Week 26 of 52

We’re at the halfway point in our year-long adventure and we decided we’ve done enough talking (at least for this week)! We love this wonderful city; it has beauty and interesting buildings, canals, people and lifestyle everywhere, so this week we tell our story mostly in pictures. (Click on any photo for the complete slide show.)

Amsterdam Loves Bikes

Bike Parking

Canal Bike Ride

Canal Bike Ride

Canal Bike Ride

Van Loon Garden

Amsterdam Street

Street Musicians

Street Violinist

Street Musicians

At the Concertgebouw

Rembrandt's Tomb

The Condomerie

Coffeeshop Reefer

Pickpocket Sign

Night Street Scene

Steeple at Night

Alley at Night

Back row: Cathy, Sape, Sharene, Karin, Harrison. Front row: Hanneke, Frank, Connie, Brenda.

Of course our week would not have been complete without a dinner party! Being in one of the world’s most interesting cities is incredible, but sharing an evening here with friends makes it even more special. Our dear friend Cathy from San Francisco came to visit us this week after a week in Paris, and Brenda is here from Boston visiting her sister, Karin. We invited them along with Frank (see last week), his friend Hanneke, and Connie and Sape, who all live in Amsterdam. Most were strangers to each other when they came in the door; all were friends when the dinner party ended. It was a great way to end the first half of our adventure.

One very sad note this week: Harrison’s Aunt Sue passed away Friday at the age of 94. Sue was the youngest sister of Harrison’s father and the last living relative of her generation on either side of Harrison’s family. We had a wonderful time with Sue and another family friend when they visited us on the Big Island back in 2002. We’ll miss you, Sue.

We’re settled into our Amsterdam apartment and getting comfortable with the city. Cathy’s visit ends on Tuesday and we’ll be on our own for several weeks until our next guests arrive.

A hui hou and tot ziens!

Harrison & Sharene

Week 25 of 52

View

Living Room

Bedroom

Our friend Frank… he makes our life here better!

Aloha and goedemorgen! We arrived in Amsterdam safely after a 7-hour train ride from Basel, Switzerland, last Tuesday. As we stepped off the train at 10 pm our dear friend Frank was there to meet us; it was great to see a familiar and friendly face to help us with our luggage and get settled. He helped us get a taxi (and in traditional Dutch style he rode his bike!) to our new home. He gave us such a warm wonderful welcome; he armed us with loads of information that he had collected for us, showed us where to go shopping and told us not to make an important purchase without checking with him first! This is a guy who first and foremost wants to be sure we have a great experience while we are here.

How do we know this great guy? We met him two years ago through craigslist (Sharene’s answer to everything)! We traded our Maui condo for his Amsterdam condo, and over the past two years through the exchange we became friends. We are so grateful for his help and friendship; he even spent all day Friday showing us some of the famous windmills and took us to the cheese market in the little village of Alkmaar — a charming town that dates back, oh, about 750 years… another reminder that we are not in America anymore!

Among his many talents, Frank is also a tour guide for hire (complete with canal boat!) and authority on Netherlands history. If you come to Amsterdam and want a personal tour, he’s your guy! Let us know and we will put you in touch.

Amsterdam Canal

Street Musician

Alkmaar Cheese Market

Why Amsterdam? It is one of Europe’s unique and most fascinating cities with beautiful canals and architecture, first-class museums and culture, and a very liberal approach to politics and civil matters. No need for a car; you can walk, ride your bike, or take public transportation everywhere, and who doesn’t love windmills and tulips and cheese? Yes, you can smoke pot and pay for sex and both are legal, but the main reason we wanted to spend three months in Amsterdam is that it offers two things other European cities do not: most people here speak English, and the Dutch are a very welcoming people. Unlike the French or Swiss (our dear Swiss friends and family excluded!), people in Amsterdam are happy to have you here and have no expectation that you should know how to speak Dutch. That’s a good thing… because it’s hard! A simple HOW ARE YOU is hoe gaat het met u. PLEASE is alstublieft. Another one we seem to need a lot is I’M SORRY: Het spijt me! (And how are you supposed to pronounce that?!)

Grocery shopping has been an interesting experience. We are thankful for fresh fruit and vegetables and pictures on boxes. We already bought lard when we thought it was butter. Yes, we know, there’s an APP for that… and we just downloaded it. As long as we set aside a couple of hours for grocery shopping we will be OK! Since Amsterdam entertains so many nationalities, you often see LNP on events, which means Language No Problem!

When it comes to paying for things, the Dutch have their own unique banking and payment system, so except for establishments that cater mostly to tourists, don’t bother bringing your VISA, MC or AMEX — they don’t accept them. We can’t set up a Dutch account in the time we’re here, so for us it’s mostly cash. That means we are daily customers of the local ATM; odd but we’ll get used to it. It’s really not too bad — we are old enough to remember when the only way to get money when traveling was by cashing a traveler’s check.

So, why Amsterdam? The city offers diversity at its best and a true melting pot of colorful, warm, friendly people who, like Frank, show their own version of aloha to outsiders, insiders, and just people like us who are passing through and want to learn another way of living.

Speaking of a different way of living, Holland was ahead of its time a few hundred years ago. Windmills were the state-of-the-art industrial parks of the 17th century, with over 700 in the Zaandijk area we visited. They produced paint, milled grain and wood, processed oil, and did much more using wind to turn the machinery. Some of the mills ground down rock to produce other needed minerals — guess you could call this the Silicon Valley of its day!

We’re excited about what the next few months will bring. We have so much to do and see and learn, and thanks to modern technology, we can share it with all the people we care about.

Once again heel erg bedankt (thank you very much) for coming along for the ride!

A hui hou and tot ziens!

Sharene and Harrison

Week 24 of 52

Switzerland has Alps, castles, lakes, culture, world-class historic cities, glaciers, and some of the best hiking in the world. And except for a few wonderful long walks and a day at one of the famous baths, we didn’t see or do any of those things! Week 24 has been a week of our extended Swiss family spoiling us with dinner parties, lots of laughs, rounds of Bananagrams and lots of great food!

Hallie and Isabel with their father, Hans, in 1987

Jon and Regula (top photo, left rear) invited us to their beautiful home near Baden for a traditional Swiss grill of Bratwurst and Cervalat. We raised our glasses to Hans, who passed away about 11 years ago and who brought this group together. Hans and Harrison met on his first trip to Europe in 1982. Hans introduced Harrison to his American wife Sarah and the three became life-long friends. Hans and Sarah had three beautiful girls: Amelia and the twins, Isabel and Hallie, who all light up the room wherever they go! Later Hans went into business with Jon, Harrison married Sharene, and they all got to know each other. Hans was a true gentleman and we honor him for enriching our lives and allowing us to be part of his legacy.

Our friends Maxine and Maya invited us to their country home southeast of Zurich. We took a quick 3-minute walk from Sarah’s to the train station, and before we knew it we were out enjoying the Swiss countryside. Maxine met us at the train with a huge smile and a big hug, whisked us away to a little outdoor cafe where we had coffee and the best pastry Sharene has had in her entire life, then drove us to their home in the little hamlet of Adletshusen. We had a long wonderful walk around the Luetzelsee, a lake with Swiss Alps and cow bells as our backdrop (we half expected to see Julie Andrews or Heidi appear as we rounded each corner). This little area is home to a couple of hundred storks who come here each spring and summer. The farmers put out food and places for them to nest to attract them.

Maxine and Maya

The Luetzelsee

Storks

Maxine Cooking

Maxine's Garden

Maxine is a Swiss Julia Child, and Maxine and Maya’s house has a big herb and vegetable garden. Maxine put us to work picking beans and peas out of her garden while she started preparing an (almost) entirely “bio” meal for us to feast on. Maya prepared the grill and assured us the meat was “happy meat.” Bio is the word they use here for organic; happy meat means the cows were treated humanely. All we know is that it was very fresh and delicious! They were both gracious hosts and the day just flew by. Another memorable day in Week 24.

The pool at the top right is the one with the current like river rapids… fun!

One non-food highlight of our week was Bad Zurzach. Think of a Jacuzzi tub on steroids and you get a good sense of what these thermal baths are about. For a small fee, you can spend the day here and go from one of the five pools to another. Each of the pools has a different temperature but most have jets about five feet apart around the perimeter that are strategically placed to work on different body parts; it’s like getting a massage from your toes all the way up! One large donut-shaped pool has a strong current that pulls you around and around like you were traveling through river rapids, others have waterfalls to wash over you. You can relax in a recliner in the water with gentle jets swirling around you, or you can choose a more gentle “zen” pool. inside they have massages and quiet rooms. Yes, we know, we are very spoiled.

Patrick and Chantal form another wing of our Swiss family near Baden not connected to Hans. Patrick was a high school foreign exchange student who lived with Sharene’s aunt and uncle in California. Even though he doesn’t look much older than he did in high school, that was over 20 years ago and we have remained close. He fell in love with Chantal in 1992, and we did too when we met her shortly after that. They’ve come a long way in the past 20 years. They are both successful young professionals; Patrick works for Credit Suisse, Chantal for KPMG, and they just moved into their chic, contemporary home (we could have done a newsletter on their kitchen alone!). They graciously invited us, Sarah, and “our” girls to another Swiss grill Saturday night. We are so proud of these two; they are smart, successful, and so much fun to be around! It’s a wonderful coincidence for us to have these two Swiss connections who live so close to each other but who didn’t know each other until we brought them together.

Red Currant Tart

Phil and Amelia

Muesli

Sharene, Harrison and Sarah on a hike above Neuenhof

As you can see, we were spoiled all week from dawn until dusk and we are so grateful to have these dear friends in our life. Sarah is a perfect host and we have loved being with her these past two weeks. The Alps might be amazing but they can’t hold a candle to our Swiss family.

Tuesday we take the train to Amsterdam to begin our next adventure. We’re reading a book called The UnDutchables to figure out how life works in the Netherlands. Wish us luck… we’ll probably need it! Next week you’ll hear from us in our Amsterdam apartment. Until then,

A hui hou and auf Wiedersehen!
Sharene and Harrison

Week 23 of 52

Aloha and Gruetzi!

After our Boston-Newark-Dusseldorf-Zurich flight, our Swiss family welcomed us with open arms, sunflowers, lots of love and a few bars of Swiss chocolate! Jet lag? We hardly felt it.

Our mornings start on our dear friend Sarah’s terrace (patio? deck? balcony? lanai?) with lovely views out to the hills. As you can see, she spoils us at every turn.

Pictured at the top is Sarah along with our dear “adopted” daughter Amelia and her brilliant and handsome husband Phil. We’re dining on the terrace at Landgasthof Rössli, a restaurant and inn owned by Phil’s parents that has been in his family for five generations, since 1863. The property itself has been around since 1293 (and we thought the North End of Boston was old)! We dined as their guests two years ago and — lucky us — we were invited back a second time! The ambiance of the inn reminds you of the days of Shakespeare but the food is as fresh as can be. The service, the wine, and of course the company was phenomenal. We had a very special evening and it was a wonderful way to start our European adventure.

As ever, we stayed busy during our four days here so far. We started out Thursday evening with a visit to Amelia and Phil’s chic new apartment right in the middle of Baden with a theater and gym and public transportation right outside their door allowing them to live a very urban life. The next day we saw Amelia’s office (she is the acting managing editor for a medical journal AND going to college); she has more energy than anyone we know. We couldn’t be more proud of her.

Amelia In Her Office

Zurich View

Zurich View

With Sarah in Zurich

Baden Farmer's Market

We enjoyed beautiful days of sunshine in Zurich and Baden. On Friday we strolled down a park-like walkway to one of Zurich’s many town squares and walked the cobblestone streets seeing wonderful shops, amazing buildings, churches, and lots of clock towers. On Saturday we went to the local farmer’s market in Baden that has as many flowers as fruits and vegetables. Everywhere you look, you are amazed at the craftsmanship in these centuries-old buildings and the gardens and flower boxes that adorn every property. These Swiss know how to capture your heart with beauty and we haven’t even gotten to the Alps yet!

Our other charming “adopted daughters” are Hallie and Isabel; Sarah’s twins and Amelia’s younger sisters. We met these two beautiful young ladies when they were 2 years old, and now here they are at 25! Isabel is an auditor for the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and Hallie is in college studying psychology, and they are both accomplished musicians, lacrosse players and world travelers. They are so much fun to be around; no matter what we’re doing, we find lots to laugh about. Here they are on Sarah’s terrace, after dinner and before some lightning rounds of Bananagrams!

Twenty years ago today we were married on the Big Island. Sarah, a poet and artist among her many talents, designed our wedding notices for us, so we can’t think of a better way to celebrate such a special day than with her and her beautiful family.

There are sweet surprises where you least expect them. We just returned home from an evening walk in the hills behind Sarah’s home where we were serenaded by someone playing the alphorn in a meadow.

We’ll venture out a bit more this coming week and will report back faithfully next Sunday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer in places new and old.

A hui hou and yoda-lay-hee-hoo!
Sharene and Harrison

P.S. Harrison’s cousin Beth was also married on July 10th two years after we were, so we send Happy Anniversary wishes to Beth and Bob!

Photo courtesy Boston Harbor Hotel

Week 22 of 52

There’s no more exciting place to be in the US on the 4th of July than Boston, and what a fitting way for us to end our “USA TOUR.” This is a city that celebrates the birth of our country in style! We’re staying a short distance from where the Declaration of Independence was read for the first time, a couple of blocks from Paul Revere’s house, and near the historic Freedom Trail, so we see a lot of tour guides dressed in period costumes walking around. There will be a lot of Star Spangled Banners, Yankee Doodles, and 1812 Overtures playing over the next few days. The fireworks started on Thursday and will continue until the big finale on July 4th with the live nationwide telecast from the Charles River Esplanade of fireworks accompanied by the Boston Pops. We decided not to share that special event with 800,000 of our Boston neighbors on the Esplanade and opted instead to go up to the rooftop garden of our apartment building and watch the festivities from there. In the meantime, even though we’re packing up, we’ve tried to make the most of our last week here in New England.

Sharene, Cathy, Ann, Kate and the adorable southern belle, Fran!

One nice thing about living on the East Coast is the ease of traveling to another state. Maine is just a quick drive from Boston, so while Harrison stayed in Boston, visited MIT one last time, and did some consulting work for our old company, Sharene got together with her best friends Cathy and Kate (from San Francisco) and Ann (from New York) to stay at the home of Kate’s mom, Fran. Fran is a cribbage master and a beautiful, lovely lady who welcomed the four into her home in Saco, Maine. Kate, whom Sharene has known for almost 20 years, was raised near Boston, and Sharene only associates her with New England and San Francisco. Imagine Sharene’s surprise when Fran greeted the girls with a lovely, gentle, southern accent and Sharene found out she was a southern belle from Atlanta GA! Where did this come from? Kate has southern roots? Goes to show that even your best friend can surprise you! As always, the girls played lots of cribbage, had lots of laughs, and loved listening to Fran’s lilting, soothing southern drawl. They took a drive and saw lighthouses and sailboats, and they ate at the famous Lobster Shack on Two Lights Road, which has been around since the 1920s. (They all agreed, the onion rings were worth the trip!)

Dori

One benefit of graduating from a great university is the ability to meet and sometimes mentor talented recent graduates. Harrison got an email a couple of weeks ago from Dori, a young Iranian woman who just finished her degree at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Her career interest is in tourism and hospitality, not a common focus of MIT graduates, so when she saw in the alumni database that Harrison was in Hawaii and involved with tourism and hospitality, she emailed him for some career advice. She still lives on the MIT campus, and when she found out we just happened to be in Boston for the month, she invited Harrison to lunch, and they spent a couple of hours at Sloan talking about her fascinating life and her past and future career. Dori studied engineering in Iran, founded and ran a management consulting firm there for 10 years (yes, they have those even in Iran), then came to the US to get a City Planning degree from Rutgers University and now her masters in Strategic Management from Sloan.

Talking with someone from Iran is enlightening, because many Americans stereotype Iran as a desert sheikdom run by radical Islamists out to destroy America, not to mention any of their own people who disagree with them. As with most stereotypes, the truth is far more complex. The vast majority of Iranians live fairly typical lives going to work or school, living in modern housing, and spending time with family and friends in what is, in many places, a very beautiful country. Many of them strongly dislike their leaders just as many Americans sometimes strongly dislike our own, and they aren’t taken out and shot. They’re really not so different from us, and it makes you wonder, to paraphrase Rodney King, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

Harrison and Sharene having lunch in downtown Boston at the Green Dragon Tavern, established 1657… NO KIDDING!!!

Our month here in the North End has gone by way too fast, but it’s been a wonderful time. Sharene has fallen in love with Boston and Harrison has been able to see it with a new appreciation; Boston was pretty gritty back in the ’60s and ’70s when he lived here as a student. Staying in a beautiful apartment hasn’t hurt, either.

We leave Boston on the 6th for Switzerland where we will stay with our dear friends near Zurich for the next couple of weeks before going on to Amsterdam for an extended stay. Our “year of being homeless” continues to unfold in amazing adventures and we’re pretty excited about Part II.

Thanks again to everyone who made Part I of our trip so much fun and to all of you whom we get to share it with each week. Have a wonderful, safe, fun 4th of July and we’ll check in from Europe as the journey continues!!

A hui hou,
Sharene and Harrison

P.S. A number of you have asked us who writes these updates and how. Actually, we don’t write them ourselves — they’re ghost-written by Garrison Keillor, which is why they’re so incredibly amusing and well-written! Just kidding!! Seriously, Sharene usually starts them… she can take a blank page and fill it up quickly with all sorts of interesting stuff, and she’s in charge of the camera so she looks over our photos from the past week to remind her what happened. Then Harrison takes over as editor, wordsmithing until it seems fit for publication. By the time you read them, they are truly a team effort and it’s often impossible to say who’s responsible for what. We’ve received a lot of comments about how much goes on each week, and we’ve surprised ourselves with all we have to write about. We often feel they’re too long even after we leave out some pretty interesting material. But we’re glad you seem to like them, or maybe you’re just too tactful to take your name off the list!

Week 21 of 52

We’re seeing not one but two Boston Pops concerts this week. Unlike Red Sox games, we were able to get tickets… (maybe they need to work some sports angle into their marketing). Shown above is their conductor, Keith Lockhart, who looks like he’s winding up for his pitch??? Anyway, he was wonderful to watch; lots of energy and it really looks like he’s having fun. GO POPS!!!

We heard a tribute to Richard Rodgers and George Gershwin Thursday night, and tonight’s concert begins with some fun orchestral music including the William Tell Overture followed by a performance by bluegrass music stars Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. Symphony Hall in Boston is renowned for its sound, and Harrison was there regularly in the early ’70s when he worked for the radio station that broadcast Boston Symphony and Boston Pops concerts. It’s been a treat for him to hear music there again after so many years.

Boston is a great town, but it’s had its challenges. Like many big cities in the last 30 years or so, they’ve made some decisions that are painful to implement but result in big quality-of-life improvements. Back in the 1950s, Boston split apart the historic area we’re living in by building a gigantic, poorly designed, and extremely ugly elevated freeway right through it. In the mid-1980s they decided to move the freeway underground. That project, known as The Big Dig, was expensive and remains controversial, but from our perspective it was sure worth it! Almost every day we walk on or by the Rose Kennedy Greenway that replaced the freeway when the Big Dig was completed. We see a neighborhood, a community, fountains, parents playing with their kids and their dogs, people reading on the grass, playing in the fountains, riding the carousel. A total transformation of the ugliness Harrison remembers from his time here.

So here’s a request to all of you out there who ever have an opportunity to vote for re-routing highways or other creative ways of re-creating green space. Even if it costs a gazillion dollars and takes 20 years, we’re here to tell you to support the cause! (If you can believe this, Seattle, normally a very progressive city, voted DOWN one such proposal and is considering a ballot measure to vote down another. HEY SEATTLE… come to Boston and take a look.)

Raining in Boston

Ann and cannoli

Boston Public Library

Our dear friend Ann from the Big Island came to visit us in the big city for a couple of days. You might remember we visited her and her husband Richard at their place on Cape Cod. The three of us visited the New England Aquarium (we wouldn’t put this on our Do Not Miss list; we’d give it 5 out of 10 stars). But we saw a cool 3D movie at the IMAX, hit happy hour at the Chart House nearby and had some great pupus (they call them appetizers here!), then took a nice evening walk home. The next day Ann and Sharene walked through the Public Garden (a beautiful botanical garden in the middle of the downtown Boston) to fancy Newbury Street and did something they never do back in Hawaii… went shoe shopping! (Flip flops are just fine back home, but shoes are a bigger deal here!) They also toured magnificent Boston Public Library, built in 1848, which is definitely ON the Do Not Miss list.

No, this isn’t the glass museum in Tacoma, but it is the work of the master glass artist, Dale Chihuly, from Washington. He has a current exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts and is it a hit! The photo here is part of a long glass “garden” that takes up an entire room. If this traveling exhibit comes to your town, don’t miss it (10 out of 10). There was so much to see at the MFA, we need to go back to finish up. Besides the Chihuli, we saw all 4 floors of the new Art of the Americas wing, which leaves at least 3 wings of art still to see! Luckily, the price of admission gets you in twice in a 10 day period. We like that idea!

We’re toasting our dear, dear friend Fritz who passed away last year. We sure miss you and wish you were here with us!

Saturday we had old friends Fred and Brenda, formerly from California now living near Boston, over for lunch and then a walk to Hanover Street for some afternoon coffee and dessert. Brenda is Dutch so we got some good tips from both of them on things to do and what to expect when we start our time in Amsterdam. So we would like to say Dank u wel! for coming to visit us and for all the great advice.

Sometimes we call ourselves retired, but we still do have a number of business obligations to take care of on the road, including maintaining the websites for MauiHotels.com and our rental properties. Harrison spent some time this week updating several of those sites and realized that some of you who read these weekly updates might find our About Us page interesting. For those of you who don’t know us very well, that page talks about our early days together and how we wound up in Hawaii.

Our month in Boston is flying by! Here it is the third week and now we need to think about packing for our big trip across the pond on July 6. It’s been a wonderful time so far and every day we are grateful to be on this adventure. It’s all the more fun to know that so many of you are joining us on the virtual ride.

A hui hou!
Sharene and Harrison

Week 20 of 52

BOSTON CELEBRATES THE STANLEY CUP WITH A MILLION BRUINS FANS!!!

Bruin Paul Revere

Saturday was a GREAT day for Boston! Over a million people took to the streets for the parade to honor the Bruins, their beloved hockey team who won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 39 years after a tough 7 games against the Vancouver Canucks. Harrison lived in the Boston area the last time the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, and he left the following year. Now he’s finally back and they win again. Coincidence? We think not!!

After the parade, the fans all changed out of their black and gold shirts, put on their red and blue ones, and headed out to the Red Sox game: if you were in the crowd and not wearing black, gold, red or blue, they knew you weren’t from Boston! This is a town with a huge dose of pride when it comes to their sports teams. People have been wearing their jerseys all week long and it’s all you hear on the news. Even Paul Revere was decked out in a Bruins shirt!

Although we’re not professional sports fans, we planned to go to a Red Sox game while we were in town so we could see historic Fenway Park. We didn’t realize the Red Sox have sold out every home game since 2003! By the time we tried to order tickets for this home series, there were no two seats together in the entire stadium, and Fenway Park holds almost 40 thousand fans! We are SO not in Hilo anymore.

So with all the celebration and whooping and hollering and the excitement in the air all around the city, we did what any two self-respecting non-sports-fans and crowd avoiders would do: we went to a museum! We did have to make our way through thousands of fans, though, to get to the subway, so we guess you can say, “we were there!”

SO, WHERE WERE YOU ON NOV. 22, 1963? (How humbling that we know there are many reading this who weren’t even born yet!) For those of us who can pinpoint exactly where we were when John F. Kennedy was shot, a trip to the JFK Museum and Library is a melancholy reminder of another era. A beautiful tribute to a young man who planned to be a writer but turned out to be a very deft and beloved politician, president and statesman. A great way to spend the afternoon and a nice refuge from all the celebrations going on in the streets!

THE NORTH END NEIGHBORHOOD… CI PIACE!!!! (We love it!)

Saints Wall

Old Boston Custom House

Beautiful Building

Vine-Covered Arbor

Paul Revere's House

Waterfront View

We may not be pro sports fans, but we do love the North End of Boston. This place is a walker’s dream; in fact, we haven’t driven our car in two weeks. The North End is the Italian area of Boston — you hear people speaking Italian all the time and Italian opera coming out of some of the store fronts. MAKE NO MISTAKE THOUGH, BOSTON IS A VERY DANGEROUS CITY!!! We’re being assaulted at every turn by all the Italian restaurants, cafes and gelato shops within just a few blocks of where we live! The sights and aromas from the cannelloni, capellini, ravioli, cannoli, biscotti, tiramisu, tortoni, loaves of ciabatta and cups of cappuccino are intoxicating. Then you have the old buildings, beautiful architecture, the harbor, the parks; it’s all very charming and has made our experience here fantastic. (Much different than when Harrison was a student, living in cheap housing and getting robbed 7 times!)

Speaking of Italian goodies, here we are indulging in a gelato and cappuccino night cap with Kevin. Harrison and Kevin have been friends for (yikes) over 40 years. They both went to MIT, worked together as broadcast engineers, shared an apartment for a time, and have kept in close touch since. Kevin grew up in Boston but has lived near San Francisco for over 30 years. He happened to be on vacation in his home town so we had him over for dinner, and afterward we took a nice walk to Hanover Street for dessert.

We had another great evening this past week, taking a scenic walk along the new Harborwalk (just built in 2009) to the Blues Barge. Every Thursday night in the summer, the Boston Harbor Hotel offers a free blues concert from this floating stage. It was a perfect warm, clear, gorgeous night to listen to some good music and then walk home. Life is good and we’re having a great time in the big city.

At the Blues Barge

The Blues Barge

It’s June 19th and we want to wish all the dads out there a wonderful (sports filled or not!) Father’s Day, and for all the people out there who still have fathers, don’t forget to call….

A hui hou and arrivederci!
Sharene and Harrison

Week 19 of 52

On Monday we drove from Cape Cod to Boston and moved into our chic apartment (thanks once again, craigslist!) in the historic North End (Boston’s Little Italy) where we will stay until we leave for Europe July 6th. Our apartment is in a former chocolate factory with plenty of room for us and our computers and with a guest room for any of you who might want to visit us before we jump the pond.

For the first time on this trip, we have found the type of urban environment we envisioned when we started, where you can get to everything you need by walking or public transportation. Shops, restaurants and fabulous architecture are all within an arm’s reach and we’re across the street from the wharves with a nice view of Boston Harbor. Sharene is in heaven and if we weren’t already booked to Europe, she would probably just stay here!

We expected to have a quiet week getting settled into the apartment and exploring a bit of Boston. Then we got an invitation to dinner Tuesday night with Harrison’s friend and MIT colleague David. Like Harrison, Dave also spent a lot of time at the MIT radio station when he was a student, and he later lived in Palo Alto, where he knew several of Harrison’s friends. For the last few decades he has been a Professor at MIT, where he is a leading researcher in a field known as Computational Genomics, in which computers are used to model complex biological processes. Oh, and along the way Dave just happened to invent the technology for making payments over the Internet.

During the delicious dinner with Dave, his wife Heidi and their daughters, Dave mentioned that he was flying his airplane to Orlando the following morning to do some routine recurrent pilot training. Harrison knew Dave was a pilot, but it was only then he learned Dave’s airplane is a Cessna Citation jet! That’s his airplane on the left, with its unique double helix paint job representing Dave’s work in genomics.

Jets are very complex airplanes. All good pilots do recurrent training on a regular basis and Dave trains with the best, FlightSafety International. After mentioning that he was flying to Orlando, he made us one of those offers you can’t refuse: “Why don’t you fly to Orlando with me?” We couldn’t get ready in time to leave early the next morning, and Sharene decided to remain in Boston, but Harrison made arrangements to fly commercially to Orlando Friday morning, watch Dave and his copilot, Leslie, while they trained in one of FlightSafety’s full-motion simulators (which are so lifelike that the FAA certifies pilots to fly the real jet after training in the simulator), and then fly back to Boston with them Friday evening.

When Harrison arrived at the FlightSafety simulator (photo at right), the instructor was running Dave and Leslie through a gauntlet of engine failures, weather problems, equipment malfunctions, and even a cockpit fire (all simulated, of course, but very real) that stretch the pilot’s ability to handle any emergency. Being about to fly a thousand miles with these pilots, Harrison was happy to see that they handled every problem professionally, safely, and successfully.

Here’s Harrison on what happened next: Then Dave surprised me: “Why don’t you take the left seat and fly a little?” WOW. What a generous offer — these machines are expensive! I climbed into the left seat of the simulator and the instructor set the airplane down at the end of Runway 4R in Honolulu (in a simulator you can go anywhere instantly). I know the Honolulu airport very well and there was the tower, the terminal building, and all the general aviation buildings out my (simulated) window, just like they look in real life. With Dave’s help in the right seat with some of the engine controls and avionics, I took off, flew around Honolulu, landed, took off again, flew down the Oahu coast a bit, came back and landed one more time. It wasn’t the most graceful flying I’ve ever done, but I made it back without damaging the airplane or doing anything really stupid. Since it was a completely new kind of flying for me, and probably the closest I’ll ever get to flying a jet, I’ll consider it a success! That’s me at the top of the page in the left seat of the simulator.

Then it was time to fly back to Boston in a real airplane. The jet was waiting for us next door at the Cessna service center, and within a few minutes Dave and Leslie did their preflight and we took off into a beautiful Florida evening. Dave wisely chose NOT to invite me to sit in the left seat on this flight! (That’s Dave in the left seat.) But I was just behind him and able to follow everything he did throughout the flight, including diverting around a large formation of nasty thunderstorms.

About three hours later we landed at Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts, a fitting destination since I learned to fly at Hanscom 42 years ago. It was a magical day and certainly one of the peak experiences on this year-long journey that has been full of peak experiences. Thank you, David, for giving this very-part-time pilot an unforgettable adventure!

So it’s been another good week: Sharene falling in love with Boston, a gorgeous, chic apartment within walking distance of everything, and a fun day of flying for Harrison. Not to mention the discovery of cannoli at the famous Mike’s Pastry! So when we spent an afternoon exploring MIT it was no surprise when the MOOD METER caught us smiling as we walked down the famous “Infinite Corridor”. Yep, the facial recognition system puts a happy face on you if you’re smiling — or a sad face if you’re not! Those MIT people aren’t just smart, they have a sense of humor, too…

Until next week,
A hui hou!
Sharene and Harrison

Week 18 of 52

We have had pretty good luck timing our cross-country trip to see friends and events along the way, and during our stop in Montreal we had hoped to visit our friend, brilliant pianist and unique personality, the Queen of Ragtime, Mimi Blais. Unfortunately, Mimi was performing in Missouri this week, not far from where we passed a couple of weeks ago, so we missed hearing her play and we missed her in Montreal. But we got the next best thing: she graciously invited us to stay in her apartment while she was away. Seems we find ALOHA wherever we go!

Montreal has all the attributes of a big North American city with the charm of France. The combination of buses and subways got us all around town quickly and cheaply. Montreal also has a hi-tech bike rental system, BIXI, that lets you rent a bike at dozens of BIXI stations around the city, use it for as long as you need, and drop it off at the same or any other BIXI station. The automated stations keep track of your time and charge your credit card only for the time you use. We took BIXI bikes for a ride from Le Vieux-Port (the old port area downtown along the St. Lawrence River) to St. Helen’s Island, site of the 1967 World’s Fair, and back across another bridge to a different section of town without having to worry about getting our bikes back.

In the Old City, the interior of the Notre-Dame Basilica (photo at the top of the page) blew us away. The photo shows just one part of this amazing building. There’s also a separate chapel with an astonishing bronze altarpiece. We haven’t been to the Vatican, but this has to be the most impressive church we have seen, even topping our memories of Notre Dame in Paris. The Catholics sure did know how to find incredibly talented craftsmen.

Quebec City has lots of charming cafes; we had a fantastic lunch at Bistro Le Brigantin.

Montreal may have the charm of France, but Quebec City has the charisma of Paris! The city is one of the oldest in North America — some of the buildings in the old section date back to 1600 — and drips with European charm. Unlike Montreal, not as many people speak English in Quebec City. We dallied three days here, wandering around and marveling at the architecture, museums and fountains, listening to street musicians, shopping, and then sitting at a sidewalk cafe and having a coffee or gelato.

Looking at the Fairmont Chateau Frontenac Hotel from the lower part of the old city.

Inside the old “walled city” we certainly got a taste of what we will experience on the European part of our trip. Between the setting and everyone speaking French, it’s like being in France without the jet lag. And outside the historic section lies a large metropolitan city in a picturesque setting next to the majestic St. Lawrence River, with fantastic parks and a spectacular waterfall, Montmorency Falls. Charm, convenience, and green space, what more can anyone ask for in a city? Quebec City is Sharene’s new favorite!

WTF lamode?

We aren’t easily offended by coarse language but we had to take a second look at this window display on a main street in downtown Quebec City of what appears to be a trendy new line of fashion. Perhaps the F word means something different in French? Somehow we can’t see this brand establishing itself at your local Sears or Walmart! Ah the adventures of traveling to new and exotic places!

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the US/Canadian border at Derby Line, Vermont.

Harrison likes to seek out geographical oddities when he travels. On a visit to Vancouver BC several years ago, we drove to Point Roberts, Washington, which is part of the United States but the only road in and out goes through Canada.

So as we approached the international border between Quebec and Vermont, Harrison remembered hearing of a town with buildings that straddled the border. One house has its living room in the US and its kitchen in Canada! The town is Derby Line, Vermont, and we visited the Haskell Free Library and Opera House that indeed is bi-country. There is literally a black line on the floor inside that divides the building between the two countries.

It’s possible (but prohibited) to drive across the border at this unguarded intersection. Locals told us they walk back and forth all the time and we did, too. How civil.

MAHALO RICHARD AND ANN!!!!

Once we came back to the good ol’ USA, we drove through some more incredibly picturesque territory… this time in Vermont and New Hampshire. The green rolling hills and trees were just stunning and we had lots of sunshine (yea!).

As we write this we are on beautiful, sunny Cape Cod, Massachusetts, visiting friends from Puna, Hawaii! We are staying with Richard and Ann who spend summers at their quintessential Cape Cod “cottage” across from Nauset Bay, one of the prettiest areas of the Cape. These two have spent the last two years renovating and adding on so now this “cottage” is a summer rental that sleeps 10! Plus they have their own house on this bay view lot. So we are 6000 miles away and, once again, sharing good times and lots of aloha with dear friends from Hawaii.

Two countries, four provinces, 15 states, and 22 beds, lugging all the luggage above in and out of hotels and homes of friends and family!

So here our cross-country road trip ends. Tomorrow we land in Boston for a full month! We found a great waterfront apartment in a historic building on the North End and we’ll spend the next month exploring Boston and preparing for our time in Europe. We’re looking forward to one place and one bed for the next 30 days.

Thanks for coming along with us on our cross-country trip; we’ve had a lot of fun and appreciate all the wonderful comments from everyone along the way.

Until next week,
A hui hou!
Sharene and Harrison

Week 17 of 52

Here it is the end of May and we can’t find any sun! But gray skies, a little rain and one evening of being chased back to our hotel because of a scary, windy rainstorm didn’t keep us from having a good time in Ohio, upstate New York, and a quick trip into Canada to see Niagara Falls.

First stop this week was Dayton, Ohio, home of the Wright Brothers and the birthplace of aviation, where every self-respecting pilot has to visit the Aviation Trail. Harrison toured the Wright Cycle Company, where Wilbur and Orville invented the airplane, Carillon Historical Park with the original 1905 Wright Flyer III, and Huffman Prairie Flying Field, a quiet, peaceful, and still open field over 100 years later where the brothers developed and tested their early airplanes. Harrison was almost alone on those visits and found them very moving, which made the next stop quite a shock: the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the largest and oldest military aviation museum, with one million square feet of exhibits and throngs of visitors. That museum is focused on aircraft used in wars, which is understandable since it’s an Air Force museum and a lot of aviation development occurred during wartime, but it was a little disappointing to see so much interest in wartime air power when there was relatively little interest in the fascinating story of how flight occurred in the first place.

Cleveland is not exactly tourist destination numero uno. Perhaps best known until recently as the place where the Cuyahoga River was so polluted it caught fire (immortalized in the Randy Newman song Burn On), it shed that image by becoming home to the incredible Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.

We both loved the museum although we have vastly different experience with music. Sharene has three musical favorites: the Beatles, Janis Joplin, and everything else! Harrison’s musical interests and knowledge run much deeper. But this is one first-class museum with lots of stuff at every level for both of us. Their current tribute to Women Who Rock showcases about 70 women from Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, the first artists to record the blues, all the way up to the present with Queen Latifah and Lady Gaga. We loved how they featured so many early black musicians and gave them the attention and credit they deserve for being the catalysts of rock and roll. (Blues legend Robert Johnson was one of the museum’s first inductees.) Lots of videos, costumes (including Michael Jackson’s sequined glove), listening booths, and a wonderful tribute to Alan Freed, the Cleveland DJ and promoter who coined the term “Rock and Roll.”

High-energy HK celebrating his birthday on the drive from Ohio to Buffalo!

After Cleveland we headed to another tourist mecca — Buffalo, New York — to see Alan. Alan was one of Harrison’s closest friends at the MIT radio station and Harrison later worked with Alan to build his first recording studio. Alan (the ultimate Buffalo Booster!) gave us a grand tour of Buffalo and took us across the border to see Niagara Falls. It was gray and misty and could have been a perfect setting for a murder mystery with the fog and steam rolling across the roads. As you can see from the top photo, that is one huge waterfall and impressive no matter the weather.

Kim, Harrison, and Alan at the Chameleon studios.

The following day Harrison toured Alan’s current studio, Chameleon Communications, and said hello to Kim. Alan and Kim have been business partners since Harrison worked with them in 1973. That’s one impressive partnership!

More fun than Niagara was ComedySportz the next night, a fast-paced improvisational comedy show played with two teams. Alan is a long-time performer in this high energy show. (Coincidentally, our friend Margie is a performer in the Portland, Oregon, ComedySportz, but we didn’t have a chance to see her perform when we visited Portland.) The show requires quick feet and an even quicker mind. We laughed the entire show. ComedySportz plays in many cities nationwide and in the UK and Germany, so if you have one in your area… go! Thanks, Alan, for a great time in Buffalo!

To see everything and everybody on our drive across the US, we have driven fast between destinations, stuck to major highways, and booked cookie-cutter hotels between our stays with friends and relatives. We saw lots of beautiful scenery, but Interstates bypass most towns, particularly the small ones, so you miss a lot of detail. We decided to do it differently on our drive across upstate New York from Buffalo toward Montreal this weekend. We headed to the south shore of Lake Ontario and followed the scenic Seaway Trail all the way to the Thousand Islands. Along the way we crossed the famous Erie Canal, saw the house where Sharene’s grandparents lived in Rochester, and passed through town after charming town.

Henderson Harbor

Henderson Harbor

For the first time on the trip we had not made advance hotel reservations, but we found a vacancy at The Willows on the Lake, a cute little lakeside resort in Henderson Harbor owned and operated by a couple who used to live in Mukilteo, Washington, where attentive readers will recall we visited James and Judy just after we left Seattle. We had an unexpectedly great meal (including perfectly prepared walleye, the favorite fish of Harrison and every other Minnesota native) at nearby Ryan’s Lookout. We watched the hazy sunset from the lakefront gazebo in front of our cabin. After all the spectacular territory we’ve seen on this trip, we didn’t expect much from upstate New York — perhaps that’s why the day turned out to be such a sublime pleasure.

We’ve landed in Montreal today, still gray with a chance of thunderstorms… but hey, if we wanted guaranteed sunshine we would have stayed in Hawaii. So with raincoats and umbrellas in hand, we’ll go forth and explore this world-class city.

Until next week, a hui hou!
Sharene and Harrison