Memorial Day in DC

We went to Washington DC for Memorial Day weekend.
The weather was just about perfect, sunny and mid 80s each day. We were a bit scared, imagining the horribly hot and humid weather DC is known for.
We saw lots of monuments and museums. Went to a Nationals and an Orioles game (we drove to Baltimore for the day). Baltimore has a pretty good Aquarium, close to the Camden Yards, fyi.

We learned a couple things:

• There are lots of lines in DC. You gotta get used to lining up & standing for a bit.
  
• The Metro works pretty well there, we went all over on it. It appears to be the same infrastructure (train cars, gates, etc) as San Francisco's BART.
  
• Memorial Day weekend is when the annual biker rally takes place in DC. There are thousands of bikers and Harleys everywhere around the mall. It is not quiet since "loud pipes save lives".

Here I am in front of the Washington Monument.


And here we are at the brand new "Nationals Stadium" to see the Brewers vs the Nationals. They are called the "Nats" for short, which really just sounds wrong.

paris part II

A follow up to the original post about our Paris vacation. We got all the photos sorted through, here is a selection.

At the Arc de Triumphe, surrounded by the largest traffic circle in the world. Crazy drivers, but it looks pretty good in the light of the sun setting.


Here we are in the Musee D'Orsay, with out iPod headphones on, listening to a little commentary on the place. The building was a train station before becoming a museum 20 years ago. The collection is overwhelming, the building impressive.


Sarah in front of the massive Monet Waterlily paintings which surround two separate rooms in the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuilleries garden.


And all the rest of the photos on Flickr

paris part I

Our trip to Paris was great!

we tried to see all the main sites, and do a good job of following the "must see while in paris" lists. We walked ourselves tired each day, got to know the Metro system fairly well and shivered in the non-Socal weather. There will be a Paris part II posting later, when Sarah gets back from the germany/work part of the trip.

some of the highlights were going to the palace and gardens of Versailles, the Eiffel Tower (of course), the Louvre, the Musee D'Orsey (probably our favorite museum of the trip), Sacre Couer Basilica, the Arc de Triumphe, the Pompidou Centre, Cathedral of Notre Dame, St. Sulpice chapel and too many more to keep track of.

The collections of the museums in Paris are just stunning. For example; in most museums, of they even have a Van Gogh painting it is a star of their collection and is called out in all materials. At the Musee D'Orsey, there is an entire gallery of Van Goghs, 4 of which would be considered some of his key works, included in about every article written on him. Kinda blows your mind.

I had collected and downloaded a bunch of audio walking tours and audio guides of things in Paris for our iPods before we left. I had done this before for some walking tours in Sydney, and I thought it might work well for Paris. It really is a nice way to be a tourist.

1. It's cheaper & faster than getting audio tours everywhere you go.


2. You look less like a tourist, but you do look like some sort of aloof american who wants to listen to their iPod more than see the sites.


3. The walking tours bring you to places you may not have visited.


4. It gives you some additional flexibility when touring: you can go in whatever order you want, people can navigate at their own pace... all good stuff.

Some of the tours we enjoyed were:

• Rick Steves audio tours - free! for both France & Italy


• Tourcaster - the Rick Steves guides were a bit more polished, but there is a far larger selection of the tours on Tourcaster... and they are worldwide. These are what I had picked up for Sydney.

and fyi - the Paris Playlist worked well... Sarah was less excited about the Jimmy Buffett inclusions, but overall it was good.