Yes, Beltherway (for BELgium, neTHERlands, norWAY). Thanks to Troy Aker for the brilliant portmanteau. This past weekend I went up to Rick Steves’ Travel Center in Edmonds for a trip consult with Lisa, and with her help I was able to firm up my itinerary, and I’ve finished booking all my accommodations, mostly through Airbnb.
I don’t know what to call this trip. My last three trips to Europe were easier: Italy, my Nordic Adventure, and the Balkans. But what do I call this trip? I was thinking “Northern Europe,” but that doesn’t feel nearly specific enough. Do I just call it “Belgium, Netherlands, and Norway”? It doesn’t exactly come trippingly…
I’ve got tickets for five Broadway shows during my upcoming visit to New York. I have one evening still to fill, plus a Wednesday matinee. For the matinee, my mom is going to meet me in the city and we are going to do the half-price TKTS thing. So that leaves me one night to fill…
I should first make clear that New York, or more specifically Manhattan, is “The City.” This is not a statement of arrogance or superiority. It is simply tradition. I grew up in one of the communities that sprang up on Long Island in the first decade after the end of World War II. My parents,…
When you grow up gay in the suburbs of New York, you develop certain affinities. Like, for instance, the Broadway musical. (I don’t mean to perpetuate any stereotypes. I actually know plenty of people who like musicals who aren’t from New York. And some of them are straight.)
So yeah, I didn’t blog on days 15 and 16. Here they are in a nutshell: Day 15 I hiked to Angels Landing in Zion National Park. (Except I didn’t go all the way to Angels Landing. I stopped at what is called Scouts Lookout or Scouts Landing. The view from up there was amazing…
I’m not posting any pics of Zion. Well, okay, just one. That’s the view from my balcony at Zion Lodge.
I’ve spent the better part of two weeks exploring some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever encountered, and today in Bryce Canyon, everything I saw was as beautiful as everything I’ve seen. Which led me to wonder… If everything is beautiful, is anything beautiful?
In the last two days I drove from Telluride, Colorado, to Bryce, Utah. I drove through a number of small towns, and the much larger communities of Monticello and Blanding, Utah, and I detoured to Natural Bridges National Monument before stopping for the night in Mexican Hat, Utah. Then I continued south through Monument Valley…
I left Durango this morning, heading north on US-550 through Silverton, Ouray, and Ridgway, then southwest and then southeast to Telluride. The drive was spectacular. They had a lot of snow in the mountains yesterday, so it was like driving through a winter wonderland. The road was also twisty as it climbed up and down…
One of the reasons I love traveling in Europe is because there is stuff to see that people built five hundred or a thousand years ago. In the USA, there’s nothing that old. Except there is.
It turns out I didn’t know what a pueblo is. I thought it was a structure. But it is actually a community. In fact, the word “pueblo” comes from Castilian for town or village and has the same Latin root as the English word “people.” I visited Taos Pueblo today and learned a lot about…
