Tag: travel

Hi all!

Hamburg is a really neat town. It reminds us a lot of Boston in some ways. It seems a lot more modern than other places we’ve visited (like pretty much most of Bavaria). I suppose that’s due in large part to bombings during World War II, but it seems like there have been pretty destructive fires in large parts of the city not connected to wars. So that’s good. I guess.

We have been very busy taking in the sights and smells:

• a spice museum in the warehouse district out on the canals
• the [St. Michaelis](http://www.st-michaelis.de/) church
• a harbor tour
• a bus tour around the city
• visited countless Christkindlmarktplätze

I’m writing from an internet cafe on our last day here before we head to London. We’re in a part of town where the university is and we’re headed to an art museum next. Then, if we have time before heading out to the airport, we’re headed to [Miniatur Wunderland](http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/) — a museum containing the world’s largest model train setup.

I’ll try to write again from London and I’ll post photos on the Regensblog when we get back.

My dad and his brother and his mom were all down in Puerto Vallarta this past week and guess what they photographed — a whale breaching in the sunset and a just-hatched turtle making his way down the beach!

Hi all –

I must apologize for a misinterpretation on our parts. Sarah found flights to various European on Air France based on an email she got from [travelzoo.com](http://www.travelzoo.com “Travelzoo website”). The link to the Air France online booking site is below:

[click this link!](http://tinyurl.com/af9v8 “Air France online booking site”)

Our goof was that we thought those prices shown were for complete roundtrips…actually what they were showing was only the price for the outbound flight, and that got us all excited. Effectively, what I’d posted here was only about 50% of the total cost you could expect for roundtrip airfare.

Sorry for all the *hooplah*.

On the way to England in December, we’re staying in Hamburg for a few days. I’ve just attempted to make reservations at a hotel in a notorious district of Hamburg called the *Reeperbahn* (pronounced “RAPER-bonn”) – somewhat equivalent to the red-light district of Amsterdam.

Hamburg’s supposed to be a fun town, but we’ve never been there, and though we’ve got our trusty Frommer’s Germany to guide us, any tips from the general public are welcome. Click the link to the Comments below to submit your € 0,02 about what to skip, what *not* to skip, personal horror stories, fond memories, etc. pertaining to Hamburg.

I mean, Hamburg was a good thing for the Beatles, wasn’t it?

Hot off the presses – we just bought tickets for a week in December in England (a day or two in Hamburg first) as part of a special running this weekend only at www.germanwings.com.

It would be really nice to hook up with Ian & Michelle for a visit…I really hope that works out.

Note: we don’t plan specifically to eat any beef. We are specifically looking forward to Invicta Tandoori. As I recall, they don’t serve beef there, but lots of other good stuff.

I *really* wish we could take Transrapid train there instead of flying. My coworkers and I discuss this exciting piece of transportation technology every few months, and one of them recently got to ride in the only Transrapid train currently in use commercially (in Shanghai). I’m glad the management decided to make him go on that trip instead of me, but taking a 400 km/h (248.5 mph!) train ride would have offset that a little bit.

Now I see that the U.S. government is in the planning stages of introducing Transrapid systems there (according to this article). It’s a start, I guess, but the real power of the Transrapid system in the U.S. would be for travel between cities like Detroit and Chicago, or Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and maybe even Salt Lake City. Those are all destinations that take no more than a couple hours to fly to/from, but are a significant car trip.

L.A. to San Francisco requires 6¹/₃ hours by car (thanks [Google Maps](http://maps.google.com)), or about 1¹/₄ hours in the air (thanks [Orbitz](http://orbitz.com)). But figure in the 60 minutes you’re supposed to be at the airport prior to departure, and your air-route time cost balloons to 2³/₄ hours:

• 1 hour sitting around waiting to board
• 1¹/₄ hours in the air
• 30 minutes (on average?) to get off the plane and collect your stuff

At 450 km/h (290 mph), with 5 minute stops in Bakersfield, Fresno, and San Jose, the travel time (using the distance Google reported) is about 1³/₄. Figure on arriving at the trainstation 10 minutes prior to departure and you’re still talking about a trip less than 2 hours from Los Angeles to San Francisco. And it is supposed to be cheaper than a flight.

If the estimates for safety and efficiency and energy consumption are accurate, then in many cases, the Transrapid is clearly the way to go. There may be cases where the overall plane trip is still less time-consuming for the passenger than a Transrapid trip, but I know I would trade the extra time in transit for improved safety, comfort, cost and environmental impact in an instant.

We’re getting ready for our first trip to Italy — a long weekend in Bolzano (a.k.a. Bozen).

It’s 4ish hours directly South of Munich by train. It has only belonged to Italy since the end of WWI, and before that has belonged to Austria and been independent and stuff like that. So, I gather it’s not going to be all “old-country Italy” — probably more like that town where Pinocchio was from in that there might be a lot of people with Italian names and German accents (ever notice that?).

Or just a lot of German speakers in general. When we went to Prague in May to visit Molly, it was entirely swamped with Germans… but that’s kind of how they are, I guess.