Christmas

This was the first year since moving to Seattle that we didn't go back to Minnesota for Christmas. Instead, my parents came here. We enjoyed beautiful weather (sunny & in the low 50s), a fantastic day of crowd-free skiing on Christmas day, and a fun party with some of my parents' long-time friends.

Taking pictures wasn't the focus of the weekend, so the selection you'll find in the album is fairly small.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.

Snow Hiking

Going skiing wasn't in the cards this weekend, but we did manage to get out for a little hike in the snow. We drove to Alpental, a ski area about 45 minutes from Seattle at Snoqualmie Pass. They've already had a couple hundred inches of snow this year, and it was fun to trudge through it and enjoy a very wintry scene.

This was our dog Oliver's first real experience in the snow (with us at least), and he seemed to enjoy it a lot. The pictures are here.

December update

It's been a busy first half of December. Seattle endured a bitterly cold streak, with high temps only in the 20's for almost a week. Skiing conditions degraded to hardpack and we haven't been up to the mountains yet this month. It's been snowing the last few days, though, so this weekend looks promising. We'll try to take some pictures and get something up soon...

We've been keeping very busy with a variety of things. We took a fun day trip to Vancouver, which is a cool city to walk around in. Although it's only about half of Seattle's size, it is in many ways a more cosmopolitan and diverse city than Seattle (something like 52% of it's residents are not native English-speakers). They're preparing to host the Winter Olympics in a few weeks, something which was pretty evident.

Ski season underway

Last weekend we went skiing for the first time of the year. It's a pretty dramatic switch from Hawaii, but it wasn't unpleasant. It's been a very snowy November in the Northwest; most resorts have opened weeks earlier than usual.

We didn't take any pictures, but it was great to get up into the mountains and out on the snow again. Hopefully November is a harbinger of great things to come this season...

Kauai

We're now back from a fantastic vacation in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai. My parents, Anya's parents, and my brother & sister in law all joined us there for a family reunion of sorts. It's unusual to get this entire group together (spread across the globe as they are) so we made the most of it. It was a very fun but also quite relaxing week.

Kauai is the 4th largest and 4th most populated island in Hawaii. For all practical purposes, it's the westernmost inhabited place in the United States proper (not counting territories, military bases, or closed islands). Northwesterly trade winds bring lots of moisture; Kauai's Mount Wai'ale'ale gets 460" of rain per year making it the wettest place on Earth. The lush vegetation combined with the rural feel - the largest "city" has less than 10,000 residents - thoroughly justify Kauai's nickname: "The Garden Isle."

Like the other Hawaiian Islands, Kauai is basically just the exposed peak of a large, mostly underwater volcano. It's the oldest island in the chain, and the volcano that formed it ceased erupting millions of years ago. All that rain has had plenty of time to erode spectacular valleys and canyons, including Waimea Canyon "the Grand Canyon of the Pacific."



Hawaii is of course know for it's waves and surfing, and Kauai is no exception. We spent the majority of our trip hanging around on various different beaches enjoying the waves. Many of Kauai's beaches are exposed directly to the Ocean, making them perfect for body boarding and surfing (like the one below).



There are a few sheltered beaches suitable for swimming, especially on the South Shore where we stayed. Here you could swim out over the rocky bottom and see literally dozens of kinds of tropical fish in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I only regret that I didn't have an underwater camera with me.



Anyway, I won't babble on any more - it was obviously a great trip. We took a ton of photos; they're separated into 4 different albums here. The "Top 35" album will give you a good overview of the trip; the rest provide a little more detail. Enjoy.

Update

Sorry about the lack of posts for a while. We just got back from an excellent week in Hawaii; I'll post more about that (and upload pictures) soon.

Pumpkin Carving & Neil

Last week, our friends Alex & Crystal held their annual pumpkin carving party. This year there was a new addition to our group: our friends Robert & Katia brought their 3-month-old son Ziad.

In an unrelated event, Anya's brother Neil visited Seattle for a single day with one of his colleagues; they were in route to a conference in Vancouver. All of this coupled with my trip to the Bay Area (see below) has conspired to make the last few weeks very busy but also very fun.

Pictures of pumpkins, baby Zi, and Neil are here.

Visiting Matt

As I've written about before (and some of you are aware), my good friend Matt recently moved to California from Vermont. From a purely selfish standpoint it's great: Vermont is one of the most difficult places in America to fly to from Seattle, and the Bay Area is one of the easiest.

I went to visit him this weekend and it seems like the move was a good one for Matt as well. He's at Stanford University in Palo Alto, about 30 miles south of San Francisco. The campus is beautiful (see entries from August or May on the right). The people in his program are smart, diverse, and interesting. His program sounds academically rigorous, meaning that Stanford's stellar reputation is probably based in some sort of reality.

Matt was able to break away from his studies long enough to celebrate his birthday with a bunch of new friends, go for a hike in the neighboring Santa Cruz mountains, and take an excursion to San Francisco. It was a fantastic weekend.

I didn't bring my camera, but Matt took some pictures. They're on his site in his October album; the pictures with me start about a third of the way down right after the stormy ocean shot.

Japanese Garden

Today we went to the Seattle Japanese Garden to see the spectacular fall color their collection of Japanese maples put on. While the garden is usually a peaceful, serene place (it's best when it's raining), their autumn festival made it relatively crowded. They had music, painting, a bonsai exhibit, etc. We'll have to go back some other day to experience the garden's transquility, but today turned out to be pretty nice for taking pictures.

The album is here.

Van Trump Park

After a summer that was longer, sunnier, and hotter than normal, fall is setting in here in the Northwest. Knowing that the days of fair weather in the alpine are numbered, we wanted to get up into the mountains one more time as hikers (sadly, ski season is still a couple months away).

We drove to the south side of Mount Rainier National Park and hiked a trail that we tried a couple years ago in June only to be turned back by steep, treacherous snowfields. Not so today. But, although last winter's snow is now long gone, this winter's snow has just started arriving.

The trail is a steep, difficult one: it climbs 2200' feet in less than 3 miles, most of it over rocks and roots. There are two goals for this hike; the first is the spectacular Comet Falls, at 320' one of the tallest waterfalls in the Park. It's also where, at an elevation of about 5,000 feet, it started snowing.

The endgame for this hike is a splendid sub-alpine meadowland named Van Trump Park. On clear days the scenery here is (supposedly) great. We didn't get to see any of that. But with a fresh dusting of snow and no wind it was a peaceful and humbling place - and no less breathtaking for the lack of huge vistas.

The picture album is here.

Golden Gardens

If you follow the blog even semi-regularly, you've doubtless seen pictures from Golden Gardens Park before - it's just such a scenic place. Today was a beautiful fall day, so we took Oliver and went for a walk on the beach. We had the camera and were able to take a few nice pictures.

Deception Pass

It's been a while since I posted because things have been busy. I went to Las Vegas for a conference last week and had a good time. (I didn't take any pictures, though. There are plenty of Vegas pictures out there if you don't know what it looks like.)

This weekend we took a short camping trip with our friends Alex, Crystal, and Rene. We camped at a beautiful and popular state park about two hours' drive north of Seattle.

If you were in a boat out in the Pacific and wanted to make your way to Seattle you'd navigate into an East-West channel of water called the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Strait leads inland to the North-South body of Puget Sound. If you turned south you'd eventually make your way down to Seattle, but if you continued heading straight across the Sound, you'd come ashore at a place called Whidbey Island.

At its northern tip, Whidbey comes within a quarter mile of another island (named Fidalgo). The narrow strip of water between them is called Deception Pass, and it's very scenic. The shores of both islands are part of Deception Pass state park, one of the more popular state parks in Washington. Boating can be dangerous because of strong tidal currents, but we stayed on land and enjoyed the views on a beautiful autumn day. The picture album is here.

Rattlesnake Ledge

On Sunday, Anya had an early-morning flight to Toronto, where she's going for a conference. Since I was up anyway, I decided to take Oliver on a sunrise hike. We went to the near edge of the Cascades to a classic Seattle-area hike called Rattlesnake Ledge.

You're probably sick of hearing about it, but Sunday was a great example of why it's so great to live in Seattle. I went on a beautiful hike (the pictures can speak for themselves) and made it back in time to have brunch with friends.

PAWS Walk

A big thank you to everyone who helped Anya raise $435 for PAWS! As I wrote last month, we participated in a fundraising walk for PAWS, a non-profit that helps take care of animals.

The walk, which drew a crowd of more than a thousand people (and at least as many dogs), was on Saturday. It's held every year in a big Seattle city park on the shores of Lake Washington. It was fun!

The pictures we promised are here.

Summer in Whistler

I'm a little late in posting the pictures, but a couple weekends ago Anya and I spent a weekend in Whistler. The picture album is here.

Most ski towns (as I've written before, Whistler is the largest & one of the best on the continent) are pretty quiet in the summer. Most of them can only dream of having the kind of year-round crowds that Whistler draws. Maybe it's the proximity to Vancouver or the fact that there's more to do there in the summer than in the winter, but this little town is almost as busy in August as it is in January.

We spent our first day ziplining - an activity where you don a climbing harness attached to a pulley and glide down cables suspended between trees. The place we went had a series of 5 cables, the largest of which was 2200' long, dropped 20 stories, and got you moving more than 50 mph. It was extremely enjoyable; I could have easily done 5 more ropes. For me the appeal was actually kind of like the appeal of skiing: a bit of adrenaline - even for those of us who aren't afraid of heights - mixed with the graceful and serene feeling of gliding through the forest and over a rushing mountain stream. After they showed us how to glide upside-down (with your head & arms dangling toward the ground) the experience got even better.

Although we couldn't bring our camera along we bought a couple photos from their professional photographer (above; they're also in the album).

You'll also see that we took the gondola & lift to the top of Whistler mountain and went for a hike. It was mostly cloudy, but at times it cleared just enough to see some fantastic scenery.

On our way home we stopped at the Whisler Olympic Park, the venue for ski jumping, nordic skiing, and biathlon at this winter's Olympics. Only one comment there: ski jumping is crazy.

Seattle Weekend

This weekend was a great example of why I enjoy living in Seattle so much: variety. On Friday night we went to the theatre and saw a great play. On Saturday we hiked to what is surely one of the most dramatic day-hikeable alpine vistas in the country and made it back to the city in time for dinner at an excellent restaurant. And on Sunday we had a fantastic brunch with friends, bought a ton of fresh local food at the farmers market, and enjoyed an afternoon picnic (feast, really) while lounging on the beach.

The hike was the most memorable detail of the weekend (and the only thing I have pictures of). It's a 9-mile, 2000' vertical climb that's only moderately strenuous in Mount Rainier National Park. The trail traverses the three summits of Burroughs Mountain, which is an eroded remnant of an old lava flow. The goal of the hike was Third Burroughs, the highest of the three peaks (7800') and the one that's connected to the main body of Rainier by a high, spiny ridge.

As you'll see in the pictures, the view was spectacular: glaciers, deep tree-lined valleys, high-alpine steppe, and ice-covered Rainier. Topography like this tends to create spectacular weather also. While we were eating lunch, fast-moving clouds arrived and the view thereafter alternated between grand and socked-in, usually within the span a few seconds. Ah, mountains!

We're now well into our third summer living in Seattle - time has really flown. Weekends like this are why we have few regrets about moving here.

The Bay Area

Anya's brother, Neil, lives in Tokyo but travels to the States and Europe as often as his schedule allows. He's a professor now and is organizing a collaborative research project with some people at Stanford; he's spending a couple weeks in California getting to know those people. We went down for the weekend to see him.

Neil is staying on campus at Stanford in Palo Alto, which is in Silicon Valley about half way between San Francisco and San Jose. Since a large portion of the world's leading tech companies are located there, Neil was scouting the area as a potential place to move. He'd been to San Francisco before but wanted to explore some interesting places outside the city.

We started the trip by driving from Silicon Valley over the small mountains to Santa Cruz, which is right on the ocean at the northern tip of Monterey Bay. It being a hot summer weekend, there was a ferocious traffic jam getting to the beach in this surfing-crazed town. We reconsidered our plans and went to downtown Santa Cruz instead. We also visited a small, funky beachside village named Capitola, which I've since read is the oldest beach resort on the West Coast.

From Santa Cruz we drove North on the Pacific Coast Highway to another beach town, Half Moon Bay, before cutting back over the mountains to Silicon Valley. It's only about 35 miles between S.C. and H.M.B., but during that time you drive along a beautiful stretch of coastline ("beautiful" is almost a redundant term when describing "coastline" in Northern California). There are literally dozens of spots to pull off the road and access the ocean. We chose a spectacular place called Scott Creek Beach where the Pacific was mercilessly battering a wide swath of sand - no breakwaters or coastal islands here. No crowds, either.

Back in Palo Alto we walked around the Stanford campus which, as I wrote before, is gorgeous. The sun was just going down, and the twilight made for some great photography (even for amateurs like us).

Our last day we went to Berkeley to visit Stanford's archrival, the University of California; Berkeley is the flagship campus of the 10 school U.C. system. It's a hilly campus that's architecturally more diverse (read: hodgepodge) than Stanford but still quite nice. Although it has a reputation for being a hotbed of liberal social activism, today it's mostly recognized as one of the best science & engineering schools in the country. While it's definitely more urban and down-to-earth than lofty Stanford, the atmosphere is no more radical than what you'd find in any big city. We didn't get enough time in Berkeley before heading to the airport to come home, so it's a place I'd like to get back to again sometime.

As you'll be able to tell from all the pictures we took, we had a great weekend.

PAWS Walk

We all have our "favorite" cause that we donate money to: things like disease research, the environment, education, homeless people, etc. Anya's is animals. And so in support of that, we're participating in a dog walk for PAWS (the Progressive Animal Welfare Society), an organization based in Seattle that's dedicated to "making the world a better place for animals" through "education, legislation, and direct care." We promise to post pictures of the event!

See our donation page here.

Thanks!

Heat

It's been an unusually warm summer this year in Seattle, but today took the cake. The official high was 103° F (40° C), which was the highest temperate ever recorded in Seattle. That's right: the hottest day since they started measuring temps here in 1891.

Most houses and apartments here - including our townhouse - don't have air conditioning; it's usually not cost effective to install it. On average, Seattle gets 3 days of temps over 90 degrees in a summer (and 1 in 4 summers have no days >90°).

We've had to start sleeping on our lowest level in the guest bedroom, where it stays relatively cool. But it's still been pretty uncomfortable at home. Like just about everyone else in the city, we've been spending a lot of time at the beach. Water temps in Lake Washington are a balmy 80°; but the Sound is still a nice hypothermia-inducing 55°. Now we just need the weather to shift so the winds come from the ocean rather than from desert-like Eastern Washington.

Kendall Katwalk

On Saturday, Anya and I did our first all-day hike of the season.

The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) is one of the major long-distance hiking trails in the country (it's the Western equivalent to the Appalachian Trail). It starts at the Mexican border, follows the Sierra Nevada through California and then the Cascades through Oregon and Washington before ending at the Canadian border. It crosses Interstate 90 about 50 miles east of Seattle at Snoqualmie Pass.

We hopped on the northbound PCT near the Pass amongst a forest of giant trees. From there, the trail steadily climbs for 6 miles (and ~2800 vertical feet) through thinning alpine forest, meadows, boulder gardens, and exposed scree slopes to a steep ridge near Kendall Peak. It passes from one side of the ridge to the other at a saddle (~5800 feet above sea level), so for a short time you're walking on an 8-foot wide trail with nothing but sheer drops on either side. That feature, called the Kendall Katwalk (sorry - the misspelling of "catwalk," however annoying, is the official name) was the destination for our day hike.

The pictures and captions speak for themselves, so here I'll just say that it was a spectacular hike - amongst the most scenic alpine trails I've ever been on.

Oregon

My parents were here visiting over the Fourth of July, and we all went down to Oregon for the long weekend. We used Portland - one of my favorite cities in the U.S. - as a home base because of the great hotel & restaurant options. We spent some time walking around the city but also took a couple of day trips.

One day we escaped the record warm temps (in the 90's) in Portland by going to the coast. About 90 minutes West of the city, in a beautiful location on the Pacific Ocean, is Cannon Beach. Anya and I had been there a couple years ago and always wanted to go back. The whole Oregon coast is a spectacular place. We didn't do much in the actual town; we mostly just hung out on the beach. You can see why in our pictures from Cannon Beach.

Another day we drove ~30 minutes East of Portland to the Columbia River Gorge. That's the place where the Columbia River (the largest river in North America that flows into the Pacific) has carved a dramatic course through the middle of the Cascade mountains. The steep sides of the gorge - especially the Oregon (southern) side - are lined with waterfalls.

We hiked a steep, switch-backed trail that followed Wahkeena Creek - which falls about 1400 vertical feet in a run of about a half mile. The trail passed through an amazing hanging valley that was like something out of a fairy tale (or a motivational poster - pick your poison). After the hike we stopped for beers in the outdoorsy town of Hood River. The consistent wind through the Gorge makes Hood River a mecca for windsurfing and kiteboarding. We took a few good pictures but they don't really do it justice.

We finished off our trip by stopping at the International Rose Test Garden in Portland ("The Rose City"). Those pictures here.

Sailing

With our trip to Russia behind us, on Saturday we finally had time to practice what we learned in our sailing classes. Our friend Pavel is a certified skipper, so we rented a 27' boat through his sailing club for the day.

Unfortunately it was pretty calm in the morning. We ended up motoring across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island, where we stopped for lunch in Eagle Harbor. The wind picked up nicely in the afternoon, though, so we were able to sail all the way back home - getting some spectacular views of Seattle (and a passing cruise ship) along the way. There are pictures here.

St. Petersburg

This is the fifth and final entry about our trip. Our photos from St Petersburg are here - it's a pretty impressive place, which means we took a lot of pictures. Pace yourself; there are a lot of great ones, but some of the best are towards the end.

When Peter the Great, one of the most influential Russians in history, became Tsar in 1684 he undertook a series of sweeping changes aimed at modernizing and strengthening what became the Russian Empire. In 1703, after winning a chunk of land from arch-rival Sweden, Peter, apparently none too fond of Moscow - decided that Russia needed a new capitol.

The spot was chosen because of its strategic importance: Russia could finally have a real seaport (Arkhangelsk, ice-bound every winter up on the White Sea, wasn't cutting it anymore). St. Petersburg was founded where the Neva River empties into the Gulf of Finland, a small offshoot of the Baltic Sea.

Peter had travelled extensively in Western Europe and decided that his new capitol should be built in the style of the great capitols of the West, and that it should surpass them in grandeur. He imported masons & architects from all over Europe to build the entire city out of stone. He ordered the Neoclassical buildings painted cheerful pastel colors (the weather is gray enough without the buildings adding to it), and he had a series of canals built to imitate Venice and Amsterdam.

In the city's center Peter built the spectacular Winter Palace, which is now part of the Hermitage Musuem, the largest and perhaps most beautiful art museum in the world. Outside the city he built Peterhof, his own version of the palaces and gardens of Versailles. Other Tsars followed this trend, and many of these beautiful places are now parks that are well worth the trouble to reach.

Upon arriving, the first impression I got of St. Petersburg (in Russian "Sankt Peterburg," or, more commonly, "Petersburg" or just "Piter") is that it is a monumental city. I mean that in two ways: first, the city itself - and everything in it - is huge. Forget the coziness of Venice or Amsterdam, this is a vast city designed to impress and, probably, to make you feel a little insignificant. If grandeur was the goal, Petersburg succeeds - and then some. The immense neighborhoods of Soviet housing blocks outside the center only add to the feeling of this being a city on a grand scale.

Petersburg is also monumental in that it's filled with monuments: war victories, politicians (especially Soviet ones), revolutionaries, authors, philosophers, composers, and poets. Even for a relatively young city - Philadelphia and New York, for example, are older - so many influential people and things happened in Petersburg that it's easy to lose track of them all.

Petersburg is also notable for being the world's northernmost large city (> 1 million people). For you geography buffs, it's at 60 degrees North - equivalent to Anchorage, AK. This means that June & July bring "white nights" where it stays light outside well past midnight (and gets bright again before 4am). The city seems to adjust its schedule and take advantage of this added light; it's a weird feeling to be walking around at 11pm, the sun still up, and the streets still filled with people going about as if it were late afternoon. I suppose they've got to make up for those short, cold winter days.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of the trip was getting to meet some great people: Anya's incomparable grandma (Babushka Raia), family friend Lena (privet, esli ti eto chitaesh!) and our super-hospitable host Boris.

Russia generally - and St Petersburg specifically - are places that any seasoned world traveller should visit. There are a lot fewer Americans (or tourists in general) than in Western Europe, which would make a solo trip there more challenging but more rewarding. Growing up in the States we're not taught much about Russian history or culture. That's unfortunate for us, but it makes visiting there that much more interesting and eye-opening.

Anyway, this blog entry has gotten long enough - congrats if you're still reading! I've added comments to many of the pictures in the photo album, so I'll let those do more explaining about the things we saw.

The Drive

This is the fourth entry about our trip. Start at "Copenhagen" below if you want to read them in order. Here are the few pictures we took along the way.

After a comfortable and relaxing time in Minsk, we were off to our next stop: St. Petersburg. We spent some time investigating and debating how to get there. That region is currently under-served by airlines after a couple of bankruptcies, so tickets were too expensive to make flying an option. It's a 14-hour overnight train ride, which is the method of choice for most people - but not us. We chose to drive the 800 kilometers (475 miles - roughly equivalent to Minneapolis to St Louis for you midwesterners) in a single day.

It turns out that roads in Belarus are very nice: they're well-maintained, well-marked, and have lots of little picnic grounds to stop at. We passed many cute little countryside villages with brightly-colored wood houses. We took a break in the very old (founded in 862 AD) town of Polatsk and saw the Cathedral of Saint Sophia, considered to be the most beautiful church in Belarus. This part of the drive was quite pleasant.

Then we got to Russia. There's no passport control between the two countries, but there's a $5 toll for the privilege of driving on an quarter-mile stretch of "international" road. After getting through this and into Russia proper, we discovered why taking the train is the preferred method of long-distance travel there.

The roads in Russia were in very poor condition: they don't appear to have had any maintenance at all since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are few or no signs telling you where to go (we got lost a couple times). The drivers are reckless to the point of being almost suicidal, and whatever traffic laws exist are universally ignored. Despite all this, we saw a number of police ticketing people for speeding - pretty clever when there aren't any speed limits posted.

Along the journey, we passed through several medium-sized towns - including Ostrov and Luga - that don't appear to have changed much from the Soviet days. They were interesting and almost kind of beautiful in a dilapidated, grim, the-world-has-forgotten-us sort of way.

We made our second stop in another historic town, Pskov. It has a walled old town/fortress that's in a nice setting along a river. It's the kind of place that could be a tourist destination if any investment were made in infrastructure (like signs telling you how to get around).

We were all pretty tired when, after 14 hours on the road, we arrived in Pushkin, the genteel town near St. Petersburg where we were staying (with a longtime friend of Anya's parents). While the roads are fine in & around St. Petersburg, it's clear that the less cross-country driving you do in Russia, the better.

Minsk

This is the third entry about our trip to northeastern Europe; see "Copenhagen" below to start from the beginning. Click here to see the picture album from our time in Minsk.

After having a great time in Vilnius, we crossed the border into Belarus and drove to Minsk, where Anya's parents live.

The border between Lithuania and Belarus is more than just political; it's a major cultural boundary as well - after crossing it you're in the Russian world. The comfortable Roman alphabet is replaced by Cyrillic. Orthodox iconography appears in place of familiar Catholic and Protestant styles. The Soviet hammer & sickle (so quickly replaced elsewhere with the staid blue & gold EU flag) - is still prominently displayed, less out of pride than an out of an acceptance of history. And although things have definitely changed since then, the weight of that history is still apparent.

Minsk is the capitol and, with about 2 million people, the largest city in Belarus. It was one of 12 Soviet "hero cities" in WWII, and its main boulevards are filled with monuments to the USSR's victory. Anya grew up in the city's center, but her parents have since moved to a small village just outside Minsk.

We spent the majority of our visit hanging out at their house. We had a fun but relaxing stay: eating, drinking, playing with the newborn puppies, enjoying the beautiful weather, and visiting the banya ("banya" is the Russian word for "sauna". Russian saunas are similar to American saunas except: a) they're more popular, b) they're much hotter, c) they're usually enjoyed with beer and salted fish, and d) they come with veniks. Check out the pictures to see what I mean).

Compared with my first visit there 4 years ago, Belarus seems to be prospering: there are far fewer dilapidated old Soviet-model cars, major road and subway improvements have been made, and previously-stalled construction on many new houses in the village has been completed.

From a traveler's perspective, Belarus is an interesting and different place. It's an order of magnitude more foreign than anywhere you'll find in Western Europe. It would be difficult to get by on your own in there without speaking at least some Russian and learning to read the Cyrillic alphabet. If you're planning to go there, however, I know of some great people to stay with...

Lithuania

This is the second part of a series of posts about our trip; see below to start at the beginning. The pictures for Lithuania are in this set.

After our layover in Copenhagen, we took a short flight to our ultimate destination: Vilnius, the capitol and largest city in Lithuania. Anya's parents met us there; they go there frequently and know their way around.

Lithuania and its neighbors Latvia and Estonia are collectively known as the Baltic Countries (they're on the Baltic Sea). Prior to 1990 they were in the Soviet Union, although their people maintain that beginning after WWII they were occupied by the Soviet Union and weren't willing members. After the collapse of the USSR, these three countries turned sharply westwards; they're now members of the EU, in the Schengen Zone (meaning you could drive from, say, Spain all the way to Estonia without having to show your passport), and will adopt the Euro for their currency in the next few years.

Vilnius' old town is beautiful, well-preserved, and thriving. It's the European Culture Capitol for 2009, meaning that it's seeing an influx of tourists - and deservedly so. Although it's a little too big to be called "cozy", it's definitely a comfortable, easy-going small city. It's filled with nice little cafés and bars, all serving good local beer and traditional Lithuanian beer snacks: fried dark bread with a light dusting of cheese (it's really good). There are plenty of beautiful old Catholic churches. The medieval architecture makes the city feel almost like an old Italian town, and the Lithuanian language - written in the Roman alphabet, not Cyrillic like Russian - looks & sounds a bit like Italian with the letter "s" added to the end of many words (in reality those languages are almost completely unrelated).

We also took a day trip to Trakai, a nearby town with a medieval castle/fortress built on an island in the middle of a lake. It was a scenic little place. We stopped at a traditional local pub for kibinai, little doughy pastry balls filled with various different meats, mushrooms, cabbage, or apples. Like elsewhere in northern Europe, vegetarians would have a tough time getting by in Lithuania: meat is the staple of every meal, albeit in much smaller portions than Americans are used to. (That's a good thing)

Being small and relatively out of the way, Vilnius probably isn't at the top of many Americans' vacation plans. But if Western Europe is a "been there, done that" proposition and you're looking to branch out, the Baltics would be a nice next step and a good primer before moving further east into the Russian-speaking world. That's where we were headed next.

Copenhagen

We just returned from our trip to northeastern Europe; this is the first of several posts regarding that trip.

While making our way to Belarus to visit Anya's parents, we had an 8-hour layover in Copenhagen, Denmark. As it turns out, it was a good choice for such a layover: the airport is a quick ride on the Metro from the city center, and Copenhagen is a nice little place to spend a few hours between flights. We wandered around the old city, had a nice Danish lunch (smørrebrød - open-faced sandwiches with salmon or herring), and had enough coffee to stay awake for the next leg of the journey.

Although I saw an admittedly small portion of the city, Copenhagen struck me as being a clean, safe, and efficiently run place. It's fairly small as European capitols go, but it seems like it would be a comfortable and easy place to live.

Here are a few pictures from the first leg of our trip (including Copenhagen).

A busy time of year

It's amazing that June will start tomorrow. Unlike last year, summer has definitely come early to Seattle: it's been sunny and in the 70's every day for the past 2 weeks.

Today was our second sailing lesson and we had a blast. We're now qualified crew members and can go out with our friend Pavel - which we'll do at the earliest possible time.

We also went to a baby shower - the first one Anya or I had ever been to - for our friends Robert & Katia, whose baby is due in July. It was a lot of fun; they didn't do any cheesy games or anything (I've heard stories). We just ate some great food, drank champagne, and enjoyed another beautiful day.

This will be my last post for a couple weeks. We're leaving in a few days to visit Anya's family in Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia. But before that, my parents are coming - they're taking care of our house & their granddog while we're away. Pretty nice gig for everyone...

Mike & Maggie

My cousin Mike and his wife Maggie came to Seattle for Memorial Day weekend as part of a big trip down the West Coast. We had absolutely perfect weather for showing them around the city, going for a little hike in the foothills, and having a picnic on the beach. Everyone had a great time, and Tuesday came way too fast.

Mike has an awesome camera and took a lot of pictures; I'll link to them once he posts them. For now, here's a set we took while picnicking at Golden Gardens.

Sailing lessons

The major cities on the West Coast are special for a lot of reasons, not least of which is their unusual proximity to both mountains and the sea. It's been two years since we've moved to Seattle (time flies), and in those two years most of our outdoor recreation has focused on the mountains. That's as it should be: I love the mountains, and having lived here I can't imagine moving to a place where there aren't any.

But the other part of the equation is the water. With that in mind, we decided to take some basic sailing classes. The aim isn't necessarily to go sailing by ourselves - at least not at first - but to serve as an able crew for our friend Pavel, who's done quite a bit of sailing.

Seattle is on a strip of land between a large freshwater lake - Lake Washington - and Puget Sound, which is salt water (in geographic terms, a "sound" is basically a large inlet off the Ocean). You can sail on either of them, but we're taking our classes through a sailing club at Shilshole Bay Marina in Ballard (on the Sound side of Seattle). Sunday was our first class.

"Sailing" itself - and by that I mean the act of harnessing the wind to move the boat - is actually a relatively simple concept. In calm seas and light winds, which we had, it doesn't take too long to learn the basic technique. The difficult part of day one was getting a grasp on all the terminology, learning to tie the correct knots, and going through all the safety regulations.

We had nearly perfect weather and learned a ton on our relatively basic 25' boat. It was also very enjoyable to get out on the water. Now we have to do our homework before our next class in two weeks.

I used the few free moments we had to snap a couple pictures.

Stanford

My good friend Matt recently got accepted to pursue a Master's degree at Stanford. I'm excited about this because it will make it much easier for me to see him - his current home in Vermont is quite a slog from Seattle.

He boldly accepted his spot at Stanford without ever having been there - actually, he'd never been to the state of California at all. Last weekend I met up with him there to scout out his new surroundings. I didn't bring a camera, but Matt has a really good photo album of the trip on his site.

We stayed in San Francisco and took the train down to Palo Alto for a day to visit the school. It's the most beautiful college campus I've ever seen; it's like a cross between a botanical garden and a living museum of Mission-style architecture. A very pleasant place to visit for any of you who know Matt.

Of course San Francisco is one of my favorite cities, and hanging out with Matt there was great. It was really hard to go back to work on Monday morning...

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

About 60 miles north of Seattle, between the mountains and the Sound, is a place called Skagit Valley (pronounced "scadge-it"). It's a large flat area with fertile soil - the result of repeated flooding from the mineral-rich, glacier-fed Skagit River.

Apparently the soil & climate are well-suited to grow rare, strange-tasting root vegetables: Skagit produces more than 90% of the U.S. supply of turnips and rutabagas. Flowers also grow well there - particularly daffodils, irises, and (most popular of all), tulips.

Every April is the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. It's kind of a strange event: basically you drive there, look at big fields covered in bright flowers, take a few pictures, and leave. It attracts a wide cross-section of society: Old people in Buicks out for their Sunday drive, young families in minivans and Subarus (it's Seattle, remember), software developers on Harleys decked out in leather, affluent folks with cars that cost in the six digits, and hillbillies in jalopies.

We went on Sunday with our friends Alex & Crystal. I guess we don't really fit into any of those categories; maybe we're in a different group: people who were out to enjoy a (mostly) sunny Sunday and sample the local food (and beverages) in La Conner, the town that's the main destination.

Here's the photo album.

Ominous Skies

One night this week we were walking around on Queen Anne hill - one of the most scenic neighborhoods in the city. It was cloudy all day, but just before dusk the sun barely started to pop out of the clouds and created some really weird light. It made for a few interesting pictures...

UW Cherry Blossoms

The main campus of the University of Washington is roughly 20 minutes on foot from our house. It's a very nice campus - lots of greenery and cool architecture. There are plenty of big fir and cedar trees to give it a Pacific Northwest feel and on a clear day there's a great line of sight to Mt. Rainier.

In spring the campus becomes a bit of a tourist attraction when the cherry trees bloom. We heard about this and walked there on Saturday to take some pictures. It was too cloudy to see the mountains, but the trees were pretty impressive. The album is here.

Summer?

Spring is definitely here in Seattle, but Monday felt more like summer - it was 75 degrees with bright sun. We went for a walk around our neighborhood and took some pictures of the lake, the city, and the flowers.

Enjoy.