Saturday Morning Comparisons: by haiku

2 haikus

9 am Sunday morning in downtown Austin:

Cyclists in spandex spin by
Amidst the stench of vomit and homelessness
Empty streets save for a motorcycle parade.

9 am Sunday morning, Alstadt, Mainz:

The sun is shining

A giant farmer's market fills the plaza

Pedestrians, bikers, families smiling together.

Comments

TV overseas!

The other day I had it. I threw up my hands in frustration. Why didn't we just get real tv already? Why does Chromecast give me such a headache? (clarification: it's usually not the Chromecast, but either our network or more often, our macbooks) Why can't I just turn on the news for a minute? Thus, the list below. I'm already enjoying a livestream of Sky News and the option to flip over to a marathon of That '70s Show. Ah, the familiar background noise of tv... We use a (paid) VPN service to access delayed tv, and there are a lot of livestreams available as well; here's the list so far: Live Channels: ABC Live Click2Houston (Channel 2 Houston News) MSNBC Live Al Jazeera Live Sky News (off VPN) CNN NDTV India Reuters TV Deutsche Welle English France 24 English Bloomberg Washington Post Live Comedy Central Fox CBS News BBC USTVNow - the free version is good, the paid / HD version is re...

3 Perfect Days in Porto

We recently returned from a very relaxed 5 day trip to Porto, Portugal. Although flight times were a bit on the odd-hours side, we chose Ryanair - 50% cheaper than any other airline to fly, even with car park and seat reservations! We used the extra savings to rent a car & car seats (I'm quickly becoming a fan of Enterprise. They consistently have the lowest prices, and this time even installed the car seats for us!). For 700 euros, we had flights and a car for a family of 4, not bad. The car came in handy as we stayed a little outside of town at a gorgeous apartment by the marina. There was plenty of parking and a Lidl within short driving distance - plus the hosts left us a few bites & port, a fun surprise! You can easily Uber around as well - it's by far the cheapest and fastest method of transport, even compared to driving in and paying for parking. Porto really felt like a great value for excellent food, tourist activities, and parking in town. If we'd ha...

3 Perfect Days in and around Hamburg

Road trip time! Hamburg is about 5 hours (plus kids = 7ish) north of where we live, and we had never seen the region... summer holiday seemed the perfect time. We drove up on a Monday, returning on Thursday, with 2 days in the city and one at a fruit farm in Jork. This region, apparently, produces the most fruit in western Europe! I bet it's gorgeous in spring. Day 1: We tried out wimdu for an apartment just north of the city. The price was right, the location was great, and the owners were incredibly nice. It was a bit tight for four of us (mostly because the kids wanted to stay up late with us / not sleep), but worked fine for the short visit. We had made afternoon reservations for Miniatur Wunderland , so we took our time getting to the city. We drove in, parking at Contipark (max 12 euros/ day, better than other lots that max out at 20 euros/day or so), which are all over central Hamburg. The plan was to walk through the warehouse district and make our way to Landungsb...

What the Blog?

Search This Blog