was going to make a presentation

Actually, because of the grey sky and bad angles, I didn't get any exterior shots that I liked so you are only getting interiors

Cathedral video

 

I WILL be stopping here before I leave

I mean really - foie gras tasting! Yum

Sadly my hopscotch days are behind me as this might be the most elaborately decorated one I have ever seen

And to conclude

SIGNS OF THE WORLD 

(new readers will note that I interpret signage I see from all over the world)

This may be the most complicated message I have ever seen portrayed by a sign

You are NOT ALLOWED to pull your luggage or walk your dog while using a wheeled conveyance.

Not even if you are wearing a hat

Not even if you are eating fast food while smoking and using your smart phone

European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part One - Getting There and Day One

I think it is a testament to just how much travel Wife and I have done the last five years that the idea of taking two weeks to go to Europe for Christmas break hardly even took notice as being a 'trip'. From a packing standpoint, especially for me, having done so many two week trips to Ghana, packing for a couple of weeks is almost an afterthought by now. Though going to the cold weather caused much research (mostly by Wife), which I can tell you know after the first day already has paid dividends.

On Being a Connoisseur of Business Class Seating.

So let's see this year I have flown Business Class internationally on these airlines:

• United 
• Brussels
• South African
• Turkish
• American
• British
• Delta

All business class, lay flat seats are not created equal. By far the American 777300 ER new Zodiac Cirrus seating was the best while the Delta old 767ER that we just flew was the worst. And when I say worst, I mean way worse. This was the first seat that was so hard and narrow all the way through the configuration that it was virtually impossible to get any good rest.

On Having a Great Driver

When we made our reservations, it proved very difficult to find a train or plane that would effectively get us from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to Strasbourg. So we ended up hiring a car and driver. With all the demonstrations in Paris now, this turned out to be an inspired choice. Our driver arrived at the designated time in his nice new Mercedes. Even with us stopping to get a bite to eat, he drove so fast but smoothly and safely, along with using the Waze GPS app to avoid a mess of traffic in Strasbourg that we got there at the time originally predicted. Then, because we could not drive into the center city where our hotel was because of the Christmas Market, he helped us by bringing our big bags the last quarter mile to the hotel unasked. You can bet I gave him a good tip!

No Rest for the Weary

I should say for the travel addicted. Even though we had been traveling for 24 hours straight and had been fighting to stay awake during the five-hour drive, once we got to the hotel and saw the beautiful lights we decided to go out. Plus Wife was hungry so out we went. We decided to take our cameras and we were instantly in picture-taking mode. We had been directed to a local place right by our hotel but it was booked up.  But wandering around a bit we found another where we could get two of the local dishes that were on our list to try. As we found out as we walked today, it was hard NOT to find these dishes in town. I had a small carafe of local wine with dinner. That put me at least over the edge. It was back to the hotel and down for some very necessary sleep.

Ode to a Great Hotel Breakfast

Hotel breakfasts, like business class seats, are hardly the same. But at the Honnong Hotel and Wine Bar, a very nice place with rooms with TWO SINKS!, it was a really lovely affair. The spread was very typical of Europe but the quality of all the offerings made the difference with great bread and charcuterie. They had something I had never seen before, a custom egg boiler. You put your eggs in a wire basket and plunged it in a hot water bath. There were timers available to keep track of just how long you wanted them cooked.

In Full Photo Mode

We were out and fully photo exploring. The city is a delight for photography with all kinds of interesting architecture, designs, and vistas. Unfortunately, it is very typically Euro Winter grey and will be this way throughout our three days here and our Olympus cameras really do not do a good job when there is a grey sky backdrop. Another thing Wife and I decided is that our prior mode of 'rushing at the end of the day to get all our pictures processed and posted' had become counterproductive to our enjoyment of our travel. Plus, at least in my case, I think it has led to posting too many pictures. So I've decided to do my journalistic writing posting separate from my photo posting. I reserve the right when I have time to include pictures in text postings when there is a good story to be told.

After five hours out, we had another nice meal of local food, walked a bit more and hit the hotel for a nap. We will probably go back out again tonight to try some more evening photo-taking.

On Achieving An Ecumenical Airline State

Frequent readers of this blog will know that de-I has been an incredibly loyal customer of United Airlines for decades. Initially, this was driven by my having achieved frequent flyer status and it being easier to maintain it than to build-up anew with another airline. Then I reached a million miles flown and I got status for life which made things much easier (there are all kinds of perks associated with status such as boarding earlier, getting premium seats at no extra cost, first preference when things go bad on rebooking).

As we moved into our transitioned, travel-loving state, we were able to make use of our frequent flyer points/miles to get upgrades on flights that made it more affordable to get business class. But over the last year or so, United changed how it does its rewards program so upgrades using miles are near impossible to get and free tickets using miles is equally impossible to find. Thus I began to search for the best deal I could find on whatever airline we were flying.

The result is that we are much more open to different airlines and use whichever one is the most effective. It has opened my mind to the fact, other airlines might have better service or seating. For example on my last trip to Ghana, the transatlantic portion was on American Airlines and their business class seats (at least on these flights) were way superior to ones I've had on United lately.

It has been refreshing.

Returning To Our Roots or We Interrupt Our Ghana Saga...FOR VACATION!

No one can say I haven't been traveling this year. But most of it has been engaged with the great pursuit of the mission in Ghana. But as I mentioned earlier. I am tired and need a break. Wife hasn't had a chance to do any 'just fun' travel because she wanted to focus on working on strengthening her body. So we are both so looking forward to this two-week interlude into doing all the fun things associated with travel that we love.

Tomorrow we fly off to France. We arrive in Paris and will take a car to the Alsacian city of Strasbourg...one of many places in France I have wanted to visit for the longest time. Strasbourg has a huge Christmas market. They pretty much shut down the center city to auto traffic for about a month! I am planning to totally indulge myself in the multiple pleasures of 1) being in France, my first travel love, 2) doing our photography thing - OMG the colors/lights/etc will have to be amazing and 3) gastronomy - Alsace has so many things food-wise to try, it will be impossible to do them all in the three days we are there.

Then it will be on to Amsterdam to spend the Christmas holiday with the #3 clan, something we have never done. We love being Amsterdam, a city we like because it is an almost living in like feeling because of #3 has been there so long. And having a holiday with the family is something we have mostly been deprived of because we are spread out over the world. So this is going to be a treat.

Then after Christmas, we head off to Tromso, Norway to meet up with #2 and 2B. Tromso is north of the Arctic Circle. I have never been north of the Arctic Circle before. Why are we going here? Well, 2B convinced all of us that we needed to go see the Northern Lights and this might be the last chance we would have to do so as they will be heading back to Asia for future posts. 

I have to say originally I was not very positive about this. Wife has been deep into figuring out how to get good phots of the Northern Lights. With my energy being taken up with the Ghana venture, I just couldn't find the bandwidth to do the same. But finally, I just decided to hell with photography. I would just go and have the experience. And once I did that my enthusiasm grew. So I truly am looking forward to this totally different experience.

I will be happily back into travel blogging mode again too. See you soon in travel blog mode!

Unexpected Opportunity...But First R&R

Yet another crazy week in the wild world of de_I's transition state. The week (gad it is not even half-way over with!) started with me getting a call from a dear friend who will be called to protect his identity, THE BENEFACTOR (he and his lovely spouse read this blog).

The BENEFACTOR calls and basically says, "Hey de-I we think this Theodora thing sounds like it could do some good. We would like to give you some money."

Mister Enrique Suave says, "Huh?"

"Dude, what's so hard to understand. I want to give you some money so  you can get this thing going."

Without going into too many gory details, the BENEFACTOR will give us enough (along with some money from Wife and I and a couple of other donations) to actually get this Theodora program off the ground! WTF!!!!

With this realization, I am sent into a state of bliss...for about 30 minutes...when I realize that all the stuff we have talked about in the vaguest of details, now will have to be executed in excruciating detail! Now I am in a state of absolute panic. I dash off a detailed list of all the things we need to deal with to my centers of influence.

And realize that I am exhausted. I mean really drained from the work over this last year. For crying out loud, I went to Ghana in February knowing nobody and only having the vaguest idea of what I might want to do in a county I knew nothing about. And in nine months have gotten a program that has real potential to a point where it is almost launched!

Thank goodness, we already had a 'fun' trip planned. We are leaving next week for Europe. We are going to see a city with Christmas markets, celebrate Christmas with the #3's, and finish up by seeing the Northern Lights in Norway with #2 and 2B. I am so looking forward to two weeks of just unconnected fun.

Now just a word here because I know what I'm going to hear. I am going to hear, "why are you pushing yourself like this? Do you think this is wise to be doing this at your age? Shouldn't you be taking it easier?"

Here is my response...so listen carefully for this is from the deepest part of my heart.

I Could Give A Shit How Long I Live! I want to do. If I want to experience. I want to make a difference. The last thing, THE LAST THING I want is to sit back, watch myself deteriorate and sit there not being able to do anything as I slowly become less and less of who I was.

You know who you are. Don't pass on to me your desire to see me live longer because it is your desire. I don't care. It is not MY DESIRE. I want to do as much as I can and love every moment of doing it. And if that means a shorter lifespan, I am totally cool with that. And you should be too.

Catching My Breath

I got home just a few days before Thanksgiving. Wife had arrived back two days before me after spending a week with the #2/Pulisha clan in the Ukraine. So no great Thanksgiving event for us. I did do enough cooking so we ticked off the boxes associated with the traditional holiday meal.

The fact that Thanksgiving was late this year and we are leaving on Dec 17 for a couple of weeks of personal travel has left me with a sort of non-energy feeling as far as getting out and hustling for business. I am taking care of my clients but not really getting out there hitting it hard. Partially this due to the fact that the inter holiday period is usually slow for business anyway. 

On the other hand, we have a ton of travel planned for the first half of 2020. On that front, I have been in full research mode and am already booking flights. I was lucky enough to find a free, frequent flier mile paid ticket to cover my February Ghana trip. Looks like we might find the same for Wife doing her parallel trip. And we have credit card points that will cover a big personal trip we have planned for the spring. So I am feeling good about our ability to keep funding our projects and our personal travel.

So I will keep things going at a simmer and be prepared to hit the ground running after the New Year.