Definitely one of our favorite views in the UK. The harbor at Tenby, Wales.
When we were both working our vacations were at most three weeks long, and were in search of new places and new experiences. Now that we’re in our fourth year of constant travel we still love new places and experiences but also love to revisit familiar places.
Arriving from Norwich to London, Liverpool Street Station. And back with our good friends Erik and Hannah in Tenby Wales. One of our happy familiar places.Coast walks from Tenby are stunning.Two handsome men and a lovely view.Headed to lunch in Laugharne which is famous for being Dylan Thomas’s home for the last four years of his life.The garage of the boat house, where Thomas wrote a lot of his most famous works.It’s set up as if he walked away for a cup of tea. He died while on tour in New York City, so in a way, he did just walk away.The boat house. It’s a small museum.I requested that the guys look “moody and poetic”. Rich is used to my requests, Erik laughed! I first visited Laugharne in 1984 or so, it’s nice to see that Dylan Thomas’s popularity is still strong.Laugharne Castle. Such an imposing site. Such a tough place to find on the map when you’re looking for “Larn”.Rich packed up and ready to leave Tenby.
After a delightful stay in Tenby we headed off to Bristol, another of our favorite UK cities. This was our third stay in Bristol. It’s always fun to chat to a local and see their sometimes puzzled delight over our love of Bristol. It’s an easy train ride from Tenby, and easy to get back to London from Bristol, thanks to the Great Western Railway which linked London and Bristol in 1841. Engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Yes, we are fans of his work and highly recommend the SS Great Britain museum ship, which he also designed.
Bristol Temple Mead station. Plenty of bikes in Bristol.A swan and a view over the Floating Harbor, a lock controlled off shoot of the tidal River Avon created in 1809.Homages to Brunel are many in Bristol!The hydraulic equipment at Underfall Yard Visitor Centre, which explores and explains the elegant engineering behind the Floating Harbor, and its importance in the development of Bristol.Artsy shot out of the historic building.It wouldn’t be a trip to Bristol without a visit to a Banksy artwork.And, like a magnet pulling us in.The Bag O’Nails pub. My favorite pub. Another must visit place for us.The cats of the Bag O’Nails pub.Pub patrons trying to seem uninterested in the cats.The cats truly uninterested in the pub patrons.Just minding my own business by the record player.Gotcha! Lured in by my wool sweater and scarf and spot near the heater. I failed to look nonchalant when this cat graced me with their presence.The Left Handed Giant pub, another favorite of ours.Sometimes it was also a bit cold inside the pubs.The ceiling of The Cornubia pub. Horse brasses and beer mats. Yes, a lot of pub visits.It was not cold inside the Cornubia. My favorite pub fire so far. Clean burning coal. Wood fires not allowed in that area, the bartender said, but clean burning coal is ok.We took the train to Bath to go for a walk in the hills.The Bath Skyline Trail.A break on a well placed bench.Snow hanging on thanks to the cold weather.
We take as many opportunities as we can to meet up with friends, so we shoved off from Bristol towards Hastings, where friends from London had recently moved.
Charing Cross Station, London. On our way to Hastings. Nice digital departure board.British seaside towns. Love them. They share similarities but are all so different.The covered promenade with the Hastings pier in the background.What does this British seaside town have that no other one does? Our friends Joe and Justina!We had a great walking tour of Hastings. A lovely town well worth visiting. Up on the East Hill.The net shops on the harbor. Where fisherfolk store their equipment and hang their nets to dry. From above the tall narrow black buildings look like toys or monopoly houses.And no day is complete without a pub stop, this time at The Clown.And after an easy train ride, back in London for a few days.The modern skyline in the glorious winter sunshine.I love the juxtaposition of the Tower of London and the Shard. It was a super cold and still morning, the reflection of the bridge in the river caught our attention.Frost on the river walk, and slightly hazy air made the view soft focus and golden.We were staying right near Spitalfields and the view of City of London with the old buildings in the foreground was captivating.Modern buildings looming over old buildings.Museum of the Home, located in a row of old almshouses. Loved the Rooms Through Time exhibit, the evolution of London dwellings from 1630 to present. Dinner date with young friends who recently moved to London.
When we were in Lyon on our way to Paris we caught an arts update on TV which mentioned the Tim Burton exhibit in London. We quickly booked tickets for our last day in the UK. So glad we did. Our two London museum visits, Museum of the Home and the Tim Burton exhibit couldn’t have been more different. Where one dealt with the practicalities of home, changing styles of furniture and social interaction, the other was the products of one man’s talent and creativity.
Recreated office, the desk blotter doodles were fantastic.I wasn’t aware what a talented artist he is.Obligatory selfie set up.Many of the movie sets and costumes had signs not to photograph them. This Nightmare before Christmas-esque mobil and wallpaper had no such sign.
I’ve been having a hard time with this blog post. We flew from London to Chicago, saw our good friends Michelle and Alan – I have no pictures! – and Rich’s birth mom. From Chicago it was off to Grand Junction Colorado to see my Mom and Sister and Niece, very few pictures. Then Seattle, then San Francisco.
Lori looking out the window on January 20th, 2025.
A lot of Americans will understand the trepidation we were feeling, trepidation that has proved correct. It feels frivolous to do anything but focus on the state of the nation. Watch the news? Keep the news at bay? Focus on family and friends? Yes, that.
Winter hiking near Fruita, Co.My Mom. Seattle with our favorite Pacific Northwesters. Northwesterns? Cecily and Christine.
41 months. That’s how long we’ve been traveling since selling our place in San Francisco. So many amazing places and wonderful people. Many hotel rooms, wonderful house and pet sits, pensions, apartments. We both realized this winter that we are ready to have a place to call our own. Spring our stuff from storage and move it into our own space. We still intend to travel a lot, but we’ll be able to go home. Cook in our own kitchen. Sleep in our own bed. Host guests! Have parties!
Sutro Tower in San Francisco and the Happy Travelers.
But first we head off to Taipei and then Indonesia. The house hunting can wait until we return to the US in the summer. Stay tuned!
Tap airways seems to have become our airline of choice to get from Europe to the USA. Their one way pricing and timing of flights works out well. Rich can buy extra leg room seats, and the planes they fly have a 2 4 2 seat configuration so we can sit just next to each other. No dreaded middle seat. Since TAP flights from Geneva go through Lisbon we can spend a night or few days there. This trip we spent just one night in Lisbon, at a hotel on the red line so it was easy to get from and back to the airport. This is what traveling with a master planner is like.
Enjoying a warm summer evening in Lisbon. Hanging out at our favorite little park, Jardim Fialho de Almeida.
So what is it like coming back to USA? Busy. We try not to go crazy with over scheduling, but there are always so many people we want to visit. In the past we’ve landed in NY or Chicago and stayed with friends or at a house sit. This time, arrival June 1st, we stayed in a hotel in downtown SF for two nights (friends had come down with Covid so we pivoted). That gave us time to go out to our storage unit, recover from jet lag a bit, and have a wander around downtown before heading to our first house sit with two cats not far from Golden Gate Park.
Salesforce Park above the beautiful transit center in downtown SF.The retired engineer reflects on his experience working on the transit center.
It’s an odd feeling to stay in a hotel in what was for so many years our hometown. It was the first time we’ve ever stayed in a hotel in SF so we leaned in. The Galleria Park Hotel had a nightly happy hour with a signature martini, or wine. We settled into cozy chairs and chatted with a fellow guest from Oroville, California. It’s a social buzz to get to the US and be able to talk to everyone again. Thankfully Californians are quite friendly.
The room keys were ready for Pride!These two were much friendlier than this photo makes them look.Storage unit mayhem! It’s fun shopping for clothing in your storage unit – everything is your size and in your style.
Our summer schedule was built around our niece’s wedding. That was our first must not miss event. A stop by the storage unit to get clothes for the wedding was good timing, as we discovered that moths had moved in. We’ve had our things in this storage unit for almost three years and haven’t seen a moth. I assume they came in with someone else’s stuff and flitted around looking for tasty wool. I left a wool sweater loose on top of a bag last January. That obviously was like a formal invitation to dinner for moths. We spent a few hours moving our clothing from cardboard boxes to plastic containers with cedar blocks in them. Other than that one sweater we saw no visible damage. Hopefully we’ve made our storage unit inhospitable to the moths.
The cleaned up version of us. Clothes from the storage unit. It was a little warm even up in the mountains, so a pre-wedding creek foot dip was welcome.Our niece and her new husband. A gorgeous and fun filled wedding. The wedding venue, Gordon’s Rim Rock Ranch.Lights and fire pits as the sun went down and the fun continued.
The wedding was up near Mount Shasta, Old Station in Shasta County. It’s a beautiful area, shaped by the volcanic activity of nearby Mt. Lassen in Lassen National Park, and Mt. Shasta a bit further north.
Rich and his step mother out for a hike.Walking through Subway Cave Lava Tubes.You walk in one end and out the other.Information signs as you walk through and marvel at how a lava tube is created.And out the other side a stunning view of Mt. Lassen. It’s actually named Lassen Peak and it’s a 10,457 ft (3,187 m) lava dome. Last eruption 1914 to 1921.Very northern California.
After the wedding and lovely visiting time with family we headed out to stay with friends near Redding before driving back to SF to catch a flight to Grand Junction, Colorado. If you’re wondering about logistics, at this point back in the US we took BART from the airport to downtown SF. A car share out to our storage unit, a MUNI bus to our first SF house sit and, then after our house sit a rental car to the wedding.
A stop by McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park and a peek at the 129 foot waterfall. This osprey parent with chicks in the nest helpfully built their nest trailside. What a classic sight. Huge nest on a tall snag.Mt. Shasta, elevation of 14,179 ft (4,322 m). Last eruption 1250.
Grand Junction Colorado is another frequent stop for us, where my Mom and Sister live. It’s been another home for us during our three years of nomading. We are thrilled to have Breeze Airways flying directly from SF to Grand Junction now.
Kathy, Mom, Rich and Lorilie – the ranch Dalmatian. Some sunset dog play time. The extra dog, Mo, belongs to a niece – he comes to ranch camp when she is traveling.A cloudy day feels rare in the Grand Valley. Made for a nice hike in the canyons near Fruita.Look at those lovely clouds. And handsome husband.My sister getting the newly cut and baled hay in before the rain started.Mom and I helping by staying hydrated. It was hot.Kathy took some time away from work to take us up to the Grand Mesa where it was quite a bit cooler, and beautiful.Sisters with a view. That’s the Grand Valley behind us.Always take photos. It brings back the feel of the day.The 500 square miles (1,300 km2) of the Mesa rises 6,000 feet (1,800 m) above the river valley. Since Grand Junction is already 4593 ft / 1400 m above sea level, you definitely notice the altitude.A haircut for Mom. She’s a good sport and not too picky with the job I do.Showing off the finished job.
After our Colorado stay it was back to California again to visit more friends and family. A night in Redwood City, two nights in San Luis Obispo, and on to Moorpark where my brother and sister-in-law live. It’s a good thing all our bike touring has made us good at packing and unpacking. It’s tempting when you have a rental car to gather more stuff to take with you, but we try and keep our life lived from a rental car as minimal as possible.
With our friend Jim hiking the coast near San Luis Obispo.With Chuck and Linda in downtown Ventura, a nice pedestrian street with cute local shops.
From Moorpark we took the Metrolink train to downtown LA to visit the Broad Museum and have a wander around.
Moorpark Station and a rail enthusiast. Always check out the bike car, even when we don’t have bikes. Nice. A very good use of space.We were post rush hour so the train was not crowded.The Broad Museum. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. It’s a stunning building and entry is free by timed reservations.Under the Table, by Robert Therrien. Or, as I called it, Rich gets to feel like a cat.Red Block. Born in Ghana and based in Nigeria, El Anatsui crafts bottle caps, reused aluminum commercial packaging, copper wire, and other materials into giant shimmering sheets of what he calls “cloths.” We saw another of this artist’s works at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.A day at the coast and time to enjoy the newly renovated Point Dume State Park in Malibu.We saw workers continuing to remove invasive plants and encourage the native plants.
After a great stay in Moorpark it was back in the rental car and back to the Bay Area. We’ve been eagerly awaiting a house and cat sit for friends for the entire month of July in our old neighborhood in San Francisco. Our second summer must do. That’s where are now. Not only do we have two wonderful goofball cats to live with and love, but it’s Tour de France time, so, after fetching our big screen from the storage unit we introduced the cats to the joy of watching the tour.
Can I catch a cyclist? I’ll try.The great thing about the Tour, according to the kitties, is loads of lap time.Rich and his riding buddy Fred at a foggy Golden Gate Bridge.
So what’s next? After a wonderful month in SF full of catching up with friends and being happily in one place for a change, we’re headed to Seattle for the month of August. We have friends to visit and one house sit lined up. Have a wonderful summer.
Gorgeous buildings with amazing paint jobs. A paint job like this is a gift to the city.This deserves two photos. I’ve seen this house when that bare tree is exploding with bright fall leaves. Stunning.
Let’s start with the architecture. And the way folks paint their buildings. The four or five color paint jobs on the Victorians always take my breath away, this one in particular. So bold. And the fence! This is a tour de force of color and joy. I love this house.
A lovingly kept corner building. That awning. The color scheme.
I haven’t found a better city for just walking around and looking at buildings. It helps that since there is so much money in the City now, more people seem to be spending to spruce up the lovely old buildings. SF has a boom and bust history, a history of rising from the ashes, and the care for these exteriors you see must bear witness to a deep love for this City. With each brightly or carefully painted building the mosaic of the city is enhanced.
Even when clad in more subdued colors these buildings charm. Nighttime glamour. I’m glad I got this photo, that huge Christmas tree in the window was gone the next day.
Great buildings- check. What else makes San Francisco amazing?
Transit! Oh the joy of traveling around while someone else drives and I can look out the window. A bus window. Perfectly situated to enjoy a nice high view.
Great transit. San Francisco has it. I admit that I have always lived quite central and in the northern part of San Francisco where the transit, biking, and walking are all good, and not every corner of the city is as accessible, but I have explored every corner of this city by transit. It’s better than many places we’ve visited in the US. It helps that SF is a small city, 7×7 Sq miles. With the help of MUNI you can explore all the neighborhoods.
The MUNI worm logo. Best transit logo ever? Probably.Mask free MUNI selfie. On the J Church.This view. Top of Dolores Park from the J Church. Rivaled only by the view from the 33 bus line as it crosses Upper Market Street.
And what gives us the great views from MUNI? The hills. Tough by bike and even on foot, but a climb up a hill is well rewarded.
The roller coaster swoop of Dolores Street. You might not think of palm trees and SF together, but Dolores Street has an impressive line of palms.
Yes, I was that tourist standing in the middle of the intersection marveling at the hill. I love it when other pedestrians turn to look at what has me mesmerized. See! I want to say, look at that swoop of trees. So cool.
Not every view of hills is as glamorous, but something about seeing hills makes me happy. And those electrical wires are so SF.
We have been so fortunate to stay with different friends each time we come back to this city we love, and left. Each stay in a different neighborhood lets us experience a new to us neighborhood and see a part of the city with fresh eyes. A wise person wrote that you can’t hate San Francisco unless you love it first. (In response to one of those ‘I’m leaving because of…’ letters.) It’s not tolerated to hate this city if you haven’t first learned to love it.
The Golden Gate Bridge after the first big January storm. The road to Ft. Point took a beating. And that old photo bombing bridge again, with Rich and his flat tire. Photo credit Rich1.
And love it we do. All the reasons I give above are nothing on the main reason why we love this City: so many good friends. We come back to recharge, to swap out stuff from our storage unit, and for Rich to get some bike rides in with his buddies. We come back to see how our city is doing, to find out if the continuing onslaught of wealth has chipped away at more of what makes this quirky city unique and lovable.
Another stunning view. The top of Dolores Park.
After Seattle our little City of hills seems so compact and charming. People are California nice, quick to smile and chat. It does make us wonder if we can settle anywhere else. So, a decision not to make that decision is made. We love SF, and we leave again. Houseless but not homeless.
The Happy Travelers waiting for a BART train to the airport, headed for Taiwan.
Packed up and on our way. Goodbye again San Francisco. See you in about five months. Until then, stay quirky.
After 3 weeks working flat out getting our condo ready to show and sell we’re now waiting. Most of our stuff is in the storage unit, the condo is as clean and tidy and minimalist as it can be, and we wait for someone to fall in love and buy it.
The upside is that we can go back to doing what we love to do in this city, walking, eating, and seeing friends. Our walk along the Batteries to Bluff trail was enhanced with flocks of California brown pelicans flying by above, below, and at eye level. They are migrating from the breeding grounds on the Channel Islands to British Columbia, apparently, even those these pelicans seem to be going south, or south west.
Batteries to Bluffs trail.
California brown pelicans were listed as endangered by the federal government in 1970, but their rebound has been robust and they were removed from the list in 2009. It’s very impressive to see so many flying along the SF coast. I remember as a child in SoCal in the 70s when these big birds were a remarkable and fairly rare sighting.
Sunny day for hiking.
This is the month locals call Fogust, and SF lived up to its name this year with cool grey days that make us the coldest place in the US, but we got a sunny day for our coast walk.
SF looking almost … tropical?
And now, back to waiting and hoping our condo will sell quickly and our flights to Europe will not be canceled.
Less Car, More Life 