https://cheerful-experimenter-3211.ck.page/dea2dfa94b/index.js%22%3E%3C/script

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Salzburg with Jace

We managed to see quite a bit during our 1 1/2-day visit to Salzburg. We stayed in the pleasant Hotel am Mirabellplatz, a short walk through the Old Town up to the Mozart Dinner Concert.







It was as good as we remembered it, especially when the Baritone invited Jace to join the show.





The next day we took Bus 840 to the salt mine we were touring. That was fun.









Later we enjoyed a hearty lunch in the on-site restaurant.





We then took a bus to the Untersbergbahn, and rode the thrilling gondola to near the peak of the 6,000-foot Untersberg, featured at the beginning and end of The Sound of Music.









Kathy and Jace gingerly hiked nearer the peak before we rode back down.



Last night we found a charming little restaurant owned by a friendly Croatian.







It was raining when we left the restaurant, and the hotel’s umbrellas came in handy.

Today is a travel day, by train from Salzburg to Munich, Schnellbahn to the Munich Airport, and then a Lufthansa ticket on German Wings to Paris.



We had time for a selfie in our hotel’s tiny European elevator 



We had yet another train cancellation (our third!), but hopped on another train without difficulty.

Likewise, today’s flight was originally on an Italian ITA plane, but signed over by Lufthansa to German Wings, which still  gives us some priority for lounges and boarding as Star Alliance Golds.

We’re staying at the Charles De Gaulle Airport Hilton tonight, and riding into Paris tomorrow morning. Jace is great company, and we hope he’s enjoying the trip as much as we are.

Monday, March 25, 2024

At the Heidelberg Castle

We all slept fairly well, Jace best of all. We started the day with a hearty Hilton breakfast.



From there it was a quick Uber ride up to Heidelberg Castle on a beautiful sunny day.










There is so much fascinating European history intertwined with the building and destruction of this site over several hundred years. We were fortunate to have an excellent English-speaking guide who mixed history with humor.



The guided tour allowed us to go inside. After the tour, Jace was able to climb on top of one of the world’s largest wine barrels.



We rode up to the next stop on the funicular railway and enjoyed lunch outside.



Frankfurters and a beer for us and Eintopf (stew) and a Coke for Jace.





Jace couldn’t quite finish the bowl, but did leave room for what he called “the best cheesecake ever.”



We rode the funicular down and decided to walk back the mile or so to our hotel along the Neckar River.









It adds up to a pretty good first full day in Europe. 

Tomorrow consists of a couple of train rides to Salzburg and an evening dinner concert of Mozart. We’ll hope for another good night’s sleep tonight.

Sunday, March 24, 2024

A Good Flight on Condor and a Currency Ripoff at the Frankfurt Airport Starbucks

Jace proved to be a good flyer on our pleasant, although bumpy, SEA-FRA flight on a Condor A350.

The food was okay, the seats are okay, and the flight attendants are friendly.









Jace got to experience a bus gate on landing, and a long walk to get to the right train tracks.

We stopped at a Starbucks and Brian only noticed after paying with a credit card that he’d been sucked into the Dynamic Currency Conversion scam, paying a 3% markup for the privilege of paying in U.S. dollars.

A good reminder for the remainder of the trip.



This should be about $24.17 US at current exchange rates.



Two train rides and a taxi later, we’ve reached the Hilton in Heidelberg.



We have time to visit the Executive Lounge.



We eat in the hotel’s restaurant, where Jace dines on Wienerschnitzel.



A good night’s sleep follows and we’re ready to start Monday morning.


Saturday, March 23, 2024

Our Own Grandchildren's 'Grand Tour' of Europe

You may of heard of the Grand Tour of Europe undertaken by wealthy young men in the 17th to 19th centuries. For us it's been the Grandchild Tour, and we're about to depart with Jace, the youngest of our eight grandchildren, on his own special trip, nearly 10 years after our first such expedition. 

We've previously traveled to Europe with Jake (2014), Avery (2015), Taegan (2016), Lily, Peyton, Riley (all 3 together in 2019), and Blane (2022). We'll visit Heidelberg, Salzburg, Paris, Venice, and Rome with Jace before flying home in a couple of weeks. We are fortunate grandparents indeed! 

We've generally considered 12 to be about the ideal age, when grandkids are old enough to more fully appreciate the sights and experiences, but not so old that they're totally involved in school and other commitments.  Jace is actually making his trip at the age of 11, because we didn't want to cope with another hot European summer (Rome can resemble a pizza oven in August).  We're instead utilizing Jace's spring break plus one additional week away from elementary school, with the approval of his parents and the school.

That's worked out well because for part of the summer Jace will have lacrosse tournament commitments in several states with an elite Seattle-based team he has joined. He also attends a lot of Saturday chess tournaments with his brother. He is one busy boy!

Our trip preparation has been interesting. Among other challenges, we've experienced two train cancellations and one flight cancellation, something of a record for us, but we managed to rebook. We were originally scheduled to be in Rome on the Easter weekend, until the reason for the horrendous hotel rates dawned on us, so we juggled the itinerary. We have reservations for all of the major attractions we'll visit with the exception of the Roman Colosseum. The notoriously challenging booking engine blocked our efforts from the U.S., so we'll try to finish that up once we've arrived in Europe.

There will be more posts forthcoming and we can only hope that Jace is as excited about the trip as he was with the magic trick birthday cake Grandma made for him in September 2021.



And here we are today at Jace’s house, all ready to go






Sunday, March 17, 2024

Budapest to Birch Bay

It's been awhile since we last posted from the Hungarian State Opera House in Budapest.





The remainder of our short trip (five nights in Budapest) was uneventful. For most of our stay we were plagued by jet lag symptoms such as waking up at 2:00 AM and being unable to get back to sleep for several hours. We’re hoping it resulted from a too easy trip over, an overnight flight in business class giving us a few hours of sleep, a leisurely overnight stay at the Heathrow Hilton, and a relatively short flight the following day from London to Budapest.

We’re already thinking about our upcoming trip to Europe with an active 11-year-old grandson, and hoping we can keep up with him.  

On our final night in Budapest we walked a couple of blocks to an Italian restaurant owned by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. It was, well, okay. 











Our stroll back to the Hilton gave us one last chance to admire the sights of Castle Hill, now illuminated.



To be frank, we were a little disappointed in our food experiences in Budapest. The fact we chose an Italian restaurant on our final night there is indicative of that. Everything was fine, but there were no special flavors that jumped out at us and tickled our taste buds.

Kathy actually prepared Chicken Paprikash the other night when daughter Karen and son-in-law Chuck visited us, and it was far superior to anything we tasted in Budapest, even though Kathy didn’t consider it one of her best efforts. 

To make a perfectly ridiculous generalization, we do prefer the cuisines of Western Europe to those we’ve experienced in Eastern Europe, but that only motivates us to explore Eastern Europe more and to search out great meals. 

We offer a quick note on our airport transfers. Brian had booked return trips during a Christmas sale at Sun Transfers, a large outfit that serves Budapest as well as many other places. Our drivers were friendly, showed up on time, and got us to our destinations, but the trips themselves were a little too exciting for our tastes, especially the return trip to the airport. 

Our driver tried to avoid the busy main roads and took us on some bumpy side streets that included some rather rundown sections of the city and a light industrial area. By the time we arrived at the airport, Kathy in particular was feeling quite carsick. The streets were busy but the airport itself was quiet and we zipped through a friendly security line in record time and spent some time in a small and crowded contract lounge before boarding our first flight.

We even got to watch our A319 arrive.





The return flights on British Airways mirrored our outbound flights, Budapest to London Heathrow to Vancouver (BUD-LHR-YVR). We experienced again the agonizing lack of legroom that seems to characterize BA intra-European flights. 



Having the blocked middle seat in European-style business class helps a little, but not much.

We landed and departed for our onward flight to YVR from the same Terminal 3. It still took us the better part of an hour but it gave us time to visit the Cathay Pacific First Class Lounge (one of the perks of our OneWorld Emerald status) and enjoy Dim Sum and other delights.







To continue our cranky little tirade about seating, the low-backed chairs in the CX lounge lean back too far for our tastes.





We actually sneaked down the hall to the business lounge for the opportunity to sit in real chairs before boarding our flight to YVR. Could it be our own bodies that are the problem? Nah…

Once aboard our BA A350, Kathy fell asleep almost immediately and skipped dinner. That’s generally not a great loss on BA. Brian did eat dinner, and could assure Kathy she wouldn’t have enjoyed the so-called Beef Tartare appetizer all that much.



Brian accidentally triggered a parental control guard on his entertainment system, and a flight attendant had to visit some master control system in the front galley to deactivate it.



Brian slept through the pre-arrival meal, and, despite a delayed departure we landed at YVR in good time. The airport was quiet and we were able to access a virtually empty NEXUS line to process our arrival on a machine and present the printout to a bored immigration official.

The favorable weather we’d experienced on this trip continued to prevail at YVR on a clear evening without a hint of rain. A Park’N Fly shuttle arrived before long and took us back to the lot, where our car awaited us. Incidentally, the cost for a week plus a couple of hours of valet parking was almost exactly US $100 all in, a relative bargain compared, say, to Seattle Airport parking. 

It was a relatively quiet 45-minute evening drive from the airport back to our house, with no delay at the US border. Almost before we knew it, we were home and in bed by around 10:00 PM local time.

Between catching up on sleep, dealing with miscellaneous tasks, and readying ourselves for our next trip, we’ve managed to keep occupied during our brief stay at home. Kathy in particular has spent some serious time at the computer, reviewing not only our itineraries but those of relatives and friends who’ve asked for her help. A couple of examples…

First, Deutsche Bahn, the national railway company of Germany, canceled a previously booked train trip with grandson Jace from Frankfurt to Salzburg via Mannheim, cordially inviting us to drop by a Frankfurt train station to pick up a refund for our original seat reservation after Kathy booked a reservation for an earlier train. We just might try that when we’re in the Frankfurt Airport.

Kathy eventually managed to sort that one out, and we’ll hopefully still arrive in Salzburg early enough to check in at our hotel before attending a dinner performance of some of Mozart’s greatest hits.

We hadn’t booked a hotel in Seattle for our late-May arrival from Australia. We were thinking of flying straight through from Brisbane to San Francisco to Seattle to Bellingham in one fell swoop, but our recent sleepless-in-Budapest experience motivates us to break up the trip with a 12-hour overnight stay at the SEA Doubletree.

Kathy also noticed that the add-on cost of the flight to Bellingham has dropped by $40 and rebooked it. That will average down the cost of that Seattle hotel stay. 

Kathy checked a Birch Bay Village neighbor’s Alaska account yesterday and noticed that a $150 flight credit is expiring soon. She got in touch and offered help in booking a flight before that deadline.

We can’t emphasize enough that money can be saved by continuing to check transportation and accommodation costs right up to the time of departure. We do enjoy an elite privilege of being able to rebook our Alaska flights if the price drops and having the refund credited to our account and used to purchase future flights. Others may not have that option, but can still take advantage of hotel rates that are reduced between the time of booking and arrival. It’s sometimes possible to save money simply by changing the reservation to a non-refundable rate.

A week after we fly back from Europe with Jace the two of us are off to Lima, Peru for a week. This trip resulted from a flight credit when we canceled our planned trip to Ecuador due to civil unrest. We’ve been to Lima twice, and are looking forward to returning and sampling more ceviche in this quite wonderful food city. 

Three weeks after we return from Lima, we’re off to Australia for one more Oz Fest, this one in Cairns. After all that, we intend to be stay-at-homes in Birch Bay for much of the summer.  For now, keeping a close eye on those three upcoming trips, along with several trips of friends and relatives, keeps us busy. 

And not to forget work in the yard as Spring arrives in Birch Bay.