(and totally dating myself with that reference to a 1988 - yes EIGHTY EIGHT - rap song)
So here I am back in good old San Rafael, California in the USA. It's time to wrap up my journey to Russia, close the book on it, so to speak and start moving towards whatever is next (here's hoping that involves beaches and drinks with umbrellas most of the time)
So when last we left our intrepid hero, he was off to Italy and Switzerland. I had a great time in both those places. I met up with my friends, the Thies family, who are insanely traveling around with their children (here's their blog if you just can't get enough of self indulgent travelogs from me:
http://thiesfamilyadventure.blogspot.com/ )
It was really great. They had everything worked out and I just had to tag along. I met them in Italy at Lake Como, which is a stunning place where they are industriously trying to milk the tourism for all it's worth and also keep the place a secret from the world so too many people don't come and ruin it. The latter goal was mostly obliterated when George Clooney bought a villa there and now everybody wants to see where he lives (spoiler alert: you can't really see anything).
Although we were mostly pelted with rain, we did manage to choose the best day to rent a small power boat and zip around the lake for 3 hours seeing so many amazing little places they began to lose their power to make us oh and ah. For those of you who care we also motored past the villa used to film some of the crappy romance scene from Episode II of the Star Wars movies. (I think it was Episode II. They were really bad and it all kinda blurs into one giant series of badness, albeit with great special effects and a pretty cool political statement that most people miss because Natalie Portman's clothes seem to keep getting torn into smaller and smaller pieces).
Here's me:
So here I am back in good old San Rafael, California in the USA. It's time to wrap up my journey to Russia, close the book on it, so to speak and start moving towards whatever is next (here's hoping that involves beaches and drinks with umbrellas most of the time)
So when last we left our intrepid hero, he was off to Italy and Switzerland. I had a great time in both those places. I met up with my friends, the Thies family, who are insanely traveling around with their children (here's their blog if you just can't get enough of self indulgent travelogs from me:
http://thiesfamilyadventure.blogspot.com/ )
It was really great. They had everything worked out and I just had to tag along. I met them in Italy at Lake Como, which is a stunning place where they are industriously trying to milk the tourism for all it's worth and also keep the place a secret from the world so too many people don't come and ruin it. The latter goal was mostly obliterated when George Clooney bought a villa there and now everybody wants to see where he lives (spoiler alert: you can't really see anything).
Although we were mostly pelted with rain, we did manage to choose the best day to rent a small power boat and zip around the lake for 3 hours seeing so many amazing little places they began to lose their power to make us oh and ah. For those of you who care we also motored past the villa used to film some of the crappy romance scene from Episode II of the Star Wars movies. (I think it was Episode II. They were really bad and it all kinda blurs into one giant series of badness, albeit with great special effects and a pretty cool political statement that most people miss because Natalie Portman's clothes seem to keep getting torn into smaller and smaller pieces).
Here's me:
Here's the Thies family enjoying the sun:
Here's just a nice picture of the lake:
Then we drove to Switzerland. First we went to Lucerne, where I happen to have visited last year and di some of the same things ... including eating chocolate so that turned out ok. Then we continued on to the Interlaken region. Now I have been there before and, although it was beautiful, Interlaken is a little touristy. Fortunately for me, and all of us really, there was nothing available in Interlaken and we ended up in this awesome, huge, nice place in the tiny town of Lauterbrunnen. Here's a picture I took from the street basically outside our place:
While there we went to this outdoor museum where they had collected actual houses and workshops from previous centuries. You could walk through them and see how people lived. But the best part was that they had people doing things live just the way they were done. We saw people sawing logs with a water wheel powered saw, making bread, spinning yarn, and several other things that were necessities in daily life. It really makes you appreciate how easy life is today, but also how artificial. It made us hope that we could incorporate the best of both worlds in our lives someday.
On our last day we took the gondola up to a place even higher in the mountains and had this nice view:
Then I went back to germany to see my friends Kevin and Jessica one more time. While there I took this nice picture:
And this silly one:
I packed my stuff, enjoyed the time with my friends, and came home.
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