Back in Bloom

It occurred to me today that I have not posted anything on this wonderful little blog for like a million years. So, I thought I would share some pictures of the recent Cherry Blossoms blooming here in DC that I took a week or two ago. 

I went down to see the Cherry Blossoms twice, but the first time the buds weren't even open yet! It shouldn't be surprising, I guess, considering how late spring came to the DC area this year. 

But a few days later it was over 90 degrees outside and rumor was the Cherry Blossoms were finally open. So after class I grabbed my camera and headed down to the National Mall. 

Sure enough the scene was much different than just a few days earlier. 

Once the Cherry Blossoms bloom, the flowers will only remain on the trees for about a week or two. 

Locals and visitors from near and far turn out in droves to enjoy the beauty from the Cherry Blossoms. 

DC holds the annual Cherry Blossom Festival each year to celebrate the flowers. 

Although most of the flowers were in bloom, some had still not opened yet. 

My personal opinion is that late afternoon or early evening is the best time to view the flowers. The lighting as the sun sets is really beautiful!

Most of the trees are located around the Tidal Basin, stretching from the Jefferson Memorial, through the FDR Memorial (pictured above) and the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. However, there are also a few to the side of the Washington Monument.

Different varieties of Cherry Blossom trees have varying shades of flowers. 

Until next year, Cherry Blossoms. 

8.17: Annapolis, Maryland

Wednesday we took a little trip to Annapolis which is only about 40 minutes away from my apartment. It is a quaint little town. It's home to the U.S. Naval Academy. Boutique shops and restaurants line the streets by the docks. It's a really nice place to walk around for a day or afternoon. Every restaurant is stock-piled with fresh sea-food entrees.

Arriving on the main street of Annapolis

Watching the ducks on the dock.

In the afternoon, we took a boat ride on the Severn River on which Annapolis is located. The Severn River eventually opens up to the Chesapeake Bay but the little cruise stayed on the Severn. We sailed around the U.S. Naval Academy and got a much better view of the school than one can get from in the city.

U.S. Naval Academy 

We're on a boat! 

Little sail boats on the Severn River

We also got our fill of seafood. For lunch we ate at a little dinner on the main street (Chick and Ruth's Delly was the name). They had great crab cakes and the rest of the food was pretty good too. In the afternoon Dandrich had oysters from the Middleton Tavern. For dinner we ate at the Federal House. I had a salmon fillet with pesto sauce and Dandrich had a seafood medley with shrimp, crab, and scallops. All the food we had there in Annapolis was excellent and fresh.

Maryland crab cakes and ribeye steak sandwich 

Oysters 

Salmon fillet with pesto sauce, rice and vegetables

Overall, I think Annapolis is a great little day trip, especially if you live or are visiting the D.C. or Baltimore area. I'm sure we'll head back sometime because I really don't think you can go wrong at any of the restaurants there (unless you eat at the Jimmy John's we passed on the main street - don't waste your time on that when there's so much good seafood available).

Annapolis Harbor 

May 21: An Afternoon in Frankenmuth

Let me begin this by saying that we set out for Frankenmuth without much idea of what to expect other than a store that sold Christmas stuff all year round. Based on that description, I suppose you could say this trip exceeded expectations. But that makes it sound a lot better than it really is.

Here the city looks down right scenic. Don't be fooled.

Frankenmuth advertises itself as "Michigan's Little Bavaria." It's really just an over-exaggerated version of Columbus' German Village that was bought by Donald Trump and turned into a Disney-type theme park. The food is not so great, everything is over-priced, and each shop sells tie-dyed sweatshirts sporting the town name. However, if this does not deter you, than go for it.

Similar to Disney, statues of mice line the streets.

We arrived in the town early in the morning and walked around some the little shops on the main street of the city. Most of them looked cute from the outside but once you entered there was really nothing worth buying. And there was little variety. At one end of the main drag was a little shopping center set off from the street. These stores had a bit more diversity; most of these stores were specialty or niche stores, which made them more entertaining to browse through.

In the shopping center we had a strawberry-banana crepe at a little cafe. That was delicious. For lunch, we mistakenly thought it'd be a good idea to find some authentic German cuisine so we went to the Bavarian Inn instead of the slightly better rated (on Yelp at least) Zehnder's which apparently is famous for chicken. Bad choice for so many reasons. We should have turned around when the hostess stared at us like a deer in the headlights when we entered the building. But we stuck it out and had to pick from four different menus. I still could not tell you the difference between these except one seemed needlessly expensive.

The crepe was actually delicious but . . . .

The biggest sign you have failed at picking a good restaurant when traveling is when you see buses of group tourists piling into said establishment. Unfortunately, we had already committed and ordered food by this point so it was too late to leave. The food was very similar to Schmidt's (in Columbus) but more bland and way less delicious. I ordered the Sauerbraten and a side of noodles. The noodles were covered in crushed crackers and were really dry and gross. Although I am not a connoisseur of Germanic cuisine the sauerbraten was only so-so.

. . . . the sauerbraten and noodles, not so much.

To add insult to injury, a woman in a Bavarian costume serenaded the diners with her accordion music, stopping at every other table to pose for pictures with the guests. It was way too campy for my enjoyment. We did not stay very long afterwards as we decided to spend the rest of the evening at a nearby outlet mall instead. In conclusion, while not the worst place I've ever been, it's certainly far from the best.

April 1 & 2: A Brief Birthday Tour

So, it's been awhile since I've updated anything because frankly I haven't been doing anything interesting for the last couple months. Mostly just working, paying my bills, and biding time until law school. But this weekend I took a short trip to the Ann Arbor - Detroit - Windsor area for my birthday.

Main Street in Ann Arbor, MI

Since Friday was my actual birthday, Dandrich and I ate dinner with his sister at Japanese restaurant on University of Michigan Campus, creatively named Sushiya. Afterwards we had a birthday dessert at The Melting Pot on Ann Arbor's Main Street / downtown area. Both restaurants are pretty good. For being small and a college town, Ann Arbor has a lot of great dining options both on campus and downtown. It's also a really walkable area. Friday night they also happened to be holding a small street festival which seems to happen quite often.

Chocolate fondue with strawberries

Saturday morning, Dandrich and I stopped by the Ann Arbor farmer's market. If you are ever in Ann Arbor on a Saturday morning it is definitely worth waking up early to go. We bought some macaroons from Cecilia's Pastries which were delicious (but they sell out fast) in addition to some freshly-made breadsticks and wildflower honey.

Lavender flavored macaroons

Our next stop was the Detroit Zoo to see the penguinarium. The zoo was nice though smaller and older than the Columbus Zoo. Honestly, the penguinarium was a little bit of a let down though still really interesting. I guess I just thought it would be a little bigger. However, the Detroit Zoo does have a pretty cool polar bear exhibit which is good-sized.

Polar Bear Exhibit at the Detroit Zoo

From the zoo we continued through Detroit on our way to Windsor, Ontario. If you are ever considering driving to Canada I would suggest not to cross through at the Detroit / Bridge to Canada checkpoint. First of all, at present they are doing a lot of reconstruction on the roads and ramps to get to the bridge. The roads are not very well marked nor are the detour signs and our GPS machine didn't have the updated maps because the construction isn't finished. We eventually got to the bridge by following a car with Canadian plates. As you go through the US Border Patrol first they search your car then you have to wait forever to pass through the Canadian Border Patrol. The GPS estimated the distance from the zoo to Windsor at about 10 miles but it took us nearly two hours to get there. On the other hand we crossed back into the United States at a smaller checkpoint north of Lake St. Clair and it took maybe 10 minutes.

I don't have any pictures of Detroit or the Bridge to Canada so here's a picture of the inhabitants at the penguinarium

Originally we planned to stop at the Casino in Windsor but decided instead to take a short drive to the city of Chatham a little further east.. We stopped first at a mall in Windsor to exchange a little bit of cash  and check out a Canadian mall. If you were ever wondering what stores are in a Canadian mall the answer is American Eagle (and a bunch of other American stores) and the Canadian clothier Roots. So basically the same things as the mall in Ann Arbor.

We drove all the way to Canada for exotic stores like Sears

Driving through the Ontario countryside, the scenery looked very much like Ohio - flat, farm land - but with one exception. Wind turbines and solar panels cover the landscape. In 2009 Ontario passed the Green Energy and Green Economy Act which, among other provisions, provides incentives to homeowners who develop small-scale renewables. As a result many of the farms and homes we passed had solar panels installed in their yards. Although this won't cover all the energy needs it does allow more reliance on renewable energy. It would be great to do something like that here in Ohio. (Though that won't happen in the foreseeable future.)

Wind turbines in the Ontario countryside

In Chatham, we ate dinner at place called Smitty's which is apparently like a Canadian IHOP or something. The portions were pretty big for the price. We also stopped to see a lighthouse on Lake St. Clair which looked way cooler on the map than in person. It was an enjoyable trip albeit short since I had to work back in Columbus on Sunday night. And watch out for more updates as I have some more adventures planned in the future!

The map said Lighthouse Cove when it should have said Two-Story Miniature Lighthouse Behind an Abandoned Parking Lot but I guess that was too long.

Jan. 1: Last Day in Taiwan

Tomorrow we are heading back State-side. Today we returned to Mao Kong for lunch and tea again and later had dinner with Dandrich's uncle. Here are some pictures from today.

Drinking tea in the mountains near Taipei. 

Tea house in Mao Kong

Taipei City, it's a little cloudy but you can still see the Taipei 101.

Picking up some dinner! 

Dec. 28: Return to the Flora Expo

Tuesday we returned to the Taipei International Flora Expo to see the exhibits we hadn't seen yet. This time we left ridiculously early and arrived at the expo nearly an hour before it opened. There were already people lining up, waiting to be the first ones into the expo, so we got in line as well.

For the indoor exhibits they only allow a certain number of people in at a time so they pass out separate tickets for entrance into these parts after you get into the expo. Dandrich and I were going to try to go see one or two of these indoor exhibits but gave up after the gates opened and I was overrun by some 70-year-old lady and her cane. As soon as the gates opened everybody ran in to get the tickets. It was crazy.

Instead we just looked at the flowers, which after all is supposed to be the purpose of the expo. Of course the flowers were really beautiful. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum is situated in the grounds of the expo so we also visited a special exhibit held there on Paul Gauguin.  It was a nice exhibit although they only had a few of his later works.

While at the expo, we got some rose-flavored ice cream that they even made look like a rose in the cone. It was pretty delicious but unfortunately it's only a limited time flavor available at the expo. The place we got the ice cream from also had a flavor called 'Obama Chocolate Brownie.'

By the time we got out of the Fine Arts Museum the Flora Expo was inundated with visitors so we didn't stay very long after that. It is still unbelievable to me that so many people would visit the expo everyday. However,  Taiwan is considerably smaller than the United States so it is easy for people all over Taiwan to visit the expo. And since it is smaller and there are fewer things to do here I guess anything new is also pretty exciting.

Dec. 26: Kaohsuing

On the final day of our trip we saw a few sights in Kaohsuing before taking the high speed rail back to Taipei. We toured through one of the larger department stores called Dream Mall. It had a ferris wheel on top of the mall but we didn't end up riding it.

Inside of the empty stadium

We also visited one of the larger stadiums in Taiwan that happens to be located in Kaohsuing.  It holds about 40,000 people so it was pretty underwhelming compared to the Horseshoe or even the Big House. It is pretty new and was built for some kind of Asian collegiate track tournament or something like that last year. Now, it isn't really used that much, it justs there empty except for the field sprinklers. However, because of the name the stadium was given in Chinese a lot of the people in the area thought it was built for the Olympics and were happy to have it built.

Outside the stadium. It was a little windy and chilly.

Because we had to catch the high speed rail train, we ate a quick lunch at a Japanese fast food place called Mos Burger. Looking at the pictures as we ordered, I was skeptical to say the least. Then I tried one of their sandwiches and it was delicious. The one I got had teriyaki beef, onions, and lettuce. But the coolest part was instead of a normal bun the meat is placed between a bun made of rice.

After experiencing the ease of traveling on Taiwan's high speed rail, I really wish we had something like this at home. The drive from Taipei to Kaohsuing usually takes three hours in optimal traffic conditions but usually a lot longer because of the congestion on Taiwanese highways. On the high speed rail the trip is only an hour and a half and you don't have to worry about traffic or directions or anything. You can just enjoy the scenery.

High speed rail trains