Canada is Lovely. It’s Just Not Europe.

Okay, let’s talk about reality for a minute. Because sometimes, you get to go on an awesome vacation you’ve been planning for months. Other times, though, you fly from Seattle to Denver shortly before an unprecedented bomb cyclone with category two hurricane-force winds and the entire airport gets shut down and you can’t get to Europe within 3 days of your scheduled arrival and you have to cancel the trip.

There are some fun things about these times. There’s the fun of exploring an empty airport, the ponderance of how some of those beer taps can be left unsupervised, the thrill of finally getting on a moving train into town after 9 hours in an airport. Mostly, though, it just sucks when you can’t go on your vacation that you’ve been planning and pining after. And yes, I am fully aware that I am supremely lucky to be able to take these trips, and that I have my wonderful life at home to come back to, and I am incredibly grateful for those things. But it sucks.

Denver International Airport, deserted (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Since the trip was for Maia’s graduation from college, Maia, Jason, and I decided to go to Canada for a few days instead since she had never been. We would take three ferries on a route to the Olympic Peninsula, Victoria, and Vancouver. We took our car, which still has Colorado plates and amused lots of Canadians, especially when the car alarm went off mid-ferry ride.

We began on a Tuesday and took our first ferry to Bainbridge Island, where we drove to Port Angeles. There are only a couple of ferries per day between port Angeles and Victoria in the winter, and we carefully timed a stop for lunch and a very short stroll to a waterfall before getting into line.

Mt. Rainier as we left Seattle (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One of the many waterfalls of the trip (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Waiting to board a ferry to another country is not as complex, cumbersome, or time consuming as going through an international airport, but perhaps because it involves just sitting and waiting, it feels like forever to me. The weather was weirdly sunny for winter in the Olympic peninsula, and we waited with car doors open, lounging half outside of the cars.

We were on the Coho on the way to Victoria (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A tugboat doing its job with Mt. Baker in the background (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Jason and I had been to Vancouver before (see Surface-Level Observations of Vancouver), but none of us had ever been to Victoria. It’s difficult to get to without taking an absurdly expensive plane ride (non-plane options include 1.5 hour ferries from the Olympic Peninsula or Vancouver, or an almost 3 hour ferry from Seattle), but Victoria is charming and I would highly recommend it. There are lots of grand government buildings and adorable houses and shiny condo buildings and tree-filled parks, and it’s fun to watch the various types of boats go in and out. It also has some great food (we tried butter chicken poutine in an Irish pub, and it was amazing) and it’s not hard to find a happy hour overlooking the water. We were in the city during an absurdly warm spell, and it was sunny and mid-60s during the day, which felt absurd for British Columbia in March.

One of the beautiful alleys in Victoria’s Chinatown (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Building within an old facade (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Not sure if you remember our coffee crisis from when we were in Vancouver in 2014, but we can confirm that Victoria has good coffee (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On one of our afternoons in Victoria, we took a trip out to Goldstream Provincial Park for a hike. The park is very close to Victoria and has some lovely huge trees. If you want to do the Niagara Falls and trestle hike in the winter or spring, though, let me know, because it’s difficult to find the correct trailhead (in the summer and autumn, it’s easy to go under the highway, but there was a considerable creek running through that tunnel when we got there). The falls are beautiful, and there is also a trail that goes up to a railroad bridge over the canyon and river. It’s beautiful, and a bit terrifying.

I love all the green everywhere (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A very large tree stump (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The trestle (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Finding the trails (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The super moon from our Victoria apartment (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After a couple of days in Victoria, we drove to Swartz Bay and boarded a ferry for Vancouver. On the way, we made a stop at the Butchart Gardens. We were somewhat skeptical because it was early spring and nothing would be in bloom, but I can now back up their advertising and say it’s worth visiting any time of year. My favorite part was the sunken garden, which was built in an old quarry. There were also fantastic statues of various animals, a lovely Japanese garden, and a small boat harbor.

Maia and a random cocker spaniel that she almost stole (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The sunken garden (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A lovely water feature (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A dragon guarding the Japanese garden (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The idyllic harbor (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our ferry to Vancouver was quite large and fancy. It had a full cafeteria, many layers of observation decks, and apparently enough room to carry 34 semis in addition to the passenger cars. We spent a lot of time on the decks, periodically ducking back inside to avoid the wind. The ferry ride from Vancouver island to the city is quite beautiful, especially in nice weather - the boat goes close to several islands. It was a bit early for whales, but we kept an eye out anyway. Either they were in a different area or we didn’t look quite hard enough.

Beautiful islands from the ferry (Photo/Jason Rafal)

When we arrived in Vancouver, we immediately drove to a suspension bridge park, since Maia had never been on one and seemed potentially interested in comparing it to the railroad trestle experience. I told her the suspension bridge would be less scary, and after giving it a try, she was not convinced. It looks like she’s having fun though.

Harrisons on the suspension bridge (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After the suspension bridge we hiked around Lynn Canyon for a while. Walking along the creek, which was a beautiful light bluish green, we came to both a scary warning sign about cliff jumping and then, predictably, cliff jumpers. The water was quite cold, but I guess March weather in the 60s in Vancouver is not common enough to waste. After visiting a couple more waterfalls, we climbed up a whole lot of stairs and headed into town, where we explored CRAB Park and got some tasty food.

A fairly unhelpful infographic (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Crazy Canadians (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Climbing a lot of stairs through the woods (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dogs in CRAB Park (no idea what’s up with that capitalization) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The next day, we realized that our hotel lent out free bikes, requested said bikes, and went on an adventure around Stanley Park. Stanley Park has already been featured in a previous blog, so I won’t spend too much time, but I will tell you that if you want to lead your family on a bike ride from the bottom of the park up to the Prospect Point Lookout, warn them about the intensity of the ride and bring some water. Otherwise, they might become quite cranky at you halfway up.

A very handsome duck (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Biking home through the blossoms (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our next excursion was to Granville Island, where we met our friend Cameron (long story involving well-timed overlapping road trips), ate poutine and gelato, and watched all the tourists interact with some rather aggressive seagulls (one stole a piece of pizza out of a woman’s hand and then struggled to swallow it for the next 10 minutes). Then we went to explore more of the city.

Strolling along the shore (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Granville (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Maia and Cameron ponder some contemporary art (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Some really incredible sidewalk art (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A view of the stadium at night (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On our last morning in Vancouver, we visited Queen Elizabeth park on the way out of town. I would highly recommend visiting if you’re ever in the area - it’s a beautiful park with some lovely gardens and a gorgeous view of the city. There’s also a metal family, stuck in time since the 70s, talking a picture at the top, and adopting yourself into the family makes for some great pictures.

Family pictures with our new family (Photo/Jason Rafal)

So, it wasn’t Europe. But Victoria and Vancouver are lovely, and I’m glad we got to go on another version of Maia’s graduation trip.

Stuck in Palermo

When we got back to Buenos Aires from Mendoza, we spent some time wandering around the botanic garden and the Japanese garden.

The view from the rooftop deck of our Palermo apartment (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A fountain in the botanic garden (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Yerba mate plants (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A giant crane in the Japanese garden (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Because the area where Buenos Aires is located has few large native plants, many larger trees were brought over from similar climates in the southern hemisphere - eucalyptus from Australia, jacaranda from South Africa (the jacaranda trees were blooming when we were in Buenos Aires, which was a really beautiful sight). There are also a lot of palm trees, which lends a slightly tropical feel to the city.

In order to get another country stamp on our passports, we took the ferry over to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, for a day. Colonia is one of the oldest towns in Uruguay and right across the river from Buenos Aires, and there are several ferries that go back and forth every day. Luckily, we had bought our tickets for the day before the G20 shut down all of the ports in the city, so we were able to get out (and back in) to Argentina.

Colonia del Sacramento, which was passed back and forth between the Spanish and Portuguese a ridiculous number of times, has an old town center that’s designated as a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s really adorable, with colorful historic buildings, a lot of art galleries, and good food.

Cute streets and cars in Colonia (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One of the classically old streets (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The beauty of Colonia (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Colorful buildings (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The lighthouse, which was built on top of a ruin (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Jason tried the local specialty chivito, which is a sandwich with steak, ham, cheese, an egg, and condiments. It was quite good but thoroughly excessive.

After we explored the town and had lunch, we still had some time until the boat back to Argentina, so we spent some time walking along the water, sitting in trees, and taking lots of pictures of birds (that was mostly Jason).

A preening green parrot (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Another bird (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Pigeons taking flight (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The second half of our trip was highly influenced by the presence of the G20, which we learned about 6 days before the leaders of the world descended. For the two-day summit, the city shut down the trains and subways, the domestic airport, and all of the city’s central ports. When we disembarked the ferry from Uruguay on the 29th, Trump had already arrived, and customs was vastly slowed because immigrations was making handwritten lists of the names, nationalities, birthdates, and passport numbers of every individual entering the country.

On Thursday night we went to one of the classic jazz clubs in Palermo, Thelonious Club. There was a big band playing, and despite not understanding much of the commentary from the band, we had a great time sharing a bottle of Malbec and listening to the music in the intimate room. Since there were so many players, a lot of the audience was friends and family, which gave the place a cozy, welcoming feel.

The performers at Thelonious Club (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Friday, because we were not able to take a biking and kayaking tour to the Delta el Tigre, (the train to the delta was not running), we booked a tour that took a boat from Buenos Aires up the river and explored the delta area. The tour organizers had their work cut out for them to make sure the tour could run with all the road, train, and port closures - we had to meet in Recoleta in the morning, then a minibus took us to a port far enough from the city center to be open. On the way to the port, our guide told us about how porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) love the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd to an unhealthy degree, how they are heavily influenced by the heavy Italian immigration after the First World War, and how their passion for futbol is supported by 32 professional stadiums in the city.

When we arrived at the boat, the skippers congratulated our guide on making it. Then, we set sail (er, motor) into the delta. Tigre’s delta is the third-largest river delta in the world, and its canal system is extensive. The locals who live in the canals are not able to drive to and from their houses, so there is an entire boat system to support them. There are grocery store boats, taxi boats, and even pool delivery boats.

A beautiful private dock (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The house of President Sarmiento, which is weirdly encased in glass (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A bus on stilts (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A grocery boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A boat delivering a pool (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we went through several of the main canals, the boat docked at the town of Tigre and we got out to explore. Our guide took us to the Puerto de Frutos market, which used to be a fruit market and is now a combination of artisans products and surprisingly upscale, hipster home furnishing stores. After we spent a while wandering, we drove back to Buenos Aires through San Isidro, where we got out for a few minutes to take some pictures of the rather impressive cathedral.

Approaching Tigre (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Securing the boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A man and his dog heading out to the canals (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A three-sided mural (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A San Isidro Cathedral (Photo/Jason Rafal)

When we arrived back in the city, our guide dropped us off at El Rosedal, where we were disappointed to see that the rose garden was already closed for the G20. We walked around outside the fence anyway before heading back to our apartment to get ready to go home.

Taking pictures of hummingbirds kept Jason busy (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A dog chases geese in the park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The incredibly beautiful canopy in one of the parks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A Holocaust memorial (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An adorable collection of stores under the train tracks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Saturday, our last day in Argentina, we spent the day walking around Palermo Soho and eating. We explored Parque Centenario, which had a weekend fair happening, and sat by the fountains for a while.

The making of a mural (Photo/Jason Rafal)

In the evening, we got in a taxi with plenty of time to get to the airport, started driving, and…our driver couldn’t get on the highway. Police were blocking off the exit. Our driver, who spoke no English, made a frustrated noise and took off on the frontage road. We took frontage roads for an hour and a half, fighting the traffic from everyone else doing the same thing, and then finally came to a complete stop because the police were blocking the frontage road as well. Many people called out to our taxi driver, asking him what was going on, but he hadn’t heard anything about the highway being closed. At this point, we were getting fairly anxious about missing our flight. After we sat still for about 15 minutes, the driver started talking to the people around us again. After a few moments of our driver trying to ask us something and us not understanding, we figured out that someone had yelled over to our driver that the police had said the highway on ramp would get reopened at 9. Our flight was at 9:15, and the driver was asking if we wanted to try to take a back way and see if that would work. We enthusiastically said yes, worried that our 15 wasted minutes sitting would make the difference in catching our flight.

Our driver spent the next 15 minutes winding through side streets until we got to the very last entrance onto the only highway to the airport. And it was blocked off. We resolved ourselves to missing our flight and our driver went outside to smoke a cigarette.

After a few more minutes, we saw a huge group of police motorcycles drive past, followed by a motorcade with American flags. Trump’s motorcade had made us miss our flight.

Fifteen minutes later they reopened the road, but we only had 15 minutes before our flight at that point, and they wouldn’t check us in. We spent the next hour and a half rebooking our flights for the next day and trying to find a hotel that we could actually get to, since there were so many road closures. Eventually, we found a hotel back in Palermo, and we had an hour and a half to get there and check in.

It was a 40-minute drive back to Palermo, but the road to the airport had been closed for hours, which meant taxis hadn’t been able to get in and pick people up, which meant the taxi line was insanely long. After several minutes of waiting in line, we noticed that some people were going over to the drop-off point and hailing taxis as people got out. We went over there and I was immediately able to hail a taxi, and we ignored the traffic controller yelling and scrambled inside. We made it to our hotel with half an hour to spare, checked in, and ate some fish and chips down the street.

On our unintended bonus day, we were excited to be able to visit El Rosedal, which had reopened since the G20 ended. It was really beautiful, and I’m glad we were able to go. Between the gardens and the story we got out of out delayed flight, I think it was probably worth the very stressful six hours.

El Rosedal (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A giant bee (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Coated in pollen (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Planetario Galileo Galilei (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An adorable pair of dog friends (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Adventures in the Mountains

On Sunday, we flew to Mendoza for a couple of days. We booked two tours while we were there - a wine tour, as one tends to do in Mendoza, and a gaucho day (gauchos are the Argentinian cowboys). We also spent our evenings walking around the city of Mendoza, which is an interesting mix of working class areas and very loud tourist parties.

The view from our apartment in Mendoza (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We have a habit of visiting places while fountains are under construction (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A performer at a weekend craft fair (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Monday morning, our guide Tim, our guide-in-training Tomás, and Syrah, the company owner’s dog, picked us up in a small truck and we began a 90-minute drive into the foothills of the Andes. By some ridiculous stroke of luck, no one else had booked the tour for that day, so we had two guides to ourselves. Tim and Tomás were great conversationalists as we drove past the man-made Potrerillos reservoir, through the little town of Las Vegas, and finally arrived at Daniel’s ranch.

Mist over the Potrerillos reservoir (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The reservoir, which is low from an alarming lack of snowfall in the past couple of years (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Daniel, his wife Marisa, and his son didn’t speak any English, but they were very nice to us. Immediately upon our arrival, I was handed a four-day-old goat, which was probably the nicest thing they could have done for me. The working ranch had a sizable herd of goats, quite a few horses, some cattle, and 12 dogs, who all eagerly asked for attention. I carried around my baby goat and watched as Daniel saddled the horses and his son let the goats out for the day. After I reluctantly handed back my baby goat, we had some mate and sopapillas for breakfast before mounting our horses and heading up into the mountains.

A cup of mate with breakfast (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Syrah, who is clearly not allowed in the house (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The baby goat that I wanted to keep forever (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Daniel’s son monitoring the goats (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A dense crowd of goats waiting to be let out (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A baby goat stuck in the fence (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The goats running to their daily grazing (and a cranky mule) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dogs in the yard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The foothills of the Andes are beautiful on any day, but while we were in Mendoza there were low-hanging clouds that gave the entire landscape a misty mysteriousness. It was both stunning and completely surreal.

The riding was at a surprisingly intermediate level - we rode up and down steep gullies and across streams, and we spent some time trotting and catering the horses through the flat areas. My horse, a blue roan gelding, was very calm and surefooted, and we only sometimes argued about the best path to take on a steep hill. Syrah and five of Daniel’s dogs came with us, and they all ran alongside and randomly took off barking at cows.

Finding the route (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Heading up the hills (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A pretty great couple’s photo (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We got up to about 9,500 feet and stopped for lunch. The low, heavy clouds were threatening rain, but Daniel and Tim got a fire going and we feasted on cheese, sausage, bread, asado, and the mandatory Malbec. The dogs alternated between defending us from nearby cows and begging for the scraps. Tim and Daniel put up a tarp roof in case it rained, but it just got very cold and damp for a while, and we huddled around the fire.

Putting up the tarp (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Snacks on a makeshift table (Photo/Jason Rafal)

My favorite dog, begging for scraps (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After lunch, wine, and conversation, we got back on the horses and headed up to a lookout point, where we could see the reservoir and the rest of the valley below. From there, it was a steep ride down the mountain and back to the ranch.

The view from the top of the lookout (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Crossing streams on the way home (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A hen among the saddles (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Puppy toes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

It was a truly great day.

On Tuesday, we had a much fancier tour of the area. We were picked up by our guide and joined two other couples in a minibus on the drive to the Uco valley, Mendoza’s new hip wine region.

Jason and I made the mistake of assuming that because we got picked up at 8, which is very early in Argentina, we were going to be fed breakfast. The fact that we were not fed was through no fault of the tour, because everyone knows the harm in assuming, but it did mean that we were very unprepared to drink the equivalent of 6 glasses of high-alcohol wine before lunch. By the end of the first tasting, I was definitely feeling it.

The first winery we went to was Bodega Piedra Negra, which was is one of the foundational wineries in the valley. They had roses planted next to their roses, not because they needed to see signs of fungus like in France, but as a nod to the beautiful, rose-edged French vineyards. Our guide at the winery, who was from Minnesota and fluent in English, Spanish, and French, walked us through the spotless fermentation and barrel rooms, where we were able to try wine directly out of the barrel. One of their prize wines was a combination of Argentinian and French Malbec. Weirdly, the Argentinian Malbec is an older strain - after grapes were originally brought over from Europe, all of the Malbec in France died from the phylloxera epidemic and had to be re-seeded from the grapes in Argentina. This means that now, the strains in Argentina are a closer relative to the original French Malbec than current French Malbec is.

The beautiful front view of Piedra Negra (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Walking onto the terrace (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A room of white wines (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Trying Malbec straight out of the barrel (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The second winery, Corazon del Sol, is owned by an doctor based in Texas who also has wineries in Napa and the Willamette valley. He bought a plot in the communal network called The Vines, which is a growing town that will eventually have 10 boutique vineyards, a resort, and shopping within a consolidated area. Corazon del Sol is interested in mixing different types of grapes to create the most well-balanced wines, instead of focusing on the traditional Malbecs of the area. Our guide at this second winery was great, and we were also getting pretty drunk by that point. We learned that the only real threat to grapes in Mendoza is the devastating large hail, which can ruin a crop for multiple years. Some vineyards are not traditionally in storm patterns, but for those who are, their only real protection is nets that need to be removed to allow the grapes to get light, and then replaced when a storm is in the forecast. It increases labor in the vineyards quite a bit, but it’s better than losing a crop. They also bomb the clouds to try to prevent hail,but the effectiveness of this strategy is very debatable.

Baby grapes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Signs of a recent spray (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Humidity being pumped into the barrel room at Corazon del Sol (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our third stop was Alpasion, which is a combination of the words for soul and passion (you may be sensing a theme about the romantic quality of Argentinian winery names). There, we drank four wines over a four-course lunch. Jason and I were delighted to eat more than crackers, and the lunch was delicious. The view was also pretty amazing.

Our view for lunch (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Spring in South America

Jason and I picked Buenos Aires to visit for a few reasons: it was in the southern hemisphere, which made the weather favorable in our chosen travel time of late November; Jason’s sister Emilie had lived there for a few weeks after college and liked it; and it had an interesting reputation as a European-feeling city in South America, which just sounded cool. Having already decided to save Patagonia for a separate trip to Chile, we decided to focus our time on the city of Buenos Aires, with a couple of days in Mendoza for good measure (and good wine).

Our first Airbnb apartment was in San Telmo, one of the oldest areas of the city. It’s known for great food and great tango, as well as more classic architecture. Our apartment was historic and quirky and adorable. It was also right on the Plaza Dorrego, where there was always something going on - outdoor dining, tango lessons, a street fair. During the day at our apartment in San Telmo, we were constantly serenaded by our neighbor’s slow, classic music, which was occasionally punctuated by the tango playing in the square outside, a bird on the roof, or a child crying next door.

The under construction, cobblestone streets of San Telmo (not entirely practical for vehicles but essential for maintaining charm) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The beautiful blooming trees (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A random paint party in a park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A line to take pictures with the blooming BA sign (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Police near the Casa Rosada (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we landed in the city and got checked in to our apartment, we started walking. We visited Puerto Madero, which is full of chain restaurants and new modern housing developments; we found a marijuana legalization rally in one of the plazas; we went to a classic Argentinian restaurant for dinner. On the first full day, we started our 15-mile walk by visiting the incredibly European-feeling Cafe Tortoni, which has been around since 1858, where we got some coffee and medialunas (sort of like softer, sweeter croissants). We saw the Recoleta Cemetery, where I could not stop marveling about how much all of the marble must have cost; visited the El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore, which is definitely the grandest bookstore I’ve ever set foot in; we marveled at the giant Floralis Generica, which apparently closes and opens with the sun. After a visit to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which has a great collection, we visited a local brewery. It was a good day.

The ceiling in Cafe Tortoni (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our breakfast at Cafe Tortoni (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Beautiful murals were everywhere (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A delicious apple pancake thing (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Reflections at the Recoleta Cemetery (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A cemetery cat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The sky from the cemetery (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Through the window of the Teatro Colón (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The amazing El Ateneo Grand Splendid (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The Floralis Generica (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A painted outdoor staircase at the national library (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A brewery with a surprise skate park in the back (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Saturday, we started walking to the La Boca neighborhood, where we quickly understood that the Boca Juniors were playing a futbol game that evening. It was an ill-fated futbol game, but we didn’t learn that until later. As we walked through the neighborhood, the energy was high. There were block parties, but there were also just people walking around the neighborhood waving flags and singing, punctuated by the supportive honks of the city’s drivers. Later we learned that the match had to be postponed because fans of River, the other team, threw rocks at a La Boca bus and hurt some of the players. It was a huge disappointment to everyone who had traveled for the game, and the rematch was removed from Buenos Aires as punishment. Everyone we talked to about the incident was adamant that it was really unusual for things to get that out of hand.

Game excitement (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Street party (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A mural next to the Boca Juniors stadium (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Street mechanics (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eventually, we got to the iconic painted streets of Barrio La Boca. Buenos Aires has an incredible number of murals and colorful buildings, but La Boca in a league of its own. The buildings in a small cluster of streets near the river are all painted bright colors, and many of the restaurants and bars have life-sized dolls hanging out of the upper windows and leering at the people below. It’s all quite surreal, but incredibly picturesque. We found a restaurant with a great outdoor courtyard and ate some choripan, which I would definitely recommend to anyone.

Paint extending to the river (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dolls hanging from the balconies (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Classic colors (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Painted buildings in La Boca (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The courtyard at lunch (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A classic grill (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A very, very large door (Photo/Jason Rafal)

During our time in the city, I began to understand why it is so special. It is definitely very European feeling - a large percentage of the population is actually from Italian decent - but with some local flair. This was my first time in South America, so I didn’t have much to compare it to, but Buenos Aires had a unique feel that was both sophisticated and friendly. The language was Spanish with some Italian influences, which made it even more difficult for us to understand, with our limited amount of Spanish and almost no knowledge of Italian. Everyone was very nice to us and accommodating, though, and the language barrier never felt like a real problem.

On Sunday, we hung out in San Telmo before flying out to Mendoza. We started the morning walking through the San Telmo street fair, which had a mile of craft stalls, then spent some time in the San Telmo market, where we ate some really delicious choripan at La Choripaneria. It was a lovely goodbye to the area.

The very extensive street fair (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A street band (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The San Telmo Market before it filled up (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A meat stall at the San Telmo Market (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The fast-paced and delicious La Choripaneria (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An Unlikely Geological Hotspot

On Thursday night, I got pretty sick. Sick enough that when we left Old Faithful on Friday morning after walking around for a couple of hours, I was very grateful to my body for not feeling the need to throw up at the geyser.

I wasn’t really able to sleep in, so we got an early start to Old Faithful as planned. Old Faithful goes off approximately every hour and a half, so we had a loose idea of when would be a good time to arrive, but tried not to get too excited about a specific plan.

We got to the geyser about half an hour before it was maybe supposed to erupt (plus or minus 16 minutes, according to the prediction calculator), so we had a seat and waited. It’s hard to see the geyser erupt without being surrounded by people because they slowly trickle in during the hour and a half proceeding the eruption, so even though it was shortly after 8:00 am, we were certainly nowhere near alone. By the time we left a couple of hours later, though, the number of people hanging out about the geyser had increased dramatically.

Old Faithful (Photo/Jason Rafal)

I’m going to be honest here - unusual geothermal activity is pretty cool, but it doesn’t make me insanely excited. Old Faithful wasn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, but it is pretty awesome to see nature explode in any way, whether arbitrarily or (approximately) on a schedule.

After we saw Old Faithful do its thing, we (slowly, and with several breaks to sit down) walked a couple of miles through the area to see the other geysers and hydrothermal elements. Honestly, this part is a bit fuzzy in my memory, so I can’t teach you much about all this stuff. But it was cool, and here are some pictures.

A view of the hillside and the Old Faithful Inn, which is the first example of parkitecture and the largest log structure in the world (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A yellow-bellied marmot (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Some sort of crazy hot water thing (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We next drove to the Grand Prismatic Spring, where Jason’s parking luck paid off and we got a spot in the very busy parking lot. Despite my general state of discomfort, the Spring was amazing. It’s a rainbow of deep, rich colors, starting with blue in the middle and ending at orange on the sides. The colors are from the water temperature, which supports the growth of different types and colors of microbes. Possibly my favorite part was the steam off of the Spring, which was all of the colors that showed in the water. It’s really beautiful, in a crazy, abstract sort of way.

People taking pictures of the Grand Prismatic Spring (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The multi-colored steam was my favorite part (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The Spring is great for abstract photography - notice the reflection of the trees along the lower edge of the orange part (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After the Spring we got some food (Jason) and probiotics (me) at Canyon Village. Yellowstone is kind of odd in that there are a few groups of stores, gas stations, and hotels in the middle of the park. It’s weird having a random cafeteria filled with tourists in the middle of a national park, five miles away from a field of wildlife that has zero humans in it. It’s an interesting dichotomy, but also nice to know that one can always get away from the crowds there.

Our next stop was Hayden Valley, where we joined the other visitors in the great American pastime of taking many pictures of bison. I am constantly bemoaning the lack of this continent’s megafauna (thanks, Quaternary extinction event), and bison are great. They are huge, they are fluffy, they have curious bovine eyes, and they are just entertaining to watch.

A bison wallowing (rolling in the dirt) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our campsite was next to Yellowstone lake, which is massive and lovely, though I missed the sight of the Tetons on the other side. We stopped on our way in to take some pictures of the very chill young male elk that were hanging out in the shade.

Relaxing elk (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Grazing elk (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A ladybug in the grass (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Saturday I felt somewhat better, and we headed to Artist’s Point early to see the lower falls. On the way, after stopping to take some more pictures of bison

I love their eyes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Bison and steam (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Yellowstone in all of its otherworldliness (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Bison butts (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Bison calves play fighting (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A young bison soaks up the early morning sun (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Uncle Tom’s trail was closed, which was frustrating but also a relief, because I’m not sure how I would have done with that many stairs. Artist’s Point, though, is a short walk to a lovely view of the lower falls, and the sun kept peeking out from behind the clouds to bathe the water and mist in a warm light. From Artist’s Point we went to see the lower falls and the brink of the upper falls. Aside from the waterfall being super dramatic, the canyon is a beautiful yellow and orange.

Upper Yellowstone Falls (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Another shot of the Falls showing the colorful canyon (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An adorable and very twitchy squirrel (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we saw the falls from several angles, we left to head for the Norris Geyser Basin area. On the drive, we saw a crowd of people peering at something over a cliff, so I demanded we stop to investigate. It was a baby black bear and its mother, who was being incredibly tolerant of the people standing far closer than the suggested 100 meters as they oohed and aahed. Jason had a pretty long telephoto lens, so we were able to get a couple of pictures while staying a little further back. After a couple of minutes the bears headed off, and we continued to see more geyers. Mama bear (Photo/Jason Rafal) Baby bear (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Norris Geyser Basin looks like the scene of the apocalypse. There are forests on all sides, but the ground in the area is very light, devoid of trees, and usually looks very dry and salty (except when there are geysers and pools). Mammoth Hot Springs is known for its beautiful, multicolored terraces, over which the hot water flows and steams. It’s weird, and remarkable, and mesmerizing.

The basin (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Steam escaping from a hillside (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Canary Spring (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Palette Spring and Terrace (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After eating lunch in Mammoth along with everyone else who was in the northern tip of the park, we headed out east to Lamar Valley. On our way, we saw another mother and baby bear by the side of the road. There were rangers keeping people from stopping because the bears were so close, so we kept driving. Once we got into the valley we stopped and got out of the car to look at the herds of bison.

There were just so many bison (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we officially left Yellowstone, we drove over Dead Indian Pass, which is so poorly named I am hardly willing to say it. But the view from the top of the pass is absolutely incredible, so I wanted to share that. It has a tragic story involving a tribe fleeing to a new valley, and a dying man who was left behind.

The incredible view from the top of the pass (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We spent our last night in a beautiful guest house in Wyoming, where we watched the sun set and the stars come out. It was a lovely end to the trip, and there was an adorable dog who came to say hi in the morning as well.

Sunset over the hay fields (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Stars in the evening sky (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our dog friend (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Yellowstone has a lot of really cool places to see, but I think the most impressive thing about the park is that approximately three million people each year come here to watch…nature. Even with all that has changed in the past 100 years, a beautiful, weird park in the middle of nowhere Wyoming is still one of our nation’s top internationally visited treasures. It gives me a tiny bit of faith in humanity.

Pointed Mountains and Clear Lakes

For the 4th of July, Jason and I took a road trip to the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Despite both having spent considerable amounts of time living in the West, neither of us had ever been, and the mid-week holiday seemed like a good excuse to take a couple more days off.

Approaching the Teton range (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The Tetons, looking fake (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A classic barn-and-Tetons shot (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We arrived mid-afternoon on Wednesday, and after securing a camping spot so that I could stop having so much anxiety about where we were sleeping, we set off on a hike to Taggart and Bradley lakes.

Taggart Creek (Photo/Jason Rafal)

I have spent a considerable amount of time around dramatic mountains - I’ve been in Colorado nearly my whole life, and have marveled at all of our lovely ranges. The Tetons, though, still amazed me. They are granite, and they have snow and glaciers year round, which gives them an arresting black and white look. They are also very steep, with angles jutting into the sky. They do not blend into the landscape at all, and they are very beautiful.

The trail to the lakes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The view at Bradley Lake (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We were not prepared for the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes love Jason, but we hadn’t had to deal with them in large numbers on any of our recent vacations, so we spaced bug spray on that first hike and had to take a slightly more hasty pace back to the car so that Jason could escape the swarms. The lakes were very photogenic, despite the bugs.

A thickly forested trail (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After our hike, we headed to Jackson to see what it was like. It was kind of like a Colorado ski town, just more western. It was simultaneously familiar and odd, just like any mountain town, but it’s a beautiful place.

Jackson has four giant arches built of antlers, because why not (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Sunset at our campsite (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Thursday we got up early so that Jason could take sunrise pictures at the Snake River Overlook, which is where one of Ansel Adams’ famous photographs was taken. It was absurdly early, and rather cold, and incredibly beautiful. When the sun was up we drove to Schwabacher’s Landing, where there were a number of photographers already taking lovely reflection photos in the morning light.

The Tetons photograph especially well in black and white (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A stunning mountain sunrise (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Another very similar photo because we couldn’t pick one (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The reflections at Schwabacher’s Landing were incredible (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Cloud reflections (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dedicated sunrise photographers (Photo/Jason Rafal)

With our sunrise pictures out of the way, we headed next to Jenny Lake, where we took the first ferry over to Hidden Falls and Cascade Canyon, which were nearly unoccupied at 7:15 am. This side of the lake features the beautiful waterfall, overlooks of the lake, and the typical outstanding views of the Tetons. We hiked around for a couple of hours before taking the ferry back and packing up our campsite.

The first boat across the lake (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Early morning light on the mountains (Photo/Jason Rafal)

More beautiful mountains and water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The dock on the other side of the lake (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Hidden Falls (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The ferry on Jenny Lake (Photo/Jason Rafal)

For the rest of the afternoon, we drove by Jackson Lake all the way up to Moose Falls in Yellowstone, where we hung out for a while before driving back to our cabin for the night in Colter Bay, where we cooked dinner next to the surprisingly clear lake and tried to obtain minimal additional mosquito bites.

Boats on Jackson Lake (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Sunset, Tetons, and Jackson Lake (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The lovely Moose Falls, where we were unfortunately not allowed to swim (Photo/Jason Rafal)

At the Mouth of the Columbia River

For Memorial Day weekend, we went to the riverside town of Astoria, Oregon, which is famous for being where Lewis and Clark spent a miserable winter after finally reaching the Pacific. It’s an old town that is not so slowly becoming a favorite of Portland dwellers and hipsters, and it’s quickly gentrifying as the old houses and shops are remodeled and repurposed. Nicole’s grandparents bought an old house and are slowly doing some restoration.

The grand Liberty Theatre (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The riverfront is very scenic, with Washington visible across the Columbia River and massive container ships frequently passing below the bridge on their way to and from the ocean. Wooden supports, remnants of a long-ago burned pier that are now covered in algae, line much of the Astoria Riverwalk.

A very large, very orange cargo ship heading out to sea (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The remains of something that might be a boiler (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After arriving in town and getting some food, Jason and I headed to the Astoria Column, which I saw from outside the restaurant and set my heart on visiting. The Astoria Column is a significant tower on top of a hill that overlooks the town of Astoria, the Colombia and Youngs Rivers, and the dense green forest to the east. It’s an incredible 360-degree view. We hiked up through the dense, green forest from the community college to climb the tower, and then made our way back to the house along the top of the ridgeline.

Nicole is confused by some sticks at the start of the trail (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The view of Astoria and the Columbia River from the Column (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The forest beyond the city (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The Astoria-Megler Bridge at sunset (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A large private garden that has welcomed the community to spend time there (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Although Astoria is not actually on the ocean, it’s very close, and we had to go to the beach while we were there. We went to Fort Stevens, which had a lot of civil war memorabilia and education in honor of Memorial Day. We greeted the horses and the educators before walking through the forest to the beach.

A typical Civil War-era scene. With a stroller behind it. (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Martha discusses the horses with one of the educators (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Portrait of a mustang (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Surveying the landscape (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Walking out onto the beach (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The view from the jetty (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Sunday night, after a delicious seafood dinner, Jason, Nicole, and Eric went to the Fort George Brewery to see live music and eat dessert. The band, All Our Exes Live in Texas, was composed of four women from Australia who turned out to be great folk artists who were, for some reason, stopping at a brewery to play at the start of their U.S. tour. The brewery was packed, the music was lively, and the musicians even sang happy birthday to one of the children dancing in front of the stage. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

A sign from above (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A jumble of reflections (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The band (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After the music was over and the dessert consumed, we walked back to the house through the city streets and the hillside passageways that allowed pedestrians to walk up and down between the houses. We took about 6 of these passageways while we were in town, but we definitely got the feeling that there were more of these secret paths than we could find in a week.

The Garden of Surging Waves, a tribute to early Chinese immigrants (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Bizarre window decorations (Photo/Jason Rafal)

More bizarre window decorations (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The Flavel House Museum, which is a bit creepy at night (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Astoria is intriguing both for its history and its current state of transition, and we will definitely be back to explore further.

There were deer everywhere (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Soaking up the plentiful summer sun (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An impressive item at the fantastic Vintage Hardware (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

A vehicle for the Cannery Pier Hotel (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A piece of a 620-year old Douglas Fir, which is protected by some presumably younger wood (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Sloths and Monkeys and Lizards, Oh My!

On Thursday we woke up early to go to the Manuel Antonio National Park for a guided tour. It had rained hard the night before, and in a possibly related turn of fortune, we got very lucky with animal sightings. We saw several sloths, a couple of which were moving; fantastically camouflaged helmet lizards; a similarly well camouflaged bird, a couple beautiful species of spider; a honey bear (that one was just a tiny blob of fur sleeping between two branches); dozens of overly friendly capuchin monkeys; a porcupine, which a capuchin poked; a howler monkey swinging between trees; a agouti, related to capybaras, that looked like a mix between a rat and a rabbit but with a certain prey animal quality; a very small deer and its fawn; a tiny frog; and several lizards. Our guide, who had interned at the San Diego Zoo, was amazing at spotting animals hiding in the trees. We would have only seen about a quarter of the animals without him. He spoke great English, knew an enormous amount about the small national park, and had an easy rapport with the other guides; as we passed other groups, the guides would point out animals to our guide, and he would do the same for them.

A slow-moving sloth (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A helmet lizard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An adorable agouti (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A mother and baby sloth (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A posing capuchin (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A porcupine curled up in a tree (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After our tour, Ally, Emilie, Jason, and I went on the Cathedral Point loop to look at some views of the ocean. Then we went and changed into our swimsuits and actually jumped in.

A note about the Pacific Ocean in Costa Rica: it is beautiful, light green, and very warm. A note about me: having spent very little time in the ocean while growing up, I really don’t know how best to handle it, and there is a lot of flailing and swallowed water when I am spending time there. The others were quite proficient at ocean, but I am rather bad at it. I got caught in a wave twice, which was a bit alarming for me, but I feel like I’m getting better. I definitely had fun once I caught my breath.

A lounging capuchin (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We ordered a couple of ripe mangoes from a street vendor - they were amazing (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After swimming we made dinner plans with Anne and Marc and headed to get - wait for it - coffee. At the coffee shop, we sat and watched the late afternoon sun shine over the ocean, then watched a thunderstorm move toward us. It wasn’t until right before the wall of water reached us that we realized we might have trouble getting back to the resort. It would be quick, we told ourselves. Half an hour of downpour later, we realized we might just have to suck it up and walk the five minutes back in the rain. We made a call and headed back, then got raincoats so we could head the other way to dinner. Of course, as soon as we started heading to dinner, the rain slowed.

The view from our hotel room window (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Friday morning we took a kayaking and snorkeling trip, and we had the tour all to ourselves, which was lovely. Our guide showed us how to paddle most effectively and then loaded us up into two-person open kayaks. We paddled around a bird nesting ground, between the rocky shore and an island, and over to a snorkeling spot at the other side of the small bay. We never actually went to land, but instead to a buoy with a place to tie kayaks near an outcropping of rocks in the middle of the water. Our guide stayed in his kayak to manage our kayaks and be around if we needed rescuing, and we put on our gear and jumped in.

Starting off (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The water was much murkier than the Caribbean, but we were still able to see several types of fish. Ally and Jason dived down with GoPros to try to capture them, which worked surprisingly well.

Jumping in with the fishes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A variety of fish (Photo/Jason Rafal)

More fish (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Anne in the water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After returning to our kayaks and “gracefully” clambering aboard, our guide gave us some fresh pineapple for a snack and helped us get situated to paddle back.

Unloading from the kayaks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we got out of the water, our bus took us to a restaurant where we were served cansadas, a typical meal with delicious fried local fish. Our guide helped us arrange a ride to Quepos that afternoon for the Friday night market, and we headed back to our resort to relax for a while.

We got to the night market a few minutes before sunset and watched the color over the water. The night market was small (Quepos only has about 4000 residents) but had a great selection of fruits, vegetables, meats, breads, and handicrafts.

A boat coming in during high tide (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Sunset on the ocean (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Giant zucchini (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Stalls at the night market (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A street in Quepos (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Saturday afternoon we had a transfer back to San Jose. In the morning, we all split up and did our own thing. Jason and I walked down to the beach before breakfast, where I waded in and we watched a couple of very excited dogs dog a hole in the sand. We also saw a family of capuchins crossing the street using the power lines. We were waiting where we expected the hotel shuttle to come pick us up, but it never came, so we got to experience the public bus, which was very nice. The elaborate foam coin compartmentalizer for providing change made me question how many coins Costa Rica actually has.

An airplane that a rich expat brought to Manuel Antonio and built a bar in (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A capuchin and her baby (Photo/Jason Rafal)

I don’t understand why all of the animals in this sign are realistic, but the child has an absurdly large head (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A happy beach dog (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A less happy beach dog (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One beach dog yelling at another to dig more (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we got back and went to breakfast, we went to the butterfly gardens in the animal refuge, which is managed by the same company as our hotel. The butterfly garden was small but beautiful, and there were tons of colorful butterflies fluttering around (I still think they should be called flutterbys). The garden had a second floor level with wooden chairs and benches that was shaded, which provided a very nice respite from the heat while watching all the butterflies.

A very large caterpillar (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A posing butterfly (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A very dramatic lizard-type animal (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After butterflies, in a completely unexpected turn of events, we went to get coffee. We went to Emilio’s, where we sat and watched the amazing view one last time. Costa Rica doesn’t really have a coffee shop culture - people usually seem to eat a meal around having coffee. To feel better about taking up a table just to have coffee, we also ordered a croissant and pain de chocolat, which both came warmed. It felt a bit European. After coffee, we headed back to the hotel to check out.

Espresso in paradise (Photo/Jason Rafal)

In between checking out and leaving for San Jose, we got lunch at a little fast casual falafel restaurant owned by an Israeli woman. The food was delicious, and they had a very good mango ginger smoothie as well. After eating, we met up with Anne and Marc at the other coffee shop, where the Rafals got more coffee. I had a frozen lemonade blended with mint. Many of the mint drinks here have been blended, which means you can get a wonderful amount of mint in the drink without being annoyed by the full leaves sticking everywhere.

After lunch we were picked up and began the three hour drive back to San Jose, where we had dinner and prepared for our trips home. I definitely could have stayed longer.

The Days of Stereotypical Costa Rican Activities

On Tuesday, Emilie, Ally, Jason and I went zip lining. We were picked up at our resort and driven to the zip line company, which was a major operation. Buses of people seemed to be arriving constantly, and we were shuttled through to get helmets and harnesses. One of the employees even helped me strap our borrowed GoPro to my helmet.

After we waited in line for a while to get our safety talk, we climbed into open gondola lifts and flew through the air to the top of the mountain, where we disembarked and tried out a tiny baby zip line before moving onto the 400+ meter large ones. Emilie and I were rather nervous, but we all managed to step up on the platform and set off.

Emilie waits her turn (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Ready to set off (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

My general impression of zip lining is that, similar to water parks and very popular bars, it’s fun but not worth all of the waiting around that you have to do. I will say, however, that the view from the five big zip lines was pretty amazing, and I’m very glad we went. You could see the Arenal Volcano itself, which was very clear that day. You could also see the lake that was created after the last time arenal erupted - there was a town there, but they had enough warning to fully evacuate, and after the eruption they created a lake over the area. La Fortuna, on the other side of the volcano, is so named because it was mostly unaffected by the eruption.

There were many pictures of people checking whether the GoPro was on (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

More GoPro checking (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Lake Arenal (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Arenal Volcano (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

The rest of the view was of the vast, green, layered forest that carpeted the mountainous area. One of the zip lines actually went through the canopy, which was also very cool.

Zipping through the canopy (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

After our ziplining adventure, we headed into the town of La Fortuna to get some coffee and lunch. It’s a small town, but there was some very good food.

A beautiful iced latte (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Graffiti on our way to lunch (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Wednesday, we took a bus transfer to Manuel Antonio. An hour into the ride, we joined up with a rafting company to take a two-hour raft trip down the Balsa river. Every day, the dams at the head of the river are opened for a couple of hours, and that’s when all the rafting companies take tours - there were three or four rafting companies altogether.

It very quickly became evident that river rat culture is the same everywhere. The guides teased each other and splashed us as the rafts passed each other. Our guide, a La Fortuna native, told us that he had done this for 15 years (after telling Anne that it was his second time out to scare her). The guide told us that it would be class two and three rapids, so we weren’t expecting too much excitement.

Rafting the Balsa River (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Some gentler rapids (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Some less gentle rapids (Photo/Jason Rafal)

When we hit a bumpy patch and our guide fell out of the boat about 15 minutes in, we realized we may have been wrong. He fell out in the first third of a rapid stretch, then pulled himself up and had enough time to shout “get down!”, our signal for huddling into the bottom of the boat, before he almost fell out again. Getting down was very necessary because no one was steering for a good chunk of time, but we made it out of that stretch without additional incident.

A few minutes later there was more excitement. We were not oriented correctly through another rapid stretch and found ourselves pushed into a large rock in the middle of the rapids by the strong current. Our guide immediately started trying to push us off of the rock, and climbed out onto the rock for more leverage when that didn’t work, but another raft slid into us and under the front of our raft, pinning us. Suddenly, flipping the raft and pinning Jason against a large rock while we did so seemed like a legitimate possibility. Noting the situation, the rescue guides, who were in one-person inflatable kayaks, came over to help our guide, and eventually they were able to slowly wedge the boats apart to free us.

Some slight concern at getting stuck (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Waiting to get free (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our guide took us to the side of the river and, taking a deep breath, remarked that we were having an exciting trip today. He also showed us his river tattoo - his scraped and slightly bloody arm from falling out of the boat.

The rest of the trip was a bit less eventful, as the big rapids were mostly in the beginning of the trip. When we got to a very calm part of the river, our guide invited us to get out and float down for a while. It was beautiful and very peaceful, even with other boats around.

After we got back in, we saw a variety of wildlife, including iguanas, lizards, cormorants, blue and white egrets, a few other species of birds, a sloth, and some long-nosed bats.

The smaller rescue kayaks were loaded up with some fresh pineapple and watermelons, and we paddled to a rocky river shore and ate the fresh fruit while watching and occasionally feeding the family of cows that was there.

The guides cut up fruit on the bottom of a raft (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Feeding the resident cows (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we finished rafting, we changed and climbed back into the bus for an hour-long ride to lunch through hills of farmland. The food was what’s called typical in Costa Rica: black beans, rice, salad, French fries, meat, and plantains. We were starving, but I’m fairly sure it was also delicious.

We also got to see and order professional pictures from rafting. We all started laughing immediately because everyone looked like they were having fun except Anne, who actually looked very angry…in almost every picture.

The rapids started immediately (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

Anne was less than amused (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

Reassurance after some rapids (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

Water everywhere (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

Our guide jumped during many photos (Photo/Costa Rica Films)

After lunch, we skirted San Jose and headed to the coast for the last four hours of driving. We were able to see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean as we started driving down the coast toward Manuel Antonio.

Vamos A La Playa

On Monday, Ally, Emilie, Jason, and I went on a hiking tour. Along with the people picked up from four other resorts, we stuffed a 15-person bus and went to a hiking trail beside the Cerro Chato and Arenal volcanoes, where we put the provided lunches in our backpacks and started our big loop for the day.

Starting the hike with a hanging bridge with a 5-person maximum (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We began by walking through the forest and saw some wildlife and plants, along with stops with volcano views. I was a little worried that all of our 8-mile hike would be slow and over fairly flat ground, but I was enjoying seeing the animals and learning about the plants. We came across a colony of leafcutter ants who were carrying leaves that were three times their size across the path in neat rows. Our guide, Nano, also picked up an ant and showed us how it could hold an entire leaf if it needed to.

Emilie sniffs a citronella leaf (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The insane strength of a leafcutter ant (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We also hiked by a massive tree that had a vine hanging from it, and we were invited to play out our Tarzan dreams. Ally and Jason both gave it a try, and Emilie and I were content to watch and take pictures. I was just blown away by the width and height of the tree - it had obviously been there a very long time.

Jason swinging around in the trees (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Arenal Volcano (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Jungle flower (Photo/Jason Rafal)

As we were hiking, we saw some spider monkeys climbing around high up in the trees. We took a few minutes to watch a take pictures, and then started moving on. Within a couple of minutes, though, we heard the monkeys start chasing each other around and making irritated noises, and because seeing a monkey spat is one of the lures of visiting Costa Rica, we backtracked to watch. It looked like some sort of territorial issue, and there was much chasing between trees and yelling. One of the monkeys had a baby clinging to its back as it jumped around.

A spider monkey doing…something (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A baby spider monkey clings to its mother as she moves from tree to tree (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After a couple more hours hiking through the jungle, during which time we stopped while our guide explained how to get out to three tourists who, concerningly, didn’t appear to speak a lot of Spanish or carry any water, we came out of the forest into a lava field. This was pretty reminiscent of avalanche fields in Colorado - a wide area where all the trees have been wiped out that’s filled with large rocks. These ones, unsurprisingly, were all lava rocks.

We hiked along the lava field to a lovely stream, where we stopped for lunch. It was beautiful, and a great place to stop in the shade for a bit. There were surprisingly few bugs, considering that we were in the jungle. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for him, Jason lured them all away.

Lunchtime at the creek (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After lunch, the hiking got more strenuous. I am used to Colorado hikes, which generally go up rather steeply for a while and then back down to the parking lot. Instead of a direct up a down, this hike went up and down dozens of times. It was also steeper, slicker, and had fewer rocks to brace against. For the very steep slopes, there were ropes tied to trees that we had to use to pull ourselves up the slopes and brace ourselves going down. Our guide would help everyone up or down from a steep ledge and then take off into the forest to get ahead of us before the next one, whooping and making Donald Duck noises as he went. Whenever we had all gathered and were ready to go on, he would say “vamos a la playa!” and take off. This confused us at first because we were nowhere near a beach, but everyone bought in after the first five times and started saying it themselves.

Some more technical hiking (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eventually, we exited the forest and walked through a working farm. At the farm, we saw horses, adorable pigs, a big spider, and tiny adorable organic pineapples. There was also a field of Brahman bulls that our guide fed leaves to. Interestingly, the farm was also some sort of tourist attraction. We walked across a couple of hanging bridges and then to natural pool with a waterfall. Our guide had extolled the virtues of the waterfall, and said the best way to view it was from behind the water. When we got there, we saw that one would have to jump into the pool and swim around to the back side of the waterfall, which our guide immediately did. Tentatively, a few other people in our group stripped down to undergarments and waded in. Of our immediate group, only Ally did, and the rest of us felt a little better about chickening out when she confirmed how cold it was.

A posing pig at the farm (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A large and frightening banana spider (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Nano standing on the other side of the waterfall (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After everyone got out of the water and dressed, we walked to another resort, the Arenal observatory lodge. It felt like we were trespassing as we visited the very small museum about the Arenal volcano and its surrounding area and used the bathrooms there to change into swimsuits. After changing, we were directed to the panoramic deck, where we hung out in the fading afternoon sunlight and admired views of the volcano, the lake, and a weird fake tree that the lodge stuck pieces of watermelon to so that birds would entertain the onlookers. We also saw some adorable animals called coatis, which I unfortunately do not have a picture of. And then, in a move that won over the Rafals entirely, we were fed coffee and cookies before getting back into our van, Grace, to drive to a hot springs.

The view of Lake Arenal from the deck (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The watermelon tree (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We finished the day at a public hot springs, where we sat in the river, got volcanic mud masks, and had Fresca mixed with Cacique Guaro poured into our mouths by our guide. The entire experience was amazing and surreal. We parked right on the road and got into the water under a bridge, and the entire river was the temperature of a slightly cool hot tub. As we hung out, drinking and soaking, many other groups showed up. By the time it was fully dark and we were leaving, the spot had gone from being shared by a couple of groups to a rather crowded party. As people got there, they would prop up some flashlights to create light, open the alcohol they brought, and find themselves a place to wade in. It was a very satisfying end to a very full day.

The hot springs before it got dark and crowded (Photo/Ally White)

Mud masks in the hot springs (Photo/Ally White)

#RafalRica Begins

In April, we (Jason, me, Emilie, Ally, Marc, and Anne) went on a trip to Costa Rica to celebrate Anne’s 65th birthday. None of us had been to Costa Rica before, and with the help of a local travel company, we had planned a week full of typical Costa Rican activities.

We all arrived in San Jose on Saturday evening and stayed at Hotel Grano de Oro, which is a Victorian house in the city that was transformed into a boutique hotel in the early 1990s. The hotel is amazing - there are many open-air courtyards throughout, and the halls are lined with old wallpaper, mirrors, paintings, clocks, and other art. There was a great sense of not knowing whether I was inside or outside as I walked from the lobby to our room, and we even had a personal fountain outside our window. The restaurant is also very good. Overall, would highly recommend.

A hotel hallway (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A hotel courtyard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The nighttime view from the roof deck (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A traditional tico breakfast (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Sunday, our driver and guide, Tommy, picked us up in the morning and we started the long drive to La Fortuna, where we would spend the first part of our trip. Along the way, he told us fun facts about Costa Rica and generally got us excited about being in the country. One of the first things we learned was the phrase Pura Vida, which is a catch-all phrase used across the country to express pleasantries. Our guide said that the phrase was a marketing campaign used by a president in the 80s that was wildly successful and spread throughout Costa Rica culture. It appears to have originated from a 1950s Mexican movie, but Costa Rica adopted the phrase as its own.

Similarly to many other countries I’ve been to, traffic laws in Costa Rica are used more like loose guidelines, and people tend to just make the driving choices that make the most sense to them at the time. Our driver used his hazards like blinkers to show when he was slowing down for a stopped car. They also use horns similarly to how they did in Vietnam - one longer blast to scold, a couple of light taps to tell someone you were passing them. Most of the bridges were one lane, so the person who got there first would go and the people coming the other way would have to wait.

Passing on mountain roads (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We were driving on Easter, which was also Election Day, and there were flags everywhere - on houses, tied to cars, being carried around - to show candidate loyalty. We passed many voting stations by the side of the road.

Voting registration stations (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We had a few stops on our way to the hotel in La Fortuna; the first was Doka Estate for a coffee tour. At Doka, we combined with other groups and followed a young woman around the farm as she walked us through how the coffee beans are harvested, sorted, de-skinned, dried, and stored. The Rafals know a fair bit about coffee, but I was struck by the sheer amount of labor that goes into coffee preparation. A lot of it is still done by hand at Doka. Similarly to picking grapes in France, laborers are invited to the farm and given food and board every year to work picking the coffee fruits. Doka roasts and also sells green beans.

Lovely tropical scenary at Doka (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our guide shows us different states of coffee beans (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Machinery that de-skins coffee (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Costa Rica has an interesting coffee culture. Until recently, they exported all of their good coffee and kept the low-quality beans to sell domestically. In the past few years there has been a movement to keep some of Costa Rica’s good quality coffee in the country. The coffee we were served at resorts, which was primarily Britt, was pretty good.

Bags of resting coffee beans (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dried green coffee beans (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Ally helps Doka rotate the drying coffee beans (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After finishing the tour and sampling some different coffees and chocolates, we loaded back into our van and headed to La Paz Waterfall Garden. This time, Tommy stayed with us and gave us the tour. La Paz is an amazing park with several large waterfalls, butterfly and hummingbird gardens, and a sort of zoo of rescued birds and wild animals. Tommy walked us through the butterfly garden; a rescued bird area, where we met a very patient toucan who was posing for pictures; an area with capuchin monkeys, spider monkeys, and sloths; and a hummingbird garden, where a descriptive sign advertised the 20 or so types of hummingbirds and we struggled to identify two or three.

A posing parakeet (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A gorgeously colored rainbow-billed toucan (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A butterfly rests on a flower (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We enjoyed a buffet lunch in an open, indoor-outdoor cafeteria before visiting some wild cats (ocelots, jaguars, and an adorable margay) and looking around a traditional Costa Rican farmhouse and yard, where we also sampled traditional sugar cane tea (which tastes like…sugar cane), cornbread that had a pudding-like consistency, and the cheese that we would find to be most prevalent in Costa Rica, which is firm and squeaky and doesn’t melt easily.

A margay, which, at about the size of a domestic cat, is more wild cat than big cat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After that, we started climbing down the hill and viewing the large waterfalls on the property. The maintenance of the trails was really impressive - it was mostly concrete steps, ramps, and railings that had been molded to look like tree branches. The trails were often steep, but well managed. The waterfalls were stunning, and each had at least a couple of vantage points from which to view them.

The whole group (despite the perspective, I am not the tallest) (Photo/Tommy)

A large jungle waterfall (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Three waterfalls from one vantage point (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The entire property is meant to be toured from the top of the hill down, and then a shuttle returns you to the top to exit. As we waited for the shuttle next to a narrow, twisty mountain road, we watched the cars and trucks making the alarming turn and they went up and down the road. At one point, a pickup truck towing a car with a rope came by, with one person in the driver’s seat and another one running up the hill behind them so he wouldn’t weigh down the car. They held up the cars in both directions for a couple minutes while trying to negotiate the turn.

The car towing having some effect on traffic (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After the waterfall garden, we drove through the forest on twisty mountain roads with hairpin turns before the landscape flattened out into rich farmland. In the afternoon, we arrived at our resort, which had beautiful views of arenal volcano from every room. We didn’t hear until later that a minority of people visiting the area actually get to see the volcano clearly; we were lucky enough to get three at least partially clear days.

The view of Arenal from our resort (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An Enormous GoPro

On Monday we took the tour to Isla Contoy that we were supposed to take on Saturday, which ended up being not the tour that I booked but a similar tour with another company that we were added into. This meant that instead of snorkeling at a reef and finishing the trip at Isla Contoy we snorkeled a small amount in another area of the water, spent some time at Isla Contoy, and visited - for the third time - Isla Mujeres.

Our boat was full of European tourists - there was maybe one other small group of American travelers on the boat. It was refreshing for us to be surrounded by other languages, but the guides had to repeat everything in six languages, which was quite the challenge for them.

Our first stop was snorkeling, which was in much calmer waters than the previous days. The guides all teased Jason for his sizable waterproof cased camera, which they called an enormous GoPro (some other people had cameras they took in the water, but they were always GoPros in waterproof cases, which was about ⅙ the size of Jason’s camera in his case). Our guide, Alex, took the group of people who spoke passable English on a tour of a somewhat shallow area with many fish, which he fed with “Mexican bread for Mexican fishes” to make them come up to the surface near us.

The shiny striped fish that we saw the most (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Many more fish on this trip (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eric with a fish buddy (Photo/Jason Rafal)

At the end of the tour we went to the edge of MUSA, which is an underwater museum off the coast of Isla Mujeres. It features stone statues of people and cars and various other things, many of which can only be viewed through diving. Our guide took us to a circle of six giant stone hands making the blessing sign that were at snorkeling level. We were not allowed to touch them, but we could dive down and look at them more closely. I swallowed about a cup of sea water by diving down to see them and not clearing my snorkel at the right time as I came back up.

Eric walking like an Egyption near the hands (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Heading back to the boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After snorkeling we got back on the boat to join everyone who had not gone snorkeling (only about half had gotten in the water) for the ride to Isla Contoy. Throughout the trip we were pressured by the boat staff into drinking very similar tasting, lightly alcoholic drinks of various bright colors. They also played dance music and encouraged us to dance along.

Tropical fruit buddies (with an excellent photobomb) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

I had been holding a beer, so my hand was cold (Photo/Eric Strom)

After about an hour on the boat, we arrived at Isla Contoy, which is a wildlife preserve north of Isla Mujeres. It’s highly regulated - no sunscreen is allowed on the island, and the 200 visitors who are allowed per day on organized trips have very limited access to three walking trails and a beach. The island is the most important seabird nesting place in the Mexican Caribbean. Alex took us up in the tower to discuss the island, then took us to look at the birds and the coast.

The name Contoy originates from when the conquistadors came to the area, pointed at the island, and asked the Mayans what it was called. The Mayans thought they were pointing at a pelican. The Mayan word for pelican is similar to contoy, so the Spanish misheard and thought the island was called Contoy.

Isla Contoy (Photo/Jason Rafal)

There was a large community of frigates mating on the island. Frigates are weird birds - they are amazing flyers, but they cannot swim or walk, so their hunting is somewhat limited. They grab fish from the surface of the water or grab them when they jump into the air. The males have a bright red gular sack that they inflate to attract the attention of mates, and they also make a loud clicking noise. Since it was mating season, it was rather loud.

A flying frigate (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One of the only tourist-accessible beaches on Isla Contoy (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

After walking around and learning about the island, we had a surprisingly delicious lunch in the picnic area before spending some free time on the beautiful white beach. At that point, we boarded the boat and went back to Isla Mujeres. We only had an hour on the island this time, and we didn’t feel the need to explore it again, so we went to the second floor of a bar across the street from the beach and drank some beers.

At the end of the trip, as we made our way back to the mainland, all the boat staff dressed up as either the Village People or superheroes and we all danced to YMCA, Gangnam Style, and another song I wasn’t as familiar with. Amusingly, all the European tourists knew the dances to the songs better than we did. It was surreal, but also rather enjoyable.

Being Tourists in Cancun

On Friday, our first full day, we woke up at 4 am, walked to the meeting point at a nearby grocery store parking lot (the grocery store becomes important later) and, after waiting several minutes and hoping we had the right meeting place, boarded a bus full of tourists and drove across the Yucatan to Chichen Itza. Two gas station stops and several short naps later, our guide taught us a little bit about Mayan culture, language, and writing as we pulled into the parking lot as it opened at 8:00. Our guide was not Mayan, but was married to a Mayan woman, and he studied archaeology at school. The focus of the tour was less about how Chichen Itza was built (much of that is still unknown) and more about how amazing it is. Everything is aligned according to the planets and perfectly built to create tricks of light and sound. I’m not sure if it’s human, alien, or magic, but it’s pretty crazy.

A dog at a rest stop on the way to Chichen Itza (Photo/Jason Rafal)

El Castillo at Chichen Itza (Photo/Jason Rafal)

El Castillo at Chichen Itza (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Stone carvings at the Great Ball Court (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The contrasting surfaces of El Castillo (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After spending a couple hours at Chichen Itza, we went to Tienda de Artesanias Chac Mool in a town called Kaua (which our guide said comes from the Mayan words for two tortillas) to eat lunch at a tourist stop that served traditional food and sold handcrafts. The food was very tasty; we had some of a plant drink called choya, which tastes a bit like a cross between grass and aloe juice, and we were also given samples of a delicious anise-flavored liqueur called Xtabentún. After lunch, we took the long bus ride back to Cancun.

Choya (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Saturday we were supposed to take a tour to Isla Contoy, a wildlife preserve, but the trip was cancelled and tentatively rescheduled for Monday. Since we now had an unexpected free day, we decided to wake up and take the first ferry to Isla Mujeres, a fairly small island off the coast of the Cancun area. We had heard that one didn’t need a lot of time to explore the island, and that a half day was a perfect amount of time (foreshadowing). Isla Mujeres is about four miles long, and it’s popular to rent a golf cart for a couple hours to explore. After trying to find a public entrance to the infamous playa Norte and failing, we found a seemingly reputable rental shop and took off around the island.

Walking along the beach to the ferry (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Near (but not on) Playa Norte (Photo/Eric Strom)

Isla Mujeres is an interesting mix of poverty, tourism, and beautiful coastal views. There are some resorts and houses that can be rented, and what looks like a fair number of second homes as well, but the downtown shopping area predominantly opens for the large numbers of daytime tourists who come over from the mainland to visit. Once you get out of the downtown area, everything starts feeling more permanent and lived in. We drove all the way around the island, stopping to take pictures, before returning the golf cart, having a beer at a beach bar, and taking the ferry back to Cancun.

Driving through the streets of Isla Mujeres (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Mirror group portrait (Photo/Jason Rafal)

What we think was a Mexican Spiny Tailed Iguana at the southern end of the island (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The bar we would end up drinking at…twice (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After returning to the resort, we hung out in the ocean for a while before deciding that we should book a snorkeling and boating trip in case the one on Monday was also cancelled. We went to visit one of the travel agents at the hotel, who said that all of the boating and snorkeling tours from Cancun went to Isla Mujeres. We were not thrilled about this prospect, since we’d already been there, but the alternative was driving a couple hours south for a full-day trip, so I acquiesced despite my fear of being stuck on a boat with a bunch of bros and we opted for a 6-hour trip that involved snorkeling and riding a catamaran.

So, on Sunday, after Eric and I spent a little time paddling around on the resort’s kayaks, we boarded a shuttle from our hotel at 1:30 and were taken to a port in puerto Juarez, which is the Cancun-adjacent town where everyone actually lives. There we boarded the boat, a bit cranky at the other 23 tourists present, and set off to snorkel. The day was partly cloudy and somewhat windy, and the water was choppy enough to make me (a person who grew up landlocked and has never felt particularly at home in the ocean) pretty nervous. Once I got in the water, though, I was distracted enough by the swimming and attempting to snorkel in the waves to actually start to have some fun. We were guided across a somewhat shallow area and saw several types of fish (I cannot name any of them). After several minutes of swimming around, or in my case flailing around, we got back onto the boat and drove to a shallower area right off Playa Norte on Isla Mujeres, where we were welcomed to jump back in and swim around without our floating belt and flippers. We had fun jumping off the boat and exhausted ourselves paddling around in the water. We had some more drinks on the boat and then landed at the Isla Mujeres pier. I wanted to rent bicycles to ride around the island, and Eric graciously agreed to stay with our stuff and have a beer on the beach while Jason and I took an hour ride in the late-afternoon sun on terrifyingly rotted road bike tires. As with all of our international bike rides thus far, it was lovely.

Nicole trying to ignore the nerves (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eric takes a dive (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Jason underwater (Photo/Eric Strom)

Fishes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Nicole struggling to get her flipper back on (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Nicole’s jump from the boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eric’s jump from the boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Jason’s jump from the boat (Photo/Eric Strom)

Biking through the streets (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We returned the bikes and watched the sunset from a bar on the beach before heading back to our boat, where the other boat passengers sat in the covered back of the boat to drink and stay warm. This mean that we had the pleasure of sitting alone in the dark on the front of the catamaran drinking beer and chatting with our guide, Eme, on the way back to the mainland. He told us stories about his adventures as a tour guide, including a drunk man falling off the catamaran and bailing clients out of “tourist jail” on the island for drinking while driving golf carts.

Eric with a coconut (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Sunset on the beach (Photo/Jason Rafal)

It’s rare that I get complete satisfaction out of a day. Despite my skepticism about the trip, Sunday was one of those days. Between the kayaking, snorkeling, and biking, I ended the day with full-body exhaustion and a new understanding of why people come back to Caribbean vacations again and again.

The Painted City

Story by Nicole

We both liked Lyon immediately. It’s a decent sized city that is walkable, hilly, colorful, and has a few big, lovely parks. We arrived late morning and went to our Airbnb, where a very nice older French gentlemen showed us around his apartment and offered us refreshments before leaving for his country house. After we went to a pedestrian street full of restaurants for lunch, we headed off to explore.

It was hot, so we first went to the Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon. It’s a really wonderful museum with a large room of sculptures and a very impressive Egypt collection.

The sculpture room (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A great dog statue (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Painting the paintings (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A very, very, very old wall (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We then went to Le Quartier Saint-Jean, which is in the old city. It’s full of beautiful old buildings in varying shades of yellow, orange, and pink, and it was bustling with restaurants, gift shops, and random museums (we walked past the puppet museum and the museum of movies and miniatures). We stopped at a gelato shop with too many flavors to resist and then began the formidable climb up to La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière, which is a beautiful white cathedral on top of a very steep hill. Fortunately much of the hillside is shaded by a park of gardens and mature trees, which is beautiful enough to distract from the calf burn. From the top of the hill you get a great view of the city, and the day was clear enough that we could even see mountains behind the city’s few skyscrapers. The cathedral was under construction, like many of the monuments we’ve seen.

Le Quartier Saint-Jean (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Looking up the hill at the Basilique (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One of the trails up through the park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Skywriting next to the Basilique (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The view from the top of the hill (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After the cathedral we walked down the hill slightly to find the old Roman amphitheater ruins. The amphitheater was being set up for a concert, which somewhat disrupted the view but was very interesting, especially since there was a musical accompaniment to the experience.

A lovely concert view (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Friday we took another all-day wine and medieval village tour, this time in a van. Our group consisted of five Americans and three women from Spain, so our very impressive guide, Olivier, spent all day explaining everything in both English and Spanish without even a pause to reset in between.

We were touring the Beaujolais region this time, which is said to be France’s Tuscany. I expected to be somewhat less impressed by the scenery because we had already spent a fair amount of time in French wine country, but it really was gorgeous. The grapes are Chardonnay and Gamay. Beaujolais produces a lot more regional and village appellation wine than borgeone, but they only have one cru level.

Us in front of a pigeon house (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Beaujolais (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Beaujolais vineyards (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we drove around and talked about wine, we went to a local producer in the town of Oingt. The vineyard owner, Dominique, did not speak English, so Olivier translated from French to English and Spanish as Dominique told us about the processes of growing, harvesting, and making wine from the grapes. He also made a half-joking request for us to come back in the fall and help harvest, because every year he needs about 30 people to harvest grapes for a few weeks. He feeds and lodges people and pays them 60 euro a day to pick grapes, and Olivier noted that he had harvested for one season in his youth. He recommended against it.

A view of the vineyards (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dominique showing us how to smell the vines (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A well-behaved vineyard dog who was told to lay down (Photo/Jason Rafal)

In the afternoon we went to the tiny medieval commune of Pérouges. The town was dressed up for a medieval fair that weekend, and it was fun to see everything set up to look like the olden days.

Preparations for the medieval fair (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A street in Pérouges (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Heart shutters (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A beautiful well (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Old buildings (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A tower (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Flowers and a butterfly in Pérouges (Photo/Jason Rafal)

When we got back from our tour, we spent the evening walking around the city. When we walked through the Place des Jacobins, there appeared to be some sort of protest going on. We had noticed lots of police and security in all the cities in France, but the square was surrounded by local police and what looked like the French National Guard. They all seemed fairly relaxed, so after looking around for a minute and trying to figure out what was going on, we decided to avoid the area where some officers with shields were facing some citizens and move on.

The Place des Jacobins (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Officers in the square (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Saturday we walked to the neighborhood of la Croix-Rousse, where we found the most massive farmers’ market that either of us had ever seen. It stretched on for at least 10 blocks of stands selling fruits and vegetables, cheese, meats, and various cooked foods. On the other side of the street there were dozens of people who had set up mini garage sales to sell clothes, toys, and household appliances. Around a corner we found a jazz band playing.

Typical farmer’s market fare (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Rotisserie chicken and fat-cooked vegetables (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We found this stand amusing (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A surprise jazz band (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We headed next to the Parc de la Tête d'Or, which is one of the largest parks in France. As expected, the park is awesome. It features a large lake with rentable paddle boats. The lake also has an island, and Google Maps indicated that there was a way to reach the island without a boat. I was expecting a bridge, but as we drew closer a bridge did not appear. Once we got to the crossing area, though, we noticed an impressive tunnel under the lake to reach the island. On the island is the monument aux morts de l'île du Souvenir, a massive statue honoring the French individuals who died during World War I.

Geese in the park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The tunnel under the water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

For lunch we went to YAAFA, a very good local fast food place that serves falafel sandwiches and salads. After lunch we did some more wandering around Lyon. One wonderful aspect of the city is the fact that everything is painted - there are full-wall murals on the sides of many buildings, and graffiti everywhere as well. In many areas the stairs are even painted.

Big cat mural (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The amazing book mural (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The mural of famous people from Lyon (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A fancy fish (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Another great thing is the passageways and stairways throughout the hilly city.

A stairway between buildings (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An archway in the city (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Looking up (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After a lovely last meal at a French restaurant, we went home and packed up. In the morning, we took the train back to Paris and flew through Iceland to Denver. For those trying to spend some time in France outside of the top tourist destinations, I highly recommend Lyon.

A bridge over the Saône (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Always Take the Bike Tour

Story by Nicole

On Wednesday, we hired a French conspiracy theorist to guide us on bikes around the Côte de Beaune.

The above is true, but it happened because we booked a day trip around the region on bicycles to explore and taste wine, and because there was a last-minute cancellation, we ended up by ourselves on the tour, This meant that we had the day to ourselves with Eric, an electronics salesman turned self-taught botanist who now works for the bike tour company. We had a delightful day biking around the vineyards and forests with a local who told us about vineyards, wine, and French culture, and sometimes spontaneously sang or whistled American songs that he played with his band.

Just the awe-inspiring French countryside (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Green and cliffs (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Looking down over Saint Romain (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We started biking around Saint Romain, where we stopped periodically to talk about vines, grapes, and wines. Eric reiterated some of what we already knew and taught us some new facts as well. Three wine facts for the day: apparently Bourgogne is also an exporter of oak wine barrels. Rosé is made like red wine, but the skins are not kept in long enough to develop the deeper red color. White wine can also use red grapes, as red grapes have white juice, they don’t add the skins back in during the winemaking process. We paused at a giant stone table at the top of a hill to eat some cheese with a glass of white wine.

Biking through Saint Romain (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Saint Romain (I think) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An old clothes-washing area (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Biking along country roads (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Snack break (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The fortress of Château de la Rochepot (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our first tasting was at Chateau de Chassange-Montrachet, where we tasted three white wines and one red. These were newer wines that had not fully matured in flavor yet, but the somaliers taught us what to taste for. The red needed a little time to develop its taste, but the smell was amazing, and it definitely didn’t taste bad, it was just lacking some layers of complexity. We also explored the very impressive cellars full of wine barrels (white wine is aged in metal and red is aged in wooden barrels). The barrels were color-coded to denote the year, and thurs the characteristics, of those barrels.

This cellar is very old (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Color-coded wine barrels (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eric walks through the wine barrels (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The original vehicle for selling Chateau de Chassange-Montrachet wine (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We had lunch in the village of Puligny Montrachet, where we were welcomed to the Olivier Leflaive restaurant by the owner himself. We paired our three-course lunch with a delicious 2011 Marsannay Premier Cru. There was much time spent discussing wine, politics, and the world at large over the meal.

After lunch, we headed out for the last leg of our biking tour. We rode for a few minutes with a woman from the Netherlands who was biking to Spain, and Eric gave her some general directions before we parted ways. I considered for a moment how both incredible and lonely her trip would be.

Eric pointed out the soon-to-be-defunct national postal service (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Beautiful biking scenery (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Beautiful biking scenery (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Beautiful biking scenery (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our fearless leader (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eric and our temporary travel companion (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We finished in Pomard, where Eric left us at a local winery and biked up the hill to get the van and bike trailer. There we tasted nine wines, 3 white and 6 red, that ranged from regional appalation to Premier Cru. Obnoxiously, Jason has learned to taste the difference between a regional appellation wine and a Premier Cru wine, which means that his wine tastes have become more expensive. Prompting a moment of small-world revelation, a couple who was from Denver randomly happened to walk into the winery when we were about to taste the wines and asked to join us.

The garden at Chateau de Pommard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The cellar at the winery in Pommard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After Eric drove us back into Beaune, we walked around the medieval town for a while before dinner. If you’re in Beaune for a bit, do yourself a favor and visit the Parc de la Bouzaise, which is a short walk outside of the old town. Flanked by vineyards and featuring instructional signs about the plants in French and English, it’s a beautiful break from the usual medieval architecture. It also has resident animals including chickens, rabbits, sheep, goats, a pig, and a gorgeous coop filled with some of the less usual types of pigeons.

The Collégiale Basilique Notre-Dame (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Looking back at old town Beaune (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A fantastically fluffy tree (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Vineyards next to the park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The pigeon coop (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Amusing pigeons (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Looking down into the pond (Photo/Jason Rafal)

So Much Knowledge About 3% of Wine

Dijon was a challenge after the never-ending activity of Paris, especially because we arrived on the Sunday of a holiday weekend. Dijon has about 150,000 inhabitants, but at the old city center where we were staying, at least two-thirds of the restaurants and shops were closed on Sunday and Monday. This turned out fine because we spent most of our time walking around anyway, but the transition to forced relaxation was a little difficult.

The fountain at Jardin Darcy, near our apartment (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Selling art at Jardin Darcy (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The white bear, one of the representative animals of Dijon (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dijon is the capital of Bourgogne (Burgundy = Bourgogne in English) and was home to a line of four powerful dukes, rich in wine, who led Bourgogne to rival central France in power. The region lived as a separate state for many years. Dijon also has many animals woven into its history, and the city has adopted the owl as its spirit animal. The tourism board put little owl markers across old town, and for three euro you can buy a booklet that will guide you to see the different historical points of interest across the old city, which dates back to the 1000s. Unfortunately, I have learned to associate the old timber and stone construction with the new, fake facades at the Colorado Renaissance Festival, so it was a little difficult to fully appreciate the age of the medieval buildings.

Symbols of the Owl’s Trail (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Cathedrale Saint-Bénigne (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Medieval architecture (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Monday, we climbed the Tour Philippe Le Bon, followed the owls around the city, and visited the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, which was partially closed (everything is going to be opening up again in 2019) but led us through the history and culture of the Dukes of Burgundy.

The view from Tour Philippe Le Bon (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A gargoyle on top of Tour Philippe Le Bon (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A dog jumps into a fountain while accompanying its person on a run through the center of Dijon (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We also walked to the edge of the old city and found fountains, the lovely Jardin de l'Arquebuse, and the natural history museum, where we browsed halls of informational (but in French, so we didn’t learn much) placards and taxidermied animals.

A fountain on the edge of the old town (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Many cabinets of birds (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Tuesday we went to the market in the morning and then walked around and went into some of the shops that had been previously closed. Bourgogne is known for its spiced bread, which we tried a few forms of. It ranged from a weird, spongey, air pocked-filled cookie to loaves of what was essentially soft, sweet fruitcake. Not surprisingly, some of the bread was shaped like owls.

Owl bread (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

On Tuesday afternoon we had a half-day tour through the Cote de Nuits with another Coloradan who was working from Paris for the summer, a couple from Japan, a woman from Taiwan, and our guide, Stevie. We drove a small VW van through the vineyards, stopping to talk about wine and vines as we went. Bourgogne produces about three percent of France’s wine, and the grapes used are overwhelmingly chardonnay and pinot noir. Unlike American wine, French wine is named for the region, not the grape variety, which makes it rather difficult to know what you’re buying unless you’re familiar with the regions of France. In addition, French wine has four classifications, called appellations, which describe the potential of the land to make a great wine (this is challenging to describe without a map, so bare with me). The first two are regional appellation, a designation which includes about 50% of Bourgogne wines and is usually grown lower on the hillsides, and village appellation, which is usually slightly upslope from the regional appellation area and represents about 30% of Bourgogne wine. Sometimes a certain village appellation is surrounded by a wall, or clos, which protects the grapes and allows the seller to list the designation of walled vineyard on the bottle, Premier Cru is the higher-quality wine produced in the areas that have more challenging conditions higher up on the slope. The most valued appellation is Grand Cru, which comes from the ideal point of the hillside and accounts for about 1% of the 3% of wine that comes from Bourgogne.

A walled vineyard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Bourgogne has fields and fields of agriculture, but most of them are wheat and canola. Only some areas are used for the vineyards. The vineyards are also dotted with rosebushes, which provide a sort of canary in the coal mine to warn of impending molds and diseases (the rose plants will be affected before the vines). Bourgogne gets about 30 inches of rain a year, and it’s actually illegal to irrigate.

We went to a wine tasting in a cellar in a small town, where we drank six white and red wines of various appellation designations and compared them. We were guided in our tasting by Stevie, who had a great understanding of American mannerisms and made a lot of jokes. We paired the wine with some delicious cheeses and crackers.

The amazing wine cellar we visited first (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The older bottles of wine in the cellar (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Learning about labels (Photo/Jason Rafal)

From there, Stevie took us to the Château du Clos de Vougeot, which had traditionally been run by Cistercian monks. There were some incredibly large old wine presses that the monks used, one of which is still in use. The machine exerts about 20 tons of pressure on the grapes to sufficiently squish them. The room where they put the giant vats of grape juice to ferment has to be large and airy to prevent the offgassing CO2 from killing the people making the wine, so the ceilings were vaulted. The whole thing was rather impressive.

The exceptional vineyards of the Clos de Vougeot (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Very old winemaking equipment (still in use today) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Decorations made from baskets formerly used to carry grapes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After the French revolution, the vineyards were taken from the church and sold to private owners. The chateau is now run by a brotherhood, who produce some wine the way the monks had been doing it for centuries and rent out the beautiful medieval building for private parties and events.

Below are a few more random photos from our visit to Dijon.

A fantastic Rapunzel tower (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A baguette vending machine in a small town (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Yes, the style of mustard is from this town (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The view from our IKEA-showroom apartment (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An Overindulgence in Parisian Food and Drink

Story by Nicole

On Thursday we slept in (it’s challenging not to sleep in when the earliest you can end dinner is about 9:30). We had some pizza for brunch and went to Sainte-Chapelle, which came highly recommended by several people. We walked past a ridiculously long line at Notre Dame and straight into Sainte-Chapelle, which was a nice feeling of victory. The cathedral is behind the guarded gates to the courthouse area, which made for an odd mix of suited professionals and confused tourists.

Sainte-Chapelle is just as gorgeous as everyone tells you. It has amazing nearly floor-to-ceiling stained glass panels on three sides, and an incredibly intricate rose window on the fourth. They are just finishing a painstaking stained glass restoration project (doing glass restoration on something so old and well renowned sounds terrifying), and almost everything was back in place.

Sainte-Chapelle (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Sainte-Chapelle (Photo/Jason Rafal)

From Sainte-Chapelle we headed to the Panthéon - which we did not go inside of, you may be noticing a trend - and sat on its steps for a while contemplating the day. From there we headed to Shakespeare and Company, one of the oldest English bookstores in Paris. And it is a fantastic bookstore. It’s loosely organized on two floors, and the upstairs experience included a sleeping cat, a man playing the piano, and a donated library and reading room. Definitely worth a stop if you’re in Paris and love books.

Shakespeare and Company (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Another great thing about Paris is the water fountains everywhere. Frequently while wandering the city you’ll see a beautifully carved water fountain, and you can hold your hands or water bottle directly up to the lips of an engraved god to receive your drinking water.

One of the city’s many water fountains (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We then got on the metro and went to Montmartre, where we got off the train partway up the hill and climbed up several flights of stairs on residential streets to reach the Basilica. It was flooded with tourists, as expected, but the view is lovely. It’s fun to people watch and hear all the different languages as well.

Climbing the steps to Montmartre (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The view from Montmartre (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A view of the Eiffel Tower from Montmartre (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The Basilica of the Sacré Cœur (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A garden in a ball in the park below Montmartre (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We had our best meal in Paris that night at a little restaurant called L’ange 20. When we first arrived, the waiter told us that we were out of luck without a reservation, but then offered that if we came back in half an hour, he would seat us if one of his 7:30 pairs didn’t show. When we came back, he gave us seats near the bar, where Jason enjoyed his view into the kitchen. The food was French with a creative spin (my entree had guacamole in it, along with angel hair pasta-wrapped shrimp and a delicious spicy sauce), and everything we had was amazing. We would highly recommend it.

On Friday we did a cooking class, which was great. We went to a market, walked to the ruins of a crumbling Roman amphitheater, and then spent several hours preparing a three-course lunch under expert and teasing guidance. We learned useful facts, including how you can dye pears brown to cover any unsightly brown spots by putting a tea bag into the water while they are poaching. We also learned a cheater way to sous vide chicken. At the end, we enjoyed our lunch of cauliflower soup; chicken with mashed potatoes, deglazed vegetables, and red wine sauce; and poached pear with chocolate sauce and homemade ice cream.

Chef Jason (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

Our fancy kitchen (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Meal in progress (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After our cooking class we went to the Jardin des Plantes, which is Paris’s botanic garden. It’s beautiful and an excellent example of why Paris is so good at parks. I would highly recommend it, and it’s free so you can just stroll in and out on your way somewhere else.

At the Jardin des Plantes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A talented bug (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Skeletons of varying sizes in a building at the Jardin des Plantes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

I’m really not quite sure whether to recommend the night cruise to people. I will say that if it’s your dream to get really drunk and enjoy a good view of the Eiffel Tower when it’s lit up at night, the cruise is probably worth it. If those things don’t interest you, you can probably skip it and save the money.

The cruise gave us aperitifs when we got there, and then we had an entire bottle of champagne and a bottle of wine. Because champagne is too sweet for Jason and we didn’t want to waste the alcohol, I ended up drinking an entire bottle of champagne by myself over the course of two hours. We were planning to take the metro back, but when we got off the boat we were drunk enough that it seemed like too big of a risk to attempt to navigate the metro correctly, so we set off walking. I became progressively more drunk as we walked, and because I’m the automatic navigator when around Rafals, this resulted in us walking at least an extra mile trying to get home. We did find some delicious ice cream on the way, though.

Walking to the boat in the rain (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The Eiffel Tower all lit up (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A lot of drinks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Boat selfie (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Nicole getting tipsy on the boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Wandering home after the boat ride (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Amazing midnight ice cream (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

On Saturday, we nursed our hangovers at breakfast (crêpes are delicious) and lunch (Italian food for variety). Then we boarded a bus to see Monet’s garden at Giverny.

If you only have a couple of days in Paris, I wouldn’t use five of those hours to explore Giverny. It’s a lot of travel time. But because it was rainy, we had already been in Paris for a few days, and we were too hungover for museums, it was a good side trip.

Monet’s gardens are really wonderful. There are a variety of colorful flowers scattered everywhere - I was amused to see columbines, colorado’s state flower - and there are many trellises that make the garden feel cozy and secluded, even when it’s filled with tourists. The water lily pond is also incredibly beautiful, and in a much softer way than the impressive historical monuments in the area. The light rain just made everything even more soft and welcoming.

Monet’s gardens (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Monet’s gardens (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Monet’s gardens (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Monet’s gardens (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Soft water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Monet lived in Giverny with his second wife, and children starting in 1883. It’s a lovely house. The kitchen was especially great, with beautiful tiling and copper pots everywhere. There was also a pot filler, which Jason argued was grounds for getting one ourselves.

Monet’s kitchen (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The rain was lightening as we got back, and we enjoyed a last night in Paris.

A man dressed as orange juice for no explicable reason (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Outside a typical Paris cafe (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Sunset light (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Goodbye to Notre Dame (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Let’s Go to Paris

Story by Nicole

Let’s be honest: I’m not going to be able to tell you anything that is new or particularly insightful about Paris. Incredibly talented writers have been coming here for centuries and attempting to explain the city’s charm to others. What I can do is reiterate some of the elements of the city that I found so wonderful (because all those writers have been absolutely right; Paris is a gem).

Part of it is the dichotomy. You’ll be walking down a normal city street and happen across an absurdly old church, or a Roman amphitheater (we saw the Arènes de Lutèce). Even the normal buildings here are interesting, with their old world charm and hidden courtyards.

The Temple du Marais, about a block from our apartment (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Stumbling across pretty things (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An adorable old Fiat 500 (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Varying levels of antiquity on a street corner (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The fastest pizza (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One great thing about Paris is that groups of friends take bottles of wine, sit in a park or by the Seine, and talk for hours. When we were sitting in a park near the Eiffel Tower, someone carrying an ice bucket of champagne bottles offered to sell us one. The parks themselves are amazing.

Hanging out at the Place des Vosges (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A walkway on the Seine (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A tiny corner park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Sitting and drinking along the Seine (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The wine bottle recycling bin was too full (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One of the beautiful canopies in the parks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our apartment in Paris was perfect. Located in the 4th Arrondissement near the Place de la Bastille, it was a great central location for exploring and also provided a charming place to nap and regroup. To get there from the street, we went through a large, old external door on the street, then opened a gate into an interior courtyard. Then we walked through the courtyard, climbed four flights of stairs, and found ourselves in a 400-square-foot flat with lovely windows.

Our apartment courtyard (Photo/Jason Rafal)

In a shocking twist, Nicole made friends with our courtyard cat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Since our apartment was fairly close by, we visited Notre Dame on our first day. You already know it’s incredible. Here are some pictures to further solidify that thought.

The rose window (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The courtyard area (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A giant cathedral, a lot of sky, and a bird (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One of the things we decided before coming on the trip was not to spend hours waiting in lines to see the famous monuments. It’s more important to us to wander around the city and get a feel for the culture than to see the inside of a specific cathedral or museum.

Wednesday was our big walk around the central city (17 miles of walking instead of our usual 8-10). We began by walking to the Louvre to see the impressive exterior. Even from the outside, the Louvre is insanely large and imposing. From there we backtracked slightly after realizing that we had missed Le Palais Royal and explored that area as well. From the Palais we headed to the Jardin des Tuileries, which is a wonderful park in the center of the city. It’s lined by shops and restaurants, like most of the big parks, and includes the ever-present green Paris park chair that we grew to love.

The Louvre (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A banner promoting the 2024 Olympics in Paris at the Hôtel de Ville (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Art in Le Palais Royal (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Water fountain selfie (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Along the north side of the Jardin des Tuileries you can find Angelina, home to some of the world’s best hot chocolate. It’s more of what you’d call a drinking chocolate in the United States – very thick and intense. It was delicious, but I had to put some milk in mine to tone it down a little. From Angelina we headed toward the Champs-Élysées, but quickly got distracted by the aptly named Grand Palais.

Pouring the hot chocolate (Photo/Jason Rafal)

I convinced Jason to go into the Grand Palais because I wanted to go under the large, greenhouse-style roof, but when we couldn’t read French we guessed that the exhibit that we wanted to buy tickets to was the garden exhibit, which was actually not in the main exhibit area. However, the gardens exhibit turned out to be really cool. Surrounded by older French people, we wandered halls displaying various sorts of art relating to gardens. This included a couple of paintings by Monet and a Picasso, as well as sculptures and plant samples. To our amusement, they were also playing garden-related clips from a few American movies, including The Godfather Part II and Edward Scissorhands. Overall, it was a very pleasant surprise.

An art exhibit of French soil samples (Photo/Jason Rafal)

From there, we began the walk down the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. It’s a broad street, lined with expensive shops, that ends at the huge stone arch, which is in the middle of a roundabout. We couldn’t see any way to get to the Arc, but there were people there, so we decided to run across traffic. Two notes: 1) if you’re going to run across a Paris roundabout, go fast; 2) if there’s a touristy monument in the middle of a busy roundabout, there’s an underground way to get there. We found the tunnel under the road in order to go back to the street and continue our walk.

The Arc de Triomphe (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Someone had told Jason that the best view of the Eiffel Tower was from the Jardins du Trocadéro, so we walked there next. It is a great view. From across the Seine, you can see the whole tower in all of its glory, as well as the cars bringing people up and down. We sat in the park for a while to rest in the shade before heading across the river to walk through the Champ de Mars.

First real view of the Eiffel Tower (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Another view of the tower (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our last stop on our city stroll was the Luxembourg Gardens. On the way there we stumbled upon an adorable small park full of Parisians and their kids. The tiny parks scattered throughout the city are wonderful to wander into. Once we finally got to the Luxembourg Gardens, we sat in the ever-present green park chairs to contemplate dinner.

The Luxembourg Gardens (and the green Paris park chairs) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

It’s Coarse and Rough...and It Gets Everywhere

Story by Nicole

We went with a group of friends to the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve for the full moon in September. The sand dunes are a pretty amazing natural feature of Colorado. They are large and dramatic and surrounded by mountains. Even though Jason has a great dislike of sand, he was lured by the friends, camping, and promise of pretty photos. 

On Friday night, we camped at Valley View Hot Springs, which is a secluded, beautiful hot springs nestled against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We spent the evening soaking in the warm water and explored the area a little more in the daylight before setting off for the sand dunes.The view from our campsite (Photo/Jason Rafal)Exploring the Orient Land Trust area (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The sand dunes are visible from a distance as you drive along the highway, but you don’t really have a good sense of their massive scale until you get much closer. We stopped at the dunes to try to get a campsite (in a stroke of luck, we actually got the last campsite available within the park) before heading to Alamosa for lunch.

On the way back from lunch, we stopped to hike at the Zapata Falls area to do some hiking. We had fun doing some mild off-roading to the trailhead (the people in the backseat were less amused) so we could explore the creek and get some nice views of the sand dunes.Looking up the canyon (Photo/Jason Rafal)Contemplating the creek (Photo/Jason Rafal)The dunes in the distance (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After hiking, we headed to the dunes to set up camp. Most of Colorado has had a fire ban this fall because it’s been so windy and dry, but thankfully we were still allowed to have fire in a an established campsite grill. After cooking, eating, and warming up by the fire, we headed out into the darkness to hike the dunes.Sunset creeps closer (Photo/Jason Rafal)The beautiful shadows of the dunes at dusk (Photo/Jason Rafal)

I’m going to disappoint you right now and tell you that we don’t have any fantastic dune pictures from our hike. The full moon allowed us to see fairly well, but it wasn’t quite bright enough for Jason to justify bringing his camera. I will tell you, though, that hiking on the dunes in the moonlight is amazing. The shadows are disorienting, and it’s impossible to tell how steep or high each dune is. It’s like being on another planet.

After we got back, Jason and Eric took some photos with a tripod, which turned out pretty cool.A plane crosses the starry sky (Photo/Jason Rafal)Eric is dramatic in the moonlight (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Sunday morning, Eric and I took a hike on the dunes before we headed back to Denver (Jason was done with the sand at that point). The dunes are totally different during the day—much less mysterious and unnerving, but still very impressive. After spending some time hiking up and sitting on the vast ridges of sand, we went back to camp to pack up and head back to civilization.Footsteps in the sand dunes (Photo/Nicole Harrison)

On the way back to Denver, we stopped at Kenosha Pass to take some pictures of the fall colors. I would highly recommend visiting Kenosha in mid to late September. There are huge aspen groves that turn from bright green to yellow and deep orange. It was a beautiful day, and it definitely felt like fall. I hope the lovely season doesn’t pass too quickly.A variety of fall colors (Photo/Jason Rafal)More mountain colors (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The One with All the Pictures

Story by Nicole

Our last day in Alaska was full of activities.

Since we were unable to take a plane ride in Talkeetna, we decided we would try to find one in the Seward area. Because Seward is close to most of the things that people want to fly over, though, helicopter rides are a little more common in that area, so we settled on going up in a helicopter. Helicopters also allow you to get a little closer to the ground, which is nice when looking at animals and glaciers down below. We found one company that did a trip northeast of Seward instead of southwest, and since we were already going southwest in a boat, we opted to fly in the other direction.

Walking up to the helicopter (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Neither of us had ever been in a helicopter before. Jason was pretty comfortable with the idea, but I was quite nervous. Within a minute of taking off, though, I was feeling fairly comfortable, mostly because our pilot, Mike, was great at flying. Even when we flew through the wind coming off of the larger glaciers, the helicopter stayed pretty stable.

The view from the helicopter was amazing. We flew over glaciers and rivers and even some mountain goats. The best part was how we were able to see an area that’s really only accessible by helicopter. Mike said he sometimes drops people off out there to kayak or backpack for a few days and then picks them up later, which sounds awesome but also a little scary.

View of a glacier from above (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A peaceful pond (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Glacial ice floating in the water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Color contrast (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Flying along the coast (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Unexpected sunbeam (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A marshy clearing (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A semi-frozen pond (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Ribbons of water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Heading back to the launch site (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After the helicopter ride, we asked Mike and his receptionist what we should do for a couple of hours, and they recommended the Alaska SeaLife Center, which ended up being a great aquarium and rehabilitation center. They had a bird room with a lot of very unperturbed birds, and we were able to get within several inches of puffins, which was pretty great. There were also seals and sea lions on display. All of the big display tanks had viewing both above and below the water line, which was pretty cool.

A tufted puffin (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Puffins in the water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A horned puffin (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A fish loses interest in us (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Dramatic fish (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A seal prepares to dive (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We had the very good luck of arriving about 15 minutes before the first viewing of Perl, a 10-week old sea lion pup. When we first arrived at the SeaLife Center, Pilot, the father, was in the tank. After we wandered around and looked at the seals, we came back to see Perl and her mom, Eden, emerging. Perl is adorable. Eden was a little protective, but she started relaxing after a few minutes.

Eden is tempted outside with fish (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eden is not thrilled (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Eden and Perl (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Perl hanging out at the edge of the water (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After the SeaLife center, we had lunch and walked around until our ride to Anchorage picked us up. Our driver was a very nice woman who spends summers in Seward and winters in Oregon, and all the time fishing. On the way to Anchorage, we stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center to see the animals. The Center was wonderful. They have a lot of happy animals in nice habitats, and they also work to rehabilitate and reintroduce animals into the wild.

Baby moose are the cutest (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An adorable red fox (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A musk ox enjoys the sunshine (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A bear blowing bubbles (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After an hour, we got back on the road for the rest of the drive to Anchorage. There is only one main road between Anchorage and Seward, and it is incredibly beautiful and very dangerous (between all the tourists looking at the scenery and the locals trying to get around the slow tourists). Our driver stopped at her favorite spot on the Turnagain Arm (so named because Captain Cook went up it looking for the Northwest Passage and was disappointed to have to turn around) so that we could look at the beautiful scenery. When we got to Anchorage, we walked around a surprisingly large open-air market, had a long dinner, went to a coffee shop, and then went to a great improv show at a brewery. Around one in the morning, we finally boarded the plane to go back to Seattle and then Denver. 

It was a fantastic trip. We would definitely recommend Alaska. We’ll be going back at some point to visit Denali National Park.