banane

Category: travel

  • Train Travel – SF to New Orleans

    Tucson, Arizona sunset The Route I took the Coast Starlight to Los Angeles, then the Sunset Limited from LA to New Orleans, and then back again 4 days later. A total of 10 days, mostly spent on the train. Coach class to Los Angeles, which was 13 hrs, and then sleeper (smallest/cheapest) to New Orleans,…

  • Long Car Rides

    I had a long car-ride with my sister Amy- Berkeley-SF-Monterey and back a day later. We had some amazing conversations. Mostly, though, they are the conversations that don’t exhaust after 15 minutes. It’s a depth of conversation that I don’t experience usually. Sometimes with coworkers, where we see each other every day for lunch, and…

  • I’m the Anachronism, I’m the Problem

    I was shocked, when I was 22 and flew to Paris, that it wasn’t like I’d read in the expat novels of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Instead, it was kinda like home. Grunge was big there, like it was in Seattle. Hip hop was emerging there, just like it was in San Jose. Everyone spoke English,…

  • I went to Russia

    I was told tonight that I hadn’t informed my blog audience that I’d been. So there it is. At Sergey Posad, trying on a white fur hat. I should have bought it! It was $200. This is the requisite Kremlin shot. I was told I stand like my sister Sally, and all of my nieces,…

  • Longest Way Home

    I flew back in 24 hours (I’ve been telling myself- actually 25.5), on probably the stupidest itinerary I’ve ever flown, which is up there with flying back on a wing and a prayer (and no money) from Paris in ’95. That’s the one where I was landing in JFK with no idea how I was…

  • Travel Food Notes Part 2: Thursday Split Pea Soup

    Here is the Thursday split pea soup- I read in the Time/Life books that Swedes always have this soup on Thursdays, and so I was very excited to sit down at a museum cafe and eat one, on Thursday. It’s a “fish Friday” institution, that you don’t want to make meat on Thursday as you…

  • Travel Food Notes: Part 1 Fish Salad & Horseradish

    My host in Sweden, Ingrid, served me horseradish soup one of the last nights, and I loved the peppery creaminess of it, so I roughly recreated the recipe yesterday for my Dad. From Epicurious and altered. Ingrid said she bought it at the store and re-heated. 1. The hard part is finding fresh horseradish. Whole…

  • AHHA KAREHEHA

    Ever since I was little I’d look at this one book on the shelf: Ahha Kareheha, or, that’s how I read it. We also had “CHEKHOV” which is really confusing, since that’s not even Cyrillic (there is no V like that), but some 1950s book editor who thought it’d be funny to print an English…

  • Humidity Makes a Nice Forest

    Before I went to Portland, I wrote this long post that I deleted about problematic feelings regarding that town. Then, I went, had a great time, and now I’m back to thinking of why I don’t live there. So, this is a moment I experienced on the third morning. I dragged my ass up a…

  • Revisiting Places: Portland

    I wrote a long post about nostalgia in Portland, and just deleted it. Why? Because I can! Alright. I’m going Thurs-Sun and will doubtless blog about it. Things to do (besides college conference): – Twit-up/FF-up somewhere downtown – Hang with Dylan of eROI – Thrift hard-core for some good fabrics!