Last weekend I took my Dad to Vegas – his first visit. While there we saw “The Beatles LOVE” Cirque du Soleil show (report here). But we also visited a few off-Strip attractions, including the Liberace Museum and the Hoover Dam. Following are photo albums of each. The Liberace Museum (originals on Flickr here, slideshow [...]
In late September 2009 a few friends and I capped our trip to Oktoberfest with a visit to Bamberg, a 1000+ year-old town known for its beer. Bamberg is a charming small city of about 70,000 in northern Bavaria. It’s reminiscent of Bruges in that it escaped bombing during WWII, retaining a twisty medieval character. [...]
A few months back I went to Munich for the world’s oldest and greatest beer festival. I loved it – Oktoberfest wildly exceeded my expectations. I had been to Munich at least once before, but not during this time of year. I expected a New Orleans Mardi Gras-like crush of drunken screaming twenty-year-olds to ruin [...]
The highlight of my September 2007 trip to Japan was a visit to the Yamazaki Distillery outside Osaka. Yamazaki is Suntory’s best-known whisky (Bill Murray’s character endorsed it in Lost in Translation), and to my knowledge the only Suntory single malt brand distributed in the USA. However, the menu at the Yamazaki tasting room (“Whisky [...]
Vienna’s iconic Riesenrad (giant Ferris wheel) is the central attraction in amusement park in the Prater, a large public park in the Second District. My favorite mention of the Prater is in Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, in which the Marschallin tells her young lover Octavian that he may ride alongside her carriage in the Prater. [...]
This photo album is the fourth in a series of five from my brief trip to Vienna in April 2009. These 65-ish photos are in and about the Wiener Staatsoper, where I attended 100+ performances (mostly standing room) while a student in 1994. Of the three nights I was in Vienna this time, I bought [...]
