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Europe 2025: Siena

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Retiring to Sienna

For the final destination in our trip, we decided to take a car. In part this was to be able to enjoy the Italian countryside, but also so we could maintain control of our own schedule when it came to the return trip. It would have been a couple hours by train, and the prospect of doing that with a flight schedule to keep made both of us nervous.

With our additional luggage, the tiny car that we’d originally slated to rent just wasn’t going to cut it. Even with an upgrade we had to keep one of the bags in the back seat. They bumped us up, though, to a nice BMW. It had lots of fancy lighting and unlike our rental on Crete the navigation system synced up properly which was a blessing.

BMW

It was a nice drive from Bologna to Siena, with all the hills, small towns, church spires and vineyards you’d expect. There were also a surprising number of long tunnels cutting through the hills.

🎶 Secret tunnel 🎶

Our place in Siena was called Siena Hills Apartments. Even with a stop at a full-sized Decathlon on the outskirts of Bologna, we were early for check-in. The folks at the desk encouraged us to just wait downstairs at the restaurant and bar.

Siena skyline

We took the elevator down and followed the signs to more of a dining room than a restaurant. The “bar” was just a counter along the room with three bottles of liquor on a shelf. Even stranger, everyone sitting at the tables in the early afternoon looked to be at least thirty years older than we were… and they were staring at us. It honestly felt like we’d wandered into an old folks home and were the most interesting thing that’d happened there in an age.

Amber noticed as we’d descended some other branding on the signs in addition to the Siena Hills Apartments. A quick web search explained all – apparently the facility was a retirement community, but since it wasn’t entirely full they rented out the remaining rooms for travelers.

Cycling the Hills of Tuscany

The entire reason for us going to Siena, though, apart from the good things we’d heard from my brother and sister-in-law, was a special treat for me. We’d originally been talking about going to the Dolomites which get rave reviews online, but the mountains are really about hiking which is neither of our jam. Then Amber had the brainwave – what if I wanted to bike in Italy. A little searching and emailing turned up a private guide for the one full day we had to be in Siena, perfecto!

The meeting point was a bike shop called Siena Velo. We arrived a little bit early, and Amber dropped me off, parking in the neighborhood being a hassle. I wandered into the shop where it was very evident that the guy running the shop spoke as much English as I did Italian. He managed to convey that my guide would be along, though.

Siena Velo

Smile, you’re biking!

My guide showed up soon after. Francesco was one of those people you just know is a cyclist. He had that triangular frame, wide shoulders, wiry strong legs. At some point early on I asked how much biking he did. It turned out he was semi-professional rider.

“What’s that mean specifically, semi-professional?” I asked.

“You train like the professionals, you just don’t get paid yet.”

I, as the kids say these days, was cooked.

We started in the city and had about five kilometers to ride until we hit the real countryside. It started off fine, with me keeping a reasonable pace even with a fair amount of hills.

Tuscan castles in the distance

The smiles are fake but the fun is real

The Chianti region was so gorgeous to ride through. Vineyards and farms were everywhere, down little winding roads, behind hedges. Often the farmhouses were built up right to the edge of the roads, as if they’d been constructed before there had been much motor traffic. About 30% of the time we were on gravel, which I’d always wanted to try. (Truth be told, I prefer standard road biking.)

The vineyards

Me and the vineyards

We took a break at a spot and had some local cola and cold water. Not pedaling, it was easier to have some good discussion. We talked about school – Francesco is going to college in economics – and many other topics.

Breaking for local cola

Past the halfway point, I’ll be honest, I was struggling. In the initial messages I’d confidently said I could comfortably ride up to 60 kilometers (about 40 miles) and that was true. But the description of Chianti as “rolling hills” was not what I thought of as rollers. These climbs were intense and long. The roads were winding, so most of the time you couldn’t see to the top. It would seem like the segment you were on would top out when you just reached the turn, only to be cruelly betrayed as the climb continued.

But those downhills were exhilarating. Zooming down as fast as I was willing to go, the wind cooling me off from the growing intensity of the sun, the scenery flying by. It was awesome and made the pain worth it.

Lunch was at Agricola Fabbrini, basically a small farm that served lunch. The meal was pitch perfect for that point in the ride, with nothing too heavy but lots of flavor (and water). There was a panzanella very like what we make at home, cured meats, and a light frittata. Wine they made on site was available, though I only had a little bit given the remainder of the ride still before me.

Agricola Fabbrini

Homemade after meal wine

They toured us around the farm after we had eaten. We got to see their cattle – much fewer than they used to have apparently. The dining room had pictures of their prize winning bulls from years past. It was so fun to see, and you could hear their pride in the heritage of the farm as they showed us the various fields they owned and how far they ran.

A young calf

Prize winning cattle

There were also chickens, lovely little flower gardens, and as we mounted up to ride off ripe fig trees.

Figs warmed by the sun

The last stretch of the ride was the shortest, but my legs were really hurting by then. In the earlier parts I could slow down a little or take a brief pause and then bounce back. By this stage, the pain in my quads was making it hard to just keep moving at all.

My guide would zip out ahead, often out of sight, then turn back to encourage me when I’d lagged long enough. “Let’s go, let’s go!” I can still hear him chanting as he pulled away from me as if we were on flat ground.

Thinking of the ride even now brings a warm smile to my face. Truly a highlight of the trip, and such a caring and thoughtful gift of Amber to come up with it!

‘You want the bike? Now pedal!’

I wonder what Amber got up to while I was riding?

What Amber did instead

Refreshing Sienna

The ~~retirement home~~ apartments did have a pool, and we got some good time lounging over the couple of days we were in Siena. At one point I decided I should take advantage of the “bar” such as it was. They had a brief drink list so I picked a negroni. It was brought out by a nervous looking young staffer.

“It’s the first one I’ve ever made. Tell me if I did it right?”

Thankfully for both him and me, his instructions must have been good because it was a nice mix of bitter and sweet, icy cold and perfect for the poolside.

Our nicest meal was at Al Tocco where we ordered Florentine steak, a massive thick cut served upright. For pasta along with we had the pico pecorino, which was done just right.

Hilariously, an American couple at the next table over from us was ordering after dinner coffee and asked for a cappuccino. The waitress’ dismay was visible to us, and we chuckled, being in on the “secret” knowledge that Italians will normally make no secret at all. Cappuccino is only for the morning! You cannot have it after lunch, let alone after dinner!

About Sienna

Okay, so I do actually know what Amber did while I was biking. She parked the car carefully, and walked into Siena to see the place before we did our big visit the next day. The care in parking was called for because of what’s known as the ZTLs – Zona a Traffico Limitato – where driving is prohibited in certain areas. Siena was known to have these, and they are not well marked much of the time. Amber was nervous the whole time driving in Italy because of the horror stories she’d heard of folks getting 300 euro tickets in the mail months after a trip because a camera caught them.

Steep streets in Siena

It turned out that we had timed our visit for some sort of city-wide festival. Amber found them setting up for the evening activities, with long tables running down the streets where folks would be dining later. Even by the time she left later in the afternoon, though, parking was a nightmare so between that and my exhausted frame we didn’t venture back.

Tables ready to party

Different neighborhoods of Siena all have their own flag and symbolic animal. This was on full display, including costumes.

Neighborhood flags

More flags

Yet more flags

The next day when we did come back for our entry to Il Duomo, things were still happening. We managed to catch a small parade, complete with song which echoed down the narrow stony streets.

Festival parade in Sienna

Singing in the square

Il Duomo

A long walk uphill from the nearest parking was the big sight to see in Siena – a medieval cathedral called Il Duomo.

Il Duomo

Images in the entryway

Big old doors

Like many of the grand places in Europe, it was timed entry. We lined up in the already streaming sunshine with all the other tourists and waited our turn. I was slightly nervous that my shorts would be a problem – we’d heard of such requirements before but forgot the day of – but thankfully I wasn’t given a bag to cover my shameful knees.

Il Duomo stripes

Stripes and ceiling

The interior had a really interesting striped pattern, with dark black lines running horizontal everywhere. The effect was very bold, making the space far more dynamic than many churches I’ve seen.

Looking up

More choir books

The choir library

It’s hard to really describe in detail how intricate and beautiful such spaces are. So much goes into them over so many centuries, it’s hard to do it justice.

Paintings in Il Duomo

The pulpit

Statues in the museum

Heads of saints (?) watching

It’s us

Across the court was a museum which had many additional objects and rooms. Amber didn’t follow up the stairs more than a level or two, already hurting from her tromping around the day before.

Books in the museum

Among the features of the museum, though, was that from the top floor you could get out onto a narrow walkway and see amazing views across Siena.

View from the top

Il Duomo in panorama

The rest of Siena

The climb back down from the panorama

Backtracking

After our tour of Il Duomo, it was time for us to head back to Bologna and begin the return trip home.

Bags packed to go

Along the highway, we stopped at a roadside spot for some food, except it wasn’t on the side – it spanned the whole highway! This seemed novel, but it was absolutely packed with angry fussy travelers (ourselves soon contributing to that number) so we grabbed our food and split as fast as we could.

Our return flight to the US was from Athens, so we took another bus in the sky “courtesy” of Ryanair from Bologna back to Athens. Amber had picked out a little bed and breakfast calls the St Thomas B&B. We arrived late, but one of the draws of the place was that it was very close to the airport but also walking distance from a taverna.

The host had been told we needed an early departure, and ordered us a taxi and had breakfast already prepared and in our room fridge since we would be gone before the normal meal began. He had sad news, though, when we made to head out to the taverna. Apparently it was closed because it was August. We ended up picking at some of the breakfast items a little early and just going to bed.

Getting the extra bag added turned out to be a hassle because our tickets were with Air Canada, but the first leg was Swiss Air instead. Sharing no systems, we had to walk to a separate desk where someone called up Air Canada to get things settled. Thankfully for once lines weren’t enormous, so our problem didn’t slow anyone else down and we were there in plenty of time.

There was, though, one leg of the journey we were concerned with. In Zurich, we had only 55 minutes from landing until the flight to Vancouver departed. We talked to the staff and there wasn’t much to be done. “If it let you book it, it should be possible.”

We got off the plane as promptly as we could in Zurich and literally ran through the airport. With great relief, when we turned the corner to where the gate was, we found enormous lines still waiting. We joined a first line that was doing passport checking, and by the time we got through that the boarding line hadn’t even drained entirely.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, and Cora picked us up at the airport. Such an amazing time, and a fun look forward to what life might be like for us when the kids have moved out.

Europe 2025: Bologna

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Getting There

The flight from Athens to Bologna was a mixed bag. We were right up at the front in the second row, and oddly one of the seats in the first row wasn’t present so I actually had leg room. But, being Ryanair, the boarding was significantly delayed and people were cranky. Amber also felt unusually nauseated on the plane. She gets motion sick pretty easily, and we were glad to hit the ground in Bologna.

It was hot when we got outside and found a late taxi. By this point it was a little after midnight, and we showed the driver our address. He shook his head. “Sundays, the center of city is closed. I can’t drive all the way there.” Nervously we agreed for him to take us as close as he could manage, imagining as we did schlepping a kilometer with our three big bags in tow over cobblestones. Fortunately, it turned out to only be about three or four blocks from where the Sunday only-walking zone kicked in to our apartment.

Interesting language choices for programmers

We buzzed in and very tall, old looking wooden doors swung open to us. Amber had received a PDF file with multiple pages of instructions in colorful text and separate numbered boxes. We managed to find the cabinet of lock boxes to get the key, but for several minutes couldn’t figure out which one was ours. Tired, hot, and frazzled, it felt like an escape room puzzle box. Eventually we reviewed the sheet again and found where the lock box number was listed after trying the code unsuccessfully on about half of them.

The elevator up to our flat was painted bright red. Unlike almost any elevator I’ve ever been in, the instant you pressed the button for your floor, the doors started slamming closed. This proved to be a fun game for us throughout the time pretending we’d shut the door on each other.

The flat was up on the fifth floor, with a nice open plan and wood floors and the bed up on a loft. The appliances were all new, and it looked pretty apparent that this was a pure rental, not someone’s actual apartment. Also it was rather steamy being on the top floor and exposed to sunlight during the day. The instructions asked to keep AC use to a minimum, but it was hard to keep the temperature liveable at all as it turned out Bologna was facing a heatwave that week. So much for cooling down a little post Crete!

The apartment

The artwork in the apartment was an odd mix. There was a large painting of an angel who looked either in ecstasy or about ready to pass out. Beside it were a couple of prints that looked to be from Alaska. Nice bookshelves lined the walls with a healthy selection of travel related books and random Italian volumes.

Art in the place

We flopped down into the bed as soon as it got cool enough, glad to have arrived at the next stage of our journey.

I <3 Bologna

Cooking Classes

As anyone who knows us is aware, food is our jam. Given that, a major component of our time in Italy was local cooking classes. We scheduled these through the excellent Cesarine website and could not have been happier with the results.

Our first full day in Bologna was a class with Maurizio. We took breakfast at an outdoor cafe in the plaza across from our apartment where sadly they refused to make Amber’s cappuccino iced (“No freddo!”) Then we walked the fifteen minutes out towards the edge of the city walls for the class at 11am. It was already hot enough that we were second-guessing whether the walking had been a good idea, but we arrived with a subtle glow about us.

Cooking with Maurizio

While we’ve taken classes before in spaces that are designed for classes, we love this style which just takes place in people’s homes. Maurizio had a lovely apartment with an unfortunately blazing porch, filled with eclectic furniture that perfectly suited it. We also got to enjoy his little dog, Dante, who constantly wanted to chase after the ball.

Dante, ever vigilant

With logo-emblazoned aprons on, we set into making pasta from scratch of two different types – a ravioli and a fettucini. This being northern Italy, these were made with flour and egg.

Ready to cook!

One time in the distant past we had made fresh pasta ourselves, but this turned out to be much easier than our memories. You make a little hill of flour, then with your fingers in the classic Italian pose form a crater or volcano into which you crack an egg. 100g of flour, more of less, work for one egg. You then slowly whisk up the egg, pulling flour into the mix until it turns to a ball of dough.

Once the dough has come together, with sprinkles of extra flour if it’s still too sticky, you knead it out by hand for a while. This mostly involves folding it over in half, then squishing it before repeating. As someone who doesn’t like getting my hands messy this stage was mildly stretching, but I went along.

Pasta rests, but we don’t

Once the dough had reached a texture that Maurizio could tell was right, we left it to rest for a half hour in plastic so the gluten could develop. While we did that, we prepared the filling for our ravioli, with fresh ricotta cheese and sauteed spinach. I enjoyed seeing Maurizio’s kitchen where he had a full on electric slicer for salamis and other meats. Standard issue in Italy apparently.

Filling prep

After the filling was ready and the dough sufficiently rested, we got down to rolling it out. This again was more to Amber’s skill set than mine, but we got things out into a thin enough layer. For the ravioli it was then a matter of spreading the little balls of filling and folding over before cutting between them with a specialized tool.

Keep it rolling

The fettuccine, while possible to slice by hand, was better served with a custom tool called a “chitarra” (aka guitar) where you simply set the rolled pasta over wires and press down to make even cuts.

Perfect fettuccine

The end results were delicious, even from our amateur preparations. The local wines helped out I’m sure.

Ravioli served with thyme and a little Parmesan

Our second class, also through Cesarine, was with Paola. We learned from our first experience and taxied there, as it was equally hot and her apartment was even further out from the city center.

Paola’s sunny kitchen

This class covered a different slice of foods with a little overlap in pasta making. We made piadina, an Italian flat bread. It made a delicious start.

As you knead it

Paola showed us the tricks to make tortellino (a specific size of tortellini). Much of the initial part of the pasta was familiar now, but she disagreed on a couple points, such as folding over and oil in the water for pasta. Controversy of the cooks! In any case, we learned the easy technique for sealing up the tortellino.

Perfect tortellino

The meal concluded with tiramisu, prepared pretty easily in small cups. We dined on Paola’s back porch in the shade by her garden, and all was well with the world.

Food Tour

Along with the cooking, we also had the opportunity to take a day long food tour to see how three different Italian classics are made – Parmigiano Reggiano, balsamico tradizionale, and prosciutto. Our guide picked us up from outside our apartment and had a car to drive us to the various locations, along with arrangements pre-made with the providers for our visit.

Welcome to the home of Parmesan

The first stop was where real Parmesan is made. Like all of the foods we experienced that day, it’s a DOP product, meaning that it’s restricted by not only location but process and ingredients. The dry white cheese in a plastic bottle this is not! Each location is controlled and tracked, with its own number so you can trace back the product you bought to the very spot it originated.

We spent quite a bit of the tour dressed up in paper gowns with foot covers while the workers went about their tasks with the huge copper vats. Although some amount of technology has been allowed into the process (witness the cleaning video below), it still includes some very manual steps. The judgement of when things are ready is also a facet where humans have yet to be replaced.

Here are a few too many videos of the process in action.

Cutting the cheese

Hoisting Parmesan

Retrieving the Parmesan

Cleaning up

A byproduct of the process is ricotta, which is made by recooking the whey that’s made in the vats. This was being packed as we ventured through the factory.

Ricotta packing

Once the fresh cheese has been retrieved and sat a while, it gets put into a metal container before going to spend a few weeks in a salt bath (not pictured here). Then comes the long wait.

New wheels before heading to aging

The factory includes a large space with row after row of shelves, running up several person heights towards the ceiling. Here the cheeses age anywhere from 12 to 36 months before they are ready.

Fresh on the shelves

Older entries, still aging

Things don’t always go to plan for every wheel. You can see some of them puffing which indicates something went off in the fermentation that gives Parmesan its unique flavor. Other wheels show cracking. The wheels are frequently checked with a little hammer, the sound enough to tell the master cheese makers what’s up inside the rind.

Something’s wrong here

Crackin’ up

Our next DOP item was on a private estate where they made real balsamic. I wasn’t fully aware, but nothing I’d ever had, either in Europe or in the US was the traditional thing. The aging process for traditional balsamic is laborious, with the end product taking either 12 or 25 years, minimum, to be ready.

Not that long in the past, this product was only available in the region, and traded or gifted between families. Only late in the last century did they begin to expand production enough to be able to sell some of it at a rather high price point.

The process starts from grapes grown either on the estate or nearby. The juice is squeezed and cooked before being ready to go into the barrels for aging. The balsamic is aged in the highest floor of the house, the room packed with barrels. It’s important for the development that it be hot there in summer – and it was! – and cold in winter. The balsamic needs to breathe. Each line of barrels is where the vinegar progresses through it’s aging process. Once a year they move liquid from the bigger barrels to the smaller.

Balsamic lines

The oldest line at the place we visited was started in 1888 and has been in continual use since. While the barrel leaks a little, they don’t mess with it for fear of screwing up the magic.

The oldest line, started 1888

The final product has to pass inspections that only allow through 1/5 of the candidates, even from the very rarefied set of families that are in the business. A meal was served after this tour, with free access to bottles of their product. Quite a genius selling device that. We bought home two tiny bottles for a hefty price.

A real Lamborghini

The last visit was to a place that makes prosciutto. As big fans of jamon, it was interesting to watch how this was done and contrast and compare the flavors of the product. There were a lot of cold rooms here, and a lot of places where they were aging varying grades of product, often with differing colors to the fats they use to seal it and different stamps depending on quality.

So much meat

Heresy to the Italians but I still appreciate the funk of the Spanish style cured pork legs better, but I have a deeper appreciation for the time and care that goes into prosciutto after the tour.

Eats

Needless to say, eating in Bologna was also a highlight, even when we weren’t in a class making it ourselves.

The first night we rocked out with no reservations, just to see what we could do at a couple recommended spots nearby. The first place we tried it was a really weird interaction – they said they didn’t have any, but then were having conversations with other folks who plainly didn’t have a reservation right beside us.

We wandered off and found another spot that looked busy and had a small cluster of people lined up. When we asked, apparently the line was for those without reservations, and it wasn’t too long so we joined the queue. The food was okay, though the pasta more al dente than I expected. We tried a fried zucchini blossom, but it mostly tasted of cheese and batter. The waiter switched between vigorous Italian and a shockingly British accent as people constantly maneuvered in and out.

Rolling pasta

We learned our lesson there and did better research and reservations for most of the later nights. The exception was Simoni Salumeria, which was more of a deli sort of place we took a chance on to great success. The great charcuterie and cheese came with perfect bread beside. I learned there to appreciate the mortadella, which I’d always viewed a little suspiciously as too much like baloney to be that good. I was wrong. Completely wrong. It’s luscious and fully deserves its standing in the meat counter.

At a recommendation from one of our guides/teachers, we got a reservation at Vicolo Colombiana. Tucked down a tiny street after which its named, we got an early slot easily which worked great for us. Here we had tortellini in brodo di cappone, perfect little pastas in a savory broth, and guancia di manzo, beef cheeks so wonderfully tender.

Another favorite was Trattoria da Me. I was expecting this for some reason to be a super traditional spot, but it turned out to be a very modern take on the cuisine. The waiter was boisterous and friendly, lighting up the room whenever he came in and full of suggestions. Here we tried again with the zucchini flowers and unlike our first night now I get the allure, the subtle flavors and textures of it. The waiter was extremely excited for us that they had the lasagna, which was normally only on Sundays, so we obviously had to go for that. We also did the rabbit and a side of fresh tomatoes that sang of summer. Truly an awesome meal.

And of course we can’t talk about food in Italy without Amber’s favorite, gelato. One of our spots in Portland is a gelato place run by an immigrant from Italy, so it was a thrill to go back to the source. I can’t give you the blow-by-blow because of how many times we would stop in for a little frozen treat. Whether on the way to an activity, or just popping out at 10pm across the plaza by our apartment, sweetness was never far away.

Gelato

More gelato

About Town

Bologna is a beautiful city. I honestly wasn’t too sure what we were going to do there, but it proved to be a perfect introduction to Italy for us. One of the most recognizable sights in the city were a pair of towers – one of them significantly leaning, take that Pisa! – and it was only a few blocks down the street from the apartment Amber found for us.

Garisenda and Asinelli – Bologna’s two towers

The city is very walkable near the center, and its architecture was a joy to explore. In Athens there were many landmarks which made an impression but the overall sense of the city apart from those spots was “generic European” to me. In Bologna on the other hand, there was an immediate sense that you were in Italy, similar to how you could land me in any corner of Barcelona and I’d know where I was. I could imagine myself in an Umberto Eco novel, criss-crossing the city alleys after dark.

A key component of that feeling of place was how the walkways and paths were built, the arching covered paths that you took from place to place.

Arched walkways

More arches

So much of the city was clearly built before the advent of cars. The narrow ways, the cobbled stones, the sense of winding your way through a maze made even the walk with Google maps to a restaurant something of an adventure.

Delightful little sidestreets

Shade down the way

A fun little side note, at least in downtown Bologna, pertains to the various grocery stores that we visited. Where normally stores are mostly a single open space, everywhere we went instead we found the places obviously carved out by connecting multiple rooms across what had to have been different apartments or shops previously. Now they were strung together in a winding maze. It made hunting for supplies extra adventurous, as you never knew what the next room would hold.

I’m not lion to you

Our days were often shaped around the excursions and classes we were taking, but there was a heatwave on which also sapped the remaining energy out of us. Most days followed a pattern of waking, doing an activity, then crashing at the apartment in the hottest part of the afternoon, maybe even napping, before emerging to dinner in the evening. Rough life.

We did some shopping in the city. An outpost of the sporting goods store Decathlon, which we frequented in Barcelona, was around and Asher dearly missed some of the swim trunks we’d gotten him there. Unfortunately it turned out to be a tiny one in Bologna so no trunks there.

Amber’s other obsession was to get some supplies for making pasta at home. We went to several locations looking for the right type of rolling pin like we’d seen in our classes. It took us eventually to a kind of cluttered, bazaar-like shop with narrow walkways down the aisles that two people could barely pass by, but we found the roller she was after. A chitarra proved impossible to find oddly enough, so Amazon it was.

Last but not least, at the balsamic place the meal had ended with an aperitif of homemade liquor aged on walnuts called nocino. I enjoyed it enough that we started asking after it at a few wine spots around, and while what we found wasn’t nearly as good, it was worth taking home.

We saw two other major sights in Bologna. One was the Basilica di San Petronio, a church bordering one of the plazas near our apartment. Only part of the front face was finished. Legend has it that the Pope of the time wasn’t too happy with it approaching the size and majesty of some other cathedrals, so he put a halt to the project and it remains unfinished to this day.

Outside the Basilica

Inside the Basilica

In a room off the main space of the cathedral were a series of really cool looking old choir books. These volumes were huge to be visible to folks from a distance while singing during services. Even so, the margins were decorated lavishly.

Choir book at the Basilica

It was a constant amazement too, throughout Bologna, all the little touches where things were decorated and gilded, painted and finished in style. The level of detail was so far past what I’m used to in the States, it’s really hard to imagine the world in which the work was done.

Such fancy decorations

Even the ceilings are fancy

The other big destination in Bologna was a set of sculptures of various figures from the Gospels, grieving over the dead Christ. Apparently these terracotta figures may have been painted and arranged different back in the day, but the exquisite way in which their emotions were captured was moving to see.

Some screaming

More screaming

SO MUCH SCREAMING

Our apartment was right across from the Piazza del Nettuno. As the name suggests, this plaza featured a massive statue of the god Neptune.

Neptune in the Plaza

Our cooking instructor Maruizio told us a story about this statue, though. The legend is that the artist originally wanted Neptune’s, well, manliness, to be rather more in keeping with his stature as a god. His patrons, though, refused and so Neptune was crafted in more modest proportions.

The artist, however, got his revenge. If you stand at just the right angle behind the statue, Neptune’s outstretched hand… well, look and see for yourself.

What the artist intended

In the States at least, we often view the past as being some more tame and bland time. I believe the facts of the matter are quite different than that impression.

Ahem

What I read along the way

Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - Various
The Great When - Alan Moore
Smiley’s People - John le Carré

Europe 2025: Crete

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Transport and Accommodations

We landed at Chania International Airport, a small place but not surprisingly so. I mean, Crete’s an island after all, how big of a need was there for airports? We grabbed our rental car just outside the terminal, briefly tried to get the navigation working, but were foiled by “Attaching with USB and starting your navigation app.” We settled on me holding up the iPhone while Google maps did its thing and got on our way.

An oddity we noticed during the half hour drive was how folks perpetually pulled over until their cars were overlapping or even entirely in the shoulder when there was space. Faster traffic then would buzz by in the partial lane. It took a few minutes to realize this was the driving cultural norm, not just some weird tentative driver ahead of us. Amber did her best to follow suit.

Greeks using the shoulder

The JCrete unconference which drew us to the island was held in Kolymbari, off almost to the western tip of Crete. By the time we entered the sleepy little seaside town it was already getting dark. The apartment we had rented was on the furthest end of town towards the Orthodox Academy of Crete (OAC) where the unconference would be held. Following the map, we turned up a narrow one-way street with cars parked along it. The buildings were almost entirely unnumbered, and the map pinned a location that very plainly wasn’t our apartment. We fumbled around for several minutes, walking up and down the street until we realized that a big wooden sliding gate we’d passed by was our entrance.

Our rustic apartment

The apartment was a rustic place. Behind the gate was a porch with a long table, barbecue (which we never ended up using), an outdoor shower, and some loungers. The walls were made of stone which kept it somewhat cool inside, although we did kick the AC on when we were in. The living and bathrooms had plainly been renovated not long in the past, with a nice modern flair that suited the space well.

Modern touches in the apartment

Once we’d dropped the luggage off and gotten the apartment cooling, we trekked out in search of dinner and groceries. There were a couple of small general shops that we’d passed on our way in, and near them some tavernas. We picked the one that looked least bar-like and were pleased with the tasty lamb and, you guessed it, Greek salad. The whole place was pretty slow, and one older man was doing all the waiting, complete with a rattling plastic cart that he used to roll out whatever goodness he was delivering and take the dishes away.

A “feature” of the apartment that we weren’t really prepared for was the cicadas. While present almost everywhere we went in Crete, they seemed to especially congregate on our porch. We referred to it as the “cicada sex club” given it’s popularity. Twice while we were there I wrote a little at the otherwise wonderful outdoor table, but the noise was right on the edge of headache-inducing so we didn’t spend much other time there.

Cicadas getting noisy

JCrete Day 1

The first day I woke up, ate some yogurt for breakfast, and then trooped out past the edge of town and uphill towards the OAC where JCrete was set to begin.

Path up to OAC

JCrete is an unconference. Unlike the traditional conferences I’ve attended in the past, at an unconf there are no planned speakers, no prior agenda, lots of healthy chaos. The day begins with people proposing sessions, which then get voted on, and the sessions with the most votes get scheduled and happen. Adding to the yearly chaos, the rooms were named after Norse mythology. Just what you’d expect for an event in Greece, right?

As the “J” in JCrete suggests, the central programming topic is Java. It had been about a year and a half since I was using much Java in my professional context (moving from New Relic to GitHub meant trading my backend Java for Ruby, TypeScript and a smattering of Go), but I found it was like riding a bike. I quickly immersed, and ended up proposing a couple of sessions even that got selected.

My session that first day was about “Surviving the AI Hype” and was a discussion forum for folks who’s roadmaps are overrun with AI features. I enjoyed the various perspectives on how to work with the hype and not burn out, how to push back when things don’t make sense and engage where the tech fits. Other highlights for the day included hearing about some of the new on-ramp features to make Java easier to start with – less ceremony for getting a program started, no shade to public static void main – and structured concurrency.

Lunches were at one each day, and partners and family, which are highly encouraged to come along to JCrete, were welcome at that point. The food was always an excellent variety of Greek dishes, and the conversation at the tables lively. The first day featured an evening meal at OAC as well, which made for easy planning. Our friends Ben and Anna arrived during the day, and we finally caught up with them there.

The first day of JCrete being about the third day since arriving, the jetlag hit hard in the afternoon. I knew the pattern well enough to struggle through, though, knowing that I’d feel better rested soon.

Unconference planning

JCrete Day 2

The second day at JCrete brought some wonderful sessions exploring new APIs in the JDK – Gatherers and stable variables in particular. The sessions were often just someone interested cracking open an IDE and writing some code live to demonstrate the newness. This was refreshing versus the usual conference polish and prep.

View from OAC

That afternoon one of the other attendees had mentioned that they needed a ride to the airport. Amber and I, being who we are, gladly agreed to give them a ride in the afternoon. Little did we know until following up that Crete has not one, but two airports. And the flight was from the second airport, Herkalion, which was two and a half hours drive away. At least we got a chance to see a large part of the length of the island. In fact, we’ve now seen more of Crete than Ben and Anna, who have attended the conference for years.

In the evening we ate at an Argentine seafood place down by the beach with Ben and Anna. The beachfront road was frequented by a variety of cats who prowled along looking for tasty treats. They hit the jackpot with our crew, who were unable to refuse feeding a cute kitty.

JCrete Day 3

The third day of JCrete had sessions in the afternoon instead of the morning so folks could make an excursion to some beaches. The downside of this plan, though, was that the approach to said beaches was an unpaved road as specifically excluded on our rental contract. That plus the really early start time convinced us to just stay in town and have a late brunch with our dear friends instead.

The sessions for the day included a rousing discussion of low latency Java – largely in the financial sector with high-frequency trading – some retro gaming on the JDK, and a session titled “Java in Space.” Came to find out that while Java is used plenty in mission control software, it is not actually on satellites. I learned a ton though about low Earth orbit, and the complexities of making sure that even in the vastness of space things don’t run into each other, a growing problem thanks to Starlink.

After sessions we spent some beach time, bobbing in the Mediterranean waters which I have missed a ton since moving away from Barcelona. Up at OAC after that a Cretan evening was scheduled, with folk music, dancers, and traditional food galore. And yes, even I was coerced into dancing (badly) as the video shows.

Dancing _cringe_

JCrete Day 4

The final day of normal sessions started back at the standard morning time. There was a discussion of JSON libraries, which I found fascinating coming from other language ecosystems where so much is already in the box compared to Java. I do hope Java gets an equivalent to require 'json'; JSON.parse(...) someday. There was also some solid discussion of observability – a topic still dear to my heart – and a lightly attended session I proposed about writing technical books.

Monastery near OAC

The evening plan was a full barbecue at the OAC put on by members of the unconf planning crew. The food was tasty, and the socializing fun, with little to no threat this time around of dancing.

The JCrete crew

JCrete Day 5

The last day of the unconference many folks had already left, so typical sessions were replaced by a morning of hacking. It was a joy to spend that time across a table from Ben, working first on a proposal for a refreshed version of one of our books, and then jamming on a retro game ported to Java that he’s been trying to get into working order.

Hacking with friends

JCrete was an exceptionally great time. I will admit to being a little leery of how well the unplanned format would work with a large crowd. I’d done it before with smaller groups, but never with a multi-session output. It was surprisingly rich, often insightful, and always fun. Looking forward to attending again in some future year.

Around Crete

While our time on the island centered around JCrete, we did get out a bit beyond driving folks to the airport. After one of the evening events, Amber had looked up loukoumades, and found a restaurant named Kosmas. We dragged Ben and Anna along for the twenty minute drive there one evening. It was an interesting change, heading into the more populated and touristy stretches of Crete closer to Chania. It highlighted just how quiet and secluded Kolymbari was.

We parked on a busy street, found our way into the restaurant, and cracked open the menus. To our dismay, while it listed all sorts of desserts, there were no loukoumades to be found. Mildly panicked, Amber flagged over the waiter and asked after our favorite Greek treat. Apparently, they’re just gifted alongside a meal rather than being ordered – actually a common occurrence at many of the restaurants we visited, although more often it was a flan/custard with citrus and a shot of raki. Fortunately they were willing to sell us the loukoumades as long as we ordered the baklava too. Minor sadness I couldn’t try because I was doing an allergy test excluding nuts which I’d shown some sensitivity too (news flash: didn’t help and I missed pastries in Greece and pistachio gelato in Italy because of it 😭).

Amber vacationing the right way

The other favorite activity was just getting down to the beach and resting. The apartment Ben and Anna had came with loungers and shade on the small strip of beach in Kolymbari, and the ladies spent a good deal of time there. Ben and I joined when we could after sessions, bobbing in the water and talking for hours.

Little shrines were common all over the place

Back in Athens, Amber had spotted an olive wood cutting board at one of our meals. This gave us our shopping quest on the island. We trotted back on an afternoon to the busier part of Chania, looked at a few shops randomly before doing more Googling and finding a place that specialized in just the sort of rich, natural wood products Amber was after. We ended up buying another suitcase to fit that and some gifts that we received from friends. It was worth it though.

Another very Greek thing that happened during our visit was a music festival down by the water in Kolymbari. I’ve called it a quiet sleepy place, but that only holds most of the time. Many of you will be thinking “Oh, did you go to it?” but realize that live music is not Amber’s jam. She’s a wet blanket at almost any concert to begin with. Once the festival got going – about eleven o’clock at night – it was loud enough to rival the cicadas during the daytime. I’m pretty sure checking the clock that it ran until at least 3 or 4 in the morning before finally settling down. Hilariously the next day the apartment owner contacted us and gifted us twenty euros to buy a bottle of wine. I think he was aware just how loud it had been so very late at the festival.

We flew back to Athens briefly, then got our next hop on Ryanair to Bologna. Needless to say, that last leg was delayed, overpacked, and full of angry crowds pushing as if we didn’t all have a seat assigned on the plane. At least it was cheap. You get what you pay for.

What I read along the way

Orbital - Samantha Harvey
Livesuit - James S. A. Corey
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Europe 2025: Athens

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After more than a decade, Amber and I were finally getting the chance for a long trip without the kids.

Getting To Athens

Our first major destination was Crete, where we’d be attending JCrete. But one does not get to Crete direct from the west coast of the United States. First stop, Athens.

We’d booked with Air Canada, which I’d traveled on before relatively happily. Not too many weeks before the departure date, though, they cancelled a leg of our flight. We had scheduled our classic super-duper early morning departure, but when Amber scrambled on the computer to reschedule she ended up finding something mid-afternoon our original departure day. It ended up losing a partial day in Athens, which will be pertinent later, but was so much more comfortable.

How I feel about early flights

The Portland Airport had some major renovations since the last time we’d been through. The rather narrow check-in area had been knocked way back, making room for a spacious modern layout underneath a ceiling of light wooden shapes that felt very Portland. The drop-off had another major new aspect too – Cora drove us up and dropped us off, as she was staying at home for the duration. Asher had already left the day before and would be splitting time between the grandparents, leaving Cora solo. It was such an odd feeling for my daughter to be doing something so, well, grown up, but the time had come.

The trip itself was uneventful, as one hopes for with air travel. Our route went Portland, Vancouver, Munich, Athens. The only minor hitch was in Munich where we had to go through passport control. Beyond the stations where documents were checked was a glassed in area with some doors marked plainly as “exit only” with lots of red and signs. Yet apparently someone had decided after walking through to turn back around and come back through the doors. This set off alarms, and everyone in the intervening space had to stand around in the shrill, piercing noise for about fifteen minutes until some incomprehensible protocol had been followed releasing us.

With the late departure we got into Athens relatively late. A cab dropped us downtown at our hotel, the Skylark. The air was thick and humid as we got our luggage from the back. The hotel was definitely hipster tinged, mostly in ways that made us Portlanders feel right at home.

Lighting, curtsey of BIRD

The only off note in the hotel environment was in the elevator. It had a full screen in the ceiling with a fancy purple geometric animation running in a loop, and played an annoying dance beat. While the music itself grated a little, it stopped the music every time the doors opened before resuming at the same spot. Any sense of rhythm was entirely lost but hey, folks heading up to the “club” on the top floor might have enjoyed it.

Gotta hand it to them

After we checked in it wasn’t quite late enough to collapse. We keep a firm policy of staying up until 9PM to start kicking the jet lag when travelling. We found a little gyro spot around the corner, got the first of many Greek salads with some fries but failed to order the meat we’d expected. We were so tired that we didn’t bother fixing it and just ate up before heading upstairs to bed.

Did you bring your antlers?

National Archaeological Museum

The breakfast included with the hotel was rather nice, so we enjoyed the morning dining on the many pickled treats, Greek yogurt, and strong coffee. Our plan for the day was to go to the National Archaeological Museum, one of the major places to see in Athens apart from, you know, the Parthenon and all that.

I haven’t studied Greek history a ton, so the museum was very revealing about the many many different eras and regions that we think of now as Greece. The museum had many spacious, open rooms with statuary, leading off then to smaller rooms off to the sides with glassed in cases showing off the antiquities.

Aphrodite giving Pan the chancla

An interesting point to me in looking at all those objects was the wide variety in their quality. Some things were so incredibly intricately crafted, a wonder to look at, clearly something from a different age. Then other items, while so old, honestly looked a bit like you could find them at the Portland Saturday Market without them being out of place.

Ancient jewelry you could imagine buying

And then there were a few bits that, well, I’m not much of an artist but judge for yourself.

Art?

Another oddity was coming upon various things which looked strangely modern, often for reasons that the creator would have had no clue about. For instance, one of the statues, I think maybe of one of the Furies, really just reminded me of some old witch from a Studio Ghibli movie.

Looks like something from a Ghibli movie

And ancient people weren’t above enjoying a little cuteness in their days either.

This hedgehog is chill instead of fast

Having said that, there were some spectacular pieces. The statues were often so lifelike and flowing it was hard to believe they were made of stone. And then down in an open courtyard by the cafe was a fabulous mosaic of the Medusa. The fine detail – and the fact it had held up through all of those years – was amazing to see.

Medusa Mosaic

Overall, it was a solid museum I would highly recommend for anyone making it through Athens.

Got your nose!

After the museum, we set out on a quest. You see, every year the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Portland throws a Greek Festival, and one of Amber’s favorite things is a dessert item they serve there called loukoumades. These lovely little fried dough balls, coated in honey and cinnamon, are a yearly treat. It seemed like a miss to come to Greece and not see how the “real thing” stacked up. A little web sleuthing turned up a couple possible locations. The most traditional option, Krinos, was a short walk away so we headed out.

Loukoumades from Krinos

We went in with some nerves. Were we in love with a fake, Americanized version of the treat? But the answer was a resounding “no!” Krinos’ loukoumades came in a slightly different shape – circular rather than the donut hole style we were familiar with – but the light crispiness, the perfect sticky sweetness of the honey, the dash of cinnamon all hit just right.

On the walk back to the hotel we passed a shop with tables out on the sidewalk selling spices. We almost went by, then Amber paused. The salesman started offering advice, asking questions, and in general pulling us in like fish on a hook. By the time we left he’d managed to sell us several different local spices and a couple varieties of local honey – one of Amber’s hobby items to gather when traveling.

Dinner that night was at Karamanlidika. We didn’t get reservations set, and when we arrived we found the corner of the brick building surrounded by quite a few people. We asked and mostly they were without reservations too, and bit by bit folks were being let inside so we lined up.

Tasty Karamanlidika

I’m glad we did. The place was effectively a restaurant attached with an awesome deli. We had a number of classics – fava bean “salad” that was more of a paste but delicious, another typical but delicious Greek salad, lamb meatballs, anchovies in white vinegar and of course a massive charcuterie plate. It’s a deli after all! A lovely red wine to top it off, and we were rolling when we left.

But of course, one cannot just have dinner when traveling. What about dessert? Another of the loukoumades places – called Lukumades wasn’t too far away, so we walked off some of the meal and joined the evening throng down the narrow streets.

Lukumades, new school

Where Krinos, which had been open since the 1920s, represented tradition, this place was all about remixing the classics. You want your loukoumades with filled with chocolate or pistachio? Dipped in some sort of frosting? Served with gelato? Savory instead of sweet with goat cheese? You got it buddy! It was like the Salt and Straw of loukoumades.

Overall I’ve got to say that it wasn’t as good as the originals. However, the same chain did have an outpost at the airport and hey, even not-the-best loukoumades are still loukoumades!

Howdy

Roman Agora and Out

One part of our time in Athens was a failure. We lost most of a day getting there with the flight re-arrangements, and we didn’t realize that the entry to the Parthenon and Acropolis were time-ticketed events. Finally researching when we were in town, we found that there just wasn’t a reasonable time for us to make it to these iconic locations. At least we could see them from a distance.

Acropolis in the distance

Fortunately, Athens has more ruins than just the Parthenon. And in fact, many of them don’t entail hours standing in line, in the hottest part of the day, while climbing huge stairs.

Our chosen backup was the Roman Agora. We didn’t get out of the hotel in a hurry, so it was still very hot near the middle of the day by the time we approached. Following Google maps, we popped to the edge of the site, only to find that the highlighted entrance was closed. It wasn’t obvious at all which way to go, so we picked a direction and started circling around to try and find an entrance. Of course, we picked the wrong way, ending up circling 3/4 of the rather large area before getting, sweaty and already tired, to the entrance.

Sunshine at the Agora

The Agora was beautiful, large with columns climbing up into the sky that really caught a sense of majesty. It’s amazing to think that those were built so many thousands of years ago and still stand.

The long view near the Roman Agora

We made a relatively brief tour of the museum that was there – we were fast approaching the “oh, more old stuff” point in viewing archaeological relics. Backtracking the way we’d walked to the Agora, we grabbed a cafe lunch. The fans at the edges of the outdoor seating really sold it.

From there it was back to the hotel to check out, and a taxi to the airport. It proved to be a frustrating check-in, as there was a whole system for people to self-check their bags but literally no one was doing so and one single attendant was helping everyone by pressing buttons on the self-serve screens. By the time we got to the front we just stepped up to one of the machines and it worked fine. No idea what the holdup was there. That tenor held throughout the boarding process – everyone was packed together a little too tight, and a little fussy and angry as things were delayed. We walked out through the punishing heat, though, boarded the plane and were on our way to the next stop, Crete!

What I read along the way

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie
The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland - Nan Shepherd
Interior Chinatown - Charles Yu
What Moves the Dead - T. Kingfisher

Europe 2024: Portugal

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Lisbon

For years we’d heard great things about Portugal. Finally it was time to check it out for ourselves!

Steep hillside with houses in Lisbon

We took a cab from the airport per usual. At the end of the ride we got our first hint of a problem we’d struggle with across this leg of the trip. The driver insisted there was an extra fee per passenger which hadn’t been mentioned before. But we were tired from the flight, so rather than fight, we rolled with it. Turns out, weird stuff like this kept happening with cabs unless we ordered them on a service like Bolt. Word to the wise, make sure the meter’s running.

Bad vibes only

The neighborhood where we’d rented an apartment was a little rundown but nothing troubling. We schlepped our luggage upstairs in the tiny elevator. Everything was in place, including a little garbage can beside the toilet and prominent signs in multiple languages informing that you couldn’t flush the TP. What? Really? In Europe? This turned out to be common where we went in Portugal, not just a fault of this building’s plumbing.

Lots of cool graffiti though

Another hurdle in Lisbon – quite literally – were the many many hills. We’re very accustomed to walking when we’re traveling. A quick glance at the map often looked reasonable to avoid the cabs. Almost without fail, though, more than a couple blocks would yield steep stairs climbing skyward, hills with charming if ankle-threatening cobblestones, and a sheen of sweat by the time you arrived.

Tiling

Lisbon was, on the whole, a colorful city. A lot of architecture was vaguely similar to Barcelona, but with more bright paint livening it up.

Building with green tiles and a rounded end

Even more distinctive, though, was Portugal’s typical tiling. While not every building was fronted with various tile patterns, almost any walk you’d see at least a couple. In some areas, the tile included images amongst the artistic geometry.

More pictorial tiling

The tiles were common enough, they showed up even in the tourist shops for purchase. Given that Lisbon seemed a little run down at times, this use of tile was a cool counter-balance to what could have been a dreary urban setting.

Tight shot of bright orange tile

Green and red starbursts

Castelo Sao Jorge

In the city, one of the major sights was the Castelo Sao Jorge, crouched on the hilltop. On our second day, we started the hike up to it. Small carts with padded seats kept zipping by us, bringing folks to the castle. Less than halfway up we broke. When an empty cart asked if we wanted a ride, we said sure and hopped on.

View of the city from Castelo Sao Jorge

In the outer courts of the castle, an immediate point of interest was the plethora of peacocks roaming free.

Peacocks at Castelo Sao Jorge

It had been a while since we’d eaten when we arrived, so we grabbed food from a little outdoor cafe inside. This gave us a chance to watch the peacocks. They watched us closely in turn. Hovering endlessly around the area, they clearly expected a hand-out we were quite willing to provide.

Asher feeding the peacocks

The castle contained a museum. Along with that, it also had a camera obscura in one tall tower. While I associate these assemblies of lenses and mirrors to project images with the distant past, this one was only installed in 1998! Still a pretty cool view of the city, though.

Lisbon through the camera obscura

As we were getting ready to go, there was a long set of stairs running downward, the final destination not visible from the top. Asher really wanted to see if it was an exit, even though it wasn’t marked as one. The gals stayed smartly up top, but I trooped down with my energetic son, and guess what? It wasn’t an exit. We climbed back up.

Asher wanted to see where the stairs went

Sintra

Our one big day outside of Lisbon took us to the town of Sintra. There we visited not one but two interesting spots – the National Palace of Pena, and the Moorish Castle. We booked a driver through Bolt at a reasonable price, even going between towns in this fashion.

National Palace of Pena

The Palace was rather busy, with timed entry for folks, long lines for the buses that made the final approach, and people everywhere. However, it was an impressive sight perched up on the hill, with bright yellow walls and complicated stonework everywhere.

Crowded exterior at the National Palace of Pena

The Palace was very much not an ancient castle, “only” dating from the 1850s. This was evident in the size of many of the spaces, which were actually rather spacious. It also showed up in the frequency of bathrooms, which must have been a luxury innovation at the time. The interiors were lushly decorated and a lot of fun to tour through.

Dining room at the National Palace. We weren’t invited to stay.

As we’d seen elsewhere, patterned tiling was all over the National Palace.

Tiled courtyard

Downhill from the National Palace was the Moorish Castle. This was a much older structure, falling apart in many areas. We walked down to it through deeply forested hillsides.

Woods near Sintra

The day was rather cool at the higher elevation. At the castle that didn’t get much better as the winds whipped through with little of the castle body to block the breeze.

Tree growing within the castle

Perched as it was on a hill, the Moorish Castle used its surroundings to good effect. This meant that the walls were nothing like a simple flat rectangle. They swooped up and down in either direction, following the folds of the hilltops.

Stairs down

Stairs up

All the climbing was worth it for the stunning view from the highest points.

View from the Moorish Castle

After we caught a Bolt back to Lisbon, we had it drop us off at the TimeOut Market. We got there late enough the market was largely shut, but a huge open space was devoted to food vendors. We all got to pick what we wanted. Following my meal, I tried out a sampler of different ports which was lovely. The rest of the family took advantage of the gelato situation available. A massive screen in the center of the tall tables was showing the European Championships (~~soccer~~ football, France versus Belgium while we were there, so no one got too rowdy.)

Eating at the TimeOut Market

The Food

As ever, a big part of our time in Portugal revolved around food. We scheduled to take a cooking class. It started with a trip to the Mercado 31 de Janeiro market where our instructor showed us a variety of local vegetables and meats, and gathered up what we’d need for the class. It was a relatively big group, with some hailing from the US and two others from Switzerland (who interestingly spoke the rare Romansh language and filled us in on all the details about it.)

The dishes bore a lot of resemblance to things we’d had and made in Spain, but with some twists here and there. The kids enjoyed blending a gazpacho-like soup and coiling up a fruit rolled cake.

Family at the cooking class

One of the treats that folks talk about in Portugal endlessly is pastel de nata. These are tasty little egg custards in a flaky shell. Easily eaten in a couple of bites, they’re available all over the place. We found a pretty good location for them near the Castelo Sao Jorge. Sadly, we had also just learned of Asher’s egg allergy not long before the trip, which took some of the shine off this delectable treat.

Pastel de Nata

One evening we went to a fado restaurant, which is a classical combination of soulful folk music and good cooking. The spot we chose was probably among the classier places we went on the trip, and the music was engaging even though we couldn’t follow the words which were undoubtedly fraught with meaning. The menu had some lovely steak, pork cheeks, and duck. I also sampled the vinho verde, a local vine variety made with newer grapes giving it a bright flavor.

Probably the highlight of our eating in Portugal, though, was Cervejaria Ramiro. Like many folks, we were aware of this seafood restaurant through Anthony Bourdain who sang its praises for the quality and freshness. He wasn’t wrong. Although it had been many years since Mr. Bourdain visited – and the small spot depicted on the show had now burrowed its way through room after room, level after level of the building it was in – the seafood absolutely delivered. Much of it was offered by weight and there were so many varieties of shellfish it was hard to know precisely what was being picked, but what a lovely problem to have.

Cervejaria Ramiro

It wasn’t uncommon for restaurants to have paper table covering that it was okay to write and draw on. This led to a family hangman habit across the trip. That led to a highlight of my life as a dad when I managed to Rickroll Cora. She then proceeded to respond with games drawn from Monty Python. I may have my faults as a parent, but I’ve done something right.

Can you guess the hangman?

Farewell

That brought us to our final days in Lisbon and Europe for the summer. We encountered then one of the downsides of apartments versus hotels, because our flight wasn’t until the afternoon but we had to leave at eleven. We asked around at a couple of the hotels in the block, but they were rather uninterested in holding bags when we hadn’t taken a room out. Ah well.

Not ready to leave

This led us to the airport many long hours early. We looked at the map and it seemed that a park wasn’t too far away, so the plan was for the ladies to hang with the baggage while I took Asher to get his wiggles out before the long flights began.

Sadly, like many US airports I’m sure, Lisbon had literally no way to walk to or from the airport. We followed every path we could, but there was no way out without walking on huge multi-lane roads that plainly weren’t meant for pedestrians. Defeated, we went back and rejoined the throng of people waiting for their flights.

After that, the flight out was delayed back to Dublin where our primary round-trip tickets were returning home from. We got in super late, and the kids were on the verge of breaking down. We assumed that hunger was part of the reason, but the only thing open was a chippy across the way. We bought a pile of deeply fried, not that appetizing food. It went almost untouched because everyone was so tired. At least we got a bit of sleep before hopping the flights back home the next morning.

Obligatory PDX carpet photo

Europe 2024: Barcelona and Menorca

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Roadtripping

While I like to think that our family has a relatively international flair, we are suckers for one deep American trait – the roadtrip. Long hours in a car aren’t something we dread. We enjoy it!

Roadtripping in Spain

Given that, we rented a car to travel from Bilbao to Barcelona. This was about a six hour drive, which is somewhere in the mid-range for us in a single day’s travel normally. From the relative greenery of Bilbao, it felt a lot like the transition to Eastern Oregon going over the Cascade Mountains as we moved into drier parts of Spain.

As usual in our family, Amber drove. We found that there were a lot of well stocked, nice rest stops along the way. We only had to pause at one for the kids to blow of steam from an argument and made good time. There was traffic coming into Barcelona late in the afternoon, but nothing too bad. The familiarity of the city helped in finding our way to the place we were staying downtown.

Favorites in BCN

The time in Barcelona was much less focused on sights and more on people. We caught up with so many of our friends, it was amazing. Asher in particular got to have sleepovers with his two besties who he’d been missing. They clicked just like no time had passed – Minecraft surpasses all boundaries of time and space. I also spent time with several former coworkers, some still with New Relic, others who had moved on like myself.

Asher at Dela Crem

Of course, we also made it a point to visit our favorite locations across the city. This meant multiple stops at places like Dela Crem – the best gelato in Barcelona, Vinitus for incredible tapas, even an evening at the Green Room, the “Irish” bar we often met friends at out in Poblenou.

Cora at Dela Crem

Less fun, we dropped into our old bank in Poblenou. We’d kept the account there with a little money in it, but when our phone numbers changed we lost access to log in. That could only be fixed in person. Oops! In classic Spanish-banking style, it only took two and a half hour of waiting to get it resolved. 😰

San Juan

We happened to be in town with friends across the holiday of San Juan. This celebration is made with fireworks and bonfires. Let me tell you, I thought Americans were nuts about fireworks but the Spanish put us to shame! The size of things folks are willing to set off in busy streets and beaches, the bonfires – with fireworks being thrown into them… it was loud, boisterous, and I’m sure injury-prone for some folks.

San Juan bonfire in the streets

Once dark finally settled, we stayed out in the streets for some hours, keeping a sensible distance from the most extreme while enjoying our own batch of sparkly mayhem.

Our San Juan contribution

Katana Experience

During an on-site in Barcelona I had been fortunate to attend, our manager Juanjo had planned an awesome activity – the Samurai Experience. Ever since doing that with my coworkers, I’d had it in mind for my son Asher, who is absolutely obsessed with swords.

Katana work takes focus

Things start with dressing in suitable outfits and learning about the history of samurai. Then you get to practice with wooden swords, nicely balanced and weighted like the real thing.

Amber showing how it’s done

At last, after all the preparations, you get to use the real katana. Those blades are amazingly intimidating! So sharp, you can really feel the danger holding them. We got to make cuts first on a foam pool noodle, then with a rolled bamboo mat.

Asher’s a natural

No huge surprise that Asher was the best of the crew. He didn’t want to leave.

Family war

After the slicing with real swords, we switched back to practice blades now buffered with foam and went to war with one another. Alliances were made and broken, but we all came out laughing, sweating, and not too bruised.

The family giving Asher his send-off

Sibling love (with katanas)

To Menorca

Our next stop after Barcelona was a trip to Menorca, one of the Balearic islands. And yes, that is Menorca, not Mallorca. A much chiller vibe, with less party and excessive resort culture.

We shared this stage of the trip with our dear friends Ben and Anna who live in Barcelona. We all got up early for the flight to the island. Once landed, we gathered our luggage and the rental car. After a lunch down the hill from our villa, Ben and I ended up hiking up the hill for reasons of vehicle and luggage space. This was soon regretted in the heat.

Still, the destination was worth the trek. The villa behind sliding gates had a large outdoor space with a pool, a huge porch, and lovely views of the sea.

View from our villa in Menorca

Even more exciting, we had a guest (or were guests of?) in the form of a turtle quickly nicknamed Tortie. The kids have a soft spot for our shelled friends, so tracking, feeding, and otherwise enjoying our reptile companion was a highlight of the time.

Our villa’s resident turtle, nicknamed ‘Tortie’

The villa had a barbecue area which Ben and I tried to use. We were a little shy on fuel and then the evening winds kicked up. We ended up finishing the chicken inside on the stove top. Meals were taken outdoors at a shaded table on the porch.

One of our main outings was to playa de Fornells, a beach with shallow warm water that was a pleasure to wade into. After much begging we also rented a paddleboard that Cora enjoyed taking out a rather long ways from shore. We drifted and watched her skitter across the smooth water.

Playa de Fornells

We largely cooked for ourselves at the villa, but one night took a reservation at Sa Punta, a restaurant in Es Castell that came highly recommended. It didn’t disappoint. Located on the narrow end of a spit of land out into surrounding bays, the views from the restaurant were awesome. Parking was tough, but Amber is my road warrior and got it done.

Night view from Sa Punta

The meal was fresh and exciting, with so much good seafood and everything perfectly prepared. We dressed up sharper than usual, and for the kids it was a higher class restaurant experience than they’d had in a long time… maybe ever.

Cora looking fabulous at Sa Punta

My ladies at Sa Punta

Good food, good friends at Sa Punta

Another highlight on the island was that it had a couple of prehistoric sites with structures called talaiot to visit. These large stones were stood up in the late second millennia BC, and we stomped around for quite a while in the heat viewing them.

Prehistoric (talaoit) monuments in Menorca

It’s humbling to see areas like this, ruins of a culture that I’d never even heard the name of before, but that have endured across so many years. We imagined what it was like to live on this island so long ago, when getting there wasn’t a quick airplane trip across the water, when subsisting in the arid climate must have been its own sort of struggle.

Underground at the talaoit site

Our final beach trip was to a location a bit more off the beaten track which turned out to be a lot more out of the way than expected. First the Google maps were kind of misleading, so we got turned around trying to find the access. Perhaps because of that mix-up, the path in was nearly a kilometer with a lot of hills, which wasn’t awesome with three of our party struggling with knee problems. After all that, the water was super wavy and clogged with so much seaweed that I was still finding it in my shorts days later. Guess not every beach is a winner.

That brought us to our final days on Menorca. We ended up flying out on June 29, our anniversary, for Lisbon. Packing and airports, always the best way to celebrate another year of wedded bliss!

Europe 2024: Bilbao

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Our flight out of Dublin was uneventful, bringing us to Bilbao and the Continent. At the airport we gathered our bags and rolled to an infrequently visited part of Spain for us – the car rental desk. Amber had a reservation all lined up, and in short order we were examining a car in the humid parking garage. Our vehicle here in Spain was nearly the biggest one available… so a mid-sized hatchback 🤣.

Crossing the Nervión River in Bilbao

Bilbao was much greener and hillier than the parts of Spain that we were used to. We drove into town, located where we would be staying, and then circled until we found a cramped parking garage drilling down into the earth.

Our accommodations in Bilbao were at the Santiago Apartments. As the name suggests, it was more apartment than hotel, with a small kitchen, two bedrooms (Cora slept on the fold-out couch in the living room), and most importantly a washing machine. For the extended trip we packed only 5 days worth of clothes, so having routine stops with laundry was a key element of the plan.

That evening we met up with one of my former coworkers from New Relic. He gave us a walking tour of parts of Bilbao on our way from the apartment to dinner. He quizzed the kids, with little success, about who the second president of the United States had been. Of course they know about George Washington, but what happened after was hazier. The reason for his question became clear when we passed a statue of John Adams, who apparently visited the Basque country to learn about their governmental systems.

John Adams, the second President of the United States, seen in Bilbao

Dinner was at a place called Kokken. I hadn’t realized when we were choosing, but it was a “surprise” restaurant, with a fixed but reasonably priced menu. This turned out to be a big challenge for the kids. They’re relatively adventurous eaters compared to many of their friends, but seafood is at the edge of their comfort zone. Given that, the large cubes of tuna with chorizo sauce and cuttlefish in teriyaki were a lot to ask. As is our usual practice, we offered them cold hard cash for trying bites. They made out like bandits.

The pinnacle of the evening was the sweetbreads. Those in the know are aware that these are the thymus, but we’d misunderstood it to be, ahem, testicles. We obviously didn’t inform the children of this until they’d tried their bite. The furor at what they thought thought they’d tried was worth the vexation. The kids may never trust us offering foods that they can’t identify again.

The next morning we had breakfast at a typical little Spanish cafe. The menu was such a nourishing return to things we love and miss in the States – multiple different tortillas, bocadillos with jamón, cafe con leche. We ended up returning to the spot every morning of our visit because it was just the thing.

Breakfast at Cafe Scala

Our location in Bilbao had been chosen largely because of how close it was to the main attraction of the city, the Guggenheim Museum. For those not big in the art scene, the Guggenheim is one of the most famous and respected museums for modern art in the world. I went in knowing basically only that, and it was a great day of learning and reflection.

Arriving at the Guggenheim

Upon entering, one of the first large exhibits was a work titled “The Matter of Time”. This enormous set of sculptures is made from from weathered steel that was aged to give it fascinating colors and textures. A smaller room off the exhibit showed off a scale model of the work with lots of detailed wall hangings describing its construction.

The Matter of Time

The whorls and angles of the whole thing are mysterious and engulfing, with several sections that you walk into without being able to see where it will lead. It’s so huge that Asher was free to dash around, while the rest of us moved at a slower, more thoughtful pace.

Walking through the corridors of The Matter of Time

Being modern art, there was a wide variety of different works. Some looked dark and moody, introspective and spare. Others were bold and bright, even whimsical.

Badminton anyone?

A nice aspect of traveling with teenagers now was that we could split up a bit and proceed at our own paces. Asher, as you might expect if you know him, did something of a speedrun. Cora, who’s been digging deep into art at school and home, took a more meditative pace.

Asher with one of the works he enjoyed

It was really fun to spend the time there, especially with Cora, and see her experiencing just how broad the world of art can be.

In, which we joked was just mirrored Monty Python fandom (‘ni’)

On our way back to the apartment in early afternoon, we were also on the prowl for food. We happened to see Porrue. This had been one of the other options that my coworker had mentioned. It had been more upscale than we’d wanted for the kids with an evening crowd. But lunchtime (2pm is totally lunchtime in Spain)? Seemed worth trying. This proved to be an awesome choice.

The meal started off with a feature that amazed and delighted our children. It’s common practice to provide a bread and olive oil, but this rocketed to the next level. They wheeled over an entire cart with multiple types of bread and olive oils to choose from. The flavors really showed off the range of olive oils. Some were peppery, some fresh, all of them delicious. The waiters seemed quite pleased with the kids’ excitement, and it was hard work getting them to slow down on the bread before the actual meal.

Soon after came a tomato salad, so simple but so delicious. Again, the olive oil was key, not only drizzled over the from-your-garden level tomatoes, but in little jellied pearls as well that popped on your tongue.

Tomato salad at Porrue

Among the most dynamic parts of the meal was the “Sliced Bellota Jamón with salmorejo and regañá crushed with mallet.” This most favorite of Spanish products came with the creamy salmorejo (tomato soup) and on top of a shell of cracker-like bread that you smack with a mallet to break into pieces.

Sliced Bellota Jamón with salmorejo and regañá crushed with mallet.

Very traditionally Basque, we ordered the txuleton, a big hunk of lovely beef cooked to perfection. Where many cuts of beef in Spain are overly thin for my taste, this Basque preparation has none of that. It’s thick, with lovely marbling and fatty edges crisped up on the grill.

I’m a huge fan of seafood, and Spain always delivers. Here I was able to have percebes, also known as goose beck barnacles. These also came on their own grilled with special long tweezers for prying the salty little nuggets of goodness from their admittedly odd shaped shells. The kids were unimpressed, so I had stepped up as the family goat (in the barn animal cleaning up, not the greatest of all time 😜).

Percebes

I don’t often seek out wine, but for this nice of a meal it seemed a waste not to let them pair things. So many delicious whites and tintos! They also served us a house aperitif at the end. I love the way that in Spain it’s common for places to have their own vemuts or other tasty beverages that are steeped in house, utterly unique in their local blend.

A tasty sip after the meal

The meal had many other courses, including the porrue (leek) from which the restaurant took its name, mushrooms with egg, steak tartare. There was no lunch menu, and this ended up as our most expensive meal of the whole trip but such a revelation to the kids of how creatively food can be done. Utterly stuffed both in our minds from art and our stomachs from the meal, we crashed back at the apartment and rested the remainder of the day.

Living in Barcelona for four years, spanning COVID which hampered our travel plans around the country, had given me a particular idea of the sort of climate in Spain – dry and scrubby, generally hot and humid. While Bilbao continued to meet the later criteria, it revealed my misconceptions on the first point. The hillsides there were so lush and green, a welcome feature for us Oregonians.

Beautiful green countryside around Bilbao

Our last full day in Bilbao we went to visit restaurant way up in the hills on the edge of the city. The views were excellent up those narrow winding roads, fringed with all sorts of trees and growing things.

Txakoli Simon

Txakoli Simon is a highly rated txuleteria (aka steakhouse) that Amber found in rewatching Parts Unknown. Though it had been many years since Anthony Bourdain’s visit, it held up to expectations – some of the finest beef I’ve ever had, served up simply, with a side-grill to ruin it ourselves if we felt the need (we didn’t). We were among the first people there for the day (typically American), and Asher took advantage of running around in the lush yard to blow off some steam.

Txuleton done right

Bilbao had treated us well, but it was time to start moving on. The rental car set us up for the next stage – road trip!

Europe 2024: Dublin

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Checking In

We landed in Dublin in late morning, having slept very little on the flight. Our game plan in Dublin involved day excursions outside of the city, so after customs we headed for the rental car pickup. Amber is our main driver most of the time anyway (reinforced by a combination of her car-sickness and my vision issues), but especially when we’re in left-drive countries.

Unfamiliar as yet with the GPS in the car, we navigated via phone to our hotel, the Skylon. It sported the uncommon feature of having rooms with three beds. Put that with being well placed between the airport and the city and parking for the car and it worked out great.

By this time a small problem from our launch on another continent had emerged – Cora had slipped on Amber’s Birkenstocks instead of her sneakers when we left home. This wouldn’t have been a big issue except those were meant to be her walking shoes… for the next three weeks. Off to the shopping center we went!

It wasn’t a bad errand for keeping us all awake. Our goal was to stay up until nine o’clock to get our rhythms set. Helpful hotel folks sent us to the Jervis Shopping Centre, a pretty basic mall setup in a shopping quarter of the city which gave plenty of options for getting Cora’s feet adequately covered.

As a bonus, it was also near a Nando’s, one of our favorite restaurants to hit when we’re in the British Isles. Although appetites were mixed around 4pm, it filled bellies enough to last the rest of the day. We each wandered off at one point or another to the restrooms, with Asher leaving for a particularly long stint. When he came back he admitted to zoning out and almost falling asleep on the pot, a sentiment we could all agree with.

Back to the hotel we settled in to relax and get some rest. I sat up reading a while but somewhat out of characters fell asleep in that posture, waking with a little jump-scare and a vigorous snorting, snoring noise that had everyone else laughing. Jet-lag notwithstanding, everyone was conked out pretty well by 9pm and slept decently through until morning.

Guinness, Natural History, and Seafood

Our first activity in Dublin was a tour of the Guinness factory. In a trend that would become evident on the trip, this was a timed entry that Amber had purchased tickets for ahead of time to smooth the path. The approach to the factory looked honestly very much like a working sort of industrial place, just with more brick and cobblestone than I’m used to. You could totally imagine the place being in active use.

Guinness has been around a while

Once we’d queued outside, though, the interior was revealed as something entirely different. QR code readers and folks with computers were there to check folks in in an orderly fashion. Groups were made by time of entry and steadily flowed with great efficiency. We found ourselves walking through spaces that explained the brewing process with great animations and immersive exhibits. Here and there elements of the old factory look sneaked through, though.

The Factory tour makes interesting updates to the old warehouse space

Whole floors of the place were devoted to the wide ranging advertising empire of Guinness. As an American, this was interesting though not nostalgic as little to none of that advertising really broke into my world. It was fascinating to see how it evolved over time, though, and how often they used art and styles which were strikingly modern for a brand from the 1700s.

Bright modern Guinness advertising

The final stage of the tour went to the very top of the whole place, which had two different bar areas both entirely done up in floor to ceiling windows. Different meaningful locations were marked on the glass in such a way that you could see the place and read about it at the same time – really nice trick to use the lovely views. Each adult member of the party (so two of us) got a ticket for a pint. Sadly Amber isn’t drinking alcohol in this season, so I had to take care of both for us.

Amber didn’t want her pint. Pity that.

After the Guinness we took a nice long walk to circle by a couple of spots Amber wanted to shop at. The first was a chain of stores I’d never heard of called Avoca which sported a lot of nice clothing, home goods, and tasty treats. Asher was about as happy to hang around there as you’d expect any thirteen year-old boy to be. From there we visited a smaller art store called Irish Design Shop. We bought a really nice print for our wall at home, and enjoyed the artistry. Next door a furniture store had a hipster-ish coffee spot, so I grabbed a flat white to stave off the afternoon jet lag.

After the shopping we got back to the sightseeing with the Natural History branch of National Museum of Ireland. Now the kids always love a good natural history museum anyways, but this one was special as it was kind of a relic of the Victorian era. Rather than glossy huge exhibits with animation and vibrant colors, it was case after case of taxidermied animals with varying degrees of believability.

Typical case at the Natural History Museum

I was a little surprised with how much the kids took to the uniqueness of the space. They searched out their favorite types of animals – frogs for Cora, turtles for Asher, with plenty of zooming around taking photos with their phones in between.

Flock of seagulls I guess, I don’t know New Wave

Plenty of the exhibits were a little newer, gathered throughout the 1900s. The insect cases all seemed very realistic and well taken care of (as my childhood entomologist enjoyed seeing). But not everything was quite so, well, successful in its preservation.

Derpy otter

Dinner that evening was one of the reasons we’d taken the car for rental. Cavistons is well to the south of Dublin, and would have been quite a stretch to get to from downtown. We punched the directions into the GPS in the car this time and happily watched the city sweep by. Well, up until that one turn anyways. Now remember, it was the end of our second day in country, and the jet lag at that point is rather heavy. We’ve had a full day, and honestly are a little scattered. Amber started to take a left turn at a light and, as she has thousands of times, headed for the rightmost lane.

“Drive left. Hon, drive left. DRIVE. LEFT.”

She recovered in plenty of time, though not enough to save the kids from a reasonable startle. “I don’t want to die,” Asher said as we drove further along, mostly in jest.

The meal was lovely, the seafood fresh and just what we were hoping for. The atmosphere was a little fancy, but not so much that we couldn’t pull out some mini Uno cards while we waited. All in all, a successful day.

Newgrange

Since we’d left the States, Amber had had a sore throat hanging on. She’d gone to urgent care back home and gotten a treatment, but it hadn’t taken care of everything. Now a few days in she was still suffering (multiple tests, no COVID) so we decided to track down options. We managed to get a virtual doctor appointment scheduled through an app locally. Wham, bam, antibiotics on the way which helped her feel much better. I was impressed, though, with how realistic the virtual appointment proved to be – I mean, she waited at least 15 or 20 minutes past the scheduled time for the doctor to show.

Our first destination for the day was Newgrange, a neolithic stone tomb. One of several such large mounds in the area, it was the one that you could enter so Amber had chosen it and gotten our entry passes all lined up. It meant an early start to drive out, but the day was sunny and we arrived at the visitors’ center with plenty of time. While the whole point of the excursion was to see a 5000 year old tomb, the center was stark and modern, with lots of glass, lofty open spaces inside, bold pictures on the walls imagining the ancient world that Newgrange represented.

We took a short walk down across a river to get to where the buses ran from. On a schedule, the buses ran up little country roads to drop us at the base of the hill.

Walking up to Newgrange on a sunny Irish day

The weather was amazing, perfectly clear and warm, giving us long views of the Irish countryside. Up on the top of the peak was the site. It looked almost like the hilltop had been belted around with stone, grass growing in a rounded green mound on top of it.

Panorama of the back of Newgrange

The tour guide at the entrance told us all about how the site had been discovered in the eighteenth century. Thankfully the folks hunting for stones to pave a road realized they had found something important, and halted taking it apart to be studied instead.

Family gathered at the entrance to Newgrange

The entrance leads into the center of the mound where there is a chamber with three alcoves off of it. Carvings mark the walls inside, and it is an astonishing space to imagine humans having built so many millennia before. The roof climbed up probably twenty or thirty feet, narrowing drastically from how the stones were stacked to construct it. The tunnel in was narrow and short in spots, and they asked that we take bags off to avoid scratch the rock.

Reconstructed stone wall at Newgrange

In more modern times the wall was reconstructed over about a decade worth of summers work by researchers. It is really an awesome thing to behold poking up there in the Irish countryside. Even more amazing, in 1967 it was confirmed that the site is perfectly aligned so that on the winter solstice, light at dawn will make its way down that cramped little tunnel, all the way into the chamber itself. How folks so long ago managed to see, understand, measure, and then build to accommodate a day that only comes once a year boggles the mind.

Closer view of swirls carved into rock at Newgrange

Slane

Not far from Newgrange was our next destination, Slane Castle.

Slane Castle

Slane Castle hosts a tour and high tea, which the family would be enjoying. They took the tour, heard about the high profile rock concerts held on the grounds, met the earl briefly who was busy doing yard work and overall had a lovely time.

The family had a nice high tea without me anyway

Slane also boasted, as of rather recently, a distillery. Sadly, the tour there was only for over eighteens, so I had to do that my myself. 😭

Slane Disillery

Having done a scotch tour before the process was very familiar, but it was fun to see all the equipment both old and new. They’re also making use of the waste heat from distilling to warm the castle, which is really neat. I ended up purchasing a bottle of their cask strength whiskey, which came with the bonus of being able to pull the handle to fill it myself.

Filling my bottle at Slane

Family being still at high tea after I finished my tour, I took a seat in the sunshine of the courtyard by the distillery, sampled more of their fine options, and read a book in peace for a while.

Enjoying myself in style at Slane Distillery

Getting back to Dublin, we had a reservation for our evening meal at an Indian restaurant called Pickle. This had come with pretty high recommendations online, and we’d requested ahead of time the full leg of roasted lamb. We taxied from the hotel again to avoid parking and got to the place which was a long narrow space decorated in warm inviting colors with lots of artwork.

Pickle, a fabulous Indian restaurant in Dublin

Honestly the kids were a little done by this point and didn’t really want to be out, so we got right down to ordering. We picked a few appetizers, and the waiter very directly told us, “Oh no, you don’t want to order that. You want this and this.” Mildly taken aback, we went with his suggestions and they were awesome. The mixes of fresh and spicy, crisp and rich flavors exceeded all our expectations. And the lamb was so succulent, falling apart off the bone, seasoned with amazing spices. Our only regret was that we couldn’t finish more of it.

Those that know me will know that I’m always reading something. While I don’t always line up topical reading for trips, I did have a couple of books by noted Irish author Claire Keegan in my stack when we arrived, so I bumped those to the front. Gotta say, that was a good move both for atmosphere, to read them while on the Emerald Isle, and simply because she is a spectacular author. Her ability to capture both the setting and the deep inner world of her characters in just a handful of words still has me amazed. I’d wholeheartedly recommend Foster and Small Things like These to almost anyone.

Waterford

The next day was one of the big reasons we rented a car for our time in Dublin – we were headed to Waterford, a roughly two hour drive (you know, nearby by American standards 🤣). So of course, when we woke up Asher was feeling sick to his stomach. Everyone else in the family was fine, but he was not a happy camper. He threw up a bit, so we got hold of some big plastic bags, rolled the dice, and set out anyways.

The long drive didn’t improve how Asher felt, and the driving that day was more wearing for Amber than we would have expected. Keeping to the “wrong” side for those stretches takes more attention than usually is needed. She honestly felt it more than a ten hour drive to Montana from our home in Oregon.

Sculpture of Waterford town layout

We arrived in Waterford not long before out scheduled tour time. The House of Waterford, a black, sleek-fronted building, stood out very much in the otherwise typical Irish architecture of the town.

Entrance to the House of Waterford

The tour started with some introductory remarks about the company itself. It has an interesting history, with a surprisingly long gap during the twentieth century when it wasn’t in operation, but then revived later on. They’re at an interesting intersection of carrying a lot of old-world elegance with their brand, but needing to modernize their reputation (if not their products) to stay afloat.

Huge custom crystal piece of an Irish harp

The crystal making process these days is still very labor intensive and manual. When you get down to molding and blowing the glass, that’s done the way things always have been, up to and including sculpting temporary wooden molds for shaping.

Hot glass blowing

An interesting aspect of their work as well is how heavily it leans on a traditional mentorship program. Along the way we saw several cohorts of apprentices being trained by the masters of the shop. Learning to do the art takes years, and even within the shop has specializations that folks will spend ages pursuing. The end results though show the evidence of all this hard work – the crystal is spectacular.

Moulds for the crystal are made from wood

They don’t entirely shun the modern world, though. Computers and newer tech do show up where it aids the process. This is clearly part of design, which makes a ton of sense, and some of the machinery can be computer controlled. That said, some types of marking on the crystal are still only done by hand.

Good to see familiar faces in the Waterford facility

Even when your crystal sax is 30k, mistakes happen

Asher carried his bag and moaned the whole way through the tour, but we found out afterward that this was one of the highlights of our trip for Cora. She was fascinated by the process and the art of the crystal. In the end although it wasn’t the easiest leg of the trip, I’m glad we went.

After the drive back to Dublin, Asher stayed in the hotel with some crackers, ginger ale, and electronics, and the remaining three of us headed out for dinner. We went to a spot called Fish Shop, which was a highly rated new-school chippy. You could tell pretty quickly that this was a bit of a different spot because they only sold wine, no beer. The tables were tiny and we sat at the bar, listening as a steady stream of folks tried to drop in but had to settle for take-away if they didn’t have a reservation. The food, though, was absolutely worth the reservation – the fish was crispy and tender, the salad perfectly dressed, just a great meal.

In such a small space we couldn’t help but overhear other folks, and partway through an American guy near us struck up conversation with a family that was dining there. He turned out to be a voice actor who was working on a film, and you could feel the charisma dripping off him as we eavesdropped on the conversation. It honestly felt for a few minutes like we were just bit players in someone else’s story until he left. This guy was clearly the protagonist.

After the meal we walked over to the Cobblestone pub, which is well known for its live Irish music.

Entry to the Cobblestone pub

The place was totally packed out, every seat at the bar and along the walls taken, folks standing in patches here and there. We ordered a pint or two, hovered awkwardly until some folks moved on and we could shuffle into place.

The lovely musicians gathered at the Cobblestone

At the front there was a circle of a dozen musicians – just whoever was able to show up that day. Someone would lead into a song and they’d all play along. It was vibrant and joyful (or sorrowful at times) and huge fun to listen to. We hung around for a while, longer than I originally expected to with the crowd.

Cora at the Cobblestone bar… a first! Still no beer.

What a great way to cap off our time in Ireland, because the next morning we were on our way back to Spain. Next stop Bilbao!

Europe Summer 2024

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When we left Barcelona in 2022, many of our travel plans for living in Europe were unfulfilled thanks to COVID. Although it was time to get back to the US, we committed that we’d try to get back to visit every two years. Well, it’s the summer of 2024, and time to make good on those promises.

Amber spent a long time crafting a wonderful itinerary, purchasing tickets, worrying away over calendars and websites, hotel and hostel lists, messaging friends. From our time in Barcelona we knew that we didn’t really want to travel much in that part of Spain during the later summer – July is already a bit too hot for our taste, and August is downright oppressive – so a hasty retreat in June was in order.

The day after school ended for the kids, we loaded our bags in the van, took the dog we’d been sitting home (Chewie’s owner would be returning that afternoon, narrowly missing us at the airport). We left the car parked there and took a nice quiet Lyft to the airport.

Obligatory shoe picture at PDX

Portland is sadly not a hub to much of anywhere international, so we connected via Seattle with a bit of time to wait between. The longer leg to Europe began late in the afternoon, which meant that we insisted the kids try to sleep at least part of the flight over since we’d be arriving during the afternoon and needing to stay up quite a few hour to start fighting the jetlag.

View from the plane on the way to Dublin

First stop (the cheapest place for us to arrive in Europe and a new destination for the family) Dublin, Ireland!

Touring Scotland

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

August broiled us day by day in Barcelona. My birthday was approaching at the beginning of September, and Amber asked “Where would you like to go?”

The year prior we’d spent my birthday flying to San Francisco to finish our paperwork for moving to Spain. Not exactly festive. This was a welcome opportunity to actually, you know, celebrate! And answering the question of where wasn’t hard either–Scotland. Amber and I had visited before and wanted to go back ever since. In recent years I’ve become a fan of single malt scotches, so a distillery tour seemed in order.

Good Crieff

But how do you balance visiting fine distilleries when you’re traveling with your kids? The first rule is “Everyone gets something.” Fortunately we knew just the thing. A few years back Amber and I went to Scottish Ruby at a Victorian spa called Crieff Hydro. This covered the kids perfectly, with swimming, archery, horseback riding, and other activities. Excitement ran high.

We flew into Glasgow. As we landed, it was overcast and raining. No bother, as Oregonians, we’re used to this sort of thing right? We gathered our bags and headed out the front door. The drizzle we’d observed turned into a hefty slap of cold rain like we hadn’t felt in months. Scuttling under the nearest shelter, we dug out the coats we’d packed, but not worn, in Barcelona and headed to pick up the rental car.

It became apparent after we got on the road that the kids would need food soon. There’s a certain tone to their voices that’s unmistakable. Amber had heard about a place called Nando’s, a South African chain known for its spicy peri-peri chicken. The first try and we were hooked; we’ve gone to Nando’s every time we’re in the UK since. (For those wondering, I prefer the moderate spice, while the rest of the family finds the mild quite enough thank you).

Holding up the Nando’s

With full bellies and less crankiness, we set off north. The first activity at Crieff we’d signed up for–air rifle shooting, which Asher was greatly anticipating–started at 4pm. Google Maps informed us that this was a stretch. We arrived fifteen minutes late to the resort, hoping to still salvage the situation, but matters got worse. As we talked to the front desk, we found that all the activities we’d reserved online weren’t showing up. (The room, thankfully, wasn’t impacted). We rescheduled archery for the next day, but sadly the air-rifles and horses didn’t happen. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Archery!!

Between pools, arrows, a family-friendly dance concert each night, and a massive chess set on the lawn, the family found Crieff perfect to kick the trip off.

Distilleries

Our plan involved driving from Crieff in the central Scottish Highlands, up north, then looping back south to catch our flight home in Manchester (cheap tickets yo).

Crossing the highlands

The country is littered with distilleries of all shapes and sizes. I did some research and built a jam-packed itinerary that was obviously impossible for our timeframe. That list served perfectly as a starting point, though.

The first stop was Edradour. We had visited years before, with the full tour and a wonderful tasting afterward. Edradour has a line of peaty scotches that they age in different wine barrels, everything from port to Bordeaux. Sipping the same liquor aged differently, side by side, taught me a ton about scotch. This time we enjoyed a nice selection in their tasting room. They make two main lines–classic Edradour, and their newer peaty Ballechin. We bought several bottles only available at the location (marked SFTC, “straight from the cask”).

The creek by Edradour

Cragganmore was the second distillery we reached. Part of a larger company, their sampling room had some rarer bottles from a variety of different lines. I came away with two very nice bottles of their flagship product–one a 15 year, and another a special 150th anniversary edition only available at the distillery. (You may be detecting a theme here…)

Entry to the Cragganmore Distillery

The final big whisky location was not a distillery, but a whisky shop called The Whisky Castle. The shop is tucked away in a tiny unassuming village called Tomintoul. This place is beautiful. The only time I’ve seen more whisky in one location is in the beloved Multnomah Whisky Library back in Portland. The Whiskey Castle runs a wonderful tasting, including local favorites and a willingness to indulge people’s curiosity.

The Whiskey Castle

We settled into a small hotel nearby attached to a pub with an outsized scotch collection. Amber and I had a lovely evening playing games, reading, and sipping the good stuff in comfortable chairs while our children slept in the room across the hall.

Tomintoul at sunset

Cairngorms National Park

Our drive took us through the central part of Scotland, which is largely occupied by Cairngorms National Park. There we got to introduce the kids to some of Scotland’s lovely scenery. Along one stretch we passed by massive fields of heather. Amber pulled the car over, and we all got out and flopped down on the springy plants.

Heather, so soft and springy

The kids and I trotted up a nearby hill. I was a little ways away when the kids started eagerly calling me over. In a gravely spot, huddled up against the blustery cool, was a toad.

TOAD

Scotland was a lovely break, and I brought home a wonderful collection of scotches to replace what I’d built up over years back in Portland. We loved Scotland, and I’m sure we’ll be back.

Yum