Iberia 2025 | Lisboa | 11/12 - 11/15/2025

We had a (relatively) luxurious 8:45a departure from our Sevilla hotel on this morning. We made a couple of rest stops after crossing over into Portugal, and then a lunch stop in Setúbal. Today was the first day of bad weather so far on a trip. Until now it has been mostly light jacket weather, though the mornings in Madrid were on the colder side (dipping down below 50°F); there were also times in Barcelona and Sevilla when just a T-shirt was fine. Anyway, it started raining on the drive today, and continued to do so for most of the day. The temperature (low 60s °F) wasn’t too bad, but it nevertheless was not pleasant to be out and about. We got a delicious lunch (Mutti and I shared a couple of tartines, and Ma got a shrimp bowl) at a small French café called Na Pas d'Quoi. After that we braved the rain for a stroll down to the harbor before meeting back up with the group. The bus dropped the group off at the Mercure Lisboa Hotel around 4p (note that Portugal is an hour behind Spain, on Western European Standard Time vs Central European Standard Time - I didn’t know this until today). We met back up at 7:15p to walk to a nearby Chinese buffet for dinner. There were fewer vegetarian options than I hoped, but my mom got her money’s worth in shrimp.

--

Departure for the bus orientation tour with the local guide (catchphrase: “family”) was 8a this morning. The rain had continued all night and was set to continue all day and the next day. However, we ended up getting lucky later in the afternoon. We made photo stops at the Torre de Belém (Belém Tower) and Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries), before heading to the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Jerónimos Monastery) for a guided tour.

Cabo da Roca

Mostly because we had doubts about finding something worthwhile to do in the bad weather, we decided that morning to join the optional excursion for the afternoon. This began after a “comfort break” at the maritime museum gift shop. The first destination was Palácio Nacional de Queluz (Queluz National Palace), a former royal summer palace. Next was a stop for lunch and shopping in the coastal town of Cascais. Our guide suggested the restaurant Honest Greens (a chain with locations in 8 European cities) as offering good options for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike - this turned out to be an excellent recommendation, as the three of us all really enjoyed our meal there. Mutti was able to quickly dip her feet into the (dirty) ocean, then we stopped at a souvenir shop and a gelateria (another recommendation by the guide) before making our way back to the bus. The final stop on the scenic drive along the Portuguese Riviera was Cabo da Roca (Cape Roca), the westernmost point of continental Europe, before we headed back to the hotel, arriving at 4:30p.

We all met back up at 6:30p to head out for the tour farewell dinner.

--

It was nice not setting an alarm this morning. The three of us met for a leisurely breakfast at the hotel at 9a. The only plan for the day was a visit (by Uber) to the Escola Portuguesa de Arte Equestre (Portuguese School of Equestrian Art) at 11a - Mutti bought tickets the day before. We had an hour to walk around the stables and small museum, and then an hour to watch a practice session in the arena across the street. The rain fortunately held off during our visit.

Praça do Comércio

Afterward we took an Uber to the city center to do some shopping (my mom received a couple of bottles of perfume) as the rain started to come down hard. As the sky began to clear we started to wander around somewhat aimlessly on foot. We sampled some pastel de nata, checked out the Rossio Christmas Market, and ended up walking down Rua Augusta through the Arco Triunfal da Rua Augusta to the Praça do Comérci. From there we headed west, stumbled into a couple from the tour, stopped by the Time Out Market Lisboa (but didn’t find any cafes there), then eventually settled at a random bicycle cafe to grab a coffee and hot chocolates. After chilling for a hour or so, we set out on foot north to get dinner at the third closest Honest Greens. This (slow) 45 minute walk was pretty scenic, taking us up and down hills normally served by the funicular trams (currently out of service due to a recent deadly accident); I was very proud of my mom for powering through the steep inclines. Unfortunately the dinner disappointed us in comparison to the great lunch from the day before, particularly the falafel that Mutti and I both ordered. After dinner it began to rain again just as we climbed into our Uber back to the hotel. After a short lounge at the hotel bar we called it a night around 8p.

--

The journey home was fairly unremarkable, other than our flight being about 2.5 hours late.

--

Full trip photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ubSqXjyFue9AWmAn8

Iberia 2025 | Sevilla & Córdoba | 11/10 - 11/12/2025

We had an 8a departure from the Novotel in Madrid, heading toward Córdoba. We made two stops, the second for lunch. The lunch buffet didn’t have any (appealing) vegetarian options, so I just grabbed some fries from Burger King. As a brief (probably TMI) aside, the rest stops have not had the best bathroom experiences; which isn’t great, considering that my bowels are apparently still on NYC time 😅. The third stop was in Córdoba sometime around 2p, where we were shown around by a local guide (catchphrase: “well…well…well”). The main attraction on the tour was the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba, a large ancient mosque that was converted to a cathedral. After a bit of free time we boarded the bus again around 4:30p and made our way to Sevilla, arriving at the Eurostars Al-Ándalus hotel around 6:30p. We met up for dinner at the hotel buffet at 7:30p.

Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba (Mosque-Cathedral Monumental Site of Córdoba)

--

The hotel breakfast buffet was decent, though unspectacular for a vegetarian - not as big as the one in Madrid, and not as good as the one in Barcelona. We had an 8:30a departure for a panoramic driving tour of Sevilla. The first stop was Plaza de España, where we spent some time walking around. Then we headed to Santa Cruz, the Jewish quarter, where a local guide showed us around. He took us through Casa de Pilatos, a private mansion that has been used in quite a few movies and TV shows, and then over to one of the main squares for a bit of free time. Next we walked over to the Catedral de Sevilla (Seville Cathedral) around 12:45, where about a third of the group went in with the local guide as one of the optional excursions. Instead, Mutti and I grabbed some pizza for lunch, then the three of us walked to a nearby tourist information center and booked a boat ride (an idea we stole from another group of three in our tour group).

Plaza de España

We made our way down to the boat dock by Torre del Oro (Tower of Gold), and eventually boarded the 2p boat. The boat ride wasn’t terrible, but it was a bit of a dud. I was also a bit disappointed when I realized that we weren’t even on the main river, the Guadalquivir (or Rio Grande), and instead on the (connected) Canal de Alfonso XIII. After the boat tour Mutti headed back to the hotel on foot while Ma and I eventually took a taxi from a stand by the cathedral (after waiting 10+ minutes for an Uber that cancelled, and then having Uber waiting times of 21+ minutes). We arrived at the hotel a bit before 4p.

We met up with the group at 6:15p for an included dinner and flamenco show at El Palacio Andaluz. The show wasn’t exactly my jam, but it was still impressive to watch the entertainers. The dinner was also underwhelming (though at least edible, so no complaints), particularly the “vegetable lasagna”.

--

Full trip photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ubSqXjyFue9AWmAn8

Iberia 2025 | Madrid | 11/8 - 11/10/2025

Saturday morning had an early start with an 8a departure from our hotel in Barcelona. It was a long bus ride, with about 6.5 hours of driving. We made three stops along the way (apparently there are EU regulations about this), including a lunch stop that turned out to be a bust - I skipped out on the salad bar, which turned out to have tuna in it, and had some fries at the last stop.

We arrived at the Novotel Madrid Center a bit after 4:30p. After checking in and a short rest, the three of us headed out at 6p to find dinner at the nearby Plaza de Salvador Dali. Our dinner woes continued, as we had a hard time deciding on a place to eat, and the restaurant we decided on turned out to be a bit underwhelming.

After dinner, I said goodbye to the moms and crossed the street to attend the Radiohead concert at the Movistar Arena, which began at 8:30p. More at this blog post. The walk back to the hotel after the show took hardly five minutes.

Radiohead at Movistar Arena

--

I barely got any sleep overnight, partly due to the concert, having slept on the bus earlier in the day, and anxiety about the early wake-up. So I was struggling mightily for the first half of the day. The breakfast buffet at the Novotel was impressively expansive, though Mutti was even more unsatisfied with the coffee than at the last hotel. We departed at 8:30a for a “panoramic” bus tour around Madrid, during which I barely stayed awake; the local guide’s catchphrase was “my dear family”. The stops were for a brief stroll through Plaza de España, and then a final stop for a guided tour of the highlights of the Museo Nacional del Prado (the national art museum).

Overlooking Toledo

We signed up at the last minute for the optional excursion to Toledo (a cultural city that has preserved its medieval architecture and heritage) which departed immediately after the Madrid bus tour returned to the hotel around 12p. This included about an hour drive each way between the cities, as well as an hour break for lunch (a sandwich) in the main square of the old city. The bulk of the excursion was a walk across the old city, with stops at the Catedral Primada de Toledo (Toledo Cathedral), Iglesia de Santo Tomé (to see El Greco’s El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz), and the Sinagoga de Santa María La Blanca (Synagogue of Santa María la Blanca). We also drove to a damasquinado for a demonstration and some shopping, before heading back to Madrid. 

After returning to Madrid around 6:15p, we walked to a somewhat nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner. The food turned out to be acceptable for everyone, which was notable for the trip so far. We also stopped for ice cream (for Mutti and me) on the walk back to the hotel.

--

Full trip photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ubSqXjyFue9AWmAn8

Iberia 2025 | Barcelona | 11/5 - 11/8/2025

The second annual Moms Trip (i.e., me, my mom, and my mother-in-law) got off to an ominous start about two hours into our flight from Newark to Barcelona. The pilot announced that they needed to turn the plane back around due to a navigation issue on the plane. Needless to say, this was concerning, but there was nothing that we could really do about it. We also weren’t sure what our options were going to be. When we eventually did return to Newark around 12:30a, we were in the same position as we had been before we initially departed almost 5 hours prior. After deplaning and some waiting around, we were eventually informed that we would be taking the same plane back over to Barcelona.

I was luckily able to have a short conversation with the pilots from our ill-fated flight, who were replaced by a new air crew for the second flight. I didn’t fully understand their explanation, but from what I could gather, it seems like the problem was actually with the flight controls and not exactly navigation. They said something about the throttle automatically pulling back soon after takeoff when the automatic system stopped working correctly. They were essentially in this manual flight mode for the next two hours, trying lots of things to get the automatic flight system fully operational. Before giving up and turning back around, they were even on the phone with ground maintenance and United headquarters. They also didn’t want to have to navigate bad weather in Barcelona in the plane’s degraded condition, and would not want to leave a stricken plane for the next air crew in Barcelona. As an aside, we later found out that multiple flights from the US headed for Barcelona around that same time ended up being diverted to Madrid because of the weather. The conversation gave me more of a sense of why they needed to turn around, and made me appreciative that we got back safely (and also appreciative of the time they spent conversing with some random passenger who had approached them as they were heading home). Unfortunately, this whole ordeal meant that we missed out on our tour of La Sagrada Familia that was scheduled for 1p on November 6.

The second flight turned out fine once it got going. I got a bit of sleep on the plane, but it wasn’t exactly of high quality. We arrived in Barcelona around 4p, and then eventually made our way to our hotel (HCC St. Moritz) by taxi around 5:30p. This gave us 30 minutes before we were to meet the rest of our Globus tour group (a total of 26 (?) guests, plus the tour director “Abbadi Klay”) at the welcome dinner around 6p.

-- 

After a (pretty solid) buffet breakfast at the hotel, our first activity of the 7th (a Friday) was a 10a guided tour of Park Güell (which we were a couple of minutes late for, but it wasn’t a big deal). The park was just about as impressive as I vaguely remembered from my first visit 20 years earlier, and it was good to get some background information about it this time around (e.g., I never knew that it was a failed real estate development). We had a bit of a scare as we were leaving, when my mom thought that she had lost her watch, but it turned out that she had left it at the hotel.

Park Güell

After getting back to the hotel, we went out for a walk, during which Mutti got an ice cream and I grabbed a sandwich. We returned to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the group for an afternoon driving tour of Barcelona, which began at 1:15p. I struggled to stay awake during the tour, probably more because of adjusting to the time zone than boredom. We made a couple of stops to get off the bus: one extended stop to walk around the Sagrada Familia (plus a bathroom break at a souvenir shop), and another to take a quick photo looking down over the city from in front of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (National Art Museum of Catalonia).

La Sagrada Familia

We returned to the hotel from the tour around 4:30p. After some deliberation, the three of us headed out on foot to walk down part of La Rambla. We also made a stop at the Mercat de la Boqueria (a public market) to buy some treats. After even more deliberation regarding dinner (trying to accommodate vegetarian options, and also shrimp for my mom), we eventually made our way to a small tapas restaurant not far from the hotel. I turned out to be the only one who enjoyed my meal. To make up for this, we got some gelato before returning to the hotel.

--

Full trip photo album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ubSqXjyFue9AWmAn8

Pacific Northwest 2025 | 7/19/2025 - 8/2/2025

Better late than never... 

I didn't blog for this one, but you can find Fran's blog about the trip here.

I did create a photo album here, and Fran created one here.

Middle East 2024 - Day 11 - 12/9/2014 - Journey home + final thoughts

My Etihad flight from Zayed International Airport to JFK was scheduled to depart at 10am. I figured that getting to the airport about 2 hours before would be fine, and that's just about what I did. I got up early, prepared, packed, said goodbye to Brad (he wasn't flying out from Dubai until 2am the next morning), had a quick breakfast at the hotel, then hailed a Careem for the ride to the airport. I was running a little later than planned, but still made it there by 8:05a. When I went to check in at the business class counter (I got a credit card charge the night before hinting that my ~$2K bid for an upgrade was accepted), I found out that check-in for US flights closes 2 hours before departure, so I was just about 10 minutes late. But the agent made a couple of calls to re-open check-in for me, and I was able to get a boarding pass.

This scary moment potentially could have been avoided if my attempt to check in online the night before had succeeded, but I couldn't complete it then for some unknown reason; of course knowing to arrive more than 2 hours before would also have helped. I think the fact that I wasn't checking any luggage helped the case, and perhaps also being in business class. In any case, I was able to breeze through the security line and US pre-clearance due to a combination of business class and Global Entry, so I was at my gate by 8:40. I guess I could have had a little time to check out the Etihad lounge after all...

The 14+ hour flight was a lot more comfortable than it would have been in economy. We left about a half hour late, but arrived just about on time. I was in a seat facing "backwards" (opposite the direction of travel of the plane) - Brad informed me that this layout allowed every seat to have aisle access. I tried to take advantage of as much of the experience as I could, but I was probably still among the least demanding passengers. Highlights included: the lay-flat seat with built-in massage, larger and less trafficked bathrooms, complementary slippers and loungewear (I declined the latter), hot towels at take-off and landing, ample drinks (including mocktails), ample snacks, eating on real flatware. One minor complaint is that the anytime bites (which people were having as a lunch of sorts before landing) didn't have a hearty vegetarian option, so I settled for some muesli and cheese. Due to timing (boarding the flight and having the meal not too long after breakfast) I never felt like I had enough room to sample the dessert options.

Back in cold and rainy NYC, I chose just about the worst option to get home from the airport. By the time I was able to take the shuttle to the ride app lot, the wait for an Uber driver, and the ride through rush hour traffic, I could have taken the AirTrain and subway home for one-tenth the cost. The taxi line looked pretty long, but I probably could have gotten in one sooner than an Uber.

--

Some brief final thoughts about the trip...

Overall, it was a good trip, and went just about as planned. The amount of wealth and development in Doha, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi was impressive (ignoring the dark side of that development for the moment). Doha in particular had more going on than I expected, and perhaps had the best infrastructure relatively speaking (although the traffic to get to the circuit was hellish, the metro and shuttle worked fairly well; the parking at all the places we went was underground, plentiful, and free); and the scale of development in Lusail is mind-boggling. Dubai and Abu Dhabi seemed more tolerant of Western culture, and more so than I expected. And it was fantastic to meet up with Ngozi, and have her show us around Abu Dhabi a couple of times. Oh, and if I were to do the Dubai / Abu Dhabi trip again, renting a car would probably be the way to go (despite the anxiety of driving somewhere foreign).

In terms of track activities, the seats at Yas Marina provided the most action that I've seen at a race (I've been to four after the two this trip). The only very minor downside of that was that I couldn't hear the announcers / PA system much during the race, as they were drowned out by the cars essentially all the time. Perhaps listening to the commentary on a personal system (either a stream or a radio) would be a good idea, as you don't get a good sense of the whole race (and have to watch highlights after 😅) even with a view as good as we had. The seat at Lusail was also good, nice and close with a good view of the main straight, the pit lane, and the podium (plus the seats were spaciously spread out); but the main straight was the only thing I could see there. The facilities were also nicer at Lusail, and the trackside activities were perhaps marginally better there. However, there was less total area to walk around at Lusail. Both tracks had better facilities than the other tracks that I had been to before (COTA, Hungaroring), but there was less ability to watch track action while walking through general admission areas (especially at Yas Marina). YMC was closer to things, with all the other entertainment options nearby on Yas Island, while LIC was way out by itself like the other two tracks. These were the first two in-person weekends for me with support series (there wasn't any at COTA, and I only went to the race at Hungaroring), and I didn't spend much time watching those; F1 qualifying and racing is really what I'm there for (though practice sessions are nice as well). It was cool to see a sprint race (in Qatar), especially one with much different results than the main race. It was even cooler to for the first time see a main race (in Abu Dhabi) that was won by someone other than Max Verstappen.

I could get used to traveling business class... The part I appreciated the most was being able to stretch out and lie down, particularly with the pelvic issues that I continue to have. But at the end of the day it's tough to justify the significantly higher price if you're all just going from point A to point B. We'll see if my thinking changes after going back to economy next time around...

--

Trip highlight photos can be found here.

Middle East 2024 - Day 10 - 12/8/2014 - Louvre + Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

After breakfast we took an Uber to meet Ngozi at Louvre Abu Dhabi, an art museum renting the name of the original in Paris. This was yet another museum where the building greatly outshined the works within, though this time it was partly because the three of us were spending more time chatting than paying attention to the art. We had also considered doing a kayak tour around the museum, but we found out that it was only offered in the evening. Instead Ngozi drove us over to the nearby Mamsha complex also on Saadiyat Island. We took a short stroll along the boardwalk and then stopped for a light (but luxurious) lunch at Valgerand Nordic Grill. After that she kindly dropped us off at the track about an hour before the 5p race.

 

We were in our seats about 35 minutes before the start, and caught the national anthem and A380 flyover. We also got a glimpse of one of the cars from the upcoming F1 movie (starring Brad Pitt) doing a lap. The race was pretty entertaining, especially the couple of incidents on the first lap. We also caught a little bit of argy-bargy in front of us at turn 6. Lewis had a great recovery drive from 16th to 4th on his last race with Mercedes, passing George on the final lap. Despite a Ferrari double podium, Lando Norris' win ensured that McLaren clinched the constructors' championship. We left during the podium celebration (and also later found out that we missed the fake podium celebration for the F1 movie), and were able to snag an Uber without nearly as much hassle as the night before. We made it back to the hotel around 7:40p, and had (a somewhat expensive) dinner there.

--

Trip highlight photos can be found here.