Sabbatical

I've been in the company for long enough to be elligible for a sabbatical vacation, that's an additional 8 weeks on top of the usual vacations. M successfully took unpaid vacation to come with me and we've been going around for over two weeks. You won't see any pictures for now and for a while but I'm going to try to keep our itinerary up to date here.
We flew to Helsinki, through Chicago and Frankfurt, it took us about 28 hours door to door. It was long enough that we pretty much didn't get any jetlag. We walked all around town enjoyed the quietness and slow living style and after 2 days we were departing for Porvoo, a cute little town a bit east of Helsinki. We spent the best part of the day windowshopping there, and enjoying the views on the old houses across the river. That was our first night of camping. That was pretty much it for classical tourism in Finland, we were going to spend most of the rest of the trip in the nature.
After camping in Savonlinna, the capital of the lake district, we headed ton Linansari, one of the large parks covering the lakes. There we rent a 2 sit kayak for 3 days, packed the camping gear into the kayak and headed for 3 days of island to island paddling and camping in the wilderness. That was also our first encounter with the Finnish national park accomodations. We were amazed at their quality. Sprinkeled all over their national parks are free campgrounds where you can find a dry toilet, a fire pit with gear to cook (including kettle and pan), dry wood, an axe to split it and usually amazing views. We were so enchanted by the trip around the lakes that we decided to go for another park instead of heading early for the baltic countries.
We drove to the northern part of Karelia, to the park of Ruuna, where we settled on an island in the middle of the river. That was probably the most scenic camp spot I've ever been at. We did short hikes in the park, gathered berries, did some rafting in the river's rapids and on the third day we headed farther north towards Lapland. We stopped one day for laundry in the lovely town of Kuhmo, the cultural capital of Karelia, where we visited a few local culture and history museum and learnt all about the Kalevala, the Finnish Epic stories and legends. From there we departed for the Oulanka national park to hike the little bear's trail. By then the weather had started to be quite cold, the Finnish were back at school and most places where empty.
Unfortunately the sun left us and we didn't get a sunny hike in Lapland. The hike was very pretty, we had a close encounter with a reindeer and a not so close one with a moose. We harvested mushrooms for the evening dinner, which we followed by one hour in the sauna, which helped gratly for the coming cold night.
We then drove to Rovaniemi, crossed the arctic circle, and did some shopping in "Santa's official home town". At least his post office is there, and we took advantage of it ;). We finished the day by a long visit to the arctic museum which gave us a lot of insight in the arctic ecosystem and the arctic populations cultures.
Next day was drive fest, we drove all the way down to helsinki in 10h30 to realize that I had forgotten my camera bag and passport at our last spot 250km north, where M courageously drove us back.
Yesterday we took the ferry to Talinn, and had quite a shock when we arrived at the camping. No more beautifull nature, cute little clean log toilets etc... Talinn's camping is a parking lot with a few smelly showers in a hangar nearby. That totally looked soviet style... Anyways, it rained all night and we decided a Hotel bed was in order.

See you

Arrived in Boston

Monday we traveled to Boston for work and got caught in a snowstorm. Our plane circled the area for almost 2 hours until it found a window of better weather to land. On our way to the hotel we stopped in a nice oyster bar to taste all the great northeast seafood, then drove to Hudson by night in the storm. It had been quite a while I hadn't driven in so much snow, it was falling so fast that the salt was not enough to keep highways clean. The next morning, the sun was shining and our hotel parking was looking like that:

We're pretty much working all week, but are taking advantage of the evenings to hang out with Aamer. Hopefully saturday we'll get some nice weather to enjoy the visit of Boston and the Freedom Trail.

Olympic peninsula trip

We took advantage of the gorgeous (and rare) winter sunny weather during the weekend to do a one day trip to the Olympic peninsula. We took again the ferry to Bremmerton and then drove north along the coast to Gamble. There we enjoyed a very large exposition of sea shells and the coastal landscape before heading to the three crabs restaurant located in Dungeness (that seems like a good match doesn't it ?).


Abandoned pier in Gamble


Looking towards Victoria island (Canada) in Dungeness. I liked the lighthouse on the sand peninsula.

After gorging ourselves with seafood (delicious crab cakes, and yes there seems to be a pattern here), we headed towards Port Angeles where we started the climb to hurricane ridge. Hurricane ridge is in the olympic national park, a bit higher than 5000ft. We arrived before sunset on the snowy ridge and enjoyed a beautiful scenic sunset up there. There was a rope tow for skiers but I wouldn't recommend going there to ski unless it's your very first time. There is pretty much no slope that would guarantee more than 5 minutes of entertainment.


Sunset on Hurricane ridge


Again looking north towards Canada


Pretty Victoria, and Canadian Cascades in the background

We drove back by night and still enjoyed a clear view of Seattle skyline (which apparently is very rare at this season).

Glittering Seattle

The day after Thanksgiving we drove to Seattle to enjoy the city while the weather was nice. We took the ferry to Bremerton as it is M's Dad preferred scenic route. The views of the bay were really nice as we had exceptional weather (especially for the NW in this season). On our way back we had one of the most impressive views I've had on a US city skyline as the sun was setting and reflecting in the skyscraper's windows. You can judge for yourself.

Chicago

Two weekends ago we had a 3 days long weekend thanks to Labor's day. On 09/09/09 we were going to attend Michelle's uncle wedding in Chicago so we flew a few days before and enjoyed some time visiting the city. I have to say I was not thrilled at the idea of spending 5 days in the midwest in just one city, but I actually really liked Chicago. The city architecture is fantastic, the skyscrapers and "the loop" area actually impressed me more than Manhattan. Apparently this is where all this frenzy of building tall things started, after the city suffered from a massive fire in 1871.

You get Gothic towers, glass towers, the Sears towers are still the second tallest building on earth (the view from atop is fantastic).

The Chicago Tribune building at sunset


View from the Sears Tower.

I enjoyed walking around and recognizing all the areas that were providing the background to one of my favorite movies ever: The Blues Brothers. I wished for a few seconds I could jump in an old cop car, and jump over the river using one of these mobile bridges as a ramp, with some loud blues playing: "sweet home Chicagoooo".


Or a little bit later listening to the Elevated Train (The El) passing buy, I couldn't help but remember Elwood's hotel room. This thing is really loud!


We stopped for an afternoon at the Art Institute and enjoyed the largest collection of impressionist paintings outside of France, and as Impressionism is my favorite painting's style we took our time. Their collection of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh is worth the visit. We also spent some time in the modern art wings, and for most of it, neither of us really get it, but it's still interesting to look at.


When M saw this one, her first words were "that's my brain!". You can clearly see it on the picture :).

We also spent some time in Millenium Park and I really enjoyed "The Bean" (Cloud Gate), this large reflective metallic structure (kind of like a giant mercury bubble) shaped like a bean is exposed among many other large displays of modern public art. I enjoyed taking pictures of people taking pictures of their reflections.


We also tried the local food specialties including super duper extra thick stuffed Pizza (not bad, but not breathtaking) and steaks at Morton's (breathtaking, this was truly amazing).


I got to meet all M's family (on her mom side) and we had quite a nice time at the wedding, dancing to a great band's music in great company.

You can find more pictures of Chicago there (first series all in B&W) and pictures from the wedding here (I am changing my digital workflow and it seems I overexposed many quite a bit in post-processing and will probably do another round of corrections).

Edit: I did one round of corrections on the exposures, it should be a little bit less blindingly bright.

Hawaii big Island

So I'll try to tell you about all our vacation in one post, I don't know if I'll succeed as we really did a lot for just one week, all this thanks to great planning (I obviously am not the one that planned :)).

Day 1:
We took our plane in the morning, went to the airport with a cab as we realized it would be cheaper than shuttle services, and after 5-6 hours landed in Maui. From there we took a plane to Kona on the west coast of the big Island of Hawaii. We picked up our rental car and drove tou our Bed and Breakfast, a local coffee plantation on the volcano slopes above Kona. There was enough time left for us to rush to the beach, swim a bit and enjoy a great sunset.


Day 2:
We woke up early to go scuba diving, but actually I think we were up at 6 pretty much every day of the week so we had quite some time to go around. It was our first time scuba diving since Israel and I was a bit nervous. It ended up being great and simple: the organizers were taking care of absolutely everything we just had to put the gear on and dive. As usual M spent her air about twice slower than me and got a lot more bottom time, I am so jealous. Anyways we had some great reef diving with quite a lot of nice fish species floating around. We saw a turtle and I think my favorite are butterfly fishes.
M took a little nap after our 2 dives, and in the afternoon we drove south to Kealakekua bay where Captain Cook is burried. We looked at the monument across the bay, played with black crabs hiding on black lava and continued to Honaunau National Historical Park. There we visited archeological remains of Hawaiian culture and some reconstructions of the traditional houses and temples. I especially like their statues with big smiles :).


We had yet another great sunset on the beach and I opened a coconut for M. It was her first tasting of a fresh one and it was well worth the effort (when you do it with a miniature swiss army knife it is really a lot of effort).


Day 3:
We had a nice relaxed breakfast at the b2b, and chatted for quite a while with the owner that explained us how he started his organic coffee farm and how complex it was to develop and manage it. It was very interesting for when we'll get tired of high tech. We stopped at the Kona Blue church on our way out and enjoyed the view on the surfers.



We drove to South Point (southernmost part of the US) and stopped at various vista point, fruit stands, chocolate macadamia stores on the way. I was a bit worried as there was a hurricane alert for the same night and we were going to camp in Volcano National Park, on the side of the island the most touched by hurricanes usually. After enjoying the landscape at south point we drove a bit east and then hike to the only green sand beach of the island.



The sand is made of olivine so it is actually more khaki than green, but it is still quite original. I played with the waves and swam a bit but undertow and currents were strong and waves started quickly to be bigger than I could handle so we left.



On our way out we heard the radio saying that the hurricane warnings were lifted, what a relief ! We headed to the Volcano Park and set camp.

Day 4:
After a nice night of sleep under the tent we visited most of the easily accessible center of interest of the Volcano National Park. It was my first time seeing active volcanoes and even if I didn't see molten lava close it was still impressive. We toured museums, museums, sulfur vents and fumes, Kilauea caldera,


Kileauea Iki crater hike,


chain of craters road, hike on the recent lava flows,


lava arches, view of the current Pu'u O'o flow arriving in the ocean, Petroglyphs (ancient traditional carvings in Lava),


and drive to a viewpoint... in the fog. Another night under the tent but this time under the rain: no leak yay !

Day 5:
We started in the morning by a lava tube exploration, and a short hike on devastation trail, then left the park and drove to the southeast of the island in Pahoa region.
We started by the visit of Lava Tree State Monument, a park set in a jungle like forest where a long time ago a lava flow ravaged the forest and petrified a large number of trees. It is interesting to see this mix of lava constructions (what remains is the lava that surrounded the tree like a shell, not the tree themselves actually) in the middle of this green forest with gigantic trees.



We stopped on the coast to snorkel in tide pools, the corals there were really pretty. I then tried to do 4x4 with a compact rental to reach the Champagne Pools (some bubbling thermal pools) but the road beat me (and the car) and we had to back off with a few scratches (on the car) when the road started to be too difficult.

We went to another thermal pool made of mixed salty and fresh water (brakish water) and dipped for quite a bit there.We headed then for our first black sand beach who was also the local nudist beach.


Along with another thousand of people we went by night to see the current lava flow that ends up in the sea. I was a bit disappointed because we ended up being blocked quite far from the action, it was raining and packed with people. Still we saw a few explosions, bombs projections, glowing red fumes etc... A little more than a barbecue, a little less than if you try to barbecue bacon ;). I didn't have a tripod so enjoy the blurry, cropped, noisy night shot...



Day 6:
After a night at Hilo we visited the Onomea bay botanical gardens a little north of town, in a spectacular area of the coast. The landscape in this region had completely changed and was clearly showing that it receives like 20x the rain of the western shore. The botanical gardens were the best I had ever seen, it was luxuriant with species from all over the pacific, most flowers were blooming and dripping water. It would have felt like heaven if not for mosquitoes: despite tons of deet on M and none on me, she still got machine-gunned. We took literally hundreds of pictures of flowers, but if you want to see more than this one you'll have to go see our Zenfolios.



We stopped at a delicious smoothies stand on the side of the scenic highway, had some nice healthy local food, headed to Akaka falls (must resist to tell the bear and the little white rabbit joke, must resist...), then Laupahoehoe point state park and finished with Rainbow falls.
We went shopping and discovered that Wallmart has actually a food section, well not really by my standards so we moved to the next store. There we bought ingredients for our only self cooked meal of the trip besides sandwiches (won't resist, gotta eat a lot of sandwiches on the Sandwich Island, ah-ah-ah). It was with local original ingredients and quite tasty: purple sweet potatoes puree, Japanese eggplant ratatouille, seared Ahi Tuna.

Day 7:
On our way to saddle road we stopped at Peepee falls and hiked in the Kaumana lava tube. This time the tubes were quite untouched and rougher to explore. It was quite fun.


We drove up Mauna Loa up to 11000ft and got a nice view on the fog, storm and clouds that surrended us and the gigantic lava fields. Then we drove up Mauna Kea, did not listen to the ranger warnings saying we needed a 4x4 to go up to 14000ft (he was wrong this time it was easy). We arrived late enough on top for the clouds to start settling down. This gave us some quite spectacular views.



We spent some time on top hiking around the crater and looking at the impressive observatories. The air here is more pure and perfect for star observation than anywhere in the world. This is due to Hawaii being alone in the middle of the sea with no air pollution, light or even anything causing turbulences within 2500 miles. On top of that there is a natural trend for clouds to cover the lower parts of the island, blocking away the light they produce by night (and they use some special lighting to disturb less the observatories which is pretty cool). The top is litteraly covered with observatories and antennas, way over 10, I stopped counting.


On our way down we caught another very pretty sunset.


We went down to the ranger station and spent the first part of the night stargazing and listening to the great tutorial that some astronomer gave. After M froze, we headed to our tent that we had hidden not far behind a bush so the rangers wouldn't spot it :). We camped at 9000 feet and didn't even get cold, great new tent.

Day 8:
Early morning we drove down Saddle road back to the west coast. We had booked a night at the Hilton resort to see what most people see of the island and rest a bit, but decided to do a small loop in the north of the island before in order to see the landscape there. It is actually quite different, the land is drier, a few cacti here and there and is occupied mostly by ranches, actually mostly one ranch: the Parker ranch.
We passed Waimea, Hawi and reached the north point where after some morning ice cream we had a very nice view on Maui in the clouds. We stopped at Lapakahi park to see some archeological remains and old Hawaiian houses. The beach was windy but very pretty.


We then checked-in at the Hilton resort, spent the afternoon in the pool doing nothing but playing in slides, drinking cocktails, and doing more nothing. We finished by fine Japanese dining experience, our guess was pretty good as a good half of the resort occupants were Japanese: the Japanese restaurant was good :).

Day 9:
We mostly just flew back home.

Cathar Castles

Our last day as tourists was well spent, we went around the Corbieres mountains which are well known for hosting the ruins of many of the Cathar castles. These castles were often built in such way that you could see the next castle from one's tower. That way they had an easy network of communication and could defend themselves easier. It didn't prevent them succumbing to the crusade that was started by the French King and pushed by the Vatican.

We started with Montsegur, which was the last one standing against the crusade. Once you are there you understand why it resisted so long, it took us about 30 minutes to reach it from the bottom of the hill and it was quite steep.


The view from atop is fantastic:




We then headed for Puivert, another castle that is a lot more accessible. This one is actually privately owned and they get the renovation money by renting it for movies or events. It was in quite a nice shape.




We finished the day by stopping in Mirepoix, another nice local town charged with history.


On our way we probably spotted 4 different Cathar castles dominating the valleys. This is a fantastic area for longer vacations, and hiking around the castles. The rest of the pictures is here.

Albi

I have to say that we were originally just going there because it was kind of on the way and was supposed to have a pretty interesting cathedral. In the end it's probably the place we visited during that trip that we enjoyed the most. Albi is the home of Toulouse-Lautrec museum, which unfortunately was... closed the day we came, but the main sight is this gigantic, massive, actually ginormus is probably the appropriate term cathedral that was built by the Catholic church after the crusade against the Cathars to remind them that they had lost.


It is located on the Tarn river, and we love cities with bridges (with Portland we are actually well served).


The inside of the cathedral was even more impressive. For once I accepted to take an audio-guide and it proved extremely interesting.


We finished the visit by just going around town and doing some shopping. M found nice shoes and shirts at Cop. Copine, and I bought some "local" gear at the 64 shop, including some rugby shirts :).

We visited some more churches before going back home, including a nice cloister:


The rest of the pictures is here.

Cordes sur Ciel

Yet another touristic destination: we drove to Cordes-sur-Ciel, a beautifully renovated old town located on top of a hill, 1 hour north of Toulouse. This is apparently a very touristic destination, has a lot of shops for local crafts and arts, but we were there in march and it's kind of the dead season. The streets of the village were quite deserted and it looked like many of our mountain villages, beautifull, old and desert. However the houses were in such great shape that there was no doubt it was living.

This is the view you get when you arrive:


Nice steep streets:


Beautiful houses:


We just spent the morning there, had lunch in the only open restaurant around which was a rip-off (prices and taste were targeted towards tourists = really poor ratio). We then drove to Albi. The rest of the pictures is here.

Carcassonne

We did a 1 day trip to Carcassonne. The main attraction of the city is its renovated citadel that reminded M all kind of fairy tales: the city actually wasn't like that in the old times but the architect in charge of the renovation decided to build on and improve on the original citadel. The result is a bit too much, but is still gorgeous. Plus I had been there when I was 2 and wanted to see it again and actually remember it this time.

The Citadel, in the middle of the vineyards.


I told you it looked like a fairy tale:


We spent a day going around the castle and stopping to eat a great Cassoulet. This is kind of heavy, but so good that in a week I probably ate at least 3 of them :). I even cooked 2 once back in the US (1 for us and 1 when M's dad visited us).

More pictures here.

Toulouse

Yeah I know, I am blogging about old stuff, but I finally got through the 500 pictures I took while in France. So we went in Toulouse for Fifille's wedding and took advantage of the week to go around like real tourists and enjoy the area.

So let's start by a visit of the Capitole:


Let's continue on the piers:


And finish with a nice dinner in good company:


We really enjoyed the city of Toulouse, it's very welcoming, the bricks light up the city in nice colors and the ambiance is very laid back. More pictures here.