My dominant recollection of the trip was its overwhelming heat and humidity. But we managed quite a few activities in the midst of the oppressive weather:

• Hanshin Tigers baseball game in Tokyo
• Sumo wrestling tournament in Tokyo
• Yamazaki Whiskey Distillery outside Osaka (deserved its own blog post and photo collection here)
• Fish market in Tokyo – way early in the morning, followed by a sushi breakfast
• Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum
• Osaka Castle
• Karaoke – late into the night – with our Japanese friends
• The Akhihabara, Tokyo’s electronics district – the next best adventure after the Yamazaki Distillery

And various others too numerous to mention, even if I could remember them.

In any case, some good photos came out of our time in Japan. I’ve grouped the various sets into a Flickr collection here. I suggest visiting Flickr directly to page through the photos more quickly and in larger sizes. But I’ve also inserted thumbnail galleries of each below. If you use the the thumbnail galleries instead of clicking through to Flickr, then note that some galleries have multiple pages.

Various One-Off Highlights

Hanshin Tigers Baseball Game: Tokyo: September 22, 2007

Sumo Tournament: Tokyo: September 20, 2007

Fish Market: Tokyo

Funny Signs

Other One-Off Shots

Following are photo albums of each.

The Liberace Museum (originals on Flickr here, slideshow here):

The Hoover Dam (originals on Flickr here, slideshow here):

I’m not much of a Cirque du Soleil fan, though somehow over the years I’ve seen at least a half dozen of their productions. Most were in tents on tour in New York or San Francisco, though also a couple in Vegas at their purpose-built theaters. Only “Zumanity” was a total dud – I left at intermission – but I have a hard time remembering anything that really distinguished the others from each other.

Those by-now over-familiar Cirque du Soleil traits permeate “LOVE”: exquisite retro-French costuming, little vehicles that seem to drive themselves, Peter Pan-like trapezery (I just made that word up), and a maelstrom of apparent gymnastic chaos on the ground. “LOVE” is an ideal introduction to the (initially breathtaking) tricks of Cirque du Soleil’s trade, though the only gimmick likely to surprise frequent Cirque attendees is a bit in which the ushers pull a billowing sheet just over the heads of the entire crowd. (My colleague Mark made the apt observation that “LOVE” is heavier on the dancing and lighter on the acrobatics than usual for Cirque du Soleil, but there’s still plenty of the latter to keep you entertained.)

My favorite segment was “Help”, during which four roller skaters perform daringly choreographed acrobatics on two half pipes. I also enjoyed “Revolution/Back in the U.S.S.R.”, which included some fantastic antics on four trampolines. But if they had trampolines, why didn’t they use them in “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”?

Cirque du Soleil shows are not known for their narrative cohesion, and “LOVE” is no exception. “LOVE” does feature several recurring characters, though their individual segments are rarely compelling or memorable enough for the audience to establish any feeling for them. There seems to be a thematic undercurrent of “a chronology of The Beatles”,  occasionally made explicit by some superbly realized projections, but those segments are so infrequent that they add more color to the performance than actual structure.

That gets us to the main draw of “The Beatles LOVE”, the music. I love the soundtrack to this show, remixed and reimagined primarily by Giles Martin, son of producer and “fifth Beatle” George Martin. Working from the original master tapes, Giles creates a beautiful tapestry (dare I say “mashup”?) of Beatles music that flows beautifully, evoking a huge variety of memories and emotions. Purists need not apply – they’ll hear “Hey Bulldog” merged into “Lady Madonna”, or the bass line from “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” underneath “Here Comes the Sun”. But I love grasping for familiar snippets of Beatles tunes as they float in and out of other songs.

So should you shell out $125 to see this show in Vegas? If you’re a Cirque du Soleil veteran looking for innovations on a now well-worn formula, then “LOVE” is not the show for you. But if you would like an introduction to the acrobatics and visual splendor of Cirque du Soleil, then “LOVE” will do as well as any. And if you love The Beatles and are okay hearing the music teased apart and reassembled, then you absolutely should add “The Beatles LOVE” to your itinerary.

(By the way, NPR did a great interview with Giles Martin about the creation of the soundtrack – you can find it here.)

(And on the same trip I visited a few worthy off-Strip attractions, including the Liberace Museum and Hoover Dam. Photo albums of each are linked here.)

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. Bamberg is home to eight old German breweries (plus a modern brewpub), two of which specialize in Rauchbier (smoked beer).

For a non-beer tourist, Bamberg is worth a day trip if you’re already in Bavaria – perhaps touring Neuschwanstein castle or other local attractions.  The old city hall, towers, and other medieval buildings are just wonderful to see and explore.

For beer aficionados, Bamberg is an absolutely required pilgrimage. A unique bit of beer history preserved here (by the way, Evan Rail wrote a superb overview of beer travel in Germany, including great pointers to Bamberg and Rauchbier, in the New York Times a couple of years ago).

Here are a few of my notes and recommendations, followed by a photo album:

• Take a cab from the train station to the old part of the city or to your hotel. The station is just far enough away from the action, and in a relatively grim-looking part of town, to make walking unpleasant.
• Stay at one of the breweries. At least two have guest rooms – Spezial and Mahr’s Bräu. A very nice way to get at heart of what Bamberg’s about.
• Try some Rauchbier at the source. Spezial (my favorite) and Schlenkerla (better known) are the only two breweries that make it. Rauchbier is described in many ways: “bacon beer,” “like licking an ash tray,” “the beer equivalent of a peaty single malt Scotch whisky, like Ardbeg, Laphroaig, or Lagavulin.” A must-try.
• Visit the Geyerswörth Palace. I’ve no idea if there’s anything worth seeing in the actual buildings, but you should climb the tower (key is available from the Tourist Office a block or two away) and take in the beautiful views of the town and the hills around.
• The Weyermann Maltings is a can’t-miss destination for the beer geek. Professional- and home-brewers both will know the Weyermann name – one of the world’s best-known and highest quality malted grain providers. Call in advance to arrange a tour. They’ll happily show you around if you give them at least a day’s notice, but are much less willing to accommodate immediate requests. The well-stocked gift ship is open only on Fridays, but you might be able to get them to open it for you on a different day. Amazing selection of beer-related gear, the most interesting being beers brewed at their pilot brewery on site. The only ales I saw in Bavaria. Weyermann beer is ultra-rare, sold only at this gift shop.
• Our favorite breweries, in descending order: 1) Spezial (definitely smoked beer, but not over-smoked), 2) Mahr’s (try the “ungespundet” – head and shoulders above their others), 3) Schlenkerla (the classic richly-flavored Rauchbier), and 4) Klosterbräu (decent all-around lagers).
• We did not like any of the beers at Fässla, and we tried them all. The service was also distinctly unfriendly.

Here are some of my photos from Bamberg. As always, I suggest viewing the slideshow directly on Flickr here, but you can also get a sense from the gallery I’ve pasted below (note that there are two pages of photos):

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 vibe. But no – though things were occasionally rowdy, the entire feel was one of, well, gemütchlichkeit! Just lots of happy folks celebrating beer and food in a Germanically-organized way.

You can find tons of Oktoberfest travel/tourist information all over the web. The official website is excellent and a great place to start. But here are a few tips from my experience:

• You can enjoy yourself mightily without ever getting a tent reservation – the outside Biergartens always have space, and they serve the same food and beer as inside. And the regular Munich beer gardens, like Augustiner and Hofbräu, are going full tilt, so you don’t even have to be at the Wiesn to have fun.
• However, you should definitely get at least one reservation for at least one tent, just to have the full experience. You haven’t been to Oktoberfest until you’ve sung “Take Me Home, Country Roads” alongside an oom-pah band and 4,000 of your newest friends.
• Eat the chicken. It’s amazing. We called it “crack chicken”. No idea what they do it back in the big rotisserie areas, but it tastes like no other food. Downright sensational.
• The BMW Museum has been around for more than thirty years, but has recently expanded with some new buildings (essentially comprising a fancy dealership). Worth a visit – most efficient way to get a feel for the Bavarian fetish for engineering.

There are six breweries allowed to brew and serve Oktoberfest-style beer for the festival. I tried five of them in situ at Oktoberfest tents. Generally I found them much lighter in color and dryer in both flavor and texture than American renditions (Sam Adams does a great Oktoberfest in the richer style I’m used to).

Here’s my force-ranked list of Munich Oktoberfest-style lagers, in order of preference (loved one, liked three, disliked one). German beers tend to be more alike than different (largely due to the preference for lagers, and the ongoing oppression of the Reinheitsgebot), so we’re looking at a relatively narrow spectrum here:

1. Augustiner: head and shoulders above the rest. Had it at one of their beer gardens, at one of their tents, sought it out again several times. Scrumptious.
2. Hofbräu: tasted at the one tent in the Wiesn that pours it. Very well made. No sense that they’re phoning it in given the popularity of their eponymous Hofbräuhaus.
3. Spaten-Franziskaner: better-known internationally for their Weissbier (wheat beer), which our hotel served at breakfast. But Spaten-Franziskaner also does a nice job with the Oktoberfest style. A touch too dry for my taste, but still excellent.
4. Paulaner: one I had liked a lot in bottle in the USA, but a bit disappointing compared to the others. Quite drinkable, just not the “a-ha” I got from Augustiner.
5. Löwenbräu: probably the neatest-looking tent (see photos below), but by far my least favorite beer. Tried it twice at two different places. Just harsh and unpleasant to my palate.

Now to the photos. As always, I think they look much better in full-screen slideshow format on Flickr here, but I’ve inserted a gallery below if you would rather poke through that (note that there are two pages of the following gallery).

However, the menu at the Yamazaki tasting room (“Whisky Library”) contains hundreds (thousands?) of other Suntory whiskies, including the sublime Hakushu, which I will review here shortly.

One of the best distillery tours offered in any country – absolutely worth going out of your way for.

Unfortunately my photos are not of the best quality, but they should give you some feel of the experience. I always suggest viewing the Flickr slideshow here, but you can get a feel for the photos from the gallery below.

(In related news, Vienna’s Riesenrad is the inspiration for the logo on this blog.)

So on April 10, 2009, I went out to the Prater to ride the Ferris wheel. That afternoon I took nearly 400 photos, just a fraction of which are in the set highlighted here. It’s still an exhaustive (exhausting?) study of the wheel itself, with a few other skyline and park shots sprinkled in. At least it completes the collection of five photo sets I made on that short visit to Vienna!

These photos look best at the largest size possible, for which purpose I suggest using the slideshow on Flickr here. But I’ve also inserted a gallery below. I hope you enjoy seeing this century-old attraction through my eyes.

Of the three nights I was in Vienna this time, I bought an actual ticket once (Night 3), the opera house was closed once (Night 2), and I stayed at the bar once (Night 1). I had intended to get a standing room ticket that first night, but traveling got the better of me.

However, the standing room ticket process seems the same now as it was fifteen years ago, according to the excellent guide on the Mostly Opera blog here.

April 11 (and April 9, for that matter) was a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal, his final opera and by far my favorite work in the medium by any composer. You can see the cast list in a photo of the poster in this album (view the original size on Flickr if it’s hard to read at the small default size). A decent performance in a mostly bad production (see the ominous disco ball on stage in a photo from my camera phone, taken on a backstage tour on Good Friday, April 10).

While studying abroad in Vienna I spent more hours waiting in line at the Vienna State Opera than any other activity – including (especially) studying. Hence the shots of colonnade outside the standing room entrance – my real home away from my home away from home. This building is notoriously hard to take in at a glance – there’s just no good angle on it – and therefore also hard to photograph. I’ve seen no good modern exterior shot of it, and certainly didn’t get one myself.

However, there are a couple of interesting views inside the opera house, and one of Mahler’s piano.

As always, in my opinion the set is best viewed in slideshow form on Flickr here (be sure to watch in full screen mode), but I’ve pasted in a gallery of thumbnails below.

Mostly exteriors, focusing on Jugendstil (art nouveau) buildings, with some other sites mixed in.

The set is on Flickr here. I generally recommend using the Flickr slideshow over the gallery inserted below.

1. 1516 Brewing Company in the First District. My full review is on BeerAdvocate here. To summarize, an American-style brew pub in Europe. Everyone speaks English, styles are generally highly varied (and highly hopped – they even brew Hop Devil IPA from Pennsylvania’s Victory Brewing), and the food is generically average. The beer is overall superb, though – I tried everything on the menu and the blackboard and didn’t have a single clunker. Just don’t come here expecting to explore the nuances of Austrian beer history or culture.
2. Siebensternbräu in the Seventh District. Still an easy(-ish) walk from the center of the city. Absolutely charming inside, with a tendency toward more European styles in the beers. I had a couple of very good lagers there, and an awesome Käsespätzle (cheese noodles) with bacon. Went beautifully with their signature Hemp beer.

My general sense was that Vienna doesn’t have much of a craft beer culture, that big-company lagers (and some macro wheat beers) are the main offering nearly everywhere. I couldn’t even find a good, “native” Vienna lager anywhere – one of my favorite styles when produced by American craft brewers.

You can’t go wrong with the beers at either of the above-two brewpubs, though, nor the food at Siebensternbräu.

My photos are probably best viewed directly on Flickr here, but I’ve also inserted them as a gallery below. (Most of them were taken with my BlackBerry, so they’re not the greatest quality.)

Thanks again to the authors of the web pages below, which helped me quite a bit on such a short trip:

• BeerAdvocate BeerFly
• Vienna Beer Gen
• Vienna Pub Guide

(P.S. My blog covers all sorts of unrelated topics. If you’re interested in just the posts about beer, you can subscribe to those here.)

My primary activity was attending performances of my favorite opera, Wagner’s Parsifal, at the Vienna State Opera. Photos and information on that to come.

But I also spent the better part of the day at the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna’s largest and best-known cemetery (there are several dozen major graveyards in this death-obsessed city).  About sixty-five photographs seemed worth sharing.

The bulk of the photos are of the church at the center of the cemetery. This building was originally known as the Dr. Karl Lueger-Gedächtniskirche, but in an apparent bit of whitewashing (Lueger, a much-loved mayor of Vienna, was a notorious anti-Semite) is now formally called the Friedhofskirche Zum Heiligen Karl Borromäus. Designed by Max Hegele, this church is one of the most spectacular examples of Viennese Jugendstil (art nouveau) architecture.

Most of the others are of grave sites. Hundreds of notable Austrians are buried in the Zentralfriedhof. I focused primarily on composers, opera singers, and other musicians (Beethoven to Falco to Zawinul – they’re all here).

More photos from Vienna to come, but here’s the best I could do at the Central Cemetery. (The photos are probably best worth browsing directly on Flickr here – the Flickr slideshow in Full Screen with “info enabled” is excellent – but I’ve also inserted a three-page gallery below.)

While in The Smoke I took some photos, a handy ninety-two of which I deemed suitable for the public.  The focus is primarily on the Fuller’s Brewery, the last major brewery operating in London (and always my first stop when I visit the city), with some shots of St. Paul’s, The Vintage House whisky shop in Soho, and a random burnt up Ferrari on the street in St. John’s Wood.

You’ll find it easier to browse the photos directly on Flickr here, but I’ll insert a gallery into this blog post, too.

A few weeks ago we visited my parents-in-law there. I took two small collections of photos.

The first includes some signs from a shooting range that we visited one morning. Way out in the boonies.

And the other is of an abandoned Taco John’s. My wife and I both love Potato Olés (though not quite to the point of joining the official fan club), and were of course disappointed to see what happened to Pocatello’s Taco John’s. (By the way, do you think that television was in their break room?)