This post is part of a series called Barcelona 2015 First things first, it’s really hot in Barcelona in July. Like, high 90s and totally still. We began the day early, before it was too sweltering, sitting on our terrace watching the Swifts diving around for breakfast. Then, it was off to the train station…
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This post is part of a series called Barcelona 2015 A pleasantly uneventful travel day brought us from Minneapolis to Amsterdam (on a practically empty plane) and then on to Barcelona. Aside from a small hiccup when the airport ATM ate my card and refused to return it, things were perfect. We made it to…
View MoreThis post is part of a series called Barcelona 2015 As has seemed to happen fairly regularly in recent years, we’re celebrating the fourth of July with a trip to Europe. Spain actually, and Barcelona specifically. This isn’t strictly a “fun” trip – I’ll be presenting at Edulearn 2015, and I’m looking forward to my…
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This post is part of a series called Portugal 2015 Our last day in Portugal! We managed to pack a lot in, but there was a lot we didn’t have time for. Next time! After waking up, it seemed prudent to attempt to extract our car from the garage. Had it turned into a faff,…
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This post is part of a series called Portugal 2015 After a late night of coughing (wooo! Wild-And-Crazy in Europe!!), we slept in a bit. Around ten, we met up with our guide for the day, Marta. The plan was to do a “gastronomy” tour in the morning, and a history tour in the afternoon….
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This post is part of a series called Portugal 2015 The goals for today were manyfold. First: See the northern parts of Portugal. Next, eat delicious cheese. Ok, so maybe the goals were more like twofold. In any case, we succeeded. Based on a very thin thread of evidence, we picked as our goal the…
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This post is part of a series called Portugal 2015 Today was our only full day in Evora, so we did our best to pack in some regional-adventuring and seeing the rest of the sights in town. First stop of the day was the town market, a fancy new building with stalls for meat, cheese…
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This post is part of a series called Portugal 2015 Pork pork, pork pork pork. Pork. Oh right. Well, we’ll get there. This morning, we caught an Uber out to the airport to pick up our rental car. As an aside, how cool is the future? You tap a button on an iPhone app and…
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This post is part of a series called Portugal 2015 Today dawned with a simple mission in mind: pastries. Err, pastries and history. I mean, mostly history. Barely any pastries at all. We caught the tram to Belem, a historic suburb of Lisbon that wasn’t destroyed by the 1755 earthquake. Belem is home to the…
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This post is part of a series called Portugal 2015 Yeah, that’s right, I put Roger Moore below Connery and Craig. But we’ll get there. First, travel! This is a two-for-one post, because yesterday we were too sleepy for blogging. We had an easy travel day, leaving Minneapolis in the evening and arriving in Amsterdam…
View MoreThis post is part of a series called Portugal 2015 We’d like to get off. After a genuinely bad run of weeks, we’ve made it to March 7th and our long awaited trip to Portugal. In fact, I write this while flying somewhere over the Atlantic, on a plane equipped with heretofore unheard of international…
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This post is part of a series called Costa Rice 2014 Saturday morning, we woke up to the possibility of birding, but the wind was very strong. Instead we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at Casa Batsu and laid in the hammocks for a few hours. Eventually it was time to check out. Janelle and Natalia…
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This post is part of a series called Costa Rice 2014 We got up extra early this morning to enjoy the blue sky (and wind) for a bit. Carlos came through with another amazing breakfast. After our delicious omelettes, we thought we were done, so we got up to go swing in the hammocks. Carlos…
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This post is part of a series called Costa Rice 2014 Today, we awoke well rested, and had a lazy morning. We had another delicious breakfast – fruit with a breakfast burrito. Today was gloriously sunny, with an amazing sky. We lingered on the patio and did some work, before heading out for a hike….
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This post is part of a series called Costa Rice 2014 We awoke in San Gerardo to a beautiful sky, with the volcano lit up in gorgeous colors. Our guide was already birding around the lodge. We met up with him for a short bird walk down towards the stream crossing. On our walk, we saw…
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This post is part of a series called Costa Rice 2014 We awoke to a delightful morning and sat on the deck, drinking coffee and watching cows. Our breakfast was amazing – a giant fruit plate, blackberry watermelon juice, strawberry yogurt drink, huevos rancheros, and an amazing pineapple coconut pancake drizzled in passion fruit sauce….
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This post is part of a series called Costa Rice 2014 We woke up this morning fully intending to go birding bright and early.. Torrential downpours meant we instead slept. We got up, had breakfast and said goodbye to Dev and Harriet. After checking out, we took the car to Rio Celeste. Rio Celeste is…
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This post is part of a series called Costa Rice 2014 We woke up at 5:30am for our day of birding, as apparently one does. We had a quick cup of coffee and met up with Jorge, our guide for the day. The first outing today was on the same hanging bridge trail we took…
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