San Francisco, California

So I am back home today from San Francisco. I flew out on Friday, and spent a long weekend walking, eating, shopping, walking, picture taking, drinking, walking, and generally having a fabulous time. The Castro, Haight Ashbury, Fishermans Wharf, Golden Gate Park, Sutro Heights Park, Union Square, Coit Tower, Cable Cars/BART/Muni, SOMA, North Beach, Embarcadero, and The Presidio... I did it all. Here are the pics. I hope you like them.

MISSOURI

The day after Christmas, I flew into Springfield Missouri and spent the afternoon checking it out. Then I drove through Jefferson City to Columbia, staying overnight and touring the campus of Mizzou and seeing the sights of the city. From there is was on to St. Louis to visit with two very cute dogs (and their owners of course)!

Brugge, Belgium

Last week saw a wicked cold snap and a snow storm in Belguim but still I decided to press on with my plan of visiting Brugge, while on a layover in Brussels. The snow stopped falling by the time I had hopped on the train at Centraal Station. The train ride was just under an hour and the views of the snow covered fields helped make it seem even less. We arrived at Brugge station and headed into the Central Market where vendors galore were selling handmade scarfs, hats, Christmas trinkets, waffels, glühwein, cheese, and beer all under the stunning and imposing architechure of the Bell Tower.  Even though it was bitterly cold, I manged to stay warm with the help of frequent stops for Glühwein. Anyway, enough of my yammering... here are the pics!

Montserrat, Spain

 There are some times in my job that I literally feel like a ping pong ball being volleyed back and forth across an ocean, and it it seems like an endless struggle with time zones, jet lag, irate passengers, holidays spent alone, turbulence, etc. One of the quick fix remedies for that feeling is a wonderful layover in which I am slapped with the reality that, at times, my job is pretty fucking cool. I was just given one of those layovers, 48 hours in Barcelona. I have been to Barcelona before many times and have posted some other photos on here, but this time I left the city and headed north, well northwest if you want to be technical, to Montserrat. It lies about 50 KMs from Barcelona, and the abridged vesion of the story is that in an ancient village on top of the mountain an image of the Virgin Mary was found in cave after some locals had experienced visions that they believed were signs from God. That statue, the 'Black Madonna' is on display at a Monestary perched on the side of the mountain, but you can also go further up the mountain to see the ruins of the village and the cave itself. Dont worry if the Catholic part doesn't interest you because the cable car that whisks you up to the top, and the view looking down over surrounding Catalonia is worth your 22 Euros, and then some.