rickspencer

I was actually there 1.5 years ago, and every bit iof it is still warm and fresh in my memory. I still wear the shoes I bought there, and I still get compliments on them. I still have my charts and vivid personal memories of my friends there. Interestingly San Franners met me in MPLS this week for a conference,and one very tall drink of water invited me to come back. Might do that. :)

love san fran (as a tourist anyway)

I was there for a conference. Grumpy’s was cool. I didn’t know where to be, but where I was ‘The Depot’ was dead by like 9ish. I’m still looking for the right place to go hang out.

Huge, garish, stupid, expensive, and not really that interesting. Remember that time you had a good time doing that one thing with that one friend, and it was like the best time of HIS life? Las Vegas is like him 20 years later. He’s fat, stinks, he’s constantly loud and talking, and all he ever wants to do is that one thing you did 20 years ago.

Can’t say I liked Vegas. I knew that going in.

It wasn’t so bad, but be prepared to walk and pay through the nose for everything. The rooms are ok. The shops/food is expensive, crowded, and stupid. The birds were pretty, but I can see that becoming kinda sad even after awhile.

Arguably the worst place in the United States. Although I’ve not been to Miami, or Orlando, the panhandle just plain sucks.

if you get to know me, MAYBE I’ll tell you how I got there, and the things I did. :)

totally worth it. See a piece of St. Nicholas! I’ve been told it’s the largest reliquary in the United States.
Conception Abbey

http://www.hababusch.de/

If you go, this is the place to stay. It’s brilliant, just brilliant.

Maybe it’s properly called a “concentration camp,” I’m not sure, but it was one of the most sobering and singly moving experiences of my life. That tunnel you see is your entrance to the camp. Even during the day, you can’t see the beginning from the end, nor the end from the beginning. You are discarded by the world into this dark colon, and the next light you see is the light of death, from the inside. It has been too long for me to recall literally, but I can still revisit the terror of that tunnel and the alien nightmare that I exited into. It was so powerful that I began to be afraid for myself in there. The safety of being on ‘tour’ is challenged sharply by the starkness, by the walls, high and infinite, and by the emptiness of the experience.

go, before you grow old.

I experienced the rudeness I expected, but honestly it probably had a lot more to do with the fact that I looked rough and lost. Actually still that’s no reason for rudeness.

Yes I was an American tourist, but since I don’t really speak French, I was having trouble finding something to eat. I didn’t even mean to be in the town in the first place but that’s another story. I was hungry and looking for food.

Anyway, I was passing by this restaurant that had it’s french doors open, and I stopped to look in. A man in a group of people, sitting, asked me if I was looking for something. He asked in English, as I’m sure it was quite obvious that I was American (I had a green Army dufflebag, tennis shoes, and these loose sporty blue Caffeine pants on). I said that I was looking for something to eat, and as a precusor to is degrading laughter, he said, “Well it’s not here.”

fuck off.

I found a ham and cheese baguette down the street. Just like Paris I’d like to give it another chance.