Lovely – Hotel Central

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My first place to stay on my Germany tour is a small, but nice Hotel at the edge of the pedestrian zone at Bamberg. From the entrance Hotel Central, one merely has to walk around the building and one is in the middle of the old town of Bamberg. But it’s not only a good starting point for explorations as a pedestrian. There is also a central bus station nearby, which offers all possible connections and for unscheduled trips, the taxi stop is right in Read More +

Train Time

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Finally its again time to travel. On this trip, I travel by train through Germany. On this first day the journey goes from Home to Bamberg. With the first train in Germany leaving Basel and arriving at Frankfurt on time, the trip started nice and calm. “Of course” the DB managed to delay the second connection a bit – but this is fully with their image and thanks to the rather generous changing times no real problem. Only at the last train change in Würzburg Read More +

Saying Goodbye

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The last day of the holiday is always a bit tricky to spend. You have all that luggage with you and there is quite a specific end to the activities you choose. On this travel, that day was easy to plan. As I was scheduled to flight out through San Francisco at the late evening, this was the perfect chance to say goodbye to many of my former working colleges. Many of the people I worked together in the past years I only knew from Read More +

Giants at Last

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My very last touristic destination on this three week trip became the “Muir Woods National Monument” just a bit outside of San Francisco. They were named after John Muir a Pioneer in protecting nature. The red wood trees have been preserved here in a small an relatively hidden valley. The oldest of these trees are around 1000 years old and therefore have seen many episodes in human history. But they not only get very old, but also very big. They can reach a hight of Read More +

In the Zoo

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(Almost) no travel without at least one visit in a zoo. So the San Francisco Zoo came to my travel itinerary. While I would have preferred a visit at the San Diego Zoo, this one was a bit closer and I anyway traveled enough. Expecting nice an warm weather, I dressed a bit summer like. This was a bit too optimistic, I have to admit. Anyway, the stay at the zoo was nice and relaxing. And finally I could also see a Grizzly from very Read More +

Different Geology

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After seeing quite some impressive formations built by sandstone, which was created by deserts, beaches, mud etc, I today saw massive mountains created in a total different way. The big formations, such as the half-dome, at “Yosemite National Park”, which stand out very impressive and may go up as much as 1.1 km from the valley floor, where built as magma cooled down. No apart from that quite relevant difference, there are also some remarkable similarities between the formations created in Yosemite and for example Read More +

Another World – Mono Lake

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Just a bit outside of the “Yosemite National Park” lies the Mono Lake. This is quite a bit a special place. As the lake only features incoming, but no outgoing water streams – the water evaporates about at the same rate as new water drips in – the lake is accumulating minerals. So in fact, the Mono Lake is an inland salt lake, which has a concentration of approximately 2.5 times the salt concentration as found in the oceans. This environment is not very well Read More +

Back at Riverside Inn

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When I looked for a hotel in or around “Yosemite National Park” on hotels.com, I decided to stay at the “Riverside Inn” as it looked quite ok. When I finally arrived there in full darkness – surprise – the place looked very familiar. When I was visiting Yosemite for the first time some 6 years ago, I struggled to find a place to stay and finally found that small motel a bit outside the park. Now intuition or was it actually my background memory, which Read More +

Area 51

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Today a big move towards the west coast – and a bit north – was on the schedule. I continued, what I started a day before and tried to get a quite a bit closer to San Francisco. Of course the way is the goal, so I have chosen a route, where I will pass another nice place, the Yosemite National Park. On the way, a bit outside of Las Vegas – “a bit” in american terms, I passed “Area 51”, the famous, non exiting, Read More +

Disney Land at Las Vegas – Le Paris

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Well, it is kind of common know ledge, that Las Vegas is a Disney Land for adults. Seeing it, is though a bit special anyway. However, also in this place there are definitively to many people to really enjoy it. The only thing you had not to queue was at the slot machines and game tables in the casinos. For eating or getting a ticket for one of the shows, queues built up quite easily. For me this was anyway only a short rest on Read More +