Some 2024 Travels

Not quite a yearly recap — perhaps later — but sharing some great travels from the past few months. I was fortunate enough to visit Europe twice this summer, once with my family and once for a friend’s wedding. A few weekend backpacking trips in California. A long weekend in the Lost Coast. I traveled south to Mexico City last month for a work offsite, and extended the trip for a bit of leisure time. Straight from Mexico City to Vegas to see The Eagles perform at the Sphere.

A busy Summer and Fall with a lot of air time. Settling in now for Winter, and looking forward to winter sports; yet I can’t help but think about the warm Mediterranean waters of Nice.

Sykes Hot Spring

Maybe one of California’s most popular trails with backpackers, but a first for me. And for Kelsey, a first time backpacking experience. We booked a hotel in Salinas for a Friday night in June and set off Saturday morning up the trail early while the coastal mountains still held fog. It was going to be hot this weekend, and I wanted to finish the initial climb before noon.

The hike was long, over 10 miles to the campsite. I knew we could have shortened it and cut off a big ascent, but wanted to push myself a little. Which I did. Since Kelsey had never backpacked, I offered to carry a pack for two. We stopped often at water crossings to cool off and catch unknown-to-me poisonous newts.

The hot springs themselves were fine. Not the best I had been to, but welcomed after a long day. The campsite itself was fine too. A little crowded, and housed not the most discreet campers.

On Sunday we were slow to start our egress because Kelsey wanted to sleep in. No idea how she can stay in a tent all morning, but that girl can sleep. Perhaps midweek in the Fall this hike would be perfect. Less crowded, cooler. With our late start, however, the heat fried me during our miles along the ridges of the Santa Lucia Mountains.

I’m in no rush to revisit, but would recommend it.

Copenhagen and France

July 12th, Kelsey and I landed in Copenhagen after a long day of travel. We were in Europe for Ricky and Linda’s wedding, which would be in the south of France. As a thanks for asking everyone to travel to Europe, their wedding was midweek. The intention being guests could bookend the wedding with their own itinerary. Kelsey and I divided the planning. I had before the wedding and her following. I picked Copenhagen; she picked Côte d’Azur.

I don’t know when or why I decided I wanted to go to Copenhagen. Maybe, if even possible, I had read too much Kierkegaard. Maybe it was the residual romanticism of my childhood wish to be an architect. I knew I didn’t want to get sucked into a crowded tourist trap. I knew I wanted to go somewhere culturally distinct, but I also knew I wanted the travel to be easy: not a planes, trains, and automobiles situation since we had three major destinations during our short trip.

So, Copenhagen it was. Somehow. I had made up my mind before I started researching. But once I started looking into the city, I was glad I had told Kelsey the night before that’s where I wanted to go. I fell in love with the city before we even left. I bought books on the Danes and their capital city. I tried to get a sense of hygge before visiting. My imaginations paled of course.

Perhaps the best meal I had this year was at Kadeau. The food and service were excellent, of course. It was the way the staff treated us that really made the experience though. Unlike other haute cuisine — which to me often comes with unnecessary pretense — Kadeau truly had a sense of hygge. The staff was jovial and cared about the food and drinks they served, each dish a story about why it was on the menu. They drank snaps tableside with us and told us where to go dancing, and how late we should wait before going to different clubs. Insisting we not get there too early.

The funny thing about Copenhagen, like any other city so far North, is that the day stretches far into the night and morning. You’d wake with the sun shining through the edges of your curtains and hear people chatting and walking to work; at least that’s what it sounds like in Danish. It’s actually 4am and they’re just coming home from those same clubs our new friends had recommended to us.

The museums were great, the architecture phenomenal, the people the nicest ever, the canals and harbors that you could just swim in were little oases in the busy city. Of all the things to rave about though, the biking was a standout. I had been to other bikeable cities, but nothing like this. I’ve long thought that you can’t possibly know a city from a car. Even in the worst traffic they’re too fast and too closed off to really take in the local fabric. And if you’re the passenger, you’ll never have a sense of your bearings. Walking is ideal, but it’s slow. Biking is that Aristotelian mean.

We biked outside the city center to see modern gothic cathedrals. We biked through Free Christiania, which to this Oaklander felt like Berkeley actualized. We biked to land’s end, and sauna’d on the shores of the Baltic. We biked to a museum inside a decommissioned underground cistern, where we walked in near complete darkness on platforms elevated inches above the water. It reminded me of those talus caves almost a year prior.

After five incredibly short days, we jetted to Bordeaux where we picked up a car to drive to the chateau that would house us the three nights of our friend’s wedding. The wedding was a wedding, indulgent and all. It was beautiful. And I drank too much, I danced too much, and the groundskeeper yelled at me for making too much noise in the pool too late. I woke up to a half-eaten brie and prosciutto sandwich on a baguette in our bed. Great time.

During our time at the chateau Trump had been shot at. We thought that would be the biggest news. But on the day of departure, as we were headed to the airport to make the short flight from Toulouse to Nice, we learned of the July 19th Crowdstrike outage. We rushed to the airport, no idea if our flight was affected. Only to find our flight unaffected and realize we wasted an afternoon in France when we could have explored Toulouse.

The landing into Nice was unforgettable. The plane’s slow and wide swinging descent to runway, tracing the beaches had me enamored with the French Riviera before even stepping off the plane.

What we had realized only a few weeks before departure was that the Tour de France was finishing in Nice for the first time ever. Kelsey and I thought we were smart to avoid Paris, which was hosting the Olympics. We thought tourism would coalesce in the capital city, and we’d have a relaxing few days on the beach before flying home. But because the race had a sprint finish for its final leg, along the Promenade des Anglais where our hotel stood, it was almost impossible to come and go from the building. We’d push through crowds just to step out for a coffee. Reservations became impossible to lock down. Museums were closed because of the event. Streets closed, causing 15-minute taxis to take easily over an hour to get us across town.

Despite it all, Nice was the highlight of France. I had watched the race from home before. I knew a little about it, perhaps more than the average American; but in the final hours of the race I became an expert. I poured over cycling gossip, who held which jerseys, who were the Americans to root for — were there any Americans to root for?

We decided to order room service and watch the race from our room. We could watch the start of the leg on the TV. From our hotel balcony we could watch the sprinters finish. First as they pedaled west, and then doubled back on the easterly side of the promenade. From our balcony we made friends with the Americans on either side doing the same. One couple from New York had too much wine and shared it with us. It was like a little picnic watching the races against a Mediterranean backdrop.