S. and I are up in Victoria for a brief pre-Christmas holiday vacation; mostly just lounging about. We’re sitting in Saint Cecilia as I write this, which I strongly recommend if you’re into coffee. They do great hand-brews. One of the non-lounge activities, though, was Craigdarroch Castle. Craigdarroch Castle from a slight distance — it’s a big Romanesque Revival stone building. ...
What do you know; it’s a different culture! Um. That was a pretty great trip. It was really satisfying to find out that I’m still able to do a 14 day trip with one bag successfully; I’m getting older but still pretty functional. We saw places I’d never seen, which is always awesome. My backpack was stolen on the way to Budapest (literally from three feet above my head, kudos to the thief) so that was sad, but I had my electronics and passport and credit cards on me at the time so it could have been worse. I’m lucky to be able to take that kind of loss in stride. ...
A casual goal for the Europe two-week trip was trying a one bag approach to packing. Context, in case you’re randomly wandering across this: I’m nearing 50, I’m not in particularly great shape, but I have decent tolerance for roughing it. I’m also in the big and tall category, and was still able to find technical clothing that’d fit (albeit not with a ton of variety). I brought an Osprey Farpoint 55 backpack, which is 55 liters of capacity spread among a main pack and a zip-on day pack. It doesn’t have as many interior compartments as I’d like but I made up for that with some packing cubes and all’s pretty well. I checked mine but I’m pretty sure I could have gotten away with carrying it on the plane. ...
We did a quick two-day visit, which is not all that long, but I think we gave the parks a pretty good once over. Disneyland Paris itself — the castle park — is spectacular. Walt Disney Studios Park is pretty dead but has a couple of excellent rides. And Disney Village is a dull shopping area. As hotels go: I’d kill to have enough money to stay in the Disneyland Hotel casually. It’s literally part of the approach to Disneyland Paris, and it’s gorgeous. Sequoia Lodge was fine: less polish than I’d expected from a Disney hotel but I have no serious complaints. I am really glad we made it out for a two day trip and would recommend it if you’re a big Disney fan and have the ability to get there. In more detail…
S. and I took an Amtrak up to Vancouver last Friday, hopped onto Skytrain, had a nice lunch in Gastown, and boarded the Ruby Princess for a one day repositioning cruise down to Seattle. This frivolity is brought to you by the opportunity to check out a cruise line’s style cheap before booking a longer Baltic cruise in a couple of years. We’re gonna stick with Holland America but the Ruby Princess was fun. ...
I’d been using the Wirecutter-recommended Accell Home or Away travel surge protector for travel until recently. It’s really good, but it only has 2 USB ports and when I started traveling with an external battery, that was too few. One USB port for my phone, one for my tablet, and none for my battery? Sad. In theory maybe I stop traveling with my tablet but then I add in my headphones, which charge via USB, and I’m back where I started. ...
For nearly 20 years I didn’t have to do much business travel. These days life is different. When my trip frequency rose above once per month I evolved a bag strategy which is both imperfect and functional. It is also very heavy on the Tom Bihn gear, because I like his bags and I tend to stick with things that work well enough. Other companies also make great stuff; my former boss swears by WaterField bags, for example. Choice is awesome. My general theme is simplicity. Painless packing is the single most important aspect of this whole thing so keeping it simple is important. Particularly when it comes to cables, I’ve often just bought an extra cable so I don’t worry about remembering to pick one up and carry it with me. This is useful to me because I’m really forgetful. I am, obviously, fortunate to be able to make that tradeoff.
Not that I saw too much of the city. My business contacts took me to Pasta e Basta on Friday, but Saturday I was laid out with a nasty cold and it’s still bad enough so that I don’t feel like going into the city. Sad. The pasta was pretty good, though, and the singing waitresses were keen. They ranged from Mozart to Dolly Parton. Musically, I mean. Now I’m faced with entertaining myself for 9 more hours in Schiphol. Sad again. Changing the flight would run upwards of $300 and it’s just not worth it. I wonder if Starbucks would let me sleep on their couches?
I was in Frankfurt less than 24 hours so I don’t have a lot to say about that. Le Meridian Park is conveniently close to the central train station and my corporate hosts took me to a very nice Italian restaurant. Frankfurt Airport is a pit of hell. In retrospect I should have figured out how to get to Amsterdam by train. Perhaps other gate areas are better, but D is an endless corridor with no waiting areas or shops; these things have been replaced by glassed up smoking areas that smell, even from the outside, like stale ashtrays. Bleak as anything. ...
Some people blog from planes, some people blog from trains. I feel awfully civilized. Cologne was great. The Excelsior Hotel Ernst, not a great business hotel, although possessed of quality service – but the location was unbeatable. Great food. Very nice beer. GDC was also quite useful; lots of vendor meetings, a few really good talks, and so on. Gamescom really is that enormous. To put it into the context of my tribe, take the Gencon dealers room and fill it up with computer game booths outfitted by companies with money to spend instead of printing debts. Keep the 30 foot ceiling; you need it to fit the booth displays. Yes, that is a 120" HDTV. Now turn up really loud techno from every booth. With me so far? Make the room a bit bigger. Good. ...