Hooloovoo writes

Bonjour! Between running around trying to see everything, and Mom getting here so I'm not seeing everything by myself, I haven't felt much of an urge to blog. But I want to get at least a brief summary down. Let's see. I arrived at the Gare du Nord on Wednesday afternoon, and took an RER train down to the Latin Quarter to drop my bag off at the hostel. It turned out to be next to a  small grocery store, which continued my love affair with European grocery stores. Grocery stores are peak "Everyday life in Paris" tourism. They should have tours. They also have mojito as a soda flavor here, it's very tasty. All I really did on Wednesday was walk around. From the Latin Quarter, past the Pantheon, past Notre Dame and the Hotel de Ville, dinner at the gluten-free waffle place, to the Louvre and Jardin des Tuileries, and then past the Musee d'Orsay, where I caught a bus back to the Rue Mouffetard, where my hostel was. That street turned out to be tiny f

I'm on the Eurostar, headed to Paris at 187 mph. Oddly, it doesn't look or feel much faster than when the Coast Starlight is going 80. I'd guess 100 or 110, but the Eurostar app seems pretty sure. My flight went fine. The gluten-free meals varied from bland to odd (why would you use puffed rice cakes to make a turkey sandwich?), but at least I didn't have to worry about food. Landing at Gatwick was hilarious in its familiarity. Cloudy for the whole descent, and then in the last 500 feet the ground was finally revealed to be ... green and gray and drizzly. Happy to report that the English version of April is a bit warmer than Tacoma's, though. Much like food, I don't think I've been anywhere that I didn't say this (well, assuming they have any), but nevertheless: London's public transit is great. I caught a train (still not sure if it was part of the Underground proper or a local train) straight to St Pancras, using the Oyster card I order

We're leaving alarmingly soon. My bag is nearly packed (actually packed, not the endless rounds of test packing required to fit clothes and technology for two months and four countries in a 45 liter pack.) I still haven't got all my meds, despite at least 6 hours on hold in the last two weeks, and there's a few things I haven't entirely decided about. Do I really need a travel pillow? Long underwear? Knitting? Somewhat more pressingly, I'm leaving to hike 400 miles in five days and I haven't decided on shoes yet. That's probably kind of important. I like the Altra trail runners better in general, but I've been having arch pain in them and the inserts I got only sort of helped. The Hoka One One boots are less comfortable, but I'm a little more confident in them not actually injuring me. As ridiculous as it would be, I haven't entirely ruled out bringing both of them and deciding later. Work, oddly, has actually wound down nicely, so we

Hi, an alarming number of years after my old blog got eaten when blogsome shut down, I'm finally starting up a new one. For the foreseeable future, well, until June, this will probably mostly be about my upcoming Europe trip. Throwing some pictures up so the site isn't totally without media.