Not too much happened today from a traveling perspective. Natalie’s relatives and friends joined us throughout the day to visit, so we never had an opportunity to even leave the house. The amusing part of the day was as each set of relatives arrived, we would reset the champagne and appetizers. I, honestly, lost track of how much I drank that day. That night we headed over to a little Russian restaurant and were treated a very fine three-course dinner. During the dinner, at least one member of the family that ran the restaurant was playing old Russian folk songs. After the dinner, everyone joined from the kitchen and played at least another 8-9 songs. Dinner and a concert, well worth it!

Today was our first great outing! We started the day with the normal waking up around 10:00am, taking our time to leave the house. Using the subway we headed over to the Arc de Triomphe as our first major tourist spot. The Arc was just as impressive as I thought it would be. Natalie and I grabbed some tickets for admission and headed to the top. Only 218 steps later, we arrived at the indoor, top exhibit featuring models of the Arc and related statues. A few more steps later, we were treated to an amazing view of the Champs-Élysées.

After the Arc, we caught the subway again and headed for the Eiffel Tower. The trip was easy enough, but once you got off the subway you were bombarded with street peddlers offering you rare, once-in-lifetime key chains of the Tower. In case you missed the rare deal, look no further than two feet away and you find the same item for a different price. The Tower was just as large and magnificent as I thought it would be.  The lines to enter the tower, on the other hand, were larger and much more impressive than I thought. The lines were crazy, maybe three hours later you had a chance to enter (and that was for the stairs line). Needless to say, we opted to walk around the garden and take a few pictures enjoying the wonderful weather we had.

After some lunch at a tourist restaurant, which was way over priced and not the greatest food, we headed back along the Champs-Elysees to the Place de la Concorde. This is the famous location for the guillotine during the French Revolution. The same guillotine that took the heads of much of the French aristocracy including Louis XVI in 1793. We arrived at the place just before sunset, so naturally we were treated to the best possible light and skyline conditions for pictures.

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Today is Christmas Day! We started off the day properly by sleeping in after a great Christmas Eve. As it was Christmas Day, nothing was open and so little was seen. After breakfast we attended a Christmas mass at Jean-Pierre’s nearby church. The service was great, but the temperature in the church was so low we were grateful to leave (not enough layers). After the service, we headed back to flat to enjoy a 2-hour lunch and warm back up a bit.

To finish out the afternoon, we headed up to Sacre Coeur Cathedral just before sunset. Unfortunately, we were unable to photograph the interior of the cathedral, which was amazing! But the outdoor and neighborhood shots were nearly perfect with the sunset that we were given. You can see more of the photos here (please login first). After the cathedral, we headed into the nearby town of Montmartre, which is kind of the “west hills” of Paris. Within the square, are dozens of artists, all eager to draw your portrait in about every style available.

To help warm back up and being fairly tired of just sitting, we opted to walk over half the way back to the flat. This again was enjoyable as we got to see more of Paris that is not frequented by tourists. Once the walk got the best of our feet we hopped on the nearest subway and headed back to relax the rest of the night.

Today was our first full day in Paris and it was Christmas Eve! It was tough to fall to asleep during the night, you felt tired going to bed, but actually falling asleep was a challenge. That was until about 3:00a, then you were out cold. We slept in until about 10:30a, which still felt like waking about in the middle of the night. But guilt and the smell of breakfast forced us out.

After a great breakfast, we set out with Jean-Pierre to head to the Christmas Market near La Grande Arche de la Défense. The Christmas markets were nothing special, except for the food that was being offered, but it was a our first chance to see the Grande Arche and try some hot spiced wine. Which was much needed since it was so warm out.

After enjoying and photographing the market, we headed back on the subway to Notre Dame Cathedral. The cathedral was absolutely incredible, and provided a nice break from the cold wind. The inside was immaculate, but very dark and difficult to photograph. We spent at least an hour inside the church photographing the interior. After feeling warm enough, we headed back outside to photograph the main entrance, including a picture of St. Denis. Finally we decided to walk around the church admiring it’s elaborate structure. But, the wind continued to get the best of us, so we called it a day and headed to find the nearest restaurant to warm back up. Nothing like a Quiche Lorriane and hot chocolate to do the trick.

Ah, there is nothing better when starting a vacation then a 6:00am flight! Yes, in order to make this whole trip work we had to leave from Chicago at 6:00am to catch a flight to Frankfurt, then only to arrive in Paris in mid-afternoon the next day. That’s the one thing I hate about flying to Europe is that you must kiss off a day. Our flight to Chicago was delayed an hour due to snow in the Chicago area, as a result they were slowing down the incoming flights. I was a bit nervous because we were not given more than 90 minutes to make the connection and I was under the impression that we were going to have to change terminals to catch the Frankfurt flight. Over an hour later we were leaving PDX on our way to Portland. Upon arrival in Chicago we were offered a great reward by the travel gods that our departing flight for Frankfurt was the gate across the hall, doesn’t get any easier than that. After grabbing some quick food and attempting to bribe the attendant to giving us business-class seats, we left ORD for FRA. The flight over was uneventful and 8 1/2 hours long. All attempts to catch some sleep failed, and the movies they offered were lame. God bless the PSP!

After landing in FRA around 6:00am the next day, we tried to figure out where our Paris flight was. The problem with FRA is that unless you are flying on Lufthansa, FRA will not assign a gate number until about 30 minutes before your flight. Normally not a problem, however many of the concourses have split levels with different gates above and below, security control is at the start of the level. So if you gate is on a different level than you are on, you must exit security and go back through on the next level. Natalie and I were getting quite tired by this point, so we decided to guess where the flight was going to be and camped out near the monitors until the gate was posted.  After enduring security, we headed for the gate, and Paris.

Once we got on the flight, I was beat and decided to nap a bit. Natalie called Jean-Pierre (Natalie’s uncle) to inform him that we were on-time and all was good. I awoke about an hour later expecting to be preparing to land, only to find that we have not left yet. Apparently there was a different excuse for why we did not leave every time they provided an update on the PA. Again, over an hour later we finally left for Paris. This is the beginning of my stance that Air France sucks.

Jean-Pierre met us at the airport and drove us to his flat near the Bastille in downtown Paris. We took a much needed nap for a few hours and woke up in time for an aperitif and dinner. Finally, the end of a very long trip to Paris, can’t wait to see some sights tomorrow.

Well due to some upcoming trips and our love for tropical places, we were not able to attend Dragon*Con this year. While I definitely missed Dragon*Con, we were able to attend a new convention conveniently held at the same time up in Seattle. The Penny Arcade Expo or PAX, is one of the largest game expos on the west coast. Unlike Origins that focused mostly on games that do not require electricity, PAX is almost exclusively about video games of all shapes and sizes.

Almost immediately up on arrival we attended a short panel on freelance artists for comics, graphic novels, and games held by Wizards of the Coast. From my vantage point the panel offered some good advice, but I was confident that Natalie absorbed far more. After the panel, we headed down to the exhibit halls to see what games were being presented. Upon entered you were first introduced to the independent games being offered for a greatly reduced price.

Now like many of you I am growing increasingly tired of the same search/replace names on screenplays for movies, and studios milking sequels and “reboots” to death. Unfortunately, PAX was no exception. There were very few new games being offered, most of the games that are due around Christmas time are. . .yes. . .sequels. Definitely not bad sequels, in fact I very much looking forward to Halo 3 ODST, Left 4 Dead 2, and especially Bioshock 2. Getting to play and watch a few of them was very exciting, and is making the wait that much harder to bear.

But really, are studios and designers really out of ideas? Seriously, grab a book or two, and I think you may find some new inspiration. Many of the indie games are not focusing on cutting-edge graphics or Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound, instead they are offering the user an opportunity to try something new. Most of the games focus on different forms of puzzle-solving, that at first glance you offer a “that’s nice” and then walk away. It’s not until you start playing that you find the game-play intoxicating and yourself writing down the URL for the game.

The highlight of PAX was no doubt the Saturday night concert. The concert started with a lame Rock Band live duel, but eventually gave way to folks who know how to create their own music. The word during the convention was that first band FreezePop had great music, but was poor on-stage. I found this to be quite the opposite: I thought their performance was amazing, but their CD music a bit flat. After being entertained by FreezePop for close to 90 minutes, the next “opening” band of Paul and Storm kept the energy going for another hour. We have heard them a couple of times, so their performance was nothing new, but entertaining nonetheless. Finally Paul and Storm were relieved Jonathan Coulton who delivered a stellar performance. The climax of the show was no doubt with Jonathan changed the lyrics of his song My Monkey to “Wil Wheaton”. Wil who happen to be in the crowd, found it so amusing that if he had not been laying down already probably would have collapsed. After the song, Wil came up on a stage for a big group hug. Awwww. . .

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Is it the 11th Commandment that the vacations must go by so fast? Seriously, it barely felt like we were there a week and then it was over. Needless to say, we have a great time and were able to do most of what we were hoping to do. In short we dove six dive sites including two sites at Lanai: No-Name Paradise and the Second Cathedral.

Day1: Our trip started with arriving at in Maui around 1:00p on Friday afternoon. After getting our bags and rental car we headed south to Wailea to the Marriott Resort & Spa where we were treated a great suite with two balconies over looking the ocean. During the afternoon we headed just south of Wailea to the Lava Shores at Ahihi Bay. The setting was great for pictures, but the lighting due to the large cloud lingering above us made capturing the shot against the bright ocean damn near impossible. After enuring the rough roads out to the park, we headed back to teh resort to tour the beach and lounge at the salt-water pool. Later that evening we headed up into the shops at Wailea at ate at the Cheeseburger in Paradise, which was surprisingly good considering how touristy it appeared.

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Day 2: Taking an opportunity to sleep in a bit, which means we awoke around 6:00a because that it is 9:00a PST, we headed over to the Longhi’s Restaurant in the same shops from the night before. All I have to say was the french toast good, the potatoes good, the juice good! We didn’t have to check-out until 11:00a, and when you wake up at 6:00a that leaves you plenty of time for snorkeling. Natalie and I heading down to the point and got in a good 90 minutes of swimming before having to head back. We checked out of the hotel and headed back to OGG to pick up Dan, Sarah, and Katie as they were set to arrive soon.

Day 3: Spend most of the day chilling at the resort or diving.

Day 4:

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Starting the morning by grabbing some more tanks and heading to Mala Ramp for one of the most amazing dives we have ever gone on. We were treated to sharks, turtles, noodle people, and more fish than I could possibly keep track of. Later that day we toured the town, and ate once again at Cheeseburger. That night we ended up playing one of the most die-head games of Gloom ever! Might have gone better if it was not for all the Mai Tais, thanks Dan!

Day 5: Decided to head back to Wailea for the day to do some shopping and of course more diving. Some of the wet weather was coming down from the North Shore, so it was nice to escape a bit to the better weather of the South (well as south as you can get on a small island). We wrapped up the day with a 2 1/2 hour whale watching trip that was incredible. We witnessed a group of males competing for a single female, who herself was with a young calf. Seemed like the female was generally uninterested in the males, but they were quite content to beat themselves up over her.

Day 6: Oh yeah, boat dive day!!!! This year we took a boat dive to Lanai, despite all the warnings about it being a very rough ride. It was a bit rough, but really nothing to be concerned over. We started the dive at Nowhere site which was a massive reef formation just 40 feet down. It featured a few little crevasses and an abundance of life. Our second dive was at the 2nd Cathedral which is a huge rock formation, allowed for some extensive cavern diving. The caverns were home to many fishes, and reef formations.

Day 7: The road to Haha. . .was very wet. The bad weather finally stopped teasing us and went for all its glory. The trip was quite wet, ask Dan. But nonetheless we toured a few falls, and made it to Hana only to discover that there really were no good restaurants there. Since some people we dying of hunger, we had to head but on the mostly-single-lane road to town. This was too bad, Hana was quite beautiful despite the weather, I did wish we could have spent more time there.

Day 8: Time to head home. If we weren’t depressed enough about that, we decided to head to our favorite kabob place only to find out that they were closing up shop due to the economy. Hell of a way to end!

The entire album can be viewed here (login required):

http://www.andyandnataliepics.com/v/andyphoto/maui2009/

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Okay, so it has been a little while. . .maybe a long while. Natalie and I just got back from Origins 2009 in Columbus, OH last weekend and in short we had a great time! For those who are unfamiliar with Origins, it is a gaming fair every year that offers you the opportunity to match wits and strategies with your friends.

Origins is not a super-LAN party, but a everything-except-computers gaming fair. This was our chance to hook up with the east-coast friends who will not be able to see at Dragon*Con this year (thank you economy). We played a whole assortment of games including “Arkham Horror“, “Pandemic“, “Spirit of the Century“, and “The 3 Commandments”.

On Friday, my goal was simple: depart customer’s site in St. Louis travel to Columbus. Of course, American Airlines went out of their way to make that as difficult as possible. Departed STL for ORD with no problems or delays, however once I got in ORD I was under a false-sense of comfort with my flight was on-time. Once on the plane already to go, the captain announced that we were going to be held to allow 20 folks arriving on a late international flight make the connection. That’s cool if you are like 10 minutes or so late, but not on the order of 90 minutes! The sad part was that there were 20+ people up on the standby list for that flight and more waiting for the next flight, AA could have easily filled the sits. And much to my misfortune the 20 people we were waiting for were middle-schoolers returning from a European trip.Wish airlines extended me the same courtesies when I was running late.

Anyway, finally arrived in Columbus and headed over to the Crowne Plaza to meet up with everyone. Most of our friends were quite drained from lengthy drives to get to Columbus. We all agreed that beer was a cure for this night.

Early Saturday morning, Natalie and I set out on our first quest: locate Starbucks! After some much needed caffeine was acquired, we headed back to the convention center and joined up with everyone else. The first game was “Spirit of the Century“, which I was not able to join since we had too many people already. No matter, I am really not into games that do not have a board or screen, but let me tell you it was damn entertaining to watch. After a short lunch at the North Market, we headed back to play “Arkham Horror” for the first time. Well second, sort of. We tried previously, but after spending 2 hours to setup the game and even longer to try to understand how to play, we kinda gave up. Needless to say, playing with experienced players was extremely fun! Later that evening with headed over to a friend of Mur Lafferty for a BBQ and game of “Pandemic“. “Pandemic” is one of those games that does not take a lot of instruction, but a fair amount of strategy and team cooperation. After the BBQ we headed back to the convention center to swing by the boardroom with John and Laura to get our free game. We ended up with “The 3 Commandments” which at first looked to rank fairly high on the suck-meter. But after playing a few rounds it ended up being one of those very entertaining games that would do well at a party (better if drinks are served).

Not-so-early on Sunday morning, we met up with everyone at Max & Erma’s restaurant for a breakfast. Some of the group had to depart so afterwards, others had the opportunity to hang around for a bit. Finally around noon most everyone had to leave after visiting the Dealer’s room one last time. Natalie and I headed back up to the boardroom to play a round of “The Red Dragon Inn“, which in my opinion was not quite worth the hype (although Gog is awesome). After playing enough games to last a few months, we headed over to Comfest which happened to running that weekend and it was only a few blocks away. Both of us were quite hungry but this point so we treated ourselves to some great BBQ, visited some of the art booths, and could not avoid the people-watching (google Comfest you will understand). After Comfest, we drove over to the Columbus Zoo for the afternoon. Now the Columbus Zoo is like half-zoo and half-amusement park. We definitely regretted not bring our swimsuits, but had a great time nonetheless. The night was topped off with a visit to Schmidt’s German restaurant for dinner which included: 1L of Warsteiner, Sauerbraten, German potato salad, chocolate cream puff, and fudge. Oh yeah!

Finally, Monday morning we left the hotel and headed for home. Of course, that was not a easy as that sounded either. Thanks to the idiocy of Expedia, I couldn’t just adjust one segment of my flight for business, I had to cancel it out and then start over. Of course though we you start over you can’t get the same flight because it is full (yes even with my cancellation, the Expedia rep thought this was ridiculous as well). Needless to say, Natalie and I could not travel together the whole way back. But all was well, we had an event-less return to Portland.

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So I was thinking the other day of places that we have dived, good and poor dives. There have been many less interesting or down-right dangerous dives, like anything Oregon Coast. But we have also been privileged to dive some the greatest dive sites on the planet, specifically the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand. Here’s a list of great dive sites we have enjoyed in the order of awesomeness:

1. Poor Knights Islands, North Island, New Zealand
2. Molokini Crater, Maui, US
3. Kapalua Bay Beach, Maui, US
4. Breakwater Point, Monterey, CA, US
5. Edmonds Water Park, Edmonds, WA, US

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I’m sure just about everyone wants to join me for this demand! The funny thing is that is not that I am burned out of work or can’t take it anymore. Actually, still very motivated. I am really tired of this gloomy weather! I love the weather in the northwest, having never cared for the extreme heat, but I admit after a very long winter it is time to retreat to sunnier skies! Seriously, I could use the tan! Even willing to settle for red, and that earn me some points after I get back. Looking forward to our upcoming vacation to the tropics. To help set the mood is are favorites for the previous trip.

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