Category Travel
Nymphenburg Palace
The upside of staying in a skeezy neighborhood next to the Munich train station? I was just that much closer to getting out to see Nymphenburg, the Bavarian royal family’s summer palace. The original baroque palace was built in the 17th Century, and then was expanded in the 18th Century and again in the 19th […]
I’m in Munich!
Trivia question: Which takes longer, flying from London to Munich, or eating a French brunch in Denver? Answer: They take the same amount of time! I texted Amanda a few minutes before boarding in London and she said she couldn’t talk because brunch. When she texted back, I had just climbed into a taxi at […]
Macbeth and the ordinary
I was in Luxembourg all last week for a business trip that turned out to be pretty fun. This was the annual EU-wide summit, where we get together to celebrate the past year and look ahead to the coming year. We stayed in a surreal thermal springs resort that straddled the border between Luxembourg and […]
Things don’t always go as planned…
Oh, the glamorous life of an expat in Europe! After work on Friday I left my London office for the airport, where I caught the last plane out for a weekend in Milan. I spent Saturday exploring parts of the city I hadn’t seen before (Cathedral! Da Vinci’s Last Supper!) and then went back to […]
A palace and a play
King Henry VIII was quite the king. All those wives and the drama with the Catholic Church and the fantastic Holbein portraits. Yesterday I went to see where he used to live. Hampton Court Palace is about 15 miles up the Thames from London and claims to be the largest medieval palace in Europe (certainly […]
A few days in Seattle
A week of business meetings was the reason for the trip, but outside of work is where all the real action was. I toured Amazon’s famous newly opened spheres; visited not one but two of my favorite nurseries to restock plants at the house; won an “Iron Chef” style competition by simply deep frying everything […]
It’s 2018 in London!
Fireworks on the Thames! It was an exercise in wading through massive crowds and standing for hours until the clock struck twelve. A dazzling display of fireworks glimpsed through a forest of phone-waving hands. Then another hour and a half wading through crowds and a long walk back to the flat. Fortunately it was not […]
Exploring Edinburgh
What a lovely, charming city! We lucked out with clear, sunny weather during the few hours of daylight (sunrise at 8:45am, sunset at 3:45pm) to explore this northern capital of Scotland. Given how limited our time would be, we stayed mainly in the Old Town and soaked up the ancient atmosphere. The castle dominates the […]
Eating our way through Edinburgh
What do you eat on a food tour in Scotland? Well, haggis, for one. Served with neeps and tatties (a.k.a. turnips and potatoes). We Americans may look askance at a sausage made of sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs mixed with oats and wrapped in stomach lining — but it was actually quite tasty (and as […]
We’ve gone to Scotland!
Left London’s sleety weather at Kings Cross station and traveled to Edinburgh where it’s sunny and FREEZING! The journey took most of the day (certainly all of the daylight hours in this northern clime) but we had a cozy dinner, a chilly walk around town (spying the castle and the street that inspired Harry Potter’s […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 