Greetings again from Yelm.  I had a great time on my 24 day vacation, but it is definitely good to be back.  A few highlights:

Spent three days in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry, sightseeing and walking around the huge city.  Of all four cities I visited this vacation, Chicago had the friendliest people.

I attended my first ARRL National Dayton Hamvention this year.  It was about five times bigger than the ARRL Northwestern Division convention in Seaside, OR that I have been to 7 times.  Since I made the national this year, I did not make it to Seaside.  The Hamvention had 4 huge vendor booth areas inside, and 4,400 flea market spaces in the 80 degree sunshine.  I put on my SPF-30 every day, I assure you.  Friday I spent most of the day walking around Hara Arena then 5 miles back to my hotel.  Saturday and Sunday I garnered 18 CW contacts on 40 meters at/for W8BI/8, the Dayton Amateur Radio Association’s Special Event station at booth 416.  I had an OUTSTANDING time.

Then I spent 9 days in Berlin, Germany!  To wit:

WALKING:  I walked 15 miles a day here, and am no worse for wear, health-wise.  The weather was just outstanding.  It only rained one day for about 6 hours total.  It hit 32 C. (about 90 F.) Monday, but most of the days topped out in the 60’s and 70’s.

Berlin is a city MADE for walking, just like Dayton is a city NOT made for walking.  You can walk anywhere in Berlin with sidewalks on both sides of the street.  All walkers have to worry about is one thing:  Cyclists.

The bike paths in Berlin are red.  The popular myth for that is that the bike paths are all stained with the blood of TOURISTS that the bike riders have hit!  Well, maybe not that bad, but it was bad.  While walking 130 miles here I had five separate incidents regarding bike-riders:  3 were high-speed riders that I just barely jumped out of their way before they hit me.  I was actually hit in two other incidents, both at a low speed.  Once by a ten year old kid on a bike riding it inside a train station!  And once was by a blind guy riding his bike on the sidewalk.  Yes, he was blind, he actually couldn’t see me.

TOURS and MUSEUMS:
I made it to all 6 of the pre-scheduled tours and museums in Berlin.  I learned a lot and no prisoners were taken.  Well…  Not so fast:

Tuesday May 31st we started out with only 8 tourists in the Cold War Tour, and ended the day with 6.  I HATE when that happens!  We started towards the first stop of our tour on one of the local trains.  Our group got up to the track just as our train pulled in, so the tour guide got us all on that train.  Unfortunately she had not checked that all of us had our tickets stamped with the time.  Oops.  I had mine, and stamped, I figured we would be on some public transportation during that tour so I got an all day pass and validated it right away.  A married couple from New York, however, forgot to validate their tickets.  Of course the Zug Politzei (train police) chose that train to spot-check, and nailed them both.  Our tour guide (with the rest of her group in tow, including me) spent the next HOUR AND A HALF at the Haupt Bahnhof (main train station) police HQ with those two trying to talk their way out of the 80 Euro fine.  Didn’t happen.  Both sides were still filing formal grievance reports and charges when our tour guide finally gave up, and went on with our tour, sans the two from New York.  We never saw them again.  I’m not going to cast any aspersions upon the reputations of the Zug Politzei, but we are talking Berlin here…  Oh, did I mention?  Those two from New York were lawyers.

But the tour guide never really recovered.  She had never lost any tourists before in her seven years of tour guide experience, and was VERY shook up.  She went through the motions, but seemed to be on a type of ‘recorded-tour-auto-pilot’ for the rest of the day.  It was a weird feeling.  The whole group of us six remaining tourists sort of acted ‘snake-bit’ as well for the rest of the day.

FOOD:  I ate quite well here.  I had to keep my strength up for walking, and to keep taking in enough calories so I didn’t lose too much weight I ate at least 3 times a day.  Breakfast was always taken care of by the hotel.  Their Fruhstucke buffet was always outstanding and I was always full after that buffet.  Lunch and supper were always catch-as-catch-can wherever I was when I could find time within whatever it was I was doing.  Asparagus was in season so I had Spargelcremezuppe (asparagus cream soup) several times.  Brats & brochen have always been popular with me, and they are still great!  There are a lot of Italian restaurants in Berlin, I ate there three or four times.  I figured it out.

DRINK:  Berliners like pale beers, not the dunkels and schwartzbiers popular in Bavaria.  I was able to find my dark beers here but just not in the quality and selection I had seen in Bavaria.  The house wines in all the restaurants were just outstanding.  Berliners do like to drink, a LOT.

I enjoyed Berlin quite a bit.  I saw probably three-quarters of the main parts of the city either by bus, walking, tram, tours, or trains, and it is a VERY vibrant city, economically and socially.  The people were friendly but reserved.  They would occasionally nod when passing them on the street, but not nearly as often as Americans would.  They drive as if they are insane.  Car drivers will stop for pedestrians, cyclists will not.

Then I spent a week in London, then home.  To wit:

FOOD IN LONDON:
I had heard a lot of bad things about British food from friends and travel sites but I loved the food.  Meat and potatoes were always available, that’s what I grew up on.  Sometimes it was a tad dry, that’s why God gave us gravy!  BTW, what the heck is in Yorkshire pudding?  It was delicious!  Darn sure wasn’t pudding, I guess it started in Yorkshire, but it did have a LOT of sodium, I bet.

LONDON DRINKS:  I had also heard a lot of bad press about English beers.  I myself don’t like Guinness Stout from the can here in the states, but in London it was delicious.  It was probably the lack of shipping preservatives.  I loved almost all of the stouts and ales in London.  They were crisp, not too bitter, cold, and washed down whatever I had for lunch or supper quite nicely.  The Brits also like their wines.  There was just as many types of wine available in London as there was in Berlin:  Whites, reds, roses, French, Italian, Dutch, German, English, yum!

LONDON TRANSIT:  In Berlin I took all manner of public transportation, trains, both above and below ground, buses, and trolleys.  But London was a little more compact so I was able to walk every place I needed to go.  For instance:  The first day I had a slot scheduled on the London Eye and decided to walk the three miles south from my hotel.  It was a good decision, I saw a lot of downtown London from the ground level, all of the rest of London from the Eye, got a lot of great pictures, and an eight mile walk out of the deal!

WALKING IN LONDON:  London has a LOT of parks.  Hyde Park was just south of my hotel, and I went through it several times.  Kensington Gardens, where Princess Di used to hang out with her boys was just west of Hyde Park.  Green Park and St. James Park were close to Buckingham Palace, and I saw a lot of Queen’s Guards activity there.  Regent’s Park was a couple miles north of my hotel, and I did make a day of it up through Baker Street.  And yes, I did see 221B Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes did not live.  He’s a fictional character!

London is even more ‘walker-friendly’ than Berlin because there were not NEARLY as many bicyclists in London.  London had about 1% of the number of bicyclists as were in Berlin.  And I never had any close calls with these bicyclists, they actually knew how to drive!

TOURS:  I had several tours in London, and enjoyed all of them.  I saw the lay of the land from the hop-on-hop-off bus tour, but it’s hard to get good pictures from a bus.  I did take a boat down to Greenwich and got a picture of my N7EIE hat on the zero degrees longitude line at the British National Observatory.  That was awesome.

I had a very informative 3-hour private tour of the British Museum, guided by a professor at Oxford, Mr. Kevin Childs.  I thought the ‘British Museum’ was the ‘British History Museum,’ and indeed, when you google ‘British History Museum’ the site for the British Museum pops right up…  But the British Museum didn’t have very much stuff actually from England.  Most everything on display at the British Museum had been ‘forcibly exported’ (my guide’s words, not mine) from Egypt, Rome, Greece, South Africa, Asia, North America, South America, and Australia back into England during the British colonization of those areas from the 1500s to the 1900s.  About FIVE PERCENT of the items on display at the British museum actually originated in Britain…  It was actually the ‘World History Museum,’ I guess.

TRAVELING:  Over the course of this entire vacation, I took nine plane flights to various cities, and the first eight were pretty well executed.  No crashes, no rescheduling, no problems, really, at all, until my last flight from Philadelphia to Seattle…  I got there in plenty of time but we were about a half an hour late pulling back from the terminal.  Turns out the flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico was late getting in to Philadelphia due to storms, and they had 30 connecting passengers for our flight, so we waited.  And then a half an hour after we got on the tarmac they closed the airport due to the weather…  We sat there for another hour, but then the captain came on the intercom to say we had to go back to the terminal.  While they were starting the engines, the tower gave them clearance to take off, and we did, two and a half hours late.  But that’s a helluva lot better than being stuck in one hundred degree heat in Philadelphia overnight.  I made it home at 0200 the next day, a little tired, slightly worse for wear, but HOME nonetheless!

I’ve been home for 23 days now, and have ‘decompressed’ back into the retired frame of mind.  The jet lag lasted about 5 days, it was much worse going west-bound home than when I went to Berlin.

There is a big difference between being ‘retired’ and being on ‘vacation.’  Retirement consists of all the mundane daily tasks everyone does, except going to and coming from work.  That includes cooking, cleaning, driving to and from shopping, doing the dishes, maintaining the house, mowing the lawn, etc.  On ‘vacation’ I had one priority:  My belly!  I had to make sure I ate enough because I walked so many miles, or I would have lost weight.  AND, since I ate out three times a day I didn’t have to do the dishes!

As it turns out I maintained my weight fine, and did walk 290 miles in 24 days.  Yes, that’s almost a half-marathon a day, every day, for 24 days.  I had no knee or hip problems the entire vacation, or I would have cut down on my walking.  Therefore I am in the best walking shape in my entire life, and am ready to do that again!

This was a great vacation.  I was totally relaxed for 24 consecutive days, and got a LOT of good exercise in the process.  Actually, walking is pretty relaxing just to start!  I saw a lot of sites and people that I had never seen before.  I had no big personnel problems with any of the staff or tourists, and everything went like clockwork except the last flight.

I now start saving for my next vacation.

73,
Leroy N7EIE