Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. Spent mine at Cathy's parents', feasting on things like turkey, prime rib, Korean potato noodles, and kimchi. Yes, I know, very traditional Thanksgiving Day cuisine. Anyway, some more Taiwan photos:
Good couple of days...included grilled strip steaks, 25 mile bike rides, Green Music Fest, beers, broiled wild sockeye salmon, running with dogs, reclaiming stock from previously roasted chickens, some BBQ, and learning that I can attach my mason jars to my blender (mind = blown).
Like last year and the year before that, we went up to Nickbot's for Memorial Day. This time, there was uncooperative weather, Nick's shitty ankle, and unfortunately Brent couldn't make it up (huge bummer). But nevertheless and needless to say, great times were still had. While enjoying the natural beauty of Michigan, we drank copious amounts of homebrew, microbrew, and macrobrew, failed horribly in sneaking up on the wives via canoe, discovered the humor of worn out ankles, and I witnessed Cathy shoot a rifle and handgun for the first time in her life. Great success. For whatever reason, I didn't take many photos this year but I did memorialize this:
We got back from Amsterdam a while ago, but Cathy and I have been pretty busy. We're still busy, but I've finally gotten around to looking at my photos from Amsterdam. Now I'm not as...enthusiastic, or passionate maybe, about traveling to Europe as some other people, but I admit I had a great time.
Flag of Amsterdam. We arrived at 9 a.m. Central European Time, and had been basically up for 30 odd hours already. I wasn't sure if I was delirious, excited, or both, but it didn't really matter. We just checked in and started wandering.
There was a lot of walking. Good thing I like walking and the city is pretty much made for walking too. And, as you know, the place is made for bicycles, although we never did get around to renting any...oh well.
Typical canal view, building towards the left is the Bijbels Museum. As for the weather, the forecast the week prior predicted clouds, rain, and more clouds. Needless to say, I was happily surprised when the clouds gave way to blue skies and sun. It stayed that way for most of the trip. Foolish forecasts.
We visited a lot of museums, including the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh (awesome), and a couple photography museums/galleries I was interested in. This one is at Huis Marseille. We also hung out at some parks (mainly Vondel Park), gardens, other random spots.
There was a lot of this. Beers and maps. Between sights, the general rule was to wander into a random cafe or bar, get a beer, and look at the map. Maybe a sandwich. Beers, maps, and a sandwich.
Zuiderkerk, a church. There was a lot to look at just by walking down any random street. I found it all too easy to just wander around and see interesting stuff everywhere I went, especially the architecture.
Ok, that's enough for now. Obviously, there was much more to the visit, but I think you get the idea. Vacation successful.
Going out of town again. We'll be back shortly.
So anyway, after Memorial Day, we pretty much immediately flew out to California to link up with my family. A very brief two-post summary will now commence:
One of the first things we did was visit the California Academy of Sciences, a huge natural history museum. It has a wonderful assortment of things, including a huge aquarium, planetarium, a green roof, and a rainforest dome. Unfortunately, the dome was closed due to maintenance or something, but despite that, we still didn't have time to see everything.
Aquariums are always a favorite of mine. As well as obligatory silhouette photos.
Sea nettle from the aquarium. Among the other specimens hanging out there were various reptiles I've never seen before, an albino alligator (named Claude), a Pacific octopus, Alligator gars, and more fish than you can shake a reel at. So much fun.
The next, we did another always fun thing: wine tasting at the vineyards. Last time Cathy and I visited we went to Napa Valley but this time we went to Sonoma Valley. I gotta say, I liked Sonoma better since it was drastically more laid back, casual, and natural.
Seigo is not yet of age and so did not partake in any of the tastings, but he did enjoy running around the grape vines (this was at Wellington Vineyards).
Bartholomew Park vineyard. We ended up flying back with an armload of wine, some of which I'm enjoying immensely as I type this.
Eric and Rie actually live in Berkeley. A nice feature of their particular area was a weekly farmer's market just a short walk away from their house. We came to check out on one of the days.
It wasn't terribly big but there were more than enough tasty morsels to choose from and the local support is strong, which is great. We bought a variety of edibles that we snacked on for the rest of the week. Also, the weather was excellent everyday we were there - which wasn't all that surprising, but it was excellent.
Next post soon.
Ahhh...finally back home and time for a new post. First up is Memorial Day. Like last year, Cathy and I went up to Nick's cabin. Last year was awesome and cloudy, this year was awesome and sunny. Needless to say, the weekend was chockablock with good times. Chockablock. I took a bunch of photos, natch, here are a couple:
Emily and Cathy on the pontoon boat. Lots of time was spent floating around lazily, enjoying some drinks, and enjoying life. Super-mega fun.
Nick and Brent on the deck, probably talking about the American imperialists.
Nickbot
Brentbot
Bell's Oberon Ale was the weekend's drink of choice because it is the color and scent of a sunny afternoon.
There is a joke to be made here.
(Sun + pontoon boat + tunes + friends) x Oberon = daaance paarty
Nonsense shot. However, when I took this I didn't see that a dragonfly (known as the bonus dragonfly) was on the mushroom, which is on a stump, which is in a lake, until I looked at the photo back home. Great stuff.
To sum it all up: Awesome friends, awesome weekend.
Generally speaking, Cathy and I avoid really fancy restaurants. The ambiance and attitude of some of those joints make us expect the food to shoot magical rainbows and mini-unicorns directly into our brains and, unfortunately, it never happens.
Despite this, we've developed the habit of checking out some of these places on her birthday, and this year we went to Charlie Trotter's. The food was good, although there were certainly no lasers or mythical creatures flying off the plate. However, the most interesting aspect of it all was that we sat at the kitchen table, a single table that Trotter's has inside the actual kitchen. This time around, I geeked out and took some photos - however, the lighting was mixed and I was using a slow lens...do not prepared to be wowed.
View from the table. It's great because we get to watch our food get prepared, see some techniques, and interact a bit with the chefs. Being able to learn a bit more about food and cooking while eating is a nice bonus. Plus the dining room decor was reminiscent of a vomiting antique rug (at least from what I saw).
Anyway, there was a lot of food. There's no menu, they just "spontaneously" make you food - which basically turns out to be their tasting menu plus a couple made specifically for our table. It came out to a lengthy 15 courses. Some of them:
Maine diver sea scallop with fingerling potato, foamed parsley, and veal heart...
Deliciousness with Oaxacan mole sauce...
and Meyer lemon sorbet with black sesame. Sidebar: my brother used to have a Meyer lemon tree in his backyard.
A somewhat ridiculous but amusing part of the experience was that we each assisted a chef in plating a dish, as Cathy is so expertly doing here. She was asked to plate one of our desserts:
Claudio Corallo chocolate truffles with red wine cherries and thyme.
Good food, good fun.
Multi-gift for Cathy.
Bali! When Cathy and I arrived in Bali we finally felt like we were on our honeymoon. Although we were having an amazing time in Korea, it was nice to finally be by ourselves.
We stayed at the Conrad Suites. The room was ridiculous - dining room, living room, master bedroom, bathroom, vanity area, balcony, wall-to-wall windows, juicer, espresso machine, flat screen tv in the bathroom, and more nonsense. They asked what our preferred pillow type and firmness was, what aromatherapy oils housekeeping should burn, and which freshly squeezed juices should be stocked daily in our fridge. Honestly, it was all plain silly to me but hey, it was our honeymoon so whatever.
We were doing this honeymoon package thing and so lots of meals, events, and tours were already planned out for us. We explored cultural areas, visited random villages, went rafting down the Ayung River, hung out with some monkeys, found some green starfish, had candlelit beachside dinners, shared forestside lunches, got weird massages which I never want to experience again, and a whole slew of other stuff.
A rocky pier, the Indian Ocean, and my lovely wife.
Although we ate some Indonesian food (which is somewhat similar to Chinese food), our package provided a lot of Westernized meals. It was a welcome change from all the Asian food I had been eating, although I did feel a bit guilty about it. I mean you don't go to Bali to eat croissants for breakfast but I just couldn't help myself.
The purple rock crab, Leptograpsus variegatus. These guys would hang out on rocky outcroppings and scurry into various nooks and crannies whenever anyone of apparent authority got too close. Kind of like me when I was in high school.
The Crab-eating macaque, Macaca fascicularis. I never saw one eating a purple rock crab but I did see one try to steal some guy's wallet. I saw another licking a wall. I also saw a group of them bum rush a lady holding a banana. Standard monkey behavior.
We visited a couple street markets which had lots of amazing piles for sale. Piles of baskets, piles of artwork, piles of clothes, piles of jewelry, piles of piles on top of other piles. It was all reminiscent of other Asian and Mexican street markets I've been to, complete with the preposterous bartering. For example, after one counteroffer for some bamboo basket, one merchant went from $200 to $10. Preposterous.
Indonesia's best selling brew. I knew this was Bintang Beer because, well, it said so on the bottle.
Back to South Korea in the next, and probably final, honeymoon post.
