Blog Meme, Post #1
Mar. 26th, 2008 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nightdog_barksThis meme. For ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
topaz_eyes, who asked: You seem to be well-traveled. Where have you been, and why?
I'm afraid I ran out of steam by the time I got to Canada. ;-)
And sorry that the links are all at the bottom -- that's just the way it turned out. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.
Places I Have Actually Lived:
Dallas, TX (born and raised)
Nacogdoches, TX -- 1976 - 1978, attended Stephen F. Austin State University. Pine trees. Lots and lots of pine trees, and tiny East Texas towns with names like Diboll, Tenaha, and Timpson.
Tokyo, Japan -- January, 2002 to April, 2003. Husband was there on a consulting contract. We lived in Chiyoda-ku and could see part of the Imperial grounds from our apartment window, along with the Budokan and Mount Fuji.
Places I Have Visited, But Not for Vacation:
Brownsville, TX -- because I was a bridesmaid in a college friend's wedding, sometime around 1978 or '79. The very first time I'd ever flown somewhere. Heh. One of the very few things I remember is that this was the first time I heard people saying "Con permiso" instead of "Excuse me" in a grocery store.
London, parts of Britain -- in 1986. We were trying to decide if we wanted to move to Woking if husband's company decided to go ahead and transfer him there. While there we hit the big draws -- the Tate and the British Museum are the only two I really remember -- then went on a road trip to Bath (Roman villas, heh) and Stonehenge. Stonehenge was actually much smaller than I expected, and I found myself preferring the standing stones at Avebury, which you could actually walk up to and touch (at the time). We also saw Starlight Express at some theatre and were harassed by a drunk in a park.
Paris, parts of southwest France, Bayeux -- our honeymoon, in October 1988. Oh, my God. Heaven. If there really is a heaven, then at least part of it has to look like France. And I wasn't still on a matrimonial high, either -- we were married in 1987 and waited a year to take our honeymoon. So, so beautiful, and the people were just lovely. The straight roads bordered by tall, thin trees, legacies of the old Roman roads. The Champs-Elysees. A bowl of fresh raspberries for dessert in a hotel-chateau. The Martel cognac warehouses. Mont-St.-Michel. The Bayeux tapestry. Driving around and around Orly airport, trying to find the rental car exit. Hee!
Youngstown, OH -- this is where Mr. Nightdog is from, and we used to go there every New Year's. At one time it was part of the U.S. steel-making powerhouse ... now, it's just another buckle on the Rust Belt. Which is not to say that there aren't parts of it that are very nice -- Mill Creek Park is really pretty, and the small towns of Canfield and Poland are very nice.
Now we go to Detroit every New Year's. The less said about that the better. *g*
Ann Arbor, MI -- for our nephew's graduation from the University of Michigan. OMG so beautiful.
Colorado Springs, CO -- for a cousin's wedding. Landing at the airport in Colorado Springs is very much like landing in a cow pasture that someone's put a runway on.
Places I Have Been on Vacation, In Alphabetical Order:
Albuquerque, NM, to Santa Fe, NM -- via the Turquoise Trail. More beautiful countryside, and Santa Fe is a great place to visit. Great food at Tiny's Lounge -- a little restaurant located in a strip mall, which is one of the places real people go to eat.
Boston -- beautiful city. Walked the Freedom Trail (exhausting), visited the Isabel Stewart Gardner museum ... can't remember what else.
Cancun and Cozumel, Mexico -- hot. Really nice, but hot. Did I mention it was hot?
Curaçao -- Mr. Nightdog's older brother went to a medical conference there so we went with him. Long time ago; to be honest the only things I really remember is eating a delicious conch stew and the never-ending trade wind.
Denver -- drove west from Denver to Glenwood Springs, then looped back east through Aspen and Leadville.
Galveston and San Antonio, TX -- our last vacation, last October. The diner that David works in in my Housefic 44 Candles is modeled on diners we saw in Galveston.
Hakone, the Izu Peninsula -- when we lived in Japan, we took the train down to Shimoda, which is where Commodore Perry landed in 1854. Mr. Nightdog's older brother and his wife had come to visit, so it was the four of us bumbling our way south. Here is an excellent source for more information.
Hawaii (Oahu, Maui, Kauai) -- dude. It's Hawaii. *g*
Hot Springs, AR -- when I was a kid. Like a ten-year-old kid. About all I remember is that it was green.
Lake Tahoe, NV -- stayed at Harrah's, so that was the first time I'd ever really been in a casino. The lake itself is gorgeous.
Los Angeles -- beautiful. Crazy. Full of people just waiting to be discovered. The Getty Museum is incredible but we actually liked the Los Angeles County Museum of Art better. Also ... the hotel restaurant at the Luxe on Sunset Boulevard makes the best eggs Benedict in the known universe.
Maine -- flew into Boston, drove up the coast to Bar Harbor. Ate lobster for the very first time (at a lobster pound) and awesome bluefish. This was when I began to understand that fresh fish could taste good -- a fact that was later reinforced when we lived in Japan. Coastal Maine is another slice of heaven -- the view from the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park is spectacular.
Miami, Sanibel Island, Marco Island, Seaside (all FL) -- visited at different times, really like them all. Except for the time I got food poisoning in Miami. No, I don't recommend that at all. Conversely, I had the best insalata di caprese I've ever had in my life at a restaurant in Bal Harbour (Miami).
Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, to Chicago, IL -- road trip. Flew into the Twin Cities, drove east-southeast along the banks of the Mississippi River, crossed into Wisconsin at Prairie du Chien, and continued east through Madison, Whitewater, and Lake Geneva before dipping south to Chicago.
This? Is a great road trip. The landscape is so varied -- the upper Mississippi is beautiful, and further south there are apple orchards, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Hillside House at the Taliesin Estate in Spring Green, WI, Chicago itself ... it's just fantastic.
Oklahoma City, OK -- drove up for a day to see the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. What? Don't look at me like that. Yee haw!
Portland, OR, to Seattle, WA -- this was a road trip that took us on a winding loop along the Columbia River Gorge, through the Horse Heaven Hills, up the Yakima Valley, and ended in Seattle. Beautiful, beautiful country, especially the Horse Heaven Hills -- an undulating, rolling landscape, covered with a short, tawny-brown grass as far as the eye could see.
San Francisco and environs -- amazing, wonderful, dirty, with aggressive panhandlers. Still amazing and wonderful, though. What I most remember is the Point Reyes National Seashore, Napa Valley, and having dinner at the Auberge du Soleil, with the valley spread out below.
And Then There's Canada:
In a separate category because let's face it -- Mr. Nightdog have this long-running love affair with Canada.
Alberta:
Calgary, Banff, Jasper, Jasper National Park, Drumheller and the Badlands -- Banff was the very first place I ever visited in Canada. Our flight was delayed for six hours, and by the time we got to Calgary it was dark. It was one in the morning by the time we got to Banff, so the first-ever look I got at the Rocky Mountains was up close and personal outside our hotel window the next morning. I literally took a step back -- I'd never seen mountains this big and this imposing -- I felt as if they might fall on me.
And then there was more! Elk, deer, snow falling on a silent forest. Ravens. Rivers running so clear and cold, the water was blue-green. Eagles. Glaciers you could walk on. And so we were hooked.
British Columbia:
Vancouver, Vancouver Island (Victoria, Sooke, Tofino, Pacific Rim National Park, Campbell River), Yoho National Park -- the seaplanes coming in and out of the harbor. Ferry whistles. Dungeness crab at Sooke Harbour House, where a seven-foot-tall rosemary bush was growing beside our door. Watching a coyote taking a walk in Campbell River with a pair of magpies as his companions. The waves crashing onto the rocks at Tofino. Drunken Canadians offering to take us home with them so we could see the black bears that lived nearby.
Quebec:
Montreal, Quebec City, Tadoussac -- the drive up the St. Lawrence, from Quebec City to Tadoussac, is the same landscape that made it into Escape Velocity -- rolling hills with apple orchards going down to the great river. The Chateau Frontenac and the Vieux Marché.
LINKS:
The very boring city of Dallas website
Nacogdoches, and Stephen F. Austin State University
Tokyo and Chiyoda-ku
Brownsville, TX
Avebury
The Bayeux Tapestry
Youngstown, OH and Wiki Youngstown
Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan
Colorado Springs, CO
The Turquoise Trail and Tiny's Restaurant and Lounge
Freedom Trail, and the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum
Cancun and Cozumel
Curaçao
Denver, CO
Galveston and San Antonio
Hawaii
Hot Springs, AR
Lake Tahoe
The Luxe Hotel and LACMA
Maine and Cadillac Mountain
Florida and Insalata di Caprese
The National Scenic Byway and Hillside
The National Cowboy Museum
The Columbia River Gorge, the Horse Heaven Hills, and the Yakima Valley
Point Reyes, Napa Valley, and the Auberge
Alberta
British Columbia
Quebec
Tadoussac
topaz_eyes, who asked: You seem to be well-traveled. Where have you been, and why?I'm afraid I ran out of steam by the time I got to Canada. ;-)
And sorry that the links are all at the bottom -- that's just the way it turned out. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.
Places I Have Actually Lived:
Dallas, TX (born and raised)
Nacogdoches, TX -- 1976 - 1978, attended Stephen F. Austin State University. Pine trees. Lots and lots of pine trees, and tiny East Texas towns with names like Diboll, Tenaha, and Timpson.
Tokyo, Japan -- January, 2002 to April, 2003. Husband was there on a consulting contract. We lived in Chiyoda-ku and could see part of the Imperial grounds from our apartment window, along with the Budokan and Mount Fuji.
Places I Have Visited, But Not for Vacation:
Brownsville, TX -- because I was a bridesmaid in a college friend's wedding, sometime around 1978 or '79. The very first time I'd ever flown somewhere. Heh. One of the very few things I remember is that this was the first time I heard people saying "Con permiso" instead of "Excuse me" in a grocery store.
London, parts of Britain -- in 1986. We were trying to decide if we wanted to move to Woking if husband's company decided to go ahead and transfer him there. While there we hit the big draws -- the Tate and the British Museum are the only two I really remember -- then went on a road trip to Bath (Roman villas, heh) and Stonehenge. Stonehenge was actually much smaller than I expected, and I found myself preferring the standing stones at Avebury, which you could actually walk up to and touch (at the time). We also saw Starlight Express at some theatre and were harassed by a drunk in a park.
Paris, parts of southwest France, Bayeux -- our honeymoon, in October 1988. Oh, my God. Heaven. If there really is a heaven, then at least part of it has to look like France. And I wasn't still on a matrimonial high, either -- we were married in 1987 and waited a year to take our honeymoon. So, so beautiful, and the people were just lovely. The straight roads bordered by tall, thin trees, legacies of the old Roman roads. The Champs-Elysees. A bowl of fresh raspberries for dessert in a hotel-chateau. The Martel cognac warehouses. Mont-St.-Michel. The Bayeux tapestry. Driving around and around Orly airport, trying to find the rental car exit. Hee!
Youngstown, OH -- this is where Mr. Nightdog is from, and we used to go there every New Year's. At one time it was part of the U.S. steel-making powerhouse ... now, it's just another buckle on the Rust Belt. Which is not to say that there aren't parts of it that are very nice -- Mill Creek Park is really pretty, and the small towns of Canfield and Poland are very nice.
Now we go to Detroit every New Year's. The less said about that the better. *g*
Ann Arbor, MI -- for our nephew's graduation from the University of Michigan. OMG so beautiful.
Colorado Springs, CO -- for a cousin's wedding. Landing at the airport in Colorado Springs is very much like landing in a cow pasture that someone's put a runway on.
Places I Have Been on Vacation, In Alphabetical Order:
Albuquerque, NM, to Santa Fe, NM -- via the Turquoise Trail. More beautiful countryside, and Santa Fe is a great place to visit. Great food at Tiny's Lounge -- a little restaurant located in a strip mall, which is one of the places real people go to eat.
Boston -- beautiful city. Walked the Freedom Trail (exhausting), visited the Isabel Stewart Gardner museum ... can't remember what else.
Cancun and Cozumel, Mexico -- hot. Really nice, but hot. Did I mention it was hot?
Curaçao -- Mr. Nightdog's older brother went to a medical conference there so we went with him. Long time ago; to be honest the only things I really remember is eating a delicious conch stew and the never-ending trade wind.
Denver -- drove west from Denver to Glenwood Springs, then looped back east through Aspen and Leadville.
Galveston and San Antonio, TX -- our last vacation, last October. The diner that David works in in my Housefic 44 Candles is modeled on diners we saw in Galveston.
Hakone, the Izu Peninsula -- when we lived in Japan, we took the train down to Shimoda, which is where Commodore Perry landed in 1854. Mr. Nightdog's older brother and his wife had come to visit, so it was the four of us bumbling our way south. Here is an excellent source for more information.
Hawaii (Oahu, Maui, Kauai) -- dude. It's Hawaii. *g*
Hot Springs, AR -- when I was a kid. Like a ten-year-old kid. About all I remember is that it was green.
Lake Tahoe, NV -- stayed at Harrah's, so that was the first time I'd ever really been in a casino. The lake itself is gorgeous.
Los Angeles -- beautiful. Crazy. Full of people just waiting to be discovered. The Getty Museum is incredible but we actually liked the Los Angeles County Museum of Art better. Also ... the hotel restaurant at the Luxe on Sunset Boulevard makes the best eggs Benedict in the known universe.
Maine -- flew into Boston, drove up the coast to Bar Harbor. Ate lobster for the very first time (at a lobster pound) and awesome bluefish. This was when I began to understand that fresh fish could taste good -- a fact that was later reinforced when we lived in Japan. Coastal Maine is another slice of heaven -- the view from the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park is spectacular.
Miami, Sanibel Island, Marco Island, Seaside (all FL) -- visited at different times, really like them all. Except for the time I got food poisoning in Miami. No, I don't recommend that at all. Conversely, I had the best insalata di caprese I've ever had in my life at a restaurant in Bal Harbour (Miami).
Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, to Chicago, IL -- road trip. Flew into the Twin Cities, drove east-southeast along the banks of the Mississippi River, crossed into Wisconsin at Prairie du Chien, and continued east through Madison, Whitewater, and Lake Geneva before dipping south to Chicago.
This? Is a great road trip. The landscape is so varied -- the upper Mississippi is beautiful, and further south there are apple orchards, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Hillside House at the Taliesin Estate in Spring Green, WI, Chicago itself ... it's just fantastic.
Oklahoma City, OK -- drove up for a day to see the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. What? Don't look at me like that. Yee haw!
Portland, OR, to Seattle, WA -- this was a road trip that took us on a winding loop along the Columbia River Gorge, through the Horse Heaven Hills, up the Yakima Valley, and ended in Seattle. Beautiful, beautiful country, especially the Horse Heaven Hills -- an undulating, rolling landscape, covered with a short, tawny-brown grass as far as the eye could see.
San Francisco and environs -- amazing, wonderful, dirty, with aggressive panhandlers. Still amazing and wonderful, though. What I most remember is the Point Reyes National Seashore, Napa Valley, and having dinner at the Auberge du Soleil, with the valley spread out below.
And Then There's Canada:
In a separate category because let's face it -- Mr. Nightdog have this long-running love affair with Canada.
Alberta:
Calgary, Banff, Jasper, Jasper National Park, Drumheller and the Badlands -- Banff was the very first place I ever visited in Canada. Our flight was delayed for six hours, and by the time we got to Calgary it was dark. It was one in the morning by the time we got to Banff, so the first-ever look I got at the Rocky Mountains was up close and personal outside our hotel window the next morning. I literally took a step back -- I'd never seen mountains this big and this imposing -- I felt as if they might fall on me.
And then there was more! Elk, deer, snow falling on a silent forest. Ravens. Rivers running so clear and cold, the water was blue-green. Eagles. Glaciers you could walk on. And so we were hooked.
British Columbia:
Vancouver, Vancouver Island (Victoria, Sooke, Tofino, Pacific Rim National Park, Campbell River), Yoho National Park -- the seaplanes coming in and out of the harbor. Ferry whistles. Dungeness crab at Sooke Harbour House, where a seven-foot-tall rosemary bush was growing beside our door. Watching a coyote taking a walk in Campbell River with a pair of magpies as his companions. The waves crashing onto the rocks at Tofino. Drunken Canadians offering to take us home with them so we could see the black bears that lived nearby.
Quebec:
Montreal, Quebec City, Tadoussac -- the drive up the St. Lawrence, from Quebec City to Tadoussac, is the same landscape that made it into Escape Velocity -- rolling hills with apple orchards going down to the great river. The Chateau Frontenac and the Vieux Marché.
LINKS:
The very boring city of Dallas website
Nacogdoches, and Stephen F. Austin State University
Tokyo and Chiyoda-ku
Brownsville, TX
Avebury
The Bayeux Tapestry
Youngstown, OH and Wiki Youngstown
Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan
Colorado Springs, CO
The Turquoise Trail and Tiny's Restaurant and Lounge
Freedom Trail, and the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum
Cancun and Cozumel
Curaçao
Denver, CO
Galveston and San Antonio
Hawaii
Hot Springs, AR
Lake Tahoe
The Luxe Hotel and LACMA
Maine and Cadillac Mountain
Florida and Insalata di Caprese
The National Scenic Byway and Hillside
The National Cowboy Museum
The Columbia River Gorge, the Horse Heaven Hills, and the Yakima Valley
Point Reyes, Napa Valley, and the Auberge
Alberta
British Columbia
Quebec
Tadoussac
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 04:12 am (UTC)It's a country with a language and written signage (I don't think you can call it an alphabet) based on totally non-Western concepts. It's not like going to France, or even Germany, where the language is based on Latin (which we can puzzle out) or Old Saxon (which I think English-speakers know in the marrow of our bones). Plus it's not a predominately Christian nation, which may not sound like a big deal, until you see a well-dressed businessman in an art museum, in the very modern city of Atami, clapping his hands three times in order to summon the gods while standing in front of a glassed-in ancient statue of the Lord Buddha.
And nobody bats an eye. Because it's normal, and real, and they believe this. In Shimoda we toured what's euphemistically referred to as the "sex museum" (here (http://www.marimari.com/cOnTENT/japan/popular_places/vicinity/izu_hanto.html), in the Choraku-ji Temple). Many of the exhibits were of prehistoric stone carvings of phalluses, and some of the exhibits had coins in front of them. Offerings, that people had left, to the gods.
The Japanese believe there are gods (kami) everywhere, most especially in places of solitude and/or places with deep historical significance. After a while you start to believe it yourself. It is a strange, beautiful country that will absolutely turn your head around.
It is very easy to fall in love with Japan.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 04:19 am (UTC)Someday I hope to visit there.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 04:30 am (UTC)The same ritual the sumo wrestlers follow, in addition to spreading their arms, palms out, to show that they carry no weapons.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 06:26 am (UTC)