One place I have always wanted to visit when in San Francisco is Alcatraz, which is as notorious as some of its former prisoners. The 9 hectare island sits about 2.4kms from San Francisco and has had many lives. First as a lighthouse, military fort and military prison in the 1860s, then as a federal prison from 1933 until 1963.… Read more →
Rolling green prairie, lightning bugs, the smell of sweet corn, the rumble of a farm vehicle going down main street. These are the sights and sounds of our summers in Iowa when we head back to John’s hometown and hang out with his family for a few weeks. While we usually get some work done — I work on my… Read more →
John and I enjoyed a few days exploring “The Other Vancouver”, which is Vancouver, Washington. Located about two hours south of Seattle along the I-5, this Vancouver sits along the Columbia River and was incorporated in 1857, 29 years before Vancouver, BC. While planning our trip to the “other” Vancouver in Washington State we knew there was one attraction we… Read more →
It’s one of those moments in the life of a Pacific Northwest resident that everyone remembers — where they were, what they heard, what they thought it was. I was only a few months old when Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980 but from 500km away, people (like my mother) recall hearing the blast and even dusting ash… Read more →
Before coming to New York I started following a few Twitter accounts: @WHotelsNYC (our hotel), @UnionSquareNY (Union Square, the area in which we’ve been staying), and @UrbanSpaceNYC (curator of New York’s public markets) to see what events and activities were taking place during our stay. The night we arrived they were setting up the Union Square Holiday Market and it’s… Read more →
What do you do with a historic elevated freight railway that spans over a mile along the West Side of Manhattan? Well you could turn it into a public park, High Line Park to be exact. Owned by the City of New York and maintained by the Friends of the High Line, this elevated public space complete with benches, artwork,… Read more →