If there is a city in the world which has more tightly tied its fate to the popularity of one Wolfgang Amade Mozart than has Salzburg, I would be be astonished. Were it not for Mozart, I do not think many people at all would even know what country Salzburg was in, and certainly no tourists would go there. I would compare it to St. Joseph, Missouri in size, both population-wise and in its small-townish-ness, and were it not for the Pony Express making its eastern terminus at St. Joseph, no one would ever go there, either. Salzburg is, however, an [View Full Entry]

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Today, we went to the Zentralfriedhof (cemetary ) with the goal of seeing the graves of all the great composers. I was disappointed, because all the great composers apparently are not buried in Vienna's Zentralfriedhof, but rather, only the ones with some connection to Vienna. However, we were not disappointed after all, because many great composers actually are associated with Vienna as it is really the birthplace of much that was (and is) new in music. Since he killed Mozart in that movie, Salieri's grave is not in the great composer's section; he [View Full Entry]

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Despite trying to hold sleep off, we ended up conking out at about 9:00 p.m. Since I sleep with a CPAP, I get very good sleep in short amounts of time, so by 2:30 a.m., I was awake and ready for the day. Clearly this was not going to work, even though Cheryl was also awake, so I put the CPAP stuff back on and forced myself back to sleep (a neat trick if you can do it) and made it to 6:30 a.m. After a bite of Früstücks (breakfast) we headed out into the city. Our first destination was the [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Wien yesterday after 10 hours from Seattle to Frankfurt, 3 hours in Frankfurt airport, an hour and a half from Frankfurt to Wien, 30 minutes on a train from the airport to the city and about a 20 minute walk to our pension (hotel, kind of). It was about 16:30 when we finally checked in, and to combat jet lag, we powered through the rest of the day and took a walk to find a Heuriger to get some Abendessen (dinner). On the way we walked by one of Beethoven's residences (yes, he really slept there). After a [View Full Entry]

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Our plane left at 10:00 p.m., but we had to be out of the beach house by noon. So, we had a bunch of time, and couldn't really spend it lounging at the beach, as we had nowhere to get all the sand off after noon. So, I poked around in all the little glossy books we picked up here and there for something for us to do. We could take a helicopter tour of the island (too expensive) or a 1-hour jungle tour in a big SUV (skeptical, what can you see in an hour?) or we could go sail [View Full Entry]

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This morning, Judy and John left our group to go off on a tour of the other Hawai'ian Islands we we were on our own for the remainder of the trip. At this point, we didn't feel like we'd spent enough time at the beach, so we decided to do just that for our morning activity. I had decided that I was going to try this boogie boarding thing I'd heard so much about, and, surprisingly, Laura and Barb both wanted to try it, too. So, we grabbed some beach chairs, an umbrella, the boogie boards, and as an afterthough, I [View Full Entry]

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After Pearl Harbor, we set off for the north shore, which during the winter months, has some of the best surfing in the world. You've heard that song "Pipeline" by the Chantays? Well, I'm pretty sure this is what they were playing about. The Banzai Pipeline is up on the north shore. On the way there, we stopped at the Dole Plantation. Apparently, you have to stop at the Dole Plantation. They've got this big maze (we didn't go), and a tour (also didn't go), and a big store and snack bar (we went there). By this time, we were all [View Full Entry]

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Today was Pearl Harbor day. When one goes to Oahu for the first time, one must go see the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial. I believe it's a sort of a civic duty. People my age do not understand at all what it was like on December 7th, 1941 and the days following. The terrorist attacks in New York and DC do not really shed any light on what it was like to be attacked by a foreign military for military goals; those attacks weren't military, they were criminal acts committed by criminal people, and it's just not the same thing. Because of [View Full Entry]

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Today was a partial day of rest. We've been go go go since we got to the island, and it was a welcome change of pace to have a little down time. I slept in this morning (6:45 a.m.) and spent some time relaxing, and then we went down to the beach and played in the water some. After that I worked on the photographs that I'd taken, burning them to CD-ROMs, just in case the worst were to happen to my laptop. Finally, we all got restless and decided to go do something, so after everybody got a shower in, [View Full Entry]

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Here we are at Tuesday already. We decided last night to try to have a big breakfast around 9:00 a.m. or so, and then head north to the Polynesian Cultural Center. Were we at home, I'd have rolled out of bed around 8:00 a.m., taken a quick shower and been ready in plenty of time. However, on Oahu, the sun comes up at 6:00 a.m. Every day (give or take 5-10 minutes). All year. Apparently, all the birds on the island decided to sleep in the palm tree just outside our window and they all woke up at once making quite [View Full Entry]

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