That was the day that Chris and I arrived back in the U.S. after years of living in Europe on our current Plan G adventure.

Plan G actually started a few months before that, on March 31, 2015, when we left Germany (where we’ been living for 3.5 years) and turned into “tourists” in the EU. (For more on the complexities of that, as well as why our current travel adventures are called Plan G, I refer you to old blog posts here and here and here and here.)

Anyway, here’s a breakdown of our Plan G travel so far:

Phase 1: March 31-2015-June 20, 2015 : Travels in Europe

Phase 2: June 20, 2015-January 7, 2016: Travels in North America, East to West

Phase 3: January 7, 2016-September 21, 2016: Travels in North America, West Coast

Phase 4: September 21, 2016-October 16, 2016: Travels Down Under

Phase 5: October 16, 2016-November 21, 2016: Travels in North America, West to East

Phase 6: November 21, 2016-present: Travels in Europe, again

A while back Chris wrote a lovely little interactive map program for me to use to plot our travels.  He made it back when we were in Phase 2 of the trip, but I never got around to actually populating the map with all our stops, and therefore never shared it.

But I  have now made the Phase 2 map:

Plan G Phase 2 Travels in North America, East to West

That’s a static screenshot of the interactive Phase 2 map. Click on that image, and a new window will open with the interactive map. You can can zoom in and out in the interactive map to see more details, plus you can click on the markers to get more information about the trip.

That Phase 2 map shows all the places we visited from the moment we arrived back in the U.S. (on June 20, 2015) until we got to Vancouver, BC on January 7, 2016. The means it represents more than 9,100 miles of driving around North America in the little Toyota Corolla that we bought (used) in Florida in August of 2015, as well as additional mileage for travel we did by plane, bus, and rental car during that same 6 month period. Seeing everything laid out on the map is kind of fun; while I knew we travelled a lot in a relatively short period of time, I hadn’t realized just how much until I saw it all on the map all at once.

Anyway, I encourage you to let me know if you have any feedback about working with or understanding the map. As a usability professional in another lifetime, I’d like to incorporate changes based on user feedback into the maps for the rest of the phases

We arrived late in the afternoon, having driven down from Eugene, Oregon (where we’d spent the previous night). We stayed at the Curly Redwood Lodge, which is unique in that it was built from a single redwood tree. That fact is interesting, even if the architecture was pretty standard American motel style, but it was a comfortable place, and a good value, so I recommend checking it out if you have the chance.

Best of all,  it is right across from the working fishing harbor. As the sun sank slowly in the (north)west — literally — Chris and I walked over and spotted some seals playing in the water next to the boats. Fun!

The photos I snapped at that moment don’t show the seals, though. Just the sunset. But that was also fun.

Enjoy.

Crescent City Harbour, May 25, 2016

Sunset at the harbor, Crescent City, May 25, 2016

Sunset for the birds

1. Chris had been waiting to hear about two grant proposals that were pending in Europe, with decisions due on both in January.  Unfortunately, the news wasn’t positive for either one, so now the job hunting begins in earnest.

BTW, if you’re curious about what Chris does for a living, his website has been newly updated with more information about some of  his cool interactive visualizations of language data. You can check it out here: http://www.chrisculy.net. (BTW, if you do check it out and see a typo or click on a link that doesn’t seem to work, please let me know.)

2. So what does the job hunting entail? At the moment, this means lots of looking on the internet and sending out emails. All of that, of course, can be done from anywhere,  which means we’re able to stay put here in Vancouver for a little while longer.  We’ll be here until the end of the month.

3. On March 1st, though, the Plan G tour heads  south, at least as far as Seattle.  Seattle will then become our base for job hunting for at least a couple of months.

4. For my part,  I’m trying to work on my book project on early American women photographers (circa 1850-1925).  My first task is to set up a website with some information sheets (which I’m calling SnapSheets™) with photos and stories about all  the interesting women photographers I’ve discovered in my research the last few months. These are women who ran photography studios as early as 1850,  and did quite a lot with photography, but hardly anyone talks about them, and they never seem to make it into the history books.

Here are a couple of ideas/working titles for a website about these women – see what you think:

1. Title: Photos, Pistols and Parasols
Tagline: Celebrating early women photographers 1850-1925

2. Title: Enterprising Ladies, Adjusting the Negative
Tagline: Celebrating early women photographers with élan
(Note: the acronym of title #2 is ELAN)

I’m interested in getting feedback on those two names, so let me know what you think (either in a comment here or in an email).

Anyway, the basic update is that Chris and I are here in Vancouver for a couple more weeks. While we’re here,  we will continue to enjoy sampling the wide-variety of food on offer,  as well as the opportunity to catch up with more old friends and acquaintances.

And the view. We will definitely continue to enjoy the view.    Here’s what it looked like the other morning from our window, as a fog that had socked us in completely overnight finally rolled out as the sun came up:

Foggy Harbour, Photo #1

Foggy in the Harbour, Photo #2

Click on the following photo a couple of times to get it to the largest size, and then see if you can spot all the birds in the fog. In the addition to the 2 in the front, there is a string of birds in the cloud to the right above the trees.

Flying through the Fog, Vancouver

Nice, eh?

Yup, I’m definitely going to enjoy this view a little while longer.

Now I should first explain that for whatever reason, Chris and I fell into a rather relaxed — read lazy — pattern that whole week in Trieste. We didn’t go to any museums, but rather spent most of our days trying different cafes, in the morning for coffee, in the evening for aperitivos. In between the cafes our main adventure each day was to wander around, see the city, and above all else find a restaurant in which to have lunch.

One day we decided to try to find a restaurant that one of Chris’ former colleagues had recommended. Before we left the apartment that morning, we opened the website page for the restaurant in the Internet browser on our iPad, so we’d have the address and a map to find it as we walked through town. We then stopped — as usual — at a coffee bar for a morning coffee, and we took out the iPad to check the address as we were sipping our coffee.

But … we couldn’t get view the page we’d left open on the iPad back int he apartment, because the iPad insists on reloading it, even if it’s already been loaded, and even if you’re not connected to the Internet. Which means that the page just displays as an error page, since it can’t reload, since you’re not connected to the internet.  That’s a most maddening design flaw, IMHO.

However, all was not lost. The barista at the coffee bar was friendly, so we asked her if she’d heard of the restaurant and knew where it was, since it was (we thought) fairly close by, we just didn’t remember the address exactly. And what do you know, she did indeed know exactly where it was,  and she kindly gave us directions to it.

But then, as we were leaving, she slipped us a business card for another place, saying that if the one we’d asked her about didn’t work out , we could try her friend’s place, as it was very good (she said). Hmm, do you trust a recommendation like that? It’s always hard to know if you’re just being lured into a “friend’s” place that will turn out to be touristy and not very good.

But we thanked her in any case and set off on our way. Following her directions to our original target, we easily found the restaurant — which turned out to be closed on Sundays.

Did I mention this was a Sunday? Right. Argh.

Ah well. All was still not lost. We pulled the business card from the barista’s friend’s place, since maybe that needed to be an option after all. However,  when we tried to find the street for the friend’s place on on our little tourist map of Trieste, the street wasn’t on the map. And we hadn’t gotten directions to that place from the barista.

Double-argh.

So our only option at that point was just  wandering  around a bit, hoping to chance upon another restaurant that was open on a Sunday. We walked for a few minutes before spying sign sign for a restaurant “near the oldest Roman arch in Trieste.” Sounds interesting, eh?  The sign’s map wasn’t exactly accurate, so we wandered around some backstreets for about 10 more minutes before finally finding that Roman arch (shown in yesterday’s post); the restaurant was to the right of the arch. The restaurant door was open, but when we went in it turned out that they weren’t serving lunch that day.

However, we had another plan. During that 10 minutes of wandering we’d noticed that a restaurant called “Osteria No” was open, so we decided to go back to find it.  However, with all the twists and turns we’d taken, we wound up taking a slightly wrong turn. But, once we realized that, we decided to  keep going, figuring we could intersect the “No” street we wanted another way, rather than having to retrace all of our steps.

As we approached where we needed to take a right turn to go to No, we passed the back entrance for what was clearly a cafe. We decided to take a left (instead of the right) to check  out the cafe, as we were building up quite an appetite what with all the wandering around.

On the downside, turning left brought us to the front of the cafe, and showed us that it was really just a glorified coffee bar and not an option for lunch.

On the upside, though, turning left brought us another street. We read the street sign and, lo and behold, we had just stumbled onto the street that the barrista friend’s restaurant was on! The street that hadn’t been on our map! Amazing. Although we still had reservations about the way we’d gotten the recommendation, we decided to take a chance on it and went in for lunch.

And…. it was by far the best meal we had in Trieste! The owners were wonderful and very friendly. The woman gave us the menu “a voce” (i.e., verbally, not written down), and as Chris commented to me later, we actually were fairly Italian, in that we listened to the menu and immediately made our choices; that’s not something we usually do that quickly, even though it was what we saw Italians do all the time.

For the wine, the guy came over and explained some options, then brought us 3 different ones to taste, so we could try them before we settled on a bottle to buy.

wine from the Serendipitous meal in Triest

Our complete meal:

– Orecchiette pasta (from Puglia) with a sauce of orata (sea bream) and calamari (squid). Outstanding!
– Orata (sea bream) baked in a shredded potato crust. The flavor of the fish under the potato crust was outstanding: juicy and flavorful.
– Wine
– 2 local digestivo drinks to finish

Consider the the high quality and large quantity of the food, it wasn’t even that expensive. We were so full we had no room for dessert. But on the way back to the hotel we did manage to stop at yet another coffee bar and happened to have one of the best espressos of the trip. A marvelous end to our accidental afternoon adventure on a Sunday in Trieste.

BTW, I meant what I said above. It really was the “mother” of all serendipity, as it wasn’t just any Sunday. It was Mother’s Day.

But today I want to take you back again to the Venice Lagoon. Now, we did see a lot different things around town on our trip to Venice last May. Many of those things will show up on the blog eventually, at least the ones that were interesting.

But one thing we made sure to do every single day we were there was to enjoy some sites and sights along the Venice lagoon.

Enjoy.

On the Venice Lagoon, May 2015

On the Venice Lagoon, May 2015 – panorama

Gondolas on the Lagoon, Venice, May 2015

Storm at sunset, Venice, May 2015 – panorama

Silhouettes, Venice, May 2015

I think I’ve mentioned at least in passing that our Plan G travel has often involved renting a vacation apartments. (This is separate from staying with relatives – thanks, Stan and Judie! and house sitting – thanks Jean and Chattie!  A vacation apartment means contracting with either a private person or a property manager to rent a furnished place that has basic kitchen appliances like a stove/cooktop and refrigerator, plus a place to sleep. In addition, it may have one or more — or none — of the following:

• dishwasher
• washing machine
• iron
• microwave
• hair dryer
• TV
• DVD
• WiFi (Internet)
• land-line telephone

Of all those “extras” the one I would trade everything except the WiFi  for is a washing machine, hands down. I’m a pro (if I do say so myself) of washing stuff out in a bathroom sink in a hotel, and can figure out ways to hang stuff up over a tub to drip-dry.

Hangers. It’s all about the hangers.

But when you have a washing machine right there in your apartment, with its spin-cycle – well, that cuts your washing time down substantially. Glorious. There’s no need for a dryer, IMHO, as long as there are hangers.

Again, doing laundry is all about the hangers.

Anyway, it’s been interesting to note that in places in our price range in Europe, a washing machine seems to be standard. However, here in the U.S., the vacation rentals that I’ve scoped out online have at best a coin-operated washing machine (and dryer) in a room somewhere in the building.  Not must you have quarters, you need to get there when no one else is doing their laundry.  Not nearly as convenient. I find that I’m still washing out a few things on and off here in the apartment, so I don’t have to rely as much on the availability of the washers.

And yes, I have lots of hangers. I bought a 10-pack at a store soon after we arrived, just to supplement anything provided in the apartments here. It really is all about the hangers.

But I digress – sort of.  Because I really didn’t want to get bogged down talking about laundry today. The main theme today is really that  vacation apartments are great if you’re staying in a place for longer than a few days.  They really let you get into a different rhythm, that isn’t quite being at home, but isn’t quite being on vacation, either. In Venice, we tended to eat a regular meal at lunch when we could, and then go out for an aperitivo (an alcoholic or not drink, usually served with small munchies) in the late afternoon, and then head back for a simple meal in the apartment of cheese, bread and wine that we would have picked up at a local deli earlier in the day. Nice.   On other occasions I could even make our main meal (fish or pasta, for example) right in the apartment. You can’t do that kind of thing in a hotel.

Venice is one of the places on our Plan G wanderings in Italy where we had a chance to stay in a vacation apartment. Actually, in Venice we stayed in two different ones, owing to some last-minute changes to our travel plans.  The two apartments weren’t that far away from each other, so they were both in great locations to allow us to just go out for a gelato and catch a great sunset on the nights when it wasn’t raining.

The first one, called “Venice Castello Studio” (VCS) was a studio-sized apartment – small, but  more than big enough for us and our (at that time) very small set of stuff.  Here’s a photo from the Trip Advisor listing for this place (click on the photo to go to the Trip Advisor website to see more views):

Venice Castello Studio (click on photo to see more photos in Trip Advisor listing)

The location of the VCS to other things in Venice really attracted me to this place: not only was it not far from the Lagoon, it was also near the big art exhibition that we wanted to visit in Venice. We discovered when we got there that it was a converted butcher shop, so the bathroom was in the converted meat locker.  Funky does not begin to describe it. However, the main quirky aspect to the VCS was that it was right on a canal and on the ground floor of the building to boot. If you look carefully through the middle window you should be able to spot the steps of that bridge from yesterday’s photo, so you can see how close the street was.

At times, that was either good, funny, or bad.

– Good for views of the canal from the windows – and since it was on the corner of the building, there were a lot of windows.

– Funny for the fact that the windows were tinted as one-way mirrors so people couldn’t see into the apartment.  Since the windows were mirrors, though, people walking down the street would stop and fix their hair, clothing, check for things between their teeth, take selfies of themselves with that bridge, never knowing anyone  could see them as they did it.  Truly funny at times.

– Bad because ground floor apartments in Venice can flood in the winter. It didn’t rain enough to  flood while we were there in May, but it was kind of damp and musty the entire time. That dampness really got old after a few days. Staying there just a couple of days would have been OK, but after 7 days we were more than ready to leave the VCS.

Then we switched to a place called  the Casa Serena, which was a completely different experience.

Casa Serena (click to see more photos on Trip Advisor)

It was really new,  on the second floor of the building by Italian terms, (which in the U.S. would be called the 3rd floor). To get to it you had to walk  down a really, really narrow alley away from the canal, so it had no water view.  However,  it did offer a nice vantage point of the hail (!) storm pounding on the rooftops across the way on the day we moved in there.

Bird in a hail storm, Venice

Hail storm, Venice

A drop of hail, Venice

The lack of the regular water view aside, the Casa Serena was really an otherwise pretty-perfect place: kitchen, bedroom, large bathroom, living room/dining area, WiFi.  And, of course, a washing machine.  It was so big, in fact, that I think it was bigger than some of the regular apartments Chris and I have rented to live in over the years.  I definitely could have stayed at the Casa Serena a lot longer.  Ah well — maybe next time we’re on vacation in Venice.

Consider this a part 1 of a story about staying in a ground-floor apartment in Venice, as I’d intended to write more about our experiences in a funky little apartment right on a little canal, but ran out of time today.

So, today I’ll just go ahead post some photos of what the rain looked like outside our apartment during one of the rain storms. Venice is definitely preferable when it’s not raining, of course, but there are opportunities in a rain storm that you don’t get when it’s sunny.

Anyway,  I took the following photos while standing under a tiny little overhang outside our door, which is why they weren’t all taken at optimal angles. Hey, it was pouring out there — I do what I can, as long as I don’t get wet.

Look for the rest of the story of our apartment adventures in tomorrow’s post. In the mean time, enjoy today’s peak at Venice in the rain.

Rain on a Venice Canal

Bridge across that canal seen from our apartment

Bridge and rain drops

A little rain drop “crown”, Venice

But now we’re on Plan G, and fresh photos of the Dolomites are harder to come by.  So, what to do now when I run out of time for finishing my planned post?

Well … how about this. Late in the day — one day back in May, that is — Chris and I set out with the intention of visiting something in Venice. As we waited for our vaporetto (water bus), another one bus came by that was headed out to the Lido island, in the opposite direction from where we’d originally intended to go.  I can’t recall exactly why, but at the last moment, we decided to catch the Lido-bound one instead and hopped on-board.  It was a good decision, because looking back toward the main island from the back of the bus afforded a spectacular view. Later, after the sun had set but with the colors of sunset lingering in the sky, the view from the bus stop on the Lido was just a photogenic.

See what you think — and then see if you agree that when in doubt, you can’t go wrong with a photo of a sunset over Venice….

.

Venice at Sunset – photo #1

Venice Sunset – photo #2

Venice at Sunset – photo #3

Let me explain.

To set the stage, here’s a quick look of Trieste from above:

Trieste Harbor Scene, from above

The Piazza Unità d’Italiaa is the central square in Trieste, and is visible in the middle of the above photo at the left end of the long white pier that extends out in to the water.  Here’s a look at it while standing on that pier:

Piazza Unità d’Italia, Trieste, Italy

However, it was when we turned around to look down at the water a little beyond that pier that we spotted an amazing sight: a large group of jellyfish floating gracefully through the water. Here a few I caught in motion:

Jelly Fish Photo #1, Trieste

Jelly Fish Photo #2, Trieste

Jelly Fish Photo #3, Trieste

They were so pretty and such fun to watch! Not a treasure for everyone, perhaps. But definitely an unexpected delight to stumble upon in Trieste.

Well, glad you asked. As I’ve said a previous post, Plan G is many things, including the chance to travel, downsize and reorganize our belongings, and above all visit family and friends. So far the last 5 months on Plan G have been chances to do all of that, definitely.

After 5 months, though, the one thing that Plan G is  still is definitely not is an actual  well-formed plan. I’d call it “Slow Travel“,  but I’m not sure it qualifies as that concept. It’s more like meandering travel, I think.

Or maybe we should have called this “Ideas G”, as we have lots of vague ideas of what to do next, but nothing is set in stone yet. I mean, we’re pretty loose on our travel timing, of necessity since a lot of things — like the arrival of our belongings from Germany, and availability of doctors appointments – has been outside our control. But, that need for flexibility in the schedule has worked to our advantage,  allowing us to follow up on opportunities as they appear. That includes a wonderful cat-sitting/house-sitting opportunity next month here in Melbourne (thanks, J— and C—!). As a result, we’re going to be staying here in Florida until at least October 2nd, which will give us more time to plan for the phase after that.

Current ideas on the table for what we do after that:

– A visit to Washington DC to allow me to visit some photography archives to do some research on early American women photographers. I have an idea that seems to be shaping up toward a possible project, and I have identified some works to try to see and archives in general to visit. But note I didn’t say I have a project plan yet — but at least it’s a start towards one, I guess.

– Following that and a stop in NJ, we want to make our way west for the rest of the autumn, hoping to dodge any early snowfalls. There are archives to visit along the way — but I haven’t plotted them on a map yet. We want to visit as many friends along the way as we can — but again, I haven’t plotted places on a route yet.

– Once we get to the  California,  the idea is to head up the coast to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. Again, visiting friends, family and archives.

– Other destinations are on the list, too:  we have friends in Hawaii … and there’s always Easter Island to fit in somewhere….

Anyway, as you can see, there’s not much after October 2nd that is planned yet. Neither Chris nor I are working at the moment, so we are currently planning (well, to use the term loosely!) to wander at least into the beginning of 2016 before we figure out where we’re actually going to settle down. Clearly we need to work this month on some more concrete travel plans and places to stay for this fall, but I’ll have to keep you posted as we figure things out.

Which reminds me: if anyone has suggestions and/or knows of people who need anyone to so house-/pet-sitting anywhere, let me know. We’re good at looking after houses and pets and computer systems that are misbehaving. In general I’m looking into vacation apartments and also house=sitting online listings to see what we can find for the fall.

So there you have it – Plan G explained as much as we have figured it out.

BTW, people often ask if the “G” stands for anything. Not really – although, since it really is a plan where anything’s up for grabs, then I guess you could also say it’s anybody’s guess.

Stay tuned…